Barbell Shrugged - [Nutrition Coaching] How to Find the Best Nutrition Coach to Achieve Your Goals w/ Precision Nutrition CEO Timothy Jones, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash #682

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

Timothy Jones is CEO of Precision Nutrition (a behavioral health coaching education and technology company). He holds a B.Ed and MS in Health Science from Western University, and an MBA with a focus in behavioral science from The University of Warwick. His medical research has been published in the Journal of Rheumatology and BMC Family Practice. He’s worked with some of the world’s leading brands and public companies, including Kellogg’s, CML Healthcare, and Procter & Gamble. Prior to joining PN, Timothy co-founded a one-of-kind healthcare startup in partnership with SickKids, which was recently named the top pediatric hospital in the world by Newsweek. He’s been interviewed as a thought leader by Entrepreneur, Fast Company, and Thrive Global. In addition to his professional pursuits, Timothy coached football and hockey for nearly 20 years. Today, he mentors a number of his former players. He is also volunteers his time as Diversity & Inclusion Chair and is the incoming Education Officer for YPO Canada.   To learn more, please go to https://rapidhealthreport.com   Connect with our guests: Connect with TJ at Precision Nutrition Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, the CEO of Precision Nutrition is coming in and we're talking about the best way, the most optimal way for you to find a nutrition coach. Right now, there's only like four billion nutrition coaches in the world. And really this show is kind of geared more towards understanding where you are with your specific

needs and how to find a coach that's going to be able to meet you at that level. Over 26 years of me lifting weights, I would not recommend myself to many people from like the years of, you know, 14 to 22 years old because I just didn't have the experience. I had a lot of ideas, but not really the experience to be able to say, I know what I'm doing inside the nutrition and fitness space. In this show, we dig into a lot of the path of what a nutrition coach is going to go through, how they're going to meet you, meet you where you're at the skill sets they likely have and then as you get more and more into nutrition coaching fitness coaching strength conditioning how do you find a coach that's going to be able to elevate their level to where your level is because you do not

want to be working with a beginner coach if you've been in the gym or focusing on your health for you know 20 years or something like that. And really what we dig into overall kind of gets into really like the state of coaching in the nutrition space and really how you can be looking for the correct level over time to continually be upping your game and getting better and better health, better results and everything that goes along with that.

As always, friends, head over to rapidehealthreport.com. That's where you can see Dan Garner, the man of the myth. Get in there and read some labs, do some nutrition supplementation protocols, and you can find all that over at rapidehealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrug. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larsen, Coach Travis Mass. Today on Barbell Shrug, TJ, Timothy Jones, the CEO of Precision Nutrition, all the way from Costa Rica.

The dude has on a sick tank top today. He's flexing it out, showing us the guns because he probably got a good surf in before this. But today on Barbell Shrugged, we're going to be talking about the fitness nutrition landscape, really how people are able to enter into the space if you'd like to get set up as a nutrition coach. And then part of that process is really like determining what people need along their journey, how you can meet them where they're at and continue to improve your skills. Dude, I'd love to kind of understand how did you, because you were not the founder of Precision Nutrition. So where did you come in in kind of that story, the acquisition, and just where were the pieces in place before you actually became CEO?

Yeah, yeah. So you're asking about the origin story, it sounds like. So effectively, JB and I, or for, I'm just making an assumption everybody here who knows who uh jb is when i say jb but dr john berardi friends yeah he's over in arizona right now just living the life actually um he's he's right around the corner oh you guys are together there you go he came down uh he came down this week uh for a visit so. So JB and I met in university. He was doing, I was doing my master's. He was doing his PhD.

He was actually my TA. I didn't know who he was at the time. He was my TA for, of all things, as you'd expect, a nutrition science course. Yeah. So through that, through mutual friend, we connected, became pretty good friends along the way there. And, you know, just stayed in touch over the years. And both his friends, not on the business side of things, but mainly his friends. He then had met the other co-founder, Phil Caravaggio, in I suppose this is their early

2000s. And they started to build out the foundation of these, this thing called precision nutrition today. Back then, I think it was drjohnbrardy.com and then went into our science link or, you know, some permutations of that. And I took the big company route. So I actually had a kid in my second year of university or prior to second year. And that really gives you a lot of purpose and a lot of meaning and direction immediately. So yeah, exactly, exactly.

So you can't really join in on a startup, but I had the benefit. I started at Procter & Gamble, which is a marketing machine, a data machine. It's absolutely awesome. And so we would meet up, JB, Phil, and I, and I'd share some of the learnings I had with them over the years. And they're obviously a much smaller company at that time, but they could apply some of the

basic principles. These principles are standard. And over the years, we talked about various different opportunities. The companies I was with, I went into, I've been in healthcare my entire career. So I went into the lab and diagnostic side, which, you know, you guys can relate to based on some of the work we're doing together. Then the healthcare services side. And that was a launch. I launched a startup there. And then PN was on its way up.

