Run a Profitable Gym
Run a Profitable Gym is packed with business tools for gym owners and CrossFit affiliates. This is actionable, data-backed business advice for all gym owners, including those who own personal training studios, fitness franchises, and strength and conditioning gyms. Broke gym owner Chris Cooper turned a struggling gym into an asset, then built a multi-million-dollar mentoring company to help other fitness entrepreneurs do the same thing. Every week, Chris presents the top tactics for building a profitable gym, as well as real success stories from gym owners who have found incredible success through Two-Brain Business mentorship. Chris’s goal is to create millionaire gym owners. Subscribe to Run a Profitable Gym and you could be one of them.
Run a Profitable Gym
Can MetFix Save CrossFit?
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CrossFit taught the world how to move, and now through MetFix, Greg Glassman wants to teach them how to eat.
In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” Chris Cooper sits down with Peter Shaw, former CrossFit flowmaster and current head of the MetFix Seminar Team.
The pair explore how MetFix is building on top of CrossFit rather than competing with it by shifting the focus from fitness alone to overall health.
Peter explains that MetFix emphasizes metabolic health education so trainers can confidently work with the 80% of people suffering from chronic disease.
The opportunity for gym owners is significant: MetFix adds a revenue stream, and it creates a pathway to attract clients who want to reverse diabetes, lose weight and get healthier.
Peter also discusses building relationships with medical professionals and positioning yourself as a health authority in your community.
Links
“Effect of Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Deprescription …”
“Virta Health champions its nutrition therapy …”
MetFix Website
Gym Owners United
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1:55 - Intro
3:42 - Fitness vs. health landscape
13:24 - MetFix and CrossFit
21:01 - Opportunity for gym owners
40:02 - Why choose MetFix?
The methods save CrossFit. Now hang on. I know you're probably saying CrossFit doesn't need saving. What I'm talking about here is not the CrossFit methodology. You know, constantly functional movement form high intensity is completely permeating the fitness landscape and has been for the last decade. Even gyms that aren't CrossFit gyms are doing a lot of CrossFit. But the CrossFit movement seems to be halting a little bit. It seems to be struggling. And usually when that happens in any company, you ask yourself why? And sometimes it's a lack of clarity on the mission. Sometimes it's that the company has been taken over, the founder is no longer there, the patch is not whatever. Sometimes it's just a change in direction, a change in platform, or a lack of media. And in CrossFit's case, many of these things could be happening and it's a shame. I've been working for years with hundreds, thousands of CrossFit affiliates. We've been publishing free content for CrossFit affiliates for a decade more. It's one of my missions in life is to help CrossFit affiliates. And one of the best ways to help CrossFit affiliates is to have a strong CrossFit HQ. But that said, it needs some help. And today I'm joined by Pete Shaw from MetFix. Full disclosure, wear my MetFix hat as a MetFix affiliate. I'm really interested to know can MetFix save CrossFit by re-igniting it, by reinstilling a sense of mission and vision and purpose, by bringing back Greg, by having the original content. I think you'll find this interview really interesting, especially if you stick right through to the end. Some of the things that Pete said right at the very ending, man, they really got me, man. So this is Run a Profitable Gym. And run whether you're running a cross-code affiliate or any other kind of gym, I think you're going to find a lot of information in this interview really useful as the fitness industry tries to tiptoe its way into the health space. Pete, welcome to Run a Profitable Gym.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks for having me, Chris.
SPEAKER_00:I'm really excited and I'm really grateful to you for coming on. Now, for the listeners out there, you know, I want to start with my disclosure statement. I'm a Metfix affiliate and I'm obviously wearing a MFX hat so that I don't like forget to say that. But Pete, uh, you know, you were involved with CrossFit to a much greater extent than I was. You were on seminar staff, you were even a Flowmaster. What led you to the Metfix movement? Let's start there.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I mean, yeah. Well, thanks for having me, Chris. Really appreciate it. And and what led me to Metfix was it's the mission. It's first and foremost, it's the mission. Yeah. We're, you know, it's it's very clear. Greg, that's one of the greatest aspects of of Greg and now Emily partnering with him is that that clear vision and the purpose of what it is that we're doing with the affiliates in the education is to bring health and education through metabolic health and and fighting against the people who want to uh who want to like blunt that that light, blunt shining a light or darken shining a light into those areas of truth about you know health and and wellness. And obviously, um, you know, coming from the crossroad world and and being a flow master and at one point owning my own affiliate and and everything, like that was the the guiding light. Like we we were in this fight to try to try to sort of change the fitness landscape. And Greg was leading the way. And I really feel like that is being carried forward in the health landscape now.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. I think we need to like define what those two landscapes are. So what is the difference between the fitness landscape and the health landscape?
