Elevating Lives Through Fitness: Mark Roberts' Journey to Building Community and Wellness in the Gym (Part 1)

Episode Transcript
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Parker Condit (00:00):
Hey everyone and welcome to Exploring Health
Macro to Micro.
I'm your host, Parker Condit.
In the show, I interviewexperts from all areas of health
.
This can be in areas you mightexpect like exercise, nutrition
and mental health, while othertopics may be in areas that you
are less familiar with.
Today is one I think a lot ofpeople will enjoy.
The exercise and fitness-relatedepisodes tend to be quite

(00:20):
popular, and that's exactly whatwe have in store.
So today's episode is based allaround exercise, fitness and
coaching.
Here to discuss that with me isMark Roberts.
Mark has been coaching in thefitness industry for over 10
years.
He's the co-owner and headcoach at Rise Athletics in
Winter Gardens, florida.
I've known Mark for a few yearsnow and since day one I've had

(00:40):
a deep amount of respect for himas not only just a business
owner and a coach, but also as aperson.
This episode will be great forany trainers and coaches out
there, but it'll also be goodfor people who are looking to
join a gym, because we spend alot of time talking about what
it takes as a gym owner and acoach to facilitate community
and creating a great cultureamongst staff and members in a

(01:01):
gym.
So if you're looking for acoach or for a gym, there's a
lot in here that will give youan idea of what to look for in a
good gym a good coach and agood training space.
We also spend plenty of timetalking about the other primary
contributors to health outsideof exercise and go into many
specifics.
This is a long episode, so it'sgetting split into two parts.
This will be part one, and parttwo will be released in the

(01:23):
same week, so there's not goingto be a big gap to hearing the
full conversation.
So, without further delay,please enjoy part one of my
conversation with Mark Roberts.
Mark Roberts, thanks so muchfor being here.

Mark Roberts (01:39):
Thank you for having me.

So we've known each other for a few years now.
Now I first came across you byreaching out to you on Instagram
.
It was just in the early daysof research for Mod o Bio and
you were kind enough to not onlyrespond, but I happen to be in
the Orlando area and you invitedme out to your gym while you
were doing something that we'regoing to get to later called the
coaches collective.
But you took a big leap offaith and just kind of inviting

(02:03):
me in and kind of setting me upas one of the speakers for that
particular night.
So I've always appreciated thatand it also just gave me a huge
opportunity to kind of get toknow you, get to know how you
run your facility, the cultureyou drive there, and that's kind
of how I want to start.
So I want to give people alittle bit of a backstory as to
how we know each other.
But you work with a lot ofOlympic weightlifters, which is

(02:25):
a highly technical skill, soyou're a very technically sound
coach.
But you also in your gym youhave a lot of gen pop classes,
so you kind of work across thespectrum of clients across the
world of fitness.
So I'm curious, like how youthink working with such a
technical group of athletes andthen also working with gen pop,
how those two serve each other.

(02:45):
Like, how does working withsuch a technical group of
athletes and then also workingwith gen pop how those two serve
each other.
Like, how does working with genpop force you to be better with
your very technical athletesand then working with athletes,
how does that serve sort of theother population you have as
well?

yeah, and this is a really good question because
this also speaks to mybackground and kind of how I got
into building Rise Athleticsthe way it is.
And so for me, when I startedout as a weightlifting coach, I
found weightlifting afterplaying rugby at college and
strength and conditioning formyself and I was very much kind

(03:17):
of traditional strength andconditioning and as I moved into
weightlifting, weightliftingwas a very traditional sport,
very old school sport.
Where the popularity ofweightlifting has grown was a
very traditional sport, very oldschool sport.
Where it's it's the popularityof weightlifting has grown so
much over the last decade, butbefore that people either got
into weightlifting when theywere very, very little 8, 10, 12
because they knew people whowere already in the sport,

(03:40):
whereas nowadays there's so manypeople coming into
weightlifting from otherathletic backgrounds or even,
just like you said, to gen pop.
So people that maybe foundcrossfit and crossfit put such
an emphasis on snatch and cleanand jerk in their training that
we found that you had 35 yearold mothers of three that all of

(04:02):
a sudden fell in love with abarbell and for us as
weightlifting coaches, that washuge.
That was.
It was amazing because it'sreally given us a new life as,
uh, as weightlifting coaches, ina career direction that we
really didn't have before.
Um, but when I was when I was astrength and conditioning coach
primarily and weightlifting wasmore of my hobby and I was

(04:23):
teaching a few weightlifters andcoaching I found that, uh,
everybody, everybody needs afoundation.
And these new weightliftersthat were coming in, these
crossfitters who just loved thebarbell and wanted to to improve
their skills in the snatch andclean and jerk, they really
didn't have that prerequisitefoundation the core strength,

(04:45):
the shoulder stability, themobility in their hips.
And, like you say,weightlifting has such a high
technical demand and one ofthose is on flexibility being
able to hit really, really greatranges of motion with an
extreme amount of weightoverhead meant that a lot of
people were getting frustrated.
They were finding that theycouldn't hit these positions.