And so there was two or three times over the years where we were, you know, I was going to join. It wasn't the right time. And basically, Phil called and said, OK, it's time. So in I think it was 2012, 2013, I think of 10 years this year with PN now, I came in, I joined the team and really allowed Phil and John to focus on their unique abilities. And so that's kind of a practice we have here is identifying what are people uniquely the best in the world at. And we have a whole process for that. I can dive into that. I would love to know that process. That sounds like...

Yeah, same. Yeah, yeah. I'll be taking notes while we do this. Mesh, you got your pen ready, bud? I do. So let me give you a quick overview here um just to be clear uh this comes from dan sullivan um he's got he's got this trademark but it's a process called unique abilities and effectively what you do is you speak to friends and family and colleagues maybe

call it anywhere from eight to ten seems to be the optimal amount. And then you say, you know, what do you rely on me for effectively? What do you think makes me special? What do you think I do uniquely? And be honest guys, it's a great feeling because you have all these people, they come back and they're giving you all kinds of praise and say, you do this great, you do this great, you do this great. And from that, it doesn't just, it's just not, oh, here's the things you're great. You sit back and you say, okay, here's the activities that I do on a regular basis. And what is it that makes people say that? How do I approach those activities that makes

people say something like, you're a really deep thinker, you're really, really thoughtful, or you're a classic systems thinker. What is it exactly that I do? And through this process, you can distill down what the unique abilities that you have are. And then what we do is we do an activity inventory, which is your classic two by two matrix. What are the things I suck at? What are the things I'm just competent at? What are the

things that I'm really good at, but I'm not really passionate about? And then what are the things that I'm really passionate about? And people see me being world-class or, you know, in their network, the best of what they've observed. And what we tried to do is then allocate as much work into that unique abilities category, that quadrant, and then assign, and this is a really fascinating part, assign as much of the other work to other people so if i were to give you kind of a very clear example for for myself um i uh not unlike a lot of people the admin side of the roles was not my favorite thing to do the project management side of roles not my favorite thing to do um organizing my calendar responding back to emails not my favorite things

to do. I would like to say I was good at it. I may be competent in some areas and probably just straight up suck. But we had a PhD in epidemiology on our team who loved this stuff. So as a part of her role, she took these tasks on for calendar, project management, coordination, all this stuff. And you'd sit back and say, wait a second, but she loved it. She was amazing at it. And she could do it in, you know, call it a quarter of the time that I could do it. And that opened me up to do the things that I do really well, which kind of fall into setting strategy, prioritization, decision making,

identifying opportunities, kind of coordinating all the resources to capitalize. So that's kind of just a brief overview of what unique abilities looks like. But we do that across all of PN. And then we try to match up people's unique abilities with the projects or the type of work that they're doing. You're never going to get to 100%. But even if you improve by 5%, your productivity goes through the roof. Your engagement goes through the roof. You start to feel like you're doing more soulful work, work that's in line with your purpose. So stepping all the way back, JB and Phil, their unique ability was not running companies. JB is, you guys, both of them awesome at marketing, insights, product

development. JB, obviously, on the science side of things, speaking side of things. And then Phil, really on deep customer understanding and product building. And, you know, so they started to focus in on those areas. And then I came in and focused on the company side of things, as I was talking about kind of coordinating strategy, planning, all these different components that fell into my unique abilities. And so that's, that, you know, that's what that's what happened. And there was a transition time there. Phil and I kind of worked together and then I transitioned into the CEO role. And in 2017, we were acquired by BV Partners out of Boston, which is a private equity firm out of Boston., you know, the quick and dirty overview of the journey ever since. Yeah. I'd love to dig into a little bit since you have seen such a breadth of different programs, different coaches, you guys have kind of like led the charge and actually getting,

getting like the nutrition level one from PN feel like is like a, the baseline to nodding. they're at or be a starting point for having an actual conversation of just how does somebody become a nutrition coach, whether in person, online, and just understanding the foundational, really like principles for helping other people. Shark family, I want to take a quick break. If you are enjoying today's conversation, I want to invite you to come over to rapidhealthreport.com. When you get to rapidhealthreport.com, you will see an area for you to opt in, in which you can see Dan Garner read through my lab work. Now, you know that we've been working at Rapid Health Optimization on programs for optimizing

health. Now, what does that actually mean? It means in three parts, we're going to be doing a ton of deep dive into your labs. That means the inside out approach. So we're not gonna be guessing your macros. We're not gonna be guessing the total calories that you need. We're actually gonna be doing all the work to uncover everything that you have going on inside you.

