Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1065: Jordan Syatt on Becoming Gary Vee's Trainer, the Biggest Lessons He Learned from Gary Vee, Keys to Building an Online Business (& Mistakes to Avoid) & MORE!

Episode Date: July 1, 2019

In this episode, Sal, Adam and Justin speak with Jordan Syatt. Jordan has a very solid fitness background, training at the renowned Westside Barbell and then spending several years traveling the world with advertising and marketing guru Gary Vaynerchuk, aka Gary Vee, as his personal trainer. Working daily with Gary allowed him to glean a wealth of knowledge on how to build a successful online business, what to do as well as what NOT to do. In this episode Jordan shares what he has learned over the years as a trainer and a marketer. Whether you are looking to build a business or not, Jordan is an engaging storyteller and shares wisdom for all. Jordan can also be found on Mind Pump TV (YouTube) in a series he shot at Mind Pump Studios. How from an early age, Jordan lived and breathed fitness. (2:36) What carryover did he see from his kettlebell training to his other fitness training? (5:04) The evolution is his fitness training: From kettlebells, barbells to powerlifting at Westside Barbell. (8:17) How can you know what the body does, if you don’t know what the body is? (17:52) The ‘net positive’ of social media for trainers. (21:48) The ‘religion mindset’ people have toward their fitness and nutrition. (23:11) The curse of knowledge. (25:38) The story of how he met and ultimately worked with Gary Vaynerchuk. (28:56) The biggest misconceptions surrounding online training and making money. (32:35) The downstream effects of ‘forward head/shoulder’ syndrome. (33:58) How he closed Gary V: The importance of communication and understanding what your client ACTUALLY needs. (38:15) What are the biggest lessons he has learned from working with Gary? (42:28) Biggest takeaways from different platforms. (47:00) The importance of training people IN PERSON, before you train online. (49:00) How is he scaling his business? (52:56) Why your goal should be to add so much value to people’s lives that they feel compelled to give you money. (55:21) Jordan’s top tips for coaches. (57:37) What are some of the biggest mistakes he has made? (1:03:58) The progression of his nutrition + general rules of thumb. (1:06:40) The upsides working with Gary V. (1:19:11) Why do we feel entitled to get paid for everything? (1:24:10) Featured Guest/People Mentioned  Jordan Syatt (@syattfitness)  Instagram Website YouTube  Westside Barbell (@westsidebarbellofficial)  Instagram Brandon Lilly (@brandonlilly3)  Instagram Eric Cressey (@ericcressey)  Instagram Joe DeFranco (@defrancosgym)  Instagram Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk (@garyvee)  Instagram Mike Vacanti (@mikevacanti)  Instagram Carter Good • Fat loss Coach (@cartergood)  Instagram Andy Frisella (@andyfrisella)  Instagram Related Links/Products Mentioned June Promotion: MAPS Strong ½ off!! **Code “STRONG50” at checkout** Mind Pump TV - YouTube Westside Barbell® Cressey Sports Performance How To Get Stronger & Remain Healthier by Changing Your Mindset [w/ Jordan Syatt] The Westside-Barbell Conjugate Method - Syatt Fitness Smartphone-related neck pain on the increase Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die - Book by Chip Heath and Dan Heath Practical Programming for Strength Training - Book by Lon Kilgore and Mark Rippetoe Science and practice of strength training - Book by Vladimir M Zatsiorsky  Periodization Training for Sports - Book by Tudor Bompa Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Imagine how much of a badass you have to be to get hired by Gary V. Oh, to be his only trainer all the time. Well, you're such a badass that, I mean, how big is Jordan Syat? And he squats like more squats and deadlifts more weight than I think any two of us combined. I know we talk about our good buddy, Mike, how unassuming he is when you see him.

You wouldn't realize you Jordan is like that. Same thing. Yes. It's just incredibly strong, super friendly, super smart, um, trainer. He's one of the better trainers. Very approachable. One of the things that He's one of the better trainers. One of the things I really appreciate about his content that he puts out to is, even though he's incredibly intelligent

and smart, he doesn't talk over his audience. And this to me is what makes a really good trainer. It's one thing to have the experience and the knowledge and the ability to break down almost anything or have conversations around almost any topic around fitness, but to be able to communicate that in a fashion that the the average person can consume it and learn from it and make changes in their life This is what drew me to him and why I was so excited to invite him down to the studio It's also why we not only had him in the studio, which is something we don't always do

We had him do a series on YouTube. So you can also go to the YouTube channel and watch the series of videos that we're releasing with him too. Yeah, this is Mind Pump TV. But yeah, we think you're gonna really enjoy this episode. Again, he's a trainer that we really, really respect. He has his own YouTube channel,

Jordan Syet spelled S-Y-A-T-T. of course. You can go on our channel, Mind Plum TV, to watch the series that we recorded with him. He has a website as well, scietfitness.com, and then you can also find them on Instagram at Syet Fitness. Also, before we get into the episode, if you're catching this episode, right when it's released, there's only a few hours left for the MAP strong 50% off sale. Now, remember, MAP strong is one of our most effective muscle building in metabolism boosting programs to date.

It's half off. Hopefully you got there, you got here in time. Just go to mapsstrong.com, MAPS, STRNG.com, and use the code strong50, STRLNG50, no space for the discount. So that's it without any further ado, here we are talking to Jordan Syeth. So you were just saying you've been training for a long time. Since 14? 14 years old.

Yeah, so I started, I was wrestling my whole life. I started wrestling when I was eight years old. And that's how I got into fitness and everything. And then basically when I got to be a freshman in high school, I was wrestling my whole life. I started wrestling when I was eight years old. And that's how I got into fitness and everything. And then basically when I got to be a freshman in high school, I made varsity and I had to cut from 112 to 103 pounds. So that was like, and I had no idea what I was doing. But basically, so I started to look into nutrition

and strength training and I was, I was small. And I was like, I was a freshman. So I was going up against juniors and seniors and I had to figure out, well, how do I get, how do I go up against these people? How do I increase my strength and everything while cutting weight? So I found a gym near me that specialized in kettlebells.

And basically I was like, hey, I'll clean the floors, I'll take the trash out, whatever I can I just intern here. And so they were like, yeah, absolutely. So I did that when I was 14. And then, throughout all of high school, worked with them and started coaching with them. And that's what I did. That's what I did. Right's what was my very first performance.

Now, this is, now kettlebells at this point, we're talking what, 10 years ago maybe more? Yeah, that was when they were first, like, 2005, 2005 when I had, Yeah, yeah, because they weren't even that, I remember, let's see here, 2000 and two, probably like three or four, 2003 or four when I was a trainer was like the first time

I'd even seen a kettlebell, even heard anyone use, and like you never see it's huge then right? RKC Pavo yeah dragon door. That was kind of sweeping. Yeah. Yeah, the only times I saw kettlebells were in the old time Pictures of old strong man, you know, and all of a sudden you see these guys working out with them Like put the hell so what interested you in that? I mean at that point in your career because I remember the first time I'd seen it I wasn't even that interested until RKC, and then I remember seeing the price for it, and I was like, oh, yeah.

I don't know about that. Yeah, I don't know about that. Yeah, I don't know how many of my clients will use this. What turned you on to the kettlebell? So I was super fortunate because I had some amazing wrestling coaches, really tremendous ones who were also really into fitness. I started doing intermittent fasting

when I was in high school because of them too. Wow. And my high school had an amazing gym, like tremendous, and they had kettlebells. I was like, what are these cannonballs with handles on it? And one of the wrestling coaches was certified in RKC, and so he was super adamant about being sure all the wrestlers were using them. And basically, once he started having me do it, I was like, I'm obsessed with this. And so then I literally searched for a kettlebell gym in the area and found one

of a couple of towns over. And that was sort of how, and they, they were through a different certification. It was called Punch Kettlebell Gym. I forget who they went through, but they, they had one of the trainers, Stacey Schadler. She had RKC and something else, the other guy, Kevin. Wow, if he had his last name now, but he also had RKC. Now, what were some of the things that you noticed right away when you started training with cut-a-bells, like as far as the transfer into your sport and what you were doing? You know, I think, I think for me at that time, it was much more of a higher repetition in endurance-based thing.

I think that was one of the faults of the coaching at that time. It was far less about getting stronger and more about just doing it for the entire length of a rest. So it was like, well you have to go six minutes, so you better do swings for six minutes, type things. And so I was getting, I was understanding the movement and I was understanding hip hinge and I was understanding that side of training, but there's only so much strength you can do with a kettlebell at a certain point. It's only time you can deadlift a 24 kilogram, a 32 kilogram, 48 kilogram, before you actually started to get stronger, or you just sort of limit it.

So I think I really got into it from that end, but I don't think I started to get really stronger until I started getting into more barbell work, which was more like junior and senior year. Do you think that's a big mistake a lot of coaches make where they try to mimic the sport so much with the weights that they turn a tool that is really good for strength into something else, like almost using a hammer to screw in a screw?

I think it's one of the biggest mistakes in general is to like everything has to be a hundred cents specific to what you're doing. You see people, for example, I've seen coaches take golfers to a cable machine and try and mimic their golf swing with a cable. I'm like, that's just a really stupid idea. I understand they're reasoning like why that they were like, well that would make sense, but practically it doesn't play out and it's probably going to end up leading to creating some issues with the swing along the way.

I think that there's strength and then there's also, you can create strength in the movement direction in that movement pattern, but you don't have to do it all exactly the same. You can do them separately. Yeah, in fact, sometimes it throws your timing off if you try to add resistance to a movement pattern that you do in your sport. Exactly. Because of the resistance. Yeah, absolutely.

Now, were you training people at this point? Also, was this just your workouts? So I was training people. I was doing it on my own, for sure. I remember in class and like, I remember in Mr. Ray's class, I would be writing programs for Mr. Racing this class. I'll be writing programs for like kids my age and you're like a teenager at this point. Yeah, I was obsessed. I was absolutely obsessed. And I was lucky because I was obsessed, I was absolutely obsessed. And I was lucky because I was surrounded by coaches who were incredibly trusting and incredibly inspiring. They sort of inundated me as this science-based in-industry at a very young age. I didn't spend too much time in the magazines

or on bullshit websites. Like they really helped me Eric Cressy, Pavel, Dan John, from a very young age, all these really amazing people. And so I would write them programs when I wasn't at the gym. And then the first thing they had me do was they let me lead the warm up. So they're like, we had a class of people,

they'd be like, okay, Jordan's gonna lead the warm up. And it was incredible because they never introduced me as the intern to the high school kid. They're always like, all right, this is coach Jordan, he's gonna lead the warm up, which was incredible. Because to hear that they thought of me as a coach sort of allowed me to allow me to sort of live up to that

Expectation as opposed to the reason the intern I have that expectation, but by saying I'm a coach I have to live up to being a coach, which really I think elevated me early on well, and so after you did the kettlebell training Was there another face to your training later on did you learn other? I mean you obviously did I know your story, but what came after that? So after that, it was basically, I was doing kettlebells and then I went in barbells and then I really got in a powerlifting. So I was in high school, I was doing the kettlebells

and then during high school, junior senior, I started getting in barbell training but then I went to Israel for a year after high school. I took a year off, just traveled for a year and I really basically just used a kettlebell for the entire year, I was away but I really was missing the barbell. So when I got back, that's when I got super

in a powerlifting. And I ended up training at Westside Barbell for a little bit, training at Crazy Performance. And then I was just obsessed with barbell training. Wow, you trained at Westside for a long time, right? I was here for about four months. It wasn't like that long. But literally, we're trained by Louis, right?

