Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1525: The Death of the Gym Industry?: A Reality Check With UFC Gym CEO Adam Sedlack

Episode Date: April 5, 2021

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin speak with UFC Gym CEO Adam Sedlack about the state of the gym industry and unintended consequences of gym closures. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. (2:06) The evil “O” word and elephant in the room. (3:40) The two contributing factors to the obesity epidemic. (6:28) Just become aware! (8:50) Scientifically why heavily processed foods hijack our system. (9:50) How trainers have the greatest ability to solve the obesity problem. (12:52) What do trainers mean to the UFC Gym model? (15:30) How mixed martial arts socialize into fitness. (17:55) Why UFC Gyms want to create a legacy not just for today, but for a lifetime. (21:14) How did they survive the lockdowns? (23:33) When politics get in the way of science. (28:01) How has the market response been since gyms have reopened? (33:36) The new changes they have made amid the pandemic. (34:58) Working out from home versus working out in a gym setting. (37:40) There is something to accountability. (42:22) The two most important letters when you start looking at leaders. (43:10) How the hell are we going to have fun tomorrow. (44:51) Does he have any predictions for the future of the low-cost gyms? (47:12) Featured Guest/People Mentioned Adam Sedlack (@ufcgymperez)  Instagram Gym & Fitness | MMA Training | UFC GYM Forrest Griffin (@forrestgriffin)  Instagram Cub Swanson (@cubswanson)  Instagram Mike Bisping (@mikebisping)  Instagram Related Links/Products Mentioned April Specials: MAPS Anabolic or Shredded Summer Bundle 50% off!  **Promo code “APRILSPECIAL” at checkout** Visit Four Sigmatic for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “mindpump” at checkout About 40% of US adults are obese, government survey finds NIH study finds heavily processed foods cause overeating and weight gain The Most Effective Single Step You Can Take to Lose Fat – Mind Pump Blog Becoming a Successful Personal Trainer in 3 Steps – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1390: The State Of The Gym Industry With UFC Gym President Adam Sedlack Mind Pump # Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth: 1280: COVID-19 – The Death Of The Gym Industry? California Fitness Alliance National Study Confirms It's Safe To Work Out At The Gym: Current Data Shows No Evidence of COVID-19 Spread in Gyms Most Americans believe gyms will become thing of the past after coronavirus The Truth About The Current State of CrossFit – Mind Pump Podcast Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salta Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You're just tuned into the world's number one fitness health entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Right, in today's episode we interview one of our favorite industry leaders, Adam Sedlack, he's the president of UFC gyms. This guy's been in the fitness space, the gym space,

for a very long time, very smart guy. And so we had him on the show to talk about the current state of the gym industry. Almost probably the hardest hit segment of the economy were gyms. The longest to be shut down, a lot of them still are restricted. So we wanted to ask him how UFC gyms is handling it,

how they're doing now, and they are doing things a little bit differently. It's just what makes them so awesome. By the way, you can find Adam Sedlack on Instagram at CEO UFC gym, and you can also look at their website, UFCJim.com. Now this episode is brought to you by our website, ufcjm.com. Now this episode is brought to you by our sponsor,

ForSigmatic. They make medicinal mushroom-based supplements. My favorite is cordiceps. I love cordiceps for athletic performance, but they have lots of other mushrooms like Raishi, which is great for relaxation. They have lion's mane, which is great for mental clarity and brain function.

Go check them out. They're the best in the business. Go to foursigmatic.com. That's F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C.com-forge-sash-mind pump. And you'll get 10% off any of the products with that Mind Pump discount. Also, we are running a promotion in April to help people get ready for summer. Maps and a ball, like one of our most popular workout programs is 50% off, and the Shredded Summer Bundle,

which is multiple Maps workout programs, is also 50% off. So they're both half off. You can only find them at mapsfitnisproducts.com, but you need to use the code April Special with no space for that discount. Adam, thanks for coming back. A lot has happened since we had you on the show last time. When we had you on the show last time,

we were like in like full on lockdown. Jim's were out of it. Nobody was open. Yeah, and now things are starting to move. What's going on? What do the rules look like so far? Yeah, I felt like last time I was here, we couldn't even use the restroom without asking for permission, right?

Yeah, no, I mean, listen, it's been an absolutely insane year, both in our industry and let's just face it around the globe. And it's been so interesting to watch how everybody's handled it, right? Whether it's political, from a political point of view, from an organizational or corporate point of view, all the way to entrepreneurs. The good news is, man, there's a light at the end of the tunnel, we're coming out of it,

and a lot of people are feeling very, very bullish. But now is the time, I think when I, just quickly, when I think about everything that's been accomplished in our industry, it's been incredible. And I had an opportunity to travel throughout the US and I've been talking to a lot of people over the last three months and listen, hats off to you guys because almost in every conversation I'm talking to my trainers and my coaches and you guys get brought up. The service that you guys provide to the trainers out there and the so

much of our fitness industry, I think it's more impactful than you guys know. So congratulations to you guys for the impact that you guys have. But listen, what have we learned from COVID and this pandemic? It's stuff that I never really thought of scientifically until we went through this experience, right? And there's one, the big, old word, obesity. You don't really understand what obesity does to people, to community, to your psyche. There's so many challenges around that. And then as we started looking at the data from COVID-19,

what did we see? We saw that you were 10 times more likely to die if you were at a BMI of 40 or above. And then the percentage of population that's obese is just absolutely insane. And I think, when I started thinking about this and I started thinking about you guys I'm like we have to start consolidating together as an industry And as experts in the media to get out there and start talking about this evil Oward because to me obesity causes cancer, it causes diabetes,

