Barbell Shrugged - Will the Gym Industry Survive Covid-19? w/ Sal Di Stefano, Anders Varner, and Doug Larson- Barbell Shrugged - Barbell Shrugged #465

Episode Date: May 6, 2020

In today’s episode the crew discusses:   Rules and regulations for reopening gyms  How will the gym experience look when you work out Will CrossFit gyms survive the social distancing  What happens when big box gym chains go bankrupt What is the role of coaches in educating on health post Covid-19 Best strategies for building an online business Will most people stay home or will they return to gyms as they did before And more…   Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Sal Di Stefano in Instagram   ————————————————   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   Paleo Valley  - Save 15% at http://paleovalley.com/shrugged   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   Purchase our favorite Protein, PreWOD, PostWOD, and Amino Acids here and use code “Shrugged” to save 20% on your order: https://bit.ly/2K2Qlq4    Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://bit.ly/3b6GZFj Save 5% using the coupon code “Shrugged” http://magbreakthrough.com/shrugged to get a 10% discount with coupon code SHRUGGED10.

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I'm Anders Varner. Doug Larson's also here. We're joined by Sal DeStefano. Let's get into the show. I've been trying to have this. Not trying. I've been having it with tons of my friends. I have gym owners around here. And like I said, it's like super suburbs. So they are legitimately like very local boutique operations. and will be asking for forgiveness versus asking for permission. And I've opened business back up in a socially distanced manner.

And they ask me if I think they're doing it right. I'm like, I should not tell you anything. But you're probably the only person that I really know that has a ton of experience in the corporate gym, 24 hour fitness space. And I would love to know what you think is going to happen to some of those businesses. I mean, 24 hour fitness being in bankruptcy, bankruptcy sounds terrifying to me as far as like a,

an overall health system is concerned. Yeah. So we actually did a show on this. And what we did is I seeked out industry leaders in different segments of the fitness, the brick and mortar fitness space. So what I tried to do is I wanted to find somebody that represented country club type gyms. So that's one segment, right? The big hundred thousand plus square foot facilities that offer, you know, workout facilities, but also have you know, high service, high cost, low volume model, you know, where you only work out with a personal trainer. I wanted to talk to somebody who represented the group exercise model, Orange Theory being one of the fastest growing ones. So I interviewed Brendan Ayan-Badeja, who owns about 50 locations, just to get his take. We talked to Jason Kalipa. You guys know who he is. He owns

many, you know, CrossFit type gyms. And then we talked to Mark Mastroff, who's, you know, widely considered to be the godfather of the modern brick-and-mortar business of gyms. He was the founder of 24 Fitness, and now he heads Fitness Holdings Worldwide, which has their hands in thousands of different types of gyms. Some of them are big box like Crunch, UFC gyms, and there's other smaller type boxes like Yoga Works and that kind of stuff. And so I wanted to kind of get their take and hear what they had to say.

And really, if you look at the two things that threaten, that really pose a big risk to the gym industry, because I believe that the gym industry is going to be among the hardest hit from the pandemic. It's the perfect storm. You have many models that rely on people working out together, close to each other, and they share equipment. So that right there makes it a perfect target for legislators and for fear, you know, for people who are- Body fluids.

Yeah, all that, right? So it's kind of a target for both. Right. Like if you're scared, you think one of the first places you think you don't want to go is a gym. And then if you're a legislator, you're like, that's a great place to regulate. Because again, what I just said, and then you look at a lot of these models, not only are they dependent on that, but like the big box gyms. You know, when I started at 24 Hour Fitness back in 1997, it was the heyday of that company. That's when the company was really crushing and taking off. They had just merged with Ray Wilson's Family Fitness. They were 24 Hour Nautilus. Then they became 24 Hour Fitness when they did the merger. And really the idea was to provide really good value, but lots of great service to really have good gyms.

And so back then, we're talking the late 90s, okay? If you wanted an all club membership that gave you access to 170 locations, back then it would have cost you something like $350 to join and then you would have paid about $45 a month. Now, today, that sounds extremely expensive for that kind of a membership. And the reason that that seems so expensive is they started to compete with each other and it kind of became a race to the bottom. Who could charge the least amount for their gyms? And then they started to rely more and more on a model that, that where you had people paying cheap dues and they either show up or they don't. And it kind of created this weird model where the people who use your gyms

the most were actually costing you money. You know, if you have your hardcore gym fanatics paying you 15 bucks a month and they're coming in, you know, five days a week and using up all your equipment, they're actually costing you money. The ones that pay 15 bucks a month that, you know, show up for two or three months out of the year. Um, those are the ones you make money off of. And that's what ended up happening in 20 and Mark Masteroff left 24. The company kind of took a shit. I left the company because I could see that the writing was on the wall and you, you had, you know, these gyms that were just charging cheap, you know, service went out the window. They stopped investing heavily in things like personal training and, you know, and that kind of stuff.