Yeah, two times a day, four days a week, one time. So it was 11 training sessions a week. My total went up by 300 pounds before us. So okay, so let's talk about this for a second. What, because they are one of the most, if not the most well-known powerlifting, I guess Jim in the world, or philosophy, structure, if you will.

Yes, where you go. What was it that made, what is it that makes them so successful? Man, what is it? I mean, I'll be honest, I've never seen a group of people more consistent over the training. And it's one of the things where you can say, well, the system is extraordinary in the system, is the best system and there's nothing better.

But I don't think it's that. I think it's these people literally put training above anything and everything else. Like, on Thanksgiving, they're in the gym, on Christmas and they're in the gym, on their birthdays, they're in the gym, like they don't miss it, like they'll miss work for it. I mean, it's so funny, because Louis, like a father, he's really extraordinary guy, and he was like,

you know, I told my wife when I first met her, I was like, PowerFdyn comes first, and she's so sweet, because she like supports him, and she's like, I know, and she's like, and she supports him in it, and he's like, lifting comes first, and that's like, I know, and she supports him in it, and he's lifting comes first. And that's also why you see a significant burnout from a lot of those lifters too.

They'll be there hardcore three years, four years, five years, then they sort of stop off after that. Aside from the toll it takes on their body. But within that time from that they're there, they explode. It's crazy. And you said you're totaling up three hundred pounds. What were your lifts?

How much did you weigh in what were your lifts? I remember the first day I went in there, I was 127 pounds soaking wet and Brandon Lilly was there at the time and he goes, I'm gonna be honest man, I thought you were a cross country runner. And I was like, well thanks, man, I appreciate it. And it was funny because when I went there, my expectation was gonna be that everyone was gonna, that was gonna gain a ton of weight because that's what West Side is, like get fucking huge, like that's it.

Everybody there was trying to get me to gain weight except for Louis. Louis was like, I don't want you to gain weight. I want you to compete at 132 and I want you to crush 132. And Louis had sort of been challenged, which is one of the reasons I got there is because someone called Louis out and was like,

Louis, you suck, you only train heavy weights, you only train big fat dudes, like you could never train a lighter guy and so then he sees me and I had a pretty good deadlift at the time and so he was like, you know, How did you get his attention? So that was a story. Basically, actually I still have the voicemail from him on my phone, but basically I was obsessed with Louis. It's sort of like when you watch Louis' videos for the first time, you sort of, you're so captivated and you can see how he creates this cult following

because he's just saying all this crazy stuff. You're like, oh, bands and chains, oh my God, dynamic effort. It's for the first time, oh my God, this is amazing. And so I contacted him because I read an article from him saying I'm looking for a lightweight lifter. And I was like, I wrote him an email as far as I could do for that kettlebell gym.

I was like, hey man, I'll come, I'll take the trash out, I'll clean the gym, just let me come train. And he responded, literally all he wrote was, our weakest guy squats 800 pounds, what do you have to offer? And so I responded, I was like, oh man, I can either just try and be super polite or I can go for broke. And I remember I wrote back, I was like, I don't give a either just try and be super polite or I can go for broke. And I remember I wrote back, I was like,

I don't give a fuck what your weakest guy does, what your strongest guy does, I'll out work you and every lifter you have. That was your response. That was my response. What a great answer. And he ended up, he called me, but I didn't have his phone number, so I ignored it.

I just saw Columbus, I had a number, I ignored it. I was in the dining hall. I was in the Penn Cater dining hall, University of Delaware. And then I get a voicemail, and I'm walking out with my buddy Kyle, and I listen to voicemail, and he's like, Jordan, there's Louis Simmons. I was like, holy shit, and I still have that voicemail.

And he's like, and he's like, I want you to come to West Side, we'll interview you, we'll see how you do, and we'll go from there. And so I called in the next day, and we had a 45 minute call, and I flew out with my mom. I flew it with my mom. This was my freshman year.

And so my mom's like the sweetest, nice, is Jewish mother. Like she doesn't know what we're getting into when we go to Westside. I'm pretty sure she's the only sweet, nice Jewish mother who's ever walked into Westside. She was with you. She was here with me.

And like, and so, 16, 17? No, so I was in college at this point. So I was 19 okay, but I mean 127 pounds yeah, and and she just doesn't know what she's about to walk into nobody gets what West Side is like It's not like you don't have a key card It's not like they're giving you like a eucalyptus towel. It's really isn't there like oh it is I mean It's Chris there weakest guys squat 800 pounds

So we go in and Louie he sees me from the cross the gym and his nose is gushing blood. He, and he's shirtless and he's tattooed, had to tell, he's got the big dog with the chain around his neck on his tattooed stomach. And he walks up, he's like, Jordan, I was like, yeah, he's like, great. And then he just like, let's start working out.

And so basically, he goes, he goes, all right. So you're gonna start off with deadlifts. And I was like, okay, like how many sets, how many reps, how much weight, he goes, he goes, all right, so you're gonna start off with deadlifts. And I was like, okay, how many sets, how many reps, how much weight he's like, as heavy as possible, and to our hurts too much. And I was like, in your mouth, like, let's go. Yeah. She left.

She left. She left, and so I'll tell you that in a minute. So then I was like, what's next? He's like, rack pulls. I was like, all right, how much, how much weight, how many sets are wrapped? He's like, as heavy as possible until it hurts too much. Go. And then I was like, okay, what's next? He's like, glue handraises as heavy as possible until it hurts too much.

Everything, the entire session. So I get through literally bleeding, like just destroyed beyond belief. And I got to my mom's car and she's in tears. And we go to this, we go to this Bob Evans restaurant and get some breakfast and she's like, I don't want you to come. I'm scared.

Because it's just surrounded by these huge dudes. And so did that for two days and everything for two days was as heavy as possible going to her. It's too much. And at the end of it, he was like, I'll see you over the summer. And that was your interview. That was my interview for two days of that.

And then thank God, my mom let me do it. She let me do it and she helped me out. She helped fund me going and the granted Ohio is super inexpensive. But she helped fund me go. And thank God she did. And so I was there for four months and totaling up by like 300 pounds.

Now what were you that day when you came in, what were you pulling when you first got there? Ah man, I wish I remembered. I, if I had to guess, I think I was pulling, I believe my best to that point was either 355 or 365, and I was like 127 and I hadn't spent that much time doing it, which I think Louis was like, all right, this is good, because yeah, a lot of potential.

And then by the end of it, I was pulling well into the 400s. Wow, wow, that's amazing. Now, what, what, what, or do you remember some of the first major critiques or things that he started to work with you on that made the big dip, that started to make a big difference

in the direction towards the 300? And well, I think the biggest thing was, and I think this is one of the biggest misconceptions of West Side is everyone sees West Side and they look at the first movement, and they're like, you max every week. And that's all they think that West Side is. They think that West Side is, you just max.

And so you look at all these lifters trying to do West Side, and they spend 45 minutes to an hour and 15 minutes working up to a max, start like every week. And then they sort of just nicks the accessory work. It's just, that's the complete opposite. You work up to a max, start like every week, and then they sort of just nicks the accessory work. It's just that's the complete opposite. Like you work up to a daily max to feel like what you can do that day which shouldn't take that long.

It shouldn't take up a massive portion of time. The majority of your work out is your accessory work and he's really big on like a lot of volume and building you up to it, not right from the get, but there's a lot of volume and a lot of accessory work, and I think that above all else, I mean, obviously major focus on posterior chain,

hamstrings and glutes, but it was, you work up to that daily max, and then you blast the hell out of your hamstrings with glute ham raises, pull-throughs, kettlebell swings, already yells, rack pulls, it's just a ton of volume. And so I think, I had never done that much volume before. And I think like really pushing yourself to a point where it's like, I don't know if

I could do this for a long period of time, but for four months, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it seems like, especially with a lot of people like yourself who get really, really serious about training, there's different phases to your training, like different schools like you did your kettlebells, you did your powerlifting, was there something that followed? Or did you stay in that powerlifting zone forever? So my goal I wanted to do that the four times my body weight. So I was there for until that happened, which was several years.

It was the better part of the next four to five years. And so I hit five, 35, but one, 32. Wow. And then after that I was like, I'm done. Wow. I was like, literally I put the bar down. You can see it, there's a video of it on YouTube, then after that I was like, I'm done. Wow. Later I put the bar down. You can see it. And there's a video of it on YouTube.

I just put the bar down as I'm done. And then I went, so I then, I went sort of back to my, MMA, like went back to more Brazilian Jiu Jitsu wrestling training. And so I spent the next amount of time really just training for that and doing more conditioning. And my strength stayed up for a long time until then I went to started coaching Gary and that's when my training sorta took a huge back seat just cause I didn't have any time.

It was a major difference. Now what were some of the things you noticed? When we first got together, the three of us all met, Sal was the big dead lifter and I'd never really put any, like you, I had deadlifted before but it was like intermittently thrown into my routine. I never like put effort after going after it.

And I was around 300 and something. I scaled all the way to 550 was where I ended up. And along that way, I started to notice things that I had never noticed before with my body. Like I started to get achy joints and I was always stiff and tight somewhere. Did you notice things like this and is that what made you kind of scale out of it?

Well, yeah, I mean, my labor, my hip is screwed up still. And I can even feel it now as I'm starting to build my deadlift back up, like that's why right now I'm deadlifting once every seven to 10 days. Just because if I try and do it twice a week, it's gonna screw me over. And I can't really back squat anymore, mainly just because I know if I go deep,

it's gonna have an issue. So I do a lot of Bulgarian split squats and a lot of lunges instead because it feels good on my hips. But yeah, I mean, definitely. Plus, I did a lot of ultra wide sumo. That's why now you look at my sumo stance, it's more of a moderate stance.