SPEAKER_01:The way that I think about it in civil terms is just is the the fitness landscape is although we because they do blend, right? There's a lot of there's a lot of blending. There's there's massive overlap. And I mean, without getting into, you know, you know, how we define health and fitness and greg's classical definition is just sort of like in layman's terms, the way that I look at it is that like fitness is focused heavily on performance. And and health is is focused on there's an aspect of performance, but it's more of like performance in in life coupled with longevity. So you want to be able, and in my mind, what we're looking for out of health is you want to be able to always do the things you want to do for as long as possible. That's that's what health is.
SPEAKER_00:That's interesting. And and I can remember, I'm sure you will too, Pete. Years ago, you know, Greg had this journal article, and it was like the you know, the fourth dimension. It's like constantly gray function movement, high intensity. And then he was he was introducing us to like this concept of time and you know, multiplied by total time or something like that. And that that was not his his most popular piece of content back then. And I think a lot of people really struggled with it. Is that kind of what he's bringing to the world with MetFix now?
SPEAKER_01:Is it you're talking about the definition of health when he did when he defined it with the Z-axis? Yeah. So his his definition of health is fitness across the years of your life. So instead of the two-dimensional, uh, the two-dimensional area under the curve that defines fitness, right? Power output over time, he's added a z-axis and he put age on that axis, and it's your work capacity throughout the your entire lifespan. And and so, sort of what we've seen is in early on, you know, Greg was a huge proponent of this, and you know, he says he said it a lot in little sound bites, but he dug into it for deeper in certain interviews. Like you remember the early days he did a lot of interviews with Tony Budding and these guys sitting at the table. And if you dig around in those, he definitely expands on this concept and he's very aware of it, of the idea that mathematically, fitness is is a part of health. But if you focus too aggressively on fitness in the short term, it can actually be detrimental to your health in the long term. So this is this is sort of what we're we're leaning towards. We we touch on that in the sort of the framework of what is med fixed, like in in the foundation seminar that we run. And and the whole course is spent sort of expanding on that idea and bringing nutrition back to the forefront. We see that as the the total linchpin in in and the deciding factor is to really whether you're going to age well, right? Which again, it's part of that mathematical definition of health.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I think you know, I'm we're going to be pulled in a lot of different directions here. But what do you mean that like fitness might might be detrimental to health long term?
SPEAKER_01:Well, here's some here's some examples. So fitness, if fitness is defined as your power average power output over over time or just work capacity, right? So if I get, you know, if I get a balance of tests, this is what the CrossFit Games was designed after, right? It's it's Greg's Hopper model. If I there's a number of different ways that you could conceptualize it, but testing it with some actual uh like workouts is a great way to do it. Now, if I want to improve on those uh from previous times and records and weights and also and so forth, I can do that a number of ways successfully, increasing my fitness mathematically in the short term, but it could actually be worse for me uh for my long-term outcomes. So, number one, taking a bunch of steroids. I could increase my fitness tomorrow by going on a on a great steroid regimen, right? And and that's gonna make me stronger. Potentially, I could, you know, I could do some EPO and get my cardio up a little bit. And in whatever combination, you know, assuming it's under the get, you know, the the even under supervision of a of a medical professional, I'm gonna increase my work capacity across broad time and middle domains. But I think that what would also be predictive is that it would shorten my lifespan, is if I stayed on that for too long, right? Another example of that would be overtraining. I could, if I have like a specific goal in mind, let's say um some competition that I want to take part in, some CrossFit competition. Because I'm on a schedule, I need to peak at a certain time. I'm gonna push myself with my volume and my loads so that I can come out and perform as well as possible in that competition. And I I was I experienced this directly when I was training for the CrossFit games in 2020. I over-trained, and plenty of people do this. You over-train, you overtrain. I had to take several months off of tons of different movements because of the aches and pains that I had I had accumulated over time, right? So am I getting fitter and am I healthy when I cannot train due to that overtraining? No. So that's another example of like overfocusing on fitness. I'm at my peak fitness in this one single point in time, but then immediately after that, it drops off significantly. And then the other example that we really drive home is the sugar and refined carbohydrate intake. Right. So layered on top of that is like I could I could ingest carbohydrates and take advantage of my glycolytic pathway to fuel my glycolytic workouts and see improvements in my times in the short term. And certainly that could be a strategy for performance if you have a you know, if you have a competition that you're trying to, you're trying to win gold for, right? You could certainly fuel yourself appropriately and and in a healthy way to achieve those goals. But if you're doing it chronically, day to day, because you believe that the carbohydrate intake is is making you healthier, that's that's misguided. You you might be seeing those increases in in times in the short term, but in the long term, that's gonna, those are gonna start to fall away. You're gonna and and you're gonna end up developing sickness. Right. We see we see tons of examples of um of endurance athletes, whether it's from like Iron Man, Triathlon, and the reason I say that is because they have they are they're skinny. I don't think people have a debate as to whether or not like a strong man is is living an unhealthy life. And in fact, even even a guy like even a guy like Eddie Hall, in his documentary, he admits he's like, I'm eating myself to death because he needs to weigh 400 pounds to win world strongest man. So he's like, he's living a classical, you know, high carbohydrate diet. It's probably it's a high everything diet, right? Yeah, yeah. But the but there's sort of this there's this misconception about the endurance athletes who they look skinny, they seem super fit, they're fueling all their workouts with a high carbohydrate load, but many of them are pre-diabetic and even diabetic.