it causes anxiety, it doesn't allow you to sleep at night, it's a holistic disability that can impact everybody. And so, I'll give you an update on the business a little bit later, but I felt, hey, I wanted to get your guys' thoughts on how you look at obesity. It's the elephant in the room. It's the elephant in the room. It's the elephant in the room

that nobody wants to talk about. We just brought this up on the show the other day that the obesity rate is now 45% of Americans, our obese, not overweight. Overweight is over 70%. Yeah, overweight we're approaching 80%, which that's almost so pretty much, almost everybody is overweight,

but 45% nearly half of America is obese, clinically obese. This is how big of an issue it is. If you look at, if you compare our life expectancy and health to other developed nations, for example, compare us to Italy or France, would be an example. They smoke cigarettes at such high rates in comparison to us, and yet we have worse health.

That's how bad obesity is for you. Sigarettes, you're better off, not encouraging people to go smoke cigarettes, by the way, but you're better off working out and being lean and smoking cigarettes than you are being overweight and not smoking. That's how bad it is for your health. And then you mentioned COVID,

it's the number one risk factor for severe symptoms of COVID. Of all the risk factors, it's the number one. And it probably has to do with how it affects our body's ability to clot blood, our circulation. And then of course, what you would hope would be a call to arms to really focus on bettering your health and improving your health, right? And try and to reduce the amount of obesity that we're seeing.

So from your perspective, when you think about obesity, what the core cause of obesity, obviously, we know we have the modern day conveniences, we know that we have fast food that's growing at record levels, and we know that technology is reducing movement. But are there other things that you guys attribute to obesity? Oh yeah, if I can hammer two,

there's two nails that are almost entirely responsible for the obesity epidemic. One is the processed food. Just how much processed food is now in our diet? So we used to blame too much fat on obesity, then we figured out, oh that's not the problem, we think it's too much carbs, too many carbs are causing obesity, and then we figured out, oh no that's not the issue. The issue is that our diets now are comprised of a majority of hyper palatable, heavily

processed foods, which encourage us to over eat. There's some actually really, really good studies now that show, and these are remarkably well done studies, the crossovers, where they'll take groups of people, they'll make sure the macros are pretty matched for both of them, and then they'll let the meat as much as they want. The only difference is one group has unlimited access to heavily processed foods, the other group has unlimited

access to whole natural foods. They'll let the meat, and then the scientists will count the calories he was going on. Then they'll switch them, switch the groups. So it's a very well-made studies. And they find that heavily processed foods on average will increase your consumption by about five to 600 calories a day, every single day, right? That's about a pound of fat you can gain essentially in a week or two from those excess calories. So that's number one.

Now the second one is definitely activity related, but people think it's because we don't move enough to burn as many calories as we should. That's actually not true. Our body actually adapts to lots of activity, so our metabolism starts to slow down when we're moving a lot. So it's not that we're not moving enough

and burning enough calories, it's that we're not moving enough and we don't have a lot of muscle on our bodies, which is very protective of speeds up our metabolism. It's very protective from food, from sugar, from makes it sensitive to insulin. So we're weak, low muscle, and we eat too much food. Those are the two things.

So if you want to counter the obesity epidemic, this is actually quite simple, maybe not easy, but it's simple, don't eat a lot of processed food and build some muscle. Those are the two muscle problems. Yeah, the challenging part, though, is modern life is making that more difficult. Like you alluded to things like fast food and things like Uber Eats,

and we've got TV now on our phones. I find myself today as a trainer giving this advice that I never gave this before. Like one of my first things to help somebody with their relationship with food, the first rule I give them before I mean, I find myself today as a trainer giving this advice that I never gave this before. Like one of my first things to help somebody with their relationship with food, the first rule I give them before I say, oh, you can't eat this or follow this diet, is actually just stop eating in front of your telephone or in front of the TV. Just so you can become aware. Just become aware of what you're consuming.

We're so distracted today with technology that we can't even sit down and have a meal with a friend without being on our social media or watching your favorite Netflix show. You add that with what Sal was talking about with processed foods, which we're designed to get you to eat more. You're just people are unaware. It's all inundating our bodies with chemicals from every witch direction on top of all that too, which we just found out this study that was pretty alarming. Yeah, now here's some interesting ways that you can combat this and as trainers what we got good at and you know that you've worked in gyms for a long and then we have is you stop pressuring the the

mechanics of what to do and you start pressuring behaviors because that's what's more successful. How do we get the right behaviors? One way, this is studies show this by the way. One way to get people to eat better is to get them to exercise. Okay, it's actually a side effect of exercising when people start to work out. But Sal, going back to the process food comment, and by the way, I think you've worked longer in the gyms than I have. Have I really Not that old.

But do you think that as people eat processed foods, your body is realizing it's not getting enough nutrients? And so there's something in your body that's triggering the need for more food to try to gain the correct nutrition. It's not the nutrients, believe it or not, although heavily processed foods typically are less nutrient dense. Really what it is is, if you look at all the R&D that goes behind processed foods, processed foods are foods that are in wrappers, boxes, they have a long shelf life.

If you look at the amount of money that's spent on those foods, it's marketing, and then it's also how do we make this food as palatable as possible? Which includes taste, texture, how it feels on your fingers, the way the wrapper sounds, when you open the color of the box, the smell, how long it stays crunchy. I mean, they literally have this down to a science. So perfect, I'll give you an example.