It's actually just slightly outside of conventional. I actually like that because you get a lot more push as opposed to only spreading. I think that's where a lot of people get a lot of hit pain as they spread so much, so often, it's spread, spread, spread. They don't get any downward push. It's a massive disadvantage. So, my sumo stance now is actually very, very moderate.

And so I think that helps, but absolutely, achy hips, achy joints for sure. And then to just send you down like the rabbit hole of functional training and learning about mobility or like, where did you start to pick up some of that? So that was actually a huge benefit. So I went from, I trained at West Side for four months and then I went back to school for several months and then I interned at a Cresce performance with Eric Cresce.

So literally within a year, I interned at both of those places. Wow. And it was just, and the cool part was Eric trained at South Side Gym and Connecticut and Eric was a massive lifter, two, Eric is strong as hell. And so he has that parallel thing background,

so he understood, he understands that how important strength is, and also that sort of obsession with lifting his heavy to Ken, but also understands that the anatomy and physiology better than anybody, and the first day I was at Cressy, he had me go to the whiteboard, and he goes, I want you to name all the muscles that attach to the scapula.

And right on that, I was like, are you out of your mind? I'm real cheater, cuz. I'm sorry. There's like 17. I got like nine of them and he, I'll never forget this, he goes, how can you know what the body does

if you don't know what the body is? And so then, from that point, he was like, if I can recommend one thing once you're done with this, is go back to school and enroll in as many gross and enemy courses as you can. And that is one of those things where, if I was to talk to a coach now about how they can get better, I don't know if I would recommend every coach to do that because I don't know if it's that necessary for every coach to understand the body on that level. But I do think that one of the major issues coaches have today is they don't understand what the body is at all.

Like they have no conception of what attaches to what causes movement wear. And they're sort of programming exercises based on what they think the exercise is good for, but not necessarily understanding what that individual needs based on how they move and it's a massive disadvantage. Right, right.

Yeah, a big thing that we see too, especially, I did this as a trainer when I first started, which was a long time ago, but you still see trainers do this is, I'm just gonna we see too, especially, I did this as a trainer when I first started, which was a long time ago, but you still see trainers do this is, I'm just gonna put together the coolest looking, weirdest exercises, and make this as fun as possible, and get you really sore. Right.

And then I think it's gonna be a good workout. You can still see that quite a bit. All the time. All even among coaches who like, should know better. I think they're sort of like this cognitive distance of like, well, I know what should be better, but I also have a feeling that these clients, they are gonna want this instead.

And so they tend to like almost go to like, well, I'm gonna do what the client wants as opposed to what they need. And it sort of creates a huge tearing on the inside of the coach, because it's like, well, I wanna give them what's right for them, but I also wanna make sure that they stay with me and don't go to like the other classes or whatever

that might just make them sweat and not do the right thing. So I think it's really tough. Well you're really big in the social media space and you've been training long enough to see how that's developed. Do you think that's helping the situation or making it worse? I think there's a net positive for sure. I think net positive for sure because there you could get bad information anywhere but I think the good information is also more readily available. If people want to find it, they can find it and they'll stumble upon it.

And so I think, absolutely, I mean, it's actually really interesting. I remember going into public gyms, whether it was golds, gyms, or New York sports clubs, years ago, and just seeing what the type of training was generally going on among General Pop. And I can go in now, and the training is totally different. Literally, I went into a gym the other day with Enrico

and there were people doing some belly breathing. There were people doing some specific stretches for their addict or magnus. They're doing dead lifts. They're doing farmers walk, single arm farmers walks. Just everyday regular people and mass with any entire gym. And I see like five years ago, absolutely not. Like no way was this a thing.

And you can see it in men's health and men's fitness and these magazines too, they're promoting these exercises. So obviously it's gonna reach more people I think. So net total by far, way more positive. I think that the negativity is just a lot louder and people focus on the negative, much more than they focus on the positive. It's easier to look at the negative

and be really upset about it than just to look at the positive and say that's awesome. Yeah, I would agree. One of the other things too, is that I'm starting to see some changes and I love your opinion on this is for a long time, and now, still true,

but not as much I think, is people get in their camps and training becomes kind of like the religion. All I do is kettlebell training, that's all I do, I'm the functional person, all my training is functional, I do bodybuilding training, that's all I do, and you're starting to see a lot more crossover now than you used to, but still,

it's still that way, I don't know what you're opinion on that. Yeah, I mean, I struggled with it, when I decided I was done powerlifting, I had a huge internal struggle. Number one, because like so much of my ego, that's what it was, was my ego is tied up and lifting super heavy all the time and posting videos of me doing super heavy stuff.

And a lot of my audience at that point followed me specifically because I was a power lifter. And so for me, changing it, going into more of a lower weight, more MMA style training, I was like, why are people gonna wanna follow me now? Why are they gonna wanna watch me do stuff that I had never done before? And not to mention, I had spent so much time preaching the benefits of barbell training and strength training. I was like, am I going to lose any, is this gonna be bad for me now?

And so I think you have this huge internal struggle with that when you're trying to change your training style. But I think the way that you phrase it was really important for people to hear in terms of the sort of religion mindset towards their training, also with their nutrition. It's like, which is really interesting. People get way more emotionally invested in nutrition to have someone disagree with you on nutrition, they get their man-a-man like it will really create. But I think the best coaches are the ones

who tend to be like, listen, let's find what works for you, whatever that may be. And also not only that, what works for you now might not be the best for you in three years. And that's okay, and let's learn how to recognize what's good for you, and then also recognize how to adjust as time goes on.

Yeah, the way I look at it is it's like a tool belt, and you have all these different tools, and there's times when you use your hammer and there's those times that you use a screwdriver and your wrench and things change, your body changes, your goals change and some tools are great for some things and not so great for other things. So when you look at kettlebell training or you look at powerlifting or you look at bodybuilding, they all have their potential benefits and some of them are better at some things and others and just mix them up and use them accordingly.

And I think this is a message that needs to be spread a little bit more because the average person isn't the extreme bodybuilder or the extreme power. And if the average person just wants the overall fitness and how. Yeah, I loved what you brought up to, you know, about workouts like online and what people are kind of putting out there as far as like Instagram. Like here's your workout of the day. But you have a different approach for that as in terms of like how you know you would you would take somebody through a workout and what you know it precedes that and like can

you get into that a little bit. So how I would take some through a workout? Yeah, like in terms of like so everybody's putting up like a workout of the day, but you have a hard time in terms of like, as a trainer, considering all the variables that go into that. And I think a lot of people don't understand like the trainer brain in terms of like,

well yeah, you could do just a workout in general, but in terms of programming, what does that look like? Yeah, so I mean, actually, did you hear me talk about that with Joe to Franco? I did, yeah, I did, and I love that discussion. I wanted to bring that up. Yeah, so basically it was, you have that issue where like, on one hand it's great. You have coaches putting up workouts for people to try on Instagram and stuff. You can see people scroll through Instagram. I'm going to try that workout today.

It's great. It's something is always better than nothing. It's fantastic. But, and this is something that I think is sort of missing now among coaches is when I first started getting into training and really understanding the size behind it, I would spend like, you're studying programming and periodization, understanding individualization, what works for one, like how to literally program per person per individual based on how they're built, what their goals are, all the stuff. So you sort of run into an issue where if you're getting in a higher level of periodization as a coach, it's almost like, it's almost disingenuous.

It's all very difficult for me just to put one work out and be like, just do this. It's like, but what came before it, what comes after it, why this? Now, where are you in a certain phase? And that's almost in my, I think on some ends, like the curse of knowledge, where it's like, you know, so much that it might be preventing you

from actually helping more people, just from like sort of dumbing it down for a minute, but also on the other hand, there has to be sort of standard by which coaches can really start to understand that you have to learn more about programming and periodization, you have to really spend time understanding how it the best workout isn't just it the best workout is really dependent on the one that came before and the one that's coming after it. Absolutely. Absolutely. One thing that

really irritates us quite a bit is you know people will cite a study and say something like this you know in your program you have one of your phases has us training in the you know two to five rep, you have one of your phases has us training in the, you know, two to five rep range, but studies show eight to 12 reps builds the most muscle. So, you know, how do you, why would you put that phase in? It's like, okay, you know, if you always train the eight to 12, guess what, rep range is going to build more muscle, but one that's not eight to 12. You know, I'm saying, but people don't, they don't, they don't understand that. And it's a difficult thing to, to try to communicate that, which is obviously why we why we started this podcast.

I remember two, like, clients would come in and bring their friend. And then they're just like, yeah, well, they could just come in and join the workout. What's wrong with that? Oh, I just had the worst time with that because it's like, I don't know anything about them. And you're just throwing them out there, you know, and it's like, oh, it was a struggle because you know too much, right? They could just join the workout, but by the by the way also they've had like MCL surgery Forgot to mention and they also don't want to like they don't have the same goals as I have so like they could just do the same thing Right, it's fine. Yeah workout to workout

So how did you end up meeting Gary? How did that process start so that started because I started it's actually a crazy story I started my website when I was at Westside Barbell. So in 2011, basically I went to Westside and this guy that I worked with, JC Dean, he was like, what are you doing? I was like, I'm at Westside Barbell. He's like, what? He's like, you should get a website and just write about it.

And so I was like, okay, so I don't know how to get a website. So he bought my website for me, transferred me all the information. I was like, what do you want me to do? He's like, you just want you to write, just like, write about what you're doing, what you're learning, just write. So I did that.

And I wrote, basically, I wrote a bunch, but one of the major things was about the West Side Conjugate Method. Like, if you search the West Side Conjugate Method, it's articles the first one that comes up, like, from 2011. Because it like really broke it down. So it wasn't like, Louis does it all the time, but Louis's like super hard to understand.

Louis sort of like contradicts himself sentence after sentence. So I like went step by step and explained it and did really well, but basically I started writing at least one article week every week from 2011 and doing YouTube videos and stuff. And so Gary's previous coach, Mike Viconty, followed my work. And I didn't know him at the time. He wasn't even a coach. He was like an accountant in Minnesota.

And so he commented on one of my articles in 2012. I responded back. And this is before he coached Gary, before he was a trainer. And he'd followed my work. So through a crazy chain of events, he ended up becoming Gary's coach. Several years later, after he became coaching, he interned with John Romano.

And then when Mike's time was up, Gary was like, who's gonna be my next coach? And Mike was like, I think I know a guy. And it was mainly just because he started following me early on, following my content, interacted with me. And then Mike said, so Gary was in a lot of pain. Gary had a lot of hip pain, a lot of neck pain,

a lot of shoulder pain. And basically, he liked that I had trained at Cressy and knew that side. So basically because he knew who I was and we'd interacted and knew that I had a knowledge and understanding of the body and human movement, that was sort of why he recommended me. Now, did you do that initially, the website and the YouTube,

did you do that initially with the contention that it was gonna become a business? No, I had no idea that it was gonna... I didn't know online coaching could be a thing, I didn't know training. Like, literally, I was just like, why am I starting a website? And he's like, just write, just tell your story, what you're learning about, and just teach people, and I was like, cool. So, literally, and I just, it was great because it helped me learn.

