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Batten House Podcast
Batten House Podcast
Batten House Podcast
Ep 12 Real Personal Training Creates a Holistic Approach to Fitness and Wellbeing
Tyler Puier, owner of Real Personal Training in Ottawa, shares his journey from competitive hockey player to fitness entrepreneur after career-ending concussions taught him the profound mental health benefits of exercise. His holistic approach focuses on the four pillars of health: exercise, nutrition, sleep, and social life, helping clients achieve both physical results and improved mental wellbeing.
• Former junior hockey and lacrosse player whose athletic career ended due to multiple concussions
• Discovered exercise was more effective than medication for managing anxiety and depression
• Established Real Personal Training in 2016 with a focus on total health, not just physical appearance
• REAL stands for Results, Exercise, Active, and Lifestyle - the core principles of his training philosophy
• Emphasizes consistency and finding exercise routines that fit into clients' unique lifestyles
• Offers both in-person and virtual training options to accommodate different schedules and needs
• Believes health is fundamental: "without it you really don't have anything"
To learn more about Real Personal Training or book a free consultation, visit www.realpt.ca or contact Tyler directly through the website.
This is the Batten House Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Sean Batten.
Speaker 2:Well, hello everyone. I am very excited to have our guest Tyler Pru. Sorry, I'm probably butchering your last name.
Speaker 3:That's all right. Yeah, Tyler Pru.
Speaker 2:Pru, yeah, Tyler is a fitness trainer in Ottawa here owns Real Personal Training. How are you doing, Tyler?
Speaker 3:I'm doing great and thank you for giving me the opportunity to come on here, sean hey absolutely I'm excited to share some information and, yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well. We met a couple of months ago, just getting to know Tyler's business, and I thought right away, for our listeners, you're going to want to get to know this guy. He's in central Ottawa, offers personal training. But I'm going to let you tell our viewers and our listeners about your business.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I'll give a bit of a backstory and how I kind of end up where I am. So, growing up played every kind of sport there is I think there's not one, I haven't tried but my two main ones were hockey and lacrosse. So winters, fall and spring hockey summer mostly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, mostly lacrosse, big believer in the two-sport thing, nice. And then, yeah, I took it far enough to get to the junior level for both of them and then I made the decision to focus primarily on hockey. So it was hockey during the season and off-season training with a sports performance trainer which gave me the first taste of personal training. And to tie into a little bit of the personal side is through. High school obviously went through some anxiety, depression, maturing, growing new experiences. So I had a psychologist, been on the anti-anxiety pills, been on sleep pills. But I realized even at that age the exercise is what made me feel the best.
Speaker 3:So fast forward, a couple of years playing junior hockey. Unfortunately I had too many concussions with a separated shoulder. That was like the icing on the cake and was recommended by doctors, my coach and, of course, my parents looking out for my health. With everyone on my team we decided that it was best to probably pursue school and let sports be more of a leisure and fun activity than a highly competitive one. So I went to Ottawa U Human Kinetics. My original intention was actually go to med school after my undergrad, but I love exercise so much and my third year became a certified trainer, worked at another studio in Ottawa, which was a great experience. Worked at another studio in Ottawa, which was a great experience, and then decided to open up real with, with the focus on exercise for longevity, but exercise focused on mental health and physical health well, good for you, man.
Speaker 2:Like talk about taking your life experience and and creating something to make such a difference in not only your life but in your community around you, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I have that luxury of experiencing it from many different angles, but knowing how effective exercise is as a tool not only for looking good but for feeling good, which ties in the mental component. Just like when people go for a run, they get the runners high. Well, the same thing happens when you exercise. The endorphins are released, um, you feel good, um. But the misconception is everyone thinks exercise is a chore, you have to do it and you have to look good, and that's not the case. Um, you need to do it for the things that don't show physically, um.
Speaker 2:And then the byproduct is physical results absolutely well, but you're bringing up a good, a good point, because a misconception in your industry would be your typical. Well, I don't want to be a bodybuilder, tyler, I don't want, I don't need a six-pack, I don't need, you know, to be here every day and so on. But really, what you're saying is you, you personally experienced it and, and I have to actually uh, so I agree a hundred percent. It's, it's the physical activity that really stimulates your, your brain, um, and you're byproduct of that.