Let me give you an example. Let's say I gave you, let's say I took six potatoes and boiled them, plain potatoes and boiled them, put them in front of you. So you got six whole big potatoes right in front of you. And I said, eat these all, no salt, no butter, plain. Can you finish these in the next 10 minutes? Probably, you'd probably be very difficult. You'd gag, right?

I gave you a bag of lace potato chips, could you eat that in 10 minutes? Same amount of potatoes. It's because one is hyper-palatable, and it literally hijacks your natural system of satiety, which we all have. Our body naturally will tell us, this is why when you have a big dinner,

let's say you go Thanksgiving, you eat a big dinner and you're stuffed, and I can't eat another bite, and then they pull out, dessert, and for some reason, you can eat a little bit more. You're literally messing with that system. That's not what's the type. Right, so these food manufacturers,

that's what they're trying to do. In fact, if you look at all the categories of foods in the supermarket, including health foods, the top sellers are not the top sellers in health food, for example, because of the healthiest. The top selling protein bar, the top selling protein powder, the top selling green powder is the ones that taste the best. That's what sells, the products.

And so we end up eating these foods that make us eat more. You're screwed. It's gonna be very, very challenging to eat the appropriate amount when you eat these kinds of foods. And then you add to that a slow metabolism, body that's not sensitive to insulin, low muscle, weak body, and you're going to get fat, you're just going to get fat and it causes a lot of problems.

So guys, what, you know, as, and I, you know, I have my perspective, but when you think about the general population out there and you think about the amount of trainers that are working with that population, what's the best way, in your opinion, for those trainers to socialize this with their clients? Oh, so here's a thing about trainers. They have the ability to make the greatest impact of anybody else. If there's anybody in the world that can help solve this problem, it's really good coaches and trainers. A good trainer or a good coach can fundamentally change someone's life in terms of health

better and more effectively than anybody else. Why? Because some people, people who don't know this, they think a trainer just somebody tells you what to do and gets you to work out. And reality, a trainer is a guide. They're like the Sherpa, you know, guiding you to the top of the mountain. They're like a behavioral therapist.

Absolutely. And that's what training, that's a really good trainer's do. So what do really good trainers do? They meet you where you're at. They don't, if you tell them, I can only work out once a week. A good trainer will say, no problem. We'll make that work. A good trainer will communicate to you in an effective way

to make you, to get you the point where you can make fundamental lifelong changes. A good trainer doesn't just focus on motivation because motivation is fleeting. A good trainer understands how to build discipline and teach their client to build discipline. A successful trainer gets a person to change their life forever, whether they're with the trainer or not. So this is why we talk to your trainers all the time. You know, my view on this is I'm navigating through the industries. You have this kind of $10 a month trainer, right, that gets hired for minimum wage and they take people through a few pieces of equipment and cardio and they call it a day.

And then you have trainers that are really meaningful with the huge value proposition. And I think training is becoming so much more holistic than ever before. Absolutely. Because you have, of course, you know, cardio manipulation, muscular manipulation. But also when you throw in food, like you're so passionate about

and you fill in nutritional gaps with supplements and then you start getting into recovery. I mean, listen, the days of LeBron James and Tom Brady, it's because of the recovery that they do with their body, right? So when you start talking about compression and you start talking about cryo and you start talking about hydration and those variables, that's to me what makes trainers great and what you just talked about is that emotional connection that where trainers will actually listen to their client and meet them where they need to be and then guide them, that's the X-Factor.

Yeah, so the reason why I get excited when I hear you talk like this at them is you run a very large gym company, right? UFC gyms, which we've talked about on the podcast before, and there was a trend there for a while where gyms stopped investing in time and money and good coaches. It became about, there was a second there where we started at 24-offitness where it seemed like they were moving in the direction of really investing in trainers, then they seemed to reverse and it seemed like the trainers were an afterthought and it was really about just getting people in the door and then who cares.

And we all knew this, that this was a huge mistake. It's exciting to hear someone like you who has all these clubs talk about trainers this way because you get it. Talk about that process. How do you guys look at your trainers with your gyms? What do they mean to you? Man, it's a great question and it's our core value proposition.

It's who we are, it's our personality. And as you look at candidates to become trainers and coaches, you guys know this. It's the ability to emotionally connect with the consumer, but it's also the ability to also control your ego and have the desire to continue to learn, learn, and learn so you can become the best at what you do. And so we have a rigorous process. And you know, listen, I have, I have I have I think and I'm a little bit bias here, but I think I have the best personal training team in the industry right now and It's because of the process that we go through and how we select the trainers and the coaches

MMA brings a whole different variable to it right because MMA is almost a religion and so when you intersect Science-based training when you intersect science-based training, when you intersect MMA and things like Jiu-Jitsu and other forms of MMA, it's beyond just the push and pull. And so the personality has to be right on the profile of the trainer. Then there's gotta be certifications that are associated that are credible.

None of these, I'm gonna pay $19 for a certification. It has to be a legitimate certification that makes sense. And then once those boxes are checked, we have a UFC gem certification that's five full days. But instead of just giving them a piece of paper, they have to pass a physical test of exactly what we would expect our consumers to do, they got to be able to do it themselves. They got to be action driven, they got to get it, they got to go through it, and they got to feel the emotion of what it takes to be able to do it themselves. They got to be action driven. They got to get it. They got to go through it. And they got to feel the emotion of what it takes to be a great client. If you don't understand what it takes to be a great client,

you cannot be a great trainer. Yeah, you mentioned martial arts. I did martial arts as a kid, judo, and then I did juditsu as a young adult. And... You kind of look like Vandom. Yeah, right. Yeah, I wish. My wife had a crush on him when she was younger, by the way.

