Unlocking Movement & Longevity: Insights from Viviane Tan

Explore how mobility training can transform your fitness, reduce injury risks, and enhance daily life, especially for mid-lifers and seniors. Vivian Tan shares her personal journey, practical tips, and misconceptions about mobility that everyone should know. 

Connect with Vivian:

• Instagram: https://instagram.com/movewithviv
• Website: https://movewithviv.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

A lot of good things. But okay, let me I love that part. Okay, I was sorry to cut you. Let me just do the intro. It's my first time, so give chance, huh? Okay. Uh hey everyone, welcome to the show. Uh this is Jay Heiker, where we uh dive into real conversations with personal trainers across Singapore who are doing things a little bit differently. Whether it's working with senior adults, specializing in mobility, bodybuilding, rehab, or anything in between, uh, this is the place to be. First of all, I would like to say the goal of this podcast is simple. We want to learn from coaches who have found their niche and understand why it matters, and hopefully it gives something you can take away. Whether you're a coach yourself or just someone looking to move better or feel better. Okay, today I've got a great guest with me, Vivian Ten. You know, not gonna say much, I won't let her introduce herself, but she mainly specializes in mobility and strength for mid-lifers and seniors. And I don't think she's your typical no pain, no gain, Petey. You know, I like I like the way you train your clients and the way you are, your uh, I guess your ethos and uh, you know, how you train people. I think that's more in the longevity and sustainable route, which I grew to become a coach to be like that myself. You know, we're gonna talk about how she got started, how she found her niche, uh, you know, your niche, and uh, you know, some common misconception and also some practical things you can start applying straight away. Let's get into it. So, obviously, we want to get to know about you a bit. So, outside of being a coach, you know, who are you? Who is Vivian?

SPEAKER_00 1:27

First of all, thanks, Jay, for having me on. Appreciate it. We're just having a really good chat about this, right? So, outside of the gym, I think people know me for the amount of food I eat. I love to explore restaurants, hawkers, basically food. I travel for food. When I when I travel, people just see food, food, food, food, food. They'll be like, wow, Vivian, how much can you eat, man? I'm like, well, that's why I work out so much, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:51

So people might think you're a food blogger.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Exactly, but no, like, not really. But at the end of the day, I think what I really love is the ability to see the world. And that came, I think it's it's a mismatch of all my background. I started, uh, I grew up as a jumper, I went into university, uh, my college days as a hockey floorball player, then I went into my university days and a little bit into my early working life as a weak boarder. Then, well, then that's when I got a little bit too ambitious and I tore my ligament. Yeah. But you see, that is the joy of living life, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:27

So if you you have a lot of stories to tell.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

So you have like, oh, I thought my ligament survived it, oh, yeah, I am because of my physio or because of what I do. But at the end of the day, if you think about it, you get to enjoy life. I like to live life, see the world, see how people live. Um, not just the sites. I don't go, for example, I don't go to New Zealand to see the amazing South Island. Instead, I go to Auckland and I just see how people live, how they run their days, how they walk a lot. By the way, Auckland is very, very healy. Like everywhere is an up slow one. So people over there get have great calf muscles.

SPEAKER_02 3:03

Yeah, I was there for New Year's and it's super hely. I get it. Everybody's just like naturally walking. I'm like struggling.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Exactly. The moment I want to turn for coffee on that shit uphill.

SPEAKER_02 3:12

Everything is a task.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Yeah, but I I I guess back to your question when I'm I'm not in the gym, I really just out there like staring in space, exploring our own country. There's a lot of things to do in our country, so I don't understand why people say Singapore is boring. Yeah. So that is just looking and exploring.

SPEAKER_02 3:29

So you were saying that you know you played sports, you were a wake border. And I guess, did you I guess naturally for a lot of trainers, you're either like they grew up being like a bit of a foodie or they will play some sports. Is that how you eventually became a trainer? Was that your natural path?