And a lot of models kind of took on that, you know, that type of, you know, model of how to build a business. I think that that's going to be screwed. I think, you know, you have people who are, you know you know they think 25 a month is too much to pay for a gym membership well now you're going to have restrictions potential restrictions from government local and by the way this makes it real hard you have federal government state government local governments and all of them could be different, right? So if you own 300 locations, you have no idea. That's what a nightmare, right, to manage. But what we're probably going to see, which I think this is pretty reasonable,

is you're probably going to see regulations that say something like, equipment must be six foot or 10 feet away from each other. They're probably going to say, you're only allowed this many people per square foot in your gym away from each other. They're probably going to say, you're only allowed this many people per square foot in your gym at any given moment. So whatever that number is, right? Probably going to reduce their traffic, their high traffic times, at least down by two thirds, at least. You're probably going to see prime time be limited to about one third of what it was before. So how are they going to do that? They're going to have to tell people,

you can't come in right now, we've hit capacity or sign up for specific times to work out. And then how are they going to stay profitable? They're going to have to charge more. Well, also, I wanted to jump in so many times. One of the things about that model where you're profitable only when people don't show up, and then you're forced to put a pause on, call it roughly 10,000 memberships at your facility. If you own multiple studio or multiple gyms, whatever that number is, call it 10,000. And now say only a thousand of them show up, but you're charging for all 10,000 that covers your overhead that covers your trainer costs. Are they able to go in and just restart all 10,000 memberships? Or is

there an email that's going out saying, would you like to continue this membership? Because that would destroy the revenue model that they're already built off of. Because now you've got 9,000 people saying, nah, I never used it to begin with, and now gyms are losing 80%, 90% of their revenue because nobody wants to restart their membership under such regulations. They already weren't using it. It just, how does the model even continue? Especially when you have that level of overhead on the building that size. It's extremely vulnerable to any disruption. And

this is the, by far, during the entire history of the fitness gym space, this is by far the biggest disruption that's ever happened. Nothing's ever come close. I mean, I talked to Mastroff about SARS because, remember, SARS was a big thing in Asia for a second, and he had gyms in Asia. And that's what they did. They had to allow a certain amount of people in or whatever, but SARS didn't become widespread.

It wasn't this global phenomenon. And within three or four months, they were able to reopen business as usual. And he said they noticed the surge. They had a surge of people coming back when that happened. But I don't see this going away that quickly. And I don't think they're going to last a year of doing this before things go back to normal. And you're right. These people paying $15 a month, all they need is a reminder that they're paying $15 a month. past a year of doing this before things go back to normal. And you're right. You know,

these people paying 15 bucks a month, all they need is a reminder that they're paying 15 bucks a month for that. And you're going to see a huge drop off. So I think they're going to lose a lot of members than the ones that if they want to keep the doors open, they're going to have to charge more. So now you have to tell people it's 70 bucks a month to work out, or maybe it's, maybe it's 70 bucks a month to work out at maybe it's maybe it's 70 bucks a month to work out at this time and then these other times are cheaper i don't know yeah but it completely changes the model they're not even gonna be able to fit the equipment that they have in there if they space everything out where are they gonna put it yeah what do you think happens in like we've seen this politically um where you go and take out the leader or or you go take out the head person at the drug cartel,

and now there's this vacuum, and now you've got 50 people that were just under the leader, all vying for the leadership role. And right now, we've got 24-hour fitness that has thousands of locations globally, and they're in financial trouble. But if we lose that leader, this vacuum's created and it's kind of chaos. Like where does somebody that is low income or doesn't have the resources to be able to go to a CrossFit gym or hire a personal trainer,

where do all those people filter to if there isn't a 24-hour fitness or like a Gold's Gym and EOS Fitness? And there's this big hole at the top of the market where it needs to be filled by somebody. It creates a ton of chaos. Yeah, I don't think the demand for fitness is going to go down, but the models are going to totally change. So what's going to happen is because the market signals are going to show, oh, I can't pay 20 bucks a month for a membership anymore. And plus I'm a little afraid you're going to see people move to different ways of working out. We've already seen right now, as we speak, it's being reported that there's a 600% increase in at-home gym

equipment sales. In fact, if you try to buy at-home equipment, you're good luck trying to find some. And I've seen on Craigslist dumbbells, a pair of dumbbells being sold for 150 bucks is the norm. So what you're going to probably see is more people working at home. For the first time in my entire career, I'm seeing people build their own at-home gym equipment. I've never seen that before in math. I'm seeing that like crazy now. I think the high-service, high-dollar, low-volume gym models are going to be the most resilient. So, like, you know, we talked to Scott who owns Red Dot Fitness. It's a local personal training studio here in San Jose, and it's a very successful

one. And he lost six members. That's it. Now, he only lost six members because they all have such a close connection to their trainers. So there's tons of value. They're already willing to spend a lot more personal training is, you know, 10 times more expensive than having a gym membership. They're willing to pay more. And his model, it's already closer to what the regulations are going to ask for. So they're going to ask for, you know, 10 feet apart and only so many people in the studio at one time. His model already kind of follows that, you know, at least much closer than a big gym. So I think those high service, high dollar, low volume fitness facilities are probably going to grow. And what you're probably going to see is the hardcore

fitness fanatics with expendable income will spend more money for the high level of service. And the people who don't want to spend a ton of money are going to do more at home workouts. The, the, the segment I think that's going to get the hit the hardest is any type of a group workout model. I think they're screwed.

