1. The most obvious reason, of course, is that at midnight tonight, the early bird discount (40% off) ends. Forever. There won't be any of this "our system was maxed out, so we're extending the sale by 2 days because I really care about you, friend!" You know you've all heard it before - but you won't hear it here.
2. To follow up on that one, let's be honest: I'm not really sure if you're my "friend." You could be a crazy internet person, for all I know. In fact, many of you probably are - and acquiring a program like Show and Go could be really good for you to attend to your social awkwardness by heading to the gym to do the program and, in the process, meet some new people. You might even get diesel and attract a member of the opposite sex, settle down with them, and name your first child "Eric Cressey." No pressure on that one, though.
3. The feedback thus far from customers has been excellent. In addition to all the testimonials you'll see from the "guinea pigs" I put through the program, I've gotten some immediate one from people who have purchased the program via email; here's one quick example that just came in this morning.
"Eric, I've just purchased Show and Go. Have started to use this straight away, and can definitely say that it makes training and writing programs for clients very easy and effective especially with the massive data base available. Plus all the add-ons from the other coaches - such as conditioning and glute exercises - are awesome." - Chris Carter
4. At first glance, this simply looks like one demonstration from the huge Show and Go video library (don't worry; trap bar deadlifts are not mandatory).
However, if you look closely, what's going on in the background is possibly more significant. You'll see a few of my pro baseball guys starting up their sessions with foam rolling and mobility warm-ups. Most of these guys are just now arriving for their off-season training - as the product is released. In other words, this video was filmed back in February or so - which tells you that it literally took seven months (an entire professional baseball season) to bring this sucker to market because we spent so much time tinkering with it and trying to make it perfect (and putting a host of people through it as a pilot program over a four-month period). In a day and age when some folks are kicking out new products each week, you have my word that this is not a fly-by-night operation; we invested a lot of time, thought, and energy into making this something of which we could be really proud.
5. On the financial side of things, I'm getting married next weekend...and it would be nice to use this book to pay for a wedding, honeymoon, and protective helmet to wear for the rest of my life. Just kidding, honey!
6. On a more urgent note, tomorrow night is my bachelor party - and we're going to need bail money to get Tony out of prison after he's incarcerated for causing a scene at the casino when he realizes that they only serve free alcohol - and not almond milk - at the blackjack tables.
7. One afternoon earlier this week, just for the heck of it, I counted the professional baseball players in our facility. There were 12 - two Royals, one Blue Jay, one National, four Braves, one Met, two A's, and one Tiger - and this is just minor leaguers, without the major league season even having wrapped up. All told, we'll be over 40 professionals from all over the country. This is not to blow sunshine up my own butt; it's to make a very important point: I actually train people six days a week. I write a ton of programs, do a ton of evaluations, and love to coach. And all this give me a great perspective from which to program for the "masses" - as I see everything from 10-year-olds to 70-year-olds in just about every athletic and weekend warrior population.
This shouldn't even be something I have to mention, but I do - because you'd be surprised how many people write and sell programs when they aren't out there seeing it first hand. Theories are all well and good, but the best programs are rooted in principles that have proven effective time and time again in the real world.
Give it a shot; you've got nothing to lose: www.ShowandGoTraining.com.
In response to a recent blog, one reader posted a question about how I "structure" my approach to continuing education. As I thought about it, it's actually a more organized "ritual" than I had previously thought. Here are the key components:
1. I always have two books going at a time. One involves training/nutrition/manual therapy/rehabilitation. The other involves business/personal development. Noticeably absent from this list is fiction; I really don't have any interest in it, and couldn't tell you the first thing about Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. I'll usually have a book on CD in the car as well, but nowadays, my commute is non-existent (since we moved closer to the facility), so I have been doing more reading and less listening than previously.
2.Our staff in-service is every Wednesday at 10:30AM. This has turned into a great continuing education opportunity for all of us. While one person is "responsible" for presenting the topic each week, it always inevitably becomes a "think tank" among our staff and interns about how something applies to specific clients, unique issues, functional anatomy, or our programming or business model.
For instance, last week, I talked about how to assess shoulder external rotation and address any identified deficits on this front. We got to talking about which clients were using the appropriate mobilizations, how to perform them, and what would happen if they are performed incorrectly. Likewise, we talked about how certain people need to be careful about mobilizing their shoulders into external rotation because of extreme congenital laxity and/or extreme humeral retroversion.
Beyond just the benefits of helping our staff grow as a whole, for me, it has several distinct benefits. First, when I come back from a weekend seminar where I've learned something good, it's a great opportunity to "reteach" and apply it immediately. I'm a firm believer that the best way to master something is to have to teach it to someone else. Second, having pretty frequent "mini-presentations" keeps my presenting skills fresh for seminars when I may have 4-6 weeks between speaking engagements.