So you know, with Marshall's bot, with Marshall arts, with Marshall arts, Marshall arts isn't just about learning how to choke someone out or arm lock someone or knock someone out. Marshall art, there's an art to what you're doing. And a lot of it is the philosophy and the attitude around it. And it very much, in my experience, the best coaches I ever worked with, the best people I ever worked with, they were very similar to the best trainers

that I ever worked with in the fitness industry, in terms of their attitude around what they were doing. It was much more than, hey, I'm just gonna show up and work out. It was much more than that. It was their life. And I've heard people refer to Jiu-Jitsu as like a philosophy and a way of living. Do you see that kind of crossover

with your coaches, with their clients? And I do. You know, the days of old, and let's just go back to the 24 hour days. Listen, I think 24 hour at its core, it was the most innovative company in its space back in the 90s. And then as things started to evolve, we figured out functional training, right? And really, I truly think CrossFit was a game changer for fitness, I think at that time.

I mean, it set a bar very high to focus on functional fitness. And as this UFC gym opportunity came to me via Mark Mastroff and Lorenzo Frittida Dana White, we at that point I didn't understand MMA. I didn't, I wasn't like you and grew up with it. I was more of the traditional sports guy. And I didn't really understand how MMA would socialize in the fitness. But then you go watch these guys. You go watch these guys and how they prepare for a fight. And it is the most unique experience that I've ever been involved with because you have

8 to 10 coaches in a camp. One focuses on their conditioning. One focuses on wrestling. One focuses on their conditioning. One focuses on wrestling. One focuses on jiu-jitsu. One focuses on standup. One focuses on diet. One is a shrink to get their head right. So you have this entire camp of people

all designed to spiritually move you to a place where when you walk into that octagon, you feel invincible. Your confidence at levels at all time high. And your body is prepared to not only dish out damage, but also to take damage. To me, that's incredibly powerful. If you can put that into a gym experience, not to say that I'm going to put you in the octagon and knock you out, but if you can prepare your mind and your body like that and

you can holistically bring together traditional fitness with what's so great about MMA inspired fitness, you have something very special. Yeah, I'm not gonna lie. When I first heard of your gyms, I thought that's gonna be interesting. What's that gonna be like? But the environment is definitely how you explain it.

It's, I remember, which one did we go to first? Cause we all went to one. Sunnyvale. It was a sunny day. Sunnyvale. We all went into one and we all left saying That's one of the best gyms. I think I've been in so you guys definitely have put together No, I love the facilities. I do have a question out of them about you brought up something that Reminded me you took me back to 24 days that I remember when they got rid of this and it sounds like You guys have implemented this in UFC and that's the the week long course of training. He used to be called 24-arif in his university when I

was a kid coming through it and was extremely valuable to me and was extremely valuable to me later on as I was a manager and managed trainers that were coming through that they got this at least baseline teaching of our philosophy before they came in and they completely eliminated that. So one, you were around for when that was eliminated, right? So one, I'd like to hear you tell me why they did and your thoughts on that. And then two, why did you guys decide to implement that? And I imagine that it cost money

and is expensive for the company to do it. Yeah, you know, listen, at that point in 24, that was above my pay grade. And so you just do what you're directed to do. But I'll just tell you what typically ruins great companies are boardroom decisions. Because you lose the authenticity and the experience of the way the team member looks at it. So we knew somebody like you that went through this week-long process on the

university that experience is something you'll always remember. Right. What a boardroom says is I'm spending a thousand dollars it takes somebody through. If I do that times two thousand trainers as X amount of money I can put that straight to the bottom line. They don't understand the ripple effect that it can have. Right. And, listen, we're not here to make UFC gyms not here to turn around and make a quick dollar. We're here to create a legacy for a long time. This is not about how much money I make today. This is about what kind of legacy we can create for tomorrow. And so, in reinvesting back into our coaches and having these one- week certifications, having the ability to work with the UFC PI performance institute with guys like Forest Griffin are amazing

because he has a whole different way of looking at fitness and looking at how people should condition and get trained. And so, you know, I think that the entire industry has to relook at this. And we have to relook at how we're investing into our key people and our key personnel that represent our industries and our brand. How did you guys, because a lot of big brands, not only didn't they get hit hard by the shutdowns, but they're a lot of bankrupt,

how did you guys survive that whole process? Because that, I mean, you're literally forced to not do business, but not much you could do around that. How did you guys stay afloat? So I'm happy to get into the political conversation in a second if you'd like. Listen, from my position, it was one of the most stressful times of my life because I have a responsibility to thousands of team members. I have a responsibility to a significant amount of members and customers. I know we have a special brand, but every fitness company around the globe, for that matter,

every service-based business around the globe, was going through the same thing, where you had greedy landlords wanting the rent, and you had a lot of different challenges, whether it's from a political environment or whether it's just the circumstances of COVID, that did not allow you to open your gyms. And so not only did we survive that, but we doubled the size of the company, which is incredibly interesting. And I got to tell you, the man Mark Mastroff stepped up and with our private equity, which is Summit Capital, those guys work together and they said Adam, we want you to go double the size

of the company, we want you to reinvest back into the company and we want the brand better than ever before. And we realize that you're not gonna take in much revenue over the next six to 12 months. As a matter of fact, Mark, it's interesting. Mark Master, if we all know him as kind of an icon in the industry, when this thing happened last March, he actually predicted when everybody else was saying 90 days, he predicted it was going to go between 12 and 16 months. And he predicted exactly what we were going to deal with with the adversity that we went through. So that really helped us having his perspective of how

to take a look at this. And then with the support of private equity and the support of an incredible UFC gym team that all had the where we all had the where seven hats, right. We all did do things that we weren't comfortable doing to make sure that we were leading by example through action to get us to the other side of this. Thank God the lights at the end of the tunnel, we're ready to go. Wow, that's interesting. You know, it's funny when you talk to successful investors, what do they say when there's blood in the streets, right? That's when you buy or whatever.

