The Big Seminar Recap

By Jason Ferruggia

Unlike my last trip to Boston a few years earlier, this one would prove to be easy and painless. As I approached the exit I called CJ Murphy on his cell phone for directions. He mentioned three rotarys. I’m from Jersey so I wondered, “what the f*ck is a rotary?” I finally figured it out and arrived at the new home of Total Performance Sports a few minutes later. I walked in to hear the sounds of weights clanging, men 100 pounds bigger than me yelling and screaming, and heavy metal blasting. I felt right at home.

After saying my hellos I went to grab some food with my good buddies, Jim “Smitty” Smith from the Diesel Crew and Alwyn Cosgrove. At dinner I told Smitty that I had hit 765 on the Power Squat on Wednesday and was pretty happy with that since my leg training had been very haphazard over the last few months and I felt like my strength was starting to come back.

“That’s pretty good,” he said.

“Is it?” I asked, in hope of getting his approval of my lower body strength.

“Not really. I’m just trying to make you feel better.”

“Right. That’s what I figured. Thanks, buddy.”

When we returned, Matt Rhodes was squatting somewhere in the neighborhood of a million pounds, under the watchful eye of Jim Wendler and Dave Tate. Suddenly my Power Squat seemed even more pathetic.

Across the room, Vincent Dizenzo was benching somewhere around the same weight. It was all very impressive and motivating, to say the least. Even though I had only slept a combined total of seven hours in the previous two nights and had barely eaten all day on the ride up, I was extremely motivated by my surroundings and had to move some weight.

Smitty and I trained together and worked up to 130’s on dumbbell floor presses and one arm rows. I beat him on the floor presses and he did 21 reps to my 20 on the rows. Under most circumstances I would think that I did pretty well in the gym that day and would have been happy with myself. I can routinely walk into most public gyms and outlift just about everyone, including guys who outweigh me by fifty pounds, but that’s not really the least bit of an impressive feat. It’s not until you see and surround yourself with guys that are truly strong that you will ever get truly strong. Even if you can only do it on occasion, you need to get out of your comfort zone and train with guys who are far stronger than you. In fact, whenever I spend time with Dave or Jim I always come home and make better strength gains in the next month than I had in the previous three because my whole idea of what is strong has be renewed and I realize just how far I have to go.

After training on Friday night we all went to dinner where among other things, I learned that there are internet forums filled with guys who hate me and Alwyn and anyone else who is successful in this business. Although it’s sad to think about people having such a lack of fulfillment and success in their own lives it did give me great pleasure and cause Alwyn much frustration to learn that I receive more attention than he does on some of these boards.

“How the f*ck are you getting more hatred than me? I’m pissed!”

Apparently these incredibly successful, super strong, jacked up forum posters also have problems with Jim Wendler and James Smith as well, but according to at least one source, they like to discuss their disdain for me the most. For that I must thank them and say that I truly appreciate how much attention they pay to what I say.  It means a lot to me.

After a great night of story telling and drinking beer we headed back to the hotel to get ready for The Big Seminar the next morning. But first we made a pit stop at the bar for a few more beers and stories. It was here that I had the pleasure of talking to Rhodes and Vinny for the first time that night. I also learned that apparently they don’t serve more than one beer per person in Boston…or something like that. That’s wicked retahded.

After about an hour so of hilarious stories provided by Dave, Rhodes and Vinny,  I decided that it was time to head up to my room and get ready for the morning.

The Seminar

Since I participated in the seminar I will not be giving a fully detailed review. I will say that Cosgrove, Wendler and Murph are three of the first guys in this entire industry that I go to for training and business advice and I think they proved exactly why. Whenever I hear any of these three speak I always learn something and this weekend proved to be no different.

There was a great group of attendees and it was a pleasure to meet each and every one of them. Hopefully they all got everything out of the seminar that they were hoping for. Personally, I think watching any of those three guys speak or coach is worth the price of admission alone. Especially when Jim gets fired up and starts yelling and cursing; there’s not much better than that.

Jim is fond of saying that you will never learn a ton at a seminar; that all the real knowledge comes from training and experience. I agree 100% but I also know that just being around certain individuals, especially those who are stronger and more experienced and/or more successful than you can teach you quite a bit and really improve your training or your business.

This weekend was the first time that I had the pleasure of meeting Vincent Dizenzo (who is an 800 pound bench presser and absolutely enormous, by the way) and I must say that not only is he an incredibly nice, smart and funny individual but he taught me a lot, whether he knows it or not. Just being with people like that rubs off on you and motivates you to be better at what you do, whether it be your hobby or your job or whatever. I had several conversations with Vinny over the weekend and while I was usually laughing my ass off at one of his stories I was also incredibly impressed with him and that only served to motivate me.

A lot of times people stereotype powerlifters to never listen to anything that anyone weaker and smaller than them has to say about anything. However, Vinny told Alwyn and I that he learned a lot from listening to us speak about business and later told Alwyn how much he respects all the hard work Alwyn has put into his business and all the training knowledge he has acquired over the years. That meant a lot to Alwyn and I and shows what kind of person Vinny is.

We all can, and should, learn from each other. It’s how you get better at everything you do. And we should all be constantly striving to get better in every aspect of our life. If you are not progressing, you are regressing; there can be no standing still.

One of the attendees summed it up perfectly at the end of the day Saturday. As an outsider to the whole thing and having met all those guys for the first time this weekend he explained how he thought it was incredibly cool to see a bunch of guys who are so different and have many different areas of expertise yet are so similar. He said she learned something different from each speaker yet also saw the underlying similarities amongst all of us.  People always want to look for the differences between training programs and coaches and what successful people do when in reality they should look for the similarities.

Jim explained this during his presentation and I believe he really hit the nail on the head. Don’t look at what the top lifters in the world do differently because there are, in fact, numerous differences. But instead, look at what they all have in common. This applies to every aspect of your life that you are trying to improve.

Hopefully everyone in attendance learned something from each of the speakers and realized that while their approaches to training or business may differ slightly, it’s really what they do the same and the common characteristics that they share that really matters in the end.

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Thanks again to all the attendees and to CJ Murphy for being such a great host.