TD Mentorship San Diego Day 3.5- McCohn Muscle

Day 3.5! This is it! This was it! By far this was the best day of the mentorship for me. Actually, I can say with confidence this was one of the best days of my life. 

The first day of the mentorship when Todd Durkin took the floor, he kept repeating, "guys we're going to go deep. We're going to go deep." I started looking around thinking to myself, "I don't know what this guy means by that, but if he thinks he's gonna make me cry, he's out of his mind." Seriously!

w/my roommate Jimmy Mackey, owner of MACFit360

I told Jimmy the day before that there were going to be some people that struggled once they left the mentorship. Todd did an awesome job working with us, but he is external motivation. We can't take Todd with us when we leave. I predicted that some people were going to go back and do well for a week, then they were going to fall into the same old habits because they did not change on the inside. Everything I said sounded right until that moment when Todd forced all of us to look inside ourselves.

There was a 3-part presentation on leadership delivered by Mastermind mentors. One of them, Frank Pucher gave a presentation of Three Simple Lessons for Business and Life. Now I don't know all of Frank's story, but I do know that he was running a training facility in New Jersey when throat cancer tried to attack him. Long story short, he kicked cancer's a$$, and is healthy enough to speak about it. My biggest takeaway from his presentation, "you need a team to ensure success."

"Everything in life happens for us, not to us." -Kelli Corasanti

Kelli gave us some insight on what to do "When the Going Gets Tough." Since the summer of 2014 was such a rough patch in my life I could easily identify with what she was speaking. Journaling, meditation, and self talk had already become a part of my emotional fitness. For me, her presentation was confirmation that I was on the right track. 

 I think Larry Indiviglia may have been my biggest fan out there. He always had the camcorder in his hand shouting out something like, "let's go Ohio! C'mon Buckeye!" He was quite the motivator. In his presentation he referred back to his days in the Naval Academy. He stressed the importance of being a team player.

Speaking of a motivation.

w/Randy Soulier

He was one of my workout partners on Day 1. We did sprint training on the Woodway treadmill. 60+ years old, and when I tell you he was sprint training......he was sprint training!

The time came for Todd to wrap up his 3.5 Day Mentorship by having us "go deep." It was his desire that we reach inside ourselves and find our purpose, our meaning, our why. He set the mood by playing inspirational music, as he likes to say, "music moves the soul." 

With several writing exercises we all had to dig inside ourselves and write about what it was we were really here to do. What did we want to accomplish? When it was time for our lives to come to an end, how did we want to be remembered? Todd Durkin, leader, motivator, man, trainer extraordinaire opened himself up to us. When he began crying, that was all she wrote. By the time we were done, there were very few dry eyes in the room. It was very emotional. Pretty much everyone in that room came face to face with their purpose in life. After all the hugs, high fives, and kind exchanges, we all left knowing what we had to do and how we needed to change. I was walking on clouds.

This guy is a true leader. I was honored to be a part of something so powerful.

Now I have a free afternoon and evening. The weather is gorgeous and I'm trying to put some miles on this Mustang convertible. Somebody please show me around this city.

La Jolla (pronounced La Hoya)

Facebook says it's the most affluential city in the US. A four-bedroom house costs 1.5M

Don't know about that, but the scenery was breath-taking.

Well hello there! 

 My gorgeous tour guide. 

Pacific Beach, La Jolla, Balboa Park, Old Town. I got to see it all. Had some good food, some wine, and dessert at a place called Extraordinary Desserts. Entrepreneur thought: an Extraordinary Dessert in Columbus would compete with Jeni's Ice Cream. It was that good.

Euphoric! 

TD Mentorship 2014 San Diego Day 2- McCohn Muscle

w/ Todd Durkin

This man is the reason high level trainers traveled from all over the world to San Diego. There is certainly more about Todd that I don't know but I will sum it up as best I can. 

-Massage therapist and bodywork specialist

-Personal trainer and BootCamp instructor, clients include Pro Bowl running back Ladainian Tomlinson WHEN he broke the all-time single season touchdown rushing record. Drew Brees, before his injury with the San Diego Chargers and after when he became an All Pro and Super Bowl Champion with the New Orleans Saints. There are a plethora of others including NFL and MLB players and mixed martial artists. A real Bootcamp instructor! His morning classes made me feel like I was back in the Army.