(05:07):
They found they plateauedpretty early on and it wasn't
because they didn't have thedesire to work on the skill of
weightlifting, but it was morebecause they didn't have that
foundational strength, becausethey hadn't been in a
traditional strength andconditioning gym that had built
a solid foundation.
They'd found a love for thebarbell through CrossFit and

(05:27):
it's never a rag on CrossFit atall.
So I'm like I'm a CrossFit leveltwo coach.
I love CrossFit, I've coachedCrossFit for many years, I own a
CrossFit affiliate, but it'smore just recognizing maybe some
holes in the way that mostpeople approach training and
programming for CrossFit.
So when deeper I got intocoaching weightlifters, the more
I recognized this need for moreof a broader foundation for a

(05:51):
lot of my athletes.
Now I started as a traditionalstrength and conditioning coach,
like I said, and so for me Iunderstood core strength, I
understood all theseprerequisites that had helped me
and helped me kind of rebuildmy own body after quite a few
rugby injuries.
And so when I recognized it withme and then that need with

(06:11):
other people, I figured, well,why not create an atmosphere, a
gym, that prioritizes all ofthose different stages rather
than just having a weightliftinggym?
I found that it was going to bevery beneficial to to be able
to show people that if you wantto be an amazing weightlifter,
you still need to have thatfoundational strength and that

(06:33):
foundational control, corestrength, mobility, flexibility.
So it was, it was very naturalfor me to be able to um coach
everybody from gen pop all theway through to weightlifting,
because it's just really in mymind it's layers.
Weightlifting is just the toplayer, but even the best
weightlifters require all ofthose other layers, and it's

(06:56):
what we in in traditionalstrength and conditioning kind
of already know but hadn't beenapplied yet to weightlifting or
maybe to CrossFit as well.

Yeah.
So I'm going to want to go intothe distinction.
For anyone who's listening andwe use the term weightlifting,
that's going to refer to Olympicweightlifting, not just lifting
weights, which is can beconfusing.
So maybe we'll go into a quickdistinction about Olympic
weightlifting versuspowerlifting.
But first you mentionedsomething how kind of the two
ends of that spectrum.
There's this principle in, likeproduct design, where, if you're

(07:30):
, the example that I learned wasnot that I'm a product designer
, but I watched a documentaryabout it where they're trying to
make a pair of garden shearsand they're like we tried to
design something that a verylike well built, like meathead
who can't even scratch his ownhead because his muscles are so
big, like we need to makesomething that he can use.
And then also the 80, 80 tonine year old who's very frail,

(07:52):
like if you design for the twoends, you kind of take care of
the middle and it seems a bitlike that's kind of what you're
getting to.
So I wanted to mention that asa an example from a different
industry.
But can you just explain thedifference between olympic
weightlifting and powerlifting,just so people who aren't
familiar with this world theymight be thinking oh,
weightlifting is just liftingweights, like doing bicep curls

(08:15):
and stuff like that, but therethere's a difference.

uh, just so people have that language as we go
through the rest of theconversation yeah, definitely,
and uh, and I actually like forme, going through the podcast,
I'll always kind of refer to itas weight training and
weightlifting, for thatdistinction, so they kind of
know.
But, um, weightlifting is isthe, the Olympic sport.
So it's, uh, two lifts, it'ssnatch and clean and jerk, and

(08:38):
we compete to.
We basically get, we get threelifts in each and we try and hit
the highest number we can in asnatch, highest number we can in
a clean and jerk.
We add those two numberstogether and that's our total
and so we compete for thehighest total.
Powerlifting is very similar,but it's three lifts, so you get
squat, bench and deadlift andeach of those you get three
attempts as well and you combinethose three lifts to get your

(09:01):
total as well.
So, um, slightly different,very, very similar format in the
way that we, the way that thewinner is is decided, but just
different lifts in general.

Okay, yeah, I appreciate that.
Just people listening sayweight training that's just kind
of lifting weights in a verygeneral sense, getting stronger
using resistance training.
Weight lifting is going torefer to Olympic weightlifting.
I'd be curious how you've,because I've been.
I've actually had the pleasureof being to your gym a few times
now because I kept findingmyself in Orlando over the past

(09:33):
few years.
You're always very graciousinviting me in, but you have a
great community there.
How have you been able to buildthat community amongst sort of
these very different populations?

that community amongst sort of these very
different populations?
Um, I I really think that, uh,two, two things there.
I think building a community.
Number one relies on, um,thinking about the culture that
you want to bring to people, andfor me, the community was
always driven out of me, findinga home in a gym.
I've always been in gyms mywhole life.

(10:07):
I've loved training, I've lovedlifting, even as a rugby player
.
I found that the strength andconditioning side being in a gym
and pushing myself in the gymwhere I actually didn't need a
team around me to do it, it wasjust me and some barbells and
dumbbells was always where Ifound most comfort in a lot of
ways.
And I was very lucky to be incertain gyms throughout my

(10:28):
career where I found communitymyself.
And I recognize that there's alot of people that are looking
for that.
They don't know they're lookingfor that, necessarily, but
they're looking for that.
And in psychology you havesomething actually called your
third place, and thepsychological third place is
based off of the idea that youhave home, you have work, and

(10:50):
these are both places where youfind connection, social
connection.
But most people need a thirdplace, and so it's somewhere
where you don't have thepressures of work or you don't
have family, where you can findsocial connection with other
people.
And I always found that mythird place was the gym.
Other people find it in otherclubs.
It could be dance, it could be,it could be a place of worship.

(11:14):
For me it was.
It was a gym.
So I always wanted to create aspace that that made other
people feel as comfortable as Ifelt in a gym, because, at the
end of the day, we all know thatyour regular globo gyms, uh,
your LA fitness, your crunchfitness there's nothing against
them, but they can beintimidating environments, and
just getting healthy Shouldn'tbe intimidating.