It's almost like, you know, you guys saw the opportunity because a lot of your competitors were not going to be able to survive this. And so you're like, let's put ourselves in a position to capitalize on this market share because the demand for fitness is still there. People are, if anything, I feel like more people. It's growing. Right, so that's the saying, am I saying,

is that what it was? You guys were like, look, we're gonna position ourselves so that when this comes up, we're ready to go and we'll be able to capture more market share. It's exactly what we saw. We knew there was going to be a tipping point, right? And listen, we're not in the clear yet, but we know what's out there. We know that obesity, exactly everything, the data you just shared with us is a huge, huge

concern out there. We know that gyms of shutdown, which is also a concern. I don't want gyms of shutdown. I want them to be part of the movement. The way I look at it is let's take fitness participation from 23% to 40%. There's enough for everybody. We need everybody out there chanting the same message. And so yeah, the opportunity was very clear and visible.

The ability to execute off the opportunity is a whole nother issue, right? There's a lot of complication around that because you're dealing with real circumstances that have real adversity. And so how you digest that information, how you find the right solution, you have to think out of the box a little bit and we've been able to do that. And you know, the exciting thing is we opened a brand new 40,000 square foot gym in Seattle in Puehlep, Washington that just turned out amazing. We just opened last weekend, I'm sorry two weeks ago, in Las

Vegas, 50,000 square foot indoor outdoor gym in Las Vegas, our first one there. We're about to open the second one on April 10th. Last weekend we opened up in Anaheim, city of industry, and Oxnore, California, all at the same time. And so we are going to, from a just a company-owned perspective, not counting domestic and international, we're gonna open up 17 locations during this period of time. So it's been insane.

Now I do wanna get you into the political realm. Let's do it. Yeah, yeah. Because so are you part of, it's like the fitness coalition? And so if you could explain kind of who represents that and what kind of fights you guys have been a part of and what kind of wins you've actually been able to accomplish in this crazy landscape that we have.

Yeah, now I want to compliment the CFA because they have done just a fantastic job representing the industry. And really, in my opinion, and I don't want to get too controversial here, but my opinion is I have the ability to view fitness all over the globe because we're developing in 37 countries, right? So I know what's going on in Thailand. I know what's going on in Singapore and China and Japan.

California was the worst run process in regards to COVID compared to everything that I've seen globally. I'm so strange. You have such a great governor. Yeah, I was. Yeah, I mean, I know, I saw the poster. I saw the poster of him in your office.

The one that we thought was our dad? So our dude, my hair just like him. Justin's a big fan, yeah. Well listen, here's what happened. Is the CFA, you know, we wanted to be fair. I mean, they want to go meet with them and it was about a round table and trying to have common ground

because we all wanted to do this safe. We understood that initially, you have to close the clubs and understand what you're dealing with. Everybody understood that. It's the inconsistency that started to happen that really created the erosion of confidence. And so when you say, hey, governor's office, all you want to do is see the data and how you're making decisions so we can understand it because we had our own data, right?

We had all the key gym operators around the state from 24 to us to in shape to all these other companies provided data about COVID and the percentage of COVID viruses that happened throughout the day and through check ins. And what we found out is that they have not, they've yet to provide us any data. They don't have any data that were they made that there was the basis of the decision. And so obviously that is a huge amount of concern.

If we go around making decisions without any data, you're going to put yourself in a lot of trouble. And the decisions of how the governor, how the governor made those decisions, I don't think they realized the impact it had on the everyday Joe. And when I look at my own gyms, and I talk to my members around California that haven't been able to work out for a year,

and they're telling me that they've gained, 18 to 20 pounds of fat because the average person's gaining between one and two pounds every single month from the inception of COVID all the way through today. When they tell me the anxieties that have been creating whether it's self-imposed, bottom line is anxieties are picking up when they tell me that depression or how high it is, the governor doesn't realize that.

The governor's office doesn't realize that. They're just thinking, okay, let's shut down gyms and let's make sure that Costco is open. Let's make sure that all these different services that they think is essential without any data. Let's make sure those are open but a place where you can actually social, I mean, think about gyms, guys.

Don't we already clean gyms? Don't we already set up equipment where it's kind of socially distanced? Cause the average machine, guess what, is six to 10 feet apart? Everything is distanced. Don't we already have good ventilation and air circulation?

Does that same thing happen at Costco? No. And also look, gyms are not, they're, they, and they've been shown now in the data. They're not, they weren't major vectors of COVID. One of the main reasons is this. Healthy people go there. I'll tell you something, right?

First of all, nobody's weighing that out. Nobody's saying, okay, this will reduce infections, but what are the consequences? What are the side effects? Nobody's saying that. There are side effects. There are consequences to some of these policies. And of course, with gyms and closing down parks,

parks got closed down. People are getting more and more unhealthy. Diabetes and obesity kills more people than anything else and then of course we know how much it increases the risk of dying from something like COVID. But here's the big one, okay. If you took the average person and they felt a little under the weather, so that full blown sick, but they're a little bit kind of sick, they're still going to go to dinner with their friend, they're still going to go to the mall to go shopping, whatever. They're not gonna go to the gym.