Nutrition, supplementation, sleep, and then we're going to go through and analyze your lifestyle. Dr. Andy Gal we're going to go through and analyze your lifestyle. Dr. Andy Galpin is going to build out a lifestyle protocol based on the severity of your concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the most severe things first. This truly is a world-class program. And we invite you to see step one of this process

by going over to rapidhealthreport.com. You can see Dan reading my labs, the nutrition and supplementation that he has recommended that has radically shifted the way that I sleep, the energy that I have during the day, my total testosterone level, and it's my ability to trust and have confidence in my health going forward. I really, really hope that you're able to go over to rapidhealthreport.com, watch the video of my labs and see what is possible. And if it is something that you are interested in, please schedule a call with me on that page. Once again, it's rapidhealthreport.com

and let's get back to the show. Understanding the foundational, really like principles for helping other people. Yeah. So, I mean, I think the best way to think about this year is we've seen a significant shift in the industry, which has been quite fascinating through COVID. Unfortunately, our industry, as you guys know, has got rocked during COVID. With all the gym shutdowns, we had a lot of excellent people just straight up leave the industry. And it makes sense. I was speaking with one woman doing an interview. I have no idea why she stayed in the industry. She had lost her job consecutively four different times with four different companies

in the fitness industry. And she was outstanding. Eventually, she went out on her own, but she was so passionate about the work she did that she stayed. She was by far the exception. By far the exception. Most of the people we talked to, after the second lockdowns of the gyms, they had no way of getting income anymore, and they ended up leaving the industry. And so what has happened now is there are literally tens of thousands of openings for people, health and fitness professionals across the industry. And that hasn't been backfilled yet.

One of the interesting shifts there though, is a lot of people, we will call them aspiring coaches in the past would go and work and have the desire to work in the gym, work for a gym chain, work for a studio. And then with time, they might then transition out on their own. That was the typical path. I come into the industry, I kind of work for one of the gym chains, I do some certifications, and then I start to build my own clientele and then I can work on my own. What's happened now is people come in and say, immediately, I want to start coaching remotely. And that's been the big shift.

So it was 75-25 before, and now that's flipped to the other direction, where 75% are like, hey, I want to come in. I want to coach remotely. So I say all this because how you want to get started in this industry is really having a clear picture is what is it you want to do? How do you want to get started in this industry is really having a clear picture is what is it you want to do? How do you want to coach? And sitting back and really understanding, okay, what's your purpose? What do you want to do? A lot of the people that come into this is like, I want to help people. That's just a prerequisite. They have a deep seated need to

help other people. And then it comes into some of the stuff we just talked about. What are your unique abilities? Sitting back and having that conversation is like, what am I going to be able to uniquely offer? And this is even before like, hey, what certification should I get? What field should I be in? Any of these sorts of things, because there's a certain sexiness to being a health and fitness professional. At least there is for me. Maybe not. If I'm an accountant, maybe they're like, hey, whatever. That being said, sitting back and understanding truly what it is that you want to do, how you want to do it, why you want to do it,

and what you can uniquely bring to it. And there's a whole process for that. Actually, John talks deeply about this in, am I allowed to say book names and stuff like that? Oh, yeah, do it all. He wrote an outstanding book called Changemakers. He sent that to us, right, Doug, after we had him on the show? Yeah. Yeah, it's a great book. I know I have it. I just don't, I can't remember if it was him that

sent it or I went and bought it, but yeah. Yeah. So he's kind of got all the tools for all these things, but kind of how do you answer all these different questions for yourself? So now if I'm going to step back and say, okay, how do I get in this industry? What do I actually want to do? Am I going to be a nutrition coach? Am I going to be a exercise coach? Am I going to be a CrossFit coach? Am I going to be a dot, dot, dot coach? Really understanding what it is you're going to do. Ultimately, if you're going to be a health and fitness coach, you're, well, I say this with as if I'm absolute, but I'm sure there's cases where it's not, but I have trouble seeing how, if you're going to truly help someone achieve the results that they're looking for, you got to hit on nutrition. And this is, you know,

this is a fascinating thing we saw in our research. A lot of people would come into the industry. They start with the exercise certification. They're in for about a year or two. And then they're like, wait a second, this isn't working. I'm writing the programs, a person is doing the programs, they're seeing me a couple of times a week. And it sounds obvious to us, but it's not. They realize, oh, damn, there's this other thing. You know, people use the 80%. I don't know where, you know, 80% is nutrition. I'm not sure that's clinically validated anywhere.