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You know, it were this is happening across all sports, not just those two extremes.
SPEAKER_00:Um at every age, too. You know, a decade of coaching kids hockey has shown me that most parents still believe this. If they're not getting the kids a six-pack of tin bits on the way to the rink in the morning, they're like carbing them up the night before with pasta. Meanwhile, the kids eaten nothing but Pop Tarts all afternoon. Like they don't need to be carved up, they need to be carved down, you know.
SPEAKER_01:I know it's crazy. I actually just I just did my my coaching cert, my Hockey Canada coaching cert. Oh, and I well, not just last year, and then just did my trainer cert this year through Hockey Canada, and I was aghast. Part of like a trainer's responsibility is like some nutrition advice for the team. And I could not believe what I saw. So the trickle down is coming from, you know, obviously, you know, pop culture and everything that we see and these other sports and the elite athletes who are sponsored by Gatorade and yada yada. Um, but also the the organizations themselves are are pushing these things, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yep. All the sponsors are carb companies now.
SPEAKER_01:All the sponsors are carb companies. I was just gonna say that the hockey canada sponsor one of their sponsors is Pepsi, which is not surprising. When after I read what they were prescribing, I was like, okay, I half expected them to stick to the nutrition, like the Canadian nutrition guidelines, but they go they go way past that. Like the guidelines are better than what they were pushing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, which is scary. Really okay. Well, sitting with Greg at dinner a couple of weeks ago down in Cleveland, uh, which you've been there, Pete, it was awesome. And one thing that Greg said to me that really triggered me reaching out to you and saying, can we can we talk about this? Is he said, I can I can't improve on CrossFit. Like I'm not going to come up with a better exercise prescription than CrossFit. Instead, what we're doing, instead of competing with CrossFit, is we're building on top of that foundation. And what that's led to, I think for a lot of people, is this feeling that he is competing with CrossFit. Can you kind of give the audience a perception of what MetFix is, where it fits with CrossFit? Is it a competitor, or is it something that's just on top? How does this stuff all work together, Pete?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Good, good. That's a great question. There's definitely some misconceptions out there. One I mean, one thing to realize is that if Greg wanted to compete directly with CrossFit, Greg and Emily, they could they could have. Greg still owns and retains the rights to all of his intellectual property, all his writings, all his all his videos. You you've seen if you've been paying attention to to broken science, you know that we post regularly uh on the Greg Glassman archive. So yeah, that that project is in an effort to preserve his original writings and teachings because what CrossFit was doing was kind of burying them. So we felt, and I mean, I as when I when Greg originally sold the company, I'll tell you right now, like the first thing I did was I went to the CrossFit Journal and downloaded every single original journal article. So I've got the whole thing on my computer. I I was so scared it was just gonna go somewhere. So I'm so happy that that Greg retained the rights number one, and that broken science is trying to bring those back to the forefront of the conversation through this archive. And it's it's one of the main links on the website, right? So just making preserving that those teachings and those writings is is really important. But Greg owns those, and so if he wanted to, he could have just done another level one. But as you know, it that that project is complete, like you said, right? What Metfix is trying to do is exactly what you're saying, is build on top from the educational standpoint. What we're doing with the foundations course, which is our flagship metfix course, it's our in-person two weekend two-day weekend course. And if you look at like the level one, the the majority of the level level one's educational material surrounds movement. It's all movement-based. There's one nutrition lecture, and then there's a couple of the journal articles uh on zone diet that are embedded in the level one training guide. What Emily and Greg wanted to do with this curriculum is sort of invert that idea of like, you know, if it's 80-20 movement nutrition at the level one, we're going to invert that and make it 80-20 nutrition and exercise. Now that's, you know, broad, broadly an easy way to think about it, but there's more nuance to it, of course. At this course, what we're trying to do is we're trying to educate trainers so that we can take them to the next level of professionalization. This was always one of Greg's major goals is to professionalize the trainer. And he did that in a big way. He gave people an opportunity to open up their own CrossFit gyms as an independent business owner. You know, you've been huge with your company and supporting those gyms and be successful as businesses. They can just with