3. I get to at least 4-5 weekend seminars per year. I'm lucky in that two of these are generally Perform Better Three-Day Summits where I get to see a wide variety of presentations - with all my travel expenses paid because I present myself.
I think that every fitness professional needs to get to at least two such events per year. The good news is that with webinars and DVD sets, you can save a ton on travel expenses and watch these on your own schedule. A lot of people, for instance, have said that they learned more from our two-day Building the Efficient Athlete Seminar DVD Set than they did in years of college - with no tuition payment required, either!
That said, a ton of the education at such events comes from interacting with other fitness professionals, so you do miss out on the accidental "social" education.
4. I have one day a week where all I read are journal articles. Sometimes it is entertaining, and sometimes it's like reading stereo instructions. It depends on journal - and regular ol' luck with respect to what's going on in the research world. I'll keep it pretty random and just type in a search term like "sports medicine" or "strength training." We also have The Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies delivered to the office so that our staff can look that over.
5. I read a few blogs/newsletters each day in both training/nutrition/manual therapy/rehabilitation and business/personal development. I've listed several on my recommended resources page. There are loads more out there; these are just the tip of the iceberg and the ones that I tend to read more frequently.
6. I'll usually have a DVD set or webinar going as often as possible. We've got a great library in the office at Cressey Sports Performance, and I'm fortunate to have a lot of stuff sent to me for free to review here on the blog. I tend to prefer DVDs more than webinars, as I can watch them in fast-forward and make people talk faster to save time!
7. I talk to and email with a handful of other coaches about programming and business ideas and new things we're doing. I wouldn't call it a mastermind group, or anything even close to one in terms of organization, but it is good to know that whenever I want to bounce an idea off someone, I have several people I can contact. On the training side of things, a few guys that come to mind are Mike Robertson, Neil Rampe, Mike Reinold, Bill Hartman, and Tony Gentilcore. On the business side of things, I'm lucky to have Alwyn Cosgrove and Pat Rigsby as good dudes who are only an email or phone call away. I think that the take-home message is that if you surround yourself with the right people, answers that would normally elude you are really right at hand.
This post wound up running a lot longer than I'd anticipated, but hopefully you all benefited from it nonetheless. Have any continuing education strategies of your own that I have overlooked? If so, please post them in the comments section below.
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Though a somewhat "normal" day at the gym, yesterday marked Cressey Performance's three-year anniversary.
While my business partner's blog post yesterday did an excellent job of doling out "thank yous" to a lot of the important people who have been so involved in our success - from clients to parents, coaches, interns, and significant others - I wanted to add my own two cents on the matter today. More than anything, I really wanted to highlight a sentence that illustrates what makes me the most proud about where CP has been, where it is, and where it's going.
We've done this for the right reasons, and we've done it the right way.
I read a business development blog post by Chris McCombs the other day where he wrote something that really hit home for me. When he was talking about how he decides to accept or reject a new project/opportunity, here is one of his guidelines:
"Only Take on Projects That Are In Line With My Current Values and Fulfill Me Beyond Just The Money - A project must fulfill me in some way BESIDE just money...too many people spend their life JUST chasing a buck; to me, that's no way to live. For me, the money must be there, but it should fulfill me personally, be fun, help a lot of people, and build and be in line with my current brand and brand equity."
Back in 2007, I had a tough decision to make. My online consulting business had really taken off, and the Maximum Strength book deal was in the works. My other products - Magnificent Mobility, The Ultimate Off-Season Training Manual, and Building the Efficient Athlete - were selling well and getting great reviews, and I'd just had a study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. This website was growing exponentially in popularity, and I had just wrapped up my first year on the Perform Better tour - so lots of doors were opening for me on the seminar front to present all over the world - and I could have stayed home and just written all day, every day.
I was getting really crunched for time, as I was already training clients 8-13 hours per day, seven days per week, as my in-person clientele had rapidly grown. My phone rang off the hook for about three weeks after Lincoln-Sudbury won a baseball state championship after I'd trained several of their guys, and one of my athletes was named state player of the year. And, after being featured on the front page of the Boston Globe with a nipple so hard I could cut diamonds, I was in demand as a t-shirt model (okay, not really - but it made for an awesome blog post, The School of Hard Nipples).
I was exhausted and stressed - but absolutely, positively, "living the dream" that I'd always wanted.
To make matters a bit more interesting, I had just started dating a great girl (now my fiancee) who I really had a good feeling was "the one" after about three months. The work days, however, were insanely long and I was worried that I'd screw up a good thing by not spending enough time with her.
