Featuring Tony Gentilcore by Chi Bang
I was privileged to sit down and speak with well-established strength and conditioning specialist, Tony Gentilcore from Core in Brookline, MA about his Strategic Strength Workshop that he is hosting along with Luke Worthington. Text will be the abbreviated and abridged version of the interview. For the full interview, check out the video interview below.
Chi: Can you give us a little background about yourself?
Tony: I started incorporating fitness in 2002, worked in several commercial gyms, and then met up with Eric Cressey. We opened Cressey Sports Performance in 2007 and I was there for 8 years as a strength coach working with a lot of professional athletes. In 2015, I opened a small personal training studio in Brookline called Core. We work on strength and at times work around various injuries when warranted. I also continue to write and travel for speaking engagements.
Chi: Why do you teach and coach so many workshops? Why do you feel continuing education is a valuable and necessary component of fitness?
Tony: If you had told me early in my career that I’d be doing workshops and speaking engagements, I would have hyperventilated. It wasn’t a goal, but it’s been a natural progression. As I started writing, I would do small speaking engagements and eventually larger engagements on a national level. It’s something I enjoy doing now and feel I have a lot to offer to other fitness professionals with my experience training, coaching, assessing clients, progressing, regressing, and programming.
Chi: Can you tell us about some of the other workshops you’ve done in the past?
Tony: Aside from the Strategic Strength Seminar, I’ve also done Complete Shoulder and Hip Blueprint with Dean Somerset at least 20 times. I’ve also teamed up with my wife, Dr. Lisa Lewis, to host the Strong Body-Strong Mind Workshop which has a psychological component paired with the fitness component. I’ve spoken at a few NSCA events and the Fitness Summit.
Chi: I’ve personally attended some of Tony’s workshops, but today we want to talk specifically about the Strategic Strength Seminar being hosted at CLIENTEL3. Who should attend and what they can expect?
Tony: It’s targeted towards fitness professionals. Luke and I went out of our way to make it accessible to the general population. I’ll be speaking about the upper and lower extremity assessment. Of course, I’m going to have people deadlift so we can break down the deadlift and how I coach the squat.
Luke will be speaking about PRI: the Postural Restoration institute protocols, his assessments, and neuromechanics. He has an extensive history with athletics and has been a trainer in the UK for a very long time. We have combined over 30 years of experience coaching. We’ll talk about assessments, programming, troubleshoot lifts-we’ll watch people squat, deadlift, bench press, and break it all down.
Chi: In the fitness industry, there are so many acronyms. We’ve heard of PRI before, but can you speak a little bit more on what that is?
Tony: PRI talks about breathing mechanics, how the diaphragm and pelvic floor are intertwined, progressive movement and really getting people to chill out and use their breath to have a profound effect on their performance in the gym and everyday life. Luke will break this down in such an accessible way that trainers will be able to utilize it.
Chi: For those in Boston and surrounding areas who have attended some of your past workshops, why should they attend this particular workshop?
Tony: Though there will always be overlapping of some information, if I’m going to speak about the squat or the deadlift, certainly from a methodology, principle, and programming standpoint things are always changing. Every workshop is different with the people that attend and there’s always a different feeling. Seeing things live is always more valuable than watching a Youtube channel. Having Luke come over from the UK adds a peppering of knowledge; not a lot of people have heard him speak here in the Northeast.