SSS - Seattle 2013 February

[Kyle Schuant]

Here are some pics by Tom from last year's SSS in Seattle, gives you all an idea what awaits us!

I'll be up for dinner and drinks on Thursday night if anyone else is in the area then.

[Kyle Schuant]

It's now Monday morning and we're all finished up.

It was excellent. I say this while at time of writing I honestly have no idea if I passed or not. You get a certificate of completion, however they evaluate your performance as a lifter (not weights lifted, but form) and coach of the lifts. If that's satisfactory, then they send you an email on the Tuesday with several short-answer questions, you have 10 days to answer them. Rip said, "don't bother sending me 5 pages... one guy sent me 57 pages. That was very good." However many of the people sending these in pass. Those who do will then be officially Starting Strength Coaches.

Around half the class were involved in training or coaching people in some way, the others were just people who wanted to lift better.

This will probably frighten those who met me this weekend, but in places I've worked, I'm usually the smartest guy in the room, in training terms. This was absolutely not the case this weekend, I was in the bottom quarter of lifters. I am a better coach than lifter. However the latter is hard to judge, as we alternated coaching and lifting for each set, and the actual coaches were very quick to step in and offer their own coaching if you hesitated at all; they have to balance teaching the lifts effectively with giving you a chance to demonstrate your coaching skills, they seem to err on the side of the former. And of course, compared to the book and DVD, some things had changed, so study by rote learning wasn't helpful.

Either way, I learned a lot about myself as a lifter, and will be a much better coach as a result. I think it was worth the expense. Flight, accommodation, lost income while away, etc, all up the total cost for me is around $4,000. And being away from my wife and toddler son has been very hard for me. I still think it was worth the expense and hassle. So if it were just $800 and in my town I'd probably go to one each month.

Attachment 3021
The coaches,
Tom, who looks like Adam Sandler but speaks like a real man instead of a little boy
Wolf, who worries when he drops below 260
Stef, who makes fun of you when she can, and brings the geek to the jock world
Rip, who I was surprised to learn actually eats fruit from time to time
Dana, who has a very kind and gentle way of telling you you're useless
Paul, who is just generally laid back and relaxed about things

Attachment 3022
"You need to put on at least 20lbs, Kyle."

[Michele Knaub]

20? you got off easy. there was a very skinny, tall dude in my seminar whom rip instructed thusly, in front of everyone:

"Boy? There is nothing wrong with your squat that cannot be fixed by gaining ONE


HUNDRED


POUNDS."

[Elgar]

Same for me Kyle, I was used to being the most knowledgable in the room. I was happy that this was not the case when I went to the seminar, it means I have that much more to learn and that much more room to improve. I'm also a coaching hopeful but damn will it be a while before I could have free days to write anything.

[Kyle Schuant]

He did say at least 20lbs. Maybe he was setting the bar low for me, I am a PT after all.

Elgar, what name do you go by day-to-day?

[Travis Rask]

I enjoyed it thoroughly. It was worth every penny.

I would definitely consider taking it again. There was a student there going through for the 3rd time, which was especially impressive en lieu of the fact he's already earned his Starting Strength Coach credentials. Speaks a lot about the community.

The most impressive element of the class was the level of student engagement.

Other than using it for lb/kg calculations, I didn't fidget with my phone at all. No one did. Unheard of these days.

[Elgar]

Richard, I suppose I should change it, since everyone here uses their normal name. When I signed up I just used a normal forum name.

[JDelage]

It was a great seminar. It was interesting to me to see that 2 of the lifters were diagnosed to need a shim under one leg. That's roughly 10% of the attendance, I wonder if this is about average. It was cool to see Rip quickly zero-in on those cases. For those people, the seminar paid large unexpected dividends right away.

As for the test, I didn't pass the platform coaching. I'm not too surprised as it was obvious I didn't have the experience some of the other lifters had. I wasn't really there for it, but obviously it's a missed opportunity.

[Kyle Schuant]

I won't be taking it again, a bit far to go and the expense is non-trivial. As I said, if it were local I'd go multiple times like Casey did.