Inside Covington - Episode 10 Lee Ramsey, Sanctify Fitness, CBC Member Spotlight

Pat and Lee Ramsey, co-owner of Sanctify Fitness, discuss why Sanctify Fitness is much more than a gym or a place to get physically fit. Lee calls it the interplay of mind, body, and spirit in the health and fitness space.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to Inside Covington, a podcast produced by the Covington Business Council in cooperation with TBNK, the telecommunication board of Northern Kentucky. I'm your host, CBC Executive Director, Pat Frew. My guest today is Lee Ramsey, co-owner of Sanctify Fitness, which is much more than a gym or a place to get physically fit. Lee calls it the interplay of mind, body, and spirit in the health and fitness space. Lee, welcome to Inside Covington.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Thanks, Pat. Thank you for having me on.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Oh, yeah, no problem. So let's get into that. What does that mean? The interplay of mind, body, and spirit in the health and fitness space.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Yeah. The I think it it was born out of me and Juliana's both personal journey with health and fitness and realizing that people can be really fit and appear to be really healthy, like aesthetically pleasing, they can eat well, and they can also be really unhealthy. Because we we noticed a gap with, especially in like the the space where aesthetics are the ultimate ideal of what you should pursue. Like everything, all of your effort is concentrated on how can I get my body into the best possible shape? And when that happens, like you sacrifice everything else. Um so everything becomes less important. And I, when me and Juliana originally started dating, I mean, all of my life was concentrated around, okay, make sure I eat the right thing, make sure I sleep well, make sure I work out, make sure I recover. Everything was oriented towards that. And my relationships suffered, my mental health suffered, I ended up getting injured over and over and over again. And then I realized, like, oh, like my whole pursuit of health isn't really healthy at all. Actually, it's it's tearing apart other parts of my life. So, how can health and fitness be pursued in a way that improves my overall quality of life and enhances everything else? Like the way that I say this to new uh people coming into our gym is we don't want to pursue fitness's fitness for fitness's sake. Like we don't want to just make it a means to its own end. We want to come in here and treat ourselves well so that we can we can do life better. You know, like I and part of, I think part of the drive, especially for me, is like I have a tendency to be hyper-competitive. And it's like realizing that come well, coming from an athletic background, athletics my whole life, going into the gym space was like this is a perfect outlet for me. But what in reality, what it did, it dominated my whole life. Um, and so what I had to learn, what Joanna had to learn was it's not that being competitive is bad. It's how can I redirect my competitiveness towards a place that's actually more important? Like I'm a father, I'm a husband, I'm a business owner, um, those are things are more important than being good at the gym. Right. So how can I be competitive in those outlets? Like, how can I give my best, and when I say competitive, I mean giving the most effort, right? Giving the most effort towards being a loving father and being a loving husband and being a more valuable contributor to my community, as opposed to, well, all my efforts are just oriented towards how can I build my body up the best it can, which is all it is, is an it's a it's a caressment of the ego, which only leads you to be lonely too. It's very lonely because it's not really giving you anything, all it makes you feel is well, I'm just a little bit better than the person over there, which it doesn't it just doesn't do I I found out it was meaningless, basically. Yeah. Um yeah, I found out it was meaningless.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

Yeah, and so when when you make that the whole thing, uh, you know, in physical training you can overtrain, and you talked about getting hurt, so there's probably an element of that, and then just not having a balanced life, and you know, and then you felt the pain in relate broken relationships and like no time for friends.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

You know, like let's go out for someone's birthday. I can't well I can't eat that. Yeah, I can't do that, I can't stay out late. Yeah, right. So I I literally created all of these parameters around my life to get this ultimate thing that didn't that wasn't really all that important, and by default, I just had no joy. I had no fun, right? And then I had to I've had to learn over the past couple years, like, where does fun come into health? Like, where is joy? Where are those things? Are those things not important for being a healthy person? And that's when we say the interplay of mind, body, and spirit, it's it's a holistic approach to that's what health means. Health cannot only mean how you look, it's gotta mean how you feel, how you think about yourself, the quality of your relationships, and all of those things, how they all come together. And I think that a lot of the times it's easy to just say, well, I can just do this, and then we we kind of attach all of our energy and efforts towards it, and we don't understand how well everything else is interacting. So let's make sure that we do this in a way that respects everything else we've got going on.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

So uh a person then, you know, they they kind of figure out where they're falling short. So how do you help them to change and grow?