SPEAKER_00 3:43

No. I mean, I came from the corporate world. Oh, okay. I used to like you, I used to be in marketing and communications. So I spent a good 14 years climbing the corporate ladder. But alongside, there's always like I will go to the gym. I would still go to the gym to work out, I'll still go for classes, I'll still go wakeboard for fun. But what really I would say it was a gradual development into a personal trainer, first of all. So basically, long like to cut the full story short, when I was still very active, um, I tore my ligament, my ACL. And because of wakeboarding. But the lucky thing about it is when I went to see my physio, I guess at the point of time, uh, my physio happened to be also the same guy who treated a international wake border on her broken femur. Broken thigh. Oh, wow. Like maybe one, two months back. So when he saw me again, I think he was the one who actually really brutally, I must say, brutally got me through my prehab and my rehab. That means before the operations, I was told, I mean, you're really very healthy, it's a clean tear. Why don't you work on strengthening your entire uh joint and all your muscles first? Get the musc the muscles in to hold the leg well so that even though like post-op were, you will want to be off touches as soon as possible so you can get the leg to start working again. So he was with me for pre-op and post-op, and I saw the way that he really grilled me through the drills, the strengthening drills, the mobility drills, through. And in three months, I was back running, jogging. Six months I was back jumping, and I told him nine in in under a year's time, nine months, I want you back on the water jumping for weeks. Yeah. So that was how I saw my own recovery. And I think that got me really interested because I you literally go from a torn tendon or a torn ligament to back to your spot. So it showed me how one can recover, even though there's a pretty uh big injury. It's quite a big one.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Yeah, yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

That got me interested. So I, and because of that ligament strain, and that's when I discovered, or I was forced to discover yoga. Because no choice, right? I can't do impact sports anymore. So I have to go back to yoga. And unfortunately, um a year and a half later, I got into a bicycle accident. Unfortunately, got knocked over by a car.

SPEAKER_02 5:59

Um you sound very injury prone like me. I think you need to be bubble wrapped. You can't even walk on the street.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

I know, right? It's an accident, super accident waiting to happen. But I think um, well, it's an unfortunate incident, but because of that head injury, I spent two months trying to recover from it. So again, it's back to starting from zero. But that also taught me that if I could recover from a ligament tear, can I recover from this as well? So the main takeaway, I would say, is to remove yourself emotionally from the situation. Stop thinking that I'm doomed. I'm doomed. I started seeing myself as a third party, as I'm just basically taking myself away from my main situation. And just get curious about, okay, let's see where I am right now, let's see where I can go next.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

Would you say like, was that like that specific or like turning point in your life where like, okay, this is what this is what I want to do?

SPEAKER_00 6:52

People will think so, right? Not yet. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:54

Not still. Another injury.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Not yet. No, no injury. I just became a really uh hard-working corporate rat.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

So, two injuries later, I'm back in the corporate world, still working my ass off. And I think, but at the point of time, I've oh I've improved a little bit in my own training. Because of my injuries, I sought a personal trainer to teach me the basics of strength training. After I graduated from my physio, I did more yoga because I got interested in it. I was also very lucky to meet a yoga teacher who happened to be a physiotherapist back in India.

SPEAKER_02 7:30

Wow, okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Yeah, so I think it's a combination of all the knowledge. They got me really curious about how the human body works. And by being able to apply that on myself, I could see how movement and a little bit of flexibility does go a long way. I mean, it was also through your own personal experience, right? We will have gone through our own case of injuries, accidents, and everything else to know what doesn't work for us, what works for us.

SPEAKER_02 7:51

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Yeah. So anyway, I digress. It was actually, so I was very tired in the in marketing and Chrome, so I decided to take a sabbatical. Okay. I went to set up, help set up the current weight park in Singapore, the one by the East Coast Lagoon.

unknown 8:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

Because that's my first love, right? Let's read morning. So it's all about applying your current knowledge, brand and marketing for me, into interest in a topic that you enjoyed. So from then I also didn't plan well. I thought that, oh, I could just become a personal trainer like that, and I could get clients. But of course, planning, no clients, no money. So eventually I had no money. I had to go back to corporate. But with that, because of that, learning from my mistake, I went back into corporate knowing that I have to grow a certain audience to get back out, knowing that I will have a decent income.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

Yeah. So generally at the end of my sabbatical working with the Wake Park, I was also given the opportunity to teach at a yoga studio that I often practice at.