(11:35):
It's already intimidating, it'salready.
It's already hard enough as itis, and so why not find
somewhere where everybody'ssupportive?
And that was that was the goalin rise athletics I.
It's the goal, it's kind of themeaning behind the name.
Um, our hashtag a lot of thetime is rise together it's.
We always talk aboutaccountability in gyms and we

(11:56):
talk about accountability intraining and it.
Nothing is is better than goingto the gym and your coach knows
you by your name.
So you walk through the doorand they say hi to you
personally, rather than areceptionist just saying hi and
they make you feel welcome and alot of that intimidation that

(12:16):
goes with the discomfort oftraining and pushing yourself is
eased just by having peoplearound you that they genuinely
want to see you succeed, versusit just being you by yourself
every time, because thatself-motivation we all know can
be difficult yeah, all right,like the work itself is already
hard enough, and then all theall the discomfort around a new

(12:39):
environment, new people, newsetting, um, so I think, even
like the, the chain gyms thatyou mentioned, all of them are
going to kind of advertise anidea of like building community,
but that obviously gets lost atscale and these organizations
are always like they're it's atop down thing, right?

So you and Jamie co in the gym, so what are the
things that you actually do,from interacting with members to
training additional staff?
Like, how do you actuallyfacilitate that?
Because everyone says like, oh,we want to build a great
community and some succeed andsome don't.
So it obviously starts with youand Jamie.
So, like, what have you focusedon as owners to actually do

(13:21):
that?

I think personally , a little bit of my history so,
and then I'll go on to us asowners to actually do that.
I think personally, a littlebit of my history so and then
I'll go on to us as owners is isthat we talked about gen pop
earlier and I found, when I wasyounger, I was, I was overweight
.
I was always active, which isthe interesting part of it.
I was always active, but I wasoverweight.
Yeah, so I was.
I love playing rugby, I playedall different sports, but, um, I

(13:46):
was very lucky to have a familythat always had family dinners
and, like, portion control wasmy problem.
I had a sweet tooth and portioncontrol, um, and so it was
always funny because for me, I Ilearned about health, uh,
myself very early on.
I was 16.
I broke my arm playing rugbyboth bones, radius and ulna and
I was stuck in a cast for eightweeks, sat on the couch, got

(14:08):
even bigger and I just wanted tomake a change.
So I started making um changesin my health very early on, and
so that goes to that gen popside of things too, and I know
we're going to talk about thatlater, um, about having that
foundation, and so it starts notonly just as owners but, as I
think, as individuals.
I place a huge emphasis onhealth in our gym, way before I

(14:32):
place an emphasis on on fitness.
Um, health underpins fitness,which is which is lost in a lot
of weightlifting, uh, gyms orjust a lot of high level sports,
I believe.
And so me and Jamie both of usJamie comes from a high level
gymnastics background and weboth love living a healthy
lifestyle so, before anything asowners, it's more as people we

(14:55):
are both trying to live a veryhealthy lifestyle and we say a
lot.
I think it's lost theimportance of it, but you have
to lead from the front, you haveto lead from example, and Jamie
and I both believe that healthis crucial to just honestly
living a happier life.
I don't think people realizethe positive benefit.

(15:17):
I actually posted somethingelse.
It was another study talkingabout how training impacts
mental health.
I think that some of theselifestyle factors that we'll
talk about later genuinely allowme to live a happier life than
a lot of people.
Not many people like me when Isay that that I'm happier
because of these health factors,but I truly believe that it is
true, and so me and Jamie reallytry and emulate that and lead

(15:39):
from the front to begin with.
And then everything that we doin the gym kind of builds on
that.
Because I don't think I thinkit can almost come across as
fake if we are trying to promoteall of these things in the gym
community and health and all ofthis but yet we're not living
those, live that lifestyleourself.
And I know a lot of gyms thatthey'll train and then at the

(16:01):
end of the day they'll throw amonthly party and they all go
and get drunk and they'll bedrinking and all sorts and and
for us it was.
It's kind of we always said we,we do things like that.
We have community events, wehave potlucks, but they're
they're always more about comingtogether as a community and
being healthy and rather than aparty, so to speak, or like, oh,

(16:25):
let's come to our christmas,new year's party and everyone's
drinking.
That's not really our vibe.
Like we try and do likecommunity bike rides, we try and
get out in the sun, we'll hirea yoga instructor to come in and
do more things like where?
So those community events arekind of built on top of um, that
lifestyle that we're trying topromote.

(16:46):
I think that's one of the bigthings that we do as owners is
is trying to get people torealize that the gym is is a
very small sector of the overalllifestyle of being healthy.
Um, we taught, we have.
We have all sorts of things I'msure we'll talk about later on
about lifestyle, um, but Ialways tell people I'm like

(17:07):
you're here for an hour a day.
There's 23 of the hours of theday where you have to be trying
to promote your own health andso when you come into the gym
and your coaches want to see youdo your best, absolutely 100%,
but you've also got 23 otherhours where you have a
responsibility to yourself tostill be healthy.

Yeah, that's a great point.
Um, I think, yeah, I think, Ithink a lot can get lost in just
the idea that you know, fitnessby itself is going to solve it.
Um, and like, most peoplearen't even in there every day
of the week, right?
So you say there's 23 hours ina day.
Usually it's like two to threehours a week, two to four hours
a week.
You're going to get somebody,which is still a lot of time,

(17:51):
like if you, if you do it well,like I used to have this thing
where I would occasionally, as atrainer, get in disagreements
with somebody who's like medicaldoctor about, like, what would
need to be done, cause theywould give what I would think
were not great suggestions fromthe fitness side and I would

(18:12):
want them to push a little bitharder.
Um, but the doctor would seethem once every three months,
once every six months.
I'm like you've got 20 minutes,20 minutes with them every few
months.
I'm like I'm getting them threedays a week.
I'm like I'm sorry, but I'mlike I'm gonna win that argument
.
Um, like I'm gonna to win themover.
I'm like I just have more timewith them.