They're totally screwed because the, the, the, what they're going to require in terms of distancing, it's just not going to make it work unless you, you know, triple your prices. That's going to be a very difficult one to maintain during this period of distancing. It's just not going to make it work unless you triple your prices. That's going to be a very difficult one to maintain during this period of time.

For the people that actually survive this, for the small gyms, like if you have a CrossFit gym and you're able to make it a couple of months before you get some members back in your doors and you have a little bit of cash flow. In the meantime, if you've started an online component, like everyone that I know that has added an online component to their physical location, they end up making almost as much money online as they do at the physical location, if not more. In our case, we end up making a bunch more online compared to what our gym was making. And then the gym just ends up being like a place to hang out and a place like to, you treat it like a laboratory of sorts where you're practicing new ideas and brainstorming and training people in person, but you're making the majority of your money online. All the people that now have to make

money online that eventually will get their physical locations back, but now they have the online component as well. I think those people, whoever establishes a good online presence is going to be able to survive the best even once their gym comes back online because they're going to have to rely for a long time on the online component to keep the physical location alive. Well, that seems to be a common direction for a lot of fitness people is to move online. But you know, that's an interesting one. You know, you said something that was interesting to me. You said a lot of people are making as much or more than they did with the brick and mortar locations, which that also hints to the fact that we're probably going to see some big shifts and maybe not go back to the way we were. I mean, if you

own a box and you go online, you start making as much money, but you don't have to manage a facility. You don't have to manage equipment. Why would you go back? I'm sure a lot of people would think to themselves, well, I don't want to go back. Then there's this other thing that you want to consider. You know, keeping one foot in each is going to be very difficult. It's, you know, and I look, I run an online business and I've also run brick and mortar gyms, two completely different monsters, two different, you know, forms of competition, different ways of attracting members

and bringing value. What's that space going to look like? I'm not sure. But yeah, if you're, if you go online and you're doing as good as you were before, that is a pretty strong, unless you just love the brick and mortar and you want to just go back to it and that's your passion.

I totally understand that. But if you're making as much or more already going online, I mean, for me, I would see that as a very strong signal. Like, okay, this is where I'm going to be and this is where I'm going to stay because I'm already doing as good as I was doing before. And we still have no idea what the new laws and regulations are going to look like or how consumer behaviors are going to shift and how long they're going to be different. You know, are people going to, how long are they going to

be afraid for? And will they, you know, how long is it going to take for things to get back to, you know, quote unquote normal? Yeah. When you start to look at... Actually, on a personal note, the thing I'm most concerned about for me as an individual is that jujitsu is screwed totally jujitsu is totally screwed it's my favorite thing to do i've have buddies that own jujitsu gyms and they are just absolutely screwed yep i'll wrestle you my wife won't do it she won't do jiu-jitsu with me i'm stuck at home trying to that's why you have five years she just jumped guard that's right yeah she can jump guard anytime hey yeah when my boys get a little older it'll be it'll be easier to do that but right now i'm like man what am i gonna do yeah group group classes are gonna have the toughest time i mean you know orange theory

locations we talked to our friend brendan and he know, he owns a lot of those locations and he was telling me like, oh yeah, we might have to space people out. I mean, Orange Theory is very successful, extremely profitable, one of the fastest growing fitness chains of all time, but they built their model on maximizing every square foot of their facility, squeezing as many people as they can in an efficient manner, switching out and trading equipment with people. Like that model, you're going to have to totally change it. And then consider this. When you go to the gym, okay, people, at least people who are consistent, they go to the gym and they love the environment they walk

in i left my stress at the door i'm by i got my headphones on i'm doing my workout this is a great place i zone now you're gonna walk into a gym everyone's wearing a mask maybe they're gonna take your temperature walking in equipment spaced out you're in your bubble people are waiting to wipe your shit down right when you're done that doesn't seem like a it's such a different environment it's almost like a stressful environment, maybe an anxious one. I don't see people wanting to go to that unless you're hardcore, at least not for a while, at least not until people calm down. So I, and I don't know very many fitness companies and gyms that can survive two months without revenue, let alone six months or eight months.

You know, most gym businesses run on very thin margins. So this is going to be a very interesting situation. You bring up a really interesting point about like the actual gym experience. And we're at this really interesting turning point where the idea of health needs to be talked about way more than it already is. Like being healthy is the best way to handle and deal with any sickness that will be coming your way or pathogens, whatever it is, you need to be as

healthy as possible to give yourself the best possible chance to survive and stay healthy. And the people that are being affected by this the most are not that healthy. And the way that we get them healthy is to get them into gyms and to get them to coaches and to get them to trainers and to make the process as easy as possible. And now you put up these systems at gyms that make it incredibly difficult for somebody to be able to come in and have a quality experience where it's fun, engaging, and they want to come back. That's a massive structural problem to the healthcare in our country. Yeah. When you look at New York's data, so across the world, what we're finding is something like between 97 to 99% of deaths due to the current pandemic, people who died also had other underlying illnesses or comorbidities.

