Episode #14 Eric Bugera PT/ Training Educator

In this weeks episode we sit down with Eric Bugera an Online Coach and Educator with Pre Script and talk about the online fitness industry and discuss building a coaching career as a young PT. We dive into how the industry has evolved over the last 15 years and what the future holds for personal trainers with the rise of AI and the internet changing the game. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:02

All right, boys, we're live. All right, guys, welcome back to the Inner Life Coaching Podcast. Today we have guest Eric Rugera. Eric, so um obviously we know that you go there through Instagram and um obviously I know you work with Prescript and do some education stuff there. Um but tell our listeners kind of a little bit about yourself and kind of what you do.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Yeah, I am an online personal trainer. I'm in the education space, which is still a weird sort of phrase to roll off my tongue. Because I I personally I I pretty much identify still just as personal trainer, which I don't think a lot of people do in this day and age. They always want to try to tack on the ambiguous title of coach, which is still, you know, that's a thing between the three of us. We know what we can distinguish between coach, if it's a strength and additioning coach, if it's a prep coach, if it's powerlifting, bodybuilding, Olympic lifting, whatever, versus personal trainer. We can make that distinction. But I think now that online exists, it's just like a low-hanging title that people like to ascribe to themselves. But for me, like I am a personal trainer first. I started in person. I have always sort of kept at least one, even if it's my baby toe in the personal training space, in-person, live in some capacity throughout my uh my career. Um, but also now, probably within the last five years, probably circa the pandemic, I got into the education space more in earnest uh while I was still in a commercial gym setting. I had I had started doing a little bit of tiptoeing around, like trainer education within the company I was with. But when the pandemic hit, that's when I really started to launch more formally or informally. I don't know what's more accurate, like having a real job and a real place and working in education versus getting into the internet scene and working in education. I'd say obviously now as it's evolved, it's much more solid. But yeah, during the pandemic, we got involved with uh either through my own personal social media as a form of like light marketing, uh, and then eventually through more official means with priest group, getting into the the actual education space for continued ed and just offering trainers and clinicians and coaches of any denomination, any walk within our space, a way of understanding how their body moves, how they can use these sort of um X's and O's, like lowest calm denominator, like the principles of human movement to improve their own practices. Again, whether you're a personal trainer, a coach, whether you're a clinician, understanding the background more so you can facilitate better training and better outcomes. Um, my formal background in education is in kinesiology first, with a little bit of nutrition on the side. So I have an undergraduate in uh kinesiology from the University of Manitoba. I came back after a few years in the field. Um, full disclosure, I burnt out, as I'm sure many coaches and trainers have. Eventually, you just you know, you grind too hard, bro. And then you need you need an excuse to step away. And for for me, you know, I was like, I'm gonna go get a nutrition degree and help my clients more. And it was really just a way of escaping because I was burning out. Um, as I completed the human nutritional sciences degree as a second undergrad, they basically like looped me in. They're like, hey, you should do a master's. And I was afraid to grow up, so I was like, Yeah, I should. And then I did a master's in kines kinesiology. And to be fair, that's really what probably was the launch pad of my career thereafter. Like the skills, the uh work ethic, the the ability to just grind and experience pain on route to like a larger goal that was at the time much larger than myself. Uh, that kind of taught me everything. And then I got back just into the personal training space, like I started the uh introduction with, and all of a sudden everything was not trivial. It's still you have to work, but it was so much easier for me to get and surpass the same level of success that I was at with much easier um uh means of sustainability. But yeah, then the pandemic hit and it shifted the entire landscape. So we got into the online space more formally, started tying in education on a larger and broader scale, and that's what brought us to where we are today.

SPEAKER_02 3:54

Yeah, it's awesome. It's really interesting. Kind of, I think all of us have like a cool like origin story of how we got from like 2019 to COVID to where we are now and like how the fitness space has evolved. Over the past few years, it seems like the online space has rapidly grown uh for good and bad reasons, um, which is like a whole whole nother subject, which we'll dive into later on. But that's super interesting. So, so what was the driver for you to go from the point where you were just in I don't want to say just an in-person trainer because it's a very important part of it, and I think it's just the foundation of what we all do. But what was the driver for you to transition from that into more of the educational space? Because I know like in your bio it says like you're your personal trainer's trainer, like you you enjoy like the educational side of things more. Like, what was the driver to get you from um more of this lifestyle coaching on the gym floor to getting into the education space?

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Yeah, it was a couple pronged. Like one, it was I worked with a lot of really good people, and I'm sure in whichever capacity you guys have worked with other trainers, you've seen people come through that were either hooked by a manager on the floor, like they were just working out as a civilian, like you'd be a great trainer because you look like you work out whatever it was, whatever the rationalization was to hook them. And then I would meet these young kids, these trainers that were just getting started. I'm like 25 at the time, they're like, you know, 19, 20, 21. So I guess that's not a huge gap, but yeah, anyways. Um, and I would just see these good people that didn't know what they were getting into because they were told to do it, as opposed to like maybe you guys and me, we sought it out more in earnest. And then they would just start getting crushed because to interact with people on a gym floor to try to build a career, it's a scary, intimidating thing if you're not willingly the person that sought it out. And then the confidence in the skill that was the other part of the equation. I started being like, Man, you guys are such good people, and you know what you're doing because, at very minimal, even through just being in maybe my orbit or the orbit of other good coaches and trainers, you know what to do. Probably better than the average person coming straight out of like with no support whatsoever. But there was a complete and total lack of confidence, and they would just again, they would get crushed, they would have their soul stolen, they would feel bad with themselves because they can't pull revenue and support their company obligations. They think that it's awkward or invasive to interact with other people, even though our entire job is helping other people. And I would just see these people that just like get stomped out and then leave the industry. I'm like, that's okay, let me do what I can to give you, even from like faux authority figure status, like I have a master's degree in kinesiology. I'm telling you, it's not that hard. Here, do this, and then give them like a very digestible version of what I know. That was very helpful, and that was kind of like the second leg of why I got into it. Um, and the third leg was, and it's this is true for to like not completely leap directly into prescript, but it's something that all of us on the team uniformly recognized at the same time of our careers, and it literally is for better or for worse, just are you like seeing this shit? Like wherever we happen to be in our space, chiropractor, physical therapist, personal trainer, SNC coach, whatever it was, you just look all around you at what was currently happening in the space with our contemporaries. We're just like, what in the fuck? Like, like what is actually happening here, right? And so it started to push us in the direction of, oh, okay, clearly I know something that either people don't, or it's just it's not getting the spotlight that it deserves. And it's the most basic thing ever, at least in our opinion, our our vantage points, because we all sort of go to that lowest common denominator of you know, biomechanics, functional anatomy, etc. etc. But clearly it's not a thing that is is like at base principles what most people follow. So, are you seeing all of this shit? So genuinely seeing good people getting crushed, um, raising confidence of everybody around me because it is not it's complex, but it's not complicated, or whatever the correct phrase of that is. Like you can go super deep in this, but to actually apply it is not that challenging. And then overall, just seeing the industry where it was and being like, this is not good. Let's just let's do what we can to spread a better way with and it's not even a proprietary take my 12-week course kind of nonsense. It's like I'm going to tell you how it works. Like, I'm not making things up to just have my own version of like the same thing that's others. Like, no, this is just how your body works. Go with go forth and do with it as you will.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

Yeah, one thing I want to highlight that you mentioned there that I think is is overlooked a lot in this industry. A lot of people get into personal training because they like to work out, but like I always say that there's a big difference between enjoying training and and genuinely liking being passionate about helping people. And I think a lot of young people get into this because they're like, Oh, it's it's easy money, it's like I'm just gonna build up this business overnight, but it's it's in reality it's not that way at all. So that's a big difference. Yeah, there is a big difference. So I think that's like for people in our position that have been in it quite, I don't know how long have you been training for now?

SPEAKER_00 9:03

Training or working? Working as a trainer, working as a trainer, uh 2011, so 15 years.