Every business development coach out there would have seen a "simple" answer to all my problems: stop training people in person. Just write, consult, make DVDs, and give seminars. It would have cut my hours by 80% and still allowed me to earn a pretty good living - and enjoy plenty of free time. There was a huge problem with that, though; as Chris wrote, it wouldn't "fulfill me personally, be fun, help a lot of people, and build and be in line with my current brand and brand equity." I like doing evaluations, writing programs, coaching, sweating, training with my guys, cranking up the music, helping people get to where they want to be, collaborating with and learning from other professionals, and watching my athletes compete - whether it's at some high school field or at Fenway Park. Giving that up wasn't an option; I guess I'd have just been a crappy business coaching client, as I would have been stubborn as an ass on giving that up.
Fortunately for me, Pete Dupuis, my roommate from my freshman year of college, had just finished his MBA and was in the midst of a job search. And, during that MBA, he'd started to train with me and packed on a ton of strength and muscle mass - making him realize and truly appreciate the value in what I was doing (especially since he was and is a goalie in a very competitive soccer league). Pete had also met and become friends with a ton of my clients - and taken a genuine interest in my baseball focus, as a lifelong Red Sox fan. Almost daily, Pete would encourage me to do my own thing and let him handle all the business stuff for me.
Simultaneously, Tony Gentilcore was ready for a change of scenery on the work front. Having been Tony's roommate and training partner for almost two years at that point, I knew he was a genuinely great guy, that he'd read everything on my bookshelf, and that he could coach his butt off and "walk the walk." He, too, had met a lot of my clients - so there was continuity from the get-go.
So, on July 13, 2007, Cressey Performance was born. Here is what we started with.
Boatloads of renovations and equipment additions later, it wound up looking like this.
Of course, we outgrew and demolished this space after about nine months and moved three miles east to a facility twice the size. And, we've continued to grow right up to this day; June was our busiest month ever, and July should be busier. We've got regular weekly clients who come from four states (MA, NH, CT, RI), and in the baseball off-season, I have college and pro guys who come from the likes of OH, AZ, CA, SC, NC, GA, FL, and VA. And, we had 33 applicants for this summer's internships.
To be very candid, though, I don't consider myself a very good "businessman." No offense to Pete or Tony, either, but I don't think they even come close to the textbook definition of the word, either. We just try to be good dudes. "We've done this for the right reasons, and we've done it the right way."
We don't allocate a certain percentage of our monthly revenues to advertising. In fact, we haven't spent a single penny on advertising - unless you count charitable donations to causes that are of significance to us.
We don't search high and low for new revenue streams to push on our clients. In fact, if I get one more MonaVie sales pitch, I'm going to suplex whoever delivered it right off our loading dock. Rather, we bust our butts to set clients up for success in any way possible - and trust that those efforts will lead to referrals and "allegiance" to Cressey Performance. We ask what they want from us and modify our plans accordingly. It's what led to us bringing in manual therapy, a pitching cage, and, of course, pitching coach/court jester Matt Blake's timeless antics.
Along those same lines, we don't measure our success based on revenue numbers; we measure it based on client results. In three years of seeing LOADS of baseball players non-stop, we've only had three arm surgeries: one shoulder and two elbow. All three were athletes who came to us with existing injuries, and in each case, we kept them afloat as long as we could and trained them through their entire rehabilitation. I don't want to toot our own horn, but this is a remarkable statistic in a population where over 57% of pitchers suffer some form of shoulder injury during each competitive season - and that doesn't even include elbows! And, our statistics don't even count literally dozens of players who have come to us after a doctor has told them they needed surgery, but we've helped them avoid these procedures. The college scholarships, draft picks, state titles, individual honors, and personal bests in the gym are all fantastic, but I'm most proud of saying that we've dedicated ourselves to keeping athletes healthy so that they can enjoy the sports they love.
The same goes for our non-competitive athlete clients. The fat loss and strength gains they experience are awesome and quantifiable, but beyond that (and more qualitatively), I love knowing that they're training pain-free and are going to be able to enjoy exercise and reap the benefits of training for a long time.
We don't penny-pinch during our slowest times of the month (late March through mid-May - the high school baseball season). We see it as an opportunity to do more staff continuing education, renovate the facilities, and get out to watch a lot of baseball and support our athletes. And, we adjust our hours to open up on Sundays and stay later on weeknights during the baseball season to make it easier for athletes to get in-season training in whenever they can. If a pitcher wants to come in and get his arm stretched out before or after an outing, he stops by and we do it for him - but don't charge him a penny for it. It's about setting people up for success.
We don't try to just "factory line" as many clients through our facility as possible with everyone on the same program. You might walk into CP and see 20 different clients on 20 different programs - because a 16-year old pitcher with crazy congenital laxity is going to have a markedly different set of needs than a 16-year-old linebacker with shoulder mobility so bad that he needs help putting a jacket on. One program on one dry erase board for hundreds of athletes isn't training; it's babysitting.
Taking this a step further, we don't boot clients out after a certain amount of time. Clients take as long as needed to complete the day's program. And, when they're done (or before they even begin), loads of our clients spend time hanging out in the office just shooting the breeze and enjoying the environment. As an example, Toronto Blue Jays Organizational Pitcher of the Year Tim Collins spends a minimum of five hours a day at CP all off-season.