And it's not, and obviously time plays a big role
in that.
But you time and I think thismay have been that coaching
collective that you came to, orit was one afterwards where I
spoke about trust and buildingtrust.
I don't know if it was that one.
It was that one and I meanthat's one of the biggest things
is you.
You have medical professionals,like you say, that you go to,
and they see you for 30 minutes.

(18:45):
Some of my athletes I see for12 to 15 hours a week, some of
my elite weightlifters, and soif a medical professional, I'm
sorry to say, thinks that theycan build better trust and a
deeper relationship withsomebody in 20 minutes than I
can in 15 hours a week, they'resadly mistaken.

(19:08):
Trust doesn't work like that.
And if you look at thepsychology of behavior, change
trust comes.
Change, sorry comes fromtrusted individuals.
It's a ripple effect.
It's not.
It's.
One of the reasons why socialmedia is so bad these days is
you're trying to change theopinions of people that are
miles away and they don't.
They don't trust you, and soall you do is put up walls, get

(19:32):
defensive, whereas actually tocreate proper change, you have
to have trust, and that'ssomething that is, I think,
unique to coaches, um, and italso speaks to the importance of
, of of what we do as coaches,which I think is really, really
undervalued these days in theindustry for the positive
changes we can make because ofthe unique position we're in,

(19:54):
but yet we are undervalued insome of these health areas that
I think we could be utilizedbetter with.

Yeah, I totally agree.
I think you know there there's alot of conversation around like
what jobs are going to getreplaced with AI?
Um, even when I was stilltraining just the idea of the
significant shift to onlinetraining models and like tonal
and Peloton and things like thatI think for people like you,

(20:27):
there's never really going to bea concern.
I think like, if the coach isgood enough and has those strong
relationships, it's never goingto be a concern.
I think like if the coach isgood enough and has those strong
relationships, it's never goingto be a concern.
I think it's for the people whoaren't necessarily taking
advantage and kind of honoringthe relationship between the
client that those people aregoing to be vulnerable.
So more message to kind of thecoaches you're saying how much

(20:50):
time you do get with yourclients each week.
It's like it's such an honorand like you have knowledge that
they don't like.
If you're not really takingadvantage of that relationship
and that time to positively helpthem, I think there's a
responsibility that you owe tothem, especially like we charge
a lot of money, right.

Yeah, so you can charge a lot of money.
That I think that's one of thebig things.
You can charge a lot of money,um, if you provide that value,
and it's a big if, because Icould jump on social media and
spend an extra three or fourhours, gain more followers and
then sell programs.
But the programs aren't whatmake the changes in the person

(21:30):
and and that's such amisconception these days that
that we've created in theindustry is that, oh, it's just
the program, and when peoplecome to our gym we talk a lot
like this isn't a transactionalrelationship.
You cannot pay me X amount ofmoney per month and you get
health in return, but you canpay to have access to my
knowledge, my support, mymotivation and all of these

(21:52):
things that if you want to buyin and invest in yourself, you
can pull out things that arepriceless.
But I'm the co-pilot, you'rethe pilot and I'll sit on the
tarmac all day long in thisplane and it won't take off
unless you get on board.
And some that's some of that.
It goes to just how youinteract with your client, like

(22:15):
you say, how you build trust andthen and then getting them to
understand that they have torelinquish quite a bit of
control and invest in thisprocess to be able to get the
most from it.
I remember telling somebody Isaid well, are you going to move
online after covid, like ourgym closed down?
And I remember saying if, ifwe're going to go online, I'm
going to change industries.

(22:35):
I'm not.
I don't.
To me, this is I don't do this.
To be online, like online, likesocial media, like this, is
amazing because of the impactand the reach we can have.
But when it comes to somebodygoing to a physical place and
being surrounded by people thatsupport them and want to see
them grow and want to see themsucceed, I honestly didn't want

(22:55):
to be part of a fitness industrythat wasn't going to have that
in person contact.

Yeah, I can totally see that for you and
where you're like, if I wantedto be online, I would be.

Yeah, I could have stayed online, I could have
transitioned, but that's not whyI do this.

Yep, so we've mentioned the Coaches Collective
a few times already.
Can you just explain what thatis?

So the Coaches Collective is basically a
network of coaches in theOrlando area that throughout the
years of coaching so I'vecoached in Orlando for about 10
years and it's just a network ofpeople that I've met coaches,
clinicians um, doesn't matterwhat kind of coach you are
personal trainer, you could bepowerlifter, crossfit,
weightlifting, kettlebell, yogabut just a network of people

(23:43):
where we can reach out to eachother, ask questions.
We plan meetups and currentlyI'm trying to put together like
a study group so we can try tosee who's interested in passing
a certain certification andwe'll study for it together.
Just a place where we canspread information rather than

(24:05):
kind of keep it to ourselves,which is one of those things in
our industry again is the ideathat somebody has all these
secrets and it's why they'resuccessful, um, and they don't
want to spread it around whenit's there's no, there's no real
secrets in in fitness.
I mean you, you don't need tobe doing the most advanced
training with velocity basedtraining or this new french

(24:29):
contrast training or so many, somany people think it's about
that high level stuff and it'sreally not.
So it's about just the samecommunity that I've built in the
gym for people trying to gethealthy.
The same thing for coaches totry and create a bigger impact
with their own clients and findthe support from other coaches
that have been there, done itand want to spread that

(24:51):
information on.

