Unlocking 28 Years of Fitness Wisdom with Luke Leaman

# Unlocking 28 Years of Fitness Wisdom with Luke Leaman

**Channel:** SummonYourSuperhuman
**Published:** 2025-09-25
**Source:** https://youtube.com/watch?v=Em1CxQo_HpQ

So I recently learned that you actually picked up standard weights when you were like eight. Yeah. Is that true? Yeah. Everyone's going into business coaching. Everybody's going into marketing, but they don't actually have a skill set. So they're basically getting really good at selling a product that doesn't work. So it would be like, it's like they're selling wish.com personal training, but they're really good at selling. they're really good at marketing but they actually don't know how to do a good job welcome to summon your superhuman i'm your host ria mestiza and i'm coming to you from iopc gym in brisbane and with my guest luke lehman he is he is like the og guru of the industry i'm gonna say like he's 27 years he's been a professional in his industry he there's not really anything he hasn't done um and and now he's got this amazing facility. I have to spend a weekend, another weekend with you, and thank you for agreeing to do an interview for the show. Anytime, anytime. So I recently learned that you actually picked up, started weights when you were like eight. Yeah. Is that true? Yeah, yeah, it's true. And I realized on my top it said 1986, so that's a chunk of your weight. About that time, yeah, yeah. And so your inspiration for picking up weights started as a bit of a joke, I think. And then, but you were inspired by Conan the Barbarian. Yeah. So, well, just to give a little backstory. So I was born and raised in Texas. Yes. In a small town. So if you've seen Barsky Blues, which I did stunts in, it's like, that's a, that's, it's, it's, you know, old MTV movie from the early two thousands, but it's a, you know, it's kind of a parody, but it's also kind of not like, that's really how a small town works. It's like the football guys are like superheroes in town. and the whole town shuts down when it's Friday night to play. So we all start lifting weights really early for American football. But my biggest dream was I saw Conan the Barbarian and Arnold Schwarzenegger. I was like, that is how a man should look, and that's what I wanted to look like, Conan. So that got me in love with bodybuilding. Yeah, so I started lifting for football, but with a bodybuilder interest. yeah and i was lucky to have a lot of good mentors when i was running all of our coaches were ex-collegiate football players and power lifters and so they were they really got me on the right road of understanding how to lift correctly and we never used anything fancy it was like bill stars five by five routine and you know just like real old school by power building like real 70s types of lifting that's yeah that's we did for ages ages yeah yeah so I was huge. Like when I was in high school, my senior year, I got to close to 110 kilos my senior year. And trimmed down to like 100 kilos for powerlifting. Big corn-fed country boys. Well, that's good. But like, that's usually it does start from an interest in sports. Cause I asked my dad to buy me a dumbbell when I was 12, because I wanted to be stronger for sports. Yeah. Cause I'm not tall. um so I think well like dumbbells he actually he ended up making it for me at a concrete because he's a Italian and if you know he's like I'll make it for you so um but I already understood then that getting stronger was going to correlate to me being a better basketball player better in whatever I wanted to do um because I had speed but I wanted more strength and power so I I already understood that but like back then like the same with you it's like magazines where like the library you know to study yeah no internet i didn't grow up with that i didn't get that till 1992 when i was 14 was that yeah with muscle and fitness flex magazine and we had uh you know the powerlifting usa magazine and like in my hometown it's like the local library which had maybe two or three like one old old auto books in black and white you know so you just kind of had to be stuck together or you had to you had to some bro or they had to teach right yeah yeah well i had no one to teach me because in australia we don't really have that same kind of culture as you guys have unfortunately now it is getting now yeah absolutely it wasn't you know i joined the gym and it was the only people in the gym were you know meatheads and and athletes yeah because uh how do you um 38 38 okay so so not not that disconnect of the generation because like I tell you guys in class, when I got in the end, when I got in the gyms, you didn't see women there. There might be, it was all guys. And you might see two women there and they were part of the Dollar Shave Club because they were juiced up bodybuilders but it wasn really a thing for women to be in the gym It was really taboo at the time And women thought of making bulkies All the women were into like Jay Fonda stuff And, you know, they'd get a record and records. And they would dance around in their leotards at home or they would go to the yoga class. And you wouldn't see them in the gym. Yeah, everyone thought I was weird. They thought I was strange. And, you know, my mom's Filipino. So she sees her 12-year-old daughter reading bodybuilding magazines with American big bodybuilders on there, and she's like, oh, dear Lord, what is my job? Getting myself into, like, she wants to turn into a big bulky woman. Yeah, she honestly was genuinely worried, but I was like, no, I understand that I want to get stronger, but I don't want to perform better. And that's why I ultimately did it, and I've just loved it ever since. Obviously, I did go through the phase of what women do is aerobic classes and all that sort of stuff when you start out. because it's easier to just go into a class and just follow along, which is why I do empathize with people that say, all I've ever done is classes. It's easier to do. And I said, well, great. But now's the time to, you know, hone in and fine tune what it is you really want. And then that's when they come to people like us is to dial in on, you know, training, nutrition and getting their body right. It's funny that you say that your dad made you some concrete dumbbells. Like I started out with concrete because back then you, You couldn't really buy fitness equipment. And I remember it must have been like seven or eight. And I asked my parents for a barbell for Christmas. And they laughed. They laughed. They laughed about it. They thought it was funny. And then Christmas, I got like a Sears, Sears Roebuck set from DP. And it was just a hollow bar and these purple, plastic, purple weights that had concrete inside. And then you got a little poster and you just follow the potion to your curls and your pushups and all that. That's how I started. Wow. That's awesome. And my sister was five years older than me. And so throughout high school, trying to gain favors with her, her boyfriends at the time would have equipment they didn't want. So one of them gave me a bench. One of them gave me a couple of rusted dumbbells. They were skinny stuff. I was trying to get my sister's pants. I don't know if it works. It's none of my business. But I had a backyard with a bunch of just random equipment I would rest on. then at some point the guy who was like the all-star quarterback um of our high school football team moved across the street and then i wanted to get into like athletic stuff and i would go out for one and a half mile runs with him and he would start running and he would just go down the road he'd come back he goes all right you got about one more mile and then i'll meet you back at the house okay shit you know it was pretty brutal yeah in the texas heat 40 42 degrees wow yeah I um was uh I lost my train oh that's right so before you were muscle nerds you were the muscle nerd right well you had a reputation as being the muscle nerd yeah yeah so like that that whole muscle nerd saying kind of came as a joke so I was working at Follicle Group and we were in Manchester and at the time this was before my wife bought me laser so I I refused to pay for it so I I had glasses from the contacts from the age of eight. And Zoe, we got back to Brisbane. She goes, you need to go to your eye appointment. I go, I just went to an eye appointment in London. Like, I got new glasses. She goes, no, you're getting lazy. But we can't afford that. She goes, I've been hiding money from you for the last two years. I'm like, holy shit, I got lazy. But where was I going with that one? The joke was, yeah. So I was lecturing, and one of my colleagues took a picture of me in my glasses, and I was jacked at the time. I was like 115 kilos in these glasses. And he started a Facebook page called Muscle Nerd Lehman. I was like, I like that. I like that. So, yeah, so when I left, all I could do became a thing. We became the Muscle Nerds. Yeah. Well, it's true because we are really a bunch of Muscle Nerds. It's like who you attract are muscle nerds because we love everything to do with muscle and gaining it and keeping it and nourishing it, really. A hundred percent. Definitely better than having big muscles and being strong. Yeah. Like you said, what you were talking about earlier, because you and I do a lot of the same type of things, is like having muscle but then being able to use it. So being functional, being able to move. So, you know, I've gone from like early days of teaching people how to get really strong, really lean, build muscles. But then, you know, I turned 46 this year and I've always kind of been in the movement stuff and in the remedial stuff, mental therapy, facial direction therapy, all that. And I just realized, man, we go to the gym to work our muscles, but we don't work our joints. And so we get all these guys who look really good, but can't actually move. and they five or 10 degrees in a movement of basically tearing their joint apart and becoming completely dysfunctional So like this whole weekend when we were talking you guys need to take care of your joints. And you see, like, the movement guys get it. They're like, yeah, 100%. But then you see some of the big bodybuilder guys, they're