I have been using the Original Strength resets now for about four to five years. There probably isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t do resets. My body feels so much better after going through the movements. I use them as part of my warm ups, cool downs, and during rest periods of my lifts.

When I heard Original Strength (OS) was having a performance workshop, I definitely wanted to attend at some point. I have an athletic background and train athletes as well. I was looking forward to learning how Tim Anderson (OS co-founder), Mark Shropshire (Shropshire Sports Training), and Chip Morton (Cincinnati Bengals Head Strength & Conditioning Coach) viewed performance training.

We started out the workshop learning and expanding on how we can fully express our athletic qualities by first building three solid pillars. When we can set these pillars in place and follow the principles learned, our body and nervous system can become more efficient with our movement. We become more resilient and our bodies are better prepared to take on the task at hand. When our brain/body can receive better input, we can start to have better output in the gym and on the field.

Once we set that in place, we moved on to learning how to strengthen our roots by engaging in our gait pattern (crawl, walk, skip, march, run, etc) work and how to properly load it. Once the body is properly loaded, and we train it, our bodies start to produce the better output we are after. We also covered how to better tie our bodies together to have a solid trunk/center, which is imperative to fully express our strength and power. Included in this section of the course, was “Goofy (or old man) strength”. We got up and got to experiment with all types of exercises and methods that were definitely outside the box. It was fun and I was able to pick up some great things to take back home for myself and the people I work with.

The next section was taught by Chip Morton. He went over what to take into consideration when designing a strength training plan. He spoke about how to structure the training and the progressions that need to be taken within a training day. He also touched on the importance of connecting with your athletes and really caring for the people you come across. Great information gathered that I can keep at the ready for reference.

Mark Shropshire lectured next. He spoke about the nervous system and how it affects and can affect our performance. We went over what goes on in the body/brain during high stress moments, or time periods, and what we can do when those things arise. Being in high stress moments, is well, stressful, but Mark also spoke about how we can make the stress response become our friend. Very interesting stuff.

All in all, this was a great workshop and I was glad I could attend. Everyone involved was very knowledgeable and very humble. I have enjoyed using the stuff I learned to add to my training and the into the training plans of the people I work with. These guys LEAD from the front and it was a great learning experience for me.