just with their level one, they can go out with some really great education and and start making people better at squatting and deadlifting and all these all these different things. And then, you know, once in a while, you're going to get someone who pays really close attention to the nutrition. And they're going to also get their clients on like a low-carb diet, right? And they're going to see immense success getting them results. We're seeing that the the functional fitness industry is right now it's saturated. And it's there's a huge focus and a shift in the health industry in general towards this metabolic, this idea of metabolic health. And what Greg and Emily recognize is that the two of them have they're in a very unique position. They, they, you know, Greg has obviously sort of followed the the trail of broken science, right? Starting all the way back when he was uh when he was suing the NSCA and his fight against big soda. And the two of them together, they really understand the industry, what's at stake, who comes after us, who's in the government trying to pass legislation to prevent people from talking about nutrition and coaching movement and these kinds of things. But then on top of understanding all of those intricacies of the of the why it might be challenging, they also understand deeply the actual science behind the validation of our methodology, right? Not just from the movement side, but especially from the nutrition side and how it pertains to the chronic disease. So when you look at the shift in the industry, like we know as trainers, right, equipped with first nutrition knowledge, second movement knowledge, we can literally change people's lives. We can reverse chronic disease. We can prevent chronic disease. We can we can have a major, major impact as trainers on like so many things. The economy, like it at this point, chronic disease is uh it's a it's a national defense crisis, right? People like when I talk to my friends who work in who work in the Canadian Armed Forces, and I know that the situation is the same in the states, they talk about how sad it is, about how many soldiers are sick and cannot complete the fitness test, right? This is a huge, huge issue. So, like we we hold a lot of power as as small business owners, trainers, right? Personal trainers at sort of like a core level with our fitness and nutrition. But the the problem is that everyone still trusts the the doctors and the medical professionals, the high, highly educated individuals in those fields, they trust those people with their lives, even though we're the ones who have the answers. And so the one large goal of the course is to try to bridge that gap. And so, even though you know, maybe you are practicing metrics already, maybe you are doing the low carb thing, and you're, you know, you're well educated on all the aspects of metabolic health, but increasing your knowledge is gonna increase the trust that those medical professionals have in you as a trainer. And that's I think the start of that relationship within that ecosystem. And and it's gonna give Trainers, huge access to you know, a billion-dollar industry. Like you look at GLP1s alone, like the way that those things have blown up, like this is that's the same demographic and this uh that we are after, and it's the same group of people that we are after. So arming yourself with the knowledge of like what is a GLP one? What effects does it have on the body? How can your training help? What does a low carb diet do? Like, how does that affect the different pieces of metabolic health and the biology and the cellular biology, right? That that knowledge is a really, really powerful thing. It it if the only thing that it does is give you conviction about what your prescription is, right? Validation, you know. So it's it's certainly a build, it's a build on top. Yeah. And it, I mean, so that's sort of like conceptually that professionalization of the trainer. From a business standpoint, I mean, you're we we had a little bit of a conversation about this, but you you I see all the books in the background, the state of the industry, all the different years is awesome. Yeah. But there's a huge opportunity here to add on top of your already thriving or potentially struggling business model as a as a gym owner, right? If if 80% of the population is suffering from chronic disease, it's safe to assume that 80% of the population is not walking into your gym. Right? If if you or another way to look at it is are eight out of ten people that walk into your gym are chronically ill? And if the answer is no, it means you're you're it means that you are attracting a specific demographic that's outside of the broader population. What met fix is is an opportunity to attract the demographic of people who are nervous about competition potentially, and because all they want to do is get healthier. They just want to regain functionality in their daily life, they want their lives change, they want to be healthy, they want to play with their kids, they want to they want to do the things that they want to do, go to work without you know having to think about their blood pressure, etc. etc. Right. And so I think, you know, back to that education piece, when you when you have that confidence, that conviction, you can start to confidently advertise to those demographics. You can start to speak that lingo and parlay that into relationships with the local medical professionals, right? Where they're making recommendations to people to come into your gym. I I think that that really is is the key here. There's a there's a lot of uh met fix gyms that are also CrossFit Gyms. There's there's a ton that are that are doing both. And you know, the business opportunity is cool. Some of them are making met fix programs like exclusive programs, and they're not exclusive, but what I mean is it's a separate program that someone could sign up for with a higher ticket because maybe it you know requires more oversight or it has more coaching involved, or there's like that nutrition piece that's added into it. So it's a it's another piece to the puzzle that I think really pushes the the trainer, the professionalization of the trainer to that next level.