Right, so every time I'd write an article, whether it was about muscle fiber type or whatever it was, I would have to research it. And then I would spend a time reading articles, reading books, and I would write about it. And I would get 20 views a day, 10 of which were for my mom. And I was just like, I had no foresight to think,

this is gonna be a business, but it was fun for me and I enjoyed it. And then I think that's probably why it became a business is because I think one of the reasons a lot of coaches fail building a business nowadays is because they make one Instagram and they're posting, they're like, why don't I have any clients yet? Right.

They're like, I make one video, it's like, why don't I have any clients yet? It's like their intent is solely based on getting something in return in terms of I want to get a client, so I'm only making this piece of content so that people will then become my client. And they're like, why am I doing all this stuff for free? If no one's becoming my client, it's like, maybe, do you enjoy it?

Like, do you? Is it helping people? Like, is that your only reason for doing it? And it took me a long time before anyone even started to say, like, hey, can you write my programs? And for the first, I didn't even, I didn't know PayPal exists, I was like, I'll do it for free. And it's just because I had no idea business possible.

Do you think that there's a common misconception? Just because things now are online that the old, some of the old business rules don't apply? Like the old rules of business were bust your ass, work real hard for a long time. Then you'll make a lot of money and be successful. Do you think a lot of people think, oh, it's online, it's fast.

I'm just gonna make an Instagram and then tomorrow I'll just start selling stuff. Yeah, I mean, realistically, I think that starting a business, unless you've started a business and owning a business, I think that people have no idea what the hell goes into it at all. I mean, even the old days. But I think now that it's online, I think there's even a bigger misconception that, oh, it's just online. I mean, even my mom bigger misconception that like, oh, it's just online. I mean, even my mom still doesn't really understand what I do. She's like, she doesn't have Instagram, so she doesn't understand that.

She doesn't, I mean, she goes on my website sometimes to watch my YouTube, but she just sees me posting funny videos sometimes and she'll be like, I don't understand how this works. Yeah. How do you make money's business weird? Yeah, it's like, you have a wig on and like, you call yourself Kenzie Morgan's like, what is going on? So I think that people have a very skewed misconception

of how quickly it takes and how much effort goes into it. And I think that's one of the reasons why there's so much burnout because they go into everything with the expectation of like, okay, I'm gonna make like a couple, I get DMs from people, be like, hey, do you have any advice from really been trying to grow my Instagram and it's just, it's not working and I go and like, they're page and they have four posts.

I'm like, all right, do like 2000 more. And then we'll talk. Exactly. So did you tell Gary V that to help his neck and his back out, he's gonna work on all the time on his phone and he's like, I would imagine that's probably like the number one thing that you have to combat is like how much the time when he's on his phone. I would imagine that's probably the number one thing that you have to combat is how much he's probably

rounded over on his phone. It was one of the first things that we did is, because it wasn't even just how much time it was just how he actually was posturing himself while he did it. And he was always down here where his neck would just drop and like I can't even do it with a microphone, but it was just, he would let his head drop

and he almost like shot his neck forward in a very forward head posture position, and then down, and his neck pain was so bad that his assistant, every time he booked him on a flight, he could only book him on the left side of the plane because he couldn't tilt his head this way. Like his neck was, he literally had no, it did not have the mobility to bend his neck that way. So he could only, if he was gonna sleep on the side, he had to go that way. His neck was, he literally had, it did not have the mobility to bend his neck that way.

So you could only, if he was gonna sleep on this idea, it doesn't go that way. So I remember like one of the first things we did was, if I touched his neck, literally just like touched it, he would shudder and pull away, because there was so much pain. So just a little bit of soft tissue work there with teaching him how to like, instead of doing this,

just keeping your chin tucked. So just simple like, just neck exercises in the warm up can do a lot. Just a couple simple like chin tucks and then with some soft tissue work it helps a ton. Now I'm actually really fascinated and interested in this topic because I have a theory that in the next five to 10 years this is going to be one of the number one conversations within the fitness or the trainer coach community. And that's because we have never seen a generation that was born with the iPhone and for 10, 18,

20 years of their life being rounded forward. And I see kids all the time now and everywhere I go, they're attached and they see that forward head, chins down and they're looking at their phone around a posture. And I just don't think that we have any idea with the consequences of that, like from posture standpoint and what that's gonna look like for these kids

that are four or five or however early the parents introduced them to iPads and iPhones. And then now them at just teenage years and young adulthood, like what do you think about that? I couldn't agree more. I think it was going to see not only just neck issues, but then from Horde, Ford Head Postural, see some shoulder issues as well, because we're going to have like seriously rounded up our back, and then people are going to knock and have enough shoulder mobility,

and then that'll make its way down to the hips. There's definitely going to be downstream effects from this, for sure. And I think, and not to mention, there's spending so much more time on these devices that they're definitely not outside playing as much. they're definitely not outside playing as much. They're definitely not outside moving as much. So I think that the effects of it will be very significant. And I don't know if it will be easy to just pinpoint what it's because of this or because of that. But I would be very interested to see what percentage of people are going into a physical therapy physical therapy appointment now with neck issues versus in 10, 15 years,

how many people are going into neck issues? I would imagine that we're gonna see a significant upward trend of people with neck issues going in. Right, you said you didn't you reference a study so? Yeah, I read a few articles that showed that there was a spike in back pain and neck pain among kids, which that's a population that never experienced. Right.

Backer neck pain, unless it was an injury from playing, they never had those issues. And now they're having all these problems, which, you know, we have a lot of trainers that listen to the show. And I would say if you're a new trainer and you wanna increase your, how valuable you are to the market, I would spend some time

learning correctional exercise for those things. I'd probably provide a lot of value. It's one of those things where I'm thinking practically what's gonna work the best. I know a lot of coaches, they're like, they're gonna say things like, well stop spending so much time on your phone. It's like, okay, but they're not gonna stop.

It's much, much more time on their phone. So what do you do? It's like actually teaching them how to number one posture while they're doing it. And number two is actually strengthening their neck muscles so that it will sort of balance itself out. I think specific neck exercises are gonna be super important. And that's really one of the things Joe DeFranco does.

A lot, he has that, I don't forget what the thing is called, but he has a specific apparatus just for your neck training, which he uses a lot for football players and stuff like to help the wood and cussions. Not a halo for you with that stuff. I know you're talking about that. It is amazing. And I know a lot of wrestlers use that type of stuff,

football players, and I think that type of tool, and even just like literally something as simple as chin tux, just doing it in your warm up every day, doing it when you wake up every day will make a huge difference. Now, were there something like, I imagine you get somebody like Gary Vee one, are you nervous the first time you petrified? Yeah, as a say. Petrified. What was that like?

And then was there like a defining moment of you teaching him something where he's like, okay, he's gone. He thought it. Yeah, you're my guy. Like, was there something like that? Well, I think that happened in the interview. So I think, so I was living in Israel at the time.

And, and basically, Michael's like, do you, would you want to coach Gary? I was like, is this serious? Like, is this a joke? Like for sure. So I flew from Tel Aviv to New York for an interview and I coached Gary for an hour. And I just took him through a warm-up, standard warm-up.

And there's a lot, I use a lot of yoga-based movements in my warm-ups. It was about seven to 10 minutes and Gary was super stoked about it. He's like, I love this. This is great. He's like, I feel awesome. And I don't think anybody of any of the other coaches

who interviewed with him did that type of stuff because he's like, man, this is what I need. He was super excited about it. And I was like, man, this is just the world's greatest stretch type movement. Just like simple stuff that yogaplex, some tea spine rotations. And he was just like, oh, I feel great.

Literally within seven minutes, I was like, nice, all right, let's go. Done deal. Then the other thing at the end of the workout, I said, before he's did the last set, last set, best set, he was like, last set, best set. I like that. And he was like super ramped up about that.

And so I think that's like when he was super excited. And then when I got, I was like, all right, I got the job. I came and I remember I was petrified. I was scared out of my mind. And the thing for me, I've never had an issue telling a client what they need to work on, what they need to improve. But with him, I was scared to,

like to tell this guy who I followed for a year, and I was like, you're posh your stuff. Yeah, this isn't good. But I remember the, I think it was probably the third or fourth session in. I was like, he tried to do a single like R.D.L. balance was awful, like absolutely terrible. And he was like, how was that?

I was like, well, you know, and he was like, did that suck? I was like, yeah, it sucked. And he goes, good. He's like, I want to know that because I like knowing what I suck at because that means that I have something to improve on. And from that point on, I had no problem being like, yo, that was really bad. Like, because I could sort of use that to improve on. And from that point on, I had no problem being like, yeah, that was really bad. Like, because I could sort of use that to motivate them. And, or one of the things that are almost in a different aspect, one of the things I always like to do,

and I don't, he doesn't, I don't think he listens to these, so I don't have, he's never like, I've never given it away. But sometimes it'll be like, all right, so we're gonna, we're gonna do this variation of this exercise, and we'll do one set. And if I can see that he has more in him, but he's being a little bit lazy, I'll be like, all right, we'll stick with this. This is the beginner variation. We'll just stay here. He's like, no, no, no, what's the more advanced one?

Yeah. No, I don't know if you want that. It's a little, he's like, I can try it. Let's go. And so then he'll, all right, cool. We'll give that a shot. How important, so you just glaze over that, but it's such an important thing for trainers to understand

there's that psychological piece. It's everything. Knowing how to communicate to your client to get them to the hot button. Yeah, but earlier you were talking about how some trainers are afraid to do what their clients need to do and rather give them what they kind of want. It's the skilled trainer that can get the client to want to do what they're supposed to do. That's exactly right. You said that so literally just my hair stood up.

That's exactly right. It's being able to get your client to want what they actually need. Right, right. Now how do you see that today with other trainers? I mean, because what I see a lot of times as other trainers have a terrible, they focus so much on learning new techniques

for exercise, learning correctional exercise, getting all these certifications, terrible at communicating to the clients. Awful. Just not good. How important would you say the communication piece is? Honestly, I think communication is, man, I may go back on the slide,

but I think communication is more important than really understanding periodization at a really intensely high level. Sure. I mean, like, understanding periodization, but for me, I've always been like, the best program followed inconsistently, what yielded worst results,

then like a decent program followed 100%. You literally just quoted us. Yeah, we say that all the time. Yeah, we say that because, you know, again, it's getting that buy-in is the most important thing because the worst, the biggest stumbling block for most people is just not doing it. It's exactly right. Yeah, yeah doing it. It's exactly right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's exactly right. Now one of the things that's really cool and we talk about this on the show, I mean, much of my education has come from just being blessed to have trained hundreds and hundreds of CEOs and entrepreneurs, what was it like training Gary and like what have you learned from him?