SPEAKER_02 8:54

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

So I started being a yoga teacher first.

SPEAKER_02 8:57

I was about to say, so you were a yoga teacher first.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Yeah, I was a yoga teacher first. Yeah. That's when I that's when I found my voice in the studio. I realized that I sound better in the studio than in a making room.

SPEAKER_02 9:06

So you all through all of that, you started as a yoga teacher first. And what would what kind of a trader would you call yourself now?

SPEAKER_00 9:13

Now I'm just mobility and movement. I always say I'm a mobility and movement coach. Okay. But people don't know what mobility is, right? I'll just then I'll always say it's joint strength training. Mobility, see it as end-range joint strength training, strengthening your joints, making sure that they are built for longevity, making sure that they are bulletproof, they are injury-proof as best as you can. And that's why you train mobility.

SPEAKER_02 9:34

So when you say you're a mobility and movement specialist, how did you come about, I guess, educating or you know, kind of like perfecting your craft in that? How did it how did that time come about?

SPEAKER_00 9:45

So many people are like they are not really receptive or they don't know what exactly it comprises. So I just say that at the end of the day, you want to move better. If you cannot move better, even if I load you with weights, you still cannot perform the rap. At the end of the day, if I load you with weights, you feel pain, but you still want to go on. So uh, not promise, but the suggestion to them is always do you want to go for a pain-free life, doing what you love to do and sustaining that into your later years. So people, and I think especially in today, we don't really think about what's 10 years, 20 years from now until I guess you and I, we got into injury, we already know and understand what it feels like to be injured. People who have never been in a situation tend not to realize how they could how their bodies could fail them. And more than often not, the pain that they are so used to, the sensation of tightness, the sensation of soreness might not be great for the long run. But it's just that they don't they don't realize it until maybe later on it comes, it hits them really hard, like a rock.

SPEAKER_02 10:55

So would you say that, like, you know, obviously the stories of you uh being injured and you know coming to where you are right now, this is why this niche is, you know, so important to you personally?

SPEAKER_00 11:07

Yeah, uh it's it has a very personal uh note to it. And also because I think being being injured and having to recover and build myself back up again, I think it gives me a bit of empathy to people who tend to be a little bit scared coming back from an injury. So there's always the not the physical trauma, because the physical trauma is really settled, but the psychological trauma, the nervous system, and how it comes back to doing something that your body is not familiar with.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

There's always that fear that might not be immediately addressed if you just jump back into training like how you used to do.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

So one of, yeah, one of my favorite lines is like, you cannot think I used to. Okay. In my twenties, I used to be that very, very fit. In my 30s, I used to be able to do this. I used to be super fit. I used to be able to do a backband, a handstand, and blah, blah, blah. Now, but I am now in my 40s. My body is is evolving, it's it's changing. Yeah. So it's I always say, I know you're used to, but you cannot think and train like how you used to. You gotta think and train like how you are now. Yeah. Because your body is now like now, now.

SPEAKER_02 12:16

Would you would you say, I guess now we are in that trend now? I wouldn't say trend everyone's fitness journey. I guess now in Singapore it's all about you see a lot of longevity clinics, you know, sustainability, pain-free. But what do you think, I guess, is the common misconceptions people have about like when you say you're a movement and mobility specialist, what is the common misconceptions that people usually have?