skeptical, Sam, and they're looking at me with this hairy eyeball. They're like, I don't believe you. And then you pull a big bodybuilder up and you go, let me see how far you can bring your arm back. He's like, oh, my God. that is you look great man you look you actually have no ability to move your arm or your leg where you need it to go yeah it's insane to me yeah i'm a big proponent of like what's the point of having all that muscle you can't use it i mean you you say and i say it as well it's like there's purpose like if you get ready for a show sure just do what you got to do you know at all at all costs right like athletes there is a purpose and there is even for like martial arts you need to have a certain degree of tightness like i work with boxes and things as well it's like i really just want to open them up because that's i see that and i'm like i just want to fix that but it's like no they need a degree of tightness because otherwise they lose their form you know it's it's everything like to suit the clients that we work with like that's right truly individualized to to who we work with like no exception and that's what that's what makes the challenge of teaching this stuff right because you have i'm in class with say 40 people and they're all for completely different areas of the industry they all have their own individual biases their own event individual sports and all that it's like how do i convince these guys that are so muscle bias centric don't care about movement just building muscle how do i get them to understand that you need you need to sprinkle a little bit of this stuff and then then talk to the movement guys it's like you guys move well but you could realistically do with a bit more strength like like externally loaded strength instead of just body weight strength so it's like how do we get everybody to understand that you know it's like they say with the truth like your side of the story my side of the story some of them analyze the truth and how do you get them to understand that we don't want to really especially for our clients be super biased in one direction without having a little bit of percentage of this other stuff too because it's really important yeah yeah and that's why you you teach us a lot of the different variables to look at yeah you know it's like you've got to take everything into consideration and it's usually always the whiteboard and lots of like you know scribbling and a lot of different scenarios and case studies that we can all sort of you know bounce our brains around like and just exchange experience we're really lucky with our students because we take pride in the fact that the people that we attract are people that want to think and they're open to those ideas. And they're, you know, you get a lot of people who are like, no, my way or the highway, or you have to do this or that. There is no gray, it's all black and white. So we do, you know, you try to attract the types of people that you want to work with. And that is all of our students. Like, I can talk about out-of-the-box thinking. And the big thing that we teach, like other educators teach a process of, here's a 10 step process to do this, or they teach a system. We teach a system of no systems. Like it's like the Bruce Lee thing, right? So it's like, you know, I, I, I've got it. I have experienced powerlifting, strong man, grappling, MMA, bodybuilding, gen pop. It's like, having those tools allows you to solve problems, which is what a good coach should be doing. Like your client has a problem. They're willing to trade you some cash to solve the problem. if you don't have a big toolbox, you're going to try to solve the problem with the tools that you have. And those may not be the tools that are actually appropriate for that. So it's like really, really creating a blueprint of where my client is and trying to create a flow chart. Like, okay, can the client do this? No. Have you considered this or this or this? We're going to find some strategy that turns that no into a yes. But a lot of guys aren't, they're not willing to think about that. They think, well, if there's, if someone's fucked up, we'll just use machines, just work around it. It's like, cool, that's fine. You can work around it. That's never going to fix the problem. And if you don't at least attempt with a little bit of stuff to fix that, the stronger they get, the less capable they're going to be. And I've always been of the opinion because this will relate to you because we're both athletes. We've both been real, like realizing bodybuilding to me, not, not, not a sport. It's not athlete sport. It's an activity, it's physical, it's massively psychological and mental fortitude. And to me, the physical aspect of bodybuilding is like the easiest part. Building muscle and getting really lean is a really basic process. Being able to build high levels of muscularity and have the mental fortitude to starve yourself to get lean lean enough to get on stage That a massively mental psychological you have to be mentally tough for that but you don't actually have to be physically tough to be a bodybuilder. And you can say the same thing with powerlifting, like getting really sharp with powerlifting is not rocket science. There's no athletic endeavor. There's physical endeavor to those, but there's no athletic endeavor. There's agility involved there's no deceleration re-acceleration there's no vertical jump that's necessary for that there's no hand-eye coordination it's pretty easy stuff but that's probably why bodybuilders and powerlifters should be doing a little bit of athletic stuff to try to retain some type of movement um when you look at the like training athletes there's so many things you have to deal with and so i like to train normal people like a scaled down athlete because athletes move well they open up well they're not bulletproof no one's bulletproof to injury but they're more resilient their percentage of getting injured goes down if they can actually move um but like what you were saying earlier when you see like an athlete in a certain posture and you're like instinctually you and i want to fix that but then we go wait a minute that posture is conducive to their sport and structure is related to function function related structure so it's like if your structure is altered for a specific function of that sport, if we try to fix that, we're actually going to create other issues and they're not going to perform as well. So it's like you have to learn how to fix stuff in a way that doesn't impede the sport, but either reverses or delays their chances of getting hurt, right? But then a lot of the coaches that have a big bias or they have a sport or a physical activity they do, if that's all they ever think about, then they're only training their clients that way, that may not be conducive to what the client wants, which most gym pop clients want to be more capable, not in the gym, outside of the gym. So we have to be like, okay, if I'm going to make you really capable in the gym, does that actually translate to playing with your kids, not having a hurt back, being able to have great sex without hurting your back, not being stiff all the time? you know so we have to start thinking about what's best for the client not not what's best for being in the gym yeah well they're all interrelated you know it's like if they get stronger and better in the gym then they by default learn how to move better and not injure themselves outside of the gym that's right i love hearing that like when i hear moms telling me that there's you know doing single leg deadlifts to pick up kids toys and things like that because it's to kind of come in automatic you know yeah that's what i want to hear that they're like bending properly to pick up off the ground because they're like laborers and stuff like that and they're like my back hasn't you know i used to wear a back brace every day and now i i can do my work pain free i'm like brilliant i think the good the the word good work has to be more capable just be more capable in life yeah so at the end of the day like our gym with this you look at our clients there most of them 130 clients the vast majority of them want to be more capable outside of the gym they want what they're doing in the gym they want it to make their life better we have a handful of guys in here who are like i want to get really strong i want to get really big chest big arms most of them just want to reverse the pizza and wine on the weekends and and reverse the back pain and actually you know train three four hours a week and then be like okay i can walk upstairs i'm in here well downstairs i'm in here and get out of bed without my back hurting that's the reality of people yeah which means we have to we have to recognize that and train them on a way and program them in a way that's going to give them what they're actually asking for because it's like if you went and bought a new car like what's your dream car right that's right okay that's a very common dream car that's not a not a cheap car right now let's say i would never buy a car like that you know why why i would be scared to death to take it anywhere well that's true i actually know somebody who owns one in hand yeah and i believe the driving because like i have a fast car but i bought like a really fast go-kart like an entry-level amg that's like a go-kart it's like a teenager's car it's really fast yeah and it wasn't that expensive not like nothing like a ferrari and i'm still like parking that like in egypt and then walk into the thing because i don't want to get a ding if i had a ferrari a lambo a mclaren man i would be myself anytime i took it somewhere it's a cruiser it's a cruiser like you just take it on a sunday and don't let anybody touch it but don't let it perch on it but it's like if you want to let's say you did go and you buy your ferrari and you bought it and then you showed up to pick it up you wanted a cherry red ferrari right you showed up and they they said here's your keys and you look over and it's a honda civic cherry red honda said you wouldn't be very happy with that no but that's exactly what happens when people go into gyms they're like i want to feel better look better move better, all this.