SPEAKER_02 9:10

Yeah, so I'm one in like year nine, I think, and you're going in year five or five or six. I think six. Yeah, and then like the the way I approach things now is massively different than I would have, you know, eight years ago. And I think when you first get into it, there's so much imposter syndrome and self-doubt, self-limiting beliefs that it it really is so beneficial to have people like kind of doing what you're doing that are taking people under their wing and kind of helping them elevate and develop their business to the next level. And I think I think it's like a natural progression for a lot of people in this industry, is like helping the next man up. Um, yeah, that's super cool. So, with that being said, what are what are like some of the big things that you see done wrong in the in the personal training industry when it comes to like first getting started? Like, so like you, I'm sure you take on a lot of like younger trainers. So, what what are the things you see people doing wrong in the industry? And like what are the what are the big mistakes you see people making when it comes to building out their personal training business, executing on the gym floor, working with people? Like, what are what are the most common things you see there?

SPEAKER_00 10:07

Uh it's similar to what you were saying earlier about how people just think it's gonna be an easy dollar or like a quick, easy gig or whatever it is. It's especially now that the online form, you have two dominant forms. You have either in-person with a commercial gym, maybe freelance, or you have online. And whether you're freelancing or online, you are the sole person that is responsible for constructing it as a business and putting it as a professional front with like a website, a name, going through the process of creating either sole proprietorship, LLC, um, whatever the correct terminology might be in in the United States, if it's slightly different than in Canada. But like it's on you to make it. This is an official thing. Don't send emails through Gmail, like maybe have the a couple bucks set aside to have a website and like an official email. It's not tremendously expensive. And I tell this to people freely. The overhead to run my business on an annual basis, probably five grand, and that's on a heavy year with certifications that I have to renew. Like, it's not it's it is not a lot to run a business through your phone with a website. But at the same time, I have all those things. I have a business bank account, I have a tax guy that'll do at least for the he doesn't do my uh my payroll or my bookkeeping, but he definitely makes sure I'm not gonna do anything dumb with my taxes. Um, and everything down the chain. It's like you just treat it like a business. Whereas a lot of people, the overhead I said, if you can't set aside that amount of money to have a formal official business, like maybe you shouldn't do it yet. Like go work a couple summers, set aside some money, and then do it then. Like, because the way you start is the way you mean to carry on. The second one is wildly overly complex hand-wringing, both in terms of how do I get started or I don't want to start. It's it's very similar to what people will say um in like anything, really. Like, I'm gonna do my first meet when my total is this much, or I'm gonna do my first show, but I need to be basically show ready before I prep. Like, people are like so they're so sketchy with just getting started and gaining experience and improving. But also that carries forward into once they are actually in the space, how they approach the actual business side, like the wringing of their hands for social media posts or content types or or a curation, how they're gonna program for someone. I must have, and I'm sure you guys have have dealt with like a day one complete new. They're like 35, like never been to a gym before, and both those things are very important. 35 is a very important nor number because that means they are a life worth of compensations, but zero body awareness and zero previous training experience. And you're like, okay, they need a periodized program, or they need to insert whatever layered complexity of like I must construct the most important, uh, the most uh refined way of approaching spirit. No, no, no. Go do stuff, keep them safe, go do stuff. Like understanding where the major rocks are and not being afraid to do them in the front of your own anxieties. And then probably the third is standing on your own two feet and just being your own person and not being afraid of that. The the amazing thing to me, as now a 37-year-old man, the boomer of the space, is how everybody is always chirping about being like, I am a maverick, or I am a I you can't find, I'm a CEO. I'm all these all these titles that they want to give themselves where they are not like everybody else. They're trying to stand out only to then, quite literally, when it comes time to do the thing, like be confident in your in your own skills or in your own personality. It's everybody just reverts back to the mean in terms of how they program, how they coach people, how they post, how they speak, everything. There's a complete uh fear of actually being who you are when the time comes to be who you are. So those are probably my top three, at least off the top of my head right now. Um, I'm sure it's an ever-evolving thing, but a lot of those, I think, through our combined experience, even on this call, like you'll see like it kind of is a recycled sort of cycle through everybody. It doesn't matter which quote unquote generation, like I'm 15 years DP said 11, and then at five, I think. That's five years, even if it's the lowest experience in this room, is a huge amount of experience in our space because most people wash out within a year or two. And to even at your level of experience formally in training, you probably have seen the cycle that I described multiple times already.

SPEAKER_02 14:22

Yeah, I think it's it's quite sad that I think the average personal training career will last two years, which is insane to me for like someone that's like stuck it out past that to see how rewarding it can be as a career and like how legitimate of a business it can be. I do like I like what you said about the structuring. I'm I'm big on like structuring systems. I talk to our trainers, our younger trainers hear about that all the time. It's like having a good, like having a good foundation with how you operate the business is so important early on for this to become something legitimate long term. Because as you get busier, things get disorganized, and your your systems of how you approach your clients and operate your business are like they have to be aligned, right? Like I think that's one of the biggest issues people get into is they they don't have a system of how they operate, and then once their schedule and their logbook starts to get busier, they just get overwhelmed and they just feel frustrated and like they're spinning their wheels. I think that's so common in this industry because it can eat you up because there's so many people that need help. Like we're I think in today's society with how out of shape a lot of people are, it's like there's never been a higher demand for what we can offer people. Um there's there's plenty of mouths to feed, right? There's plenty, there's plenty to go around, but it's like you have to have a legitimate business structure and how you're operating this stuff, or the industry can definitely like swallow you up at a minimum of at least a decent homeboarding program, a decent homeboarding process, and when you bring people on at minimum, at least uh man.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Even you mentioning that, like it makes me reflect on mine. And I've been doing this fully online, probably I think it's since 2020, is when I formally launched and quit the in-person officially. Like you said, I worked really hard for like three months leading in. I was still in person, I worked real hard on the back end to create those systems, and I have barely touched them since. I have my onboarding intake forms, my literally Google forms, everybody, just like the most low-hanging, easy to apply yourself to and send out common things that all clients will also have access to without having to get into their own apps or anything like that. And I really haven't had to touch it, hence the overhead being so low annually. Like, I can make some I could definitely make some upgrades for the sake of doing it if I really wanted to, but like there hasn't been a problem. And you just work real hard up front one time, and then you make tiny little micro adjustments as you go. It's not a tremendous amount of effort past that.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

Yeah, I like that. Yeah, and I and that's why I think it's so important for you to get some skin in the game on the gym floor in the first place, so that you have an idea of how you want to operate things when you do move in the online space. I we'll get into this a bit more in depth, but the online space is it's like the wild, wild west right now. But I I think there's so many people that are skipping the I'm not saying you have to go about it this way, but I think it's so important to get some skin in the game on the gym floor before you even dive into the online space. Like, I think that's an area that so many people overlook with all the influencers and things we have now. It's like learning how to actually communicate and work with people, it's so important, and I think it's an area that gets just brushed over now because people have access to just post whatever they want online, and there's not really any regulations to what they're saying.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

I agree with you, but I also think it's like just stupid crucial. Like, if you don't know the process and what you need to create, like how are you gonna create it on an online space? Like, I think you learn what you need to create online through the skin in the game of like in-person. Like, I've dealt with this, I know what I need to do. This is gonna be the structure I'm putting in place to deal with this online. But if you just jump straight to the online world, you have no idea. You're basically copying and pasting from other people that what they did, and you don't have any idea why they're doing that because you don't have any in-person knowledge or any personability, like you're not personable with that person, you don't know how to do it.