The first place people don't go when they start to feel a little under the weather is gyms. They just don't go work out. I know this. I manage gyms. Sick people don't show up to my gym to work out. So you have this self-selection bias of people

who all feel good enough to work out. So you go to a gym, you're not surrounded by very sick people. That's one of the main reasons why, in my opinion, why we didn't see huge spreads of COVID in gyms. You're so right, there is this common respect in gyms because gyms create community. And people know that just don't go to the gym if you don't feel good.

Whether it's a position of they just don't feel good enough to go or that't feel good. Whether it's a position of, they just don't feel good enough to go, or that's the respect for the other members that are there that they don't want them to get sick. So I completely agree with you. And I think that as we look back on this in a couple of years, we're going to be able to directly look at this and say

that the way this was handled and managed cost people's lives, it cost people's lives, it cost people's professional lives, the deteriorate and the significant way, and it had much more impact than we realized today. Oh, I 100% agree with that. So okay, so some of your gems are open now, or if not all of them, but with certain restrictions, how has the market response been?

Have you felt like you opened one up and there were people were just like, oh my God, I've been waiting for a year to work out or has it been slow? Like what's it been like? There's a huge demand. And yeah, it's been just incredible to see is that the popularity without having to spend money

on marketing without having to do the things that we've typically done in the past around membership acquisition, people are coming back to the gym and they feel almost like their liberty is back. And we're seeing customers now that would not have gone to the gym in the past that are now given it a shot. And so now it's really driven around

so far the younger population, right? We're not seeing as much of the senior population into the doors. I think that will come as the vaccine continues to spread. But so far, it's been, we're very optimistic. And we're very bullish on where fitness is going. And we think that there's going to be a huge, huge voice inside this industry as we navigate through this,

because we're not done with pandemics. They're gonna come back, and we're gonna be much more prepared in the future with A data, but with B, making sure we're educating our trainers and our team members, and everybody else within our circle to be able to handle a situation like this.

You mentioned, I think it was a gym in Vegas that's outdoor indoor. With these new locations that you're opening up, is that something you're considering now to have a larger outdoor area because are they designing that in the plans? Yeah, yeah, no, it is, I think, which is, I mean, it might be, that's awesome.

I think that's great. Yeah, we have a gym in Costa Mesa, it's owned by Mike Bisbeak and Cubswantson out there, and it's half outdoors and half indoors, and it's always performed exceptionally well. Well, when COVID hit, the performance doubled because you could, for the most part, keep it open, right? And so it was really amazing to see.

Yes, Centennial has, then Las Vegas has an outdoor gym, and yes, City of Industry has an outdoor gym, and yes, Oxnard has an outdoor gym. So what we're seeing is members really like that external experience of being able to train outside and or inside based on how the weather is and based on what they feel. Yeah, it's kind of like a throwback. I remember, I mean, you ever work out at Muscle Beach? I mean, I walked by it. I was a little bit intimidated, but I know you somebody like you probably know. No, it's one, I mean, I mean, it was, it was, I can't wait to

take you. Yeah, it's a great time. No, but it's a great time mean, it was, I can't wait to ditch her off. He's rips it off right away. It's a great time. No, but people, but that makes perfect sense that you guys would then include that in your new plans because if this happens again, at least you'll have that buffer, right? You'll have an open area. Was there anything else that's different now

considering what happened that you guys are looking, like, are you training people differently and say, okay, if this happens again, here's how we're set up or are you looking at different plans? Like, is there anything else that's different? Listen, I would say everything's different. It's not just one or two things. From the virtual fitness community that everybody's now engaging in, and how we're setting up

to intersect social community with fitness online, I think is a big piece. I think how we train our team to more holistically take care of our consumers that they're just not a member check in that it really is about making sure they're eating, drinking, sleeping, going through recovery and training the right way. The way we're educating our team member is much more enhanced compared to probably pre-COVID. And I think, you know, listen, the obvious stuff that we all need to make sure that we continue to consider, which is the clenliness of the facility and making sure that we're keeping maintenance up.

You can't take shortcuts anymore. And Jim's that try to save money and make profit through cutting maintenance and cutting capex and cutting investment back in the clenliness, they're making a huge mistake, because even though we may not be dealing with a pandemic in six months, they're making a huge mistake because even though we may not be dealing with the pandemic in six months,

we're still dealing with other illnesses and other things, you know, staff infection, other things that you can get if the gym is not clean. Plus people are aware of the fact that they were, that there was an illness, so now they're probably just more aware of that in general. That's right. That's a great segue for a question that I had for you.

Are you familiar with some of the surveys that have been done on what people are saying about working out from home now? Have you followed any of that? A little bit, yeah. So I think maybe Doug, you can pull it up to tell me where it's at right now, but I've been following this since,

now obviously when COVID first hit and everybody was scared of death, they even go outside, I'm sure the rates of how many people said they're going to work out from home was much higher than probably what it's going to be when we feel safer? But there has been a large percentage and I want to say the number is like 40% which is almost half the people That are saying now that they may never return to gyms

Now is this something that you guys have discussed and how are you guys Attacking that from a business point? Yeah, I mean, it's the same thing that I see, 40% of the people are never gonna return to a grocery store. It's not reality. And listen, we all know you guys are gym people and you know the importance of social community.