And then they're like, okay, but then they give you just a powerlifting routine or a bodybuilder routine. And the client, gym clients don't know any better. They'll just do it. Yeah. But, and it's not a bad program. It's a great program. It's designed for what it's supposed to do, but it's not what they asked. That's not what they were purchasing. So it's like a bait and switch. Because the coach, in their mind, thinks that everybody should be a bodybuilder. Everybody should be a powerlifter. That's the best way of doing it. It's like, no, that's the only way you know how to do it. that's why all of your clients get that regardless if this that's the best program out there it says a lot when you see you know i've worked in a commercial gym most of my career and it's like i've seen it all like you know i see the trainers who um they're doing an arm day for their own workout and then they try their client comes in and it's arm day for them too and like they're not even like specifying what what like they don't even have a plan long term it's just like like literally session by session. Yeah. And it's like, oh, or what do you want to do today, man? It's like you're asking the client what they want to do. It's the worst, right? And I remember I was in Perth and, you know, Marks. Marks was at Biosig when we met 14 years ago. So she teaches body combat and she had to teach. And I was hanging out with her and I was like, well, I'll go to the gym and I'll work out while you do that. and we were there for a few hours and i i watched this one coach stay in the same area and she trained four or five people the exact same program she had a man came in did the same thing she had a little old asian lady that came in she had a huge massively obese lady came in doing box jumps it was the same program she never left that area i'm looking at her going you have four completely different clients and you're doing the same thing because you have no you have there's an education gap there but what's crazy is like nowadays when you and i 10 years ago 20 years ago you had to do canadian education like yeah because even though this is a low barrier to entry career there was a lot of competition nowadays it's not competition it's just saturated so your competition comes from just people undercutting you with prices or being very good at marketing, but not actually know what the fuck they're doing. We didn't have social media to lean on. So we actually had to know what we were doing. They had to have a portfolio, just a lot of referral word of mouth. Nowadays, anybody can look like an expert on social media and then you watch and train them. You have no idea what you're doing. And the young generation won't do continuing education. They think they can learn everything they need to on a 60-second video on TikTok or they watch a 15-minute video on YouTube where there's a lot of context missing. And they're learning for people who actually don't even know what you're talking about. Well, that's the thing. Like back in, well, for years now, but especially in, well, the last four or five years, people used to say to me, like, why don't you post, you know, you don't post a lot. You don't share a lot of content and things like that. And I was like, the people who are like truly honing in on their craft and they're like specializing with helping people and doing, like it's not just the face-to-face stuff like if we do so much behind the scene work studying we're writing always studying like i'm the same as you like we're just like always looking to learn so it's like we don't post because we're too busy actually doing what we're supposed to be doing and it to focus on creating content but obviously now in this day and age you know we do need to put ourselves out there a little bit more but to share good stuff because otherwise it's like what's the point of knowing everything that we know if we don't share it yeah then so a lot of people ask like why is your instagram some shit like you guys you guys post but you don't post like twice a day like everybody else with it we've never had to yeah we we built our reputation on word of mouth and doing really good work and and we're too we're doing too much work so you're either what people need to understand is if you're doing a good job you're working you don't have time to make videos you don't have time to film content you're too busy taking care of your clients so it's like if i see someone posting all the time i'm just going to assume they're content creators and they're probably selling 50 programs and they're giving everybody the same program they're not actually professional coaches so it's like because if you were doing your job as a coach you would be too busy behind the scenes to actually do a bunch of videos i have no time to do that type of shit because i'm i'm working so much that if i have downtime i'm hanging out with my wife and dogs i'm reading i'm i'm playing video games or i'm working out myself or i'm hanging out and helping max and chad i'm having downtime because you know we come from that old school where like a full job and coaching is like 60 70 80 hours a week You might be doing 55 60 sessions but then you got another 20 25 hours of behind the scenes stuff for your writing programs analyzing applying stuff communicating with clients and then your study and continuing education well that's what a real coach you're doing you know i used to always hear like oh man have you heard of this guy like he's great he's doing like 10 sessions a day in the gym and i'm like i guarantee you that that guy doing 10 sessions a day he's not doing any extra education it's not actually like programming out you know periodization for their for what their goals are like there's no personalization no at all it's called personal training yeah exactly and problem is you know there's a low barrier of entry right so it's like you go in you do three months of course you can do it online now like it used to be that way so you go in three months get this certification and people go sweet i'm qualified and then don't do anything else and so like even in our industry there are people who've been there for like 10 years but what they're doing is they're just exercising the same experience like year after year and it's like bro you were doing the same thing like they never grow they never grow they never get any better and uh yeah it's like we some of the even some of the people excuse me some of the people we had in class um this week and they're like how how do you remember so much how do you and how do you constantly come up with new things uh i can't do that and i'm like well i'll tell you what i'm i do when i'm answering stuff on instagram or facebook you pop up and you're spending all day chatting to people posting having online arguments of course you don't have time to study do you see me doing that no i'm too busy saying i don't have any time to argue with people um and if i'm having conversation people it's about training and coaching it's not like around yeah but they they can't seem to understand why they're not getting better like you're not actually doing anything to get better you you're too busy using your sword and not sharpening it enough exactly yeah yeah there's too much information out there and then i always hear from people i was following so-and-so's program or like they you know some cookie cutter program or some influencer that they're following this not even you know hasn't even bothered to go get qualified but they've got a nice body and so it's like i want to look like you and i'll pay you money to look like you it's like it's crazy to be actually respect people who just because they look good it's like but you know you say it as well as I it's like people in their 20s don't have to try very hard like I love I love how candid you speak about how like when you were young you know young and dumb you say young and dumb still now but like but like when you were like actual like young said you were dumb in the stupid things that you would do yes you know you were hard for it's like all or nothing kind of attitude and put your body on the line and um you were very methodical still though even though you did a lot crazy things um but there was there was a reason for it you know you've done a lot of crazy shit with with training with different diets i've tried every you know last night i was asked about a couple of diets have you done i've done it all there's nothing you're going to do that i haven't done before i was doing this i started training i was eight years old trust me i've been through the high carb low carb keto south beach diet atkins diet i've been through body opus i've been through anabolic diet i've been i've been i've done eco keto which is a vegan ketogenic diet i've done everything and i've always done that because i want to see what it does and i always i've never given anybody anything i haven't done myself i could truly say that too yeah i pride myself on that yeah if i'm going to give something to somebody i need to experience at first um so like if if i'm going to train somebody for an endurance sport i'm gonna i'm going to actually train myself for a few months just to see what do i need to take care of like like one of the big things lately i had an ultra marathoner 100 100k uh vegan trail run ultra i've had a bunch of endurance athletes i go okay i'm not going to run to be honest i'm not going to run a marathon or an ultra to teach somebody that but i'm gonna start working on like 10 15k okay maybe i do a month of vegan just to see what it's like and see okay where do i feel like the bottleneck is for my ability to run far and i i realized last year it's like learning actually how to run because people just start running and they don't do