SPEAKER_00 12:37

Let me quote, no, I'll I'll say literally. Oh, you pilate. Oh, yo, yoga, yoga one, like that lama. But I don't blame them because people don't know. Movement can be everything, right? And people think movement is like, wow, all the beautiful poses and this and that. But uh, but I'll just go, no. Can you actually climb the entire brick wall of China and come down from that, for example, without feeling anything? Can you imagine? Can you foresee yourself hopping across the the like for example, I'll just quote, I'll just point out something like a bench to them. Then I say, can you imagine yourself hopping over that bench cleanly? Then you're like, oh no, cannot, cannot, cannot. And I say, yeah, that's that's lyrics. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:16

Okay, that's that actually is really plain playing for, like, you know, just being able to do guess certain like everyday stuff and you know, without having that psychological fear, right, I guess. Yeah. And um, I myself, as you know, as I try to evolve myself as a trainer, you know, last time warm-up was just okay, bands, push up, jump on the bike. Now I, you know, I do actually do about five to eight minutes of mobility, mobility with resistance, all depending on what we're trying to do and stuff. But if I was a trainer who's new into the industry and obviously I've seen all this longevity stuff, sustainability, but what do you think is trainers get wrong as a trainer now? What what do you think when people say mobility, what do you think is the common misconception? What do you think they get it wrong usually?

SPEAKER_00 14:00

Um, maybe not wrong, but maybe based on what they're exposed to. Okay. I think a lot of trainers are not exposed to enough mobility work because mobility in the general context, people know that, oh, we need to have more buttonary joints, and therefore they do stuff like stretches, like arm stretches.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

But actually, it's about stressing the joint at the end range. So it's expanding your range or of movement. What they don't know, or maybe they are not educated or they don't they're not exposed to, is that they might not know the technicalities of end-of-range joint strength training. Okay, it's very, very technical. It is very cue-specific because it requires the individual to be aware of their own body, of their own body movement in space. Like for example, simple example is if I tell you to do a lunge, one knee down, one leg forward, a lunge position, and I say it is a stretch, but I want you to really feel the hip flexor. Basically the part where your legs your your thighs join to your hips, that area stretch with the ability to load it. So my lunge, your your idea of a lunge is oh, I'll just stick my hips down.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

However, the technicality of a lunge is that you will want to be able to press the knee down into the floor to activate the glutes. So that you have muscles activated to purposely push your knee into the ground. And then you have muscles that you actively lift your torso up. So you have a stretch in these two directions, different directions. But do people know how to feel that deliberately? And that is what I call a proper stretch. It's a hardworking stretch because muscles are involved in lengthening the fascia, the tissue that is that that's moving, I mean, that the uh envelopes of joints and muscles. Because the tightness over there is just about letting the body just be a little bit more springy, a bit more butchery, and these are all muscle work. Yeah. It is not just letting gravity do the work.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

So when you say things like lunging and lengthening, I guess if someone, can I take it out of like general, like maybe if I was just an auntie or an uncle and I'm looking at this lady and say, what is this lady talking about?

SPEAKER_00 16:10

I know, right? It's so hard. It's really, really hard to teach.

SPEAKER_02 16:13

And let's break we break it down and we say, okay, what is two or three simple things someone can start doing today, you know, to improve their mobility, I would say, or their movement. Let's say if they want to go to their coach and say, I saw this podcast, you know, Vivian said I want to do mobility, mobility, but then they go to their coach. Maybe their coach is also not educated. What would you say they can kind of like two or three simple things they can learn or they can start doing today?

SPEAKER_00 16:37

I cannot say two to three small things, but basically it's a series of trying to improve your joint rotational strength. For example, like for your arms, for your shoulders, we can do shoulder rotations, straight arm shoulder rotations. That means basically do not bend your elbows, just go for straight. That is already making an effort to improve your rotation. We can also go for standing hip rotation, which means that you stand and then you raise one leg and then you try to circle the knee. You're just trying to improve the capsule. So to really expand into this, I think it will take a whole series of it. But first of all, I would just say improve on the rotational bit first, which is basically your shoulders and your hips. So your biggest two rotational muscles.

SPEAKER_02 17:20

Shoulders and why why are why shoulders and hips are most important? I hear it all the time. You've got to have good mobility in your shoulders and hips.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Those are the ones that are joining from your torso. Your body is your center, right? Your torso is your center. And anything that you hold on the outside, anything you step on the outside are very, very far away. So the ones that are closest to your body are your shoulders and literally your hips joining your body together.