Tim has sold girl scout cookies for the daughter of one of our clients, and he's been our back-up front desk guy when Pete is out of town. Yesterday, he was back to visit on his all-star break - and he said hello to every client he saw - and remembered them by name. If you're a 15-year-old up-and-coming baseball pitcher, how cool is it to get that kind of greeting when you walk into the office? Well, at CP, kids get that greeting from 10-15 pro guys all the time. And, if they're lucky, they might even get to throw on a bobsled helmet and join these pro guys in a rave to Miley Cyrus, apparently.
At least once a week, I get an email from an up-and-coming coach asking for advice about starting a facility. When I get these emails, I now think about how Rachel Cosgrove recently mentioned that more than 80% of fitness coaches leave the industry within the first year. In most cases, this happens because these people never should have entered the fitness industry in the first place - because their intentions (money) were all wrong. They usually leave under the assumption that they could never make a living training people, but in reality, these folks are going to have a hard time making a living in any occupation that requires genuinely caring about what you do and the people with whom you work, and being willing to hang your hat on the results you produce.
As such, the first advice, in a general sense, is obvious: do it for the right reasons, and do it the right way. Sure, making a living is essential, but only open a facility because it would fulfill you "personally, be fun, help a lot of people, and build and be in line" with who you are and what your values are - which together constitute your "brand." Making the move to start up this business was one of the most daunting decisions I have ever had to make, and all the efforts toward actually getting the business started were equally challenging. However, in the end, it has been more rewarding both personally and professionally than I could have ever possibly imagined.
Thank you very much to all of you - clients/customers, parents, EricCressey.com readers, seminar attendees, and professional colleagues - for all your support over the past three years. We couldn't have done it without you - and look forward to many more years of doing things for the right reasons and in the right way.
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I turn 29 today. And, while a lot of people look at birthdays as a reason to feel badly about getting old, I like to think of them as a reason to reflect on the cool stuff that's happened in the past year. Or, at the very least, I look at a birthday as good blog content! So, without further ado, here are 29 reasons I'm smiling on my 29th birthday.
1. I'm still not as old as Tony! (okay, that was wrong).
2. Several of our high school athletes have gone off to college and been among the strongest (if not the strongest) in the weight room. The really rewarding aspect of it, though, is that they have an appreciation for the fact that it isn't just about strength; it's about combining that strength with a host of other factors - flexibility, soft tissue quality, etc. - to stay healthy. I just love that they are informed consumers and advocates for themselves.
3. Lincoln-Sudbury Baseball has been #1 in the state, according to the Boston Globe Rankings. We train over 30 players who are currently in the LS program, plus quite a few younger guys and LS alumni.
4. Along those lines, LS junior Carl Anderson was batting .500 with 6HR and 21 RBIs through the first 11 games. He was also 4-0 with a 0.78 ERA and 25K in 18 innings pitched.
5.
Enough said.
6. A reader sent me a great article in response to myIs Pitching Velocity Really that Important?Blog: Change-up has become Great Equalizer. Awesome article!
7. CP athlete and Toronto Blue Jays prospect Tim Collins has 32 strikeouts in 18 innings pitched. Opponents are hitting just .206 against him. He also made a surprise cameo in the office at CP the other day on his only off-day of the month and hung out for the whole afternoon. Tim, one of our college prospects, and I all went over to watch a high school game in which a lot of our guys were playing. It's pretty cool to see pro and college ballplayers coming back to watch high school kids' games when it's usually the other way around! It makes me really proud of the camaraderie we've built among all our clients at Cressey Performance.
8. A buddy of mine is involved with Humblecock clothing (www.humblecock.com), so he sent me some free goodies. I like this stuff! I passed out a few samples to my pro guys and they loved it.
9. Brian St. Pierre, our first employee at Cressey Performance, is unfortunately leaving us at the end of this week as he returns to school to do his master's degree. While we're really bummed to be losing him, I can say that I'm really proud of how tremendous a job he's done for us since early 2008, when we first hired him. He's improved tremendously as a coach and really turned himself into an industry leader (actually just had his first article published at T-Muscle HERE). It's funny how good things happen for great people who work hard. Check him out at BrianStPierreTraining.com.
10. Recently, a local scout informed me that the Massachusetts baseball class of 2011 was ranked as the 5th best in the country. In other words, our juniors here in little ol' Massachusetts are competing with the likes of Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina - where the populations are not only bigger, but they can also play baseball year-round. Whoever said that early sports specialization was necessary to compete with these big dogs doesn't understand development at all. While the Southern boys are having Tommy Johns and labral repairs in the winter, our guys are training their butts off and attacking things with a specific plan.