any drills and they don't actually know how to run they don't know how to pick the right footwear they don't know how to step to prevent it or they're trying so i put myself through all that to then say okay i now have a reasonable grasp and then anything else i need to know i'll pay someone that's an expert to then fill in those gaps but you you realistically have to experience this stuff i wanted them to train weightlifting weightlifting so um back in the day my early days i did a lot of like eastern european and russian type of stuff and then i this two years ago got it in the chinese weightlifting I said okay what can I learn from that And I put myself through two years of weightlifting right So now I feel confident that I can train that But people should always take on clients, only take on clients that they have a reasonable level of knowledge and skill towards that, right? It's like a bodybuilder taking on a marathon runner. It's like, you don't know, you have no idea what's going on. yeah somebody that's like oh i can get really lean i'm going to take on a high level competitor if you've never been on stage and you've never been that like you have no idea what's going on like you really have to have some experience and yeah they're not saying somebody has to has to actually get on stage but it's a good idea to like push yourself as close to that level as you can because you'll find you'll find that it's not what you think like you feel like a bag of garbage you know so that's what i like about having max because max max is like a mini-me so max is like he's gone through he want to learn all the weightlifting so we worked on that for a year and a half then he wanted to do get really lean so he did that now he's got he signed up for power for me he's like he does all this stuff so it's like uh right now while he's young same thing i did i just flip flop back and forth through different things and other coaches my college would laugh at me they're like you're your ad is not just that it's also in your training and yeah but if i do this for 20 years i'm gonna know how to train all that stuff and i'm gonna know how to use it all together whereas you only know how to do your own so it's important to have a lot of different experiences yeah i think it highlights what you were saying before about how you know there's a lot of new coaches new trainers coming in that want the experience knowledge like this and it's like well yeah you can you can get it like we can we can like hit the face with knowledge but like you won't know what to do with it yeah you need to actually like take it let it marinate and like put it to work practically and see it like practical application of that coming to fruition it's like did it work when you tried this how did they how did that client you know adapt to all of the different things that you experimented with and things and then as time goes by it's like you know the reason why they say with the 10 000 hour rules it's true. Like I really struggled to do exercises incorrectly because I've done it correctly. So many thousands of hours at a time. Yeah. So when I try to show someone how to do something wrong, I'm like, you got to kind of figure it out. Yeah, truly. Yeah. And it's the same thing with their knowledge. Like they need to try it and try it again until they, they get it. Yeah. And oh man, I got so much. I can say, it's like, here's the thing. Like one of the things that people go, well, I want to, I'm 25 and I want to know what you know now I'm like okay I'm 20 years ahead of you and I started probably I started when I was 14 studying this stuff so I was already like 10 years ahead of you so I'm like 30 years ahead of you realistically if it was that don't wish for that because a if if you just if somebody just gave it to you you wouldn't value the the knowledge also if it was that easy to learn no one would need you yeah so like one of the discussions we had last night where some we're like okay if we just had a matrix thing we just upload the information i wish i could do that i'm like yeah but if you could do that so could your clients yeah you wouldn't have a job anymore because everybody can learn it what's special about what we do at our level of knowledge is not everybody can do it which is why we'll never have to worry about work yeah people go well, AI will get better. It's not anywhere close to what it needs to be. And there's no personal aspect to AI. Zoe, at one point, when asked the AI to write her a weightlifting, Olympic weightlifting routine, it was god awful. Like, there's just no way. I don't think it'll be 20 years before AI gets that advanced. But that's what these young coaches want. They want it to be like AI. They want something that'll spit it out, and they don't actually have to do any work. But it's like, where's the fun in that? There is no fun in that. Do you want to be an expert or do you want to have a machine that's the expert and you just make the money? Because if that's the case, get out of the industry. Like, Luke, if you were a robot, like, one, we wouldn't have, like, gelled when we met, you know, and I wouldn't be continuing to come back to spend time with you. Like, I love just being around you because I always learn something when we chat. You know, it's like I don't want to go speak to a robot and I don't want someone to just spit out a program. Like, there is no fun in that, you know, and it's that trial and error because you know even like we're very good at program design now right like we're doing it such a long time so it's like but we may make a tweak you know if we see something like actually i don't quite like that i might oh change that a little bit perfect you know like that's that's what we want um and that's what computers come to like because they don't have that eye like my eyes are so like i'm sure it's the same with you like does my wife's head in because she's just like stop analyzing bodies like you go for a hike or something and i'm like oh that person's knees like oh that person you know shot like up I can see all the dysfunction in the body You can stop though I can like all I see is dysfunction and you know you talking about someone just puts on shoes and starts running and it like they have so much dysfunction and not enough function to know like where their center is and how to actually move their body. Mechanically they're just not going well and they don't know how to pace themselves and they just start running. They run as hard as they can and then they wonder why everything hurts and they're not getting any faster. Like people don't understand like there's nuances specifics and context you have to have during during part of that and you have that that coach's eye i'll go to cole's not and i try not to do it the first thing i do being a nutritionist is i'm always sneaking a peek in what people are eating so i'm like i see somebody they're really overweight i'm like i already know what's going to be in there look at it you got a couple bucks of shapes in there you got some sugar coca-cola you're well okay you got a rotisserie chicken but that's like the only thing in your basket that's good like i want to help you but I also don't want to give you unsolicited advice. But then you see other people like old, bold men are walking around with that crippled lean. And like a lot of our industry says, well, you don't need to worry about posture. You put the big thing in posture, so do I. It's like everybody, there's no perfect posture. Yeah, but there's acceptable deviations and there's tolerances for posture. It's like if you go and you look at these old people, it's like that is your future. That's your retirement. if you don't recognize it and take care of it now. So that goes circles back to like the power of physical bodybuilding, the extreme people who, you know, they're just focused on muscles, not on joints. They're just focusing on muscles and not the other tissues. And yeah, you look good now. You're 25. You look fantastic. You're really strong. Remember, I was that way too before I started taking care of myself. I'm lucky I never hurt myself that bad because I always recognize and try to retain my function. you know always that athlete mentality like i'm telling you by the i've had friends that i that i used to compete with that didn't have to pull the line purple now because they didn't listen to all that yeah and it's it's good the young guys don't think about it because they can recover they get injured they recover in a few days that shit changes when you're in your late 30s early 40s all that shit changes like your ability to reorganize tissue you have an accumulation over decades of these insults to and trauma to your tissue uh if you if you don't take care of it when you're pliable and it's easy to take care of it gets a lot harder when you're later muscle is easy to grow like muscle and strength is always easy to grow even when you're old the hard thing is rebuilding your joint tissue because that reorganizes itself far far slower than muscles do it's like if you your superannuation fund do you start that when you're young but you start that when you're already past middle age certainly you're young like you want to bank that the same same thing for your physique you want to make sure you're banking retirement funds so that you're not crippled and it's easy to fix later because as your body falls apart that's going to happen we're trying to delay that as much as possible yeah i think there needs to be more emphasis on people like and there has been you know like you were probably one of the first people to talk about least mode years ago when you started to actually say look beast mode has place but there's also you gotta splash that with these modes otherwise you know