And I don't look at the at-home experience as competition at all. It's about how do you compliment the at-home experience? Because what I wanna do is take my train different mentality. I wanna give the consumer the at-home experience? Because what I want to do is take my train different mentality. I want to give the consumer the best possible fitness experience that cannot be replicated anywhere else, whether they're at home or whether they're at another gym inside my four walls.

Then what I need to make sure that I do is I'm able to extend that at home. So if they're running late, if the weather's bad, if the tires flat, they're going to be able to jump online and take a quick class or do a quick workout, and they're going to be able to search thousands of videos to be able to do that. And quite frankly, if they have Peloton, I embrace it. Peloton grow, expand, because Peloton, how many modalities is Peloton? It's one modality, right? It's cycling. Okay, do whatever you want to do on cycling, and it complements what you're going to cycling. Okay, do whatever you want to do on cycling, and it complements what you're gonna do in my gym.

If you want to do other vets, you want to go to YouTube and look at fitness at home, by all means, do it. But that's just compliments, and it navigates the message of how important fitness is. So now, instead of speaking to the limited percentage of population to get into gyms, we're speaking to a much broader audience that are now accepting fitness at home.

My job is to make sure my value proposition is so unique that you can only get it within my four walls, which makes people both want to work out at home and in the gym. That makes, that does make a lot of sense. You bring up the community atmosphere in gyms, and then earlier you brought up CrossFit. This is why CrossFit succeeded so well, is they had that.

You went in and you were working out with other people, you had that kind of team atmosphere. A lot of modern gyms, I feel like lost that. You go in, put your headphones on, do your workout, and you don't really talk to anybody. You're in a private, you're in a public gym, but by yourself, UFC gyms are a little bit different because of the class atmosphere, the MMA that's in there, it does feel more like that group environment, which is a very powerful, that is one of the most effective ways

if people consistent, I know that. I know people used to show up to work out with me half the time because they just like to say, hang out with me, not necessarily because of the workout. So, and I would like to see statistics on that. What percentage of people who work out consistently at home also have a gym membership? I did.

I know you did too, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I wonder what that number was. No, I think you bring up a great point. And I think that's the right, regardless if it affects a business or not negatively, I think that's the right attitude. Is that, I think one of the problems of the fitness industry is,

we've been competing with each other for so long, it doesn't make sense. I mean, that's one of the things that inspired the show was that we wanted to come out and share all the positive benefits of all these different modalities. And there's plenty of obese, unhealthy people for everybody in the space to eat.

Instead of competing with each other and saying, my modality is better than your modality, why not encourage people to dabble in all of it and see what works best. Just me and meet people where they're at. I think it's great that they know now they have an option, you know, if those circumstances, you know, come up again or like there's more lockdowns or whatever, like, you know, people are now at least savvy to know like, okay, I have an answer, I can do this at my house, but I also love the gym experience. And I don't think that's going to go away. Well, it isn't a crazy, you know, in 1999, 2000, when 16 people out of 100 were working

out in a gym and we were going insane on competition. We were beating each other up. We were price, you know, cutting each other. 16 out of 100 people. That means, and I'm not good at math here, but I'll try. That means 84 people had, they weren't involved in fitness. And we weren't looking at that opportunity to grow the platform. And so, you know, the other thing I'll talk about on, on, on the connectivity here is there is something to accountability. There's just something to it.

And I don't care who you are. You are not inspired. You're not having fun and you're not being held accountable at home. So you're going to choose days that you just don't feel like doing it because you're not in the mood. You're gonna choose to give up a little bit sooner

than you should. And let's face it, when you go to the right gym, that's in your trade area, and you're inspired to work out with other people around you, that becomes kind of like what you're talking about, the CrossFit effect, right? The CrossFit effect was that social connectivity,

where people were holding each other accountable to showing up at the gym and then inspiring one another to achieve better results. Well, this is a debate that we have all the time. This is that you're coming from my point right here. Yeah, and we have this discussion all the time, but I will say this, a big part of what you're saying has to do with the leadership in the gym.

And what I mean by that is, I've run gyms that were old, you know, that were not as nice as my competitors gyms, but we did better because of me and the team in there. What kind of people are you looking for to work in and run these Jim? What kind of managers are you looking for? Because I feel like that makes the biggest impact. You guys have nice Jims, nice equipment,

it's all fancy, big, all that stuff. But it doesn't matter if the team isn't the right team. So I was gonna come at you with a job offer right after this. He's expensive as well. I know, I know, I know, I know. I was going to come at you with a job offer right after this. He's expensive as well. I know. I know. I know. I've got a model that is.

I'm going to pay away too much, dude. You've got to book out. Yeah. You said, shit, so isolated. I know. Listen, there's two very important letters when you start looking at leaders. It used to be back when you and I were a GM at 24 hour. It was who worked the hardest and who had the most amount

of passion and I could sell. Today, those elements are certainly important, right? Discretional attitude is always critical, but it's EQ, emotional intelligence. You have to be able to understand the filter of what other people, the way other people are looking at things. If you don't understand and comprehend that, you will never, ever speak to the mass audience.

You're only going to speak to a selective few. Leadership is the most important element of any gym in 2021. You have to be able to inspire others around you to accomplish things that they did not think was possible. Yeah, that makes it huge, different. What about the atmosphere with the members? Are you encouraging people to go out on the floor, talk to people, to get people engaged?

Like I said earlier, a lot of gyms you go in, you got your headphones on, and it's like you're by yourself. I would imagine you guys are trying to have a different kind of atmosphere. Look, I had a conference call last week, and I told everybody to put their pins down and to not take notes.