Yeah, and it's all.
It's largely in person.
I don't know if there's anyonline aspect to it.
I think there's probably aFacebook group.
But that was one of thosethings that I was like.
I was so impressed that youwere organizing and spearheading
, because so much now it's likejoin my online community.
It's a great community ofprofessionals.
But it's like, oh, join myonline community.
It's a great community ofprofessionals, but it's like you
never meet each other.

(25:14):
It's surface level engagement.
But I was really impressed withI think I've been to two of them
amongst other times that I'vebeen there but the depth in
which you're willing to goespecially because the first one
I went to is all about, like,trust and vulnerability.
As a coach, I think that waslike the large topic and you

(25:37):
were incredibly trusting,inviting me to sort of present
without knowing really anythingabout me, and then you also
being very vulnerable to youknow, feedback and opening
yourself up, being like I don'tknow everything.
It's largely a self-servinggroup as well, right, when you
can bring these professionalstogether and you're like I'm
going to get free education fromthem, but a lot of people don't
have the humility to putthemselves in that situation.
So anyone listening to this inthe Orlando area.

(25:58):
If you're a coach, uh, get intouch with Mark Um.
Is it strange?
Or are there any struggles,kind of running a business with
your now wife, Jamie?

I thought that question might come up.
Um, it's been difficult forsure.
Um, it's never been rainbowsand fairy tales.
We, um, jamie, jamie and Istarted dating, uh where, just
before I actually started myweightlifting club.
So I was coaching at multiplegyms, had my personal training
and, um, through just a coupleof different events, I ended up

(26:29):
taking the plunge and opening myweightlifting club out of one
of the gyms that I my personaltraining and, through just a
couple of different events, Iended up taking the plunge and
opening my weightlifting clubout of one of the gyms I was
working at.
Fast forward a couple of years,it was just after the pandemic
and that gym was moving and agym came up for sale and it was
like, well, I told this storytoday.

(26:50):
Actually I was 29.
I was kind of going throughlike existential crisis of like,
what am I going to do?
Am I just going to besubleasing a space my whole life
?
What's the big picture here?
We want to have a family and soon and so forth.
And within two weeks,everything changed Purchased a
gym, moved in, jamie graduatedthat summer and quit her job and

(27:11):
just came full time in a gym.
Neither of us had businessexperience.
I had been coaching my wholelife.
Jamie had just graduated with adegree in physical education
and it was basically hit theground running and figure it out
, and so there has been a lot offiguring it out.
There's been a lot of stress.

(27:31):
There's been a lot of figuringit out, um, there's been a lot
of of stress.
There's been a lot of sacrifice, but I think one of the things
we've learned is to really workas a team, uh, communicate well,
um, we struggled to findbalance, I think, as, as all
young business owners and and uhand couples who are business
owners have found Um, but at thesame time, there's no one I'd

(27:53):
rather do it with.
Uh, we, we literally we're inthere all the time we come home
and we said we talk about it allthe time it's 100, all of our
lives but um, at the same time,uh, we, we get to sit back and
we get to say we created this.
It's not I created this or shecreated it.
It's we created this.
It's not I created this or shecreated it, it's we created this
.
And there's a.
There's a lot of pride andsense of accomplishment so far.

(28:17):
Um, and to to like we, we gotmarried recently.
So it was.
It was awesome to see thepeople that we had at our
wedding that had supported usthrough this journey, and to
have to have so many good peoplearound us that have supported
us and and not forced us to grow.
But, um, wouldn't let us faileither.

(28:39):
That kind of thing and and soit's one of those things where
I'm sure it's the same answerfrom a lot of couples that are
business owners together, butit's.
It's one of the most stressful,difficult things you can do in
life, but also one of the most,if not the most, rewarding thing
I've ever done.

But, like net-net , you think it's probably been
beneficial for your relationship.
It's probably forced a lot ofthings, forced you to confront
things that probably could havegone unaddressed much longer
without having this businessstructure sort of forcing you to
look at it.

Yes, definitely.
I mean, there's no puttingthings off.
Um, there is, there is, it's,it's.
It's weird, it's, and I'm surethat people understand this, but
where, where life kind of keepsthrowing the same lesson at you
until you learn it, and and forus it's we have to learn it
because our business and ourlivelihoods depend on it.
So we recognize those things soquick now and we're able to

(29:38):
overcome them together.
And we're able to recognizewhen she's struggling, so I can
put in some extra effort tosupport her.
She sees when I'm strugglingand she puts an extra effort to
support me.
We're both still competitiveweightlifters, um, both of us
ex-athletes, with a lot ofinjuries too.
So we and as any high levelathlete or long term athlete

(30:01):
knows that uh, a lot of the timeour ability to train and work
out is very much linked with ourmental health as well, and so
we both have those those uhhighs and those lows through
training and uh being able to umadapt to each other and how
we're feeling in different times.
Like Jamie's in a bit of aphase of rehab at the moment.

(30:22):
Um, I've just come out of one,and it's my last year as a
senior lifter to be able tocompete at the state
championships in Florida, to beable to compete at the state
championships in Florida.
So she's extremely supportive.
Even though she can't train theway she wants to right now, she
puts how she feels aside sothat she can support me and my
goals.
So it's really cool just to seehow much of a team we can be

(30:46):
and how much we can overcome andadapt to together.

Yeah, I love that .
Do you still do your ownprogramming or do you outsource
some of that because you'restill competing at a high level?
Um, and it's one of thosethings that people who don't
work in the industry probablywould be like why would you ever
outsource your training?
But it does happen quite a bit.
I was just curious do you doyou do your own programming for
workouts, nutrition, recovery,or do you kind of hand that off

(31:12):
to somebody else?