SPEAKER_02 18:09

Have you guys seen the thing going around? I think it's been a trend in this past week online about I guess some coach just building out a generic program and sending it to like 50 people and taking charging insane amounts of money. Insane. I don't know if you've seen that going around.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

I yeah, I saw that like 15 years ago. Like it was my initial resistance to the online format because nothing new or everything new is old or old is new again, or whatever. Like one of my initial like reads on the online space, and this is when I was a young trainer. I literally just came out of school, it was in-person, and you'd hear about, and it's primarily through the bodybuilding space at the time. Powerlifting started getting it too because powerlifting and honestly, distance format for powerlifting is kind of the shit. Like it actually is pretty much built for it of all the things. Maybe Olympic lifting needs. No, I'd say Olympic needs a lot more in-person coaching than maybe even powerlifting does, at least the way everything's has evolved over time, and we've seen who's effective. But you'd see like bodybuilding programs, and it's literally as you described, here is the same program for all my bikini girls, the same diet. Here's your not a spreadsheet. Here's literally just print this off. It's got my little logo in the corner, and uh just follow this for 12 weeks, and that'll be that amount of money. And enjoy your eating disorder and your metabolism that's been destroyed, uh, your gut health that's been thrown in the toilet, and it'll be five years until you can actually do anything ever again because your body has to recover. Nice. It's it exists, and again, the exorbitant fee attached to it is like the there's nothing be here long enough, and everything's a cycle, and nothing's surprising anymore. So when you say that, thankfully, I'm insulated and I don't know what who or what you're talking about, but I am not surprised in the slightest in exactly as you described it.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Right, right. I kind of believe you in the same sense, it's just still it's still new. Like, man, that's I just would never like that would be crazy. It was a it was but it's straight copy and paste, it was all AI generated, chat GPT, copy, I like paste. It was wild.

SPEAKER_02 20:12

So um kind of transitioning away from that, I'm kind of curious. So, what is your what is your process with online coaching mentorship look like? Because I know you do a lot of the education side of things, you do mentorship, you do video analysis, things like that. So, what does all that look like for you and how has that adapted for you um over the years you've been in the online space? And you said you've been doing it full-time since 2022.

SPEAKER_00 20:34

Uh 2020, no. Like I was very resistant to any formalized mentorship processes because again, I view it from the standpoint of what is the product that I what are the deliverables deliverables that I can give you, right? So, from a programming and online coaching standpoint, that's your spreadsheet, that's our daily communications for technique or any sort of queuing. That's maybe some troubleshooting on lifestyle things, like there's continuous interaction that is the deliverable, like I can do that from mentorship. It's like, okay, well, how does that change from just programming and coaching? Because for the most part, like I can't divorce those two things. Like, if you're a programming client, I'm going to teach you everything about what you're doing and why along the way. And is and if I give you a good program to reach your goals, but also keep you from falling off the wagon physically or any in any other respect, you're probably gonna learn pretty much everything about your body and training slowly but surely if you're willing to engage on that level. So the mentorship, I'm like, okay, well, what makes that distinct? Because like people would DM me, like, hey, do you do any sort of education, mentorship, anything like that? I'm like, yeah, just go into programming and I'll teach you what do you want to know? And we'll use that as we'll use the programming as the vehicle for your education. Um, and then finally, in the last year, I formally launched it uh in January or December of last year. Um, there's a handful of people, and I was like, be grudgingly fine. And I was, and this is the same way I do anything with anybody, like as a personal trainer. And just a highly experienced personal trainer at that. Like I can do many, I can spin many plates. I can give you introductory to probably intermediate or like low-level advanced powerlifting, intermediate bodybuilding. I'll get you to your show. I've got one person that's been with me forever for whatever reason, even though I I can't do posing, I don't give a shit about bodybuilding in general. Like I like it as a as it's a cool hobby, but it's like it's not something that I'm particularly specialized in. I just know how the body works. And I was like, yo, I'll get you to a certain level. I can guarantee you that because of how the body works, but I would rather outsource you otherwise. And so when it came to the mentorship, I'm like, okay, as long as you guys all know that this is my first run at it, and we're kind of collaborating on how to construct it so it's gonna best serve all of you. This is how we're gonna go forth with it. It was fairly priced because it's like, here's my price for programming. What are the additional services that are gonna be rendered? Okay, so here's the bump in price, it's nothing crazy. But it basically still uses their own training as a vehicle with very intentional selections and services like loon breakdowns specific to them. Maybe I pull in case studies that they'll bring of their clients or of their personal goals or issues or whatever, and we'll do detailed breakdowns there. But the one hour call that we do, like as a group call, that's where I was like, do I have a curriculum? Like, how do people do mentorships? Like, what is what what defines a mentorship? I'm like, well, I'm not gonna give you basically like course material per se. Because if I try that, I'm like, yo, I'm making a course, like I'm not gonna go half-assed. So it basically became like open session QA, case studies, technical breakdown so they can see what I see, kind of taking the things I was doing on an individual level and then bringing it in as a group setting so they could uh ping off each other a little bit, um, with some degree of formal topics, like we'll get into the big ones maybe, but it just kind of is a free-floating what do you need? And let's make that because I still to this day I'm like, if someone has a mentorship, go to school, motherfucker. Like, there what do you mean mentorship? Like, if if you're coaching someone, you are their mentor already, like a formal, structured, curriculum-based thing, like that's called school. Maybe I'm old and people don't like school anymore, I guess. But like, man, go get a degree, MBA, go get a beacon, go get nutrition, like go to these places where this is the you haven't even touched AI at. I'm starting to get heat, I'm starting to get pissed. All of your heroes, because again, I'm getting pissed because I know education gets pushed back on a lot in a lot of different circles in the fitness space, and I'm very into the education space, like the formal I have my degrees education space. All of your heroes have degrees, whether they're talking about them or not, if they're personality driven, there's a ton of your personality-driven heroes that have their degrees, whether they're your academic heroes, the people that are pushing all of the actual science that's driving what people do. Clearly, they have degrees and they're spawning other people with degrees. Like it so mentorships, experience-based, or I don't understand why they exist. So we're not going to be doing necessarily let's just create like the NSCA personal trainer ripoff or whatever it might be, because like that exists. Like, go do that, right? Like, so I kind of kind of went in a couple circles, kind of went off tangent a little bit, but hopefully that gives a better understanding of what I do. It's it's let's take what you specifically want and tailor the mentorship experience in a group setting to account for all of that.

SPEAKER_02 25:34

Oh, that really that elaborated well. And one thing that you mentioned that I really like, I think you made some some posts on your Instagram about this before about like being a generalist and the value behind that. Um, I think that serves you really well when you move into the online space because I always tell people when you get into in-person training, train anyone and everyone and gain as much experience as possible before you try to go into like a niche route, right? It's like it creates like all those all those clients that you're working with, all the different varieties and challenges and types of that's building out a skill set and creating creating knowledge and and value for you so that you can you can be a tool with anybody, right? Like I think that's super important. And I I think you've made some posts about that before. Um and I've always found that very relatable. I think the work that I do with like my my lifestyle clients, if you want to call them that, or the ones we do on the gym for like lifestyle clients, um, has translated very well to things that I do with like my bodybuilding athletes and um any any higher-level athletes. It's it's like training people is training people, right? So when you when you learn those skills with how to communicate and learn how the body's moving and solving problems for people, I think it translates very, very well, especially when you try to get into the online space, you already have that skill set developed.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Yeah, between spending an exorbitant amount of time on the gym floor, uh training everyone and every anyone. And honestly, the longer you're there, the more complex the case studies become. Um, especially if you're in the same place for long enough, you become a point of reliability for potential people that were looking for training, but just didn't trust the fact that every one or two years there's a complete turnover of the trainers. So I would start getting these examples of like I trained uh one of my longer-term clients, he had spina bifida, we trained him from a wheelchair. That introduced a whole new level of creativity and understanding of how the human body works for how to deliver their goals. Uh, hip replacements, heart issues, like anything you can think of, you start to have more open access to these kind of cases where it takes you out of the oh, oh, you're a 20 to 25-year-old, apparently healthy individual that would like to improve their body composition, uh, time and nutrition and sleep and responsibility, none of these are problems. We got it, everything's gonna be fine. You're the ideal model client. Yeah, that that slowly starts to melt away based upon your experience and your reliability, and it if you become the touch point for people that have these more and more complex issues to deal with, and it's this rolling ball downhill that gets you better and better, so that when you parlay that into maybe going online, I mean, nothing really surprised you at that stage. Like you realize that people are people.

