Sincerely,

Bitter Betty

Big Bear, 2/17

We don’t have much new news in this Newsletter but wanted to use it as a way to let you guys know we have officially booked a cabin in Big Bear the weekend of February 17th.

Here are the complete details of the cabin we have booked.

In summary,

• SIZE: It is a 33-person cabin with a 40 foot deck, 8 bedrooms and located next to a bar and a rental shop.  If we hit 33 and we have requests for more, we will call the cabin and see what else we can do but right now it is FIRST COME, FIRST SERVE.

• COST: It will be between $66 and $100 depending on how many people we get.  Right now, we have 16 people who have signed up.

• LOGISTICS: Check in will be roughly 4 pm on Friday and check out will be 11 am Sunday.  You are more than welcome to head up early on Friday to hit the mountain and then just meet at the cabin later for check-in.  For those interested, we will caravan from the P360 parking lot at 12 pm Friday, the 17th.  Again, feel free to head up whenever you want.

• LIFT TICKETS & RENTALS: We will get discounts on rentals and lift tickets if you need either.

Go ahead and let us know if you would like to invite someone else and we will put that person on the waiting list.  If we do not fill the 33 people via P360 members then we will open it up to your friends.

Here are some pics of the cabin we’ve booked.

Let’s fill this thing up and have an absurd weekend.

Member Shout Outs

Another week of pretty incredible personal accomplishments by P360 members highlighted by two female records being padded, two 400# deadlifts, two women going three feet in the air, a near 3x body weight deadlift and other other awesome stuff.

Jump Start Your Heart

As a reminder, our charity 5k is this weekend and if you are still interested in signing up then head on over to the official information page. Registration is just $30 and it all goes to the Children’s Heart Foundation.  The race finishes in the P360 parking lot and post-race festivities will be held all day long at Sneak Joint.  It promises to be a great time so let’s all head out and raise some money for what we feel is a truly great cause.

Let us know if you have registered and we can will form a P360 group to run together.

NBD and in your face, East Coast.

February Big Bear Trip

After a January hiatus from a P360 Social Event we’ll be coming back strong in February and currently trying to gauge interest on a potential trip to Big Bear.

Right now there is nothing concrete as we will need about 25-30 people to commit  but it seems like we have quite a few interested!

Here’s what we are currently looking at.

• Weekend: Feb. 17 – Feb. 19th (the event will def. be this weekend regardless if we go to Bear)
• Cost: $75 – $100 for lodging + whatever you want to spend on the mountain
• Lodging: ~30 person cabin that can be expanded if we need it.

Completely open to all members right now so let us know what you think.  This trip will be entirely driven by the amount of people we get to commit so shoot us an email or let us know what you are thinking in person.

I am sure we will get the question of “can I bring my ______” and right now, we are keeping it as just members. That’s not to say we won’t open it up after a while but as I am sure you understand, we need to see which P360 folks are in first.

Member Shout Outs

Man, we had a HUGE week last week highlighted by two records, thirteen PRs across multiple exercises and an All-American announcement.  Check it out, pretty cool stuff below.

Specialty Classes

The specialty classes have been great and we’re pumped to see you guys really embracing the Thursday night yoga class.  It will be remaining on the schedule indefinitely and if attendance remains this popular we will most likely add another slot during the week.

Black Ops has trailed off a little bit so right now we are going to test out an every other week schedule.  As always, best way to get something on the menu is to regularly attend it.

One option we are considering is to have Tuesday and Thursday night be “Choose Your Own Adventure” night as a way to combine both a Daily Challenge, Power and Black Ops class.  We would have three workouts to choose from and you could go any route you wanted, essentially allowing us to keep all three, please everyone and remain efficient with our scheduling.

Class Times

The 6:15 morning classes have been very popular and will remain on the schedule as long as we continue to see attendance like this.  We will also keep the 6:30 for a while as we decide what works best for the collective group in the morning but just wanted to let you guys know that you can expect the mornings to remain as is for a while.

We will also be keeping the 12 noon class, as well.