So I, I do my own programming pretty much.
Um, like I say, I unfortunatelyfrom rugby rugby is not a very
forgiving sport Um, so I have Ihave quite a few injuries coming
from that Um, so I manage allmy programming or my nutrition
and things like that, and Ialways kind of tell people that
the hardest athlete you'll evercoach is yourself, um, unless

(31:34):
you coach your wife, maybe Idon't know.
But um, um, and so kind of tofigure it out myself with my own
body, because I have all ofthose biases on what I want to
do, um, I think has actuallybeen a huge, a huge player in,
in, in my success and my growthand my learning.
Um, but I do also have a coachso I can always bounce ideas off

(31:57):
him.
Uh, when I compete at meets,he's there and so he, he coaches
me when I compete atcompetitions, um, but the rest
of it is is me kind of trainingmyself and figuring out myself,
but kind of, like we were sayingwith the coaching collective
earlier, I might do this bymyself in the day-to-day, but
but I have a support network, um, I have a physical therapist

(32:18):
who has identified a few things,uh, a few few of my old
injuries that I didn't realizemaybe had the severity that they
do have, um, and so I've beenable to bounce ideas off of her
to manipulate my training, whichhas really helped me come back
in the last three months,because I had some lower back
pain that was reallydebilitating and had to take out

(32:42):
certain exercises, and withoutother people being able to still
be there to support me, Iwouldn't be able to train myself
and program for myself in theway I can to find success.

So as a gym owner , you probably get a lot of
requests from people that may ormay not fall outside of your
scope.
Um, like, how do you handlethat?
Because you know, to a certainlevel, like you can you can
handle nutrition requests.
But then it's like, oh, what ifthey have like?
What if they have a specificdisease to be Be like?
So there's a lot of nuance tohandling those requests.

(33:15):
Have you just built like areally good network that you're
for out to?
Or basically, how do you handleall those requests that maybe
fall outside of what you'recomfortable and you feel is kind
of safe and ethical for you tohandle?

Definitely a network, a hundred percent.
Um, there's, there's definitelya network of people that I
refer out to chiropractors, softtissue therapists, physical
therapists, rds, um, and wealways kind of have those, those
people, in our back pocketready at any point.
But I think the biggest thingis honesty.
Um, we kind of, since you'vebeen to the gym, we've put up

(33:49):
our values literally on bigflags in the gym to kind of
really hone in on that community, that culture and uh, and so,
when it comes to things that wecan't handle, it's my
expectation from my coaches isalways that they they speak with
honesty and they setexpectations first and foremost.
So it might be uh, like prettycommon, but this is a good

(34:11):
example is, uh, somebody whowants nutritional help?
Uh, and we find out like, uh,they had their gallbladder
removed so they can't digestfats in the same way.
It's one of those things wherewe always say like, look, we
have nutritional knowledge.
We can, we can help you withthe basics and we can give you,
we can give you education aroundnutrition.

(34:32):
Um, but the specifics of whatyou might need are going to be
different compared to thespecifics of what somebody else
might need.
And so when, if, if they kindof want to start that process
with us.
We we kind of start with thosecaveats of of.
At the end of the day, youmight have a gold ladder, you
might not have a gold ladder,but energy in, energy out still

(34:53):
plays a role, and so we can workon high level, um, high level
things and just some of the goodpillars of, of of health, with
people that might have um a fewareas that require specialist
help as well, and so I alwaystell people you can, we can,
work to a certain point.
However, this is not my area ofexpertise and we may need to,

(35:15):
and if at any point you feeluncomfortable or you feel like
you want to go to somebody whohas more knowledge than me, I'm
never going to be offended, andthat's something that a lot of
coaches are.
It's a, it's a quantity over aquality thing, and and that's
where we talk about the value inwhat we charge and things like
that is is sometimes people willactually value you more if you

(35:39):
say, no, I can't do this andgive them honesty and say I'm
willing to work with you for aslong as I feel comfortable and
you feel comfortable, but if anypoint that you feel
uncomfortable uncomfortable,it's your job to tell me, and if
any point I feel uncomfortable,I promise I'm going to tell you
so we can creatively solve thisproblem together.
Just because I might not havethat specialist knowledge

(36:02):
doesn't mean that we can't stillcreate a coach athlete
relationship and get you to abetter position than you're in
right now right and, generallyspeaking, you're going to be
more knowledgeable than thepatient or the client about
whatever that subspecialty mightbe.

So you can always help as a quarterback in that
situation, because it's verydaunting to be like.
Now I need to manage all ofthese other relationships,
whereas a coach you can helpwith that coordination, you
could reach out, you can seewhat those recommendations are,
so you can kind of work togetherfor like a synergistic solution
where it's not just like muchof what happens in the

(36:39):
traditional medical communitieswhere everything is just siloed,
it's like you can have veryconflicting interventions just
because the providers aren'tspeaking with each other.

Yeah, 100%, and at the end of the day, that really
brings that, integrates healthin a much more holistic way.
And holistic health is is weknow is is way more, is way more
successful than when you dojust go and go okay, well, I
need to go get this one pill forthis one thing, which then has
a knock-on effect, like you say,the the next silo over there,

(37:10):
so you're going to go tosomebody else where it's like,
well, hang on a second.
Why don't we just baselinebetter and then touch on a few
things over here and integrate?
Well, if you're feeling down,you're feeling some mental
health issues, but you're notgoing and getting some sunlight

(37:31):
every day, like, how about westart working on some some
getting some daily sunlight?
How about we start working onsome daily exercise before we
just jump ship and then maybestart looking at medication or
something like that?
There's there's lots ofdifferent ways we can approach
this and then escalate when weneed to.