SPEAKER_02 28:10

Yeah, I I really like that point you made about um the challenging clients. I was actually talking to one of our newer trainers about that the other day. The the best lessons you learn in this industry are from your hardest, most challenging clients. The ones that give you the most headaches and have the most like quote unquote issues and and and challenges that they present, like those make you a better trainer because they they force you to really dive into problem solving. And when you can unlock unlock problems for those people, it it just makes you a better trainer, more versatile, if that makes sense. Yeah, I love it.

SPEAKER_01 28:41

Yeah, I agree with all of that. I mean, I've got plenty of those, and that I feel like the 25-year-old perfects are few and far between right now. Like, I wish there was more of those, but I also wish there's not, I like what I got because I'm learning so much from what I'm doing right now. It transfers to everything.

SPEAKER_02 29:00

Yeah, one a good example of that that I've heard before was in the bodybuilding space. It was like anybody can take a elite genetic athlete and get them on stage and and have them turn professional, right? But it's like, what have you done with somebody that doesn't have top-tier genetics and how do you develop them? Like it's the same thing with like in-person, any type of like any type of clientele. So, in um, in terms of like your training philosophies, let's let's dive into the prescript a little bit because I know prescript's a big thing, it's a systems way of doing things. So, like in your 15 years in the industry, how has your like philosophy of your approach on on training and and coaching and mentoring changed over that time? Specifically, how has Prescript um helped shift that for you?

SPEAKER_00 29:44

Yeah, Prescript was an inflection point, I think, for confidence and a willingness to listen to my own personal experience and my own knowledge because it validated in post a lot of the things that I had known, but put it together in a way that I'd never conceptualized as in the right word. It just made everything so much more clear the way it was originally taught to me. Because I took the course back in 2019-2020 when it was first coming out, uh, right before the pandemic hit. And then during the pandemic, is when I was midway through the course with them, and then eventually it parlayed into we developed a rapport, developed a relationship, and I just hung out and basically contributed in some capacity until it became this uh natural progression of actually joining the team itself. And in doing so, like you know, kin degree, master's degree, 10-ish years of experience in the field at that stage. None of the words that were spoken to me during the content were new words. Yet somehow I walked away with my mind blown because let's say I've never seen things so well connected and put together in an actionable way that I can immediately give to my clients. That's the usual pushback on getting like a sterile degree, like just going to school and coming out, is that yeah, you know all these things from a textbook, but do you know how to actually apply them to a person? And I had found great success up until that point, being able to do my own natural version of that evolution, like, okay, I uh here's my book learning. How do I transform this into being useful for a person? But then you take prescript and all of a sudden it's this massive accelerant in understanding it all all at once. Um, so my training philosophy, so in the in the commercial trainer space, uh, education along that same track had really started to get a boost. Like a lot of the gyms started to really invest in trainer education. They put it set aside like budgets for it, they were investing in their in their trainers, going and getting CEUs or approaching courses on their own, things like that. So it started to level up. Um, but it was still very like, how do we translate this to someone that has no background in the space, as opposed to maybe someone like me, where I would see many of the courses that were gonna be brought through, maybe maybe the speakers, the instructors, and I'm like, I I'm not getting up for these. Um, I have a master's degree, not to gloat, blah, blah, blah. But it's like, okay, we're gonna do basic assessments, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do that. And it's things that a new trainer with no experience, like, these are gold mines for them for confidence and for applicability. And for me, I'm like, man, like I either did this or I have my own methodology beyond this years ago. And then Prescript would come through, and like I said, now I'm gonna, I I barely knew who Shallow was. I think I I saw him on social media break down a paper one time and just push back against something that he was particularly pissed against. And I was like, oh, there's someone here. That's there's a brain in there. Let's go. Okay, let's let's maybe see what they have to say. And so all along the way, those two things started to mesh where my understanding of how to train someone in the commercial space, it had already diverted away from okay, here on day one, we're gonna do like 10 different table assessments, we're gonna have you do a wall slide, maybe a squat form assessment. I'd already start to deviate away maybe from the standard issue way of doing things. And then with Prescript, it cemented how I then built it moving forward. And I've written about it, it's very public, and I'm I'm not there's no gatekeeping. I the metaphor that I use is like a funnel system where it doesn't matter if you're bodybuilding, powerlifting, a trainer yourself, complete noob, no experience whatsoever. I'm gonna create the greatest capture of physical characteristics that you will need to be successful in your training moving forward, regardless of goal. Mobility, stability, strength, shout-out prescript across the major hubs of stability, the shoulder, hip, and spine, physical body awareness to be able to perform different exercises, the skill of those exercises, and being able to just generally speaking move through all the planes and ranges of motion. I'm then going to take my knowledge of human physiology from my degrees and apply this to okay, what training implements? How does the biomechanics get modified, the resistance, runways of progression, programming tools like tempo, and I'm like I said, the largest capture, we're gonna plop you down in like these full body entry-level programs, quote unquote, where I'm just assessing and testing and pushing you all at once. Because I and I say that last one testing, because I've got enough younger or coaches themselves that have started with me where I'll place them there. And I know with you guys, you've been in the space long enough. If I hand someone that is used to standard training that you might find in the space, I'm like, all right, you're gonna get four exercises and two working sets each today, they're gonna lose their mind because that's not enough stuff. That's that's not enough exercises, that's not enough sets per exercise. And I'm like, really? Is it okay? I mean, sounds like that's a you probably just start poking them. Be like, maybe if you trained harder, it might just the anything you can do to sort of like get them. But it's part of the funneling process where again you start at the beginning and then you're funneling them towards zero mobility issues, zero stability issues, full skill across all the major patterns, uh, the ability to press through to high degrees of RP or RIR, so getting close to failure truly and not sandbanging it or stopping early, like all of these different points that are going to make them successful again, whether they're bodybuilding, powerlifting, training for I guess high rocks is a thing now, hybrid training, whatever it is. And then you go through, man, like an example of uh that I use usually is like half kneeling, uh single arm, contralateral pull down or and or row. You gotta man, that's you addressing their scap, their ability to brace and stabilize. You're assessing and addressing hip mobility and stability, like a ton of different capture points all at once, and then you can apply a tempo of like 311 and then an RPE of eight in the first week. The next week you reduce the tempo by one. The next week you increase the RPE by one. The next week you reduce reps maybe by two from 12 to 10. And all of these things, the more experience you have in programming, the more experience you have in coaching is actually nudging them forward quite significantly each time. But it also gives you with that same exercise shit like 10 weeks until you're at like, okay, you're gonna do your half kneeling cable row for a set of for three sets of eight with two minutes of rest, and we're gonna see where you break. And then that will inform the next variation of a single arm row that we're gonna choose, whether it's a dumbbell, a machine, what's most applicable to your goal. But it gives you this enormous runway where the whole time over the course of maybe that 10 to 12 week initial wave of training, you've addressed so many of their potential early form plateaus. Then you just do it again with the next leg of those exercises, whether you go from cable to dumbbell or cable to barbell, dumbbell to barbell, barbell to machine, whatever it is, you do it again, and that slow and steady closing down, narrowing of the funnel gets them to that like the pedestal of the set and rep schemes, the intensity schemes that science or the internet would tell you is the best thing for optimality. But also you've made it so that they're a tank, they're an absolute unit, and they're not going to have any niggles, they're not gonna have any plateaus from mobility or stability issues. So that is combined what I was already clearly up here, sort of slowly getting towards from the standpoint of just using exercise and planes and ranges of motion, unilateral work to be the assessment as opposed to doing the standard issue commercial gym style of assessing. But then add in prescript, add in master's degree level of like understanding physiology, and you start to create over 15 years now the quote unquote method that I have sort of landed upon. That is how I train basically everybody. Because after that, three one to three months, depending on where you personally need to be inserted along that continuum of that funnel. Now we're just off to the races and we train however we want, specific to getting you to your actual goal as fast as humanly possible.

