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My Experience At The First Ever Evolve Strength Symposium


Well, this has been my first blog in quite some time. I almost have to re-learn how to do this! Ha! I thought this would be a good time as any and talk about this past weekend. I attended the very first Evolve Strength Symposium, in Edmonton,Alberta.

I am not going to talk about what each presenter talked about but, instead, I am going to talk about my whole experience with the entire weekend in general and go down a few rabbit holes so bare with me.

My wife and kids went with my sister in law to Saskatchewan for the weekend to sell her book, at the Sask Comic-Con (Shameless Plug Alert..Check out her book here, called the Firstborn) ,so that left me with no vehicle, so I decided to do an experiment.

I took one of the scooters on Day 1 of the conference. Has anyone tried it? They usually look like this...

Sometimes you will find them in the weirdest places around town, like in Edmonton for instance; one was found in the wading pool by the Legislature building so they had to shut down the pool...Yaay Edmonton!

Anyways the experiment was, I wanted to see how much it would cost between one of these scooters, an Uber and just a regular taxi. The outcome may shock a few people (or it may not) the scooter was the cheapest $6, with the taxi being the most expensive $20 with an Uber being $9. The distance was from my house to basically the University of Alberta. Roughly 6km give or take. Interesting eh?

I found the strength symposium, overall not to bad for the first time considering it was a world-class event and there were presenters from all over North America here.

It was my first time seeing Dean Somerset present, I was lucky enough to see him present twice in the same conference! WOW! I have been following Dean for about 6 or 7 years on social media. I found him off of a webinar I bought from Rick Kaselj. I loved his stuff ever since. He put up a slide that really resonated with me and confirmed with what I was taught through the three day SFG Kettlebell Course, that is basically tensing one muscle recruits nearby synergists, antagonists, and non-involved muscles to increase force. It's science ya'll..hashtag that!

I also enjoyed Hannah Gray's presentation and mind-boggling to me considering, it was her first time presenting.

Her presentation was a breath of fresh air because there are so many people that do not stick with exercise and or hate it..(If you have been in this industry long enough, I am sure you have had some clients like this, I know I've had) And the easy thing to do is just walk away but these people need help the most and she gave some tips on how to achieve this. She also spoke from experience.

It took me a long time to realize this, probably a while in the "trenches" you cannot fit one person into one mold. Not everyone likes pumping iron. Some people like to swim, or some people like to Olympic Lift, you have to celebrate that and keep them at that and try not to push them into say strength training, the thing they despise the most...(My wife is probably laughing so hard at this right now..I love you too dear, and yes you are right..happy wife, happy life right? ;) )

The mixer was kind of awkward for me, I really tried to meet new people but it seemed like I was falling flat. After today I had a self- discovery. I always gravitated towards older people than me. I dunno why, but it has always been like that for me, ever since high school. When I was in college, I would drink beers with my neighbour or hang out with the guys at my volunteer fire hall. I had a great conversation with a older guy last night who is a chiropractor and today I really started to talk to this semi retired guy who drove here from Saskatoon for the weekend and he does this, wait for it..as a HOBBY!

I had a good profound conversation with him today, he is semi retired as a pilot (still flies) and he really enjoys this stuff.

It got me thinking why I gravitate towards older people and I think it's because they have more life experience, and in this case, in the fitness industry, there is more to talk about than just fitness, I love fitness as more as the next guy but, you can only go so far with it.

My ideal clientele is someone that wants to feel better and look better. Whether they want to have more cardio, so they can chase after their kids longer without getting winded, or if they want to look better naked.

At the end of the day, the average person does not care how much they can bench or squat; they just want to perform and feel better. If these are my "ideal clients," they would also be the ones that I hang around the most. I never really thought of that until this weekend.

What struck me though the most about this weekend, was the swearing in the presentations. Most of it was unnecessary, and I meant that in the nicest way possible to any of the presenters that are reading this.

But it's not their fault. It is everywhere now; why is that? Is it a "millennial" thing?

I am a huge country fan, I listen to a local country radio station (CISN) and there is an ad that I CANNOT STAND, it's a Volkswagen ad and the guy is talking about the car and while he is doing it, he is throwing out f-bombs just for the fun of it. Every time he does this a car honks. Every time I hear this, I turn it off because I don't want my kids to hear this cause it's really easy to put 2 and 2 together and I have some REALLY smart kids! HA!