Okay. So the vast, vast, vast majority of deaths, people had some type of a, of a, of a comorbidity that made them vulnerable to dying from the current virus. Well,

the number one comorbidity in New York was obesity. So people who were obese or had obesity related diseases, their odds of succumbing to the symptoms of this virus were far higher, right? There was another article I read in, this was in the scientific journal that talks about how exercise primes the body to release certain natural chemicals that seem to fight the virus very strongly. So being fit and healthy is one of the best things you could do for, like you said, for anything, but especially for this one. So, you know, it's important. It's important that we stay fit and healthy. It's also important for us mentally. I don't think the demand to be fit is going to go down. I think everybody's going to know that, especially when the news comes out that being overweight is a number one cause of death from the COVID pandemic.

I don't see the models, though, staying the same. That's the only thing. It's going to change. If you own an at-home gym equipment company right now, you're going to be crushing for a little while. That would be my guess. Go hang out with our friends at PRX. They have the greatest setup of all time. Oh, we work with them too. Oh my God. They're backlogged. So many people are going over there.

It's crazy. Oh my God. I love it so much. I want to call them and just be like, I have like $20. Can I just invest in one one hundredth of your business right now? Just give me like the tiniest little piece. I just want to be a part of the ride well when one company give me the high to go with it if you're looking to invest in a public company that might benefit from this something like peloton that's where i would look um i know they just had the largest class that they've ever had uh ever recently those digital at you know you know those tech companies that are delivering fitness to your house or whatever, I see those doing pretty well too. Trust me.

I know Peloton's kicking ass because our boy Travis Mash, who squatted 800 and was strongest man in the world, finds himself on a stationary bike in the morning riding up hills with people. That's like the biggest turnaround in the world. Peloton's selling to that guy. They're crushing it. That's like the biggest turnaround in the world. Peloton selling to that guy. They're crushing it. That's hilarious. What? Well, if the, say we have this, this giant rush coming to, to market now, and you've got obesity becomes, is the number one target for, you know, these viruses, and now our government turns its bullseye, aims straight at obesity,

and that's we're really going to target this and make a big push. Without a 24-hour fitness-type gym, what kind of models are out there or are we accessible to people that probably don't have the income to be able to pay for something that is a high-end personal training the relationships and inside the gym matters a lot yet we're not really

allowed to build those how do we create some sort of system or structure in which that matters home gyms are expensive yeah and as soon as you get the base level you just want add-ons it's a it's a like you know there isn't like a really cheap solution right now without 24-hour fitness type gyms yeah i think you'll see um sales of bands and maybe so single pair of dumbbells kettlebell you know physio balls those will go through the roof. You'll probably see more people do outdoor exercise, old school type stuff, body weight exercise. And then people who have expendable income, fitness is going to be just more expensive than it used to be. And you're going to see more of these high service kind of boutique type facilities where you go in and you're in there with, you know, four other people with your trainers and it's just you guys working out. I think that's

what it might look like for a little while. Although, you know, I will say this. I mean, if a lot of these gyms close down, you're probably going to see equipment. You're going to see a lot of fire sale on a lot of their equipment, which might help. Can't wait. I need a rower. What do you think the role of me and you and Doug? Like, I feel like in a way, like, do we, do we do a good enough job in our industry telling somebody or reaching somebody that's obese and giving them the tools to just get started. Um, instead of maybe not instead of, but when you, when you scroll through social media, where so many people are going to find fitness or find inspiration for fitness, and we're all fighting for like, what seems to be like the top one, one hundredth of a percent of

coolness. And we train the most elite athletes and you know this is my athletic background so I'm more qualified and I've fallen into this trap hardcore and I this process of being in the house and kind of assessing just how I talk to people and try and relate to people I I believe I have had a really big shift in like, man, maybe trying to be the coolest isn't the best way to go. If we have an audience, maybe our goal really should be to help as many people as possible, including the very underserved, kind of obese, the population that doesn't wake up every morning thinking, how do I get stronger? But how do we, how do we get information and education and, you know,

motivation, inspiration to get more people moving the right direction? Because it's not the healthy people right now that are the problem. It's, it's getting more people healthy is the problem. It's getting more people healthy is the problem. Yeah, I think, so I'll speak just for myself and what we do. You know, our goal is the same as it was when we started Mind Pump, and it's the same as it was when I first got into fitness. It's how do I provide as much value as I possibly can? How do I help people feel good and make changes in their lives that they want to make that will improve their health and their well-being? And now the context changes around that, right? So, you know, now we're in this pandemic and, you know, stuff's going on. So, now we're doing episodes about, you know, working out at home and how to, you know, progressively overload your body if you don't have weights and breaking your workouts up into smaller workouts throughout the day because that helps create structure with your day.

And, you know, it makes you feel better throughout the day. And it seems to be more effective for when you're stuck at home and, you know, we're trying to bring, you know, information to fitness professionals about how to continue to work in this business and support themselves with the changing regulations. And that's why we did that show with those fitness leaders. I think it's the same as it's always been. And I'll say this, if you have a business, you know, a fitness business, you know, and you're seeing it right now, the resilient gyms and the resilient fitness businesses are the ones that have always provided the most value to the people that they have. And I think when you have social media, I think you forget that

you try and look for, you know, if you have an online business, which I think online fitness is going to blow up even more. It's already has been growing, but online coaching, that kind of stuff, we kind of get trapped in the whole, like how many followers I can get, how many people I can, how many eyes I can get on myself, which is the totally the wrong strategy. It's a failing strategy. One out of a million of, of, of people who do that are going to do well. Everybody else is not going to do well because you're not providing tons of value. You're just trying to get lots of eyes on you. And I look at it this way. Like if I owned a small store on the corner of whatever street, and I saw a hundred people in front of me, I mean, I would treat every single person, uh, tremendous value. That's a, that's a real person right in

