Program
The topics highlighted in blue are intended for enhancing the fitness business (for managers, fitness club owners, and trainers aiming to develop in the entrepreneurial direction).
Saturday - March 23
08:00-09:00
Registration
Please arrive on time
09:00-09:30
Opening conference
Awards in three categories
Saturday - March 23
Room 1
Donji Dorćol
10:00 – 11:00
This workshop is ideal for beginners and those new to TRX Suspension Training. Participants will learn the basic exercises, correct form, and safety considerations for using TRX straps effectively. It’s a great starting point for anyone looking to incorporate TRX into their fitness routine.
Marko Tajs
TRX master trener
11:15 – 12:15
For more experienced TRX users, this workshop will explore advanced exercises and progressions that can take your training to the next level. Participants will learn how to increase the intensity and complexity of their TRX workouts for enhanced results.
Darren Dillon
TRX International educator
12:45 – 13:45
In addition to sport specific skills the athlete needs to have power, strength and stability. What can the strength and performance coach do to ensure that the athlete has all they need to perform at their best? This session explores how to integrate the traditional training components of strength and conditioning with often missed adaptations needed for a powerful, healthy and durable athlete.
Ken Miller
MS, NASM-CPT, CES, PES, GFS
15:30 – 16:30
80-85% of the population has had or is currently experiencing low back discomfort and pain. However when it comes to the low back, things may not actually be what they seem. This workshop will dive into what it takes to identify where stress can come from and learn how to manage stress build-up in the low back region.
Kenneth Miller
MS, NASM-CPT, CES, PES, GFS
16:45 – 17:45
Many trainers and exercise enthusiasts will separate the goals of stability and strength when it comes to their workouts. What if there was a style of training that can combine both benefits of stability and strength within one workout? What if there was a phase of training that bridges the gap between stability and strength? If you’re looking for such a style of workout this workshop on Strength Endurance is for you where we will explore this format of workout that will give you the best of both worlds.
Rick Richey
NASM Regional Master Instructor
18:00 – 19:00
Plyometrics or “Reactive Training” are often considered exercises for athletes or high level exercisers. If we go by the quote,”If you have a body, you’re an athlete”, then you qualify for this modality of exercise. However it isn’t something to be entered into lightly as it is with all things, proper progressions are needed to ensure safety and success. This workshop will show from beginning to end how to transform the new client to a seasoned athlete.
Ken Miller
MS, NASM-CPT, CES, PES, GFS
Room 2
Shonda 4
10:00 – 11:00
NASM has a comprehensive flexibility continuum that addresses corrective, active, and functional outcomes. Each of these categories of flexibility have their own techniques applied to see specific results. Be ready to experience the progression from beginning to end and everything in between when it comes to flexibility.
Rick Richey
NASM Regional Master Instructor
11:15 – 12:15
Matteo Pozzati
CrossFit
12:45 – 13:45
Matteo Pozzati
CrossFit
15:30 – 16:30
Are you a gym owner or manager looking for new ways to increase revenue?
In this session we will discuss how to achieve it by implementing proven tactics from other industries.
An example of what to expect: identify your “whales” customers and optimize their spendings in your gym.
Corentin Bernard
CEO of Accolade Pro, European Innovation Prize winner in 2022.
16:45 – 17:45
Unlock the Secrets to a Thriving Personal Training Business with – ‘How to Get More Personal Training Clients’. In this dynamic session, with James Breese from Strength Matters, dive into the art of expanding your client base and boosting your personal training career.
Learn innovative strategies and proven methods to attract and retain clients, understand the psychology of your target market, and leverage the latest marketing trends in fitness. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting out, this talk offers invaluable insights into creating a compelling client experience, effective marketing techniques, and building a strong, loyal clientele. Don’t miss the chance to transform your personal training business into a thriving success story!
James Breese
Coach, Founder Strength Matters and Cricket Matters
18:00 – 19:00
Maximize Your Gym’s Potential with ‘How Do I Get More Gym Members?’. Join us for a powerful session led by fitness marketing expert James Breese from Strength Matters. This seminar is specially designed to guide gym owners and managers in significantly increasing their membership base.
Learn cutting-edge tactics and reliable approaches for attracting a steady stream of new members while ensuring the satisfaction and retention of existing ones. Explore the psychology of your prospective gym members, harness the most effective marketing trends in fitness, and understand how to create a gym atmosphere that resonates with your ideal clientele.
Whether you’re a new gym or well-established, this session will equip you with the tools and knowledge to grow your gym into a vibrant, bustling business. Transform your gym into a go-to fitness destination and watch your business flourish!
