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Health & Fitness Redefined
Health and Fitness Redefined with Anthony Amen. Take a dive into the health world as we learn how to overcome adversity, depict fact vs fiction and see health & fitness in a whole new light.Fitness Is Medicine
Health & Fitness Redefined
Sorting Fitness Facts from Fiction
Anthony and Dom explore the challenges of navigating fitness misinformation and provide practical strategies for identifying trustworthy advice in an industry flooded with conflicting information.
• Physical appearance doesn't guarantee expertise – someone with a six-pack isn't necessarily knowledgeable about exercise science
• The fitness industry lacks standardized regulation, allowing anyone to claim they're a trainer without proper credentials
• Fear-mongering tactics and promises of "special formulas" or "magic solutions" are major red flags
• Formal education provides some credibility but isn't the only factor to consider
• Fundamentals like strength training, cardio, proper sleep and nutrition remain the most reliable approaches
• Contract-free training options demonstrate a company's confidence in their product
• Focus on fitness professionals who specialize in what you need rather than claiming expertise in everything
• Consistency with basic principles matters more than perfect optimization or trendy approaches
Don't forget to share, subscribe, and remember: fitness is medicine.
Learn More at: www.Redefine-Fitness.com
Hello and welcome to Health and Fitness Redefined. I'm your host, anthony Amen, and today we have another great episode for all of you Before we introduce today's guest. Crazy news At the time of this recording is the last day we were open for business for my very first gym. It's such a surreal moment. It really hit me. I'm going to post later today on social media an open letter I wrote to my clients and my staff about it. Just a crazy experience looking back over the last seven years. I mean we're leaving for all the right reasons, going to a bigger spot, doing more.
Speaker 1:This rebrand we hit hard. It's freaking awesome. Highly recommend you go check that if you're ever in the Mount Sinai area. But it's just crazy. Like the gym is half empty at this point and tomorrow I'm going in, we're closed for good, moving all the equipment and that's it. Boom. Anyway, just crazy looking back of everything that's happened. Without further ado, though, let's welcome to the day show Dom. Dom, it's a pleasure to have you today. Hey, thanks for having me on. Appreciate you coming on, taking the time and, dom, before we hop into today's topic, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into the health and fitness world.
Speaker 2:Ooh sure. So very long journey which keeps getting longer every year that I'm alive. But I started out being very obese growing up. I lost over 130 pounds when I was in high school and then, you know, like when you're a teenager, lose 130 pounds. All your friends are like, wow, how did you do that? Like you must know what you're doing. And I didn't really know what I was doing. But I kind of pseudo personal trained my friends in high school and that kind of led to a natural path into the fitness industry and then, like you know, one thing led to another, ended up helping people and eventually I really just like branched out, starting with like personal training, then worked with like apps, research and like a whole bunch of other stuff over time.
Speaker 1:I love that man. I love that man. I know we were talking a little pre-show about misinformation as far as fitness goes and I want to give a little shout out to somebody who posted on my account a few weeks ago. She said that for future episodes, one of them she'd like to hear is about influencers and how to combat getting through all freaking you see online with different people and all that and it kind of relates right, because there's hundreds, if not thousands, of people that are online influencers, especially in the health and fitness world, who hey look like me, do this great thing and it's overwhelming.
Speaker 1:I can see it from a consumer standpoint. One day you're reading about how all you should eat is greens, and the next slide is never eat greens. And then one's only eat eggs and the other one's never eat eggs. And it can just go on and on down this like crazy rabbit hole. And for a consumer watching, who doesn't literally study this thing all the time, it can get stressful and you can just be like either throw your hands up, walk away and give up, or just go to your doctor. Before you know you're getting ozempic and just starving yourself because you don't know what to eat, because now everything's going to kill you. So how would you suggest even just basics? Right, let's talk open-ended basics. For somebody who isn't familiar with this topic to really navigate through the online bullshit going on, yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm glad you brought that up because that's such like a common experience that almost everybody experiences at some point, right, even people that are like fitness professionals today, like when you were first like looking into fitness, like when you're younger, like you're gonna encounter this and have no idea what's going on. Regardless, it's just like something everybody experiences and one of the things that's tricky, that leads to people like mistrusting certain content creators, comes from, like the proxy we're using to like predict whether somebody is reliable or trustworthy. So I'll go through like a few examples of things that aren't necessarily the best predictors of whether or not somebody will be reliable, that sometimes people like use. So, for example, like if you see somebody that's in great shape, that doesn't necessarily matter, right, like somebody can have a six pack, they could look really good. There could be like any numbers of reasons for that. That doesn't necessarily mean that their training isn't effectual, but it's just not something that can reliably predict that this person understands like exercise science in a way that'll at least matter to you, because you know there are factors like genetics. There are factors like some people do use steroids or other performance enhancing drugs. Sometimes people are just doing something long enough that it happens to work out for them right? Because, like, if you look at a body at any point in time, that's just its current state. That person may have been doing something very inefficient for 20 years and if they give you that same inefficient thing, you won't really look like their body like they do for 20 years, right? As opposed to having something more efficient that somebody else could like program or like provide for you and then like also in addition to like all this body stuff, right?
