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A Few Words with John Connor

Irish Eyes Have Smiled on this PICP Coach from Dublin

If you were on a psychologist’s couch and were asked to name the first thing that popped into your mind when you heard the word “Ireland,” you might reel off leprechauns, River Dance, U2, shamrocks and Lucky Charms. All good choices (well, except for the last one, as they don’t sell that breakfast cereal in that country), but one of the most valuable treasures associated with Ireland is John Connor.

John is PICP Level 4 and an ART© practitioner, having been certified in the spine and upper and lower extremities programs, and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in exercise and nutrition science from the University of Chester. He completed his first internship with Charles Poliquin in 2004, when Charles was headquartered in his facility in Arizona, and has been working for him ever since, most recently helping with the iStrength Pro software.

Although John was born in Dublin and it’s where he and his wife, Fiona, still call home, for more than 100 days of the year John leaves “The Land of Saints and Scholars” to conduct seminars worldwide for Poliquin Performance. John has taught PICP Levels 1-3, assisting with the Level 4 PICP, and has also worked with Charles on his PIMPST and BioSignature courses.

Along with PICP Level 4 coach Eoin Lacey, John is co-owner of the Irish Strength Institute, a high-performance personal training center in Dublin. Although they opened their facility in 2008 at the start of their country’s depression, during which John says over 2,000 businesses were terminated, the business has expanded twice. They started with a 800-square-foot facility and have grown to over 3,000 square feet with a staff of six PICP-certified trainers and a full-time physiotherapist. John and Eoin have trained UFC fighter Tom Egan and many elite soccer players and other athletes who have competed in the Gaelic games. His celebrity clients include Ronan Keating, the lead singer of the Irish boy band Boyzone.

A former goalkeeper in soccer who entertained college scholarship offers in the United States, John found his athletic aspirations cut short when he suffered serious injuries to his ACL and MCL. Although he was able to make a 100 percent recovery from surgery thanks in part to a sound structural balance program, John decided to focus on a career in the personal training industry.

Although John hasn’t received a supernatural “gift of eloquence” by hanging upside down and kissing Ireland’s famous Blarney Stone, he is extremely articulate. He sat down with me recently and gave an insightful look into his rewarding – and very busy – life.

KG: How popular is the personal training business in Ireland?
JC: It’s growing. To give you an example, when I started in the field 10 years ago, at one point I was the only full-time trainer on staff. When I left it three years later, there were 10 guys giving 25 to 35 sessions a week. And consider that when Eoin and I opened our gym in 2008 it was during the peak of the recession, which caused over 2,000 businesses to close, but we ended up expanding twice and having to continually hire more staff.

KG: What’s it like working with Eoin Lacey?
JC: We work well together because we have different strengths. For example, Eoin is very good at marketing to generate business, and I am very good with the financial side of the business.

KG: How did you first learn about Charles Poliquin?
JC: I found his website and started reading his material, and in 2004 I took his internship.

KG: What was your impression of Charles’s Arizona facility during your internship?
JC: What made the biggest impression was how strong and how lean everyone was at the gym. In our gym at that time, if you could bench press 100 kilos you would be considered strong, but that was nothing compared to what I saw during my internship – I remember a 17-year-old training football running back there who was bench pressing 180 kilos [396 pounds] at 95 kilos [209 pounds] bodyweight. During that time Ben Prentiss was working there, and now he is one of the most successful strength coaches for hockey with, I believe, 16 NHL players.

KG: What general observations have you made about the trainers from various countries who attend Charles’s courses?
JC: I think that if you go to a course of his, you’re better than 90 percent of the people in your industry. I’ve met trainers who have not taken a course in 10 years; their training is stale because they are not learning and growing as trainers. As for general conclusions about the trainers, it appears that the trainers from the Scandinavian countries have the most formal education and the trainers from North America have the most practical education. Another interesting thing is that whereas the North American trainers tend to be very good at the bench press, the trainers from Australia are often brilliant at chin-ups.

KG: Do you integrate ART with your personal training?
JC: I do in the sense that if someone comes in for a workout and can’t do a particular movement, I might try an ART treatment to see if I can resolve the problem.

KG: What is your client base?
JC: We have all types of clients, from 15-year-old soccer players to executives. Our oldest client is 63. We only do personal training, one-on-one, so we don’t open the gym to the public, as it would interfere with our primary business.

KG: What type of clients are you most passionate about working with?
JC: Motivated clients. I don’t care if the client is a housewife or an elite athlete, I love to work with those who are motivated to succeed.

KG: You trained Ronan Keating in 2007 for the Boyzone Reunion Tour. How did you acquire him as a client?
JC: I was introduced to him though David Keoghan, a client of mine who used to be a 400-meter hurdler who turned to acting and appeared on the HBO show The Tudors.

KG: What were Keating’s training goals?
JC: At first he just wanted to get leaner and insisted that he didn’t want to get bigger, but as with many of my clients, as he lost the weight, his goals changed and he decided that he wanted to add a few pounds of muscle.

KG: What advice would you give to someone who wants to open a gym?
JC: I would say start small with a low overhead and get some good financial advice. Yes, your goal may be to grow your facility to the size of ours, but no matter how well you work out your numbers, you don’t realize that so many things add up, such as rent, and taxes, water, electricity, paying your accountant. Whatever you think it’s going to cost, double that. Also, one thing I’ve found is that regardless of how good you are and how well you’ve set up your business, a lot of the success of a gym has to do with location.

KG: What sports are most popular in your country?
JC: Soccer is a huge part of Irish life, and rugby has made massive gains in popularity in the last two years, along with mixed martial arts. The Gaelic games, which are amateur sports such as hurling, are enormously popular, with many of the events drawing over 80,000 fans.

KG: What is the general opinion of the conditioning level of soccer players?
JC: Amateur Gaelic Athletic Association soccer players are often in better condition than many of the professional players, but generally the biggest problem most soccer players have from a conditioning standpoint is that they don’t know where the weightroom is. Soccer is such an old sport that no one wants to challenge the way things are done.

KG: How good is the nutrition of the general population in Ireland?
JC: When I was growing up, it seems that every meal had some form of potato, such as mashed potatoes or potato chips, and vegetables that were boiled to death. But the biggest problem is drinking, which has led to a lot of beer guts more than overall fatness. If you’re coming from Ireland, you really don’t realize how much the people drink until you leave the country.

KG: How are supplements regarded in your country?
JC: It’s a tough sell. Irish people will sit there in front of you smoking and drinking a pint of Guiness and tell you that supplements can’t be good for you. As a result, at our facility we concentrate on promoting the core supplements and then prescribe one, maybe two, supplements from a BioSignature assessment on top of that. It’s a very gradual process.

KG: Is it hard for you to stay in shape traveling so much internationally?
JC: It depends on where you are, as the long-distance traveling can knock you out, such as when I have to fly to Australia. Finding a place to train is not so much the issue, but trying to eat healthy while on the road. It’s hard, but if you want to be taken seriously in this business, you have to walk the walk.

KG: What are some of your current goals?
JC: I’m focused on completing my master’s, but as a general goal I would
like to see the continued growth of the Irish Strength Institute.