by JL Holdsworth
In a word, this trip was amazing. It was my first time in London and it was even better than I expected.
My London Experience
First off, the food was great. Many people warned me about the food but I had a wonderful culinary experience. I had traditional Sunday roast with Yorkshire pudding, which I had no clue what it was when I ordered it (for those of you wondering, it's a bread-like fried dough you dip in the gravy from the roast). I had traditional venison and ale pie, fish and chips, and many other great dishes. A pleasant surprise was how good Guinness tastes in London. I don't enjoy Guinness in the states but Douglas Heel convinced me it was different and he was definitely right. Don’t let a reputation spoil your experience!
I also loved how quaint London feels. You are in this huge city but every time you turn a corner you feel like you are in another little neighborhood in any small town. It felt much more inviting than New York, which is of comparable size. In my downtime, I took in as much of the history as I could. I visited London Tower, the Tower Bridge, Big Ben, the British Museum, and many other historically significant places. You could be there for a month and not come close to seeing everything. Also, I got very good at using the Underground. By the end, I was at Buckingham Palace giving a bunch of foreign people directions like I was a native.
RPR in London
Best new word: Niggles - definition: cause of slight but persistent annoyance and/or discomfort.
“My hip has always had some niggles but then I started doing RPR and it went away.”
As always, those in attendance were amazing people. All with different backgrounds and from many different countries. We had people from six different countries at the clinic which made the experience a lot richer - and not just with accents. On one hand, I learned some differences in language (and everyone in attendance was very gracious about that). What was really fun was learning about different sporting cultures and comparing them. Systems in European countries can be quite different to those in the States, and I can’t say one is better than another, but it was very interesting to look at those differences.
Our host, Andy, did a great job getting everything set up and the clinic was in a great location that was easy to get to from the Underground.
It was great to have the creator of Be Activated, Douglas Heel, on hand for both days. This clinic was the first time Douglas had seen how RPR has modified Be Activated to be geared for performance. We talk about it all the time in clinics but I feel people still don't know that RPR is the performance partner for what Douglas is doing on the practitioner side with Be Activated. I enjoy my time with Douglas because we constantly bounce ideas back and forth and always come up with some ways to make our systems better. Because Be Activated has a longer history in the UK, this clinic in particular was fun because we had several people who had also been through Be Activated come. These folks work with teams and athletes and wanted to learn how we are teaching and implementing with our teams and personal training clients. When Chris, Cal, and I started RPR, our goal was to reach people like that, so this made me really happy..
Overall I want to thank everyone who came to the clinic and appreciate some of the messages I have received from people who have already started to implement and see great results with themselves and with clients. I'm not sure when we will be back to Europe, but this was definitely a great first trip!