Oh man, what I've learned from him could fill a library. And it's learned a lot from him. And I think, oh man, well we'll say, one of my biggest takeaways that a lot of coaches and personal trainers really appreciate hearing is, so I used to get super upset when people would like leave hate on my comments or just unnecessary. And it's not like disagreements,

just like super obnoxious hateful comments. And Gary, just watching him handle his social media in person is very interesting to me. It's like watching his demeanor and watching how he handles people who disagree with him or leave unnecessarily mean or hateful comments. And I remember asking him, I was like, do you ever get mad at these comments?

He's like, no. I was like, no, no, but like really? Do you ever get upset? He's like, no. He's like, why? He's like, think about like, but like really? Do you ever get upset? He's like, no. He's like, why? He's like, think about like this. If someone is taking the time out of their day, if they have the time, they're literally,

think about what they're doing in their day. If they have the time to go on to someone else's page and leave a hateful comment, think about how sad that person must actually be. How unhappy that person must actually be. Like just take a minute and really think that, like let that sink in of how unhappy of a place that person has to be.

He's like, do you ever take your time to go on anyone else's page and leave a hateful comment? I'm like, no, I don't take, I don't bear that anyone else's page period. He's like, because you have good shit to do. Because you have like actual stuff that's helping people, because you're spending your time making content. If you're spending your time looking at other people's pages

and actually taking the time to leave a hateful comment, you are in a very bad place, and you should feel terrible for that person. You should feel sympathetic for that person. You shouldn't be upset. You should take your time to say, hey, listen, I don't know what you're going through, but I'm always here for you if you need help.

And that was a massive change for me, mentally, like, instead of being upset at them, like feeling sympathetic towards them and offering them my help. Yeah, those are just miserable people. Yeah, yeah. You were also one of the first people that I ever saw do the fitness memes.

Yeah. Is that what kind of took the Instagram off for you? Yeah, so basically on, when I started with Gary, I had around like 4,000 and I was posting four or five times a week and it was just very half-assed000, and I was posting four or five times a week, and it was just very half-assed. I thought I was working on it. I really thought that I was spending a lot of time

on Instagram, but I wasn't. And so then I spent, I was about six months with Gary, and it hadn't grown that much. And because he doesn't really like push to me at all, like he was like, you have to work for it. And so on December, I think it was December 31 of 2016, he was like, you got to post three times a day every day. And I was like, three times a day every single day.

And he was like, yeah. So then, you know, that was December, December 30th. And then December that night, I posted twice. And the next day I go in, he was like, you do post three times this year, and I was like, yes. And he was like, no, you didn't. I was like, damn it. So then like, no, you didn't. That was like, damn it. So then from that point on,

from December 31 through April, through more like June, I posted three times a day every day with the exception of two Sundays when I posted twice. And so from December 31 to April 6th, my account about doubled, just three times a day every day, which was crazy. And then on April 7th,

I posted my first infographic, and it exploded. I posted my first infographic, and it went viral in bonkers. Now, what gave you the idea to do that? So basically, I was helping my friend Carter Good with his business, and I was like, you should start posting some calorie comparisons, and he did it in infographicographic form and it went nuts.

And so then he did that for two weeks and I was like man, I wanna do the same thing but I wasn't into the calorie comparisons, I was more like, drink training and just more like information based without just the calorie comparison. So my first infographic was an explanation of strength for his hyperchiever's endurance and it went nuts.

And then literally I saw that go crazy. So a couple hours later, I posted one, this is on Friday night when usually interaction is really down. I posted one on how sweet potatoes and white potatoes, they're not good or bad. They both have their own benefits. And that one went bonkers. And literally they must have been hitting Explore page because just like thousands of new followers and that one day.

And so then I was like, all right, I'll just do these. So I did like three of those a day every day for the better part of a year. And then it went from 16,000 to like over 200,000 in that year. Wow, wow, wow. Now you're spread over Twitter, YouTube, you've got a podcast, you've got the Instagram going, you're all over all these platforms. What are some of the things, you've got a podcast, you've got the Instagram going, you're all over all these platforms.

What are some of the things that you've learned about each of them through this process? Well, that's a great question. I would say Instagram, it's sort of like what you learn from it is in the name. It's very like in the moment, in-st-in-st-a, like that one moment, a lot of people will see your content, but they won't even read the caption.

They'll go through the double tap. It's a great place to reach a larger audience, to get a larger audience and interact with people. But I think that podcasts, I think that long form YouTube videos, I think long form articles are massively underrated now. I mean, that's what I sort of got me in the industry. I was like these long form 2000 word articles. And I think a lot of people are so focused on

Getting these on the likes whether like on Instagram getting more likes They've just assumed that more likes equals more income and more reach But I think that I would ten times out of ten Rather have I would rather have a hundred thousand on YouTube than a million on Instagram Because people who are more willing to watch, who people who are willing to watch a 10 minute video or a 20 minute video are way more invested in you and what you have to say than the people who can barely

read a full caption and just double tap it on the way down and go by. So I think that Instagram is a great place to reach new people and get attention, but to actually build a deeper relationship with your audience, podcasts, articles, videos, that's really where the major benefit is gonna come. Yeah, I would agree.

And it's also harder to fake a podcast. That's right. So you should have taken Instagram. It's exactly right. Yeah, because you'll be talking for an hour, you know, Instagram, we've met a lot of fitness influencers through Instagram and you meet them and you talk to them, like, this guy doesn't know shit about fitness.

That is so funny. I did a, with Anders from Barbell Shrugged recently. He said the same thing. He's like, it's crazy. You sit down with someone for an hour. They can't bullshit. They can't fake that anymore. It's crazy how many people they sit down with

and people just aren't, I don't know what the fuck they're talking about. So we've seen recently, relatively recently, the explosion of the online coach and a lot of that driven by social media. do you think it's important for people to, when they hire an online coach that that coach had actually trained people in person? I think that training people in person will make you a better online coach, but training people online will not make you better in person coach.

I think training people in person is not like they should, but it's essential. If your coach hasn't actually trained people in person, even like when I was fully online, when I wasn't coaching Gary, I still train people in person. Number one, because I love it, but number two is, because every session I learned something new. Every single time I coach someone in person, no matter how many years I've done this,

I learned something new every time whether it's a new, it's funny, a lot of people really like the cues that I use with clients. Like I put one up on Instagram yesterday or the other day, like showing your nipples to the wall on the deadlift, which people just thought was amazing. Like, oh my God, how'd you think of that? I just thought of that because I've coached so many people

in person, you try new things. That's the one that worked. It's the one that worked the best. And it's like, and it's funny because what I didn't say and I didn't speak about this is I used to use, if you had T letters on your T-shirt, show me, show me the, I would want to see had letters on your t-shirt, show me, show me the, I would want to see the letters on your t-shirt, but when I used that, people would over extend too much.

It would be too much of a hyper extension lower back, but when I said show me your nipples, they didn't go that much. And so that's why I chose that one instead of show me the letters on your t-shirt. And it's like, you only learn that from coach, people, and person. You don't learn, you can't do that from online. So that's a hack that I was searching for from YouTube that I remember we pieced together on YouTube was, I remember when I first got on YouTube,

I was so, even myself, the part that I was nervous about was I was thinking about my peers. Like, oh, my peers are gonna judge me. And I'm gonna get, we're gonna get this constant back and forth on my way, right way, you're the right way. And I was worried about that. And I took about a year of us doing the YouTube before I finally just fuck it.

Well, I got to stop worrying about my peers and speak to the cameras if I was speaking to one of my clients and giving these tips like that. And that's actually when the YouTube really started to take off was fuck the hate that I'm getting. And there's people that are talking shit to me that are my peers, the hundred trainers that are watching this,

let me speak to the average Jaina Joe, which I've been coaching to for over 15 years. Exactly. And that was a game changer for us. And when I look back at our videos that have got the most views that are in the millions or hundreds of thousands, it's some of the most basic tips that I was giving in there with advice like that.

Absolutely. It's like worrying about what other coaches are going to say is just it's a terrible rabbit hole to go down because number one, they're not going to be the ones who are going to be paying you. They're not going to be your clients. And they're just looking for, hey, they're just looking to argue with people. And so, yeah, I mean, it's very noticeable, very much notice the same exact thing when you stop worrying about what other coaches are going to think.

You can see this in a lot of coaches and even in myself, if you look at my writing from 2011, 2012, 2013, I was using a lot of bigger terminology, not because it was necessary for the article, but because I wanted to sound smart. So that when other coaches read it, they're like, oh, he knows what he's talking about. He used the word anterior pelvic tilt. He knows what's up.

But it's like, that's literally just like me stroking my own ego to try and so that other trainers will be like, oh, they know what's up. But it's like, if literally just like me stroking my own ego to try and so that other trainers will be like oh, they know it's up But it's like if instead of using interior pelvic tilt You're like yeah, you don't want to stand like him Kardashian Then I was like all people like oh, I know what he means now, right? It's like you're like tuck your tail like your sad dog. It's like I didn't use push your pelvic tilt But I get like 10 out of 10 regular people know what the fuck to do right?

I think this is what stifles most coaches. I think you have this kind of that fuck to do. Right. I think this is what stifles most coaches. I think you have this kind of, this growth curve that you go through as a trainer where you come in and you don't know anything. And so you're not that great and so you're not having a ton of success.

And then you maybe put a lot of work into getting good and learning more and getting educated. And then you learn all this information and then you want everybody to know how smart you are. And so then you get stuck in speaking like that all the time and then you never grow beyond that. I feel like this is one of the most difficult things for trainers to understand is like to get out of your own way

and learn how to communicate to your clients. Now, when you look at like all the different platforms that you're working, you're training Gary Vee, you've got all this content you're writing, like how are you scaling your business and what's like the future look like for you personally? Well, oh man. So I have no idea what the future looks like.

I'll be very honest to you. I have no clue. And people are like, what are you going to do in five years? I have no clue. I have no idea. Literally every day I'm just throwing around. I'm sure to the wall and seeing what happens. Fortunately, I love what I do.

It's amazing. In terms of scaling my business, when I first started doing online coaching, it was just one-on-one, because it's all I knew how to do it, so I didn't really, I had no business plan. I was like, all right, I was just work with people one-on-one, because that's what you do. And then I realized, okay,

there are a lot of people who can't afford one-on-one, and there's only so many people I can work with before my quality as a coach declines rapidly. So then I was like, okay, I'll make a membership. So I have this intercircle membership, which is super affordable. And so that's really what I'm focused on building right now. So I'm doing that.