SPEAKER_02 17:40

Yeah. Okay. So so if I'm if I'm an auntie and uncle, we've got to go tell my coach, we've got to do a lot of mobility in my shoulder and my hips. Full rotations in the joints. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

Tend then watch my YouTube la. We'll go into that, we'll put it in. But I think back to your questions about new trainers. Maybe new trainers will feel very overwhelmed. So my advice to new trainers, because I also happen to teach the um some of the ace topics. Okay. Yeah. So I always tell batch after batch that at the end of the day, when you have a cert, you it's the equivalent of having a general degree or a general diploma, but you don't know what you are good at yet. Or maybe you don't know what you want to specialize in yet. So just go and explore. The more you explore, the more you experience, the more you find that what you kind of enjoy, then along the way, it's all about discovering again. So I wouldn't say in today's longevity world, what new coaches should focus on, but I think it's more on in today's world of people who are more enthusiastic about fitness, coaches can start to become equally enthusiastic about finding out what they really enjoy. When they really enjoy it, they can teach it.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

I like that. I like that, you know, you should definitely find kind of like your niche or what you enjoy or what you're doing. Let's say, you know, speaking on new trainers again, and a new trainer comes in and they're like, okay, I want to be a mobility and movement specialist. In your experience, what do you feel like is a common mistake these guys always do? Like, what do you think like they should be? Like you think, like, okay, I'm a movement and mobility specialist and I'm a new trainer, but then these are the common mistakes that you always see them make or make them that you see them do.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

Ah, so if they want to go into that and maybe they'll just think that, oh, I will just go and also take a yoga certification. Or I'll go and take a Pilate certification. Not wrong. It is their way of exploring, their way of expanding their knowledge. However, I will also recommend them to look into mobility-specific causes. There are a lot out there now. And different teachers or different instructors will have their own esos approach to mobility or to movement in general. And at the end of the day, movement is so broad, it is almost like a dance, right? But there are also many different genres of dance. So there are also equally many different genres of movement. So depending on what they enjoy, the more movements they explore, the more they realize that actually their joints can move in different directions, which is a full unbase. It's a basic of movement. The fact that your body can move in all different directions and you want to explore how to do it. So if they want to start being there, then I think they need to start looking at what type of different movements are there. Then they can go and learn from the coach they like.

SPEAKER_02 20:20

I agree. I feel like when you have such a broad topic, it's always good to learn, you know, I guess do your own research. You know, it's not just one person who can teach that, but you know, maybe different coaches have different ethos, different ways of teaching it. And I guess that that's what's kind of like you kind of build your own standard program from that, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:37

Right. But I still would say, still going back to the basics. I think at the end of the day, when you have a when you learn, take up the course of, say, a personal trainer, or you take up a group instructor course. Every course has a basic and primary movement, all the movement patterns that we all learn about when we were all trying to be personal co personal trainers, right? I think we cannot disregard that. We always should go back to the basics, then expand from that. I think what a lot of people right now, or if you see the fitness trends right now, everybody is going like, we need to do this, like do a one-handed pull-up plus a one-legged lift. That's kind of complexity, but there's no real need for that, right? Or there's really no real need for you to be able to balance on the half-boosable and try to do something else. Because at the end of the day, fundamentally, we need to be able to strengthen our joints, strengthen and build muscles. The core strength, um, physical strength all still needs to be still needs to be there in order for us to pursue something more complex.

SPEAKER_02 21:38

I like that because I was just about to segue into a question asking you, you know, how would you approach this differently than to a standard program, right? But I guess your your way of saying it is that, you know, those strain from the basics, it should still be there. But then mobility should be at the start of the program, in the middle, at the end, or it doesn't matter, you know. Is that something that the coaches should be thinking about?