SPEAKER_01 5:04

Yeah, so I am so obsessed with this, Pat. Like I think about this a lot. I write about this a lot because I it confounds me when I meet someone who is very, very out of shape. Like they're they're terribly out of shape, but the frame of mind they're in is like I'm done. Like I'm ready to be different, I'm I'm done living the lifestyle that I was living. I'm ready for something new, I'm ready for something, even if it's gonna be hard, like I'm I'm gonna be dedicated towards it. And then there's there's other people who are who are in comparatively good shape, and they're fine with things in their life that are giving them negative consequences, like they're fine with it. So there's gotta be a breaking point. Like people have to experience a moment in their life, I call it a prick of conscience, when you like wake up and you're like, you know, something's got to be different because I'm done living this way. And part of what our job is, is to help people become more honest about what those things actually are. Because if we're not honest, we will internally reason and bargain with ourselves to stay where we are. It's like if you are, if you're out of shape and you don't really eat well, you don't really sleep well, and you maybe try exercise, you try um being more thoughtful about your diet for a little bit, and then you're like, well, this is hard, and and then you start to think, well, you know, I actually life wasn't that bad, and I'm not really the kind of person to do this anyways, and I might as well just not change because people don't really change anyways. That's the progression of thought that happens, and that happens in so many different spaces. It's not just isolated to health. It's I mean, that happens in in people's marriages, happens in people's jobs, right? It's like, can I begin to be more honest with myself so that I can get myself on solid ground so I know what steps to take forward? Because if we're not being really honest, then there's no there's no visible direction for us to take. So if I'm if I'm not brutally honest that, you know what, I actually don't eat well, like I just don't, then you have a step to take. Okay, if you don't eat well, you know, okay, well, then I need to start eating healthy. But if you're like, if you're still kind of confused on whether or not you're eating healthy or whether or not you're eating poorly or or not, then it's like, well, it just leaves you in limbo, you don't move at all. So part of our job is is helping people to move towards something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

Um you also talk about the importance of community among business owners, discuss that.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Yeah, Pat. So when I went to the CBC the first time, I originally went there because I thought it'd be nice to get more business. And then I realized that I actually didn't care about business. I cared about meeting other people who felt the same pressure as me. You know, because when you're when you're an owner, the pressure feels like it comes from all sides, basically all the time. And there's not really there are days off, sort of, but you're kind of always at the whim of if something happens and I've got to be the one to take care of it. And meeting other people who have that level of responsibility, it's like, okay, well, now I have a source of feedback that these people truly understand uh the kind of pressure that I live in. And it it doesn't because it can be I mean it can be terribly lonely, you know.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Yeah, we do have a lot of small business owners in the Covington Business Council, and you know, in many ways their business kind of has to consume them sometimes because they have to deliver, they have to, they have to bring in the customers so that you know you can live or your family can live, or you know, you're responsible for other people. So, yes.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

So I mean you get you get collective mentorship through that too. Like my favorite part is when you you make us ask questions and we just sit and talk about it. Because then we realize that I mean we're all in different industries and we all struggle with the same things. And that's just I mean, that's really, really helpful. Like that's that's ther therapeutic in many ways.