And then other than that, I love speaking. I really like speaking. I wanna do a lot of speaking engagements and go around and sort of educate coaches. I really do like to help coaches become better coaches. Not only in terms of really like, here's one interesting, I see a lot of business coaches now coming out on Instagram and stuff,

like how to build, and one really interesting thing about this is they start essentially trying to relay information they've heard from Gary or from Andy for Sellers, something, you can tell it's not their own information, like they're just spewing it back. And you see, like, their engagement dropped massively. You see, like, a lot of like, they're starting to sell way more, like, doing stuff that just doesn't really make sense. And there's always talking about business stuff, but what I've found is from the coaches

that I've worked with and the coaches that I've helped, is the more you make them better coaches, the better their business grows. So rather than just trying to talk to them about sales, funnels, and sequences, and doing all these, trying to get all this automation set up, you're just like, hey, let's get you be a better coach. So you can teach people how to achieve their goals better, their businesses go up. It's like, less talking about business, more talking about coaching, more talking about what you need to do, be a better coach, how to be a better communicator,

learning how to like, reading better books, motivational interviewing, learning how to actually assess people, how to actually program, then all of a sudden, their businesses go up, not because they're learning how to do sales funnels, but because they're actually learning how to help people better. Dude, I think that's such a great point and a great topic because something we talk a lot about is what we're seeing

right now, and I don't know if you see the same thing as this growth in these mastermind groups where these people on social media get a large enough following, you know, like let's say someone like yourself, 400,000. And then instantly, I'm an authority on how to build a business. And if you don't know better, you may think that just because you have a few hundred thousand followers on Instagram, this person must be making millions of dollars. And then the next thing they pivot into is coaching others how to make a million dollars. And then the whole thing is built around these sales funnels and drops and traps and shit like that versus figuring out how to add value into people's life.

And a lot of the success of what we did here was that's how we led. We led with, okay, we're just going to pour so much good free content until people are literally trying to give us money and that's how that that was the day that we decided to monetize no sales funnels were built yet no idea of like how we were really going to make all this money it was really like hey can we provide so much fucking value that people feel compelled just to give us money? And that was a day. I remember we all walked in the studio and we had been for about a year going like, okay,

when are we going to turn this thing on? When is it going to be a business and not just something we love doing and passionate about? And it was. All of us had come into work and it's like, man, I'm getting emails every day of people saying, hey, can you guys start a Patreon or can I give you money? Yeah. It's like, okay, now we have a business.

And this is the advice that I give to trainers when I get a lot of them asking me, like, you know, how do we build this business? And what do we do? And I said, listen, your goal should be to add as much, so much value to these people's lives that they feel compelled to give you money. And then you know you have something on your hands.

It's a really good point. And I think a lot of people overlook it. One of the most common rebuttals that coaches will give when they're nervous about it, like well, if I give them everything, why would they pay me? And I think one of the best pieces of advice I ever got was people aren't paying for coaching.

They're paying for coaches. They're paying for you. Like if they could get a program on Google, they could get a program from any coach, they could go for the lowest cost, but they're going for you, the coach, because they trust you. And the only way to build trust

is to give them everything you know. Yeah. So what are some of the most important things that you wanna communicate to coaches to make? Cause you were talking about you wanna go and make better coaches. What are the things that you wanna talk to them about? You know, I think I would go back to communication. I think were talking about you want to go and make better coaches. What are the things that you want to talk to them about? You know, I think I would go back to communication.

I think I would really go back to communication. And have you guys read Made to Stick? No. It's by Chip and Dan Heath, two of my favorite authors of all time, incredible. Made to Stick. They have a brand new book out. I think it's called Moments. And they are extraordinary.

And they do a great job of breaking down the science of a lot of behavioral psychology and a lot of like why people do certain things, why they behave to certain things. And made to stick is basically a book about why certain phrases or sayings or ideas are sticky, why they stick with you for life. So for example, breakfast like a king, lunch

like a prince dinner like a popper. It's one of those things where it's like, why do you guys ever heard that before? It's like, why is that so sticky? Like, why is that like for generations, even though it's not even accurate? I mean, like, we know that now. But why is that so sticky? Why is that always going to be like passed down for generations? And it's sort of the science behind learning about how to take a topic and break it down into a very easily digestible, understandable, and like sticky thing that people will always remember. And so one of the things I always look for

in my comment section is for people to be like, oh my God, I'm always gonna remember this now. Sort of like show your nipples to the wall for the deadlift that people are like, I'll never forget that one. It's like they might have, they might forget like, hey, like good posture or like whatever the cue you may use, but like how can you get better at communicating away?

Not only just so in the moment they get it, but so that they will remember it forever and they internalize it. And so that book I think was a huge game changer for me in understanding not just strategies to make ideas sticky, but actually understanding the value and making things sticky. Because when you understand the value in it,

then you actually spend your time trying to make things, to express things in a way that people will really internalize forever. Excellent, excellent. So communication, what else? What other things do you like to communicate to trainers to make them better coaches? I would definitely say programming and periodization.

I mean, programming and periodization. I mean, program and periodization because, man, it's bad. It's really bad. It's having no idea. You don't know what you don't know, right? I mean, I would say, you know, I would say practical programming is a great place for people to start. I think it's just a good solid book for people to understand. I think Rippado's done a really good job with like starting strength and all that. It's just a good solid book for people to understand. I think Ripado's done a really good job with starting strength and all that. It's just a good beginner. I mean, I wouldn't pay attention to the nutrition section of that book at all.

I just don't think Go Matt is a really good thing for anyone who needed to do. But I think that he did a really good job of outlining the basics and understanding what you need to know. I think if you want to get more into the science and practice of strength training, by Zazaeorski is one of the best books anybody could read. That's one of those books that you'll have to read one page four or five times before you can go

into the next one, but super valuable and really important. I think, and Bampa has a number of books, Periodization Training for Sports. It's probably one of my favorites. If you really want to train athletes and understand athletic training, my favorites. That's if you really want to train athletes and understand athletic training. And also, even if you don't want to train athletes, but you want to learn, I think what that book did for me

better than any other book was really understand the value of laying out, like, of a periododized program and seeing like, okay, so like, this is the phase one, this is the phase two, this is the phase three, and then also working backwards. So you start from the endpoint, and then you periodize in reverse rather than starting from the front. And sort of understanding how you can map out the program and understand, then you can really see, like, okay, well, the only way this phase will work is if you properly periodize before hand, and if you plan, like, properly for afterwards.

So that's really what I was saying for that. Yeah, and you have a unique way that you started training in terms of like seeking out like some of the best, you know, gyms and the best coaches out there to learn from and like really go through this sort of mentorship apprenticeship type of a program. Is that something that, you know, you would recommend to somebody that's first like wanting to start off as a personal trainer?

Yeah, I think, I think, in turning at a gym, even if it's not an amazing gym, I think just learning from people in person and getting practical experience coaching people is the best thing you can do for sure. Even, I mean, people, I got really hated on for saying this, but I think most certifications are bullshit. I really do.

I think most people spend way too much time and money on getting more certifications. They can put more letters after the name and their Instagram profile. If that's going to make a fucking difference, the reality is like if you spend more time interning at a gym, you're going to get a lot more benefit. I agree with you 100%. I think there's value and certifications, but I think you're not going to learn nearly as much as you'll learn working with people, just training people, learning from other trainers, to train lots of people, which is why,

and I'd love your opinion on this, I typically win trainers or people who want to become trainers when they ask me, like where should they start? I typically tell them to start off in a big corporate global gym, like 24 fitness or an LA fitness. And the reason why I say that is this sheer amount

of volume of people that they're gonna see. Absolutely. Okay, so you would agree with that. I agree with that, and because the volume of people, and that they're gonna see. Absolutely. Okay, so you would agree with that. I agree with that. And because the volume of people, and because they're gonna learn a ton from working with those people, and when you work with those people, they're gonna follow you.

Sure. They'll come with you. It's like a lot of people don't realize an in-person business builds an online business if that's throughout you wanna go. An online business doesn't, it can build in person business, but I think I have clients that were gonna be still

one-on-one today online that started working with me when I was 16. This is like, they will follow you when people find someone that will go out of their way to make sure that they have a great program and that they care about them, they stick with them. That's the irony of the trainer, like, sales cycle. It's like, you got to really learn how to market and sales a lot in the beginning. Then you get so good that you kind of don't need to anymore. It just, you got the same clients,

people refer people to you, and you don't need to worry about prospecting like you used to. Yeah, and I think people, they're so focused on learning how to like sell better. They don't realize that if you get people better results, that you don't have to sell. It's like you have a referral network of people who will sing your praises louder than any sales market, any funnel you could ever make.

Like I think that a word of mouth business is the best business you can build. That's like the ultimate business if you actually are worth your salt. If you're really good, then word of mouth will be plenty. Yeah, absolutely. Now you're obviously one of the more well-known trainers. We think you're one of the people, one of the very few people out there that are promoting good information when it comes to fitness. But along the way, along your career, I'm sure you've made mistakes like all the huge. What are some of the biggest mistakes you've made? Oh man, let's see. All right, well, when I was a teenager, I was super obnoxious to my mom about making

sure she only bought organic. And she was like, outrageous expensive shit. She was supporting my brother and I by herself. Just like, I was like, mom, I'm not eating anything less than organic. And she was like, you're really making this dip. I want organic popsicles. I don't want the organic milk, organic, like everything.

And like, she did it. Like God bless her. She really, like, she did not have any extra money and I don't know what she sacrificed in order to make that happen. But like that's one of the things that I always have like a deep pit of regret in my stomach. Like no, like we need organic stuff.

Like it's super important. Like and it's just like obnoxious about it. And so that was one of the biggest mistakes. I mean, it's like regret, you know, treating my mom poorly on that one. And then let's see. I mean, I think, treating my mom poorly on that front. And then, let's see. I mean, I think, I think it's interesting, you were talking about how, you know,

we get into these sort of really dogmatic chances and it's, when you're learning about stuff, when you're learning about it and you want other people to know how smart you are, I think that's when you really get into this, like, you're gonna fight to the death about it. And I think anytime when I was getting into kettlebells, I was like, you learn, well, there's the RKC way

and then there's this way. And then when you're getting into powerlifting, there's like the West Sideway, but then there's like this way. It's like along the way, every stage of my career, every stage of my learning, I've found myself in, well, it's either this way or that way. And almost every time I've learned something new,

I've been like, this is the way. And that's my stance. And only once you, number one, try everything. And number two, really, you get to a point in which you understand that everything works. Can you start to be like, okay, relax. It started like, stop. Like, you don't have to get so emotionally invested

or upset about every time someone maybe says they have a disagreement. When I was younger, I was so quick to get so defensive about whatever it was that I was doing. It was number one, it would definitely push people away, but it would keep me from learning. I think probably being able to step back, let the other person talk and understand, listen, consistency is more important than any, whatever method you're using. And sort of, that's how I judge methodology at this point.