The results? At Cressey Performance alone, we have eight juniors verbally committed to play for Division 1 baseball programs - including Virginia, Vanderbilt, Boston College, and UCONN. And, there should be at least a half-dozen more on that list by the time everyone signs national letters of intent this fall.
11. Head over to Amazon.com and check out the reviews on Maximum Strength HERE. This sucker is getting more stars than an astronomy textbook!
12. It gets even better than that. In the next few months, I'll release a new product that'll blow the doors off of what I did with Maximum Strength. If you liked Maximum Strength, you'll LOVE this one. Subscribe to my newsletter at the right of this screen to be among the first notified.
13. Awesome!
By the way, when I was watching this video on YouTube, one of the recommended videos was Will Ferrell's 2003 Harvard Commencement speech. It is absolutely hilarious; talk about a way to make a graduation actually interesting!
14. In the past few months, I've gotten invitations to present in both St. Thomas and South Africa. For those of you who prefer visual representations of how sweet this is, please take note (respectively):
We still have to plan our honeymoon soon as well, so it's going to be a very sunny year for a couple of Bostonians!
15. It's getting to be that time of year when pitchers come in and act all surprised that they are hitting homeruns now. It just goes to show you that when you get more athletic, a lot of things fall into place - and not just in terms of pitching! Rotational power is rotational power; the hitting just requires more hand-eye coordination.
16. I've got my own office now! Unfortunately, it's still buried under boxes and clutter from the move, but it is nice to know that I have a little bit more organization coming to my life soon!
17. I am pretty darn proud of the Cressey Performance website. It's a huge improvement from our old one, and I'm psyched to have an online presence that reflects how much hard work we put into making CP a special place to train.
18. CP athlete and San Diego Padres prospect Will Inman has a 3.03 ERA through 38.2 innings pitched in AAA. Opponents are hitting just .221 against him. For those who aren't familiar with the Pacific Coast League, this is the single-hardest league in which one can pitch at any level of professional baseball. There are small ballparks and insane winds that turn pop-ups into 450-foot HRs. Will is doing awesome and we're all really happy for him; it's a lot of hard work rewarded.
19. This one really cracks me up. We uploaded this video of CP athlete Sahil Bloom back in October of 2007, and it's become the second most popular of all-time. The funniest part is all the 13-year-olds arguing in the comments section about how this is "just good for football players" and how they all throw 97mph at age 13.
The funniest part is that Sahil is now pitching consistently over 90mph - and doing so at Stanford. He's 1-0 with a 0.00 ERA through six outings in his freshman year. It's amazing that he's had this success just "training for football!"
20. The past year has brought some collaborative efforts for me that have been absolutely tremendous in not only enhancing my productivity, but also educating me (and my readers/customers). Matt Blake has brought a great new dimension to Cressey Performance with his pitching instruction and video analysis, and to EricCressey.com with his blog contributions. Nate Tiplady has been a huge addition to our programs with the Graston and ART services he provides to our clients. It was also great to collaborate with both Mike Reinold and Bill Hartman on projects for the first time, with Optimal Shoulder Performance and Assess & Correct, respectively.
At the end of the day, you are only as strong as your network, so I'd encourage you all to seek out collaborative efforts with other professionals who complement your skill set as well.
21. Slacker.com. This thing is an awesome source for music; I listen to it all the time when I'm at the computer writing programs.
22. Just got this feedback from a very happy Optimal Shoulder Performance customer:
"Awesome job on the OptimalShoulderPerformance DVDs with Reinold. I just finished watching them this past weekend (I need to get a life) and I found them extremely educational and helpful. I really thought the information you both provided complimented each other well. There were some variations to some movements that I will definitely be implementing into some of my programs."
While the financial side of things with product sales is nice, the thing that I actually enjoy the most is knowing that the information we're putting out is helping people to improve their bodies and stay out of pain. It's even better when I know it is helping a fellow fitness professional or some rehabilitation specialist, as it means that they're taking that knowledge to help more people beyond just themselves. At the end of my career, I really want to be known most for the always putting my athletes first and always doing my best to contribute to the body of knowledge.
23. On Tuesday morning, I had an absolutely terrible training session. I felt weak the entire time, and couldn't even stomach a shake post-training. About an hour later, every joint in my body hurt and I had a raging headache. That night, I was in bed early and was pouring sweat in my sleep.
I almost never get sick. We are taking once every 3-4 years. My attendance is so good at work that my business partner, Pete, has to force me to take days off. Surely, there is something to the idea that regular exercise and proper diet reduces one's likelihood of getting sick - and this is certainly demonstrated in the reduced absenteeism
Wednesday morning, I woke up feeling a ton better. It turned out to be a really productive day. This little experience reminds me that taking care of your body doesn't just prevent you from getting sick; it also helps you to bounce back quickly when the unavoidable illness happens.
24. CP athlete Danny O'Connor looks to run his professional boxing record to 12-0 this weekend at Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut. A huge CP contingent will be out to support him. Danny works his butt off five days a week at CP in addition to all his boxing training, and deserves all the success that comes to him.