James Breese
Coach, Founder Strength Matters and Cricket Matters
Room 3
Shonda 1
10:00 – 11:00
Learn how quality fitness equipment can transform the member experience, increase satisfaction and ultimately contribute to the success and reputation of a fitness club.
This lecture will provide club owners and managers with practical guidelines for keeping up with trends and making optimal use of quality equipment as the key to long-term success.
11:15 – 12:15
Discover how introducing the Pilates reformer to your fitness club can bring innovation to exercise. Improve your offering, attract new clientele and improve the overall member experience.
12:45 – 13:45
15:30 – 16:30
Edin Mehmedović
Graduate kinesiologist
16:45 – 17:45
Milan Ivetić
CEO & Owner iFit
18:00 – 19:00
Aleksandar Dejanović
Dr feedback
Room 4
Shonda 2
10:00 – 11:00
Vladimir Bulatović
Powerlifting
11:15 – 12:15
What is insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome?
Mitochondria, the energy powerhouse and its dysfunction.
Finding the cause-and-effect relationship between insulin resistance and the triggers that lead to type 2 diabetes mellitus.
Do only obese people have IR?
IR symptoms, when to use therapy and cooperation of sports medicine doctors, endocrinologists and sports medicine trainers – teamwork.
Exercise is medicine and FITT principles for IR.
Marko Dimitrijević
Graduated sports medicine coach
12:45 – 13:45
15:30 – 16:30
How important is building personal branding in the fitness industry?
How we connect with clients and build long-term relationships? What is the presence on social networks and in the media, and how important is education and certification in building and strengthening the brand and building authority in the fitness industry?
Maja Dimitrijević
Personal trainer
16:45 – 17:45
Muscle growth must be accompanied by a certain lifestyle that involves regular training for muscle hypertrophy. With adequate NUTRITION, sleep, and supplementation, conditions are created that will trigger the mechanism of muscle growth.
“DIET FOR INCREASING MUSCLE MASS” is a topic that I will thoroughly cover at the “OPTIMA” fitness conference in March with the aim of bringing the mechanism of muscle growth closer to you in as much detail as possible.
I will cover some basics such as:
- Calories and their function
- Determining calorie intake during the muscle growth phase
- Timing of micro and macronutrients
- Proteins
- Supplementation
- And much more
Marko Vukotić
Professor of sports and physical education
18:00 – 19:00
Join us for a dynamic aerobic workshop featuring the Penalty Box, where we will demonstrate a complete workout. Discover the best aerobic warm-up exercises, followed by various strength and sculpting exercises targeting critical areas of the female body – legs, abdomen, and buttocks. Conclude the session with stretching exercises.
Learn a variety of methods to prevent workout monotony, understand different ways to execute exercises, and explore effective training techniques.
Discover how to motivate clients to stay consistent and learn strategies to retain them for a lifetime. Find out the keys to client retention and how to make fitness a lifelong commitment.
Create your own brand and embrace authenticity in your fitness approach.
Bojana Paljić
Personal trainer and group gitness instructor
19:30 – 23:00
Optima Connecting Dinner
Sunday - March 24
Room 1
Donji Dorćol
09:00 – 10:00
This workshop will delve deep into using TRX for core strength and stability. Participants will learn a variety of exercises and techniques to target the core muscles, helping to build a strong and stable core that enhances overall fitness and performance.
Darren Dillon
TRX International educator
10:15 – 11:15
High-intensity interval training is popular for efficient workouts. In this workshop, participants will learn how to use TRX for HIIT workouts that deliver a maximum workout in a short amount of time, focusing on cardio, strength, and calorie burn.
Slobodan Tiragić
MSC, personal trainer, HFS Academy
11:45 – 12:45
Whether you’re an athlete or an octogenarian – balance training is an incredibly important addition to training protocols. Its ability to help increase foot/ankle and hip stability and strength, as well as its applications to sport and life, makes it a valuable addition to every workout. However, it is often overlooked in application, perhaps because it isn’t considered challenging enough … until NOW!
This workshop will discuss the benefits of balance training and provide a surprisingly challenging workout to experience (and take back to your clients). You will practice dozens of balance exercises for stability, strength, and power and learn different ways to add them to your programming. Add incredible value to your training toolbox for a wide variety of clients with a challenging take on some simple balance exercises.
Rick Richey
NASM Regional Master Instructor
14:30 – 15:30
The fitness and performance industry has seen a vast increase in information and application of “Recovery Strategies”. This workshop will explore the balance of “taking stress out” of the body through recovery to complement well as “putting stress in” though training.
Kenneth Miller
MS, NASM-CPT, CES, PES, GFS
15:45 – 16:45
Using a foam roller or any self Myofascial technique tool properly can be an elusive task for anyone. This workshop explains and practically applies techniques that help maximize mobility and performance. After this workshop be prepared to move freely about the gym!