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Yeah, I think at the end of the day I agree with you. Like we said, fundamentally we still need to visit the basics. From general population all the way to the acid level. Are you squatting properly? The right technique. Are you doing your single legs properly? Are you balancing well or are you compromising somewhere? When you do your push-pull stuff, are you using the right muscles to engage? Are you just pulling with just one specific muscle and not doing, not engaging the rest? So if one can understand the fundamentals of all of these strength techniques, then I feel that it then evolves into other things because from there I can say, can I squat deeper? So the so for example, just turning a strength to mobility is for example, I do a barbell back squat. And today my bum can sit to the level of my knees. But one day with the same weight, can my bum sit all the way to the level of my heels and all the way up. And that itself, you have expanded the range of your squat. So that is mobility in training. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:06

So it's it's not like a specific movement, like this is a mobility exercise or movement. It's not, it's clearly the range.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Yes, you're expanding your range, but there are different ways to expand the range. I'm not gonna load you with your bubble all the time, but uh there are different techniques to go about it. So that's why the curiosity comes in, right? Like, well, how does she get her ass to the ground and stand all the way back up? How did she do it? What, but I can't do it. I've been doing it for years, but I can't do it. So maybe it's something else. Because you there may be other things like, oh, maybe you know my hips are not that mobile, but maybe it's not the hips, maybe it's my back is not that mobile. Things like that. Okay. See, it's such a big topic.

SPEAKER_02 23:43

Yeah, it is, it is. I guess, I guess that's kind of what separates a good trainer and a great trainer, right? Like being able to realize what's going on, okay, why is this person not squatting so low? Are they having tight cuffs or are they having a tight lower back and stuff? I guess my question to you now, if you I guess you have your own team or if you were to have your own team, what do you think in your eyes separates a good trainer to a from a great trainer?

SPEAKER_00 24:06

The ability to get your un your clients to understand what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_02 24:11

Wow, great, yeah, I like that.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

Exactly. Because if you can talk all sorts of things and they go like, huh? Then you do things that you you it's not supposed to be. You're not really a great coach, are you? You're just a great performer.

SPEAKER_02 24:22

Yes, yes, I agree.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

Yeah. There is it's a lot of soft skills needed. A great trainer may not be super experienced, but he or she has the ability to spot imbalances. Problem solving is a very rare trait that I find in trainers because I find that a lot of them just follow textbook. Yeah. They follow what they see, and they just, okay, this is a great example. I will I I will pass it on to my client.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

But people don't problem solve. They don't look at their client and just go, why are they, first of all, can they identify my that my client doesn't look very comfortable in that position. Or my client doesn't seem to move smoothly into that position. There's a bit of awkwardness in it. So first of all, they can they identify it. Then comes the question of can they then problem solve it? That to me is a great trainer.

SPEAKER_02 25:10

Wow, okay, yeah, I totally agree. I feel like at the start, you just want to show your knowledge and you keep giving them all these tim words, right? You start talking about muscles, you start about your joints, and the client is just like, what are you talking about? And then you start to make it very simple and just like, okay, I want you to put your feet shoulder width apart, I want you to think about going this slow and that. I think having like very good soft skills makes you a very good trainer for sure. And obviously, having the knowledge to problem solve, it's the icing on the cake. I totally agree. I mean, obviously it's not a one program fits all, but that definitely is, you know, something that I feel is changed my career because I was just like, you don't have to be the smartest person in the room. You don't have to go and show up and say, you know, this. But I guess that was for me when I started. I felt like I really became a better trainer because I was able to communicate to my clients better. But would you say that that's the same for you, or like what's one lesson or mindset that you felt like, you know, that had the biggest shift or the impact on your career?

SPEAKER_00 26:07

I think I'm very lucky that um my clients they they have told me that they stick with me because they're always growing in their fitness journey with me. So it's never a dull moment for them. Um but I think the pivoting moment is because I deal with midlife first, I deal with um a lot of people who are fresh out of injury, recovering from injury or past trauma. So the biggest um the biggest, like always it always makes my day when, for example, someone who is very stiff and one day he just tells me, you know, Viv, today I realize nowadays I can just step into my underwear without sitting down on a bed, without fearing of toppling over. And that is a very fundamental daily life movement that people don't realize, say, huh.