you're gonna fall apart it's like i did the same thing like i'm an ecto wall so i'm like super hard gainer so i used to think that if i just smashed myself in the gym for a couple of hours every day i would grow right yeah it's like but it was it was doing the opposite i was putting so much strain and stress on my body and i wasn't reaping the results then i worked harder in the gym thinking that that was what i needed to do and it's like it's not necessarily so i just wasn't recovering that's I wasn't giving myself an opportunity to grow because I was just continually breaking down the tissue. Look, I still have the same thing. I still think I'm 21. And so I'll start training. I'm like, all right, training three days, training four days, training five days. And I'll be like, how long can I sustain this before the level of fatigue is too high or everything hurts? And it's like you get an idea of this, but once you get that idea, then you have to be constructive about it. okay, I was really good on four days. I was really good on like seven hours of training a week. Once I went to like nine, that's when it got rapidly. So now the smart thing would be, let's go back to what worked last time and see, can I ride that a little bit longer? A lot of people will start smashing themselves and then they don't recognize the symptoms that they're overdoing it. And it's like, will more work give you more higher return? Yeah, but only to a point. At some point you're doing so much work that you're now actually going backwards. So you want to have a really good return on investment. You don't want to keep investing more of your time and your energy and getting exhausted doing this stuff. And then actually, let's say you go, you're here and your gains are here and you go to here and your gains are here, then you go to here and your gains are here. You go to here, your gains are here. You're getting a wall diminishing returns.

At some point you go up and it actually goes down. So people need to understand like you have a finite research, you have a finite ability to recover from what you're doing and more is not necessarily better. Less is also not necessarily better. It's a Goldilocks, not too high, not too low. Figure out for yourself where it's just right. Well, that's where the value in measuring, you know, so you can manage what you measure, right? Like that's why we collect the data and we watch and having smart programming so that you know you don't go in there and train for two hours when you don't need to when you know that your stress levels are super high so why would i give you a two-hour program yeah when you're you know super stressed at work and working 80 hours a week it's like it's counterproductive like you're just not going to sleep you're not going to like grow any and that's that's that's where a high high level coach who knows what they're doing and and does the work and pays attention and does those assessments and does those measurements that's where they're valuable because that's where those influencers who are they they talk a good game but they can only talk a good game about a small section of people and they have no idea what to do outside of that right so it's like you either niche down into that small section and don't take on clients anywhere else or you get more tools and skill sets you can work with more people right so like you said over the weekend if you if you're say a bodybuilder and that's what you know niche down only take on bodybuilders if you're a bodybuilding man and you don't know anything about female physiology niche down to men who bodybuild don't take on mary muffin top who wants to basically feel better and do better body combat like you have to know where your scope of knowledge and where your level of education is and kind of it kind of double down on that or you start learning how to manage more people if you want to train more people but young coaches want money that's what they want and so they'll take on anybody regardless if they actually know what they're doing or not it's fucking crazy it's harmful it's you know it is and like you know you and i we've experienced in in bodyboarding and all these different things so it's like we know what we're talking about one we've lived it so we can teach it and it's like and we've learned all the different things that go along with that as well it's not like we're just like to say shooting from the hip yeah you know give this a go it's like no we're actually talking from experience you know and we and we we do want to not harm people and that's super important like that's the main thing it's like they every person that steps into our office it's like how can i best care for you and and take you to where you need to go you know both where you want to go and and hey you need to take care of these things along the way as well and you're known for the people you train so you're known for the positive things you do but you're also known for negative things you do so if you take on clients that you're not going to take on you'll be known for the guy who can't get results with with clients even then there's not any context there there's not not going to be any room for you to go well i probably shouldn't have taken that client on because i actually didn't know what i was doing and people just going to go great you've trained all these people and you up 50 of them you didn't really go 50 the other 50 you actually harm because you tried to train them like the other 50 and that's not what they were asking and they weren't actually qualified to do this yeah i think that um you need to be very transparent with that from the start so you know even if someone comes to you and you're not quite sure and that's that's one thing i really respect about you is you taught this many years ago but you basically said in a roundabout way like you you have no qualms in saying i don't know like i don't know the answer to that or i'll find out like and you're really preaching like if you don't know just say i don't know and i will let you you know i'll find out or i know this person who can help you yeah and that's like that is one of the most powerful statements you can say to people is if they don't just make up just say you know i'll be honest i don't know i've not looked into it i could try to find out i'm probably know the dude like uh even over the weekend somebody wanted to talk about detoxification which is something i don't i used to talk about or really talk about anymore look i can here's here's some information on that but um i'm not i'm not your guy i'm not the expert in that i know way more than average and i can help you a lot but if you want to know that even deeper than what i just told you go talk to brian walsh because he's got a whole course on it and like he knows every possible thing you could and probably for everything i I've seen in the last 10 years, probably the most comprehensive person that's looked at all the ups and downs and ins and outs of that. So like, I'd love to be able to show you a detoxification course, but he's the guy to do it. So that where you know my level of knowledge there is here but his is over here So it like I get you to here but if you want to go further just go talk to him Yes That what that my responsibility as an educator because that a conversation that could potentially mess somebody up when I'm in the hospital. Yeah. Well, I think that's where the investigative questions come in as well. It's like, if someone comes to me and they say, I want a detox, I'm like, well, how easy is it to just Google and find a detox plan, right? and you're like there's some really questionable stuff out there but if someone comes to me and say oh i want a detox and i'm like what are you detoxing from like what what who told you you need to detox like what is it your you know what are we talking we're talking kidney detox gut detox cellular detox brain detox this is gonna be it could be a lot of categories what we're actually talking about and it might be all the above it's like okay which one do we take care first and it are am i the person to actually help you with this or like i'm your personal trainer or strength coach like oh it's not really in our scope of practice so it's like maybe i send them to somebody who's an actual detoxification professional yeah yeah yeah uh someone a professional who can is has no um resistance to referring out yeah that's somebody of integrity right there like that's someone you can trust because they're not just trying to keep your business all to themselves if we had that in all the industries too we would it would be nice because we would just be passing clients back and forth to each other instead of trying to be where like put my detox hat on i'm a detox oh you want to strike trying to take that off my strength training hat on it's like no no no somebody else is better at that just refer them back to the coach and then when they have stuff for either nutrition or detox so they'll send it back to you so but there's a lot of coaches that they start in the coaching industry and then you get like the the functional medicine side um and it's like man that's not really what we do as trainers right and it's got medicine and that that should be realistically somebody with a medical license but it's gotten like I said it's a wild west here right so you you haven't heard me talk about that stuff a long time no it's not even allowed in Australia like but it's not a it's not a publication that it's recognized here in Australia it's not it's not and um it's not unless if you it's like a gray market type of thing right it's not really as far as functional practitioner it's it's kind of like it's is it legal or not legal it's kind of the lines are blurred there but for me like