Peter D'Epiro

Technology Meets Minimalism in Silicon Valley

October 6, 2015 By Peter D'Epiro 5 Comments

PCC Mountain View Lead Photo

For the first time since its inception, the Progressive Calisthenics Certification (PCC) touched down in the Bay Area, specifically Silicon Valley, California. The land of technological innovation and gadgets was introduced to primitive movement patterns and raw strength development, through the use of nothing more than one’s own bodyweight!

Hosted at the Bay Area’s premier fitness and performance training facility, Evolution Trainers, the beautiful California weather and custom built outdoor scaffolding jungle gym allowed for a wonderful combination of indoor and outdoor training throughout the course.

PCC Mountain View Outdoor

As has become commonplace at the PCC, the group of participants was an eclectic mix that included fitness trainers, military personnel, martial artists, teachers, local tech professionals, and calisthenics enthusiasts. Attendees came from the northern and southernmost ends of California, all over the United States, and even as far away as Hong Kong.

This class was unique for me. Having attended the very first PCC in Minneapolis over 2 years ago, I was back for this one as an assistant, which provided a unique vantage point on the curriculum relative to my first time around. Not having to focus on my own performance, aches, pains and anxiety about the Century Test, I was able to view the class as a whole. Seeing all the participants work on the various skills gave me a new and different sense of the incredible experience that is the PCC.

Dragon Door typically likes to track PR’s, when students are able to perform a skill for the first time. While a requisite amount of power and stability are needed to perform the various feats of strength at the PCC, it is amazing to watch attendees who genuinely cannot perform a skill, work through the progressions during the class, receive cues and coaching pointers, and ultimately succeed in execution. From pistol squats to muscle-ups to hand balancing, it was amazing to see everyone in the room get better together as the weekend went on!

PCC Mountain View Crow

Seeing this process in action validates the well thought out progressions and regressions of the curriculum. This highlights the knowledge, communication and teaching skills of Master Instructors Al and Danny Kavadlo, along with Team Leader Logan Christopher, who also lent his insights to this particular course. It was a pleasure to coach alongside such legendary talent.

PCC Mountain View Coaching

The PCC has evolved since its inception, yet still maintains a wonderfully positive and supportive atmosphere that leads to new friendships, professional connections and gains in physical strength. It is an incredibly fun and inspiring experience. Complimenting the technical insights this weekend were individual talks by both Al and Danny about the paths they’ve taken to the PCC, the principles of progression and program design. These talks are not only engaging, but further deepen and personalize an already powerful experience for the students.

All in all, this newly minted group of PCC instructors walked away with much more than a piece of paper declaring them “certified”. They left with new skills, new friends and membership in one of the most special and positive communities in the fitness arena.

PCC Mountain View Group Photo

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About Pete D’Epiro: A fitness & performance coach in the San Francisco Bay Area for 20 years, Pete specializes in training the unique population that is the Silicon Valley executive/entrepreneur as well as junior athletes ranging from middle school to Division I scholarship athletes. Pete also volunteers his time to Stew Smith’s non-profit Heroes of Tomorrow, providing free training to candidates preparing for careers in military special operations, law enforcement, & fire. Most days of the year Pete can be found at the world-class training facility, Evolution Trainers (www.evolutiontrainers.com), in Mountain View, California.

Kids and Calisthenics

May 27, 2014 By Peter D'Epiro 6 Comments

Playground Workout child performs clutch flag

When my son began organized sports my main reason for coaching was fairly simple: spend time with my boy. Besides, who better to coach the team than someone who has experience as both a coach and former athlete, understands we are not playing for a college scholarship from the ages of 5-12, and is more than happy to explain that point to overzealous parents?

I was excited to spend quality time with my son, but over time I learned that coaching provides opportunities beyond teaching kids the skills of various sports and trying to foster an environment that would leave them wanting to sign up again the next year.

KidsSportsTeam

I can’t imagine a much better resource for developing motor skills, strength and athleticism in today’s youth than calisthenics. As a result, you will find our teams opening practice with a number of standard athletic drills (skips, cariocas, etc.) and animal movements to work on total body strength, stability and coordination. If we’re lucky, as we often are during our current baseball season, we will practice at a park or school that has playground equipment nearby, and the kids can all head over for a couple rounds of a fun calisthenics circuit. When we have practice at this particular school, our players show up, start playing catch to get ready for practice, and inevitably a chorus of inquiries starts, asking if they can go do their “obstacle course” to start practice. You can’t beat building genuine strength and movement skill, while all the while the kids feel like they are having a great time “playing.”

Think about some of the principles and skills required for calisthenics movements: learning to generate total body tension, learning to link the kinetic chain rather than isolating joints and muscles. Let a young athlete practice push ups, pull ups and other bar exercises and more than likely, even without being cognizant of it, they will figure out how to generate more tension throughout their kinetic chain, creating a more stable base from which to produce strength and perform the movement.