25. Chris Howard is the newest addition to the Cressey Performance staff, and we're excited to have him on board. A former CP intern, Chris went on to massage therapy school and is now a LMT - on top of his CSCS and master's degree in nutrition. Needless to say, we're lucky to have a guy who brings so much versatility to our facility. I especially like Chris right now because he's motivated me to brush up on my anatomy knowledge since he just retook it all in school!
26. Bill Hartman is in town for a seminar at Northeastern this weekend, so it'll be a nice birthday present to catch up with him. He's joining us at CP today for the day. His blog is always full of good stuff, but chatting with him in person is even better!
27. Tony Gentilcore wrote a great two-part series called "It All Starts in the Kitchen." There are some great tips in there for those of you who might struggle on the diet side of things. Check out Part 1 and Part 2.
28. One of our pro baseball guys told me to check out the "Baseball Made Easy" series on YouTube, and it's absolutely hilarious. Check a few of them out:
29. I already knew I had the greatest girl in the world, but when she took me to a Sox game last night for my birthday for the third year in a row, I was reminded once again! Here we were last year - when I had more hair.
Also, don't forget that today is the last day to get the $20 early-bird discount on The Single-Leg Solution. Don't miss out; the introductory price ends tonight at midnight.
1. Yesterday was tax day. And, since you're all probably feeling like Uncle Sam took a dump in your favorite shoes on the taxes front, this uplifting video couldn't be more appropriate to kick things off.
2. Yesterday also marked the end of the introductory offer on our new Optimal Shoulder Performance DVD set. Some of our more noteworthy customers of these DVDs sold to the likes of President Obama, Amelia Earhart, Spongebob Squarepants, and King Tut. Okay, they really didn't buy any - but they might have if you blog readers had told all your friends about this fantastic resource to spread the word. The take-home point is that you should feel poor and guilty the day after April 15. Thanks for nothing. Let's move on.
3. Just when I thought nobody could beat me down more than Uncle Sam yesterday, I realized that Tony had written this month's staff training program, and I went through one of the most brutal training sessions in Cressey Performance history. Here's a little taste:
A1) Bench Press Clusters: 4 x (4x2) - 10s
A2) (160-lb/hand) Farmer's Walk: 4x90yds (on last set, it was walk as far as you could go...I went 135 yards)
Frankly, this first pairing was enough to get a 25% attrition rate from our training crew (man down!) - but there was actually more:
B1) Wide Pronated Grip Seated Cable Rows: 3x10
B2) 1-arm, 1-leg DB RDL: 3x8/side
C1) Standing DB Military Press: 3x8
C2) Slideboard Bodysaw: 3x10
And, last but not least:
D) Side-Lying External Rotations: 2x8/side
I'm not sure why, but it really made me angry to do these external rotations at the end of all this brutality. It was almost like Tony was rubbing it in our faces that we weren't quite done, even though the hard stuff was over. So, just as a statement, I did 2x10/side instead and then suplexed Tony off the loading dock...just because (okay, not really; Uncle Sam suplexed him off the loading dock).
4. While I don't really "commute" anymore because our new house is so close to the facility, I do have a pretty good audio book rolling in the car right now: Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard.
It was written by Chip and Dan Heath (who also wrote Made to Stick, a book I absolutely loved and highly recommended in the past). The Heath brothers go into detail on the important factors that determine whether or not attempts at change will be successful, highlighting some profound examples from everything from the business world to nutritional practices with newborns in Southeast Asia. What I like the most is that they relate everything back to principles that are directly applicable to everything in my "world:" training and nutrition practices, managing employees, and running a business. It's definitely worth a read. Check it out HERE.
5. This point is going to make today's blog interactive, as I need some feedback. My one responsibility on the wedding planning front is to decide where we go on our honeymoon (tough job, I know). I know I've got readers all over the world who have been to some cool places, so let's hear some recommendations in the comments section below. We're an active couple and want to honeymoon where we can hike, exercise, etc. instead of just sitting around drinking tequila. As of right now, I'm leaning toward the Riviera Maya, but am open to suggestions - except Iceland. This guy convinced me otherwise:
This might come across as a completely random blog post, but in light of the time of year and the fact that I have five accountants in my family, I'm going to write it anyway.
If you are a trainer who does your own taxes, you are an idiot.
Yes, you're dumber than the guy doing handstand push-ups on the stability ball. And, you're giving your money away and likely increasing your risk of being audited down the road.
People come to you to learn how to get fit, more athletic, and healthy. In your eyes, they'd be crazy to try to program or coach themselves. And, just walk into any commercial gym and from the exercises and techniques you'll see executed, and you'll want to pull out your hair. While accountants on the whole are generally very patient people, I'm sure they want to do the same when they hear about Average Joe sitting down for some quality team (read: three days) with Turbo Tax.