SPEAKER_00 8:53

Right. The the thought of investing in your local economy is a mission.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

Talk about the important thing. So have you read Wendell Berry? Do you know what that is? Yes. So I read his book Um Sex, Economy, and War. I think it was war. It might be something else. But either way, it's a collection of essays.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

I remembered the first theme.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

It might have been sex. Yeah, well, it really impacted me, man, because he he talked about how if you are making money in an area and then you're uh basically just offshoring spending. Like you're let's say I'm making money in Covington and I spend all my money on Amazon. Well, there's Amazon workers in Covington, maybe, so maybe that's helping them a little bit. Or I'm yeah, I'm just giving all my money to big box chains. It's like I'm basically just taking resources from the place I live and then giving it to somewhere else to I don't know where. So I realize that that actually devalues my money. And if I make money in the place that I live and then I reinvest it, I actually make the value of my money go up because I'm improving the quality of life of my neighbors. So then I started to become a little bit more set and built a moral conviction that, hey, it's actually, it this is actually a good thing. Like that's the this is the first time I thought about spending money in a really good way. Because I'm a and my wife will tell you this in much better words than me. I'm a pathological saver. Like I constantly want to save money, I constantly want to, no, no, let's let's tighten, let's tighten. And then I realized like, if I'm not investing in my local community, like we don't have, like, I'm a hypocrite because I own a business, and people have to spend money on my business. So like I should probably pay it forward. That's why I started getting lunch at uh Rika's or Reka's. I'm not sure if I'm gonna pronounce that right, but they're a great sandwich shop. I started getting lunch there twice a week, and I feel good about it. Because I'm like, they're here and they're serving the community, and I should invest in that. And it's not even that I shouldn't invest, like I should feel good about it. Like it's a good work that you're doing to invest in local business.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

Right, right. Um developing a personal vision for your life. What is what is your personal vision, Lee?

SPEAKER_01 10:54

Oh, I didn't think you were gonna ask what was my personal vision. Um okay, so personal vision for my life. I have a I have three, I guess, three interconnecting frameworks. The first one is I want to be an author, um, a speaker, and a thought leader in the health and fitness space. That's the that's the first thing. And that that begins by the gym. That begins with working with people and by getting to know them and trying to help them. Um the second portion of that is I believe that the reason why that's important um is because I can be a more valuable contributor to my community and that I'm I'm helping people and serving them. And then the broader framework of that is I believe that we're all children of God, and that I I believe that our primary fulfillment, like the feeling of joy and satisfaction, comes from binding what was broken back together. And and what I'm good at is helping people discover more of who they are and what they want, and taking actionable steps towards improving their life uh in a way that they can feel um in a way that is that's existential, that's real. And so my personal vision is all of those things, all of those three things kind of aligning uh together at once. And what happens is if you have a personal vision, then you can I heard the term reverse engineer. I don't know, I don't really like that because I think tech language kind of muddles some things down sometimes. But you can delineate legitimate steps from that and say, well, if I want to be an author, then I've gotta write. Because no author doesn't write. You know, that's what they do. So then I'm like, okay, well, I'm gonna start writing every day. Well, I want to be a speaker. Well, speakers have to speak. So finding opportunities to speak, doing it on my own, practicing, and then I want to do it in the context of how can I use that to help other people. And so let's put myself in a space uh where I have the ability to do that, and something that I'm competent in. Um, yeah. So that's how I see each and every day of my life kind of moving me towards closer of what I feel like I've been called to do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

You're listening to Inside Covington, a podcast about the intersection of people and business in Covington. I'm your host, Pat Frew, and I'm talking with Lee Ramsey of Sanctify Fitness. Um, obviously, in in the work that you do, accountability is a big piece of that. Can you uh differentiate between internal and external accountability?