Speaker 2:It's also important to touch on this idea of like education, and this is something that's really a big issue in the US. That is less of an issue in some other countries and it does vary country by country. In the US. That is less of an issue in some other countries and it does vary country by country, but we have a very unregulated and decentralized system for, like, certifying personal trainers or people in the fitness industry, and this is I'll explain a little bit what I mean by that. So, like, basically right.
Speaker 2:If you think about like a normal, like healthcare position, like, let's say, like a nurse, right? You go to any nurse in the US, rn, a registered nurse, you know they've already completed at least a bachelor's degree, and that's something that you know meets a certain educational standard and that's kind of somewhat standardized across the US Now, when it comes to fitness professionals and personal trainers, like not everybody has a college degree and I mean it's okay for people to not have a college degree right or to be at any level they are at, but you know that makes it harder to reliably say like this person with this certification or this person who's a personal trainer, at a minimum is this quality right? Because you can be very educated and very skilled without a college degree. But it's just like a safety control mechanism in a sense that increases probability and you know that is just a big issue.
Speaker 1:You touched on a lot there and let's break a lot of that down, okay. So first, for your example of just because somebody's in shape doesn't mean you should follow them right. Just because someone drives a somebody's in shape doesn't mean you should follow them right. Just because someone drives a car that's working doesn't mean they're a mechanic. Just because somebody has a good knee doesn't mean they know how to rehab a knee and give you a new one. I don't know why we get stuck in this narrative of fitness, which is you're in good shape. You must know what you're talking about. But every other industry we just ignore, right? We just don't care, like it doesn't matter. Oh, your water works in your house. You have to be a good plumber. It just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2:That's so true, right? Because, like I've had experience, if you think about it right, Every time you take a class, right, like people are like, if you're like a medical doctor and you learn something about like female anatomy and you're a male in that class, you learn the same thing as male students, like everybody that's in an exercise science class is in that class, regardless of how they apply that to their own life, because the skill is applying it to other people, not applying it to yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, yeah, you're exactly right. It's just it doesn't relate to something being good, right. So that's the first issue. The second component of that is trainer certifications and everything being deregulated, which is something we've talked about so many times on the show. But just to reiterate back and kind of give a little catch-up for those that are just listening, you can just say, like I know specifically for the state of new york right, that's where we are, and I know this is the case in most states. You're gonna say you're a trainer, there's no certification, there's no licensee, there's no process whatsoever. People think that you need to be certified to be a trainer, but it's just not true. There's literally nothing that says you need to have this in order to be a fitness professional or personal trainer. Bob across the street can just be a personal trainer if he wants to be right. So that's the first caveat. The second one is there are certifications. Certifications are done by private companies, so the private company's ideology is to make money, so a lot of them don't have standards. There's literally no standards. They just want your money to give you a piece of paper to say you're certified. Now, it's not to say all of these certifications are like that. There are some reputable ones that are out there that do have some kind of process involved. I do like watch you take tests, make sure you're not cheating off your friends and it's hard to know what those are unless you're in our industry and I kind of learned what those were quickly as I started my own gym to know that those are. The people that took those certifications are the only ones I'm going to allow to work Right. So I knew there was four of them that were reputable. I can hold on to these. These people are good.
Speaker 1:Now let's take it a step further. Covid happened. Covid shook up our industry completely. From being a gym owner's pet, we were shut down for almost nine months in the state of New York. The biggest reason we were not allowed to open was because the state had nothing on us, right? Your Barber Barber was allowed to open two and a half months prior to us. Why is getting a haircut more important than working out? The reason being the barber screwed up. They took the license. When they're screwed up, they took the license. The physical bed was screwed up. They took the license away. They went all over the practice. That's something. Hold over their heads. For us there was nothing, nothing they could pull from us, because there is something that regulates our industry.
Speaker 1:I saw this as a big giant red flag For those that do not know, and for Dom as well here on the show, redefine Fitness is the first training company in the entire United States of America to have an apprenticeship program approved by the Department of Labor in New York State. Meaning I went through three and a half years of getting curriculum created through COVID that I sent out to the state, fought with them to get approval, finally got approval off of it and I have the capability to put my trainers through this program, which is a thousand hours of on-the-job training on top of hooking up with a local Community College and then having to take 18 months of college courses through this program to therefore graduate from this apprenticeship program, become joining me. It's the same way trade works plumbers, electricians, all that personal training is now a certified trade through New York State. And when? The only gym, as far as I'm aware in the entire country, that office, because I understand that problem, I'm not knowing.