Imagine you're going to pay an accountant a few hundred dollars to do your taxes. That's a few extra training sessions added to your week - and you aren't giving up any time to figure out the tax code (which is constantly changing). You can read a book, have fun with your family, or do whatever else it is you enjoy.
Tony Gentilcore is one of my best friends and a business partner, so he won't mind me using him as an example. In the summer of 2007, I watched Tony slave over Turbo Tax for an entire weekend.He had a puzzled look on his face the entire time. When he was done (late Sunday night), I went over and asked him if he's deducted 7-8 different things that my accountant (my brother) taught me about that year. He had no idea what I was talking about.
Tony is a guy that buys books, attends seminars, has professional memberships (NSCA, PETA, and the Chuck 'E Cheese Pizza of the Month Club). None of these were deducted. So, by attempting to "save" some money and do it himself, Tony missed out on a bunch of key deductions and overreported net income. Say, for ease of calculation, that was $1,000 of expenses he didn't write off. That means he reported $1,000 more net income - and in a (arbitrarily assigned) tax bracket of 30%, he gave Uncle Sam a $300 bonus - which would have more than paid for the cost of an accountant and freed up Tony's weekend to listen to do the robot, drool all over his Nora Jones CD, and attack stability balls with scissors.
Now, here's an example of our business finances from our 2008 tax return that will really drive home the point. When we opened Cressey Sports Performance in the summer of 2007, we had to put up $30,000 worth of renovations: walls, doors, carpeting, a ceiling for the offices, and painting, as we were subletting from another tenant and wanted to "separate" our space. It went from this...
To this...
These renovations were placed on a 15-year depreciation schedule - so we got a $2,000 deduction from net income in year 1 (very few people would know to do this on their tax returns without an accountant).
Business grew quickly, and we decided to move (also a deduction) three miles east in May of 2008, which was the end of the lease we were under. When we went, we had to demolish renovations to the old place (which was one of the funnest hours of my life, for the record) - but we also got to write off the remaining $28,000 from that depreciation schedule against our net income for 2008. None of us would have even remembered to do that - but our accountant absolutely, positively did. In the process, he saved us a ton of money that was rightfully ours and kept out balance sheet accurate - and it was no extra effort on our part. That move alone probably saved us enough taxes to cover his accounting fees for 6-7 years - or the cost of our turf and crash wall combined.
Another example on my personal finances was the recommendation I received to maximize my contributions to a SEP IRA to lessen my net taxable income at this point in my life when I don't have any quality deductions - kids, a spouse (yet), or a mortgage (yet). I'll be taxed on it down the road, but at least it's mine in the interim to grow it as I please (and I know there are different schools of thought on this, but you get the point).
Getting an accountant is an investment, not an expense. And, the more diversified I have become in my revenue streams - from CSP, to products, to seminars - the more essential and valuable that investment has become.
You are an idiot if you are going it alone. And, we just found out that our taxes will be going up yet again, so your mistakes are going to be further magnified. I don't know why this happens so much in the fitness industry, but it absolutely does. Find a good accountant.
Have a comment or question? Post 'em below.
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Recommended Reading for the Week:
Personal Training Certifications: A Different Perspective - Pat Rigsby got the idea for this blog post from a conversation we had at dinner at a conference last weekend in Tampa, and it came out really well.
Exercises You Should Be Doing: Slideboard Bodysaw - Tony Gentilcore wrote up a good blog post about an exercise we've been incorporating quite a bit more nowadays since we picked it up from Mike Boyle. Video included!
On Question, Many Answers - One of our interns this semester brought this blog post from Dr. Mike Scott to my attention. It's a collection of responses from various experts to the question, "Why are childhood overuse injuries becoming so prevalent in our society?"
I thought I'd use a quick blog post here to tell you about three of my holiday gifts this year that might interest a lot of you. With it being a few days after Christmas, a lot of stores are running big sales, and you could probably pick these up at big discounts.
Dragon Naturally Speaking Software - This is a speech recognition software that works with your computer to directly translate what you say into a microphone into a word processing document or email. My hope is that it'll make it easy for me to dictate blogs and emails while in the car on my 40-minute commute to and from Cressey Performance each day.
Admittedly, I am still feeling this one out, as it takes some "calibrating" to learn how to interpret your voice correctly (I read John F. Kennedy's inaugural address into it the other night). However, I'm really psyched about how this could improve my efficiency in 2010; check it out for yourself.
What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures - Tony Gentilcore (and others) turned me on to Malcolm Gladwell's writing in 2009, and I absolutely loved it (including The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers). This is his newest work, and it is actually a collection of his short pieces that were featured in The New Yorker, where Gladwell is a staff writer.