SPEAKER_00:I was doing some research for this interview, Pete, and I was talking to another metrics affiliate, and they said, well, most people open up a CrossFit affiliate because they want to give the gift of fitness that they have to somebody else. But you open up a metfics affiliate to help the people to help somebody else instead. So instead of making other people like you, it's like meeting people where they actually are and just helping them get a little bit healthier. And that really rung true to me because I have parents, uh in-laws who don't eat as well as they should. I'm not gonna talk them into thrusters and burpees. Maybe I can, you know, pivot them a little bit away from the carbs. And I think that that was really helpful for me to hear. Do you find like if you were gonna hold up the mission of CrossFit versus the mission of Metfix, what are the two overlap and how would they be different?
SPEAKER_01:I I can't speak to the mission of CrossFit anymore too much. I if you like, you know, uh, are you I you know, my question to you would be, are you referring to the mission when Greg was there? Was it Greg's vision? Yeah, you know what I mean? So I right now, and I mean I I feel for the for those who are working for CrossFit right now because they've the company's been up for sale for you know over a year now. And like how do you have a mission? How do you have conviction in your mission if you if that's the scenario? It's gotta be hard to motivate yourself, right? So the the the mission of of of Metfix is what I you know what we just outlined right there. It's it's to it's to change the world by educating people about medical health, specifically trainers, because they're the ones that hold the key. And you know, in the in the course, we like you that comment that you just said, that example is a really cool one. We talk about behavior change, and behavior change is one of the lectures that we we talk about at the course, and we do little breakout groups afterwards to talk about sort of the coaching aspects of it. I think one of the things that understanding metabolic health and the details of it is it really it really describes the issue uh as a core cellular biology issue, and it and it and actually oddly enough that gives you more empathy for those who are going through uh sickness because it it doesn't, it's not a it's not a um, it's not a willpower thing. It's you know, so everyone who has chronic disease wants to be healthy. Yeah. And and I think without that deeper level understanding of why someone is feeling the way that they're feeling, why they can't put down the you know, the donuts, why they can't stop eating you bread nonstop, like et cetera, et cetera. That that understanding of that it's it's deep rooted in the way that their their physiology and their cellular biology is made up, that they're they're craving those things and they can't stay away from them is really important as a coach to recognize that, right? Because you're gonna make better decisions, like you were saying, it's it's really hard to convince someone to do thrusters and burpees. It's it's it's also very hard to convince someone to change their diet, maybe harder. Yeah, maybe, maybe harder. So it starts with that empathy, and and like I was just saying, oddly enough, that that education piece really helps with that.
SPEAKER_00:I think one of the things that I picked up was, you know, people are they're they're overweight, but they still feel like they're starving to death. And it's not a psychological issue. Like those are the actual signals their body is sending them. And and so it's not a willpower thing. Like, you know, you and I are in good shape, and that gives us enormous advantages. If you and I wanted to, you know, we we've eaten too many carbs over Christmas and we want to quit, we could probably do it pretty easily. We'd have a day or two that we're we felt kind of rough. But for these other people right now, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, Robin brought home cinnamon rolls two days ago, and it's just like this has to stop. You know, for these people, it their body is telling them that they are doing something dangerous, that it's a matter of life and death, that are hurting themselves. And um, you know, that's something that I picked up from the course was kind of like that perspective where for the first time in my 30-year fitness career, I was like, holy crap, like these people really do have it rough.