Speaker 1:But going back to your point, I'm sitting in front of somebody and trying to explain this and they go what like no one knows. No one knows, like the extra stuff we go through, the extra hurdles you'll find out after you start and you start comparing like wow, why is this training so much better than bob across the street? Oh, bob just said he was a trainer one day and decided to charge you 300 for it. So long-winded argument point of it. But I hope that like kind of fits in where it does. It's hard to tell, it's hard to figure out and for people that are going off of I want a six-week booty program. That girl has a big butt, like that, doesn't mean that that's the reason they got a big butt. Trust me, I know a lot of those women, especially that quote. These beautiful grounds are their little injections on the side. So please note, because someone looks at something doesn't mean they're super knowledgeable. I digress.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's fair. I appreciate you going through all that. A lot of like points as well. To build off of what you mentioned. One thing just for, like anybody listening as well, right, even outside of the fitness industry like a key thing is like we're talking about a certification and not a license. Like, if you see the word license, that means it's like a regulated thing, it's like a government based thing, right? If you see certification, that's more of a private company thing, so your mileage can vary and it's really important to like look at that as like a keyword, right, whenever that comes up.
Speaker 2:And on the note, like what you mentioned, right, of companies like having very different standards. So there are companies that are accredited by a certain institution that just is like, hey, these are standardized, and then there are ones that aren't, but regardless, even like the best ones in the industry, which are pretty good compared to like the other ones, right, compared to the ones that aren't standardized or that are, like, have a lower standard, they still don't contain very much information contrasted to a college degree, right? So a lot of colleges in exercise science, what they do is they base some of their entry level courses specifically off of certain high quality certifications that exist. So the best, most reputable certifications tend to like equal about the amount of, like one college course worth of, like credit, worth of information. And that is important, right? Because, like, if you think about it, like if you've taken any class, right, if you've been in college, think about a gen ed class you've just taken once.
Speaker 2:Or if you didn't go to college, just think about a class you took in high school and it was just like elective, some random thing. Now, imagine that is your job. You don't really have a lot to go off of, which is why I love your apprenticeship program and what you described of it, because you do actually take college courses and you do also apply them, which is another really big thing. Right, because there is a big learning curve for new fitness professionals in the industry when it comes to actually applying what they learn in school, because you know you learn how to optimize things physiologically and that's great and all. But, like, that's not what matters for like 99 percent of people, because what matters first is people actually adhere to their programming, people actually exercise and make the most of the situation they're in rather than train in a hyper-efficient way, and bridging that gap is hard unless you have like a lot of practical experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, that leads into the other argument. Very experienced in this. Hired many, many trainers in my life. Go to your point of those people that are too certified, too many many degrees, dive too much into the bubble, run into usually another issue. The number one reason clients stay with personal training comes down to what do you know?
Speaker 2:they like them. It's like a personality thing personality.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it doesn't matter how smart you are, and what's the number one way to get to guarantee somebody's going to see not really guarantee, but most likely way someone's going to see results is the continuing of showing up. Yes, you can make things more efficient. Yes, they can really break down the science and give them the best program in the entire world and make it five percent better and really fight to make it every minute count. But if someone doesn't keep coming and they do it once or twice, what the hell's the point? Really, the point is to keep someone showing up consistently over the long term, enough to generate a habit that they start doing it themselves over the long term, enough to generate a habit that they start doing it themselves.
Speaker 1:And that is really where you run into the flip corn of it of making sure the person has personality.
Speaker 1:So now you've got to balance the smartest people and the personality side of it and you have to figure out how to fuse both of them together in order to get the best trainer and grow them.
Speaker 1:And what I've learned is the best way to do that is to take the education and pin the education internally so you hire more based upon personality, with the caveat of having a minimum standard of education, which is, if someone's interested, then you can use an apprenticeship program with on-the-job training and education. Because they have the personality they're falling in love with. They love being coming to work, they're more willing than to learn, they spend a thousand hours in the gym learning and now they're able to go out on their own and do their own thing in the gym and start training their own clients. But they are not smart enough. And then you build in a continuing education curriculum inside of your company, where now trainers are required every single week, sit down for an hour and a half deep, dive into your topic, do presentations on, do homework on it and present the following week.
Speaker 2:So now you're constantly leveling up your trainers and becoming the best of the best, because you're getting both things together, because they both need to work in order to have a successful company yeah, and like building off of that a bit as well, right, like that idea of just making sure people like stick to training is super important because, like, what matters at the end of the day is that you're always taking well, not always per se, but like on average taking one step closer to whatever your goal is.
Speaker 2:As long as you're moving in the right direction, your future will be better off than if you hadn't moved in the right direction. It's really easy for people to pursue and focus on being perfect, right, and that even leads to like misinformation stuff and some of the perpetuation of it, because when people, like you know, go into like X or Y rabbit hole online and it's often in pursuit of perfection rather than just pursuit of something that works for them, if you just accept what works for you, even if it's not super efficient, as long as you're able to maintain it, then that's awesome and you know, at that point it's easier just to like stick to the basics.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like you're not trying to. Most people aren't trying to be professional bodybuilders where every rep counts, every set counts, every grain of rice has to be tracked right.
Speaker 2:That's not the general population.
Speaker 1:So you want to be super scientific, dive into that group, which is great. You want to really just figure out how to get people to keep coming back and feeling better, because at the end of the day, the person wants to go home and feel better, feel like they did something and really do something, but they don't want to wake up and they can't get off the freaking toilet bowl. It's not that group.