-Owner of Fitness Quest 10 which is a gym small in size but gigantic in performance. He has an AWESOME staff, including 30+ personal and group fitness trainers. His facility also offers massage, body work, and chiropractic work. It's a one stop shop for the human body.

-Worldwide motivational speaker. This guy could fire up the laziest group of people. I first heard him speak in 2013 at the IDEA Fitness Convention and I've been following him ever since. In that time he's traveled to Australia, Europe, and all over the U.S. fulfilling his vision of making IMPACT in people's lives.

-Blogger, author. I also follow him on social media @todddurkin

He has one book published (that I know of), and is working on another. He sends out several emails a week as well.

-Husband, father. He has a beautiful family, a wife and three kids. 

It's like, when does this dude have time to sleep? It's easy to see why I would travel to the west coast to learn from him. He IS pretty much everything I want to be in the fitness industry.

He's endorsed by Under Armour too.

This day of lecturers included: The Blue-Print for Success in the Fitness Industry; Systemizing Your Business; The Top 10 Lessons I Learned While Building My Dream Facility, Treadside Manner Talk, and How to Have a 100k Month.

These presenters flew in from all over the country as well.

After an intense early morning BootCamp, a day filled with classes, and a Q&A meeting with the inventor of the BOSU ball, David Weck, who is a brilliant, mad scientist type by the way, it was time for me to play hard. 

I met two young ladies by the pool at lunchtime that were not part of the mentorship. It just so happened that it was one of their birthdays, and they invited me to hang out with them that night. Uhhh, HELL YEAH!

Unexpectedly, I found myself in the Gaslamp District surrounded by BEAUTIFUL people.....and some alcohol.

Yeah! I didn't really know any of these people, but we all had a common goal: to have some fun!

I'm telling you, it felt like Whatever USA.

All my peers were back at the hotel chillin' and I'm out having the time of my life. I was so grateful I got to meet these people. All because I socialized for 20 minutes with two ladies at the swimming pool during lunch. But just like last year, when I went out on the late night adventure with my cousin in LA......damn if I don't have a BootCamp workout in a few hours.

TD Mentorship 2014 San Diego Day 1- McCohn Muscle

The Todd Durkin 2014 3.5 Day Mentorship came at exactly the right time. After a summer of excelling in training and business, while struggling with some personal issues I proudly limped into my 34th birthday, in need of a getaway. I don't take many vacations, or days off for that matter and getting out of my everyday environment could not have come at a better time. My clients showed me plenty of love on my birthday which had me feeling euphoric. Little did I know, that feeling would skyrocket over the next few days.

A lady at the airport in Minneapolis came up to me while I was eating and asked if I was this guy.......T.O! Terrell Owens. He's about 6ft3in and I'm 5ft9in but whatever. The important thing here is being mistaken for a superstar, millionaire, former NFL athlete. I'll take it as a compliment.

Sun's Out, Guns Out baby!

Everyday during the mentorship was 87 degrees and sunny. It was absolutely beautiful weather compared to all the thunderstorming going on back home in Ohio. The only time the weather felt inconvenient was during the first of our 3.5 days when we had a killer 4pm workout at Fitness Quest 10. During the workout we did Woodway treadmill sprints, hill sprints, shuttle runs (suicides), TRX, band training, kettlebells, med ball slams, push ups, ab rollers, battle ropes, and a few tools I had never used before. Training was at a high level!

Battle rope training mixed with plyometrics.

Girl look at that body! I work out!!

I just had a birthday, and fell off my meal plan a little bit. But I felt good enough to take my shirt off in front of 75 other trainers. Being fit feels good!

I don't know what other people were thinking about this and I really didn't care. TD told us to have fun and that is exactly what I did. I had to get the footage, because a few of my clients like to do The Wobble from time to time in the morning at Max Out Gym. We get down like that.

Rockin it!

While everybody else was working out, or taping us:-) Samantha Lazaris and I were doing The Wobble. She's a Wolverine fan but it's all good. I didn't hold it against her.

60+ trainers from all over the world attended this mentorship. Some had little experience in the fitness industry and others were absolute powerhouses. Meeting and working out with them, including the staff at Fitness Quest 10 was a great experience.