SPEAKER_01:Totally. When you one of the things we teach in the course is is, you know, sort of the overarching theme is that when your body's stuck in carbohydrate metabolism, it's really hard to break free of that because it's the only energy source your body can and wants to use as fuel. So that's partly the reason why your body cannot burn the fat off your body. It is more nuanced than that, the actual biology, because you know, we're always burning all of these things at the same time, but it's it's sort of a more or less of situation, right? And if you know, the more your body has a preference for and a propensity to burn carbohydrates, the the harder it's going to be for you when you stop eating those carbohydrates, because like you're saying, you're essentially starving yourself. Because even though you've got all this energy locked up as fat storage, it will not access that. So that that takes time. And there might be a little bit of uh, you know, a willpower component, but you know, especially during those that initial transition phase, if you are trying to, you know, switch from carb to fat burning, but because there's that period of discomfort that you just described, right? But but again, as the coach, like recognizing that there's going to be a period of discomfort and there's hope on the other side of the fence and like strategies on how to guide them through that, either like all in or gradually, is is really, really important so that people have that long-term success, right? I don't know if you j if you listen to do you know Jelly Roll, the yeah the artist? Did you see his transformation?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, pretty wild.
SPEAKER_01:Crazy. Like he talks a lot about like the feelings that he went through during his journey, like he lost like 270 pounds or something crazy like that. Um and he, I think he was doing a ketogenic diet and he's he had oversight from a bunch of professionals, but he didn't do with any any drugs. Um, he said he was taking a little bit of a little bit of metformin, uh, but the plan was to like get off of it. He was only taking it for like a year. So that's like listening to him talk about sort of the the emotional aspect of like weight loss and and the connection to food that's that someone has physically and mentally to get them to that place in the in the first place is is you know it it's it makes it a lot more complicated than just giving someone a meal plan and saying, go. You have to have care, you have to have empathy, you need to be able to have multiple tools to lead them down the right path. Um, because it one tool is not always going to work either, right?
SPEAKER_00:It's interesting. I I did just read an article about him last night, and he was talking about how when he was obese, he had low testosterone, and each was impacting the other. But, you know, I think another crazy example is like the number one diet proponent of all time, Oprah Winfrey. Uh, you know, she went from owning a large stake in Weight Watchers to selling that, becoming a huge advocate for GLP one. And now on the backside of that, she's saying it was a mistake.
SPEAKER_01:You know, is she saying it's a mistake now?
SPEAKER_00:She is now, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Just a I gotta look that up. Okay, wow.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I've only seen these articles in the last couple of weeks where she was like, I, you know, I kind of regret it and all this other stuff. And meanwhile, Weight Watchers is trying to like come back. But, you know, what's what's interesting is that I think every fitness coach saw like, okay, all the GLP1 drugs, they weren't gonna work. None of us saw the rebound effect happening this fast. I don't and so you know, it this this resurgence and this focus on health, I think is it's not just important, but it's also urgent.
SPEAKER_01:Totally, totally. Do you know Virto Health? The company Verto Health. Verta Health was a company that Greg connected with actually when he first started CrossFit Health. Um, and that's another way to look at Memphis, to be honest, is you know, and and broken science in general is a continuation of his CrossFit Health effort that got canceled along with Greg, basically. Um and but so he connected with VertaHealth because what they're doing is they're they're doing they're clinically reversing like hundreds and thousands of patients, uh type 2 diabetes, heart disease with ketogenic diet. And it's it's kind of it's a really cool, really cool company. Sarah Hallberg was she's she's passed away since, but she was a big proponent. She's actually part of that company, I believe. And they released a study recently about a ketogenic diet as a as a way to prevent the rebound after GLP1s.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that's really interesting.