Kids Calisthenics Obstacle Course

What does an athlete need to hit a baseball as far as possible, kick a soccer ball as far as possible, throw a baseball as hard as possible? They need linkage through the entire system, total body tension at just the right moments, integration of the nervous system and kinetic chain.

My family lives in California, a state known for great weather year-round. Despite this environment, physical education in school is down to 1 or 2 days per week as a result of state budget cuts and shifting priorities in school curriculum. Academic excellence is so prioritized that time to play outside of school also suffers. Combine this atmosphere, contemporary technological advances that have reduced our activity in general, and the realization that today’s youth are being raised with these advances completely integrated into their lives, and the bottom line is there is just not as much physical activity occurring for our youth today compared to past generations. That’s why it’s so important for parents to make sure their kids get out and move.

The relationship between calisthenics, youth and young athlete development seems perfectly synergistic, building strength and improving motor development in under-active children, and providing the injury prevention and general athletic development (needed to safeguard young athletes from the risks of early sport specialization). If you are a parent, consider taking advantage of the great resource that calisthenics offers to develop your child’s movement skills, athleticism and strength. And if you coach youth sports, considering doing your athletes a huge favor by making time for movement training beyond the skills of your sport.

Kids Calisthenics Crawling

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The PCC and….Love?

June 25, 2013 By Peter D'Epiro 11 Comments

It was back into the trenches Monday morning after attending the inaugural PCC over the weekend. To say this course was phenomenal is an understatement. The Kavadlo brothers (Al and Danny) set the tone for the weekend with their positivity, humility and accessibility. Further enhancing the vibe were John du Cane, Al and Danny’s co-instructors Adrienne Harvey and Steven Low, and all of the students who spent the weekend cheering, coaching and supporting one another. I have rarely experienced a class, conference or certification with such an amazing atmosphere and amazingly accessible group of instructors in my years in this industry (don’t want to age myself, but somewhere in the immediate vicinity of 20 years…).

This praise is independent of the actual course content, which was absolutely spectacular. An organized and systematic series of well thought out progressions for some of the most challenging bodyweight strength techniques out there. These movements/exercises/techniques are accessible to fitness professionals and clients of all levels because of the thorough progressions for each.

All of which brings me back to the title…love? Where does that fit into this picture, or this course? As is often the case in the field of fitness and performance training after a class or conference, I returned home motivated and inspired by the wealth of new information and resources I learned…as well as humbled by my great inability to perform so many of these techniques, despite throwing weights around in the gym for over 25 years. There is the age-old process a professional in our field goes through after an educational program of any type: does this fit into my philosophy and methodology? If so, where and how? How will I incorporate this into my personal training program? How will I incorporate it into my clients’ training programs when I return to work Monday morning and going forward?

Logic and precedent suggest that I set about answering these questions when I returned home Sunday evening. For perhaps the first time ever I didn’t do that though. The content of the PCC is so unique and accessible to all populations that something entirely different happened. Like so many others, I not only took a break from work to attend this course, I also left my family at home, including my 10-year-old son. It’s safe to assume I wanted to reconnect and spend a little quality time with him when I first got home…and before I needed to shift my focus to returning to work the next morning.

Something unique and special happened right after I settled in at home…before giving it much thought I found myself saying to my son, “Hey buddy, want to see a couple of the cool things I learned this weekend?” Always gracious, and perhaps a little curious about what dad had been doing all weekend he obliged me. Next thing you know I had my son’s hands firmly wrapped around my ankles as I spotted him and he pressed his way into his first bridge! From there I showed him one other move that was a little more balance than strength oriented, the frog stand. As he spent the remainder of the night on the floor trying to pop up into a bridge or a frog stand every so often father and son had reconnected and our bond was strengthened by our new shared pursuit (and I’m sure he enjoys the fact that his gumby-like 10 year old mobility allows him to perform some of these moves better than me at this point!).

So…the PCC and love? I don’t yet know exactly how I will incorporate this phenomenal approach to training into my own programming, or that of my clients. What I do know is that school is out tomorrow for my son, little league is officially over, and summer is upon us. My son and I have already scouted out the local schools and parks for the best playground equipment for our needs and have found our “spot” for the summer. We are both equally excited to go workout together. He is excited because it feels like playing to him and he gets to play with dad. I am excited because I get to play with my son while sneakily introducing him to strength training and laying the foundation for a fitness lifestyle for the remainder of his life, while also challenging myself with some of the toughest strength moves I have ever tried to master. My son is the center of my universe, he is my love, and it is the unconditional love he shares with me that humbles and sustains me.

For all the praise I can easily heap upon the PCC course and its content, none is greater than the way it has and will strengthen the love between this father and his son. I have a new “gym” at one of the local middle schools…and I officially have a new workout partner, he’s 10 and he’s my best buddy! I suppose I could put on my business cap and start working on the possibilities and opportunities for bringing the PCC system of training to the TV watching, Xbox playing, inactive youth in my area, but right now I have a date to go outside and “play” on the monkey bars with my son!

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