SPEAKER_02 37:50

Yeah, I love that. I think that for my, so I've done prescript level one a few years ago and I'm planning to eventually get into prescript level two. But I think one of the biggest takeaways for me was um, like you said, a systems way of doing things, but also like thinking outside the box a little bit itself, too. Like instead of doing one of those generic like NASA movement assessments, like actually learning that how somebody moves through movement on the gym floor instead of having to do like this like cookie-cutter assessment, um, like your whole process of how you how you break down programming and everything for somebody completely changes. Um, and I think it's so good to have something like prescript answer now with all the misinformation that there is online. That's one of the biggest questions that I get, especially with like when I take on like a new client that's wanting to get into bodybuilding or something like that. That's one of the biggest things that they say in the consultation is that there's so much information out there, I don't know which way to go. And I'm like, I get that. That's that's that's why there's coaches out there, right? Like it's it's to simplify things. Like you can you can listen to a million different voices, but it's like just pick a route and go with it. I think it's so important. But yeah, having prescript in in your pocket, I think is is massively beneficial. I recommend it to anybody that inquires about getting into the industry, is like start there, um, like skip, skip a lot of the more generic things and and go there. It's it's so so so worthy of the investment. So worthy of the investment.

SPEAKER_00 39:10

Well, to your point, it basically is teaching you again the X and O's, the smallest common denominators, the principles as to why either your body moves a certain way or how to move a certain way, how adaptation works. And some of the greatest buy-in I've ever gotten as a coach from newer clients is being able to look at what they did previously and explain to them why what worked worked and what didn't didn't. Or I'll have clients send me irritatingly someone's real and be like, what do you think of this? And then, like, and I'm not I'm not promoting just like dunking on other people in the space, but you know, for very large accounts, prominent accounts, popular accounts. If they're an influencer, if they're someone that more with slightly more credibility than like you're on a mill influencer, it doesn't really matter. They'll send it to me and I'll be able to take what they said and translate it to our universal language and be like, here is what they are saying without saying it. Here's why what they're saying might work under these contexts and why they're blowing it up as it's as though it's a big thing. Here's where it fails and why it is not universally applicable because of how the body like it gives you that ability as a bullshit detector to just look and appraise information in real time for your clients. Because to your point, there's an immense amount of stuff out there that is just masquerading as the same core principles, but people don't know that, or they're using it as a method of their own, again, proprietary advertising. This is how I do it, and it's clearly different and new and unique. Like, no, it's not if it's working, it's working because of the same basic principles.

SPEAKER_01 40:38

I've told my own clients that if you ever have any confusion or if you just don't follow blindly to Instagram, send it to me, you hired me for a reason. Like, I'm not like I'm saying I'm like I'm not excited about doing it, but I take it as in um how can this apply to you and how it doesn't apply to you for the client themselves. Like, okay, you can take these points and we can apply it to what you're doing now, and then this is why it doesn't work for you. So it kind of helps them break them down for them specifically because it could help some people, it could not help some people, and that's what they don't know. It's like, is this really helpful information, or is it just something that I need to not worry about? Because that's the big thing with influencers, is they'll take something that's this big, like the tiny one percent of like it doesn't really matter, and they explode it up like it's the newest thing ever, and it's really not like like shit, it's it's not new, it's just something that people usually just skip over and they blow it up like it's the greatest new thing ever, and you gotta bring it back down to the client, like actually that might be this this part of your problem. This that's not the part of the problem we're trying to focus on.

SPEAKER_00 41:51

Yeah, I had uh one of my clients that worked with me for close to a year, I want to say online. Um complete like it was a podcast referral, like they found they heard me on a podcast and sought me out. So this is not like a long-form uh previous relationship, like I had no idea who this person was, right? And they had scoliosis, and then they were a bikini athlete or an aspiring bikini trainee, like that sort of style. And they're one of the people that I love training the most because they would send me things, not having they didn't have the they had the understanding of the physical limitations that their scoliosis would present in certain positions because ouch, that shit hurt because my spine is curved differently than the person performing this exercise. Um, but they didn't really understand how or why beyond that beyond the physical sensation they would run into. And I would get it all that all the time, like, hey, they did this, hey, this, they did this for their either shoulders or their glutes. And I'm like, so here's how your spine affects what you're seeing right now and why it's a literal impossibility. And in certain cases, all four limbs they would have unique ranges of motion, uh, depths or exercise selection that would be best for them based upon their their physical structure. Yeah, that kind of stuff. It's it's fun and aggravating at the same time, airing more on the side of fun, thankfully for me. But yeah, the the what's the other one? Uh the other one that just triggered. There's two of them. Uh zone two. Maybe I'm so old that I'm uh now young, but I'm like, I don't recall zones in my formal education on cardio. It was all just like heart rates and stuff like that. But like I just remember a couple of years ago, zone two as a thing, so low intensity, steady state-ish blew up and it just again, boomer, just pissed me off. So I'm like, I like wait, where did it am I falling behind? What I fucking miss. Oh, you mean cardio? But my mitochondrial biogenesis pissed me off again because I'm like, Yeah, I know what those words mean. You don't because all you're saying is cardio, the adaptation to cardio. Like, there's a couple of people in the space that are like extremely well educated that when they start to wield those terms, I'm like, okay, let's see what they have to say. Because they're gonna be on the bleeding edge of science and maybe have like the mind, but this. For like the Olympic athlete top one percent of one percent, where it matters, then it matters. The average person that says mitochondrial biogenesis, you literally just told your client in way too many syllables that cardio is important, and you know where they said that everywhere since you were in grade school, telling your students to go run more, like what like those are the things that just get me.

SPEAKER_02 44:24

Yeah, I do I do think the the online space and the fitness industry and in the like social media, like there's too much overcomplication of things like that where people always have the there's always gotta be like a trend or a term or some some new fad, like oh do the stairmaster or do the do the inkline walk for a level level five for probably 25 minutes or whatever. Like there's always something that's like the new quick fix, and it's it can be exhausting for people that work in the industry because it's always something different, and we're always having to debunk things for people. It's like you know, at the end of the day, just apply yourself and be consistent. Like it's not that complicated.

SPEAKER_01 44:59

And it's always, yeah, it's always the same deep, it's always the same one as like you're splitting hairs and majoring in the minors, stop, just do your cardio and stick to the basic foundations of things, and you're gonna get exactly what you want. Like, you're not going to the Olympia, like you're not doing these like massive things or just trying to get in shape and most like you're don't worry about that. It's always the same people. So, what do you like? That's a good question to lead into is like, what do you think are some of the like the overrated, crazy stuff online that you see right now? Some of the overrated stuff that you see um maybe come across your desk with clients or on your feed or whatever it might be. Like, what's some of the trends you think is highly overrated in the industry right now?

SPEAKER_00 45:45

Yeah, um, I'm a little probably behind because of the annual and now more than annual purge of just everything. Just show me people getting hurt, like jackass style. I want my algorithm to be jackass, and I want my algorithm to be like cats. That's what I want it to be. I don't want anything to do with fitness anymore, aside from people that are like that I follow, like you guys. Um yeah, the trends that I see. So the probably the last one that I was super um, I won't say super engrossed in, but it slid across my desk the most was like the length tension, like knife fights that kept happening about like length in position, uh all of them really short and lengthened versus mid-range, but also like length in partials and like the the entire explosive debate that just kept happening there over and over. Um, and the biggest thing was like there are for every single goal reasons to train a position outside of the primary reason for that goal. Bodybuilding, hypertrophy, physique. Let's build muscle, let's build proportionality. Nailed it. Okay, this form of this exercise for this muscle group is the best for absolute tissue stimulus. Cool. I guess that's the only thing we should ever do ever. And everything else goes in the garbage. Like, no, no, man, maybe you should do a lengthened position because it either gives you less load or uh you know puts you into a less stable position and helps with joint mobility and stability. You desperately need to. Uh, one of the biggest ones, actually, um Corey Fit, one of my friends. I'm gonna roast her because I can. Uh, we first met, and one of the first stories we we heard is that she tore her serratus one time in posing before a comp. And we're like, cool, that's a unique injury and also a hilarious way to do it.