SPEAKER_01:So they kind of did they did a study alongside um alongside the ketogenic diet. I don't know all the details because I didn't read the entire thing. Uh, but the the message was that you know, if you were taking a GLP1 and you wanted to see success and get off in the long term, is the the best way to do that would be to go um and follow a ketogenic diet. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Man, if you send me the link, Pete, I'll throw that in the show notes for everybody.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah, yeah. I'll send that to you totally. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, so you know, I could talk about this stuff with you for hours. I love it so much. And um, you know, one thing that I want to do is kind of bring us back to our key topic here. So we we've talked about, and and you said this without prompting, you know, the CrossFit mission. Greg is the figurehead, owning the original content, you know, in all these things that really drew a lot of people to CrossFit, very clear mission. You know, here is the here's the content, here's kind of like the iconic leader. Those things are lacking from CrossFit right now. And I'm not going to ask if you feel the same because I don't want to put you in hot water. I'm usually in hot water these days. But when I say like can MetFix save CrossFit, by by not competing and by adding on top, I have this impression that you, Greg, Dale, Emily, the team could potentially keep some affiliates alive and maybe even attract people into the CrossFit methodology through a different avenue. Do you do you feel that way? Is that is that a sensation around MetFix?
SPEAKER_01:100%. 100%. Like I was saying earlier, the the the functional fitness, like CrossFit as a movement practice is not going to die. The constantly varied functional movements at high intensity will not die. No matter what the number of CrossFit affiliates goes up to or goes down to, it's uh there are way more micro gyms or you know, small functional fitness gyms doing CrossFit now that don't have that label on their front door than ever before. Like, but that's still all the same thing. Like, look at all the companies that have spawned out from uh that movement. Totally. You know, you've got high rocks now, you've got all these competitions. I was just looking at the Lifetime Fitness website. They've got a like a functional fitness competition, but then at the same time, they're doing like a they're doing a metabolic health piece as well. Yeah. So the way to differentiate yourself in that market, I believe, is to is to focus on metabolic health, chronic disease, is to tap into that untapped market. It's not to do the same thing over and over and over and over and over again and try to compete for the same resources and the same small motivated individuals who are going to walk into your gym, right? The the most of the people coming into your gym, this is what I experienced as a crossfit gym owner, uh, you know, back in the late 2010s. People walking into my gym were looking for my gym, like for a long period of time before they walked in. There were it, I always got really excited when someone came in who like had just passed on the street and they see it, or or they're like, hey, I'm just looking for a random fitness facility, and I want to, I saw that you guys make people healthier. Like that made me really excited. Most of the people walking in are like very specific. They're like, hey, I want to learn how to snatch, I want to learn how to, you know, uh, I might want to compete a little bit. And you're you're fighting for limited resources as a gym owner if you're focused on that, right? Or or maybe you're not focused on that, and you that's just passively what's happening, right? I just I just think that there are so many more people out there that need our help than don't. And we're and for for gym owners and trainers, there's a massive opportunity to gain some education and confidence to start not changing your business model, but again, like you're saying, adding on to it to start to attract these types of people.
SPEAKER_00:I gotta share this with you, Pete, because this was less than an hour ago. So I was over at my gym. We're I'm in a semi-private group there. This this woman, she's there for her first workout. She's doing on-ramp. And she says to me, you know, I've been thinking about joining this gym for five years. And I was like, Wow, you know, what what got you in, Monique? And she's like, Oh, you you made an Instagram post yesterday about how you were this dork and you know, it's long and drawn out because I was a very big dork. She's like, that was it for me. I was like, wow, you know, it's not where I am, but this this guy is completely transparent about his background, and that's why I joined. And I I thought, like, okay, we put that message out once. She's been following us for five years, and that's kind of the one that that pushed her over the threshold. How much of our messaging is actually about metabolic health? And how much of it is actually like we still look kind of you know athletic compared to most people. And the reality is, you know, maybe 1% of my posts are talking about the right things.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, totally. Or the people that are just, you know, we talk about people who are attracted to movement and it acts as a Trojan horse for the nutrition conversation.
unknown:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:What about the reverse? What about the reverse? What about someone who doesn't want anything to do with movement and they just want someone how to tell them how to eat healthy? Yeah. Like there's there's gotta be some people out there like that, right? In fact, I know a bunch. I know a bunch. And and what if what if, like you were saying, your Instagram posts involved some messaging around food? Deliberate attention to the food that you put in your body and how it uh affects your health. And people are attracted to your gym because of that, and then and that acts as the Trojan horse for movement, potentially, like there, right? You yeah, until you start attracting them, you don't know how many are out there. But what we do know is that there's a lot of sick people, and it's the nutrition that's gonna fix it first and foremost.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Right. And and and that low lower barrier to entry. It's a much lower barrier to entry to come in for uh someone who is super nervous about you know jumping into a class with a whole bunch of barbells and loud music to just to have a meeting and a conversation about uh their goals and their health and maybe what they're eating. And you give them a little bit of advice and they're on their way and invite them back next week. Like this becomes a huge opportunity to get people in your gym who would have never thought to do it in the first place. But again, you got you need to be thinking, you have to have that mindset as the coach, right? I need to have those opportunities in place, whether it's in my schedule or in my business plan or whether my messaging, you know, explicitly expresses these things that we're trying to do at our facility. And then once you kind of go down that road long enough, then you're gonna start to see what's out there.