Tony got me the audio CDs for this, and I listened to it on my hours and hours of driving to and from Maine for the holiday. It's excellent: very entertaining, educational, and thought provoking. Something pretty cool: you can buy all four of these books from Gladwell on Amazon for under $40 right now (including free shipping). That's a tremendous value.
Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow - This book by Chip Conley was actually a gift to me from Alwyn Cosgrove about a month ago, and I'm about halfway through it. As I've read, it's made me realize several reasons that we've been successful in our business model at Cressey Performance (including 15% growth this year in spite of the "recession"). Regardless of the industry in which you work, if you manage employees, I'd highly recommend it.
It's not easy buying holiday gifts for me. I'm "that guy" who really can't think of anything that he really wants - or even needs. Call me simple, or call me stubborn (or a bit of both), but short of books, audiobooks, and DVDs within my field (all of which are continuing education write-offs that go directly to the Cressey Performance library), I'm generally really at a loss for what to write after "Dear Santa."
So, I thought I'd make my holiday wish list a bit non-traditional for the sake of this blog. Without further ado, here's my holiday blog wish list:
1. I'd like for the phrase "it's all you" to be permanently banished from gyms worldwide.
2. I'd like to see it get markedly more difficult to be in a position to train people for a living. In other words, I think that states ought to implement licensing requirements that - even if not very strict - would discourage folks from getting into the industry if they weren't fully committed to being good at their chosen craft.
Now, don't get me wrong; I would never discourage someone from making a career change to become a fitness professional. I know some excellent coaches/trainers who have done just this and been very successful - and helped a lot of people. These effective transitions, though, were made by people who invested the time, energy, and patience to do it the right way.
3. Similarly, I'd like for more people in the fitness industry to appreciate the process (human interaction) more than just the destination (making money). There's been a big push on the business side of things in this industry to help people run their business more efficiently, and I think the intentions are fantastic. However, I think it's important to not lose sight of the fact that training people should be fun; I'm a firm believer that if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. If you aren't enjoying it and letting your enthusiasm show because all you can think about is getting to the four-hour work-week, then you're not doing everything you can to help your clients.
I know I can say that I am like a little kid on Christmas morning when it comes to helping out up-and-coming high school athletes with the college recruiting process, and I watch dozens of high school baseball games every spring. In addition to the great time I have working with all our pro and college guys at CP, I'm also following all of them during their seasons - because it really does matter to me how they do. While it may add value to your services in your clients' eyes, this extra stuff isn't "billable" (and never should be). It may extend your "work" week, but you don't perceive it because it's all part of a process that you enjoy, not just something you "get through" as quickly as possible so that you can do something else. Case in point: here's how I spent one Friday afternoon last spring after the facility had closed up for the day (this video followed a crazy circuit we'd designed for the guys, and the winners got the hoses):
So, if you find that you aren't having fun and taking an active interest in your clients' successes, then your job should be to rearrange things to either find your enthusiasm or put someone else in your place who can provide enthusiasm of their own. I guess the take-home point is that it doesn't take any extra time to simply care.
4. I'd like for Tony Gentilcore to misplace every techno CD he owns.
5. I'd like to see more rehabilitation specialists be proactive with soft tissue work. Please understand that it may not be indicated in every condition, but for me, knowing that a rehabilitation specialist is willing to use some elbow grease with a patient is a sign that he/she isn't just going through the motions.
6. I'd like to know why my business partner needs to wear a weight belt to answer the phone. Is it really that heavy?
7. Shameless (but justified) self-promotion alert: I'd like to see anyone who exercises purchase a copy of Assess and Correct. The overwhelming majority of people who come through our doors with a history of pain are not just people who have dysfunction. Rather, they're often people who have had dysfunction for a long time and accumulated exercise volume on top of it. Or, they've done therapy just enough to get asymptomatic, and then gone right back into their "normal routines" without addressing an underlying imbalance. That, to me, is why we made Assess and Correct.
It's a proactive approach in a more reactive fitness world. People wait for something to go wrong with the knee, back, shoulder, or something else. To me, it makes a lot more sense (both financially and in terms of the cost of one's time) to assess oneself and address what's wrong than it is to wait for symptoms to kick in - and then spend time in physical therapy. As hackneyed as the saying is, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Click HERE to check it out.
8. Along these same lines, I'd like to see people think more along the lines of "contraindicated people" than contraindicated exercises. Short of a few movements (e.g., upright rows, behind-the-neck pulldowns, empty cans), there aren't many exercises I'd completely "banish" from my training arsenal. Mike Boyle's "The Death of Squatting" interview kicked off a lot of interest on this front. I think that it's our job to fit the exercise program to the individual, and not the individual to the exercise - and as such, we don't need to worry about excluding certain exercises altogether.
9. I'd like to see distance running for pitchers (or any baseball player) completely abolished. I've wrote about my opposition to it in A New Model for Training Between Starts: Part 1.
10. I'd like for this kid to get the record deal he deserves.