Speaker 3:The biggest challenge is the consistency, um, and one of the things that we measure early on isn't the numbers, it's not the stats, it's not. Are you losing weight? Are your weights going up? Is are you doing your sessions? Are you doing the exercises on your own? If we ask you to do a walk two times per week for 30 minutes, are you getting it done? Because we know if you find that schedule that works for you, the results will come, and then we can fine tune it and tailor it to specific goals.
Speaker 2:Nice, so you're. So that's, that's great, cause you're talking to a well-rounded outside the gym, not just in the gym. And you know, you gotta tell me what this, what the meaning behind your name is, the real personal fitness meaning behind your name is the real personal fitness.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was the hardest thing to choose. Starting starting the business. I I'm not joking I had a piece of paper, two-sided, with 500, 600 names written down. Yeah, and of course you search online. Does someone already have this? Or what do you want to represent? And, uh, real was actually an acronym. It stood for results, exercise, active and lifestyle Four key words that I thought was very important in the personal training industry. So with the acronym spelling real, I was like that's it. You have to be real with yourself, you have to keep it real. And all these things started going through my mind of what real stands for. And then we've kind of made it more simple. In the studio we have, and in our logo there's a green square beside real and what that is is it's four sides, so the four pillars of health, which is exercise, nutrition, sleep and social meaning, your social life, and we believe if you have those four things in tune with what works best in your lifestyle, you've accomplished good health.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that that's great. So the so it's a huge difference between what somebody would consider a gym. I got, I have a gym membership, you know, and I'm going to go to a personal trainer in one of those larger gym memberships, right, that's. It's a very different more, I feel, and correct me if I'm wrong but your approach with you and your team there is more holistic and it's more of a hey, well, it's very holistic, I mean, and all that entails, right.
Speaker 3:That's exactly exactly what it is, and one of the things I strongly believed in was being able to make it super personalized and focused, to a point where we just don't know you from coming to the gym, and that you can lift a certain amount of weight or you can run for a certain amount of distance. We know everything about you, which allows us to make your exercise program very tailored, customized and the most effective.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I mean, one size doesn't fit all. Obviously, we're all different shapes and sizes, ages, strengths, weaknesses and so on. That's, that's, that's awesome. Okay, so we've. You've talked about the four pillars. One of the means, social. What is it you do for fun when you're not training somebody, when you're not running your business, which is a whole beast on its own? What are you doing for fun these days, tyler?
Speaker 3:I feel like it kind of ties into business. I'll try to uh step outside of it a bit and um, I love being outdoors, so, uh, fishing, boating um, running, um, seeing family I have a really strong connection with my family and I'm fortunate for that um and seeing friends, of course. So the social life is is important um, and then in the winter, um four-wheeling, um, skating, ice fishing, um things that can just kind of take me away from the business in the studio, and uh, yeah, and finding that balance right and that's that's something we try to accomplish with everyone is where is that balance for you and me? I'm someone who thrives off people and their energy, so I like having stuff planned, I like looking forward to things and, of course, traveling, I think, is super important for people's health, and just getting away from the office, the computer, whatever it may be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and even if you love it, like, you're obviously doing your passion and you've been in business for how long now?
Speaker 3:Real open in 2016. So just over eight years.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's no small accomplishment, so congratulations for that, but then keeping the balance right and living what you're preaching essentially, and then finding team members who believe the same right, because it's not just you there, right, it's other team members who also embody your vision for real.
Speaker 3:I've been there before, of when I first started real from 6 am till 8 pm doing the sessions myself and then on Saturdays doing team training to keep the athletic performance side of it involved. And after two years I finally learned my lesson that I'm not invincible, I can't do everything, so learning as I go, because I went into it as the personal trainer and not more of a business person. But it's slowly evolving to that point and, like I said, it's my passion, so if it wasn't I wouldn't enjoy the ride.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. When you started the business or even before that. You know we always go through every one of us goes through a hardship or a challenge in life. You mentioned a couple things that you kind of had to work through in high school. Can you describe one of those, those hardships that kind of you rose above and now you can say, hey, I'm, I've, I'm stronger now as a result of that, now that I'm on the other side of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a very good question, and if you asked this to me about, uh, 15 years ago. I wouldn't be comfortable talking about it, um, but it would be my first year playing junior hockey. Um, I think it was like 40 games in or something. Um, I had a really bad concussion, um one where I lost consciousness on the ice. Um, it was in the hospital. There's some memory loss along the way, uh, so my recovery from that took a long time.
