John’s CST Background

Back in the Fall of 2006, I had a wake-up call involving some simple joint mobility exercises that I just couldn’t do for the life of me. To make a long story short, I had major movement dysfunctions that led me to discovering the Warrior Wellness joint mobility program, which I started practicing daily (now known as Intu-Flow). This one decision sparked a cascade of others that ultimately led to me working for my CST Instructor Certification in 2009. It’s since been two years, and I decided it was time to pursue the next level of certification and become a CST Coach.

Why I decided to go for the coach level certification

To be honest, it only makes sense that as my understanding of the CST system evolves, that I pursue a greater level of competency with the system behind the techniques. Coaches are held to a higher standard than CST Instructors and I felt more than prepared to challenge myself further after two additional years of exploration.

Coaches, in particular, are required to progress beyond the basic techniques of CST and learn how to assess clients using the Poise Analysis and the Functional Movement Screen methods. Coaches are also immersed in the Compensatory Movement strategy to help rebalance the body from the over-specializations and over-compensations that develop from life and training.

What I liked about the CST seminar

As I look back, the best part of the whole event was meeting and training with other like-minded athletes and fitness professionals. The CST tribe is truly a special community, made up of some of the finest professionals I’ve had the honor of training with. Everyone is positive and encouraging, and the atmosphere feels much more like a family than a conference crowd. But if that wasn’t enough, I got to meet several of you guys, too. In fact, I remember nine different people (out of 30+ attendees) who pulled me aside and complimented me for this website. Thank you for reading and for the kind words – you guys rock!

If that wasn’t enough already, there was a lot more to love about this seminar experience.

One thing that stands out was the format of the seminar being experiential first, and educational second. We learned and absorbed the CST system as we experienced it. There was some time devoted for lecturing and small group labs, but the majority of the time was spent practicing the system. If one arrived well-prepared (as you must if you want to graduate a CST seminar), then the physical workload should feel well-balanced with the lecturing/classwork. At no point did I feel physically overwhelmed – even with multiple daily training sessions. They really have the work-to-rest ratio down to a science now.

The other very cool thing about this is that most of the attendees, myself included, actually felt better and better throughout the course of the seminar. After 18 hours of flying and some jet lag, I woke up on Friday morning stiff as a rail and feeling like I was stuck in a chair-shape. By the end of just one day of moderate training, though, I felt restored and ready to tackle the rest of the seminar. Tired, yes. But also invigorated. That trend continued throughout the rest of the weekend, and despite a physically-intensive 22.5 hour exam (and an additional 3-hour kettlebell seminar after the CST event), I left Wolf Fitness feeling much better than when I had arrived. I wasn’t the only one either!

When we all arrived on Friday, the depth and amount of materials that we realized we were about to expose ourselves to was somewhat overwhelming, but the coaches assured us that “it will all make sense by the end of the weekend.” We covered a lot of ground with many layers of complexity (suited for whatever level of CST you’re certifying for). And they were right, it all made sense by the end of Sunday, and I can still remember the moment it “clicked.” But man oh man, do I have so much more to learn. CST is broad as it is deep, and I’m now convinced one could spend a lifetime studying this art.

One of the organizational models they used this time around was the inclusion of small group training with coaches that rotated from group to group. This provided an opportunity to learn CST in an intimate format from different professionals (with different perspectives and teaching styles). It provided a good balance of group learning along with just enough individual attention. This was a big improvement over the last seminar format of everyone learning in one large group, and just one more reason why I think they’ve got their seminars down to a science. Not only that, but all of the coaches performed extremely well and each of them went the extra mile to help us learn.

Another thing that was cool to witness was the higher caliber of seminar attendees. The stakes are definitely higher now, and all of the FlowFit and Clubbell Trial by Fire exam scores were much better than at my last seminar. People are coming more prepared, and so that’s just one more reason to put in the work if you’re thinking about going for certification. Speaking of work, we did a lot of it – and I really mean that – a lot. But there was just enough fun mixed in to keep our attention spans from faltering.