Jump Start Your Heart

In case you missed our invitation last week then make sure to check out the Jump Start Your Heart Facebook page.  It’s a charitable 5k going from Pacific Beach to the front doors of Performance360 with the proceeds going to the Children’s Heart Foundation.  It’s just $30 to register and you get a jump rope and a t-shirt out of it.  We all know how much you guys like double unders.

That’s it, guys.  Let us know if there is anything we can do for you guys.

-Dave & Pritz

Here were the folks who hit 18 rounds or higher.

• Elyse Paulson, 23
• John Blackburn, 22
• Cameron Fous, 21
• Krisan Davidson, 20
• Mollyrose Corr, 20
• Tim Valaski, 19
• Aly Rea, 19
• Brandon Flora, 19
• Jenn Bittner, 19
• Jason Weber, 18
• Sean Mackin, 18
• Deena Elkassed, 18
• Andrea O’Donnell, 18

Across the gym, it was an outstanding job from first timer to P360 vet.  Keep up that energy and effort the rest of this week and month and good things lie ahead.

That’s straight legit!

Additionally, the gym saw yet another male climb into the 400# deadlift territory.  Way to go, JB!

The obvious and number one reason for this is safety.  If your form is correct then you greatly minimize your chance of injuring yourself, it’s pretty obvious

However, form is not just important for beginners learning the technique of the mechanics.  Form is HUGELY important for folks who already have it down and want to make serious, serious gains.

To illustrate the difference of good form vs. bad form I am showing you two videos of my and Pritz’s workout yesterday.

Video #1: Fail

You will see in this video I took the bar off the rack and kind of stuttered.  Honestly, the weight was heavier than I thought it was and I immediately took on a defeatist attitude.  The bar got in my head, I lost confidence and I did not create enough hip drive on the initial dip.  Secondly, I did not drive myself under the bar as I pressed it overhead.  See if you can find both of those spots on this miss.

Video #2: Hit

I decided to rest for three minutes and then try it again correcting the mistakes that I knew I made. On the second go around, I took the bar off the rack much faster with no hesitation, dipped my hips back and then drove them forward while driving myself underneath the bar on the press. It might take a trained eye to see it but watch how there is no hesitation when I get the weight. It’s grab and go.

I understand this might be a boring post for some but I wanted to hammer home the point that form is hugely important regardless of your fitness level. If you are beginner, it is vital so that you perform it safely and without injury and if you are bit further along the training curve it becomes even more important so that you can continue to make progress.

“If you’re going through Hell, keep going.”

One of my favorite quotes of all time.  I am a short and simple kind of guy and Mr. Churchill pretty much sums it up.

Why couldn’t he have been American?

2011 was arguably the fastest year of my life. I can’t believe it came and went as quickly as it did and considering this is the last year of civilization, we need to make it a good one. So I say, get as strong and lean as you can so when the disaster happens that’s going to end us all, you can make sure the weaklings bite it first.

On that light note! Here are some of the exciting things we have going on in the gym. We have a lot of new contests and roll outs coming your way so make sure to read up on it all.

Facebook Referral Contest

The Facebook contest we ran in October is coming back in full force, this time with more opportunity to earn yourself a membership discount.  For those of you who were not a member back then or if you need a refresher on how it works, you can accumulate points as follows.

• Refer a new gym member = 20 points (as always, if you refer a new member you get a free month of training on us…ask us details).

This will always be king for getting points since this gym only grows if you guys help us.  You will also earn a ton of points for help spreading the word on social media.

• “Share” a P360 Facebook post or blog = 3 points
• Tag “@P360″ in one of your posts = 3 points
• Comment/Like one of our posts = 1 point
• “Check in” to P360 = 1 point
• Try P360 in 2012 Invites = 1 point (info below)

(Per last time, this structure may change after the first few days as really have no idea how much we are extending ourselves off the bat.)

We are also rolling out a new addition to the contest.  We’ll be creating a Facebook Event called “Try P360 in 2012″.  You will get 1 point for every friend you get to “attend”.  You would invite your friends just like any event we have, and from there we get as pool of interested potential members.

We are hoping for a repeat of October when we handed out a TON of discounts for the social media help you guys lent us so let’s get the pimpin’ of P360 going and all help each other out.

You will earn the following discount based on accumulated points.

