5 Great Takeaways from the
Perform Better Functional Training Summit (Part 1)

The weekend before Labor Day, David Holomakoff, CPO, and I drove from Portland, Maine to Providence, Rhode Island, to attend the Perform Better Functional Training Summit. We debriefed after and came away with 5 Key Takeaways—the learnings were so rich, that we have Part 1 in this post, then Part 2 to follow.

Keynote speaker MMA Champion Jim Miller

The keynote speaker at the Providence summit was MMA Champion Jim Miller who, along with his strength and conditioning coach, gave a rousing and motivational talk and a hands-on session the next day that epitomized the winning spirit of the whole conference.

Here’s just a partial list of speakers at this Providence event:

• Michael Boyle

• Gray Cook

• Rachael Cosgrove

• Mary Kay Feit

• Vince Gabriele

• Molly Galbraith

• John Graham

• Bill Parisi

• Greg Rose

• Frank Velasquez

5 Great Takeaways

While we couldn’t attend all of the sessions, here were our 5 Great Takeaways from the ones we did, as they relate to fitness, performance sports and overall well-being:

1. A Holistic Approach is Best  

2. Women Are Different

3. We Can Prevent ACL Injuries in Girls and Women

4. Best Practice is to Measure Everything

5. As With Anything:  Success Includes Deeply Connecting with Others

#1:  A Holistic Approach is Best 

Gray Cook, MSPT, OCS, CSCS and developer of the Functional Movement System (FMS) gave a powerful talk on a holistic approach. “Exercise is not always the answer,” he said. 

As the trends have shown, consumers–all of us–are more aware of and more interested in being overall healthy, not just reaching a certain weight or looking ripped. Gray talked about looking at movement quality, yes, but also breathing quality, sleep wellness, and nutritional awareness. 

Being the world expert on movement quality, he asked:  “Is the pain because of how you move or does moving cause the pain?” He also counseled that “movement quality is not about how fit you are, but about how many risk factors you have.”

At one point, Gray asked the group to raise their hands if they were physical therapists, athletic trainers, strength and conditioning coaches, or fitness professionals. A mix of all were in the audience. Gray surveyed the audience and waved his hand across the room: “We all need to be talking to one another.” 

#2 Women Are Different

Molly Galbraith blew us away. Molly is the founder of Girls Gone Strong, an organization dedicated to the belief that “when women feel strong, confident, and empowered in their lives and bodies, we can change the world.” She also created the GGS Academy, a provider of women-specific health and fitness coaching and certifications.  

Our mindset going into this session was obvious, “Of course women are different.” Then Molly began in a most unexpected place.

She asked if we could think of the five factors that impact body image for women.  To be honest, (Pat, the woman speaking here), I was thinking about things like weight, being toned, etc. What woman hasn’t grown up constantly thinking about her self image in these sorts of ways?

Then she showed factor #1:  Does she feel safe?

I had to admit, as a 5’4” woman, I thought A LOT about my own safety my entire life. I just didn’t realize it. Molly had me riveted from here on out.

Here is her list of factors impacting body image for women:

1. Does she feel safe?

2. Does she feel comfortable?

3. Does she feel strong and capable?

4. Does she feel resilient?

5. Does she feel ownership/autonomy?

In providing personalized training to women, Molly painted a compelling picture that any provider needs to be considering these factors. She emphasized that trainers need to understand what else is going on in a woman’s life (not prying), but considering for example, has she just had a baby? How will that impact what she can do?

She gave another great example: let’s say you are providing training to a woman in a crowded gym, and you have her do hip raises. Is this really something she’s comfortable doing with all these people around?

Molly then told the incredible story of how as part of her mission, she focused on women and pregnancy. How, until her organization came along, women who had C-Section pregnancies–an operation that cuts through seven tissue layers of a woman’s body–had no automatic referral for rehabilitation afterwards. 

Thanks to Molly’s organization, that has changed. 

As you can imagine, having this expanded view of what women are facing coming into any fitness program, changes your entire view. It certainly did mine.

We’ll comment on the remaining takeaways in our next post.