front of me that can provide. But if I have a hundred followers on Instagram, people think, oh, it's only 100 followers. It's not a big deal. What's the difference? So I think you can build a very successful business online with just thousands, just a few thousand people, maybe even a thousand, depending on your model. A thousand people who really find value in what you say, who really think that you are providing them with great information, who want to pay you for more of that information, a thousand followers is a six-figure business or more. So I think that's what we need to look at. And so, you know, the goal is, as always was, how do we look at the people that we have? How do we give them as much good value as possible how do i communicate in ways that

effectively gets them to change behaviors in in positive ways um how do i move them along this process and then you know if we do a good enough job i'm sure they'll drive more people to us and we'll grow which is what's happened and just stay on that path so that hasn't changed the context has changed and so we're just trying to figure out how to continue doing that as the world kind of changes. We're going to take a quick break to thank our sponsors at Organifi. As always, we love Organifi. You love Organifi. Three years running, you've been digging the red drink, the gold drink, and my favorite.

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free at the end you will automatically get access to your unique coupon code to claim your free bottle this is limited to one per household this offer is only available at p3om.com forward slash shrugged free. Let's get back to the show. When we step outside of the gym, I actually talked to our mutual friend, Mr. Joe DeSena, last week. And you see a lot of these, like Spartan specifically, where's obstacle course racing? Like a lot of these offshoots of, you know, lifting weights, but very much in the fitness business. Where does a lot of that stuff go?

Because they are not going to get 10,000 people to Tahoe in four months. No. What am I going to do? What about me? I want to go to Tahoe. Yeah. No, you're not going to. I mean, look, we are social creatures.

We've got got we've survived pandemics in the past in terrible things and we once we start to feel safe i mean we have to be around each other this is just the way yeah i mean it's considered a cruel and unusual punishment to isolate a prisoner okay that just isolating somebody is is considered so bad that if you're caught doing it in war then you might be you know in war, then you might be held in front of a trial for war crimes. That's how bad it is. We are social creatures. At some point, we're going to be coming back around and we'll all be around each other. and until legislators feel the pressure from us to change certain things,

all these big social gathering type businesses and behaviors are not going to, they're gone. I mean, you're not going to go to an arena and listen to a concert until people feel really safe doing it and until legislators, you know, pass laws that make it okay. So until that happens, it will get back to, we will go back to that. That's just human nature. But it might take just long enough to crush a lot of companies. And what are we finding already? What, you know, the country's been essentially shut down for what,

six weeks or something like that? Five, six, seven weeks? Yeah. Businesses shutting down. They didn't have enough savings and they were so leveraged that they could not survive six weeks of no income. What do you think is going to happen in another two months? So it's going to be a, again, I think we're going to see some very interesting change. I think certain bubbles are popping. I think the education bubble is finally going to, I think there's gonna be some permanent changes to education that needed to be done anyway. Yeah. You know, I send my kids to private school, right? So I spend a lot of money to have them go get, you know, what I consider to be a better education than the public schools that I belong to.

But am I going to keep paying for a private school education if it's all online? If next year they say you can't come back, you got to go online. I'm not going to spend that much for online education. I'm going to look at competitors and see what I can find. And I think you're going to see that across the board with education. How many companies just told or were like questioning like, oh, maybe we should have more people working from home. And they're like, ah, you know, I don't really know if we should give them that much freedom yet. It might be hard to transition. And then 24 hours, you were a 100% teleworking situation. They eliminated the SAT.

College went online. You just took millions of people and said, go home. And the whole system basically kept going. Like, that's an insane thing to think that all of these like big systems and structures that we thought were just in place, they were, these were fixed. They were never going anywhere.

And then all of a sudden, boom. Yeah. Well, like education, especially higher education is a racket in many cases anyway. I mean, you're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on tuition in,

in, in costs to have, you know, you-dollar stadiums and gyms and kitchens and all stuff. And, of course, government, you know, makes it easier and easier and easier to borrow money because kids are led to believe that that's the only way to succeed. So the cost has just exploded. And that's about to burst. I mean, there's no reason to spend three hundred dollars on a textbook you know nowadays it doesn't make any sense it's all so if they go and if let's just say this i guarantee that their admissions are already

plummeting because they're already telling kids that you have to do this all online what do you think is going to happen if they do that another year i mean no way people are going to spend money you know 30 40 50 000 a going to spend money, you know, 30, 40, $50,000 a year to do to attend, you know, an online online classes when they could just do it through competitor, you know, courses that deliver, you know, similar information. There's no way. So I think a lot of things are going to change permanently. Yeah. You guys are a little bit closer to San Francisco than I am out here in beautiful Raleigh, North Carolina. Have you seen anything kind of coming through your office or heard anything on like the virtual reality,

augmented reality? Last time Doug and I were, we went to USF, University of San Francisco, and Doug was doing boxing matches in virtual reality. He got his heart rate super high and he knocked the guy out. Wow. And it was so cool. Have you guys seen anything come through that you just looked at and you were like, oh my God, that's the future? No, we, I mean,