I just know it's a lot. But then they figure out they got to go on the nutrition journey and do some sort of nutrition education. I would say definitely to maximize any component. I mean, like Andy on hearing even quoted a study where, you know, you can get stronger by simply lifting weights with very little look at nutrition. You can get stronger and then, and you can get, you can get the same hypertrophy from just eating protein. Those things can be separate, but to maximize it, I would 100% say you're correct. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. When you look at kind of the performance elements, a lot of the people who come to us, the most common people coming to us are looking to lose weight, change, change their physique in some, some, some some form or fashion feel better in some way um so i kind of my my answer is a bit biased in in in that direction sure um but any direction really though yeah exactly correct yeah yeah so eventually people are going to need to do a nutrition certification

and you know this is where this is where we play um this is where you know we we're we're world class this is our unique ability. And so to answer your question there is people kind of come in and then will want to do a nutrition certification. So that's kind of the first step. I'll just kind of go back through this is like understanding what is it you're going to do? How you plan on delivering it? What is it uniquely about you that you're going to do? How you plan on delivering it? What is it uniquely about you that you're going to do?

And then what are the tools? What are the resources I'm going to need to be able to effectively do this job, this career, this passion I have. And this kind of brings us into the, the certification. Yeah. And I go ahead. Sorry. Nope. You're up. Certification go. Yeah. Yeah. So what I was going to say is a little bit is I, I focus a lot on what makes things different. One of the, you know, as,

as, as a business leader, you're supposed to read business books. So I've read a bit, a lot of business books. I'm sure you all have have read, but there's one that's kind of less known that had a really significant effect on me as a business leader, which was called Understanding Michael Porter. And Michael Porter is kind of a key thought leader over the years in kind of business strategy. But what I really loved about it is it gave me words to describe this principle that I really believed in. The principle is this idea that the notion of competition is not about beating other people in the same game, but creating and offering a unique value for your customers.

So you're actually competing to be different, not competing to win. And so when you start making, you get to start making your own rules, you get to start to change how people think about the space. So PN didn't get into the meal planning game. We got into the how do I actually do this, the chain psychology game. And with a very clear emphasis on what are all the things that affect how you eat beyond the mind, such as, I mean, you guys be very familiar with this, how you're sleeping, how you manage stress, how you recover, how you're moving. And while it seems sort of obvious, how many people know or have an understanding how their sleep impacts their nutrition or vice versa? No, the people aren't asking about, Hey, uh, my, my, my sleep and my cravings. They're asking, you know, what's your macros? Yeah. What's my macro ratio. And this is, this is, this is an overly simple, uh, oversimplified example, but it's

illustrative of the depth of our specific insights. So having worked with well over 100,000 clients, we've got a very, very deep understanding of how do you actually help people change your behavior? And we've been able to take this and turn it into a system, an education program. And this allows us to say, hey, we've got unique insights. You can use these to meaningfully help your clients adopt healthy behaviors.

So as a coach coming into this industry to kind of bring it back here is this is where your focus wants to be. And there's a bunch of great certifications. But it's really in around how do I actually help my clients make progress? Yeah. Wait, can you outline some of the like more tangible tactics in that realm of behavior change? Some of the more tangible tactics. Let me see here. So when we step back, I can, Doug, but it's really dependent on the individual. And so we have a principle in our certification, kind of client-centered coaching, right?

Versus coach-centered coaching. It's not what I think you need or you should do. It's through our dialogue. And I develop a deep rapport, deep relationship with you to understand what needs to be unblocked, what's in the way. So that can be something related to sleep. That can be related something to stress that can be related something to nutrition, like these things may in fact be in the way of someone eating better. If they're sleeping really poorly, as you know, they're going to be much more hungry. They're going to have way more cravings. They're going to get a much better, higher physiological response of pleasure from when they eat. So you might step back like a tangible, as you said, what are some

of those things is helping people work on a sleep routine or a sleep program, something along those lines. Now, there's over, you know, there, there, there can be some very tactical things such as, you know, turning off your devices before, you know, an hour before you go to bed using blackout blinds, using an eight sleep, all these different sorts of things. But really, it's stepping back where the coach is identifying what's in the way. Some of our core habits for our personal nutrition coaching program are really focused in and around impulse control, craving control, things like eating slowly, which seems – I still have trouble with this today. It is like I love it. But eating slowly, eating to 80% full. This way of thinking about it as I'm turning on system two.

I'm turning on awareness for the things that in our lives we don't regularly do. Does that answer your question, Doug? I can go a little bit deeper. I can kind of bounce around a little bit, but that's, you know, that's, you know, that's some basic ones. Yeah. Like one of the, one of the things that actually prompted that question was, I remember I did that PN shirt, you know, 10 plus years ago now, but one of the things that I thought was really useful that I really should use more than I currently do, but I still use it on occasions. Like when you, when you dig into somebody's lifestyle and you're, you're brainstorming with them, what kind of the next domino should be that the next thing you should work on

the next focus as you develop it, you, you asked them like on a scale of one to 10, like how likely are you to be able to actually accomplish what we're doing right now? And if they don't score like a nine or a 10, then that means it's too difficult. Like they have to basically say like, I absolutely can do that. If they say like, ah, yeah, I think I could do like, I could do like a six or seven. You go, ah, let's change that a little bit to make it a little bit more likely for you to accomplish that. So I liked the, I liked scoring it like that, where you and the client both had a very, a very solid idea and, um, in a kind of quantifiable way that they were, uh,