when we started teaching foundations i told everybody this is not a functional medicine course because i i'm not a doctor i haven't i don't have an md a do i mean none of that so you're going to learn similar things that you would learn in a functional source but this is This is functional physiology. So this is going to be more tailored to what you guys can actually do and when to understand when to refer this out. We're going to bring that course back some updating it and we're going to bring it out because that was our, that was an awesome, that was a fun course. Yeah. Fun course. Yeah. Well, then I'll see you then. And that's the thing, like I've been in the industry now, you know, a long time, like 13 plus years. And it's like, well, I, I, I still couldn't continually learning. I'm going to the course of like, why I'm not going to pretend that I know everything. Like I'm a student first and a teacher second. I love teaching. Yeah. But I love learning. Like I just live and breathe learning. And if you're going to be an educator, you're going to teach, you have to continue. I'm still, I think Zoe, we're really transparent as a company. I think Zoe did a post a year or two ago and showed everybody how much we actually spend on our education. It was something like $50,000 a year between us, between her, me, and our employees. and people are complaining about paying $500 for a weekend course. Like, yeah, if you want to get to the level that we're playing at, I was, my entire 20s, I was broke. I was making six figures and this was 20, 20, over 25 years ago and I was always broke. And my mom goes, why are you always broke? You're making so much money. Yeah, but I'm spending all of it on educational lunch. She goes, why? It's investment that's going to pay off when I'm in my 40s. and that's paying off but people need to people need to invest more themselves because of how can you expect a client to invest in you if you won't even invest in yourself and an investment in yourself is an investment in your clients yeah exactly well that's why i tell my clients i practice what i preach yeah it's like everything i told you like i've done like you said and it's like i'm i show them i'm learning all the time like you know i don't know how all the the answers i'm always like improving myself i'm always looking for the next best version of me that's just what i love to do i thrive on that so old school continual growth and having a bigger beginner's mindset and flexible mindset yeah it's like put it like this like have you ever have you ever had to uh replace a flange on a toilet no okay i'm gonna tell you because i have before right because because i a man and i stupid right so years ago i had a house that was on a I was renting it I never had a house on a septic tank And all of a sudden the bathroom smelled like the septic tank And I didn't know what was going on. So I go to Home Depot, which is our Bunnings. And I'm like, what do I do? And the guy's, oh, you need to replace the flange. What do I do? You need a hammer drill with this and this and this. I ended up spending probably three times more to do that. And probably dozens of hours longer than I should have been doing to do it myself. I should have gotten the expert, which would be the plumber. So now I'm like, I can reasonably remove a toilet and replace the flange. And I had to educate myself to do that. I would never sell that as a service to somebody just because I could do that. So just because someone can work out really well and they build a body for themselves and they're really good, that doesn't mean that they can do it for other people. That is exactly what's happening with this younger generation. They go, I like to work out. I want to work out with other people and count the reps. but they actually don't know what they're doing because they didn't go to plumber school to actually learn how to do all this shit yeah it's crazy yeah you're only as good as what you know yeah and then you continue to learn more and that's how i found you it's like i i mean charles was obviously like the biggest name in the industry back then and then the pulpit group you were a teacher in and so that's how i met you because i was there to become a biosegniture practitioner and i wanted to add more tools to my tool belt and have this measurement tool to be to use you know it's like well what's the point of that well i had value from it because i had seen the value in it and i wanted to give that value back to my clients that's it that's it it's like people will scoff at spending fifteen hundred dollars for a course but if you make in the next 12 months 10 times the value of that it's a really good investment where else are you going to find a return on investment like that right and that's like that's kind of been a matter of pride with us we don't teach business we don't teach money we just teach you how to get better at your job and we've had people that were struggling making 35 000 a year within two years doing our courses they're making 120 150 000 we've not taught them how to market we've not taught them how to do sales we've only taught them how to get better results and now they're on a waiting list and they were struggling as trying before everyone's going into business coaching everybody's going into marketing but they don't actually have a skill set so they're they're basically getting really good at selling a product that doesn't work so it would be like it's like they're selling wish.com personal training but they're really good at selling they're really good at marketing but they actually don't know how to do a good job and then they just have to keep farming for new clients because the clients after a few months realize they actually don't know what they're talking about or they're making them feel worse yeah yeah yeah well that's that thing about integrity it's like you have to to actually have care you know what are most trainers say when they industry they're like i just want to help you yeah they say that like that's the lie that but then they see they think they can make a lot of money and then it switches to that so then they go well why do i need i don't need to know what i'm doing i know enough yeah i know enough um to get people where they need to be i'll just go buy they get business mental and i'll just learn how to just farm for leads and try to close leads reputation is everything you know and if you didn't have a good reputation if i didn't have good experience meeting you then i wouldn't have continued like learning from you post polk and group you know it's like if you were a you know an arrogant jackass right well i'm a jackass um but you know if you weren't a nice person you want a good person i wouldn't want it to to even know you'd be after that so it's like so reputation is everything and how that person makes you feel and you but you know that they don't really care about you and and you know you teach that by just being who you are right you don't talk about like oh you should be a caring person when you're like this and that but you say like you need to actually well you do actually because you say um you need to really truly investigate all the things because if you give them things that can actually cause them harm you're better to do less and more slowly but i guess the problem is with a lot of people they want things freaking fast right so they're like i want to you know lose five kilos in two weeks and it's like let's cut your arm off to starve yourself you know you lose it but like there's all these you know expectations nowadays and i think that it's important for um you know people like you and and i to share that the realistic expectations of what is possible and how to do it in a healthy way without breaking yourself like we've done extremes you know bodybuilding is an extreme sport that's why you don't call it athletes i understand that um it's i like the discipline behind bodybuilding really taught me a lot of like structure and discipline in my life like really just honing in, but it's not traditionally healthy. And now everybody's taking gear and it's like, it's a normal thing now. It's commercialized. Everybody should be taking stuff. It's like, well, for what? Like a metal that like Yeah for a price of children Yeah pretty much It one thing I do like right now is that people are being more transparent about what they taking because i always been transparent about i'm like look this is this is what i've done this is what i do now this is what i'm not doing now and there were very few people that were actually being honest myself john meadows very few people would actually say yeah i've taken trend i've taken deal angel this is what i've done and then say look this is what i found with experimentation in my 20s don't do this don't do this this is bad this is good but it's nice that at least it's getting to the point where people understand that especially in our industry almost everybody's on right and especially if they look really good so i think that i think that is a good thing that we are having conversations about it and trt is getting more uh accepted it's not not as much of a tabby thing anymore but there's still a lot of people who aren't being transparent and it's it's important that that we're honest because our clients if they look at someone with a really nice physique and they go i want to look like that they need to understand that that wasn't just a product of clean eating and training hard and getting your sleep that was also a product of testosterone and pre-mobility trend and like if you do want to look like that um this is what it's going to take if you're not willing to do that then you can look like this but a really scaled down version right so i think on being honest and