SPEAKER_01 13:30

Yeah, I so this this is so difficult to teach people because I don't exactly know. I'm still trying to figure this out. If it's if it's something that is innate in people, or if it's something that is grown and developed over time. I'm kind of I'm inclined to believe it's a little bit of both. But I had a client, I have a client who's doing her PhD on resilience, and she's about to finish, and we talk about it a lot because she wants to understand, okay, is resilience a trait, a quality, or is it something that is more of like a process? Like everybody is at a point on the continuum. So that's the the the frame that I look at internal and external accountability. And those what those words mean to me is internal means you don't have to be told what to do, but like you are the one who executes on it, whether or not someone's demanding it from you. So you keep the promises you make to yourself. External accountability is when you're fulfilling you're fulfilling duties that have been designated by somebody else. And so part of what my job is, is to help people realize that whether I'm there or not, like you've got to be the one to take ownership over this area of your life, or else it's never going to stick. Like you're never gonna keep doing this if you've outsourced discipline, if you've outsourced responsibility to somebody else. And I think that in large part, sometimes athletics does a disservice in this because we're told a lot of athletes that come into our gym are like, well, I've been told what to do my whole life, I've been told how to work out, I've been told when to get up, I've been told when to eat, I've been told what to eat, all these things. I mean, the military is it is a whole different thing, but it's the same concept. Like you're basically you're you're taught how to follow instructions, but when you're out in your own life, there's no bloody instructions. So you just gotta figure it out. And it's hard. So trying to develop a sense of, well, I'm gonna do this because I'm gonna do it and because I believe in it, that takes a level of believing that your life is serious. I think that's that's a big portion in trying to develop internal accountability again, which is also like I I look at that in resilience as pretty closely connected. Trying to get people to believe that no, like your life is important, you know. As I meet with a lot of people who are like, I ask them about certain aspects of their life, and if they don't want to talk about it, then I just I'll move on and do something else. But a lot of the times they'll answer in a way that's like, well, that's not really that important. I'm like, well, what you're saying when you say that's not important is that you're not important, that what you do isn't important. And like I don't believe that. So trying to assist people and facilitate someone else's discovery that your life and what you do really amounts to something and you should take it seriously. Like, I there's this quote by C.S. Lewis, and he says, Um, evil and good actions compound on one another. And I've thought about that for like five years, because if you really think about your behavior and how everything leads to something else, then you can't take something. It does again, it doesn't mean be this like insane tyrant and try to control every area of your life because you're so serious, but it's like understand the weight that what you do has consequences and you cannot get out from under that.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

Say that quote again.

SPEAKER_01 16:51

He said, evil and good actions compound on each other.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Yeah. Why do why have we gotten so unhealthy as a w as a society today?

SPEAKER_01 17:04

Um okay, so there's like there's like for me, my mind my mind sees like 75 angles to this pad. So I'm gonna try to just say one, and I'm gonna try to stay on one train of thought and and not try to bounce off to other things. So to what I said previously, I think that when a lot of our uh basic needs are met, when uh the the things that allow us to live like eating and ha having shelter and all those things, and I understand there's there's always exceptions to this stuff, so I'm I'm generalizing quite a bit. It kind of teaches us to not have ambition. It kind of indirectly teaches us that, well, I've got everything taken care of, like I actually don't have to do anything. Or it doesn't it doesn't like it doesn't demand us to take ourselves seriously when everything is when things are easier, you know, and and things aren't easy. I know I'm I don't want to generalize, but I do I really do think there's something real to this that when you have when you have access to entertainment, when you can order food, when you can have a community on the internet, when you can learn on the internet, when you can do everything basically, basic necessities by sitting on a couch, there like that that internal ambition to go strive for something really meaningful. And when I say unhealthy, that's what I mean. I mean more of like a a crisis of meaning more than anything else. Um and we could talk, you know, the quality of our food is diminished and all of those things too. But I do think one of the main problem isn't even that. The main problem is that we've somehow lost the stuff that's meaningful in our lives. Because the stuff that's meaningful, like, it pulls us out of ourselves, it makes us strive for something that's important. And and when we don't do that, like we just don't, like, there's a level of apathy that I've that I've experienced meeting other people that I'm like, this is the unhealthiest thing I've ever seen in my life. It's like, well, nothing's that serious. Yeah, the world's bad, but like, oh well, I might as well just kind of skate by and and you know, watch my television show and sit down on my couch and look at the stock market, all this other like, and and that I'm not even sure why it infuriates me so much, but I I think that I've I've understood that that's that's happened inside myself. Like I spent COVID watching hours of television. It's like, why did I do that? Because I didn't think I mean maybe it's because I was uneducated, I was young as I I was naive, but it was also because I didn't realize the seriousness of my own life. You know, that that your life is very serious, like you're gonna die. So like let's you know get up and go do something. Um hopefully that doesn't sound like abrasive, but I get No.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Yeah. No. Um, you know, the different levels of behavior, we we have to understand behavior in order to uh modulate it or change it for the positive. So there are there are a lot of different questions. There's not only the what of behavior, but the how and the why. Okay. Contrast all those, talk about the importance of each of those.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

