Evolution of Training Philosophy

oh christ where do i start um yeah so okay so the number one thing is demonizing exercises and thinking that things are stupid so i i posted on facebook the other day it was a reshare something i shared like a year ago and my friend my friend dr mike t nelson had posted something um last year saying you know what if if my client thought that standing on an upside down Bosu ball doing single arm like Zottman curls or some shit like that while, you know, singing Dixie or whatever, if they thought that was the best fucking exercise in the world, guess what? I would let them do it because in their mind, they're going to give it a hundred percent effort and that's going to actually get them results. And I really, I really like that, that statement he made really like hit a chord with me because in 2013, I was in a seminar with um uh dr robert spolsky who wrote uh why zebras don't get ulcers um and he's a i mean the guy's a phenomenal guy he's a freaking ridiculous brainiac genius and he was talking in front of 300 strength conditioning coaches and he did a whole 90 minute talk about um stress and stress response and that type of thing and somebody asked him what the best exercise was and he goes you know uh i think that the best exercise for people is the exercise that they enjoy doing and i looked at him and i went wow fuck what a dick i've been because i kind of grew up in that era of you know if if if you can't fix it with squats and fish oil you're probably gonna die so you know so then i thought back about like all the people over the previous 15 years like wow all the people I made I made them squat because I like to squat and I think everyone should have to squat but they didn't actually enjoy squatting like what a dick I've been to make people do exercises that for whatever reason dogmatically I think they're the best but they're not really the best for everyone and not everyone enjoys it and what I should have been doing was creating an environment where people are having fun and having joy in their training and getting results so that we're all happy and I'm providing a service, which is what they're paying for, that they actually want to do. So a lot of it, like the whole first, the majority of the first 75% of my career was being an absolute alpha male silverback gorilla dickhead douchebag and making people do things that probably they didn't really have to do to get to the goals that they wanted. Um, and just, you know, you know, that type of thing and dangerous things in the whole, when I was teaching some of the stuff I was teaching from the company, I won't name, um, and realizing that a lot of it was a whole heap of bullshit. And now that I'm actually gone and reading textbooks going, wow, I was really teaching some shit. Um, and then trying to rectify that now. So yeah, you know, just like every other trainer, there's growing pains and you kind of learn by being a real dumb ass and then one day you wake up and you go okay wow i actually kind of figure out what's going on and i've got good mentors now and wow some of the stuff i was teaching back then or training people with probably was really fucking stupid and i won't do that again but that's i think that's indicative of any career you know that you go into is there's going to be a point where you get into the career you're amped up you're learning you start teaching stuff that's probably not correct and then eventually 20 years later you wake up and go holy shit i want to go i want to build a time machine to go back and kick my own ass because i probably should have been teaching that stuff yeah so yeah yeah it's a great answer and i think you know we're all guilty of it um and but you know it's something you only learn after after you've made those mistakes and then you meet the the mentors that sort of open you up to

I guess the bigger picture and that is, you know, compliance and long-term overall health. Yeah, 100%. And, you know, when you first get in, when you're 20, you know, when you're 19 or 20 and you get in the industry, like your whole MO is having six-pack abs or eight-pack abs. And, you know, you you basically all of your training cycles revolve around either holiday in Mexico or Ibiza or whatever or or going to seminars. We have to take a shirt off like, oh, I'm going to bio-sig. So I'm going to fucking diet down. So I'm like the leanest dude there like that. That's your whole like M.O. when you're in your 20s and you get in your 30s and you're like, OK, things start to your values start to change. And then you get in your 40s and they change massively. So, you know, it's the inevitable growth cycle of a personal trainer when it's someone who's a lifelong trainer and somebody who like this is like their career. Like this wasn't a secondary thing for me. I didn't go into real estate and didn't decide, oh, fuck this. I'm going to be a personal trainer, count reps. It was something that, you know, you've always wanted to do. So if you're a lifer like I am, you kind of go into it and you look back on like every 10 years, you look back and go, wow, man, that stuff I was doing back then, what a fucking idiot I was. Man, I really wish I could kick my own ass right now. But that's the way it is. Yeah, but I think it was also being – some people sort of take the view that it's not as good, but being a generalist and seeing, I guess, the health as a total, the sum of its all parts versus if you go see someone who's a specialist just in one specific area, they're going to get you good. say it's a powerlifting coach, they're going to teach you powerlifting. They're not going to sit you on a, on a BOSU ball or do yoga with you. And if you go to see a yoga teacher, it's the same thing. They're going to teach you, you yoga. But I guess for you, I guess you've seen a bit of a bigger picture, um, in your career.