And again, like the coordination between a coach
and a therapist can be sovaluable so both of you can make
better decisions than relyingon the person who's already
struggling with a particularsituation.
You're like you translate whatI'm teaching you to them and
it's like it's differentlanguages generally, neither of
which the person or the patientgenerally speaks.

(38:12):
Yeah, so you like being a coach, you can really help kind of
bridge those conversations.
You mentioned kind of pillarsof health and I did want to end
up talking about like sort of ahierarchy, because a lot of
people, especially with howeasily information is
disseminated, now there's justlike little nuggets of
information about health.

(38:33):
It can just be like veryamorphous and be like how do I
structure this into my life?
I have 40,000 protocols I cando.
Right, you mentioned morningsunlight be like where does that
fit in?
So can you kind of break downlike how you describe pillars of
health or maybe a hierarchy ofhow you teach people so they
don't get overwhelmed with allthe information that is out
there?

Yeah, that's something in our gym that we're
very, very specific on too.
We, whenever somebody comesinto the gym, they do get two
sessions, one-on-ones withcoaches, where we we first of
all take them kind of throughlike a we call it a movement
education session versus amovement assessment.
Um, cause it's not pass or fail, it's.
It's more about finding outwhere they are with their

(39:14):
movement and understanding ofmovement, so we can better coach
them going forwards, versussaying, oh, you can't do this,
you can't do this, you failedthis, you failed, which just
makes them feel like a loser andthey walk out the gym feeling
like they didn't accomplishanything.
Um, so that's a lousy salestactic.
Okay, oh yeah, you, you need mekind of thing which is super
lazy sales tactic, exactly, umso um.

(39:37):
But the?
The second one is really the,the one that I think is the most
important.
But, unfortunately, even as agym owner and knowing everybody
that comes through the gym andall our members, is probably not
the thing that people realizeis the most important, and it's
our lifestyle session and wecategorize it and I don't know
whether these are, these are notall inclusive by any means, but

(40:00):
we talk about sleep, nutrition,mindfulness and daily movement,
and so we we go over those fourthings, um and uh.
Obviously we know what sleep is, we know what nutrition is, and
we basically go over somefoundational principles of
nutrition, some foundationalprinciples of sleep.
Um, daily movements is is onewhere people go, oh so, going to

(40:22):
the gym.
You know well over somefoundational principles of
nutrition, some foundationalprinciples of sleep.
Daily movements is one wherepeople go, oh so, going to the
gym.
Well, that's one part of it.
The other part might be makingsure you get your step count in
per day, making sure that you dosome stretching and some self
myofascial release and foamrolling, some things like that.
Um, and then uh, uh,mindfulness.
One is more where it's.

(40:42):
It's based around stressreduction.
Um, we talk about the fact thatstress is not just physical.
Stress is mental, emotional andthe body for, for simplistic
terms, processes it all the same.
So when you are a prime example,we have some weightlifters that
are accountants.
It's tax season and so we droptheir volume of their training

(41:05):
down and we manipulate theirtraining more during tax season
because they're more stressed atwork, so their ability to
recover from training goes downjust because their work stress
has gone up.
And so we talk about thingsthat we can do to reduce stress
non-sleep, deep rest, meditationkind of thing.
We talk about daily sunlight,getting outside in nature.

(41:26):
We could even go as far asgrounding Some of these other
things, journaling ways in whichthey can introspect and kind of
stop consuming social media andother things and start actually
looking inward to figuring outtheir own thoughts, their own
emotions and kind of reducestress from that standpoint as
well.
So those are the four thingsthat we baseline as the

(41:49):
important things that we wantpeople to be focusing on inside
and outside the gym, and theneverything kind of gets layered
on top of that.

So you alluded to something really smart there.
I want you to kind of break itdown a little bit more.
Injuries they can be acute,right.
Sometimes things just happenyou step off of a curb and you
roll your ankle acute injury Alot of times injuries occur, but
even then you might bevulnerable because of what I'm
going to discuss.
Even then you might bevulnerable because of what I'm

(42:21):
going to discuss.
So injuries are generally like a, a load management issue, where
the person is just inadequatelyrecovered or the amount of
volume or the amount of trainingstress was too great and that's
going to put them in avulnerable position where
they're not adequately recovered, however you want to describe
that.
But you mentioned that yourOlympic weightlifter some of
them are accountants, so they'retaking on more stress at work.
It's hard to quantify all thesethings, but when you look at

(42:45):
like an exercise based injury oran exercise based workload, you
can't just be accounting forthe exercise based workload.
You need to see what'shappening like what else is
happening in their life.
The accounting one is a greatexample, because people can
understand that accountants getbusy during tax season.
But there's all these otherfactors that even if you're

(43:06):
managing your sort of exercise,training workload appropriately,
maybe using like an acute tochronic workload calculator or
something like that.
If you're not looking at theseother factors outside of that,
you're probably going to bevulnerable.
So if you could just kind ofspeak to anything about how you
try to do that, even though youcan't necessarily quantify it,
just kind of like the skill of acoach though, right.

Yeah, yeah, and and that's and that goes back to
me saying I don't want to workonline, right, I is.
Is that these people that cometo our gym?
Um, I kind of one thing Ialways kind of say is is, I have
my coach's checklist and it'skind of like, like, how's your
day been?
How's your nutrition, how wasyour sleep, how are you feeling?