Speaker 1:This is the group that wants to wake up, feeling refreshed good wants to get that workout done, sweat a little bit like that's a whole other bulky that wants to not be pain, right. Those are the things you start looking forward to, especially as your age like with our demographic it's like 50 to 65 year olds is. I want to just feel good. If I lose a couple pounds, great, I want my shoulder to stop hurting. I want my shoulder to stop hurting, I want my hip to stop hurting. And you know that the prior is consistent treatment, really focusing on the different underactive muscles going on and releasing the fascia inside the body. So little things to tweak them, to make them feel good, even though they're not going to lose 100 pounds. Right, they're really feeling better.
Speaker 1:And ultimately, when I feel better, what do I tend to do? I tend to walk more. I tend to sleep better. I tend to eat better because I feel good. If I feel bad and I feel depressed, what am I going to do? I'm going to eat like shit, I'm going to not sleep, I'm not going outside for walks, I'm not going being social. So it's a fun little balance you're trying to do to make the person feel really freaking good, because you know, those other habits that play a role into it are just going to be automatically tacked on because they feel absolutely amazing after having a session, instead of feeling run down, beat up and not can't get off the couch yeah, and building off that right like it.
Speaker 2:ultimately it creates a feedback loop where, like hey, like now, I feel better, and I feel better, it'll be easier to make the decision to exercise again tomorrow. And then, when you exercise in a way that makes you feel better, then you're going to feel even better the next day and that just like perpetuates and it makes life a whole heck of a lot easier when it comes to just being active.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and tie that back to the first question right? I mean, we saw that 15 minutes ago which was how do you separate what you see online? What's the best way to? I have seconds to figure out if I want to listen to someone and continue watching the video. So how do I process it as a normal consumer to make a right decision of the solutions to or not?
Speaker 2:Cool. The best thing to do would literally just be to look at formal degrees. That's the best proxy measure that we have well, let's break that down right.
Speaker 1:Formal degrees let's start with one thing okay, I have a basic formal degree, but everything I learned back in college we're talking 2008 to 2012 is like 13 years ago. So all of that information most of it's wrong right now. You go back 13 years ago and health science is wrong. So how do I know, as a consumer? I see anthony has a health science degree from 15 years ago, or someone older than me has it 20, 25 years ago, right, but all that information is wrong. So and I'm still learning bad information this is the problem.
Speaker 1:We have doctors, right, we talk about this a lot. Physicians who were in their 50s 60s are giving you horrible nutrition science telling you to eat under 900 calories a day, telling you to avoid proteins, like, telling you, or just going strict, no carb, like they have no idea what they're talking about with this stuff. And it's apparent because they're learning science that is so freaking old and it's just been disproven a million times. But they never refreshed off of these topics because they also have a million other things to learn about, right, they have to learn about these, all the million other treatments. So it's not really their fault, it's just that they didn't learn it. So how do you, how can we say degrees is what's to look for? Plus, it takes time to go see if someone has a degree to look it up. Like it just doesn't feel like that's the answer, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Well, I'd say, like it's the best answer that I'm at least aware that we have. It's an imperfect answer, right, like I do agree with you that it's not a perfect answer. It's why it's like a proxy, like there are means of like just trying to predict, and we could look at other things. Right, we could say, like this person sounds like they know what they're talking about, like they're confident, they seem engaged. But inherently, that's going to be based on my own like subjective like, as the consumer who's like new to fitness and stuff. Like that's going to be based on my own like subjective perception.
Speaker 2:So like if, if we're looking at like tangible, standardized proxies, there aren't really a lot we have, which is part of why it's really hard, right, and that's part of why misinformation spreads so easily. Like if we can't use certifications. In that sense, we could also use like years of experience, how recent a degree is, per your point, with recency and things of that nature but there's really not a lot that we could look at in a non-subjective way to use as a proxy and ultimately, right, this is where, like you also have to like qualitatively look at things to try to like hone in on Is this person likely to be like genuine and well-educated, informed, with like up to date science. But at the same time, it's hard, right, if you have a few seconds and you don't really know and you aren't a professional in the field. So it's very easy to fall for people who seem like they are and then they aren't. But if you're really looking at one variable, the only thing we could, or the best thing we could do, would be look at degrees.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sorry to hound on it. I just don't feel like the college degree is the. I think it's something. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying ignore it, pull, throw it away. I just don't think it's the the thing a consumer is going to one be able to find, two, maybe have to make a decision over three seconds about it and three, can really trust the information behind someone saying that because you're just going to get a lot of BS. I'm going to give you a counter-argument. I have three seconds to make a decision off of somebody on a reel, let's say Instagram. I'm scrolling through it's three seconds.
Speaker 1:It's how they say things, as opposed to what they're saying. So I'm watching someone's reaction about uh, like what's the oh my gosh, so stupidest fucking video the other day, person's trying to convince people that eggs were bad. Right, and they're like eggs are bad and they just throw, throw the eggs away. Someone like that I'm not listening to. That to me is a quick red flag. You're just trying to capture my attention and move on and you are fear-margaring me into something Because all food I can give an argument cake is good for you, not necessarily that you should eat it all the freaking time.