Speaker 3:It took, I think it was about a year before I played another game, believe it or not um, and it's one of those injuries where people don't actually know how you're feeling absolutely it's hidden yep right and I, I've, I've taken some pretty big hits in my life and being a kid you hit your head on stuff or you fall, and I've never had something like that before.
Speaker 3:So during that process, um, anxiety and depression was really triggered. I went through high school. I had some of it like I was talking about um, I learned how to cope with it and then I was fine until that concussion Um, it's. It's tough because you, your thought process is different. You start to get depressed from a sense of a performance level, like I can't get back to it.
Speaker 3:Um, everything was kind of in fast forward for me, um, especially on the ice, where usually my game was. I see the ice wall and then I'd step out there and everything was just a whirlwind. Um, so, yeah, there was a lot of to get back to it. There were a lot of tests I had to go through and you get to a certain test, you like cam so close and you hit a bump in the road. But when I eventually got back to it, um, I wasn't too much long after where I I battled some more post-concussive symptoms they were calling it at the time and something that in science and in the sport has become really big and I lived exactly that. I was not myself, sleep was different, anxiety was very high, so it just got to a point where I yeah, and then I had a separated shoulder, so that was just kind of another thing throw that in there throw that in there and, based on doctor recommendations, I had a really good team around me.
Speaker 3:I'm grateful for that, looking out for my health, because you're telling an 18 year old that sports was his life, that you should no longer play sports competitively. So it was tough. And then I went to Ottawa U? Um the first year, I would say I was trying to find find my way in life, find out where I wanted to go, um, but yeah, it's uh. I found that passion again with exercise and uh, and here we are.
Speaker 2:I I honor you for just pushing through Cause, like if I think about that for a moment as a young man at 18 sports, you know, sports is your life and all of a sudden someone saying, oh wait, you're not going to do that professionally Um, that's a real blow, Like for you to bounce back and do this now and be successful at it as well. Anybody can start a business to be around for a year or two, but you know, here you are, like it's good man.
Speaker 3:I honor you for that brother, it's awesome, it was a journey. But you know, you said something that kind of resonated with me. It was a big blow and it was because I felt like, not even for myself, but I let people down around me and for me and maybe it's weird business gives me that sense of igniting that passion again and making sure I don't let people down and I'm just happy to help people. Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:So, hey, one of the reasons I wanted you on the show cause I I felt like we really hit it off when we met and, uh, it's, it's, it's so great um to to share your story.
Speaker 2:And thank you for sharing your story. It's it's a lot of personal stuff in there, but it can really help, especially our younger, our younger listeners um, you know, trying to figure out how to start a business if they want to, but you've turned, you know, something that that could potentially derail you in life into something so great that's helping so many people. Um, and he, you know, eight years, basically eight years later, um, that's that's great. Um, eight years, basically eight years later, that's that's great. So we're wrapping up here in a minute there's so much more I'd love to talk to you about, so we'll probably get you on the show again, cause, like there's so much, there's so much you're doing so much that I just I want, I want you to get the word out even more. But to wrap it up here, what's one thing you wish our listeners listeners knew about your business?
Speaker 3:To wrap it up here. What's one thing you wish our listeners knew about your business? Yeah, I think that we don't only offer in-person sessions. We offer virtual sessions and exercise programs and we have the free consultations. I think it's important for people to know that because when they see real personal training, they see studio One. They have to get to the studio and sometimes it's just easier if you have a tough schedule, to do it at home.
Speaker 3:So that's something we offer and even if it's a conversation, even if we booked that initial consultation and talk about where you're at and where you want to go, happy to sit down and and listen and give my advice to people. So just that we're open-minded, we genuinely care about people's path moving forward and at the end of the day, your health is the most important because without it you really don't have anything and a lot of people lose that along the way. They get too busy with work or they have a family or they have an injury and they just never really get back up on the horse. So it's important that exercise is involved in your lifestyle in some capacity.
Speaker 2:It's worth a call. That's great. So for our listeners, how do they get a hold of you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, best way you can go through our website, wwwrealptca. The phone number on there is actually the number that will come right to me, so you can call that number, you can text that number or you can send us an email and I'll be happy to reach out and answer any questions people have.
Speaker 2:That's great. Well, listen, I really appreciate your time and sharing your journey with us, and we will definitely be in touch, all right, thanks man, yeah, sounds great.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me on here. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:You, betcha brother. Thanks for listening to the Batten House Podcast. To nominate a favorite local business to be featured on the show, go to battenhousepodcastca. That's battenhousepodcastca. God see you.