unknown 47:27

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 47:27

Like, with bodybuilding as the the focal point of this of this uh anecdote, it's like, oh, maybe, and this is not me ripping her program per se, it's just the example I'm using, but maybe we should also integrate outside of uh like you know, length tension elitism, maybe we should integrate exercises completely outside of bodybuilding, specifically so you can do things for bodybuilding, like enter poses without exploding. I'm sure in your combined experience, you've seen people cramp on stage, you've seen people get hurt prior to comp because of immobility or anything like that. Like those are the things we litter in. So it's not like this elitism. And to top this one off before I move on, the integration of new or uh emerging sciences to try to validate or backvalidate people's points when the difference in the statistics of what's happening is so minuscule. The effect difference between, say, training in this position versus this versus this position, this exercise versus this exercise. If an elite trained person takes it to the end over and over over the course of their entire career, maybe there's a slight difference. For the average person, for most bodybuilders, for most people for that matter, you're never gonna you have to be able to individualize on a greater level than what the science says in that respect. Uh and that that leads me into the next one, with which is the weaponization of science and the just every single thing needs to have a study, or especially uh, I don't know how it is now, because I've again I've exited that that algorithm, but let's be basically putting science on its own 24-hour news cycle almost. How like the news cycle must always have something to horrify you or make you upset because it needs to draw eyeballs to the product, which is a scary prospect in this day and age that the news is a product, but it always has to be constantly going and evolving, or else you're not gonna watch. And then the the ad revenue goes down. Somehow science almost jumped in, at least in our our space, where oh, look at all these new and emerging experiments that are happening, all this new and emerging data. And it's like, well, all these things are coming out pre-peer review, pre-print, pre-everything, just to sort of validate or add, quote unquote, to an argument. It's like that's not how this is supposed to work. Like, and I've had conversations with people in the space, especially in the the science uh area of the space where it's not as bad as it sounds necessarily, but it's still like we tend to err on the side of maybe wait until things get through peer review before really standing on them like they're like they're a settled paper. So that's another one. Uh third trend, I had it, and as I was describing, it's gone. Um, I mean kind well, I don't know if it's a trend. Hyrox is pissing me off, not high rocks itself, because I think it's the better, it's the better thing for the average person than CrossFit because it's something that most people can manage from a movement, it's not gonna kill you outright just doing it, but I think it's the necessity for competition to drive training. Don't get me wrong, this is this is probably a a harder sell or a diceier one, it's more of a personal opinion than it is like dose, don't do that, do whatever that whatever you want. But people that are only going to train or only going to train hard if they basically put a gun to their head of competition. So I am going to do my first bodybuilding show because I want to challenge myself, or and then I'm going to very publicly announce that I'm going to do my first marathon, and then when I have to bail, I'm going to feel bad about myself. Like that kind of that kind of thing, which has been pervasive since I got in space. But I'm going to do this just to tell myself I can do it. That's probably a poor reason to do something that can get as extreme as bodybuilding or getting to CrossFit or high rocks just to obliterate yourself one time or a marathon just to cause physical harm, basically, to run a marathon and then yeet yourself out of the space immediately after. Like train the way you want to train. And if a competition happens to exist and you're so passionate about it, cool. But your training does not always have to be linked to competition.

SPEAKER_02 51:32

I a thousand percent agree with that. I think like social media puts this like this pressure on people to post everything that they're doing for maybe it's validation or like you said, accountability. But I I truly think the the the most progress you ever make is this when you're enjoying what you're doing, you're doing it consistently. Like at the end of the day, like we all got into this for the love of training, right? Like and taking it something that we enjoy and turning it into an extreme competitive sport, whether it be high rocks, CrossFit, bodybuilding, power, whatever it is, like it can quickly go from a fun, stress-relieving outlet to this can all-consuming thing that that just can take away the joy of why you go to the gym in the first place. I'm I'm guilty of this when I get when I do like a contest prep for a bodybuilding show. There's a there are a few months post-show where I'm I'm quite frankly very hard on myself about like the diet and the training and things like that. And it's it does take time to kind of reset and kind of get back into that mode where you're like, all right, I I'm in the gym because I want to feel good, I want to be there for my kids, and I want to be mobile and enjoy life. But like you flip that switch and it's a it's a whole different ballgame. But I think the internet and social media has caused this like divide where it feels like you have to be one or the other. You're either you're either ultra-competitive at some specific goal or you're just you're just doing nothing. There's no, I feel like the the era where people just go to the gym just to go to the gym, it's almost like not cool or acceptant anymore, that you have to be in the some at the end of the day, it is like for mental health, physical well-being, right?

SPEAKER_01 53:03

Yeah. I 100% agree with that. I tell a lot of people, like I mean, that's with just muscles in general, like looking pretty is not his primary goal. Like, let's just put on some muscle and enjoy the health of it. And it's not because we need to have this beef body. Because you do something doesn't mean you have to do this, also. Like, let's find the actual foundation of why we should actually be putting on muscle and why we should actually be eating healthy diets. It's not because you want to look pretty. That's a byproduct. That's just a benefit to it. That's that's what that is. It's a benefit to it. Do all the other things and know why you're doing it first, and then you get the benefits of it.

SPEAKER_02 53:44

Yeah, I think there's so much there's so much pressure around like high-level uh physique or competition goals that it is like for myself, I know like I coach quite a bit of like natural bodybuilders, but I also really just enjoy people that have general fitness goals because it's just it's refreshing and and and nice to have like working towards general fitness and and and enjoyment versus just like a competitive like deadline all the time. There's just so much pressure that gets pulled up around that.

SPEAKER_01 54:10

Never worked out a day in your life unless you've been shredded and it's it's hard to get past that.

SPEAKER_02 54:19

Well, I haven't we haven't opened up the can of worms of the AI yet, but I think it's a good time to do it. I know you've been itching to talk about it so before let's let's rip it open. What what's what's your take? I know you've been you've been putting out some heaters on Instagram recently about, so let's let's hear it.