Speaker 1:But in a perfect world, you can have a piece of cake once a week or once a month. It's not gonna kill you, right? So me telling you this inherent thing is gonna kill you. Throw it away, throw it in the garbage. It's that fear-mongering is gonna be the first thing I'm gonna look for, whether someone's giving me true information or not. Where, realistically, realistically, I want to live in a normie world is a lack of better way of putting it, where someone who understands things like I can have a beer once in a while. It's fine. Little things like that are, I think are better things to look for than a college degree. I want to hear what you think of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I do agree that that is also a helpful proxy.
Speaker 2:One of the challenges with that right is that also has the same blind spot that you pointed out with like college degrees, right.
Speaker 2:So, like, if I am very genuinely trying to help somebody and I present them with incorrect information, just not intentionally then you know I could do that in a very genuine, nuanced way, and so that problem still persists, which is why, like you know, I could do that in a very genuine, nuanced way, and so that problem still persists, which is why, like you know, the more proxy variables we have, the better we'll be at predicting.
Speaker 2:So I do agree, that is something that does help and, like you know, if you could look at both, yeah, it helps and, per your point, with it being difficult to find, like a lot of instances, if people have like degrees relevant to what they do it's like in a bio. If it's a personal trainer working at a gym, they advertise it, right, like it's a marketing thing, and if they don't, then that's probably not something related to that person. Like everything would take usually like a second or two to Google and you know, both do matter, like because somebody can be educated and lie to you, which is what you're saying captures, and then the other, which is, like, very important to avoid, because those people are more likely to not just not help you but actively harm you, which is really bad.
Speaker 1:Yeah, mia said, the biggest argument is it's impossible to tell right. At the end of the day, it's absolutely impossible to tell, since you know someone on a pure, genuine level and you're able to have an hour conversation with them, which is almost impossible. It is impossible to do to every single time people you're following, so it just takes a lot of work to really dive in and do it. And, for ease of understanding, like you said, there's different, like proxy level checks. I'm going to stick to one fear, fear mongering. And then two my other favorite, which I mentioned with the doctor's thing talk to people for what they're known for and make sure that's the only thing they do. This is what I mean.
Speaker 1:If I have to get knee surgery, I am only talking to people who do knee surgeons, that's it. I ain't going to the guy that practices knee surgery on the side, on the flip side of that, I ain't going to my knee surgeon and asking him for nutrition advice if my toilet bowl is clogged. I'm not calling my electrician to say can you fix my toilet bowl. You work in Helms, you understand right. I ain't doing that. I'm going to the plumber who's been doing it for a long time and that's literally all he does. Is it a perfect science? No, not at all, but it helps show you exactly what to look for Like. Doctors are good at doctoring. Nurses are good at nursing. Personal trainers are good at doctoring. Nurses are good at nursing. Personal trainers are good at personal training. But make sure that's all they do, because at some point right and this is why I'm going to stress this If I'm a bad personal trainer, right, I can go out and get some clients.
Speaker 1:Fair to say, if I'm personable, I could sell myself. I can sell six-week programs on the side. Whatever right, I'm going to start gathering clients. I'm going to start getting busy and I'm going to start. This is my full-time job. What's going to happen? My clients aren't going to get results. They're going to get pissed off at me. They're going to get hurt. So what are those clients going to do? They're going to refer anyone to me and eventually I'm going to burn out all of those leads and start looking for a new job, because all my personality is now weighing through and at some point, in order to help with your churn, you really have to be good enough to get referrals from your clients.
Speaker 1:On the flip side of that, if I'm a good trainer, I get five clients modestly. I give them amazing results. They're happy. They spent hours getting to know me. Now I have a reputable source. They're going to their friends telling their friends how amazing it is. They're referring and now I'm growing and I never have to look back and say, hey, I need a new job, or so on and so forth. And I get busier and busier and busier and I can just say this guy is super freaking busy and has been doing this for 10 years, 9.5 times out of 10, he knows what he's talking about. Personal training is all he does, and everyone refers to this dude, and he's been doing it for so long. So if that makes sense, that's kind of where I would look.
Speaker 2:Because bad actors are going to get bad eggs. Yeah, bad actors in general are always going to be out there, especially in this industry, which, just like a quick side point about apps and things like that, there are a lot of apps and businesses whose entire model is based on getting you to subscribe and not necessarily to help you after that fact, right After you do subscribe, and that is a really common thing in the industry. So just worth it to keep that in mind. If somebody makes you a really big promise up front, it's just probably because they want your money immediately and they're not investing in delivering. But I also do want to add on to a little bit of what you said, like, definitely don't go to your knee surgeon for a haircut, like.
Speaker 2:Also, one thing I found in my own experience which is actually kind of helpful, like adding on to it a little right is sometimes you do get like diminishing returns if you work in a very narrow niche in what you do, so you can actually learn more and grow more and become more proficient at like one specific thing, if you do like, have like a little bit of variance within that same realm and that is something that can help right Because, like, if you do one thing all the time and it's just one very, very narrow thing, then eventually you'll start learning and improving less. But if you develop similar skill sets to what matter for that through other you know similar things in that industry, like, for example, like, if you just like learn a little bit more about nutrition or a little more about X or Y, you know that could like facilitate, you know, whatever outcome that you'd be focusing on in that like original, really narrow thing maybe you're right to an extent, but in the caveat of that, right, if I study just exercise science, that's it.