transparent is the best way to start everything yeah i do i do like the fact that a lot of people are talking about it but then part of it is sort of making it normal like it's normalized a little bit you know on tic toc there's like these trend challenges and things now it's blowing my mind like people think that a trt cycles you know like oh yeah but i'm taking this and then it's like no no that's not what it is i think it's just like it's in those early stages where like everybody's really like oh we can i can actually talk about this now and it's getting it gets out of control but you're i just looking at trends it will calm down at some point um but you can't fix stupid people and do this stuff i mean look at the tide pod challenges and kids were eating tide pods and hurting themselves there's always got to be that small minority that is almost seemingly it up for everybody by doing stupid and risky things but at least the people who are doing it responsibly don't have to hide it as much anymore so that there's always going to be a negative aspect of things but i think it's way worse for people to be non-transparent and do that and lead people to believe that they've done that without any assistance if you look at even like old stuff like uh casey beider when they're doing the the nautilus stuff and they were like oh he's doing like about one set to failure and we put on 40 pounds of muscle in four weeks it's like we did it without steroids come on guys we know we know the truth but that stuck for decades and then it finally comes out that well you know he was kind of doing some other and training more would he sneak off and do more stuff it's like okay it's like at least we can start having a bit of honesty yeah yeah in the day you want to be involved in muscle you've got to train up and you have to train hard you do actually you know your perception of hard is is so different i i love breaking people's um understanding of what they think is hard yeah and it's like you shouldn't have any gas left in the tank right now yeah so you really can't show me or tell me that you actually inserted at least 80 or 90 percent there because you're not having a buffing like you look quite so i'm like i want you to go again yeah you know like it was a continuum with everything right just like okay you have to train really hard but there is this ceiling where training beyond that is not good and then you say okay you got to train the heart way harder than this and look at most people i set it over the weekend most people don't they think they're training hard but they're not so it's like you don't even have to get to this extreme but if you're down here we need to get at least let's get closer to that and like training training at that ceiling is way harder than most people are going to do but jesus you are so far away from that you're going to have to come at least here if you really want to get results so it's important for people to understand that if you're not seeing changes, you probably are not training hard enough. But then if you start training harder and harder and harder, keep in mind, we also don't want the pedal on the swing all the way over to that side. Yeah, it's a fine line. Like it's a balanced scene act with your life and your lifestyle and what you do in the gym as well. It's for most people. And, you know, majority of the coaches that were there on the weekend, you know,

train the majority of general population yeah we might sprinkle in physique athletes yeah we might do this we might do that but like we work with everyday people so everyday people need to be these things need to be taken into consideration yeah do they have kids do they have this did how many hours are they working are they traveling for work you know are they doing five-hour work like you've got to take into all these considerations and then program around that and program their everything around that to to support their lives basically and i also have one thing to add kind of that that intensity and volume issue right especially if anybody's watching this it's like maybe they're not a coach maybe they are a gym pop person maybe they're kind of like an amateur weekend warrior bodybuilder whatever most gen pop they're only gonna they're only gonna go to the gym train two maybe three you're lucky you can get four so if If you're only going to go in there for two to three hours a week, you're going to have to train a lot harder than if you were training four or five because you don't have enough volume to really overcome a lack of effort. So if you're a minimalist time trainer, you don't have enough time, you're going to have to train a lot harder than you think. If you have a few more hours in the gym, you can dial that back a little bit because you can overwhelm stimulation with volume. so it's like you got to be constructive and say okay how many days can i realistically invest in training i really only have three days okay you don't have time to around like you're going to have to take everything post-proximity failure for at least a few steps on every body part now if you go well i actually could train five to six days okay cool you don't actually have to go full potato but you got to go semi-potato something i something i started doing lately is start using windler 531 again something i haven't used in years and i this is the strategy i'm using it for is that if you need to show somebody how they're not training hard so if you can you ever use 531 i'm not sure so it's a jim windler who used to be with the lead fts west side you do basically, you get a pretty good idea of what the one rep max is. So let's say your one rep max is 100 kilos. And then you multiply that by 85-90% that you're training with. So let's say it's 100 kilos, you're going to train, you're going to base your maxes off of that, or your training numbers off of 90. You do a 3x5, you do 65% of that for 5, 75% of that for 5, 85% of that, and you do an AMRAP. Then the next session, you go to 70, 80, 90. So you go to 70 by 3, 80 by 3, 90 by AMRAP. And on the third round, you do a 5, 3, 1. It's basically 75% 5, 85% 3, and 1 for an AMRAP. That is a really good strategy to get people to understand how much they're slacking. Because those first two sets, because they're submaximal to affiliate, but then they do that AMRAP. If they do, let's say you estimate their 100, they think it's at 100 and they do that say 75 on that first amrap but they get like 12 reps it's like okay we can actually now if they get close proximity to failures we'll show them a you've been stopping way way too little reps in reserve and we can now calculate out what we think the true max is we can change the numbers for the five by three by three um and then in that maybe they hit like eight reps okay realistically at that point you should be only getting five so i can redo that number five three one when you hit that one you should only be able to get one or two so it's a really good way in three weeks to actually find out what their true rep max is and say look you know how you've been you can see here where you hit 12 reps on that normally you've been hitting like six you can see you've not actually been lifting anywhere close to where you need to be so do you understand you're stronger than you think you are like yeah okay now what have you learned when you do that three by five you should be getting about five when you do that three by three you should be getting like getting you know three to five and on that last one you should be only getting one maybe two tops and they're like oh shit i have been slacking a little bit but it's nice because it gives them a couple of easy sets and then they get this one like ball busting set it's a really good training tool i use a lot on coaches when i think they're they're sandbagging shit i give them that yeah no that's fair enough well you you do you do say that that coaches think they train harder than they think they do um or i have coaches that do train hard but like when i get a new coach i have no idea what their what their experiences are and how they learn how to do something and like i said i really fussy about technique and how we do things and I want to find what the best I want to fit the exercise to you not the other way around So if I see that it looks like they trying to fit themselves to the exercise instead of the other way around, like, okay, we need to, we need to figure out how to do this. And we've, we have to figure out how to, how to make the piece of the puzzle line up. So this is your back squat and your back squat is different than my back squat or your back squat it's your back squat the way you do each exercise has to fit you and i have to have these conversations with coaches a lot of my coaches they look really sloppy which infuriates me i'm like if you don't have pride in the way you train yourself i'm scared to figure out what you do with clients right because if you don't do it right how are you teaching your clients to do it right so i get i have these long talks with my coaches i'm like god you gotta you're sloppy you clean the up like take pride in what you do because it's a direct reflection to me on how you're actually coaching your clients because if you're allowing yourself to do that and you're your own billboard i guarantee your 50 clients all of them are training like even my clients used to say when i was in a commercial gym they were just like is that trainer going to fix that that client's form and i was like no that's bad when your clients see it and he sometimes and Then they're like, I'm like, well, no, because the trainer is only as good as the trainer knows. And if they don't know any better than that, then that's what that looks like. And I said, well, I can't literally go over there