Mindset
“Nothing great ever came that easy.”
― Unknown
In 2003, my future wife and I began to imagine a course where we could combine our skills as therapists with our experience as performance practitioners. A year later, during the NHL lockout, I had a rare window of time, and we decided to bring that idea to life.
That summer, we ran our first course. About twenty practitioners joined us for a weekend, all of them driven by the same desire to get better at helping their clients. We focused on the lower quadrant. It felt manageable, and more importantly, it allowed us to present a clearer approach to understanding movement and creating meaningful change.
After that, life moved quickly, and teaching was put on hold. But the idea never left us. There was a quiet conviction that what we were doing represented a different way to approach injury and performance. Instead of simply managing symptoms, we kept coming back to deeper questions. Why is the issue there in the first place? Why not take a proactive approach? Why not use the same therapeutic tools not just to reduce pain, but to build more resilient, capable humans?
Teaching, as we would come to learn, is not for the faint of heart. It demands more than experience. It requires structure, clarity, and a system that others can actually use. Translating what you know into something transferable is a different kind of challenge altogether.
I remember putting together our first course syllabus and presentation. It was a grind. Software issues, formatting problems, and a lot of trial and error. When we finally got through it, I remember saying to Jaime that I was glad it was done and that I never wanted to do it again. That was probably a hundred iterations ago.
If you are going to share what you know, you have to be prepared to revisit it constantly. There is always a better way to say something. Always a clearer way to teach it. You do not finish it once. You refine it, again and again, knowing it will never truly be complete.
In 2013, we felt the pull to return to teaching. Not because we had everything figured out, but because we had reached a point where what we understood needed to be shared. I hesitate to say “knew,” because certainty is a dangerous thing in this space. Everything exists in context. It is all shades of grey. You can move forward, but you need to do so with awareness and humility.
In the fall of 2014, we ran our first official Reconditioning course. We had a full room of about thirty-five people, all eager to learn. By then, we had built a reputation for helping solve more complex cases, and there was a growing curiosity around how we approached our work.
That weekend is still vivid in my mind. The day before we were set to begin, I came down with a stomach virus. I spent most of the day before the course in the bathroom, wondering how I was going to get through it. We had spent months preparing, and now I was in rough shape.
I managed to get through the first evening session on little more than electrolytes. No food, no energy, just enough to stay upright and deliver. Somehow, I made it through the weekend. It was far from perfect, but it was real, and it marked the beginning of something important.
Over the next five years, we committed to live teaching. After two strong courses in Montreal, we realized we needed to expand beyond our immediate circle. That meant learning how to communicate what we did in a way that resonated with people we had never met. It meant identifying who we were trying to serve and finding language that invited them into the process.
Then came 2020.
The pandemic disrupted everything. Like everyone else, we were forced to adapt. We shifted our live events into digital formats, something we were fortunate to be somewhat prepared for. We had already begun recording our courses and experimenting with online delivery. We leaned into that and expanded.
We also moved the International Hockey Performance Summit online. For three years, it thrived in that format. But when we tried to bring it back to a live setting, the interest just was not there. The landscape had shifted.
Private education was evolving quickly, and keeping pace required constant attention. About a year and a half ago, we made the decision to rebuild everything. We rethought the curriculum, reshaped the delivery, and incorporated the deeper work we had done in neuroscience. We reshot content, rebuilt the platform, and created a new digital experience from the ground up.
It was a significant undertaking. Tools like ChatGPT played a role in helping us move faster and stay organized, but the real work was in the thinking, refining, and building.
This past weekend marked the culmination of seventeen months of that effort. Our first two cohorts completed fourteen weeks of online learning and came together in Montreal for a three-day, in-person experience.
There were people in that room who had been with us since 2014. A few even traced back to that first course in 2004. That is what stays with you. Not the content, not the logistics, but the community. People who continue to show up, driven by a shared commitment to help others move better, feel better, and live with less limitation.
It was a meaningful moment. One that brought a sense of perspective to the work, the challenges, and the sacrifices along the way.
It has been a long road.
And it feels like we are just getting started.