It's like, everything works for a certain amount of time, how long can you maintain this? And that's really the most important. I feel like that carries into nutrition, which we haven't talked a lot about, too. I mean, that was, I feel the same thing about training that I feel with nutrition. You get somebody who, you know, a client or a trainer who ends up trying keto and it just was life changing for them, right? It just changed their life. Like they have their gut issues are gone and they feel great and feel amazing.

And so now they push keto on everybody and they talk about how amazing the keto geno diet is and the same thing for vegan, the same thing for intermittent fasting. Like you get the people that try these ways of eating, and then all of a sudden they become so dogmatic about it. And until maybe you go through all of them yourself and you start to realize, like, oh, shit, maybe it's not the diet, maybe it's because I was eating something that I probably shouldn't have been eating, and now that I'm not, I feel so much better. Talk about your journey in learning that through nutrition,

because I know you kinda talk about this too. Yeah, so I mean, when I was, I started intermittent fasting when I was a teenager because of my wrestling coach. So I did the warrior diet when I was 18, 17 to 18, and super, like that ended up wrestling combined with that ended up having some serious eating disorders, like having like serious interaction and like definitely like had a little bit of bulimia

at some point. Not like radicus, it never had to go to a therapy place, but you know, wrestling isn't the best for developing a healthy relationship with food. And so from that, I got super dogmatic about intermittent fasting. And the crazy part about that was, I remember when I decided I was like, I needmatic about intermittent fasting. And the crazy part about that was, I remember when I decided I was like, I need to stop intermittent fasting. Because basically I realized that what I was doing,

and I actually wrote an article about it, I think it was 2012, yeah, I think it was 2012, where I was saving all my calories for as late as possible because I was like, if I save my calories, then I'll be able to eat a ton at one point and my whole purpose was to get as full as possible. But I realized at a certain point, I was like, I could eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat,

and just not get full. And a lot of people who struggle with binge eating, they'll brag about how much they can eat. I'll never get full. I can eat so much. And that's their way of hiding behind this, covering up this fear that, well, that's a problem. If you can't feel yourself getting full.

I remember realizing that in 2012, and I was like, I need to stop, and I was so nervous. Even though I knew that calories were most important, even though I knew that, I was so nervous to stop intermittent fasting, because just in that emotional side of my brain, I was like, oh man, like, I'm gonna have breakfast now. Which is like, when you say it out loud,

sounds ridiculous, but it's also one of the reasons why I think it's super important for people to speak about their anxieties out loud. People will just keep them in their head and it's just an emotional turn wheel. But when you actually speak it out loud, it's like I'm super nervous about eating breakfast. Obviously, you're like, okay, well now I sound

ridiculous, and so let's try eating breakfast. And literally, through when I was in a min fasting, I had serious anxiety around food, and I couldn't get full as soon as I started eating breakfast It all went away But it just that was it I had to because when you save your calories and you spend all day Saving your calories for this one massive meal and that you don't even get full anymore anymore It's like that's a you it's a serious issue So you just start off by like you know, I'm not gonna say my calories anymore

I'm just gonna eat in the morning all of a sudden like you start to feel yourself getting full again You have a more normalized eating behavior. Yeah humans can pathologize anything. I mean it doesn't matter What I mean there's people who who eat their big meal in the morning and then don't eat the rest of the day And they fast that way and you know you can make arguments for either one But we have a tendency to we can make anything crazy. Yeah. Any eating style, any nutrition plan, anything, which is why, you know, I try to stay away from hard rules,

but I do, there are some general rules though around nutrition. Are there general ones that you tend to tell people, like, okay, here's generally what I like to tell people to do with nutrition, and then we can look at the details on an individual basis. Yeah, generally, I mean, generally, I like, listen, to do with nutrition, and then we can look at the details on an individual basis. Yeah, generally, I like, listen, try and have protein at every meal,

try and stay hydrated when you can, try and drink first, first and foremost. I, mainly, I really do try and make sure people understand calories. I really do want to bring that home and understand the importance of really what calories are and how that works, and sort of educating them on that.

Because once you understand that, once you understand the basics of how calories work and why they're important in the role they play, then you can sort of manipulate it however you want. If intermittent fasting works for you, great. Just don't forget about calories. If keto works for you, awesome, just don't forget about the total calories, like whatever it is.

Just always remember coming back to this, whatever your meal frequency is, whatever what foods you're eating. Just like, let's make sure we're keeping your calories and check, getting a significant amount of protein, and that's really the general rules. Yeah, for me as a train of the one thing that I saw that made the biggest difference

with clients, besides educating them not on things like macros and calories, which I think is the basics, you gotta kind of learn that, was to, because the biggest hurdle for most people around nutrition is just that they have a tendency to want to overeat or eat too much. And so to get around that or to work around that,

I used to have people avoid the most highly palatable foods which were the heavily processed foods. They tend to, what I found, they tend to make us want to overeat. That's what they're engineered to do. And then a study comes out and they actually compared giving people unlimited food. One side had access to highly processed foods. The others were all whole natural foods. And the group that ate the highly palatable, you know, highly processed foods consumed a significant amount more calories, even though neither one of them had guidelines. There's eat as much as you want. And they found that made them eat more.

So for me, when I tell clients, hey, avoid those heavily processed foods, that alone usually gets their intake to go down significantly. For sure. And it makes sense. And I think, we talked about the mindset side a lot. I think, so one of the things I did,

I think it was in 2013, is I made a nutrition course from a one-on-one clients. And the first video in that course had nothing to do with nutrition. It was just like, it was basically saying, listen to matter what happens, you can't fuck up. Just like letting you can't,

I don't care if you binge, I don't care if you do whole pizza, I don't care if you get ice-cream cereal, have a ton of beer, I don't care what happens, you didn't mess up. Because I think what happens is when people, when they feel like they screwed up, when they feel like they messed up, when they feel like they messed up, when they feel like they went off track,

it's almost like, oh, well, what's the point? I'm just gonna spend the whole weekend binging I'll get back on track on my day. I'll get off again. It's exactly right. And so when you sort of take away that excuse that they use, no longer can you say, you fucked up because you didn't.

I don't care, just next bite, you're back on track. Next meal, you're back on track. When you take away that excuse, all of a sudden it's like, listen, I had a whole pizza last night on Friday night, but Saturday morning I'm back on it, rather than having the whole pizza set Friday night, and then all day, Saturday, all day, Sunday,

spend the rest of it just going off track because they feel like they screwed up. I'll just get back on track on Monday. It's like, you just saved yourself an extra seven to 12,000 calories, and you're in the mindset of I'm back on track feeling good. Or they over-correct. The other side is they'll eat the pizza, and they're in the mindset of I'm back on track feeling good. Or are they over-correct? The other side is they'll eat the pizza,

and they'll be like, I'm not eating anything. This is right. Tomorrow, and it's like, you know, they went off track with the car. I'm like, I'm not eating anything. The car starts fish-telling again a little bit, so they spin the other direction. We know what happens on the freeway.

That's a really good point. Car spins in circles and you crash. So, these are the two things I would see people do is either, oh, I'm done, I fucked it, I'm over, or I screwed up now, today I'm gonna fast and I eat anything at all, and it becomes this binge. I'd say exactly. Now how many times have you had the client

who's come to you that is trying to lose 30 or more pounds and they have yo-yo dieted so many times that they are only consuming like 1500 calories or less and they're still hanging on to their body weight and not losing anything. Constantly, but they're not actually, it's like they think they are. Like I swear, I swear, I'm only,

I'm only eating 1200 a day, and you can't fix me, I've been to everybody, and it's like, I must have a hormone problem, must be my age, genetics, it's not gonna happen. And this is where communication really comes in because a lot of coaches are just gonna go right for like, they're gonna go straight for the jugular, be like, you're wrong.

Like, I know you're wrong, like, you guarantee you're missing something, but if you sort of let them talk and ask questions, it'll come out. So, one of my favorite questions to ask in this is, like, I'll let them talk, I'll let it get all out. Like, okay, so I understand that. So let me ask you this. If there's one spot in your nutrition

that you think you're doing really well in, what is that? And if there's one spot in your nutrition that you think you can improve, what would it be? And so there's one spot in there that I think they're doing really well. They'll tell me, but the one that they improve, that's the important one,

because they'll be like, well, sometimes on weekends, I think I eat more than I should. And I end up maybe eating too much and I binge. I'm like, okay, so like, how many calories do you think might be eating? So, you know, a lot sometimes. Like, okay, so you're not eating 1200 a day. They're like, well, no, not all the time. And so then all of a sudden, they sort of start through talking and realize,

well, maybe I'm not actually tracking as well as I am as I think I am. And you sort of let them tell you that story rather than just be like, I know it's happening somewhere, I know it is. And then they get way more defensive. Yeah. So is it in your experience that more often than not, it's a lack of tracking really well versus somebody who has slowed their metabolism down from yo-yo dieting so much? Correct.

I mean, in terms, if it's solely a metabolic, if it's not an actual, like, if it's a thyroid issue, that's a problem, like, you need to get your thyroid checked, you need to get a metabolic cart test. If those come back that you have an actual issue, then 100%, that's something that we have to work with from a medication perspective with a doctor. But if those levels are all normal and they're totally fine, and they've been, if they've been eating low calories, they went super low calorie and their metabolism slowed down. I mean, research shows it doesn't take that long through eating a higher calorie diet

to get your metabolism back up to normal. So like, usually they're just not tracking properly. How do you get, how do you talk to someone eating more calories when they're afraid to? Oh man, that's tough. That's really tough. That's almost harder to get someone to do that than the opposite, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, because the fear of getting fat is a constituency overwhelmed people and like bring a lot of anxiety with people. And because, I mean, yeah, it's tough. I think the thing with that is I found challenges work really well. So I found like,

for me, I just get one day, that's perfect, but sometimes I go for like a seven day. Do you think that, for example, I had one woman recently who was like petrified of carbs? She's like, I know they're not gonna be fine. I know it, but I'm petrified of it. And like, I know I tell my friends it's fine to eat carbs, but when it comes to myself, I'm super scared of it.

And I was like, all right, well, how about this? How about four, seven days, we eat like 70 grams of carbs a day. Do you think you could do that? Just 70 grams. And if at the end of the seven days, you eat like 70 grams of carbs a day. Do you think you could do that? Just 70 grams. And if at the end of the seven days, you gain to ton of weight and like it's really bad, like then we'll go back.