Kenneth Miller
MS, NASM-CPT, CES, PES, GFS
17:00 – 18:00
This workshop provides numerous series of exercise CLUSTERS designed to optimize and challenge clients during movement preparation and exercise implementation. These CLUSTERS allow for smart programming and seamless transitions from one group of exercises to another making programming easy.
Rick Richey
NASM Regional Master Instructor
Room 2
Shonda 4
09:00 – 10:00
Find the path to personal and business success through this innovative – experiential masterclass with the Ereps Ambassador George Xiros.
The “Polar Opposites” theory of how you take decisions, how to upgrade your mindset’s level.
George Xiros
Official Ambassador of the EEREPS
10:15 – 11:15
Sitting is not quite the new smoking, but sedentary lifestyles and smoking have a lot in common when it comes to morbidity and early mortality. In fact, research shows that being sedentary throughout the day is so bad for you that even a daily hour-long workout won’t save you from many chronic diseases if you are sedentary for the other 23 hours in the day! In this session we will review the research of being sedentary and how lifestyle changes beyond – and sometimes instead of – an hour in the gym can help save our clients, family, and loved ones from pathologies that are rooted in being rooted to our chairs.
Rick Richey
NASM Regional Master Instructor
11:45 – 12:45
As it is known, one of the most commonly used and injured joint is the shoulder joint. We aim to share the key points that will break the cycle of injury and increase the productivity of individuals with an integrated preventive approach, as a result of the necessary evaluations with fitness professionals.
Dr. Türker Bıyıkl
NASM Master Trainer
14:30 – 15:30
15:45 – 16:45
Matteo Pozzati
CrossFit
17:00 – 18:00
Corrective exercise is necessary for both keeping an athlete’s structural integrity and
returning from injury. When it comes to throwers, racquet sports and other “rotational” athletes, range
of motion, stability and coordination need to be combined in their training program. This workshop
will discuss the steps and progressions for rotational athletes to navigate the twists and turns of
training.
Equipment: Foam Roller, Mini-Bands, Resistance Bands with Handles
Matteo Pozzati
CrossFit
Room 3
Shonda 1
09:00 – 10:00
10:15 – 11:15
You will learn step by step how to create an advertisement and a sales system to reach new clients in a proper and measurable way. Such systems give stability to the business, it is easy to reach clients and it is easy to project the growth that we control. After the lecture, you will be able to immediately implement this system in your home, which will bring you more sales.
Vladimir Jakovljević
CEO LevUp Digital Solutions
11:45 – 12:45
Marko Ćosić
PhD, University of Belgrade, FSFV
14:30 – 15:30
Aleksandar Dejanović
Dr feedback
15:45 – 16:45
I will tell you the story of my life and the challenges I faced and how I solved them with steel discipline.
Motivation is a short-term wave that we can’t always overcome, but that’s why discipline is the key that opens the door to success.
Stjepan Ursa
Fitness influencer, master of public relations, bodybuilding trainer
17:00 – 18:00
In this lecture, we will talk about various tools with which we can slow down aging and reduce biological age. Also, we will talk about the things we do in our everyday life that affect aging. We will find out how far science has come in this area.
Nemanja Milović
Professor of sport and physical education
Room 4
Shonda 2
09:00 – 10:00
You are at a business crossroads, thinking about which direction to go. You have the desire to open your own fitness club, but you don’t have enough knowledge, information and self-confidence to take that step. Come to Optima and my lecture where I will share my knowledge and experience in the fitness business for the last 16 years. So far I have opened 8 fitness clubs, I believe that in all those jobs I have learned something that you need to start at this moment.
Milan Zarić
Owner of City Fitness, clubs from Belgrade. Author of the book "FITNESS ENTREPRENEUR"
10:15 – 11:15
Do you want to help your clients move better, train or simply perform daily activities better, easier and without pain? The NASM approach to corrective exercise will teach you to recognize muscle imbalances and compensations and to properly address the problem using the 4 phases of this continuum:
1. Inhibition
2. Stretching
3. Activation
4. Integration
Stefan Vasić
NASM, HFS Academy
BSc Milena Ilić
NASM PT, HFS Academy
11:45 – 12:45
Veljko Marković
14:30 – 15:30
Discover key strategies for introducing a wellness space into your fitness club. With new trends in membership benefits, learn how to improve the customer experience while increasing club profitability.
15:45 – 16:45
Miloš Kojić
Assistant at the Faculty of Sports and Physical Education
Dejan Mihajlović
NASM PT, HFS Academy
17:00 – 18:00
Milan Veselinović
Strenth and Conditioning Coach