The last thing I really liked about the CST seminar was eating a cowboy-style, bacon cheeseburger with absolutely no shame whatsoever. Not only that, I washed it down with a 7-layer, King Kong sized slice of double chocolate gorilla cake. I don’t know what part of the gorilla they used, but it was incredible. (Note: I did this AFTER the entire seminar.)

What I didn’t like about the CST seminar

It would be remiss of me not to mention what I didn’t like about the seminar overall, but in 4 days since graduating, I still haven’t managed to come up with any legitimate complaints. Sure, it was hard traveling to this particular facility because it wasn’t near any major airports, and I did feel bad for all the international attendees. Traveling with clubbells is never fun either. But neither of those are necessarily seminar-related.

If I had one complaint, and this is more of a way I would have improved the seminar, it deals with the content itself. All of the Clubbell 6D Matrix materials were repeats from the seminar I attended two years ago. This leads me to believe that CST has not seen significant development in the last two years, but I’m just speculating, of course. Nevertheless, it was good to review those programs anyways, and I rated the overall seminar content at 4 out of 5 stars.

Perhaps some real complaints will come to me later (and if they do, I’ll update this review), but for now I’m quite satisfied with how everything went overall.

A somewhat-related prediction

Though it has been refined over several years, the CST system is still in its infancy, and its practitioners represent a fringe minority group – much like Pilates, Feldenkrais, and even yoga did in decades past. Nobody outside of the fitness industry really knows what CST is, nor do they really care.

TACFIT, on the other hand, is growing rapidly, and in a much shorter period of time. Obviously, TACFIT is a much more marketable brand than CST, and much more suitable for the fitness industry, in general. I think TACFIT already has and will continue to eclipse the CST system as a whole, and will slowly take the lead as the next generation of health-first fitness. I also think that TACFIT has the potential to compete with other fitness industry giants such as CrossFit given the right leadership and management. Watch for this to start unfolding over the next few years.

Thoughts for those pursuing certification

This is not an easy certification to obtain (instructor or coach level), so if you don’t really want it, don’t bother going for it. We were told that about 60% of attendees usually pass on average, leaving about 40% who must retest to certify. So, this is not a mail-order personal trainer certification. It requires a large time investment, and even then, some people do fail. The bottom line is that you must put in the work, and the tests are designed to reveal those who have and haven’t prepared adequately.

That said, even if you’re not interested in certifying, there’s still a wealth of knowledge to be gained from attending a seminar. I would encourage anyone with a remote interest in fitness or strength and conditioning to look deeply into the CST system. Plan ahead. I would recommend no less than 6 months to prepare, and 1-2 years would be more appropriate. Go deep into Intu-Flow, FlowFit, and clubbell training, preparing more than necessary. And if you have any questions about the process, be sure to let me know.

One last note. If you are a fitness professional and are looking for relevant certification opportunities, my recommendation is to get good at CST so that you can get great at TACFIT when it starts to explode and go stratospheric.

Final Words

All in all, it was a great experience with a wonderful group of people, and I can’t wait for the next one!

Click Here to Learn More About CST Certification

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CST Coach, CST-KS
Health-First Fitness Coach

P.S. Check out a couple of my interviews with Scott Sonnon to learn more about the inner-workings of the CST system:

Interview with CST-founder, Scott Sonnon (part 1)

Interview with CST-founder, Scott Sonnon (part 2)

Interview with Scott Sonnon about TACFIT

P.P.S. Wolf Fitness Systems is an awesome place to train. The facility was ideal and the staff were top-notch. They were wonderful hosts for an event like this and handled all hurdles with ease. With the family-esque atmosphere, it came as no surprise that about 25% of the seminar attendees were locals who train with the Wolf pack. I’d recommend to anyone within driving distance of Monterey/Salinas CA to check out their great gym and programs.

I also did sports in high school. It was cross country running in the fall, winter track, and spring track and field. I took summers mostly off, but I still ran off and on, especially leading up to the Fall. I ran so hard those seasons that I developed some major injuries in my legs from overtraining, which ultimately resulted in 3 years of physical therapy to rehabilitate me (but that’s another story). My career as a Navy SEAL was no longer plausible, so I fell back to “normal fitness training.” This is when things got interesting.

After high school, I began trying a LOT of different training styles. I simply couldn’t find anything that suited me perfectly.

