Make Yourself Smarter

I love a quote from the Boston based rehab specialist Mike Reinold,

"If you aren't learning you aren't trying"

This , in my opinion, couldn't be more true.  If  - as fitness professionals, health professionals, rehab specialists or whatever we want to call ourselves  - we aren't doing the best for our clients then what are we really doing?

Shouting and counting?

I know I'd be wanting a little more than that for £1 per minute.

I have always thought that in any field the best way to learn and better yourself is to find someone who is better at it than you (time to put the egos away here, there is always someone!), and find out how they do things.

With this in mind I made a recent trip to Cressey Performance in Massachusetts, USA to observe two of the very best in the business of performance training - Eric Cressey and Tony Gentilcore -  two people who's work I follow closely and have immense respect for.

I knew I was going to see assessment and coaching of the highest order.  However, I was completely blown away at how hands on and accessible these guys are.  Not only are the clients of CP lucky to have two of Americas finest coaches under the same roof-  but they genuinely do get hands on coaching from these guys on each and every training session..

My last training session at CP saw Major League and Collegiate baseball players and a former US international rugby player - working out alongside a 50 year old local amateur golfer and a 13 year old softball hopeful.  Now there may not be anything too unusual in that - but - what was very special is that the main men of Cressey Performance gave just as much time and attention to these guys as they did their star athletes.  And perhaps more importantly the star athletes were very happy to wait their turn...

This for me was like a return to my days of team sports training sessions, Cressey Performance is run not like a club - but like a team  - and everyone is made to feel part of it.   Eric, Tony and Pete have put together something very special over in Hudson MA.  They have a huge CPFAMILY emblazoned on the wall by the warm up area, but far from being one of the many generic slogans you see on gym walls around the world this is a very accurate description.

Far from this being a love poem about the facility in Hudson - the take home point is that if you want to get better then surround yourself by people better than yourself.  I hear all the time about how courses, seminars, textbooks are prohibitively expensive - get out there and see how other coaches do things, and how other training facilities are run.  Try it - and you'll be amazed at what you can accomplish.