A very sincere and heartfelt thank-you to @Tim_Patterson, @Jared_Maggard, and @Christian_Thibaudeau for the opportunity to learn from one of the most incredible presenters I’ve seen in any industry!
For those walking into the middle of this movie, Biotest covered my ticket to join Coach Thibaudeau’s training seminar in Atlanta, GA this last weekend.
“How the hell did this jerk get such an incredible opportunity” you may ask yourself. First, chill out with the aggressive language. Second, I clicked “I want to go” - that’s it! Biotest created a thread in the forum for loyal members to volunteer to get themselves to Atlanta in exchange for free admission. On Monday, @Jared_Maggard called me and told me I was in - he also continued to check in with me to make sure I got all the info, I was prepared, and then followed up to see how I enjoyed myself. I really do appreciate that we are a “T-Family” here and I believe the Biotest team goes far to treat us as more than transactional customers.
I’ve mentioned it here in other places, but, for me, this was a dream opportunity. @Christian_Thibaudeau is someone whose writings I’ve been following for a long time - I actually joined this site ~15 (maybe plus… relax!) years ago specifically to ask him questions about training for army schools/ units I was working toward. Since then, I’ve been a huge fan of his neurotyping work - it legitimately has helped me better relate to folks at work and my own family. To actually meet and learn from him IRL, as I assume you kids say, was incredibly exciting.
In terms of the actual seminar, I’d like to throw some thoughts out just as they hit me. My main purpose of this post was a thank-you, but maybe it can also help folks gauge what they might like to get out of something like this.
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Coach Thibaudeau is exactly the same person he portrays on this site and in social media. He is humble and relatable, very funny, and simply creates a comfortable atmosphere. He also isn’t kidding when he says folks make him uncomfortable when they ambush him 1:1 or compliment him… and I was guilty (my bad).
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He is very generous with his time, spending his breaks (during which time he really just wanted to change his shirt or grab a drink) talking to folks as they lined up to spend time with him. He spent at least 10-15 minutes with me one-on-one talking through how I might be able to better relate with my son… and even accurately guessed how my wife might see things. This was well off-topic for the seminar, and relevant only to me, so this was pure altruism on his part.
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He told at least 3 Ohio jokes before his first “dirty” joke… I don’t know if that’s a pro or con.
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I’ve never been to a fitness industry seminar, but I’ve done multiple graduate school immersion weekends and countless surgical society events that are similar concepts; Coach Thib is a very impressive presenter. He’s able to structure a loose outline that will run from theory to practical, so we arrive where we’re going in a logical manner, but doesn’t stay attached to that schedule. As folks asked questions or took him in different directions, he was happy to go there. His ability to do so and then return to topic, without doing either a disservice, is rare. Just as rare, he’s also mature enough to say when something isn’t his area of expertise.
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CT blends practical and clinical knowledge in a seamless manner, and references one to “prove” the other. This is an often-missing link in some evidence-based trainers or in-the-trenches coaches; we end up sacrificing either the “so what” or the “why”… or, worse, we’ll just take a single sample outcome at face value and say “this is how it should be!” Thib would reference data, explain how he applied that with his athletes, then explain his observations and what that meant for his future strategies.
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I learned a ton. He gave a lecture on cortisol and its implications across the body (I can say his descriptions of the insulin pathway and metabolics was textbook-accurate… I’m not smart enough to opine on the rest) that was one of the most enlightening things I’ve heard - worth the trip itself.
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For myself, I am convinced I overdo one modality of training, don’t change the stimulus enough, and underutilize planned progression models. Even though we all know how much I hate thinking, I just want to do, this weekend definitely showed me I need to put a little more effort into at least picking something up front. I still believe, and Coach actually said as well, effort is the most important. But it makes a lot more sense to pour from my effort pitcher into the abilities glasses that are less full (instead of just spilling it out and seeing what happens) - that requires some level of analysis.
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For the very few folks I help train, I feel I gained a lot of tools. This is important, because none of them are me - one may just want a chance of a playing high school football and another wants to not embarrass his daughter when he’s in a t-shirt and maybe not die of a heart attack.
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Getting out into this world and meeting other folks was amazing. I took a lot of numbers and have folks to network with locally and on the road - great fringe benefit!
I’m sure there’s much, much more I could say. Really, this was incredible all around. If I had three takeaways:
- CT is an incredible teacher
- Biotest is generous to its customers - take advantage!
- Learning live is a different animal than learning online; leverage that resource when you can.
Thanks all!