highly likely to be able to accomplish the task that you have both planned together. Like little things like that. I thought were very good, uh, that I took away. Cause I already had a bachelor's and a master's in, in,

uh, kinesiology with a minor nutrition, blah, blah, blah. Like I, I'd read the nutrition stuff and I went, okay,

yeah, I, I did all that in college. Like, it sounds like normal nutrition stuff. Uh, and I'd read a ton of PN stuff before I even took the cert. Um, but the behavior change psychology side of it was the most novel and useful part of that certification in my opinion, and little tactics like that, uh, really went a long way for me throughout my career. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. I'm glad, I'm glad you highlighted that way. We have a foundation, you'll see a whole bunch of different principles from chain psychology we incorporate. Motivational interviewing being one of the

key methods that we use. And this comes right from motivational interviewing. I think I'm right on that. You know, it's very analogous to BJ Fogg's work on in around tiny habits. And so it's in the name itself. I had an opportunity to go out, go out to his place in around Napa Valley and kind of do one of his one of his workshops there. Absolutely outstanding if you have an opportunity to do it. But he's got something kind of motivation action line, which again, just kind of regular chart. Anything above the line is you kind of got motivation on one axis. You got action on the other. You got to stay under. It's almost like a curve coming down from top left to right. And you keep reducing the size of the action

until it's underneath the line. Otherwise, people will not be able to sustain it very similar to just a backwards way of saying, you know, what's your readiness to adopt this? Or what's your readiness for change? And nine out of 10. And this is probably the number one thing you can use as a coach is find something that somebody can do consistently and recognize when they continue to do it. We, when we were building one of our versions of our coaching program, we had an opportunity to talk to this coach from Equinox. He was one of their top coaches. And he was doing the, they were doing the presentation and people asked, you know, what's your secret? And he would sit back and simply say, no matter what, every workout, if it was totally brutal, whatever, I would always find a way to

highlight progress. Always, no matter how small it was, highlighting progress. So that combination of figuring out with the client something they feel like they can do repeatedly, sustainably, and then continuing to recognize it is a powerful, powerful combination. And we see from our million data points study, that for all the stuff, you know, we could go into every realm of science, physiology, biology, chemistry, whatever, that simple actions, repeated, lead to results. And it sounds absurd, but we found, we bucketed our clients into 0 to 25, 25 to 50, 50 to 75, 75 to 100 consistency.

Even 25 to 50 still got positive results. So if you were doing, just imagine doing the practice that you're working on 25% of the time, if you could go to a client and say, hey, now obviously that's not the goal, but if you can help a client get to 25% of the time, and you're recognizing it, that's going to only build momentum. And this is how you transform someone's life. Yeah. And I think that's a really good place to actually shift the conversation

to kind of the consumer side or the person looking to get coached and what they can look for in a coach. Because if you think about somebody showing up and doing 25% of the work and still getting very close to where their end goal is, um, one, it shows really how far an uneducated, maybe the general population is when it comes to just how to live a healthy life that a quarter of the time doing the right thing is going to get them significantly improve their, their health significantly. Um, but kind of along those lines, like where, where does a potential client start looking for a coach? Cause you know, we run

a program where there's a tons of tons of lab work and a super deep dive into the lifestyle and breaking down everything that you do so that we're managing stressors inside and out, outside and in. It might be a little much if today is day one. I can imagine like a stool sample isn't the thing that you're looking for if you're just starting to learn how to eat vegetables. So like, how does a client go find a coach that's actually able to meet them? I would have, I would even assume that tracking macros is way beyond what most people think about when it, when it comes to just getting healthier or, or even what they need. So where in this chaos does, does a client kind of like actually find a coach that's going to be able to guide them in the right direction? Yeah, that's a, that's a really, really good question. And my instinct is what will we have them? What kind of, what, what really does bubble up for me though, when you,

when you say that one is ultimately as a coach, we were kind of talking about what's going to make great coaches is like understanding and meeting clients where they're at, right? And by and large, the general population really just needs to, and bear with me, this is a gross overgeneralization, but I think it is applicable. If we see, or we could help the entire population just simply eat more fruits and vegetables, more lean protein, and less processed foods, we would see a massive impact on all-cause mortality, all-cause morbidity, like right across the board, our healthcare costs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

I say that because I'm not sure we need to do a DNA analysis to make a recommendation to eat more fruits and vegetables and more lean protein, right? And so from a client perspective, finding a coach, you're going to want to ask these questions around like, what is their belief? What is their methodology? What is their approach? And if they start saying to you, well, you should do X and you should do Y and you need to do this. And they're very militant. That's probably not going to be the right person for you. And it gives you a very clear picture that this person is going to be very coach centered, not client centered. And so that's really what you're looking for is somebody who's listening to what you want to accomplish and provides a system for how they want to accomplish it. Where do you go for that?

