Late last summer I made the trek down to NYC to attend the Peak Diet and Training Summit to get my learnification on as well as take part in an “expert panel” that Joe Dowdell put together as part of that weekend’s festivities.
As much I LOVE getting smarter (and I did a ton of it that weekend), one of the best parts of going to those sort of things is the networking opportunities that manifest and take place.
While I already knew many of the attendees that weekend – Joe, Mike Roussell, Jim Smith, Kevin Neeld, John Romaniello, and John Gaglione to name a few – I also met a lot of new faces, too. You see, many times I end up hitting it off with other coaches, practitioners, and trainers who share many of the same affinities as myself. You know, lifting heavy things, the rotator cuff, and bacon. God, I love bacon.
As it happened, that weekend I met two people who would end up as significant networking contacts.
One was Jon Goodman of the Personal Trainer Development Center, who wrote a fantastic guest post for this site (HERE) as well as invited me up to Toronto in June to speak at the PTDC Hybrid Training Seminar.
The second was Dr. Perry Nickelston; Or, P-Nickle-Stizzle, as I like to call him.
Dr. Perry is a rare breed indeed. In his own words:
No. I am not your typical doctor. I have tattoos. I wear jeans to work. My shoes are Vibrams. I wear lots of bling (rings and necklace). I don’t wear a white coat or put ties on. I look for the cause of our pain and don’t chase the site. I don’t have an ego when it comes to referring out. If I can’t help you I will tell you. I don’t want to see you for lots of visits be use that means I am not helping fast enough. I want to teach you how to take care of yourself. I talk like what I feel and I walk the talk. I don’t tell you to do something I can’t do myself. I will use any tool and method to get you well. When you call my office I answer the phone. My office number is my cell number because I am here for you as a person. I am not the status quo…and that’s the way I like it. I love what I do more than anything and I want to share it with others. Got a problem with any of those? Tough cookies!
I had the humbling opportunity to be invited by Perry to talk some shop on his Stop Chasing Pain Podcast last Friday morning.
Even though we only chatted for around 35-40 minutes, he and I covered a lot of ground ranging from things like program design and mastering the basics to some of daily musings inside Cressey Performance (especially assessment) and what “stability” training actually means.
All told it was an easy flowing conversation between two dudes and how we can go about increasing people’s level of awesome.
A slight warning: I may or may not have had a potty mouth during the taping. Sorry Mom.
Nevertheless, Perry does a fantastic job with his podcast – he has something like 30,000 subscribers! – so I hope you’ll check it out and offer some feedback!
In the Trenches with Tony Gentilcore