SPEAKER_02 26:53

That's a that's a great, like, you know, when I obviously play rugby, when you have like a lot of knee and ankle injuries, it's a struggle. To even go to the toilet. And I totally get that, and to have that knowing that if you're a, I guess, senior or like midlifer or like going through all that to like, you know, people take that for granted, right? So to have that, I guess, yeah, to give them you giving them that confidence is I guess is why they stick with you, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:14

It's restoring their ability to live life better.

SPEAKER_02 27:17

Oh wow, there you go.

SPEAKER_00 27:18

Yeah, that's that's what keeps me going. And I think that's really the biggest reward I see from my my clients, my student, my class students, um, for them to realize that, hey, actually I can do this now better. I can go down the stairs without pain.

SPEAKER_01 27:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:32

And I think a little bit more significant for me would be those people who come at fresh from injuries. Like, I'm no longer afraid of like being on my bicycle anymore. That kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02 27:42

Yeah, and and I think you are, you know, you were saying that all these clients stick with you because you are always evolving. Would you say, I guess now looking back when you first started coaching, absolutely and now, what would you tell your younger self? Would be like, you know, obviously you've evolved, but what would you tell your younger self?

SPEAKER_00 27:59

I actually wouldn't change anything, you know. Okay, whether it's a coaching career of the entire life, people always have regrets, right? But everything in life happens for a reason. And everything in life that happened will give you the experience to carry it forward. So, like if I look back, I wouldn't do anything. I would just say, just continue doing what you do. Go get you, go explore, go do whatever you want.

SPEAKER_02 28:20

Just go carry on, it's okay. Everything will work out in the end. You'll be uh you'll be you'll be fine sitting down and stuff out drinking.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

Exactly, exactly. But okay, okay. Maybe maybe to be more serious, like um, one takeaway I always tell people, especially when they pivot, when they do career change, I always say you don't want to just switch without a plan. I mean, we are all adults. So have a plan of what you want to achieve in six months. Um, have that savings for six months. Because you need to be prepared to invest in your new business, your new venture. It's not easy. Yes, exactly. When and you need to have that goal of where you want to be. Then when you have the goal, you need to then ask yourself, how are you gonna get it? So when you have money, you can find a solution. You have no money, you're desperate, cannot find a solution.

SPEAKER_02 29:05

Money is a money is the answer. Find the money.

SPEAKER_00 29:07

Unfortunately, money is the answer. So save.

SPEAKER_02 29:10

I do agree. I do agree. I think uh it makes life easier. I mean, it will definitely help you with your planning.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

It gives you more choices, uh, basically. So it's not about being rich, but it's having enough savings, knowing that you are ready to exit and try and explore something for six to six months to a year.

SPEAKER_02 29:25

Yeah, you need to do your research, go and come out your expenses and figure out, okay, this is what I'm ready to do.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

Yeah, exactly. Don't just YOLO and jump into it. I'll be like, Alama, I cannot help you.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

They're gonna be like, I saw Vivian he told me on this podcast to just YOLO and go, no, you're gonna do your savings.

SPEAKER_00 29:43

Yes. You do plan for it. I mean, at the end of the day, there are people like you and me who have gone through that before. So generally, we can always share with our experience as an example of how we did it. But they don't have to follow it, but they have an idea of how we have to work for it.

SPEAKER_02 29:58

Yeah, for sure. And I think uh if we want to talk about learning from you more, where can if I was a trainer, both uh new and old, where can I go to learn more about you or mobility? You you said that you have a YouTube channel. Do you want to tell us about it?

SPEAKER_00 30:13

The easiest way actually is my website or my the handle. I just go with move with viv. So move with this. So there's move with viv.com, there is move with viv on Instagram, on Facebook, on YouTube. Everything is move with viv. So I think once people hit their Google search, it is pretty easy to find me and chat with me from there. My chatbot might reply, but I will try to interject. If you keep chatting my chatbot, my chatbot will chat will chat with you.

SPEAKER_02 30:38

So if they want to look from you, both trainers and uh clients, they look for movewithviv.com and look for your YouTube as well or your Instagram. But where are you located? Which gym?

