As I have written before, I LOVE my summer family! Every time I am around the staff, presenters and attendees of Perform Better Summits I just feel better. I feel excited about the profession. I get fuel from the passion that everyone there has about our industries. I get fired up to learn more. I realize how much I don’t know.
Long Beach was no exception.

The weekend began with the amazing Coach Dos Animal Shelter Pub Crawl Annual event! Not only did Dos raise money for a great cause, but also he created an environment where we all had fun doing it! Who doesn’t love beer and wine in the name of animals!?!? Reconnecting with people I hadn’t seen in a long time, seeing people I saw just a few weeks before in Chicago and meeting a lot of new people kicked off my weekend with a bang.

A combination of the last 5 weeks on the road (literally I have been home for 2 days in 5 weeks), being up for 24 hours the day of the pub crawl (I came in from Costa Rica) and I guess a few glasses of wine during the crawl had something to do with me sleeping in Friday morning. Not proud of myself for missing some great speakers, but it needed to be done. Work + Rest = Success…. right?
On my way to the convention center, I ran into Mark Verstegen and the EXOS crew. It was great to see my old family, some of whom I haven’t seen in quite some time. It was great to catch up with everyone and hear the new and exciting things that are going on in everyone’s personal and professional life.
One of the things I was most looking forward to this weekend was taking in a bit of DJ Winks. That’s right, Nick Winkelman brought the house down at the Friday night social with a great blend of EDM, current pop and rap. I was impressed Nick! Very impressed!

Brandon Marcello gave one of the best presentations I saw this weekend. He discussed recovery and regeneration, defining the terms and organizing what we should be doing beyond foam rolling. Knowing the differences in metabolic, neurologic (both PNS and CNS), psychological and environmental fatigue will allow us to choose appropriate interventions based on the response we are looking for. Isn’t that what all training is about? Why should recovery be any different? He used the reference of Calder 2003 quite a bit…can’t wait to look up that paper/ book and learn more.

I got to catch the tail end of Gray Cook’s lecture. I love the progression of his teaching over the years and am continued to be intrigued as to how he makes difficult topics easy so they can be used in an organized, systematic manner.
Much of my learning this week was done outside the classroom. I spent a lot of time talking with Alwyn and Rachel Cosgrove as well as Thomas Plummer, attempting to define my businesses and steps necessary to be successful. This was so valuable to me based on the place I am right now. I am looking forward to setting up formal time with all three of these people to make sure I am on the right road.
I also spent some time with Laree Draper…. editor to the stars (ie. Mark Cheng, Dan John, Gray Cook, etc.). This means…yes… I AM GOING TO HAVE SOME PRODUCT SOON!! I have hated that I have not had any specific reference, videos, presentations, etc for all of you to follow up with after our time spent together. Laree is going to make sure that changes by the end of the year. Yeah! Stay tuned!

I refined my talk on Organizing Your Tool Box a bit since Chicago and I think it was better organized this time around. I have thoroughly enjoyed working through this topic in a way that selfishly helps my practice, but also helps all of you organize your own practice. There are so many great teachings out there. There are so many great schools of thought that are all complimentary to each other if we would just put the gloves down and see the commonalities in these philosophes instead of the differences. This topic is by no means complete for me. In fact, it is just the opposite. I plan on continuing to organize and systematize this information so no one has to “drink the kool-aid” of any one thing. Instead, we can all sit around during Dos’s pub crawl next year and drink a beer (or wine) and have some educated debate on what is best for our athletes, given the specific situation.