And the only thing I wanted to do was talk about having fun. That's it. I wanted to figure out, how can we have more fun in our clubs? Let's not talk about KPIs and drivers and measures and all the typical conference calls stuff that you do, the minutiae. Let's just say, how the hell are we going to have fun tomorrow?

How are we going to have fun in a different way than we have an experience before? You got to get people thinking about fitness in a creative way, and you got to give them the right autonomy and trust to do so. You can't script everything out. You can't say, hey, from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., here's exactly what you're gonna do every second of the day. I gotta go to sound.

I gotta say sound. You are an incredible leader. You inspire me. Here's our objectives as an organization. Here's how we think we can get there. But I'd like to have your slant, your personality, your style, and I want you to figure out how to make sure every team member has fun because if they have fun,

who else has fun, the customer. It also sheds together. Where were you, man, when we were at the end of our careers running, Jess? I would have loved that. I always got to, you got to fit in this box. Sorry, can't do it your way, you got to do it this way.

Highlight the planner. Feel like a game-able record book. Yeah, drive you crazy. So, okay, so with some of these limitations and restrictions, I think what, some gyms in California can be what? To 10% indoor, 20% indoor? Yeah, there's some counties that are up to 25% now,

but it's gonna continue to get better. And listen, the nice thing is, when you have some decent square food, you can basically operate as normal. I was just gonna say, how do you organize something like that? Do people have to have appointments, or do they show up,

and then you tell them, or full, what does that look like? I can't really speak to the low cost gyms. The low cost gyms, the more of the philosophy is how many members can you get in a gym at one time, right? And the premium value proposition gyms, you just don't have the same type of crowds and floods of people.

You have, when you pay a little bit more dues and you have a more premium experience, you just, you don't get as many people showing up at one time. So we have no issues. We, we're in a good spot. On that note, do you, do you have any predictions? Do you think that we're going to see any more fallout in the gym industry? Like, do you predict any of these low, low cost gyms? Do you see any of them filing for bankruptcy? Are we going to see anything else? Is orange theory going to survive? Yes. I do think they'll survive. They're a good brand. I think, you know, listen, everybody isn't kind of the same position. And it's all how you deal with the current economic challenges, right? What we're seeing on data is about 78% of our

members came back. And so I know some of the data says 59% plan in the return, but we saw more than we expected to come back initially. And then we put a plan together to make sure that we get at least 95% back, that we're there prior to COVID happening. And is there a risk in the future? Of course there is, but the people that don't take on and embrace that risk are the people that are going to fail. You have to know the risk, you have to know the choppy waters to try to navigate through.

And if you run the business correctly, you try to stay as healthy as you can, I like the odds of success. But there is no certainty in any climate. And, you know, I mean, listen, what kind of debt did we create for this country over the last 12 months? I mean, I don't know what's it's like. I just bought more Bitcoin today. I just bought more Bitcoin today.

I just bought more Bitcoin today. I just bought more Bitcoin today. I just bought more Bitcoin today. I just bought more Bitcoin today. I just bought more Bitcoin today. I just bought more Bitcoin today. I just bought more Bitcoin today. I just bought more Bitcoin today.

I just bought more Bitcoin today. I just bought more Bitcoin today. I just bought more Bitcoin today. I just bought more Bitcoin today. I just bought more Bitcoin today. I just bought more Bitcoin today. I just bought more Bitcoin today. I just bought more Bitcoin today. I just bought more Bitcoin today. I just bought more Bitcoin. And that goes back into the economy. And it's not gonna be easy. I don't care if business and members came back

to a 100% level where it was pre-COVID, you still have the adversity of the economic challenges with people trying to raise minimum wage, with people with laws changing. And I mean, listen, I'm dealing with a club in Texas, I'm trying to open, I'm trying to figure out if I should even name the city because it could hurt me, but I'm dealing with a club in Texas.

And all I want to try to do is open a pre-sale center, a business office that's this size with three desk in it to just sell memberships a preview center for the gym. The city came out and said, no, you cannot open because we don't have a professional diagram. Okay, well, let me give you a diagram. We inserted the diagram provided it to the city. You can't open because there is not three thermostats located in these three areas. We dealt with that. They came back with something else. So cities now, because of COVID, They came back with something else. So cities now because of COVID

There's a lot of city employees that are involved with permits that are trying to justify jobs By rat red tagging right so so it there's there's dimensions of this COVID that is it's not just The simple what's in front of our face. There's the extension of everything else that's around us That's creating challenges to get back to normal. Wow. Adam, do you guys franchise? We do. Okay, good.

That's good to know, because one day, we've talked about owning a gym. I have my money's on you guys. Well, listen, I appreciate it, but we're going to stay humble and we're going to stay very empathetic to the team member and the customer. I do believe we have something unique and special as it continues to translate globally. But there's adversity. There's adversity in front of us, but with the team and with people like you that you guys that are driving the fitness passion out there across the world really, I like our chances of success as an industry. I'm not just talking about UFC gym. I want to see this industry

prevail and be incredibly successful. Same here. Thanks for coming on, man. My pleasure. Always good to see you guys. Thank you very much. Look, you can go to MindPumpFree.com and download some of our guides. They cost nothing. They're absolutely free. And you can also find all of us on social media,

Justin on Instagram at MindPumpJustine. I'm at MindPumpSoul and Adam at MindPumpAddom. Thank you for listening to MindPump. 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 South Adam and Justin

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