(43:50):
Like?
What's kind of like, hey,what's going on in your life
right now?
Um, how are you feeling?
And people think that's a verysurface, surface level question,
but in reality, as a coach,coach, it's actually a very deep
question.
I want to know, like, what wasyour?
Where was your mental pointcoming into this training
session?
Like, what was it?
Was it?

(44:10):
Yeah, I feel fantastic,everything feels great.
I want to PR today, or is itactually?
No, I just broke up myrelationships down the sink, uh,
or I just found out that aloved one was, was, uh,
diagnosed with some some kind ofdisease, or uh, and, and so
it's, it's really it's.

(44:31):
It's me figuring out, um, kindof like, how HRV works, but from
a from a more psychologicalperspective perspective.
Um, like for those of you whodon't know who, what hrv is is
it's a measurement of, um, ofrecovery, that we can use in in
conditioning, workouts,cardiovascular health, things

(44:51):
like that.
So, but this is me figuring outwell, are we, are we in a in a
session where we can push thepercentages today, or are we in
a position where we actuallyhave to pull back on them today?
And, like you said, there isn'treally a way to quantify that?
I think that's where the valueof a coach really comes out and
comes into fruition, becauseit's about reading people.

(45:14):
It's about how well do you knowthe people that you're coaching
?
How well do you understand thepeople that you're coaching, um,
how well do you understandwhether they are hiding
something, whether they saythey're great, but you, it's a
surface smile and actually, deepdown, they're actually going
through something.
Um, that that really dictateswhether I mean I, from years of

(45:36):
years of doing this.
But you can see it in the waythey move, you can see it in
their body language and and Idon't think there's there's
necessarily a way to quantify it, unless you've got somebody to
do a questionnaire every day andand then went through it and I
used to be a very, uh, veryobjected, very analytical coach

(45:56):
in that way and try and figureout ways to really get the
numbers and dive into thenumbers and and what I realized
over time was I was just missingthe personal connection.
That is really what you want incoaches.
Um, the?
I have great mentors, I have aphenomenal coach, uh, and it's
not because he got me to do aquestionnaire before I trained,

(46:16):
it's because he could.
He could, he knew what my goalswere, he knew what drove me, he
knew what motivated me and hecould see when I was having a
good day and when I was having abad day.
And so it's kind of a bad answerfor other coaches to kind of
say there's no real way to dothis other than experience and
invest in your athletes.
My coach actually told me thisa long time ago and he said the

(46:40):
biggest mistake coaches can makeis thinking that it's about
them.
My career won't be successfulif I focus on me and me being a
successful coach.
Coaching is one of those thingswhere, if my athletes are
successful, I become successful.
I won't be a successful coachwithout having successful
athletes.
And I say athletes but that'sjust just success stories all

(47:00):
around the.
The mom who had a first babythat can't lose that baby weight
that didn't think she wouldever be back down to her
pre-baby weights or be as strongas she used to be.
And you see her come in andshe's disheartened because she
hasn't seen progress and insteadof pushing her to crush her in
a workout, you take it to theside and have a conversation
about maybe we can change a fewthings outside the gym, or maybe

(47:23):
we're not looking in the rightplaces and we can motivate her
in a different way.
Those are really the thingsthat I think differentiate good
coaches from great coaches.
I feel like I need to give anobjective measure, but there
really isn't an objectivemeasure in there.
You can you can create systemsaround that, but the more

(47:43):
systems you create, the less youhave that personal relationship
again, and to me it comes backdown to being able to have a
personal relationship witheverybody that you coach.

Data is great, but too much data or poorly
structured systems can kind ofcreate a barrier between you and
the person where it's like,yeah great, you're doing
velocity based assessment tostart the session, to see what
their nervous system is tellingyou and you have HRV scores and
stuff like that.
But you know you might just bemissing like the look on their
face where, like, they don'thave it today.

Absolutely, and it goes both ways right.
Some days people are so focusedon the program and sticking to
the program and you miss anopportunity to actually hit a PR
and you don't get thoseopportunities very often the
more elite of an athlete you are.
So it goes both ways.
To see if somebody is movingwell and they're in a good mood,

(48:38):
take advantage of it, big themup, pump them up.
Let's go for something big,because you you might not get
that opportunity again for awhile, and so it definitely goes
both ways in the way you cankind of look at those athletes
and and see how they're feelingand and pull the best out of
them at all times.
And I talk a lot about creatingsuccess in training sessions,

(49:00):
not just like following theprogram or the program will do
the work.
It's, it's up to the coach andthe athlete to create successful
training sessions every day.

Yeah, you got to cook while the skill taught.
That's one of those things thatI've noticed getting older.
Those days are less and lessfrequent.
Like I used to have a lot ofthose days where I'm like we're
just, we're always cooking andnow I'm like you really got to
feel for it and be like, okay,these are the days where I
really do have to be aggressiveand take advantage of it and
just trust that, like I'm, I'mwell-rounded enough to really

(49:32):
keep pushing at this time.
Hey, everyone, that's all fortoday's show.
I want to thank you so much forstopping by and watching,
especially if you've made it allthe way to this point.
If you'd like to be notifiedwhen new episodes are going to
be released, feel free tosubscribe and make sure you hit
the bell button as well.
To learn more about today'sguest, feel free to look in the
description.
You can also visit the podcastwebsite, which is

(49:53):
exploringhealthpodcastcom.
That website will also belinked in the description health
podcastcom.
That website will also belinked in the description.
As always, like shares,comments are a huge help to me
and to this channel and to theshow.
So any of that you can do Iwould really appreciate.
And again, thank you so muchfor watching.
I'll see you next time.

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