Okay, so I read this book uh by Nicholas Carr, it's called The Shallows, and he talks about the he he quotes this guy, he says, the medium is the message. Okay, he's talking about media. He's talking about how when you begin, like when you're a child or your parents are allowing you to use technology, at the beginning it could be like, oh my goodness, my kid's learning Spanish and he's learning geography. But what your kid is also learning is to be attentive to a screen. So eventually what it sort of evolves into is that utilizing the screen becomes more important than the actual whatever you're doing on it. It's just spending time with it. Does that make sense? So what is indirectly happening is you're you're beginning to be more consumed with something that's artificial life than than real life. So he talks about that is the the medium by which you receive information is part of the message. So you take this in health and fitness space that you can be working out and you can be eating well, and you can do it under a punitive framework of mind. Doing it where you're doing it out of punishing yourself for past behavior, you're doing it because you don't think you're good enough, and I've learned that that's not good. Like that's just not good. So you can be externally displaying these healthy behaviors and be very unhealthy while you're doing it. Because the how of your behavior isn't pointed towards your flourishing, it's literally pointed towards beating you down. And so what we have to transition to, or what what our coaches at Sanctuary Fitness try to do is try to help people understand that the gym, that health, that your life, there needs to be activities in it that are done because you're valuable, right? Instead of, well, because I did something bad to punish myself. It's like, no, because you're very, very valuable and you need to care for. For yourself. And that's like that's a little bit of a synthesis of that's the why and the how of my behavior. And then the what will pour out of that. The what pours out of it. But if we just concentrate on like what to do, and we miss out on the deeper questions of well, how do I talk to myself before I do these things? Or what is my ultimate goal in doing this? Like we'll we'll miss out on those. And then we'll do our behaviors, and then we won't really feel any different. It's like, well, I'm healthier, but I still don't think I'm healthier. Like, I know people who are very healthy and they always think they've got some chronic condition. There's something always wrong with them. It's like, well, there's nothing wrong with you, but you think there is. And so there is, right? So it's a little bit of the think therefore I own, therefore I am thing, but I really I've it's not just like I've experienced these things meeting with people and and analyzing myself. Like I do, I do the same stuff. Like I do, I do the same stuff.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

Final thoughts. Anything else you want to add in summing things up?

SPEAKER_01 23:01

Um Yeah, man. I I just think that what me and my wife have really come to understand is that if you're going to change any aspect of your life, um, I feel like the number one quality in people who do that successfully and continually are people who seek out being challenged in the way that they think or the way that they live. Because some n nothing nothing stands in your way more than yourself. I think Socrates said no, no, this wasn't Socrates. I forget he said this, but he said, smart people learn from everything and everyone. Average people, again, this is generalizing. I'm not this is generalizing, okay? Average people learn from their experiences, and then stupid people know everything. And so if you can develop a sense of insatiable curiosity about how, like, not only how can I get better, but what's new about the world, what's new about people, what's new about myself, and you don't stop changing, like that's what that's what really living is, Pat. Um, and I'm convinced of that, you know, and so business is important. Obviously, like I I love our business and I love what we do, um, but I think it's so much, and all businesses are like this, like it's so much more than just a service. It's like we're getting um to connect with other human beings and just spending time with them and sharing their life. Uh, and I think that's when done in the frame of mind of I'm curious and I'm open and I'm willing to learn, like there's nothing better than that. You know, I'm I don't I haven't found anything better.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

Well put, well put. Lee, thanks so much for your time today.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

Thanks, Pat. It's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

So I've been talking to Lee Ramsey of Sanctify Fitness about their holistic approach to fitness, mind, mind, body, and spirit, a Covington-based business. I'm your host for Inside Covington, Pat Frew, Executive Director of the Covington Business Council. Thanks for tuning in. Enjoy the rest of your day.