I will admit, I’m still in awe of everything that happened last week, between the 27th of April and 2nd of May in Rotterdam. I’ve been a long time follower of Sebastian Oreb (a.k.a. Australian Strength Coach) and his training methods. Long story short, some weeks ago I saw one of his Instagram posts mentioning his seminar “Deconstructing the Gym Lifts” with Andrew Lock (another professional I’ve been following for a long time), and that they would present it in Rotterdam, Netherlands. As I also have been very curious about getting to know the Netherlands, it was probably a once in a lifetime opportunity to kill 2 birds with one shot only.
Very quick I made the decision to buy tickets, check hotels and everything. I basically organized the trip in a couple days, and it all ended up working very well. The 27th was King’s Day in the Netherlands, and I had no idea what it meant. As I got there, there was a huge party literally everywhere in both Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Luckily I quickly managed to get to the hotel and check-in because on the next day at 8:45am I was supposed to be in the gym that was 5km away form where I stayed, and I had NO IDEA how to get there.
I woke up VERY early on the 28th, just in case. Found myself some breakfast and headed to the closest train station around 8:10am. By getting there I just couldn’t figure out which train to take and where to (although google maps showed me everything). I tried calling a taxi, but all of them were busy at the moment. Luckily I remembered the hotel had a bike rental service. I ran back to the hotel, quickly rented one bike and my adventure began 🙂 The weather was horrible, by the way.
That was around 8:45 already, so I left from the hotel already late. I somehow managed to complete a 20 minutes bike ride in less than 15 (breaking more or less 382 traffic laws in the meantime), and somehow managed to get to the gym at 8:59 sharp. They had all just sat down to start the seminar. The 28th of April was a seminar apart from the main one, and it was called “Building the Ultimate Strength Athlete”.
On that day we went through the 3 big lifts, but not as in depth as in the “main” seminar. We spoke about technique, programming, and etc, and it was definitely valuable knowledge, because I got to know inside the head of Sebastian and what was his logical thinking regarding training.
After a whole day of learning and meeting some cool people, I went back home very happy with my decision to travel for this seminar, not even knowing what was yet to come. On the 29th I woke up even earlier and decided to rent the bike for the rest of the days already. On that day the weather was much better, very warm and sunny actually.
By getting to the gym named Staal & Kracht (a really nice and well equipped Powerlifting/Strongman facility), there were definitely less people than in the previous day, which in my mind turned out to be a good thing, because everybody would get more attention. From the first day already the energy was amazing. You could easily notice everybody in there was very eager to learn and connect with others, and I found out later there were some pretty heavy lifters as well.
The first day of the seminar was all focused on Squats. At first Sebastian started speaking about technique and cues he uses to his athletes, and we spent more or less 2 hours in there. Right after all this, Andrew Lock went on to speak about rehab and most common injuries, and also taught us many activation drills to do before squatting.
We went for a lunch break, and right after it was time to speak a bit more about rehab, and then time to squat. I took it easy, worked up to 2 singles @ 160kg because it was Saturday, and Saturdays are my deadlift days, so I had to save some energy.
Well, that didn’t help at all. I was scheduled to pull 252,5kgx3 on that day, and it didn’t even move off the floor. I stayed to train after the seminar, and I think that all the days of travelling plus unusual food, low water intake and so on had played a role. I barely pulled 225kg x 3. Did a few more exercises and called it a day.
On the next day we had a Bench Press day. The schedule was pretty much the same as the squat day, speaking about technique and cues, followed by most common injuries/rehab and activation drills, lunch and then some action, to end the day talking about programming.
This was on Sunday and I was already pretty exhausted from all the studying and talking, so I didn’t train at all. But I got pretty happy from having Sebastian Oreb and Andrew Lock complimenting my Bench technique. That made me really happy, since it took me a long time to really start benching seriously due to a huge fear I always had of pectoral tears.
On Monday it was our Deadlift day, and I admit I was extremely concerned of not being able to pull some kind of “heavyish” weight, so Sebastian could give me feedback on my technique. You know, it’s very easy to keep a good technique when the weight is light. After the whole day basically was done, it was time to deadlift. To my surprise, Sebastian made a couple adjustments in my technique, and I was already feeling over the moon. For some unknown reason (cause I slept like shit and also ate like shit on that day) the weight was FLYING off the floor.
Don’t ask me, I don’t understand why either. I believe all the adrenaline built up to that moment made it happen. Anyways, I started puling and 170kg felt like nothing. 200kg felt like nothing, then 225kg came very easy, 240kg came very easy, and 250kg went up scarily easy and fast. I knew already in my mind that I got 270kg in me, but still decided to ask Sebastian. As a coach, I understand that sometimes it’s better to hold back a bit even when the athlete is feeling good, so I wanted his feedback. He said “you have it, bro!”.
Man, 270kg came up also at a certain ease. What an energy we had there. Everybody looking and cheering for each other. That was amazing. What a nice crew we got together there. The seminar was over in great style. We all spoke, got a ton of pictures with each other, I promised them I’ll be back in Staal & Kracht some day to train…they also promised to come to Estonia hahahaha.
From the seminar and the technical aspects themselves, what made me the happiest is that my way of thinking the training is VERY similar to that of Sebastian’s. When we spoke about programming on the Bench day, he was mentioning what he would do on a Bench day of his athletes, and he literally described MY TRAINING at the present moment 😀 In fact we also spoke about how to program for Squats and Deadlifts, and he even mentioned one program that I have done and prescribed for my trainees, you can find it here.
I share a lot of the same philosophies and principles, and Sebastian also takes a lot from Charles Poliquin (like myself), so when you get all that info together, it’s easy to get to a certain conclusion in terms of programming someone’s training because it becomes a pretty logical path. One decision leads to another and so on, following a certain progression in the training. It was very good (and ego lifting, I must admit) that I think training in such a similar way as the top strength coach in the world nowadays. That must mean I’m going in the right direction, I believe.
Besides all that, the biggest bonus of this seminar was the people I met there. Such cool, friendly, motivated and hardcore lifters/trainers I met. Those guys made me feel like I was part of their community, or that I’ve bene training in that gym for over 10 years or something like that. Guys, you rock! I know exactly where my next vacation/training camp will take place hahaha.
I honestly can’t wait to have another of Sebastian’s seminars in Europe. That will be a good opportunity to travel and meet more cool people, learn more from the best and maybe hit some new PR’s again 😀 #muchneeded
Thanks to all of you who read until the end. Hope you got to feel at least a bit of the good vibes I have from those days in Netherlands.
Stay strong! Peace out!