Speaker 1:And then somebody is studies nutrition and exercise science. The person who just studies exercise science is always going to know more than the person who splits the. Both can be very good, and the one that has both is going to have a better understanding of the human body, right.
Speaker 2:So I get what you're saying and I think that that wouldn't necessarily always hold right, because that would presume that each person is maximally knowledgeable within their field, and that's not necessarily always going to be the case. Right? Because that would presume that each person is maximally knowledgeable within their field, and that's not necessarily always going to be the case. Right, because, like, if you study, exercise, science, that's your one thing. You might not be very passionate about, it might have not internalized a lot, might have not been very skilled, so those factors do still influence, like that end output, you know.
Speaker 1:To. I just I'm a big believer and I've learned tons of personal experience here. When you focus on too many things, everything becomes shit, because there's no such thing as multitasking, and this is a project I do. If you have attention, you only have 100% of your attention. It's a percentage. Your brain can't automatically start putting out more because you're focusing on two things, for example, texting and driving. People tell me all the freaking time, especially 20-year-olds. I can text and drive. I'm great at it. That's not true.
Speaker 1:Does it take you longer to type a text when you're driving? Yes, there, of course, you can do it a lot quicker if that's the only thing you pay attention to. Is your driving 100% efficient? If I threw a baseball at your car while you were texting your phone or driving, are you able to dodge it? Probably not. But if you were just focusing on driving, probably. Or if you need to send that text in three seconds and you were just texting, can you get that done a lot quicker? Probably you. Humans are not meant to multitask. We need to focus on one of the different things. It doesn't mean we can spend four hours on one topic, four hours on the next topic, but then we run into the issue.
Speaker 2:There's only 24 hours in a day Five little together 24 hours in a day is definitely a big limiter, especially when you need like eight of them to sleep.
Speaker 2:So that is still real, um. But one thing I'll say is, like that, like example you were putting forward, right, that's more based on like an acute reaction, like our acute psychology, right, like we can only, um, in terms of our attentiveness, we could only focus on one thing discreetly at a time and we like rapidly switch. So, like, per your point, we can't truly multitask, just like objectively. But that itself, right, is like different than doing something in like a broader sense, because you're not just really like acutely, like looking at a phone, looking at the road and like processing this or that in like a millisecond to millisecond sense. You know you can, um, you know learn this one thing and then you could learn another thing, you could learn something about I don't know just really anything, and it's kind of like in school, right, even just in a very fundamental sense, when we're younger we go through school, different classes, and you can retain information up to a point, it's completely inefficient.
Speaker 1:Another personal example is as a business owner right, so I started off as a personal trainer. That was the first thing I did inside my company and I became a darn good personal trainer, built up an entire thing, and what happened? What I did was I ran into an issue I couldn't be a great personal trainer and a great business owner. They it's a personal training company. Some people could say it's the same, but it's not. And what ended up happening was my personal training skills started diminishing. My business skills started diminishing.
Speaker 1:My overall capacity to handle all the information that was coming into me started the mission and anthony got really stressed out and burnt out and to the point he got sick, really bad, and said I can't do this anymore. If I'm going to own a business, I need to be a business owner, no longer a personal trainer, and I gave up personal training to people that are now way better than I ever was. So thank God I did that, but I got to focus on one thing, which is running a personal training company, and I do have personal training skills, but they are nowhere near those of my some of my trainers who, that's all they focus on is personal training, if that makes sense yeah, that does.
Speaker 2:and firstly, like I'm glad you got through that like burnout period because it sounds rough, so I'm glad you were able to persevere through that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so like I guess, like, so building off of like what you said a little bit right, like the part of that comes from, like doing more than our capacity.
Speaker 2:So whatever that is. So like what I'm talking about isn't necessarily doing more than our capacity, but whatever is within our capacity and like even in your case, right, I imagine your past experience being a personal trainer has made you a better business owner for personal trainer business now, which is essentially like the point that I'm making. Like, if you looked at yourself now, right, and you had an alternate timeline version of you that was never a personal trainer, knew nothing about exercise science, you probably wouldn't have been as good as you are right now. You wouldn't have advocated for the apprenticeship, you wouldn't have actually made this huge impact on the world. But because you have a greater skill set than somebody who was completely removed from the field, that was only in business, you were able to do that and you achieved impressive things because of that, right, so that's essentially what I was saying, just to kind of dumb this down, right which?
Speaker 1:I agree with. Actually, if you take math as a whole, I don't know why I chose math weird subject, but whatever. Nobody likes math, meta skill right, you have to learn the meta skill as a whole. A basic math one plus one is two. Two plus two is what kind of deal, right?
Speaker 1:until you get to a point where math branches to become a specialty inside of math and then you have to choose one and order, like, let's say, trigonometry, right in order to really deep dive into trigonometry. That can now be only so focused, but you never would have got to that advanced portion of trigonometry without learning the meta skill of math. Is that what you're saying? Uh, in a sense. Um, so, something similar.