There are a bunch of really good coaching companies out there. And there's also a bunch that are, are, are not really good. And here lies, you know, here lies the challenge. Um, there I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to think about how to even think about this, how like what beyond saying, Hey, PN, we do that. Um, there, there are other people. I think there's things that you guys do very, very well. Like, uh, one of the explanation of everything in the courses, but it's starting people so small. And, you know, one thing I feel like I've learned, and maybe this adds a little context to your answer, but one thing that I've learned over the years is like, if somebody comes to me and says, Hey, can you help with my nutrition? And it's like a friend at a party,

no matter how annoying that is, like you do want, you're like, yeah, I can, you know, and like, what I used to do is just say, go do this. But what I do now is if I'm genuinely trying to help them is I just ask them as many questions as possible. And I feel like I've forgotten more steps along the way than I can remember. Because if you just like followed my training program and my nutrition, you would be doing a training and nutrition program specifically designed for a human being that has been in this game for 26 years and understands movement with no joint pain that has two kids and a business and my life. And it fits. But I don't know what your life looks like. I don't know what the constraints are. I don't know how we, we break through some of those things and eliminate them. Um, and, and I think one of the things that PN does so well, it's really like the tiny changes, the week by week additions to, to everything.

Um, and maybe it's the asking questions, but being able to like start a relationship with the coach and that you actually trust that, that is thinking more about you versus their system. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. I mean, this is not about accountability. This is not about your macros ratio. This is about care. Somebody who you have in your corner that cares about your progress and has the skills to help you unblock those things that get in the way as you're making progress and there's kind of a dynamic interplay between those things so as i step back and reflect is like you have a dialogue with someone if you felt like you're listened to to exactly what you were describing someone's asking you a lot of questions to understand um felt like you're listened to, to exactly what you were describing,

someone's asking you a lot of questions to understand, you're in the right direction for finding a coach. If they tell you, hey, here's what I'm going to do. This is what I did. If there's a lot of telling and not listening, probably I'd look somewhere else. I'd look somewhere else. Now, that's kind of more generalized. Now, if I were to get more specific, depending on what your very specific needs are as an individual, then obviously, I'm working with you guys. I'm working with rapid health optimization. And I'm willing, ready, willing, and able, Doug, to dive in to do all these things, all the different kinds of testing, all the different kinds of reporting. I have some very specific goals that I want to achieve, some very specific outcomes I want to achieve. Now, those are only outcomes. And just because I want them doesn't mean I'm going to cheat. I've got to practice. I've got to do the behaviors. That's

ultimately what we're focused on together. And this is where I sit back and say, if you're the type of person that is ready for this, highly disciplined, wants to make some significant changes, willing to commit the time, energy, and effort in your life. Programs like this are life-changing. It's been life-changing for me. We've talked about recording food. I'm CEO of PN. I've never done that in my entire life until working with you. And I have probably learned the most from that than any kind of activity I have done before. I've just never been a person that records my work. Now, with my lab background, I've done all different kinds of testing. And now you guys know there's testing analysis, et cetera, et cetera. But herein lies a problem. And when we look at all, I've got one of

the fancy rings that measure stuff, and we've all got different devices that are measuring all different kinds of things, and the glucose monitors. And I don't knock any of these things. I think it's really cool that people have ways to get data, personalized data on themselves. There is something to that when I feel like it's personalized to me, I feel more meaning, more connection, I have a higher likelihood to take action. The challenge is the recommendation layer for these, all these different devices is extremely poor. And I don't want to say that to knock it poor in as much as it's too generalized. It's not personalized. And border, you know, there's times when it could be useful, and times where it could be detrimental. Working with individuals, like the work that you're doing,

has been very special for me in that while I've done all the labs in my life, I've done all the DNA analysis, I lack in the area of kind of interpretation and recommendation. And this to me is where I see the fitness industry in general going, is we now have all the data, but nobody knows what the heck do I do with it? Where do I even begin? What's that really small thing to start? Because the list has now become massive of all the things that you could start doing. And this is where experts who can interpret this and make algorithms to turn this into recommendations that are personalized based on the individual life of the person going through the program

is so transformational, quite frankly. Yeah. When you say that the industry is moving in this direction for this hyper-personalized, completely comprehensive way of going about and companies that are trying to do this. Where do you see kind of the pitfalls? Because really there's like this big surge right now of like companies that are privatizing or they're doing blood work analysis, sending supplementation. And I can only imagine because that's so accessible to be able to doing blood work analysis, sending supplementation. And I can only imagine because that's so accessible to be able to get blood work from your regular doctor and then have Joe Schmoe, nutritionist on the side, even people that are like highly qualified, but they're doing this on a,

on a, with, with scaling in mind right off the bat versus expertise or, you know, these like, you know, focusing on specific results, I guess you could say. Do you see trouble in now all of a sudden an expansion of lab work being a thing without kind of any, I hate the idea of like regulation, but without prior expertise or a large enough database of work, people just immediately going into blood work. There's so many online nutrition courses, but that skillset and that leap from I provide macros and a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, so you're getting your micronutrients to now I'm analyzing labs. That's a giant leap for anybody that has ever tried to do that. You will understand that as a many year long process.