It's almost like people do not know how to articulate their speech well and because swearing is the "cool" thing now, they need to say it. To me it cheapens what you are trying to say.

When I served my country in the Canadian Forces, I could swear with the best of them but, it's almost gotten to a point where it is a little too much just because a few articles came out a few years ago saying how good it is for you, so now everyone has to do it.

There needs to be a point to swearing, and it needs to flow well. Presentations, I don't think is where swearing belongs. It's like training a new client, would you swear from the get-go? I know I wouldn't, so why would you swear in front of new people you haven't met?

Speaking of presentations, the best structure that really stood out for me was Marc Morris. His slide at the beginning brought back crazy memories of the military for me.

One of the things the military taught me to do was a power point, and at the beginning of EVERY power point, you should have TEACHING POINTS

This means what you will learn in the power point. If you don't do this it will quickly become death by power point! Simple :) I added some fitness pro's to my "follower list" I was really impressed with Lee Boyce and Coach Pow, (The Enterprise formally known as EJ Parris- I hope I said it right)

I was SUPER impressed by him, he delved down DEEP and asked the audience basically like why do you do what you do and to basically question everything.

I wouldn't say that I have been in a rut, I am sorta enjoying the space I am in now, I get to look after my kids and basically do whatever I want but I do miss training and his talk moved me. Everyone has a story to tell and if you don't know mine check out this.

If you don't want to read my long story, the reason I do what I do is I know how important exercise and living healthy is when it comes to fighting disease and or keeping disease at bay.

My aunt was obese, and had cancer everywhere in her body and passed (I opened up my personal training studio in her honour, with the money she gave me,) and my dad has Crohn's disease, and as of two years ago, he also developed Alzheimer's disease, just a few weeks ago, found out he is in the advanced stages...at 67. Oh and my uncle died of ALS, so disease is around me.

So that is my why. I want to be around for my kids. I want to do stuff until I am old and grey.

But for a freaking Olympian to basically say don't believe in everything, challenge everything you read or hear, and everyone is someone special, was something I needed to hear...to sorta steal a line from Kurt Angle..FROM A FREAKIN OLYMPIAN to boot!

I said that I was in a rut, kind of currently. Well I owned and operated a personal training studio located in Brooks, Alberta for 6 years. When the economy or big oil crashed, to put it into perspective, I went from 2 full time personal trainers and 17 clients, to 1 client and me letting go my trainers in a 10 month span.

When I moved with my family to Edmonton, there are only a few places where I would love to work at but they won't even consider me because I don't have a degree.

I am in a different spot right now than I was 8 years ago when I opened up my personal training studio in Brooks. For one I have 3 kids now, so I really cannot work at a big box gym if I wanted to and I enjoy looking after my kids during the day. I know a lot of parents that can't and they would give their left leg to do it, so I am very fortunate in that way.

That being said the right opportunity for me hasn't come up yet.

His talk made me think where I want to go and everyone is really special in their own way.

When I served, I had to do basic training twice (not a lot of people can do that, they will just give up.)

I also started a business from SCRATCH and when starting it, a local fitness person told me, "There is no market for personal training.." A few years later, she calls me wondering if I could buy her fitness class studio.

I also won New Business of The Year Award a year later after opening. This was a year or so before I had staff!

Those are some MAJOR life skills, that can be used at any setting and they can't be taught.

Anyways, I made him laugh at the end of his presentation. When I introduced myself, one of my instructors from a while ago said, "You have a degree? Congrats you are certified stupid." Went well with his talk.

Another presenter, Leigh Peele, put up a great slide "Walking and tracking steps is a realistic method for altering body compositions in ALL populations."

Which is amazing because I started to use just walking into my online training clients programs, a few years ago and they have received incredible benefits.

I decided to on Sunday night, walk home and let me tell you, I had a good sweat going and I consider myself a fairly fit individual. (I can do every minute on the minute kettlebell swings with a 36kg, hand to hand, 10 reps per side.)

So that just goes to show you how true that slide was.

Overall it was pretty good for the first time and I will probably go back.

I have to hand it to Andrew Coates, Dean Somerset, Dean Guedo and Hannah Gray for putting this together though! (And to the guy on the far left, sorry dude, didn't meet you, but Facebook tells me your name is Micheal. FB is creepy like that ) Mad props! Lot's of hard work and behind the scenes, I cannot even imagine it.

Don't know when I will write again, but I hope you enjoyed it!

 
 
 

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