Things I Learned On My Visit to iFAST

I have been having problems with my right hip for the past 5 years.  I have seen at least 8 different physical therapists and have made some really good progress, but have never really seen complete resolution.  In the past year I have gone through phases were I couldn’t bend down to tie my shoes without significant pain.  I was unable to workout for long periods and often limped around my house for the first 20 minutes when I got out of bed in the morning. I’ve been told that my hip will definitely have to be replaced at some point so I’m constantly searching for ways to help delay that operation and just improve my quality of life.

With that in mind I have been planning on making a trip to visit iFAST for two primary reasons.  First of all its owned by Bill Hartman and Mike Robertson.  They are two fitness professionals whom I really respect and I always learn a ton when interacting with other coaches in their facility.   Secondly iFAST is famous for the fact that all their programs are custom written based off Bill’s assessment.  They have clients visit them from all over the world and are well known for fixing people. In fact, the day I arrived for my the assessment Bill was finishing an assessment with a client that had flown in from Australia. Part of my mission was to have Bill assess me and then have some custom programming written for me.

Things I Learned On My Visit:

• Bill and Mike are known as corrective guys, but just like everyone else they get pigeonholed and folks seem to think that is all they do at their gym.  Yes many clients come to iFAST because they are dealing with chronic pain, but they use similar corrective strategies to help optimize movement and reduce inefficiencies.
• Just like most gyms they work with a variety of clients.  I saw everything from a soccer mom performing Prowler sprints, a former Olympic bobsledder working on his Olympic lifting, and a powerlifter repping 500 pounds on the backsquat.
• Resistance training is still the move effective corrective strategy ever, but you can and should also use other parts of training sessions to help correct things.
• They prioritize using the right muscles at the right time to perform a given exercise and will terminate sets when significant compensations begin to occur.
• They can defend every exercise in every program, but not just in a global sense.  They were able to tie every exercise they choose for me back to my original assessment. This thought process is really important when designing a program because first defining the why makes every other decision much simpler.
• Their interns are smart – wicked smart.  Thanks to Zach, Eric, Scott, and Lance for letting me harass them for 3 days.
• Not every strength exercise should always be used to develop maximal strength. At times you may prioritize using them to improve movement patterns and stabilization strategies.
• EQIs = Very effective, but very painful.
• Airdynes are still a horribly painful conditioning tool. My visit reminded me of many exhausting conditioning sessions from my high school days.
• There is endless variety available when it comes to energy system training and while it may not correct any musculoskeletal issues it better not make them worse.
• Modalities like stretching and foam rolling should be treated as tools to help solve specific problems.  The assessment process at iFAST dictates when these tools are used.
• I’ve seen Bill speak a few times on the differences between short and stiff tissues, but observing several of Bill’s assessments really helped crystallize this for me.
• I also saw some examples of clients who had severe mobility restrictions that I would have at first thought were tissue related, but were instead due to some type of movement compensation (Bill also pointed out some of these issues during my personal assessment).

I had a blast hanging out with Bill and Mike. I can’t thank them enough for taking the time to answer all my silly questions and challenge my thinking. It was a tremendous learning experience and I look forward to visiting them again.

In my next post on the topic I’m going to talk a little bit about my experiences with my iFAST program.