Bodybuilding Journey Fall 2015 Part III

I knew I had my work cut out for me, but one thing I wasn't going to leave to question was my work ethic. I committed to training, and training hard. As a matter of fact, training became more important than my business and the service I provided others. There was nothing more important. I had committed to being on stage in front of hundreds of people wearing tiny underwear......I was not going to fumble the ball on this one.

I knew posing was important. I did not know that the person coaching your posing was more important.  I went to posing workshops, and even drove to Dayton one time to work with a coach. I also referred my battle buddy to a female coach that I barely knew. Lucky for me, Rafaela, the tall, gorgeous Brazilian Bikini competitor put herself in a position to be coached by someone I've respected since I started training. Every trainer worth their weight in Columbus has heard of Mike Davies. He's coached at a high level for a long time. His reputation precedes him. Even when I was new to the training game in Columbus I knew that Mike was someone I needed to know. Because of Rafaela, I got the chance.

I soaked up every bit of knowledge that I could. It's like learning from a kung fu master. When you're around wisdom you talk less and listen more. There was no point in me talking about what I knew. My body showed that. Now was a time for me to get drilled and coached on how to get better.

And he assured me that I was on the right path, in my coaching and my own training. MORE CONFIRMATION that my blueprint was working. I earned the respect of a fitness legend.

It was coming! But I wasn't quite there yet. I needed to get my body Turnt Up. 

My commitment to a bodybuilding lifestyle was at an all time high.....literally....when I went to Beaver Creek, Colorado for Todd Durkin's Mastermind Retreat. This was a perfect time to pick the brains of World Class fitness professionals. To gain ideas to build and sustain million dollar health and fitness businesses. I had the opportunity to do that. And I also received confirmation from them that I was on the right path. I used all my free time in high altitude to train. I went from training twice a day to three times. My eating wasn't at it's best but that was ok. I was working hard.....and breathing some damn good air.

My mentor Todd Durkin is an expert at getting people FIRED UP! 

Then it's back to reality!

 The mission was on! The energy was creating and attracting fit, healthy, lean physiques.

 And I felt good about taking topless high-speed selfies in the gym. Coordination, balance, strength, desire.....I got it all baby!

WWW.MCCOHNMUSCLE.COM

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 3- McCohn Muscle

That Day 3 BootCamp? I'm not going to lie, I was more of a spectator than a participator. Yes, I probably had TOO much fun the night before, but my body was pretty sore after the first two workouts of the mentorship. So yeah, I was just listening to my body ;-)

We did a lot of activities and games here. There were some buddy exercises, some running, calisthenics; we played a game called Blob Tag which was pretty cool. It was more like a team building activity. There was also some type of football game I did not participate in because I got caught up in a conversation with a successful trainer and entrepreneur from Coronado named Christopher Foote. This guy has got it going on, and his positive attitude is contagious.

This day, Saturday, we got overloaded with information. Entrepreneur, Trainer, Gym Owner, Beachbody Diamond Coach, and speaker Trina Gray jumped it off with "Time to Get Social." A lecture on steps we could take to improve our reach on social media platforms. Ladies! If you do not follow "Trina Gray Fitness" on Facebook, I encourage you to do so. She is a wife, mother, and inspiration like many of you.

www.facebook.com/trinagrayfitness

Instagram: @trinagray

Next we learned from Entrepreneur, Trainer, Gym Owner, Beachbody Extraordinaire, Marketing Mastermind, and speak Vito LaFata. He opened up a lot of people's eyes about the way our websites were put together, why they needed to improve, and what we could do to improve them. Talk about some useful information. Remember how I used the word "overloaded." We received so much good information over these 3.5 days there is no way to implement it all quickly. All of it is going to take time but the faster we're able to put it together, the better our businesses will become. For sure!

That's Vito and Trina on the left. I'm not sure why I did not get pictures with them. Probably because they made me realize how garbage my social media and website was. lol :-) Their presentations were GAME CHANGERS!

Other lectures we received on day 3: The 30 Minute Business Model, The Art of a Great Presentation, and Going Deep Coaching.

Then you know how fitness professionals do, Work Hard....Play Hard.

This is what happens when you get a Buckeye fan and a Wolverine fan together! Well dressed hostility. She has some great arms, but her team though! Todd was gracious enough to let all 65 of us come over to his house. He fed us, provided water, wine and other beverages. I even had a chocolate chip cookie. It was a good time. A couple of conversations that stood out to me was one with Brent Gallagher, owner of West U Fitness in Houston. This guy is amazing. The Dave Ramsey of trainers. He's built a training facility that brings in over $1M a year and he has no debt. HELLO! He gave me awesome encouragement and advice about starting my own training facility.

The other was an inspiring conversation with the Director of First Impressions at Fitness Quest 10, Stephanie Anderson. As she was talking to me about some difficult times in her past it really stirred something up inside of me. I looked at her as a conqueror; someone who has fought many battles to get to the point where she is today, and she has the courage to tell her story. 

Listen to her story here

Little did I know, the emotion I felt from one conversation would be taken to another level on the last day of mentorship.

And the Michigan Wolverines are still poop!

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.