Is there problems with that because that's really becoming the next phase? I think it depends on what you would define as a problem. Yeah. So it's both, you know, there's opportunities there and certainly problems there. If I were to distill it down, I mean, very simply, you know, what are some of the problems is bad recommendations. Yeah. Stuff that could actually be detrimental to your health. But even if we didn't go that far like if people are making supplement recommendations uh food recommendations things like that that you know that's really starting to to to to push the line a little bit too too far people getting information and starting to understand and having access to getting that information about their um

their health i i think there are certainly a number of benefits to that. So that's why I say, now, where do the opportunities come in? The opportunities come in is, you know, Ray Dalio, find believable experts, right? Find out where they agree and disagree and try to understand the differences between it. So you can become informed yourself or work with them specifically. Yeah. And so I see I see some phenomenal opportunities there to really help personalize the recommendations that people get and not personalization for personalization sake, because that, that don't get me wrong. That's important. But there is, as I said, where you see this in the literature, a higher level of motivation, a higher likelihood that people will follow through on the tasks when it's more personalized. And then on top of that,

when you make it as something as intimate as your health, right? Like I see I'm at risk for something very detrimental death or pain or cancer, whatever it may be, right? As much as we can drive up the intrinsic motivation to take action, the better. It does concern me that all these companies are coming out and they focus on the scale first. And, you know, okay here here's what your your blood results are and here's the the the supplements that you you should take wow that that that's a big big leap i don't know your injury history i don't know your life history i don't know your

psychological state i don't know how active you are i don't know if you're traveling a lot. I don't know, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. And I'm already leaping to that. And you know, this isn't like something external to your body. Like this isn't necessarily like it, this isn't like making a workout and, you know, there's risks with the workout. So, but to me, this is like the equivalent of, oh, you've never squatted before. Let's throw 315 on the rack and just see how you balance. I totally agree. It's too far. It's going too far. And so starting with a handcrafted experience, figuring out all the pitfalls, figuring out all the ways that you're going to be able to go backwards and how you're going to actually help people make progress, understanding where you're

going to take scientific information and make it clinically relevant and actually applicable, and then figuring out how you're going to incorporate that into somebody's life. This, to me, is the only way to start this stuff yeah but unfortunately as you said you get a lot of vc back companies this is pretty sexy and it is great i mean it is great technology and like i said there are advantages to it but it's scale scale scale scale scale no no it's um this you're putting you're putting stuff in your body yeah you know i mean like we got this idea of scaling and putting stuff in your body yeah yeah i uh yeah it's it's a really yeah really um kind of specific example to my my family um you know my wife and i have both gone through

dan's protocol and uh her sister was like hey can you send me some of those supplements that you did for your gut health? And I was like, do not send that. Like, it seems like we're just sending over some sort of supplement as if it's pre-workout, but we're, we're doing like real work inside your gut right now. That is not some like broad supplementation that you should be just yeah go take that no big deal like you can really jack somebody up because it's super specific to your physiology versus like yeah just go uh whey protein's good go have it go have creatine it's they're very very different um supplements and and very different goals for each thing. Yep. Yep. I think people, the, the, just the, the coaching side of it, I think, um, as coaches, as people that run

businesses, it's very easy to play like just one degree outside of your actual, uh, comfort zone. Like you're, you're, you're telling people you can do things, you trust yourself enough, but like, are you really there? And I think that's where this, this new cool thing of being able to read blood work or being able to help people with labs kind of has like some, some real gray area to it of making sure you're working with somebody that's very qualified to do it. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think the other, I mean, the other area we were talking about, you know, what makes a great coach or what should I look like and look for in a coach is the idea of experimentation. Right. Can your coach kind of work with you and do they have a path for you to experiment? And how are you kind of collecting and understanding what data you're going to use to determine what the markers

are that you're going to make any changes are but um in order to experiment i think there's a prerequisite level of expertise uh required yeah um and you know in this case here you know hey here's some you know here's some probiotics for blah blah blah it generalized i i don't know how much experimentation you have you have you don't know any of the variables like unless you know the variables how the hell are you going to do any kind of an experiment yeah um like you don't know what's going on in that person's life what else are they eating so on so like all i mean and then that's getting really specific into experimentation but i think it uh i think it applies even more broadly.