probably same stuff that you've heard. I think that's going to be very interesting when that becomes really realistic. I'm worried about VR porn. I think that'll screw everybody over a little bit. That might change society enough to cause it to collapse i agree i will stay in this chair forever yeah exactly andrews has voluntarily isolated himself from everything yeah yeah i think augmented reality has some

so much more potential over virtual reality yeah Like the virtual reality thing, it sounds so cool, but nobody I know that has a virtual reality headset of any kind uses it on a regular basis. Like not even like on a weekly basis, let alone a daily basis. Like as opposed to cell phones where like you just, they're just in your hand constantly every day. Like you just can't live without it. I feel like the augmented reality, once that gets good good enough will actually be much more disruptive than virtual reality

if you can have your trainer just standing next to you telling you what to do and in augmented reality where the majority of the room is the exact same but you just have this new person there this this hologram of a trainer and that person can actually give you feedback and they can see what you're doing like i feel like that's that's available, that'll be a game changer. I agree. Until virtual reality becomes indistinguishable from reality and then that'll definitely take over. But I agree with you.

I think augmented reality is what, that's where we're going to see the next big shift in how we do certain things. VR is still VR. You know you're in it. It doesn't feel real. And so it's not really a replacement for reality. When it does get to that point though, that's when we're going to

see some interesting things happen, I think. I think a lot of the fitness industry too, and maybe this is just because we've been in the game so long that you start to realize like, okay, the sets and reps probably don't matter as much as just the behavioral lifestyle adjustments that you make for long-term success. Do you feel like a lot of that is, you know, the behavioral patterns of people and mental health, those are going to really start taking the forefront of the conversation instead of just the physical side of things? If depression, people being in their house right now, if we're losing touch with the relationships, does that become a much bigger conversation as this gets longer and longer? You know, I think, I mean, maybe. The problem is that conversation is a longer, deeper one, and it requires somebody who wants to listen to, I mean, when you're telling someone, you know, work out, you know, hard with this new class and take this pill and you'll lose, you know, your weight in 60 days. That's an easy message to deliver. It's a harder one to say, hey, we're going to

have to fundamentally change the way you live forever. That's a very difficult conversation. It requires more skill. I think the fitness space can move in that direction. I hope it does because that's really what people need to hear. The reason why I like podcasts so much is because it's long form. I can discuss these complex conversations over an hour or two hour episode. It's not a small, I can't talk about how to change your nutrition to, you know, in a long term way to, to, you know, be lean, fit and healthy. I can't do that in a, you know, a 30 second commercial or ad or whatever. It's going to take conversation and it's also going

to take slow and consistent, steady self-work. So I would like to see it move in that direction, but it's too easy to sell a product by hype, motivation, excitement, and by tapping into people's trigger points like you're too fat, you're too skinny, you're too unattractive, whatever. One thing that we try to do here is we try to fight fire with fire. So we'll use some of those tactics to get people's attention, but then we'll try to deliver the right message. And it seems to be, it seems to be working because there is a few, there are some things to learn from the marketers. They know how to get attention really, really well. And so you got to kind of look at them and say, okay, how do we, how do how to get attention really, really well. And so you got to kind of look at them and say, okay, how do we do what they do, but do it in the right way so that we can win

this, you know, this information battle. Yeah. You're always telling the line of getting someone's attention and at the same time not being clickbait. Right. Right. Exactly. You want to get their attention and then you want to, you know, one, I'll tell you, and you guys, you know, worked with people for a while too. You know, Justin, Adam and myself trained people, everyday regular people for over two decades before really, really passionate about actually helping them, one thing that you start to learn is that, you know, how you communicate is as important and more important than what you're trying to communicate. So, you know, I'm trying to communicate to you to eat less or to exercise, but how I communicate that to you is even more important. Getting the person to really understand and hear what you're saying and make those changes. So I'll give you a simple, this is a very easy example.

This is a simple one, right? So in trainers hear this all the time. So you talk to somebody about working out and what you'll inevitably hear is one of the objections, if you would want to categorize it as such, will be something like, you know, oh, I know I should work out, but I just don't have the time. I have, you know, three kids and I work and I have bills and I just don't have the time to work out. I know I should, but I don't have the time. Now, somebody who doesn't have years of experience communicating this to people, they might say something like, you know, we all have 24 hours in a day.

You know, we all have the same amount of time. You have to prioritize this time. And if you prioritize this time, you'll make more time for other things because you're healthier, more productive, more energetic. You'll be a better parent because you feel better and you're healthier, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now, that's all true. Those are all true. Yeah. But it's ineffective. It's totally ineffective. The person's looking at you like, well, what do you know about my life? And now we're just going to go back and forth about whether or not I have enough time. Somebody who's experienced may say

something more, the more effective way to communicate to that person would be something like this. Very simple. I don't have enough time to work out. I'm really busy. I have three kids, a job, and I know I should. I just don't have the time. My response to them would be, how much time do you think you can dedicate, however little, to exercise every single week? What's realistic for you knowing your lifestyle?