SPEAKER_00:I think it's really interesting that you know that we could do a show on that, starting with nutrition first, because you know, Danny Craig does not have a problem generating leads. Weight Watchers do not have a leads problem, they had a retention problem. Like all these organizations that start with diet, they're never struggling to get new clients. No. Um, but Pete, you know, you one of the reasons I was I am so looking forward to this question is you were as deep as it gets in CrossFit, you completely entrenched. Now you're completely as deep as it gets in it entrenched in metfics. What was that personal you know change like for you? What was that transition like? What made you make the choice?
SPEAKER_01:The mission never changed for me. The mission never changed for me. And when it when it changed for CrossFit, or it seemed to, you know, maybe it didn't change, maybe it just got forgotten. But when that changed, it was easy for me because I was already set in my mission. And there was just this other thing, broken science and metfix with the original leader and the original visionary, right? And and him and Emily together, absolute powerhouse. And I'm just like, it seems obvious, right? So for me, the transition was was pretty easy. I mean, there's personal relationships, obviously, that I've I've built at that company. So there's people that I don't see anymore that I really like and miss, but you know, I try to keep in touch with them. But you know, from a mission-focused standpoint, that was an easy decision for me to make.
SPEAKER_00:That was amazing, Pete. Thank you. Yeah, I that is it sounded like something Greg would say honestly. It was like uh, you know, it's so genius that you you wonder, like, well, that seems simple. Why didn't I think of that before? But that is the mark of genius, you know. Pete, thanks so much for doing this with us. You know, um, as much I do get attacked sometimes for like hating CrossFit. That's not the truth. It's actually the opposite. I want to do anything it takes to save CrossFit. Maybe not save the company the way it is, but the methodology is worth saving, the material is worth saving, and definitely the mission. And I think it's it's best hope is Metfix now.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, really appreciate that, Chris. Hey, thanks so much for your time. And um, hey, we got to get together soon. We're both we're in the same province in Canada. So we're not that, I mean, we're not that far from each other. We're far enough though.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's a big province, but still, you're right. Yeah. Well, Pete, thanks so much for coming on the show, man. So I I'd love to you to tell people like where they can follow you know metfix on social media and how they can contact you directly.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, great. Well, and maybe maybe I can even give you uh those those direct links to the social media and Instagram and stuff, and you can share that broadly. But we've got you know broken science and and metfix by bsi. So bsi is broken science initiative. So all of our uh Instagram and uh X handles for Metfix is Metfix by BSI. We're on Instagram for both that and for broken science initiative. If you go to brokenscienceinitiative.org, that's the main website. Metfix.org just directly links you to the metfix page. It's embedded on that website. You guys can get tons of information on that site. It's it's endless, it's an endless resource of like archives and education. We're doing tons of uh of online classes that are in development. So we've got sort of our in-person flagship course that will continue in and sort of standalone at this point in time, but we're in constant development of online resources. So the we're trying to make a more accessible version of this education that we're offering online. And we've got like type 2 diabetes course, uh, we've got um critical thinking course, we're gonna have first responders, we've got uh we're gonna have a what is metfix metabolic flexibility course, reactive oxyces, like the list goes on and on and on. So we're gonna keep an eye out for that, and um and on YouTube as well. On YouTube, we've got regular uh free live shows on YouTube from the Medical Society, but also uh Dale, who you who you had mentioned, Dale King, our head of affiliates. Dale does a regular show. I think it's called The Daily Fix, which is a play on our daily meal workout and article publication. And and he interviews affiliate owners regularly. He should actually have you on. But so if if if people are interested in hearing from affiliate owners, that's a great place to go, is to go to the YouTube page and listen to some of the interviews that Dale does with the Medfix affiliate owners.
SPEAKER_00:That's super smart. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Well, Pete, thanks again, man. And uh good luck digging out from this snow.
SPEAKER_01:Hey, appreciate it. Thanks, Chris. All right.