Speaker 2:Uh, so that would be like a narrow within the umbrella that what you're saying In a sense. So something similar. So that would be like a narrow within the umbrella of what I'm saying, if that makes sense. But that makes sense because you're giving an example. But I mean just generally the idea of like you know, like your skills can transfer over sometimes.
Speaker 2:You know, sometimes doing a specific thing doesn't always, it's like, even if you think about it, like, if we step away from like the mental stuff, it may even be easier to give an example of like training, right, like, sometimes you can like, like, let's say you are, you have a client who is very adaptation resistant and they've built muscle pretty well through, like you know, focusing on like type one fiber. So for like audience, like, so, basically muscle fibers, that a certain type of muscle fiber, and then now like because those muscle fibers are more adaptation resistant than other types, you could switch the focus on something that would be less good normally for building muscle but it could still push you further. So that's sort of similar as an analogy to what I'm talking about. That makes sense.
Speaker 1:I get it too. I get where you're coming from with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, needless to say, it's just like going back to the original point. It's hard, it's really hard to tell, like, what someone doesn't know. Look at all the nuanced stuff we're diving into right and I'm talking about like a normal temperature span of somebody online. Like we slept up. The conversation started.
Speaker 1:it's quick, it's three seconds to capture someone's attention kind of deal. So it's in that aspect, I think, going over both our arguments it it's possible. I think it's just impossible and you really have to get to know somebody and then figure out. Like you're saying, I'm more of a meta-skill analysis of it and having an understanding and really trying to take your best shot at finding the person who really has the skills with that and taking more than three seconds. So maybe the issue is we need to reverse our attention spans back the other way, where they came from, and really deep dive into topics a little more and not break things down into microsecond before we jump to the next topic. Right?
Speaker 2:I agree.
Speaker 2:I think that's a really good point and, honestly, that does solve a lot.
Speaker 2:Right, because, like you know, like the premise we're working off of, like you know there's no perfect solution, right, like, no matter what route you go, it's always just a prediction.
Speaker 2:And it's like differing between, like 60 percent predictive value and 65 percent, so it's like, regardless, we're going to be wrong sometimes if we're like saying this person knows what they're doing or not.
Speaker 2:But, like you know, if you see something that you are like wow, this sounds fun, this sounds like something I could do, this is interesting Research. That one thing more instead of like taking it at face value, right, like, look into it, see if it's commonplace for professionals in the field to support it, at least it's again, not always like the best measure, but you know we're doing the best we can. But, like, if, on average, you find something in like, let's say, like 80% of people you see that like are like commenting or like have quotes in like different like you know articles or publications, like they all say something similar, whenever you like Google it, you Google it. You're like, okay, it's more likely this is right than if an influencer said something that you can't find anybody repeat in an actual publication and that's a really good way if you have more than three seconds, a few minutes to just look into.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and for the love of God, stay away from people that say this is my butt, it looks great, I want this butt. I think that's the worst one, or the special. Oh my god. There's no such thing as a special magic formula that you can drink or eat to become a special magic person. It doesn't exist. If someone tells you it does, run the other direction, please, for the love of God. There's no secret. If I mix these seven ingredients together and break it down into this and I'm going to convince you with really bad signs about why it works, run away the opposite direction.
Speaker 2:Actually adding on to that right. So another thing I've noticed that happens a lot is oftentimes people that are like it's like, I think it's like intentional. I mean I don't even think it's probably like a marketing strategy for a lot of people, but like a lot of times when people are selling misinformation, they always use the word science a lot, like they always say right, they're not wrong. Yeah, like they always say this is the science, because, like, they are trying to like build that authority, because they recognize they don't have stronger legs to stand on because they're making a claim that's not true.
Speaker 1:Or the Airbon people that come to you and tell you that you can sell Airbon and make a lot of money. Whatever these multi-level marketing companies that come to you in the weight loss realm, it's just that they have their own special. Like I said, this bar from our company is going to be the game changer, for it's not fucking true, it's all processed bullshit. Eat real food, do what's right. I think the funniest thing I ever saw in my freaking life was what people will do to avoid traditional exercise, and it's like people doing this like crazy bungee jump thing sticking there getting an efficient workout.
Speaker 1:What's been around the longest works. The best time is the like narrowest attitude of all misinformation across time. Things that have been around the longest are way more likely to be right. So go look into what's been, what type of fitness and stuff has been around the longest and go do that traditional weight lifting, adding some cardio into your freaking life walking, sleeping those things work way better. Then I'm gonna hook myself up to a bungee cord or to some crazy electrodes, like I did in a previous episode, and then I going to spin around in three circles and I'm going to jump up and down and count to three and go, hoorah, and I'm going to be in shape.