And then you wait. Let the person give you the answer. They might say something like once a week. And then I say, no problem problem we'll start right there it's a very very different way of communicating the same thing and i know as a trainer if i get them to work out a little bit and i do it right and that if you do that right then eventually they're going to find the time but that's what that's the big difference that's one thing i hope we don't lose is the relationship with the trainer. If people go into their garage and they're all following, um, you know, Instagram workouts, whatever it is, I, I hope that there's still a community, uh, a conversation with, with coaches,

whether it's through Facebook groups or just that piece of it, uh, because it is really, really important for somebody that needs someone to answer to and needs somebody to kind of inspire that motivation that understands their life. Like I find that answer that you're talking about of like, well, we all have 24 hours. Of course you should. It's like, well, you say that because you're single, you're a fitness professional, working out is partly your job. You have to look a certain way to get clients and build trust like the entire deck is stacked for the personal trainer to say i have at least 60 minutes why don't you and the other guys well and the the client looks at me and goes well the deck is stacked against me because i have two kids at home a wife i gotta go cut the grass

there's a billion other things that i have to do and And if I go inside and say, Hey, I want to go for a run, you're getting like six eyeballs staring back at you going, Oh, we got shit to do. It's like you lose the battle. But if people are able to get into a gym and they have somebody that they're accountable to, to, it just makes that conversation to find that hour three times a week or two times a week, whatever it is. It makes it like the human connection matters a lot because our willpower just isn't that strong. We're not able to say no to people that many times to create long-term sustainable solutions to health. You have to have somebody there. Well, fitness is a journey. It's a long journey. It's a lifetime journey. And having a

guide makes a lot of sense. It just does. And a guide, a good guide is going to help you make proper activity a part of your life and is going to help you create better relationships with food, both of which are imperative for long-term health and success and pretty much every metric that you can measure. I think this current situation is going to, I think for trainers, it's an incredible opportunity. That's what I think.

I think people, trainers have been forever trying to create a strong market for at-home training. I know so many trainers who've tried to say, I'm going to build a personal training business and I'm going to go to people's houses and train them. And I know very few that actually are able to do that successfully on their own. It just wasn't, it wasn't a strong market demand for it. Well, I guarantee that market demand is going to go up. I guarantee. Yeah. I guarantee people are going to be more open to having a trainer come to their house to train them in the garage.

I mean, you got to keep this in mind. When gyms reopen and when states start to loosen things up, the regulations are not going to say don't be around anyone. They're going to say things like don't go to, you know, don't be around more than 50 people. If you operate a business, have all these, you know, distancing rules and make sure people wear masks and take the temperature or whatever. So you're still going to be able to like go over your friend's house and, you know, you're going to work out with somebody in your garage. Like that's going to be okay. So I could totally foresee people hiring a trainer to come to their garage or maybe bring bands in a physio ball to their living room and take them through a workout so if you're a trainer uh man

if i was if i was just a personal trainer right now i would be doing everything to build my online presence to build tremendous value and to start to get ready to uh to to train people virtually and in their homes locally that could see the market for that growing massively. Yeah, I think that the people that can get into the homes or have somebody come to your home makes just a massive, massive opportunity. Like people are going to be dying to just connect with a trainer that knows what's going on.

There's a huge opportunity. And the number of people that are going to be coming to market looking for something, I think, is just there he is, the strongest one of all of us showed up. It's a really good time to be a trainer. You get to sit back. If you thought you were a trainer at a 24-hour fitness and that was your job, guess what?

We're all entrepreneurs now. You don't have a choice your 24-hour fitness gig is gone and i think some of the most profitable coaches like successful coaches like you look at somebody like ben bruno he's got like a 300 square foot garage with some mats in it but he's the best trainer on his block. His area code just happens to be 92109. And you can be successful by being the best trainer in your neighborhood and just running people through your garage. Yeah, if you're a trainer, what I would have done when this all went down

is I would have called my clients and I would have been proactive. I would have said, hey, John, I know you have seven sessions with me left. Looks like we're not going to be able to work out in the gym. But what I'd like to do is take those seven sessions, cut them in half so that they're 30 minute workouts. So now you have 14. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to call you on FaceTime, take you through some body weight mobility exercises. It's a great opportunity to work on mobility. And I would have continued my value that way. And then as things become more and more clear, because you have that consistent value and you're still

working with your clients, I'd say, look, it looks like we're not going back to the gym, but I'm going to be driving to people's houses to train them. So if you want to continue this, I have a pair of dumbbells. You don't even need equipment. I'm going to come to your house. We're going to do body weight exercises. I'm going to do mobility and exercise with you. I'm going to continue training you if you want to maintain this relationship. And I guarantee, you know, 8 out of 10 or 7 out of 10 of your clients will say yes. Now you're making, I mean, and honestly, you have the opportunity to make more money. If you work at a big box gym, your clients were paying $60, $70 a session.

