3-Hour Brain Rush with Joe Dowdell

This weekend I had the honor of attending my good friend Joe Dowdell's workshop at Peak Performance Gym in NYC on Program Design 101. Joe is the CEO and founder of Peak Performance Gym voted one of the Top 10 Gyms in the country by Men's health Magazine, so you know he know his stuff. And take it from me, HE DOES!

Click here to see my Stop Chasing Pain TV interview with Joe after the workshop.




Here are just a few of the 100's of take aways from the workshop. Keep an eye out for Joe's Internship Program coming soon.

Learn more at Joe's website:

Joe Dowdell Website

• The Goal of your client is the most important component to program design. It's not about you, it's about them!
• Targeting the GTO Golgi Tendon Organ is the key ingredient that makes foam rolling effective.
• CNS Activation Drills fire up the nervous system and are designed to improve the individual's timing and rhythm.
• In general he recommends changing the strength program every 3-6 weeks, but 4 weeks is a good rule of thumb.
• Core dominant exercises (in general) should be placed at the end of the strength training session.
• TEMPO matters!
• Two ways to look at intensity: load and effort!
• GPP General Physical Preparation is always where you start with a client. Helps develop tissue tolerance to begin to improve their work capacity.
• Block Method of Periodizaton is an idea that suggest the use and sequencing of specialized meso-cyle blocks, where highly concentrate training workloads are focused on a minimal number of motor and technical abilities.

This is just a sample of the enormous information he talked about for programming. There is an art to programming. Invest the time to learn the skill.

Thanks Joe for a great time! 

Chad Skrederstu, Joe Dowdell, Me