Speaker 2:God, so I have like a. So I have both. Like a weirdly relevant story to one of those things you mentioned and also just I forgot I was going to say another part, but I'll go through the random story story. So, like the multi-level marketing thing, when I was in college, right, like one of my friends invited me to like help them with something. It was a completely false pretense, like, and I showed up and it was a multi-level marketing thing which was not helping them with like they want to help with their homework and I was like, yeah, sure, like I could help, you could help you with this, whatever, right, but it was a multiple marketing thing and it was selling like supplements that are like fake supplements, like the person, right, that was like speaking to everybody.
Speaker 2:They kept making up words that sounded like if you didn't know anything about like exercise, science, nutrition, whatever, like they'd sound like oh, this sounds useful to me. Like she kept using the word protein factor. She's like this has the highest protein factor. Our scientists singular, so you would always say our scientists like one says that this protein factor is the most and like that's not like a thing, like you don't have like a nutrient named protein factor, and they just kept adding, like all these words, there were more, but that's just always the one that stuck out in my head because it just felt strange I mean, I've gotten to fight to some of these people as a gym owner.
Speaker 1:They approached me all the time. All the time. You can make more money in your gym by selling this. I wouldn't sell this to anybody.
Speaker 2:I like my clients, that's right you know, like that's the thing too, right, because, like you were with clients and they like you and then you also end up liking them because you're around them so much.
Speaker 2:You know, um, and you know actually another thing with what you said about like, uh, things that, like you know, when you think of like just traditional healthy stuff, right, that is usually generally what works like for the most part, like it's like sleep, like a decent amount, like even if you don't have to get super technical with it just like sleep decent amount, eat well, cetera.
Speaker 2:It's one of the things that sometimes there's this manufactured like, I guess, like uncertainty, I think sometimes like misinformation spaces where, like, people are like, oh, the basic things don't work at all Right, and then it creates this impression that there is this lack of consensus in the field. But, like, the areas that you see like lack of consensus about right are the more advanced things that are like, okay, this is changing your efficiency from like 85% to 90% or 95%, things that will matter less for the average person. You know, because the basic stuff we had more time to generally understand and if science changes related to that, right, it'll more or less. It doesn't necessarily mean the old science is inherently wrong. It's just we'll find out it's a little less effective than other things. We still know that, like you know lifting weights and like moving your body and stuff, that'll lead to better outcomes just happier time later in life, higher quality of life as you age. Then, if you just did nothing and just like ate like a bajillion calories every day, facts, the real science, scientifically science.
Speaker 1:Only thing I'm going to add, because we mentioned this previously about, like, how to know if you found a right place, and this is something we do, and I don't even why this didn't come to me earlier. But if a gym forces you into a contract, probably not good. If I force you into anything to sign up for a year, 10 weeks, 12 weeks, whatever the case may be I'm probably not good because I'm trying to just get your money up front and bounce out. We offer bi-weekly no commitment cancel whenever you want. On top of that, you have 28 days to use the gym as many times as you want, train as many times as you want, and you could say man, not for me, I'm gonna fully you. So it's unheard of in our industry, but that's because we know what we're doing works right.
Speaker 1:That is amazing Caveat as well.
Speaker 2:I just realized to say that's, firstly, amazing for anybody listening.
Speaker 2:That is a really important point because, like you know, a lot of companies like they genuinely like I've worked with a lot of companies in like different areas of the fitness industry that like approach through different lenses right like I work with content creators, apps, websites, etc.
Speaker 2:And like they all like do something. A lot of them do something similar, which is like basically what he described, where, like, they invest all of their time, money, resources into making a really strong pitch for you and then they deliver nothing because, like they expect you're going to quit and they make more money than if they pay somebody that knows what they're doing to help you after you sign up. That's why, actually, like a lot of like the type of contract you described right is common at like a lot of commercial gyms, like the big chain gyms and stuff like that, because they tend to invest in trainers that are in the industry that they expect to have a high churn that'll quit pretty quickly, because it doesn't really matter to them if the trainer stays and helps a client long-term, because that's not really where they're getting most of their money from.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so find a place that's confident in what they do and what we do is unheard of, but at least something. Well, no commitment line, dom. We went way over, but it's okay. It's a great freaking conversation. It was great yeah. I'm going to answer the final two questions. I said we'll just wrap this up. The first one is if you were to summarize this episode in one or two sentences, what would you take on message?
Speaker 2:sentences would be take a message Ooh, okay. So take a message. Do not trust everything you see at face value is the first sentence, and then the second would be just like hey, do what works for you. You don't need to be perfect. If an influencer tells you something's perfect, you know, don't worry about it, just do what works for you, stick with the basics.
Speaker 1:I love that. And the second question how can people find you and get ahold of you and learn more?
Speaker 2:Cool, so you can find me on blue sky at Dominic health. D O M E N I, c, h, e, a L T H. My name's spelled where it's not like D O M I is D O M E for some reason, and other than that I just have a LinkedIn, so not really too many places.
Speaker 1:That's.
Speaker 2:Dominic.
Speaker 1:Angelino Dom. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you, guys for listening to this week's episode of health and fitness redefined. Don't forget chair subscribe. It's the only way this show grows out from here. So you know we don't run advertising like that. We give you all fun and filtered sessions, don sessions. Don't forget, fitness is medicine. Until next time. Outro Music.