75 points = 10% off
100 points = 20% off
125 points = 30% off

New Class Schedule

We are excited to announce that the 12 noon class will now be run every day of the week starting next week.  As always, we keep classes on the schedule based on a single criterion: attendance.   So, if we want to keep it as a permanent fixture then we’ll need to make sure that attendance stays consistent for those who have been coming.

In addition, we are considering tweaking the morning class schedule to the following.

• 6:15 am
• 7:00 am

Please email us your feedback, especially if you are a consistent morning class attender.  Get your voice heard.

Member Shout Outs

‘Beat the Soft’

In case you missed the analysis from the Beat the Soft Holiday Challenge you can read about it here.  Pretty remarkable.  Chrissy Perrenoud came away with the $300 cash lottery which you can watch here.

P360 Expansion

Some of you have asked us what we plan on doing when classes start to become more popular over time.  If we plan on expanding the class size, adding more space, etc.

While nothing has happened yet we are extremely pumped to let you guys know that we’ll be taking on more space in the facility probably around February.  There are a few options that may occur on premise but however it nets out will result in substantially more space for you guys.  We never want to turn this gym into assembly line (in fact we refuse to), so this will allow us to grow more in tune with P360 philosophy.

Suggestion Box

We are taking any and all suggestions to make 2012 even better than 2011.  As always, we can’t promise we’ll implement them but we love taking feedback.  That’s how just about every major implementation has occurred at P360 so if you have something in mind than run it by us.  Our door is always open, or in this case our email inbox (Dave@Perform-360.com).

Happy New Year.

-DT

Chrissy is an extremely deserving winner having increased her strength 76% and also lost upwards of five pounds in the process. She was in the gym nearly every day working on her goal and applied a lot of effort towards getting her name in the pot for multiple categories.

‘Beat the Soft’.  A name we came up with for our 5-week holiday contest that we thought would help motivate folks to do just that.  However, you never really know who is going to embrace it and it what quantity.  You also don’t know if people are going to stick to it for a full five weeks.

Suffice it to say it was almost 100% embraced by the 39 people who volunteered.

Here are the highlights.

The average female participant saw her strength increase 44% while simultaneously dropping 5 pounds of body fat.

The average male participant saw his strength increase 25% while simultaneously dropping 1.7 pounds of body fat.

That is absolutely remarkable.  It’s clear the men in the contest were not after fat loss as much as most of the guys were in great shape to begin with and going hard for strength.  Further, the reason their percentage is so much lower is quite frankly, they were starting out much stronger even proportionately speaking. Stronger folks will see much more modest gains than beginners.

The takeaway?

It’s amazing what compound lifts can do for your body composition, strength and performance!

Here are the final standings for each category with highlights in parenthesis.

Strength Gain: Male Division

1. Chris Sieberkrob – 65% (205 to 295# 3-rep deadlift)
2. Jon Mesic – 40% (205 to 255# 3R deadlift)
3. Eddie MacPhee – 39% (315 to 375# 3R deadlift)

Strength Gain: Female Division

1. Chrissy Perrenoud – 76% (75 to 135# 3R deadlift)
2. Alex Vekich – 62% (185 to 225# 3R deadlift)
3. Andrea O’Donnell – 58% (105 to 145# 3R deadlift)

Fat Loss: Male Division

1. Robbie Davis, 5 lbs.
2. Jon Mesic, 3 lbs.
3. Matt Gordon, 0.2 lbs (ha!)

Fat Loss: Female Division

1. Jess Eystad – 12 lbs.
2. Marissa Dubolino – 9 lbs.
3. Alex Vekich – lbs.

While every person significantly improved their body composition and/or strength, to me Alex Vekich deserves special recognition because of how she was able to both lose 7 pounds and also see her strength improve 62%.  That’s a microcosm of what Performance360′s training will do for folks when you apply some focus.

We will be raffling the $300 Grand Prize winner this afternoon based on the above standings.  If you want to know your individual percentage increases in strength or fat loss just shoot me an email and I will happily send them over to you!

Outstanding job to all of those who participated.  I would certainly say that soft had its ass kicked this holiday season.

P360 1, Winter Holidays 0.

-DT