SPEAKER_00 30:49

Mostly over at Clark Key. There's a gym over here called Pig360, Pig360. So it is a B2B gym, okay, where they rent out their premises for um freelance personal trainers to coach their clients at. Very similar to Core Collective. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:04

So Clark Key Area Central is the location where you're at. And then if anybody wants to look out for you or look uh to train with you, uh, it will be at movewith.com or on the Instagram.

SPEAKER_00 31:15

If they want to chat with me, I must buy coffee. I'm just I'm kidding, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:19

Okay, okay. Thank you so much. Okay, that was really a great conversation. I really enjoyed it. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope everyone who watches this when we do our snippets definitely learn something. I definitely learned a lot of things from you. Thanks. You know, I got it. I mean, this is why I feel like I wanted to do this, right? I feel like when coaches and coaches talk, it's very different. It is. You get to find, you get that sense of like, I can relate, but at the same time, I'm like, wow, this person's journey is so different from mine, but we're kind of in the same space. But I got injured as well. And that's when I kind of like, okay, I love fitness and stuff. So, but I feel like mobility is something that I can definitely learn more from you. So I feel like every new coach, you know, like I said, if you're a great coach, mobility through strength and resistance is something that you should definitely educate yourself with, which I will definitely do with, you know. Yeah, sorry.

SPEAKER_00 32:10

No, I want to say it's not about incorporating an hour of mobility because people always feel that that takes away all my precious uh training time. So it's about incorporating it into your first, not five minutes of warm-up, first 20 minutes of warm-up. Make it uh make it a little bit more deliberate, first 20 minutes of really buttering up your joints. We can talk about that more in detail, like whether it's like via coaching or via talking about it. But that first 20 minutes of really limbering up properly would really, I feel from experience and how I see my athlete do, will really improve the performance of your actual training.

SPEAKER_01 32:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:46

Yeah. When I started incorporating more mobility stuff, and I think the word that you use is very good, being deliberate. Like last time, we were just like, I see a program, I want to do the program, get it over with like pop and go, and sometimes you feel more wrecked. But when like I was telling a few of my clients and my friends, I was like, now my warm-up or my my my mobility flow or the things that get me takes me 10 to 15 minutes before I actually leave subweights, right? Because you want to be deliberate if you're training, right? If you don't feel good, sometimes if I don't feel good, I won't complete the whole session, right? But then you know, sometimes I feel like the mobility part is what kept keeps me going, especially if you want to train three to four times a week, right? So I think being very deliberate is very important as well.

SPEAKER_00 33:26

Yeah. I was just about to, I was just discussing my my my co-coach. Like we just did the high rocks like last month. Yeah. And we were winning with like no training, no proper, no, no, no real training of the high-rocks stations themselves. We just did like the transition so that we wouldn't trip on each other. But we concluded that at the end of the day, mobility and uh dynamic training is what got us through very smoothly. We we didn't ache as much as we thought we would. Um around us, we were hearing judges call out, no raps, no raps, because people weren't lunging with their knees touching the ground, people weren't squatting low enough, and here we are just going towing, towing, thawing, like really enjoying ourselves. And we realized that actually, yeah, no struggle. I mean, it was tired, but it's no struggle in terms of the stiffness and the range. So at the end of the day, I always want I I'm just cooking up the content piece for that. But mobility is super important, and it's probably what's gonna save you through all your races and all your competitions if you take them seriously and want to move on in that. So, yeah, it's an interesting piece that we're gonna talk about.

SPEAKER_02 34:32

100%. I think people will uh I think one get everyone to get on that, you know. And I want to tell everyone if you enjoyed this episode, please uh feel free to share it with someone who you think might benefit from it. You know, don't forget to follow and subscribe myself and Viv so you don't miss future episodes. And if you want to check out more from Vivian 10, you can find them at Move with Viv or she's at Peak Studio in Clarke 3. Thanks for listening, guys, and uh catch you in the next episode. Thank you, Viv.

SPEAKER_00 34:56

Thanks, She.