And wrapping. Oh, go ahead. Sorry. No, no, no. I was just going to say the only, I do think about like where, where might it work? You know, what, what could we get together around or line up on? Because there is, as I said, there's some positive that can kind of come out of the access to these new testing modalities that people have available to. If we could limit it to some very, very straightforward things like fish oil, multivitamin, things that we know that are significant,

low risk of harm, and high potential benefit, and people are lacking, generally speaking, on a population basis. If we could limit it to that, if you could connect some of that and just get people started there, that might be one way to think about this. But as we talked about, anything beyond that, I think is just going too far. Yeah. Um, kind of wrapping it all together too, like, uh, the entry point for the clients, the entry point for a coach, the entry point into these higher level things. Um, I feel like a lot of it is like really go practice and do the work of the basics, the things that you can like really trust yourself on, because there's overwhelming evidence that eating a wide variety of fruits and vegetables and

getting enough protein is going to radically change your life. And if you're a coach, do programs that give you the knowledge to be able to do that so that everybody can benefit from very, very good knowledge that gets them, you know, inside 85, 90% the way there and build those habits. And if you still can't get to peak performance or whatever your goal is, then you got to go find somebody that's got ninja skills like Dan Garner that can really get in and like do the work that very few people on this planet can do. He might be a witch.

He's a ninja, man. I got to tell you, going through this with Dan and when he was walking through all the clinical studies in the video and showing where even the reference ranges for the labs were off relative to the recommendations for intervention, it was mind-blowing for me. It was absolutely mind-blowing for me. And so for me, it is one of my like figure out who not how, like, I'm not going to, like, I do enjoy this stuff. I'm going to dive down the rabbit hole and some of this stuff,

but ultimately there there's no point if you really, really want to get to that fundamental improvement, whether it's performance health and wellbeing your fitness level, your physique, whatever, like for, for us, it's, it was like, we had this thing at PN. Don't buy the book, get the guy or get the gal. That wrote it. Yeah, exactly. Get them, get them, have them come in, consult, so on and so forth. Right. That's that's what you do.

No one has time to go down the Dan Garner. I don't have enough time left in my life. One subject, one hour. Well, get after it. And even if you could be the Dan Garner of X, you can't be the Dan Garner of 10 categories.

No, no, not at all. There's just not enough time in the day to do that much studying and that much research or just to like, just to fill your brain with that much information. Just unrealistic. Yeah. Yeah.

Where is he? Dan? He's, uh, he's out with Mark Bell right now. They're doing a whole bunch of stuff. He's training for the Boston marathon. Oh yeah.

He's doing all, he's doing basically everything we do at rapid inside. Uh, he's just specifically coaching him. Um, TJ, it's been a pleasure, dude.

Not just today, uh, last nine, 10 months, dude. Not just today, last nine, 10 months, however long we've been doing this now, hanging out each week and getting things dialed in, just awesome conversations all the time. So I appreciate it. Where can people find you and PN? Yeah, well, first, thanks. I really appreciate you guys having me on. It's as silly as it might sound, I feel honored. You know, you guys are both we're colleagues and you're my coaches. And so when your coaches kind of ask you, hey, we want to learn something from you. That's that feels great. That feels great. People can find us www.precisionnutrition.com and tag me if people did have questions or anything along those lines.

You can get me at Tim at precisionnutrition persistent nutrition.com fantastic not even on social media well i have i have social media accounts but you'll see that there's no posts yeah i love it good for you that is a that's a boss right there if you can like have a company and you're not on social media that's when you've made it well you kind of my goal yeah you kind of got it like you got it like i i do like to put some stuff up that that wasn't entirely true because i do post some of the i like repost some of the stuff from pian on my my linkedin account instagram i don't i i don't have anything there and and and facebook i really don't have anything there. Good for you. Yeah. That's a young person's game.

At least it is for me. I got two sons that probably be far better than that than me. They play the game. That's my goal is not social media. Travis Bash. Masterly Duck. There he is. Find him on Instagram.

Masterly. Masterly Performance. Go to Twitter at Masterly. Yes. Doug Larson. You bet. Master League performance. Go to Twitter at Master League. Yes. Doug Larson. You bet. Yeah, similar boat.

I have not been posting on social media as much as I probably should given I run a virtual company, but I am on social media, specifically Instagram at Douglas E. Larson and I will pair it with what Anders

has already said. TJ, it's been a pleasure being with you every week for the last nine months or so. Great conversations and just have really enjoyed having you as a client and have enjoyed learning from you as well along the way. So appreciate you coming on the show today. Cool. Awesome.

I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. Make sure you get over to RapidHealthReport.com. That is where you can see Dan Garner and Dr. Andy Galpin dig into the lab's lifestyle and performance optimization plans to get you where you need to go over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.