And she was like, okay, I can do that. So seven days goes by and her weight stayed within the normal range. She was like, okay, I was like, do you think we could do it at 80 grams for a week? Yeah, okay. And then I went to 100 grams. Then I went up to 120 grams.

She was like, I feel great energy for workouts. But these mini challenges really help people a lot because there's an end in sight. It's not, and sometimes I'll just do a 24 hour challenge. The 24 hour challenge is work for people who have trouble eating fewer amounts. Like a lot of people who are like, you know they're overeating, but they're not saying,

I'm like, do you think, for the next day, you could hit your calories 100%. You get 1800 calories, they're like, yeah, I could do it. I'm like, 18 hours, and then when they you could hit your calories 100% you get 1800 calories. They're like, yeah, I could do it. I'm like, 18, and then when they're like, I did it, you go over the top super excited. Like, fucking amazing. I knew you could do it.

It's like, using you do it again. Yeah, I think I could do it again. And you just like go over the top encouraging for them. So these challenges just to get people, because the thing is, a lot of people talk about motivation and they want to start with the motivation.

But motivation isn't the first thing you start with usually the first what drives motivation is the action. So you like you get them to complete the action. Then once they've completed it and they feel oh my god, I succeeded. Boom, then you get more motivation. People try and get more motivation when before you actually you have to get them to complete something. What do you say to clients who are like, you know, I can't stay motivated all the time to work out forever. I just lose motivation. I'll be motivated for three months and then I'll just stop. What do you say to clients who are like, I can't stay motivated all the time to work out forever. I just lose motivation. I'll be motivated for three months, and then I'll just stop.

What do you say to those people? I'm like, yeah, join the fucking club. I get it. Like, I feel you. I definitely get it. And that's where I think it's like, what's realistic? Are you going to the gym seven times a week?

Is that what you're trying to do? Or three times a week would probably be better for you at that point, maybe even two times a week, or do like go to two times a week and go to a jiu-jitsu class or something. Like find something else you enjoy. That's another sort of rabbit hole people go down and say, well if I'm not actually lifting weight, then am I actually working out?

It's like there's so many ways to exercise. Like let's not only think that doing 12 reps is the only way you could do it. There's so many options. But I mean, I think that's one of the biggest misconceptions is people think that you're just always gonna have motivation to go. It's just like, nope, that's just not the case. Awesome. Now you said you're out here because you're gonna be training

Gary and San Francisco. What do the workouts look like? Do you just follow like the hotel, whatever the hotel has and you construct a workout around the hotel gym? Yeah, so I mean with Gary, it is crazy, man. And this is where, well, we'll bring out the fancy name cybernetic periodization is just going by how people feel It's like is super important understand, but it's an art to go by how people feel I what I'm lucky with with Gary is that I coach him seven days a week

Most people only see people one or two maybe three times a week at most It's like so with Gary I have a lot of room to plug and play, so it's like, listen, this gym has nothing, you're tired of shit, you've barely slept over the last two days, we're just gonna do like soft tissue work and some mobility versus, and then I can adjust the next day. But like, it's difficult if you only see someone two or three times a week and you really wanna get that

heavy work out in with them. So it is largely based on how he's feeling his most important. And like, I know if he's been going non-stop for two days and he's feeling is most important. And like I know if he's been going non-stop for two days and he's super exhausted, then like I'm not even gonna bother trying to get him to like do a leg workout. But if you know if the gym is well equipped and he's feeling really good, then I can sort of adjust on the fly. And this is in person seven days a week? Oh wow. Yeah. So you're going all over the place.

Where if he's in Hong Kong, I'm in Hong Kong. If he's in LA, I'm in LA, everywhere he goes. Wow, wow, what are some of the craziest places you've had to train him? Well, Hong Kong is my favorite. That was super fun, yeah, that was really, really fun. The culture, that was amazing. I was just gonna go back. I really like Belgium.

Belgium was just super clean, really nice. The food is great. We go to London relatively frequently, he has offices there, but I mean, LA he has offices there too, so we go there all the time. Did you have any reserve? Cause that's a massive commitment on your part just to like, you know, up end your schedule

and follow him on all these trips and everything like that. Was that something that you really had to like consider and like think about for quite a while? To be very honest with you, no, not at all. I was all in. The way that I remember one of the conversations that changed my life, I was in college. I hated college. I hated it.

I almost dropped out a couple times. The only reason I didn't drop out the first time is because Louis told me to come and train with him. I was about to drop out and then I got that call. I literally had a one-way ticket book back to Israel and then he called me later that day and he was like, you're me to come and train with him. I was about to drop out and then I got that call. I literally had a one way ticket book back to Israel and then he called me later that day and he was like, you're gonna come. But with when I was in college

and one of these times, which I really wanted to drop out, one of my really good family friends who's a psychologist, she was like, this man, you've got about like four and a half years or three and a half years left, you just gotta do it. And I don't really agree with it now, just thinking back to it. But the mindset he said, he was like,

you're just thinking about your intention. You just gotta sit, you're in detention. Like, it's gonna suck, but you might as well have fun while you're there, like make the most of it. And it was a really cool mindset for me to have, I'm just in detention, like, I just gotta sit here and fucking get through it. With Gary, it was a three year initial deal and seven days a week, there was a huge

commitment to it, but I was like, it's all upside. There's no downside to it and it's like, what else am I going to do? At that point I was living in Israel, had an amazing place, I was on the beach and I was relaxing, I was taking Hebrew classes and enjoying it, but I was like, am I just gonna fucking sit here and then see whoever else is coaching him and seriously regret not doing that? It was more like, no, I'm all at 100%. Now, did you negotiate at all

or did you let him close you on the first thing that he offered you? There was zero negotiation. I was just like, whatever you say is that's how it goes. It was like, I'm in. What's the deal? No, that's a good attitude. I had an opportunity one time to do this. One of my clients had a record label and they had an artist and she was up and coming

and they wanted to. You might know her now. Her name is Lady Gaga. It's kind of a big deal. Definitely not. Definitely not. Anybody like that. But I actually didn't work out because one I had I had a mortgage that time, you know, I was getting paid good money at 401k benefits and I wanted too much money

That was the deal yeah, he was like, do I can't I can't give you that they're trying to sell me on the opportunity And this person was by by no means the size of Gary so I was we went back and forth and it never happened So you were just, I was going to do it. You were going to do it no matter what. I did this all the time. I did it about a month ago. Actually, I need to respond to the guy, Rico, remind me to respond to this guy. This guy in New Jersey was like, hey, we'd love for you to come speak to our company. How much of that cost? And I said a number. And he was like, man, I'm really sorry. We can't do that. And I was like, okay, how about this number? And he was like, man, I'm really sorry. Like, we can't do that. And I was like, okay, how about this number?

And he was like, man, I'm really sorry, we can't do that. I was like, you know what, can you pay for lunch? And then I was like, yeah, we can pay for lunch. I was like, all right, cool, let's do that. And like, that's literally it. I was like, I just wanna do it. Like, it's not so much, like, of course, making money and so I can support my employees and support my family.

It's important. But I mean, I also just love doing it. And so there's certain foreigners who are like, I but I mean, I also just love doing it. And so there's certain form of, I suck in negotiating, I'm just kidding. Well, there's also a lot of, I think you're young first off, you're still young, dude. But I think there's a lot of other value you get from working and training certain people.

Right. Besides the money, obviously Gary, well connected, you probably learned a lot about building your own business, your social media and all of that, because you're working with the guru of that right now. And I think a lot of nowadays, you see a lot less people willing to do that, or at least they don't understand it.

I know there's some people are saying that free internships, those are wrong, those are bad. They're learning some incredible skills. It has changed my life. It has changed my life. It's like, it's almost like, why the fuck do you feel entitled to get paid? Yeah.

It's like, I don't understand why. It's a very interesting mindset to me. It's like, it's just a massive, I don't even know if it's just short-sightedness or where that entitlement comes from. It seems to be a generational thing. I feel like the old ways it wasn't like that. I feel like, and it's interesting hearing you

because you're the generation before us and you definitely don't have that attitude and we have some employees that are in that age group and it is different. They expect like, oh, if I put all this work in, I should get paid. It's like, what about the opportunity you have to be a part of this?

And like, people would pay for that. I know some of the experiences that I had either working for a client or working for a business were more valuable than any certification or education than I got. So it's interesting that they think that... It's super odd to me. And I don't get it. I'm always hesitant to blame something on a generation, but I can't see another explanation

for this because for other generations before me, that was not like that at all. I was like, yeah, I'll work for free. I'll get the experience. That's exactly what you would do. You'd work with a mentor or whatever it was to learn how to be, I don't know, whether it's in Barbara to be someone like metal worker. You work for free, you learn from them as your mentor

and then you sort of gain their business. And it's like, that's how it works. And now it's people like, why would I work for free? It's me, you were missing out a lot of opportunities. Yeah, I blame just bullshit, you know, propaganda, some of it political by saying, oh, this worker, you know, or this, in turn, are being exploited. No, it's voluntary.

If they agree to be there, that means that they're getting something that is of value, more valuable than the work that they're putting in. And if the person is bringing them on, that means that they value their work more than the cost. And so that's it. And I think if we allow people to do that and stop demonizing some of these things,

people will increase their skills or improve their skills and become more valuable in the marketplace. And internships are incredible opportunities. When you're new and you have no experience, I mean, nobody's gonna teach you more than a good mentor. 100%. That's why I ended up training Gary's, because Mike knew that I worked at Crescent Performance.

I didn't get paid for that. It was six days a week, at least six to eight hours a day. I was driving 45 minutes there, 45 minutes back. I didn't get paid at all. But the reason I trained Gary's, because Mike was like, oh, Crescent is like the best with this. I know Gary's got pain in this guy in turn with him, so that's what I'm doing.

In fact, this, you know, there's just some of the things that I value that Gary talks about the most is, you know, we play such a high value on formal education. I think we've been, again, a lot of propaganda. Like, oh, you know, if you can spend 200 grand on getting a liberal arts degree, it's totally worth it. But if you go work for a free internship, you go learn from somebody who's an incredible mentor, that's exploding you.

Doesn't make any fucking sense. At all. Doesn't make any sense. It's a really good point. It's like completely illogical. Absolutely. Anyway, thanks for coming on the show, man. It's been great, brother.

Thank you so much. We really appreciate what you're doing. We like to highlight people who we think are promoting the right information. There's a lot of shitty information out there, but like you said, I believe it's a net positive. It lights out there. And people like you, so thank you for coming on. Thank you guys so much.

I'm really appreciate you guys. No problem. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad, maps for performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically

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