You're making $25 a session. Now you drive to their house. They could pay you $60 and you make the $60. So there's a lot of opportunity there for sure. Have you seen a shift at all to nutrition coaching? That was the first thing I told my buddy whose gym I primarily hang out at here when this was first going down six weeks ago or so. I was like, man, you just need to keep everyone's memberships rolling just like they are right now. Give them all generic, easy at home, bodyweight only workouts that they can just do without any instruction and then just do nutrition coaching with everyone. That's for

all the values. They're still going to get in shape. They're still going to lose weight, et cetera. You're still going to have that personal touch, but it's very easy to do just on an easy phone call. Yeah, nutrition coaching was already online nutrition coaching was already growing. And I don't see that slowing down. I mean, you know, people are losing their jobs. And you know, economically speaking, people will definitely have, generally speaking, less expendable income. But the people who tend to hire trainers long term, tend to have more expendable income and are probably more resilient to economic downturn. So I think trainers, again, the ones that provide value, if you do a good job, you're going to be pretty protected. I mean, I remember when 2008 happened, which the financial crash of 2008 still dwarfs this one.

We don't know what the long term effects of this one are going to be, but 2008 was pretty bad. And, you know, some trainers I knew built their businesses during that time. They were doing things like, you know, small group training, three people at a time, outdoor bootcamp classes. They were, they just, they thrived because, again, the people that we tend to service as trainers tend to have more expendable income, tend to take their fitness a little bit more seriously, that want that guidance there. So I think you're probably in a better position so long as you continue to provide people with good value. Yeah. What do you think the future of competing is right now? The CrossFit Games, the Olympics, the NBA, but more specifically in the fitness realm for weightlifting, powerlifting, strongman, and all the rest, bodybuilding. What are these athletes going to do?

For people that want to watch these events, obviously that's not an option right now, but how do the sports continue to be sports without spectators? I don't know. I don't know what that's going to look like. I would imagine that they're going to try and bring as things start to loosen up to have them all just be televised and maybe not have crowds. Maybe that's like a phase one type of thing. I definitely don't think they're going to go away. And I do think, again, once we once you know, we maybe herd immunity or vaccine comes out, and then everybody kind of calms down a little bit. And we're, you know, five years away from from, know this situation i think people are going to flock back to to that kind of stuff it's we're too social you know like asking you see people rioting right now and protesting part of that is they want to get back to work but i think part of us people are like i

need to go back around people yeah i got to be around people it's it's so it's such a uh integral part of us is just creatures um so i don't see it being permanent i sent out a text to dog and travis on sunday i'm there i'm not rioting i'm ready to throw freaking weightlifting competition yeah good for you i'll put all the power lifting or all the platforms six feet apart you bring your own barbell so no one touches but i gotta get back to people i need the people yeah i'm with you man i i it's like i'm facetiming my family and friends and it's like it's rough man yeah some some there's been a lot of good stuff that's come out of it being being in in the house with family and a couple couple months of watching the little one

grow up right in front of us speaking of of which, you got a little one coming. I do. I do. I got, what a great time, right? To be pregnant. My wife's pregnant. We're expecting in October. Congrats, man.

Yeah, I'm super excited. And, you know, speaking of good things that have come out of this, I mean, you know, I don't like to just sound negative. Look, I tell you what, I have never talked to my neighbors as much as I talk to you now. I go on walks. People say hi. We keep our distance, but everybody, you can tell everybody's craving human attention. I have so much gratitude for my health, for the fact that my family and friends are healthy.

I have so much gratitude that I have a business that so far hasn't been affected negatively. You know, we're a digital business um i think people i think sometimes we get reminded of the things that are really important in life and this this this this tends to do that i mean we don't we don't change or grow unless we're forced to that's just human nature yeah so i do see a lot of positive coming out of this too i think that there was like such a speed and fire that was like burning in the country with people and the intensity, whether it's news media, social media, just everything was so hot. And it was so nice for a little bit of time to just cool everything off.

Everybody's just kind of like, remember that we liked each other, that we were all human beings. It was great. Yeah. You feel a sense of unity a little bit don't you it's like the patriotism that i felt after september 11th kind of yeah reminds me of that a little bit so hey man i know you got to get going i uh we squeezed you in here on less than 24 hours i saw your podcast go up and i was like i'm not listening to that no way i gotta bring him on shrugged so i appreciate you moving a bunch of things around and coming to hang out with us. Hey, I appreciate it. I appreciate what you guys do. And thanks for having me on. Right on my man. Mind Pump Media, Mind Pump on podcast, iTunes, Stitcher, all that. Anything special you guys have going on you want to send out? No, if you want free information,

we have free fitness videos we provide every week on youtube mind pump tv and then um we have a lot of free guides and resources at mindpumpfree.com so that's it that's where you get all the free stuff the youtube the podcast and then mindpumpfree.com awesome man doug larson right on sal thanks for coming on buddy good thanks thank you you bet i'll find me on instagram at douglas c larson i'm anders varna at anders varna we Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. Get over to Barbell Shrugged dot com forward slash store. E-books, nutrition, training programs. We'll see you guys next week. That's a wrap, friends. Stay Home Super Bundle going out Monday, March 11th.

Make sure you get over to Barbell Shrugged dot com forward slash stay home and use the code stay home to save all the crazy coin. Stay here. We're going to have a big show on the launch and everything because we're super stoked. This new program is going to be so rad. This template do-it-yourself Metcons. I'm so stoked on it. Also, I want to thank Sal from Mind Pumped

for showing up, hanging out, as well as our sponsors over at Organifi. Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. Save 20% and then P3OM.com forward slash shrugged free to get a free bottle giveaway this month. Friends, we'll be back on Monday. Have a good weekend.