Dragondoor Health and Strength Conference Review

The jaws of the crowd dropped and the applause was intense as close to 100 people watched Katy go from 2 reps in the one arm pushup to 7. That’s a 3.5x increase!

I’ve seen it happen again and again but it still amazes me the results that can be gained by tweaking your “mind code” of any exercise.

I’ll share more about that in a moment, but first a little back story…

A couple of weeks ago was the first ever Dragondoor Health and Strength Conference.

I was excited to join the stage with the likes of Zach Even-Esh, Al and Danny Kavadlo, Jon Bruney, Mike Gillette, Marty Gallagher and many more.

I got to see old friends and make new ones. That includes actually meeting in person several people I had talked to online but never had been able to shake their hands.

Over two days in Minneapolis the stage was packed, one speaker after another.

Some of my favorite takeaways include Dr. Chris Hardy discussing the role of stress in our training, and how all training must be modulated for stressors OUTSIDE of training. I’m certainly familiar with the concept but he laid it out in a very detailed manner.

(Plus I learned the word interoception which describes a subconscious awareness of the state of our organs. That’s something I’ve certainly played with before, talking to organs in a hypnotic state, but it’s cool to see that they’re finding out about that scientifically too.)

Right now I’m reading his new 500+ page book, co-written with Marty Gallagher, Strong Medicine. Also plan to have him on as a guest of my podcast later on.

Rolando Garcia delivered a message any personal trainer needs to hear regarding building a business. Being a good trainer is only 25% of the picture.

Max Shank showed why going to 80% effort is an easy rule of thumb to get great progress and lower the likelihood of injury and how 5 to 10 minutes a day of daily training leads to BIG increases. These ideas were covered in his great book Ultimate Athleticism.

Al Kavadlo shared 5 levels of bodyweight strength which really summed it up well.

Steve Holliner taught the benefits of ‘assymetrical and alive’ training, specifically with a sandbag. Those were a lot of fun to play with.

And a special shout out to Andrea Du Cane. My wife has been loving your Kettlebell Goddess DVD that she picked up at the event.

There was so much more…Now back to me 😉

In the next month or so Mental Muscle, my long-awaited book on mental training for strength and fitness will finally be released with Dragondoor.

So my presentation was on the same topic, specifically one area that I cover in the book, that I’ve never seen anyone else in the whole field cover.

How to Hack Your Mind Codes for Instant Strength Gains

I worked hard on this presentation, crafting it in a way to take people from where they are, to seeing some of the possibilities that mental training can bring.

Unfortunately, it is too far outside the paradigm of most people, thus it is discounted or labeled not important.

Having a captive audience for close to an hour allows me the time to take you on a journey.

On that note, if I did a similar presentation on a webinar, would you be interested in attending? Let me know in the comments below and I can make that happen…

The big moment was at the end of my presentation. I wasn’t just there to talk about theory or even share stories of past success…

I was prepared to show it live!

This was a bit nerve-wracking. This was my first time speaking in front of a group so large, and doing a live demo like this was a bit like flying on the trapeze without a net.

I’m happy to say that it went flawlessly.

First up, I brought up a man named Dustin. I “messed with his mind” (that’s a fun term I like to use to describe what I do) helping him to enhance how his subconscious mind processed a kettlebell press.

He went for it and hit 6 reps with the 32kg which was an all time PR for him.

Not bad.

And fortunately there was still time for one more demo.

Katy jumped up on the stage and we choose to work with one arm pushups. The most she had ever done before was two of them.

After guiding her through the same process, and seeing some interesting things come up like the color yellow, she went at it again.

And there she cranked out 7. Amazing!

What was interested was she reported an internal voice that said “You can do 7”.

This wasn’t something she said to herself, but something that emerged subconsciously from doing the drill. There’s a very important distinction there.

Coaching someone through this process isn’t some magical power that I alone possess. It’s a learnable skill that anyone can do.

And the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

The good news is that there may be some video of that available later.

And everything is detailed in Mental Muscle, coming soon. (ETA is late September now)

John Du Cane at Dragondoor has plans to make this an annual conference. Hope to see you there next year…