I wanted to write this blog to alert my friends in the fitness industry who are considering attending multiple Perform Better Seminars this year. Perform Better is currently offering a “VIP Special” that allows you to attend as many seminars you’d like during an entire calendar year for $699! I was already planning on attending all of the different seminars so I’ll break down the savings for you:

One-Day Learn-By-Doing Seminar $149
Two-Day FMS (Functional Movement Screen) Seminar $379
Three-Day Functional Training Summit $349
Results Business Seminars $349 (I plan on attending the first seminar in 2011)

Total $1,226

Total with VIP Discount: $699

Granted, I’m not factoring in any early-bird discounts or taxes, but you get the point. If you’d like the discount, call Perform Better at 888-556-7464 and tell the customer service agent you’d like to talk to Chris Poirier about the VIP discount.

For the record I am very happy with Perform Better. Not only do they put on the absolute best seminars worldwide, they also have excellent customer service. Last year there was a thread on the StrengthCoach.Com forum asking which company had the best customer service out of all the different fitness equipment companies and every strength coach and personal trainer on the forum who responded chose Perform Better. I have to agree, as there was an incident earlier this year where Perform Better made an error and under-charged me for an item I purchased by one-hundred dollars. When they realized their mistake, with no hesitation they told me that they would honor the price they quoted me. How often does that happen in today’s economy?

I also have to credit the Perform Better Functional Training Summit for much of my success this past year. Last year I attended the 3-day seminar at Long Beach and met Mike Boyle, Eric Cressey, Martin Rooney, Gray Cook, Robert Dos Remedios, Bill Parisi, Vern Gambetta, Mark Verstegen, and Alwyn Cosgrove. I have to laugh now because I approached each of them at the end of their seminars and handed them an article I wrote on glute activation. These are all coaches who are about as far as you can get at the end of the “sport-specific” continuum, yet the article I gave them included some information about machine exercises and used some bodybuilding terminology. Now that I know a lot more about the industry, I can just envision the look on their faces as they read the article. They were probably thinking to themselves, “This guy just isn’t quite there yet!”

At any rate, I lucked out because at the time Mike Boyle had been considering programming the shoulder-elevated single leg hip lift into his routine and I gave him some ammunition to justify its inclusion with my glute EMG data. Coincidentally he was thinking about writing an article on the single leg hip lift calling it “the best exercise we never do.” Although he never wrote this article, he did post several videos showing different variations of the exercise over the next several months, in addition to mentioning my name on his blog a couple of times, posting a couple of my articles on his site, and mentioning me in his podcast on several occasions.

I piggy-backed off of this success by making sure to tell T-Nation that Mike Boyle had recently published a couple of my articles on his site so they would take me more seriously. This led to T-Nation posting several of my articles on their site, and the rest is history. Now I’m pretty well-known in the industry.

As a matter of fact, for the most part I was completely unknown in the fitness world as of last August. Since then I’ve published an eBook and been a part of over 30 articles online. I would venture to guess that I’ve been involved in more published articles in the last year than any other individual in the fitness industry. For this reason I’m declaring myself “rookie of the year” in the fitness industry.

I hope that I can continue to rise in popularity as next year I want to be writing for Men’s Health and speaking at the Perform Better Seminars! Wish me luck! Although I went off on a bit of a tangent, I have the Perform Better seminar to thank for much of my success. Simply put, if you want to get well-known in the industry you have to network. It is much easier for someone like Mike Boyle to post one of your articles on his site when he’s met you face to face. That’s just the way things work. I’m looking forward to meeting even more like-minded folks this year! Hope you enjoyed the blog.