SPEAKER_00 54:34

Preface this first. There are multiple different applications of AI, as I've been inundated with in the past before it even blew up because some of my friends are in the tech space as well. Um, and nothing has ever sold me on it. Like maybe it's again, I don't want change. I'm an old man. I have a cell phone, I have the internet, I've I've progressed beyond like my let's go to my friend's house on the weekend and actually see them to see if they're home kind of phase. Like, I'm I'm with the tech, I'm I'm evolved. But I look at our space and I'm like, what place does AI have in our space? Aside from what you described earlier, where someone wants to do a poor job at it and basically eliminate the human factor entirely, both the client being a human that needs to be tailored to, and also you as an individual mind being able to problem solve and use personality and make it unique from a business standpoint in terms of generating leads and generating funnels. You know what pisses off every single person the most in their day if it happens to them? Getting uh instead of talking to a human when you have a problem, talking to an AI chatbot or getting put on hold with a circular uh AI telephone telecommunications bullshit instead of just being like, okay, I need to say three words to a real human who can then touch one button and then connect me to the play, right? Like those things, they're all just garbage. So now apply that to our space where like, how is that gonna make it any easier if I somehow try to rig up an AI chatbot or rig up an AI anything to imitate me as a funnel system? If you run into that, immediately you're you're if I if I get approached in any respect, which we all do, if you're in this space, either someone's trying to recruit you as a client or they're trying to recruit you as a social media guru or something like that, it's gonna help blow up your following or to your business side, it's all just AI spam, and you get immediately banned and sometimes reported, even though it doesn't, I don't think there's a report specific to it. I just do it because fuck them. Like it's just the worst because you're immediately off put knowing that this is not a personal touch in a personal space. It's absolutely insane. So, from that standpoint, I'm like, okay, there's no value that it's going to add if I try to apply AI to my life in my career right now. It's work that didn't need to happen for a benefit that doesn't exist that actually probably makes me look worse in the eyes of people that might want to work with me. Um, the funneling and filtering and all the all the processes I have, like, oh, you do all of your work manually. Yes. Do you know how much I work per week? I work on the internet, I talk to clients through my phone mostly. That's most of my job. I can write an email a week to every client to send them their update or to communicate, like, right? Like, there's not a tremendous amount. As we start started the conversation with, I can make a Google form once and then copy the link to people that want to work with me. I don't need to be using AI for any of these things. Um, all the way to content creation, which is an entire adjacent but similar can of worms, where it's like, man, it's been blowing up since COVID because people just had too much time on their hands. But the degree of technological advancement from just record something on your phone, talking to your phone on your story, or recording your own workout, or just doing something to because you need to record, to it has to be like a Hollywood level production for a story or a reel that three people will see because your algorithm got nuked that week or whatever it is. It's insanity. And then you to integrate the AI feature, it's all right, AI, please read everything I've ever put out, and then just be me instead, and then write a caption that sort of sounds like me, but also has incredible amounts of obvious plot holes in how a real human would speak. It I think I use the phrase the uncanny valley of communication or something to that effect in one of my previous rants on my own page. It's that like if any of us three made a post and then the next day made the same post, just generating the caption with AI, you'd be able to pick and choose all the holes because people don't speak like that. It's close, but it's very obvious, like there's an uncanny value effect to it. And then, like I was saying in the the rant I had the other day that you were referring to or triggering me with people see that and then they see it and they think, okay, so you are so useless to the success of your own product that you're willing and able to get AI to write you out of the owner your own process. You're not saving time, you're not saving resources. If I want to go one other route, you're actually trashing the planet probably more because of the resources that go towards AI, but that's a completely distinct non-fitness related topic. Um, but you're literally allocating resources in a place that are not going to benefit you or your business that didn't need to exist. The entirety of our business is predicated on one-to-one or one-to-many human interaction. And that's why AI has no place here because if I'm spending money, the fastest way to have me clutch my wallet is to be AI. I'm not seeking some generic fix. I'm not looking for the team version of coaching. If I'm gonna spend money on coaching, this is everybody, they're gonna look for someone that they can trust. I don't trust AI, it's not a real thing. I'm looking for someone that can have problem-solving experience for whatever my problem happens to be, and I'm actually looking for someone that's good. You're looking for someone when you're looking for a coach. All of us have social proof, we all have experience in the field, we all have background sort of case studies or examples of our prior experience. AI is none of that. Like, so it's it's an interesting and wild evolution of the space where you see people get captured into the the swell of popularity of it or faked popularity of AI, where they think that it's the next logical step in their own business when it is quite literally the thing that is removing them from their business, which is the express purpose of AI in many respects, is to remove the human necessity. But in our space, that does not make sense because the entirety of our space is predicated on human interaction.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:46

Yeah, that I that's the main driver of this whole topic to me is personal training, is personal, right? Like it's it's relationship building, it's networking, it's it's communication between human beings, or like you said, multiple human beings and and accountability, but that's a huge heart. Like, I'm not gonna be accountable to over a lot, but like if I've got like JT like looking over my program and and making decisions based on like situational issues that I'm having and making like in in-time real adjustments, like those things are what somebody's paying for, and that's the value behind like an actual organic relationship with a coach. Like, like you and I worked together for years, like so. There's like certain things that we just kind of naturally know about you that you can't replicate or replace that with with with AI, like it's just and I think all these like training softwares and different fitness apps are trying to like integrate all this and take the personalization out of the industry. And I just I long I agree with you, I think long term it's it's gonna fizzle out, and again, it it waters down bad coaching, it it pushes out bad coaches. But I think like if you're going above and beyond, you really care about helping people. Like, I think it'll just kind of it'll cleanse the industry a little bit because I I do think there are there's tons of like the online space is certainly saturated, but I don't think it's it's filled with with a lot of high quality, and I think it'll make it a lot easier to pick apart the good from the bad and really allow people that really care about people to separate themselves. Like, I absolutely believe that.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:15

Yeah, the people that stand out are the ones that are delivering the thing that you don't see, and all you ever see right now is overly produced. And I was thinking about the other day because one of the coaches I follow they put out a series of slides on their social media story, and I'm like, this is incredibly produced, so much effort, whether it was AI or personally done or outsourced to someone that could curate it, even through Canva or whatever the sourcing might be. They got an editor to do a bunch of work for them, and I'm like 90% of your following is going to swipe through this. Like, we're all in the fitness space, like aside from our friends that are doing things that are literally not fitness related. If you guys post about your businesses, I support you, I do. But I'm not about to watch you do an advertisement on your business because I also am in this space, or I'm not necessarily looking for a coach. It's the strangest thing in the world to me to have people invest all that time and effort into what could be one Instagram advertising slide, just like a billboard on the side of a road that you know, like, oh, in 10 miles down the road, there's a McDonald's, cool. And then it just is planted in your brain for 10 miles where you're like when I'm ready to eat, oh, I happen to be next to McDonald's. Oh, there it is, sick. It's just something that exists in the background, and when you're ready for training, you've seen my slide pop up on your feed 10 million times, but you've also in the interim seen all of my personality, all of who I have successfully trained, all of their uh everything, aside from this heavily curated, weird, like Hollywood level production value creation that most of the time people are just like swiping through. Like, I don't have time for this. Get to the point. Let's go. Like, it's such a weird, like, great, great on you for making it nice and fancy, but I have to go mow my grass or some shit. I got real life to do. Like, we're I am a trainer first, and from a cute creator standpoint, I'm a creator in a way that accurately depicts and represents me as opposed to what I've been told I'm supposed to look like under the bright lights.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:10

Yeah, I I totally agree. I dude, it drives me crazy how much like how much time people spend trying to get go viral and do these trendy funny videos on Instagram if they're like a fitness coaching. I swear the the most productive coaches and the ones that are getting the most results have the most boring basic fitness like Instagram pages because they're literally just posting basic general content and then results, and like they're so busy doing as you say, like so busy doing the thing and getting results and coaching people that they don't have time to spend editing all this like fluff and trying to be funny, like they're just they're just about their business, and that those people that's who I want to work with when they had you just you can tell a clear difference between someone that's busy doing the thing and coaching, and then somebody that's not busy because they have plenty of time to try to like follow trends online. But there's a there's a clear difference.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:00

Either you're sacrificing time where you could have been doing higher quality work with your people, or to your point, you don't have people, so you have all this free time to pursue the thing that you think will get you people. When the reality is just be in the space and do the work for a long time and be good at what you do and strive to be better at what you do and stand out through just six like the success of your clients or through the longevity of your uh personality, you being a fixture in a space, saying the same thing over and over and not just going wherever the trend is like acting like, man. It's the same, same as it's always been, and yet the same the same cycles always occur where people are the the bright and shiny effect, the U shiny, they they don't have confidence in what they're saying or their personality, so they try to blend in with what the trends happen to be. When the trends are entertainment value, and that's that's where I think a lot of trainers are failing is they misconstrue entertainment with education, they misconstrue entertainment with advertising when the reality is most things that trend. Or most people that get like mega follows or go viral, it's because people like what they're posting as content but aren't necessarily following them because, like, oh, I'm gonna coach with this person. Like someone with two million followers doesn't have two million clients, they have two million followers.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:18

Yeah, there's a huge difference. Yeah, there's a huge difference of being a coach and being an influencer. I think I think people get that news that they they get that wrong when they get in the industry. They think the best way to grow online is to be trendy, but like in reality, it's can you get results? I always tell people the best way to to advance in this industry is just survive in it and provide a high quality service for a really long time. Like, like you said, like just be in it long enough and and you'll rise to the top eventually.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:45

Yeah, always try to progress, like always try to get better. That's the key there, because always try to improve, improve the best you can. You can't you can't get any better than that.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:55