One of my first focused training programs was with a training partner that was into bodybuilding. Ethan was much bigger than me, and always outperformed me a little bit on each lift (except the bench press, he had a huge advantage on that one). He would get program ideas from bodybuilding magazines, and enjoy making girls wince at the pictures inside. I spent almost 9 months in that bodybuilding-style routine. It was a classic split routine, body part specific, and I gained almost 20 lbs. By the end, I could crank out 50 parallel bar dips (full range of motion, not those sissy dips I see at the gym all the time), and 30 deadhang pullups. All of my lifts were going up consistently. I was definitely bigger and turned some heads in the gym, especially around repetition 40 on those dips! I had what most guys wanted in a physique, but I didn’t feel good. I felt strong in the gym, weak everywhere else. I couldn’t move as well as I used to. I even had trouble scratching my back, cliche, I know. Ultimately, I decided that bodybuilding-style training wasn’t for me – but what was? My search continued.

College brought some unique opportunities, like training with strength coach, Kyle Battis. Kyle was all about functional training and performance enhancement, and that made sense to me. After all, if I was going to look strong, I should also feel and BE strong too. Kyle was always at my college gym available for a new training idea, usually something that I had never seen before. One day, he pulled me aside and taught me the olympic barbell snatch – and the clean and jerk a week later. That’s when I really got interested in functional training. I learned how much weight I could put over my head. Slowly, I got immersed in classic weight training: squats, deadlifts, bench presses, and everything in between. I also experimented with kettlebells, sandbags, medicine balls, and other training tools.

This is when my training got a little bit hazy. It wasn’t focused anymore, there was too much to do, too many new things to try, and I got lost for awhile. Sure, I had some focused training cycles like improving my clean and jerk, and my deadlift, but my training was scattered at best. On top of my training, and full time college, I had also started a sole proprietorship landscaping company. I also got my National Strength and Conditioning Association personal trainer certification around this time, and began working at a local health club as a one-on-one personal trainer. I was getting burnt out, and it finally had to happen.

During a deadlifting micro-cycle, I was building up my volume, doing 225 for high reps. In the middle of a set, a disk in my lumbar spine slipped, and I immediately dropped the barbell and fell to the floor. I could lament over the details, but the takehome point is that this event initiated a major change in me. I re-examined why I was lifting weights. I clearly outlined my goals and priorities and realized that I didn’t need to lift very heavy weights to achieve my strength goals. I recognized that I don’t have to be the strongest, only strong enough. I realized that I have never in my life encountered something that I was not physically strong enough to overcome – and yet I had still been pursuing more strength.

I consider this event similar to a new birth, a completely new life and new way of thinking about health, fitness, and strength training. I began to focus on what I call “real world strength,” and putting health at the top of my physical priorities. It was two years before I was no longer in daily pain (I would go to bed in pain, and wake up in even greater pain.). Not having health insurance this time through, I had to search out my own answers, and that’s what led me to a better understanding of balancing hard and soft styles of training. This is what ultimately led me to the Circular Strength Training system (CST), which is the next logical step in my lifelong evolution. I’ve been practicing elements of CST for the past 3 years, and will be attending their certification seminar this August to get certified as an instructor.

But I wouldn’t say it will end here. I don’t think Circular Strength Training is the end-all, be-all. Sure, I think it is the most comprehensive system I have ever experienced for attaining specific goals with longevity and health in mind – but it isn’t complete, at least not yet. The CST tribe is all about constant evolution, and bringing new experiences into their community to seek excellence together. When I share the CST ranks, I’ll blend my experiences with theirs and we will all be better for it.

Where will this evolution take me down the road? Who knows. But then again, I’m also hearing more and more about primal fitness systems that really get back to our roots. Things like parkour, freerunning, and most recently MovNat by Erwan Le Corre (based on Georges Hebert’s Le Methode Naturelle… Erwan’s awesome promo video is here).

Regardless, I’m taking the next step – diving head-first into what I know is the best route for me right now, and CST seems to be the hidden treasure that I’ve been looking for. Find more information about CST at the official site here:

http://rmaxinternational.com

To your health and success,

Fitness Professional and CST Athlete