That's I agree with all of that. All right, well, we've got time for one more topic today. So if we can end on one one high note here. So, what if if you were getting into the industry, if you were redoing your career and you were starting up in the industry again for the first time, how would you build out your business? What would you do differently? And and and give a give a blueprint for somebody that's dipping their toes in the training industry for the first time and they want to build a long-term career that they can eventually retire from. What's that look like for you?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:23

Yeah, I think the biggest difference now is that there are many different um vehicles for delivering the training service now. Whereas when I first started, in-person was kind of the only way. Um, the pandemic uh introduced virtual training, so literally just through Zoom or through whatever, training someone in their house via Zoom. And it really blew up the concept of like online programming and things of that nature, the way that we all kind of see it as standard now. When I first started, it was you were in person, that's it. But I would still start there just knowing that these are the other vehicles, like there's an actual career path now in training, and I don't think people realize that. Where when I first started 15 years ago, the career path in training was either you're a personal trainer forever, and there's a ceiling there, and I'll explain why, or you slowly get into the corporate structure of the company. So you go to a fitness manager or a regional or all the way up the chain, and that's your method of progressing or advancing your career. Because no matter how you cut it, there's a ceiling on how many people you can help at any given point in time because you are one person. So the other part of the AI discussion or any of the business coaching discussions is the concept of scaling. If you're looking to seriously scale, you're looking to divert into a different product. Either you're gonna be a gym owner and you're gonna scale like that, or you're gonna get into I do one to many, or I have a team of coaches under me, or I do challenges, or you're you're changing the business model entirely. So I would still start because my business model is always personal training and education. I would start in person, fully being aware that there are this is a launch pad for my ability to do this solo through these other means, through virtual and online, viewing it as a career path. And the other prong, when you send me this series of questions, it's kind of like get my brain juicy on them. Um, one of the concepts was looking at the commercial gym settings specifically as an apprenticeship. Because even in some of my most uh one of my posts most recently was like the the world needs commercial trainers, and it was it was very well received because most of the time commercial gyms just get outright shit on, because I don't think people view it as an apprenticeship at this stage, and it can be a lifelong career for sure, but when you look at all the value of a commercial gym in terms of the safest, most insulated way to learn how to coach, to learn how to talk to people and find clients, to learn all the background business information you need to support yourself in independence, all of these training wheel settings, the biggest pushback is these motherfuckers, they're gonna take over half of my money, and then the government's gonna tax me. I'm gonna be immediately yeah, it's a money discussion. Yes, every gym that allows you to train there as an employee or freelance takes a cut, that's normal. But you have to think of it as this is an investment in the infrastructure that will cause me to have the ability to go independent and flourish there. This is your apprenticeship where you're eating shit. Back again, the old man Eric is out today, but back in my day, I didn't get paid for anything that wasn't a one-to-one hour. So prospecting and finding clients was completely of my own volition. You ate what you killed, that was it. Now that's illegal. Most places don't do that anymore. So even there, there's a there's a leg up, but it you don't view it as the company is stealing a bunch of my money, the company is providing a platform and and resources for me to learn to build, knowing that this is the entry-level position of this space. It in and of itself, like everywhere, is slowly growing to be a much more sustainable and well-taken care of career path if you really want it. But we're in the growing pains right now for that. So I would start there, still use it as my insulated way of cutting my teeth, of learning, of building the skills, knowing that I'm gonna I'm gonna quote unquote level up here a few times, but there's an exit point, and I would push myself earlier through that exit point than I did in my career because online already exists. But I'd know I'd project what is my who am I, what is my voice, what is my skill set, all these things and be refining those in the commercial gym while gathering as much experience as possible, and then still launch into independence. Education, probably still there at some point, because we're gonna assume all things being equal, I still did say degrees or whatever else. It would still probably be there. Um, but it would honestly that probably wouldn't change too much because I've always used it as an as an organic method of expressing who I am as your coach, potentially as well. It's not like the the other part of being in this space right now, if you're just getting into it, is if you're especially starting online, everybody naturally thinks that you must be an educator in the space. Like, no, you don't. You just train people, you don't have to educate anybody. Education is a good god.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:08

Yeah, I like I would like to move our.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:10

Sorry, hold on. Sorry, I have to real quick cancel that call and bring myself back up. My uh my screen just got eaten by by a call. I apologize. Um yeah, just to summarize in case there's no edits, just to resummarize that entire concept, still start in person. Know that it's an apprenticeship and not get butthurt over the split of cash. Use it to build the skills that will allow you to leverage those skills and abilities to not have blind spots when you launch online through that entire three to five-year arc of in-person, develop the skills and the personality of who you're going to be in independence so you can fully support yourself, and then know when you get to the independent scene, you're starting over. Like you're starting over over. Because for me, I was I was well known in person in my gym and in my province. People knew me. I didn't have any trouble finding clients. I went online. Dude, nobody knows who I am. I gotta start over. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:07

Yeah, I think two things to highlight there. One being the in-person um within like a corporate gym. I think that's super, super beneficial. Like I that's where I started for a couple of years when I first got into before I went independent as well. Um, it's it's it's using that time as like as a tool. Every every client is a repetition, and it's where you can work through the subliminating beliefs and the poster syndrome and develop your voice and your identity of who you are as a coach and a trainer and how you're gonna how you're gonna approach the industry. Like, I think that's massively beneficial. And then the second thing I'd like to highlight that you you mentioned was the the online space being a completely different animal. Like, I was talking to a guy about this the other day. It's it's so different, but it's the same as like how you built up your in-person. Like you develop a reputation as being a good in-person trainer, you have to basically reset the scale and try to do that in the online space because they're completely different. Yeah, you might pick up some in-person people and eventually move them into the online space, like you can do some of that, but to have getting a presence developed online where you're getting consistent traction and leads and um outreach of people, like that that takes time. It's a whole whole separate skill in a sense.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:17

I agree with all that. I mean, you can't get any I the very first part be personal first before you do anything else. It really is, uh I believe that's extremely important. I don't think you can do anything very well at all without doing that first. I mean, we see it. You see it across the board, like with online coaches that you hear about and you know here and there, but I really think that that's what they're missing is the personal training that they never got into and just jumped into online training because they look fit. Literally, some of them, that's why they start. They look fit, they put all their fancy, well-staged, nice lighting photos up, and people I want to look like that can train with them, and that that's that's where they get a lot of that from. So I agree.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:10

So well, man, this was great. I appreciate you uh taking some time to jump on with us. Uh, I know our listeners very thoroughly enjoyed it. Um, it was great to get to uh converse, talk talk training, talk coaching, talk the industry, and dabble in the uh AI a little bit too. So it was uh we appreciate your time, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:27

Yeah, that was fun. Thanks so much for bringing me on.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:30

Yeah, absolutely. So where can the uh where can our audience find you on social media?

SPEAKER_00 1:15:34

Yeah, the central hub is Instagram right now, uh at Eric Bigera, just my name. Uh I have a flow of posting reels for blind technique reviews, essentially just technical breakdown, usually tied to some concept that I'm trying to use as an educational sort of point on the video based upon what I see. Um, but truly it is basically someone sends me footage they would like me to review, and it is basically my first appraisal, aside from incidental viewing of me just like formatting things. So it's basically first watch through. I still do a ton of written content, uh halfway between education and rants at this point. And then probably bi-weekly, I would say, is probably the average. Uh, Substack as well. And everything, everything still just gets sent through Instagram. So if you just follow there, you'll see everything. But Substack is just longer form articles, concepts, then the whole thing. Uh, and then I work with a company called Prescripts that we discussed earlier. Continued education for basically everybody in the space, personal trainers, coaches, clinicians. Uh, currently I am helping run one of the cohorts of prescript level one, so the flagship course. So if you're interested, you can go to uh www.pre-dash script.com and see some information on the courses we offer there as well. And you can probably find me in some capacity through them too.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:42

Awesome. Hit them up, guys. Eric's the man. Well, hey, we appreciate it, man. Um, we'll speak to you soon. And thanks again for jumping on the podcast and uh sharing some knowledge. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:52

Thank you so much.