and be like, hey, excuse me, you're not doing that right. Unless I see something really harmful or really stupid, but I'm watching that. That's just how it is. Like whenever I'm at a gym, even if I'm at a gym or nobody knows who I am, I'm hyper-conscious the way I'm doing things. Because if you walk into the gym and you've got a decent physique and you look like you know, like I have a lot of pride in the way that I apply my exercise and the technique that I do. I always want to make sure that I have, I'm not, it doesn't have to be at 100%, but it needs to be close to like, it needs to be under 10%. You'd be 90% there where no one can look at you and be like, hey, you need to squeeze your bum or you need to squeeze your abs, you need to do this or drop your head. it like no one ever has to clean up my technique because i'm my own worst credit for this stuff if i'm at if i'm posting videos on instagram if you watch our instagram you will never see me post something where it's bad technique and if it is i'll explain on there yeah i didn't realize i was doing this i cleaned that up for the next one you're having that transparency and showing people showing other coaches like i technique matters to me it should matter to you as well because it matters to me and it matters to you probably going to matter even more for their clients yeah yeah set the example like whether or not they know we're a professional or not like once you exemplify what things should look like yeah when's that problem they're like that saying like how you do one thing is how you do everything now i do have a problem with that because especially with me having adb like i do some things really sloppy but i the things that matter i do a high level of precision accuracy and technique so my job requires me to understand an exercise to be able to perform it perfectly and be able to teach other people how to perform perfectly so kind of going back to that saying i don't think that applies for everything in your life right like because if zoe will tell you i'm the most unorganized person in the world but if you look at my training and all the stuff that i do there it is tip-top the most organized thing you've ever seen everything has its place everything's done in a system but without her i would not have made it here on time i would not i would just forget so zoe's my organizer for everything that's outside of my career but if you're a professional in a court career how you do one thing there does while you do everything so if you lift sloppy program sloppy for yourself you're going to do it for everybody else and you're going to you're going to accept that that's okay for them to do and to me it's not yeah are you an expert professional or not yeah if you have low standards and you're lazy then you're going to you're actually going to just give people a free pass like yeah when they do the same thing you're like oh that's all right i do the same thing it's like well what we're right who's getting benefit and i can't i can't expect these coaches learning from me if i'm doing things sloppy i'm teaching them that that's okay and it's not okay it's not okay especially when it comes to people are paying you you have due diligence to give them a level of care and to not create anything negative or hurt people which means we need to make sure that technique is tip-top and our programming is tip-top and everything makes sense and everything's well followed up and planned yeah yeah i you know we always give them what they need but also what they want to make it incredible and that's that's the important part yeah i mean my clients often complain if i'm doing things too technical and they get frustrated because like they really want to get it but you know it's like all right but you understand i'm got to practice the skill you got to get really good at it that it and then this will transfer into this so it like we doing split squat you get really great at this and your depth improves and you get stronger in a single leg your back squat going to improve the next time I put you under the bar And they're like, oh, okay. So they really need to understand why they're investing so much time into technique and improving their skill. Yeah. And especially with a high skill type movement, it's like, okay, yeah. And, you know, I'm very blunt. And my clients will be like, man, that was a real garbage lift. I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to disagree. Dude, that sucked. But it is getting better, and this is a high-level skill. Now, don't worry about that because all of your other exercises were done perfectly. So keep doing that and just put more of your focus on building the skill for that one because I'm asking a lot of you by moving you to this really high-level skill. I struggled with it at first. Everyone struggles with it. That's okay. Don't keep saying it's garbage. It's going to be garbage. I know that. You know that. God knows that. but practice will make it better. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. The people are willing to put in the time to, to, to really hone in on, on, on skills. But the ones that do, they try, like it really, it's not hard to stand out nowadays, to be honest. Like if you really like work hard and you, you hold yourself to a high standard, because people are just kind of like here, there and everywhere with everything. And it's like, yeah, if you, if you just really, again, integrity, like I was saying, it's like, you just really have integrity in what you do. you will stand out like that's probably what you do literally yeah with how you treat yourselves it's like how we train in the gym it's like we're not going to train stopping a gym we're not going to leave weights lying around like we put things back like i hate it but sometimes it waits back for other people it's like because i don't like working out in an environment where it's messy yeah so it's like it's dangerous and it's dangerous but it's like but it makes me feel better when the space is tidy so it's like why am i cleaning up someone else's gym it's not my problem but at the same time it is yeah you know well you know what um i think i remember back there was uh there was an article about uh there was a japanese rugby team and they showed the they showed the locker room after their match and it was completely it looked like cleaners had come and tidied everything up and that's that that japanese thing like that respect and keeping like leave it the way you found it and all that these are professional rugby players they don't have to do that but they did it because it's a matter of practice the right thing to do and so that you go in our gym we don't have to we don't have to clean anything because we tell our clients if you don't put back the way where it goes you don't train here anymore and we have a little exclusive boutique like we're full almost at full capacity so if you get booted out and we say come back in three months when you can learn how to put your back you come back you may not be able to to train here anymore. And we do just not, not to say like, not to pat ourselves on the back, we do have the best gym in this area because there is no other gym that has the equipment we have and the knowledge we have and the cleanliness and the community like that. So a lot of people will leave and they'll come back because they're like, that's not a shit. I went to two other gyms that was not the same thing. I'm like, good. Now just make sure you keep your shit tidy. So we've trained all of our clients to be able to do that. And we try to, we try to reinforce that culture that our community here takes care of each other and they also take care of the gym and a clean gym a tidy gym is a safe gym and if you're going to come if you can come in here and do four sets of 12 you can put your plates back right i can remember when i used to work in really big gems like gold's gym you would have people that would fight over a front row spot and then go run on a treadmill that makes no sense like you could have parked anywhere you're about to go run on a treadmill so it's like if you're going to go on the gym floor and you're going to beat the out of yourself the weights the easiest thing you could do that day is put your weights up yeah and just count that as extra activity well it's a respect thing you know and you said about the pro athletes and it's like they say that a lot about the top teams are those ones who have the respect they have respect for the everybody that's on the team from the people that are handling the drinks and the towels it's like and they clean up after themselves they're not like the entitled like oh i'm a pro athlete i just wrote my over here and you pick it up for me it's like they're actually not the ones at the top of the game at the top of the game are the ones that take pride in packing up their bags and they they do everything like correct like i don't care if you have a messy house but you're not going to come and mess up my house in here right yes right but it's uh yeah it's a it's a beautiful thing that more people are training now but the problem is that there's not enough people that own gyms and And none of those trades that actually teaching their clients how to be good gym members, how to do things right. And do things right. Not just for themselves, but for everybody else as well. Yeah. Yeah. That was a big thing. I learned from Charles, Charles demanded a tidy gym, every single thing in that gym had a proper place And if you removed it from that place you put it back and i saw him absolutely chastise and destroy in front of everybody 60 people like that and he would absolutely roast you and force you to put stuff back and i'm like okay that's that's how i was raised in texas that's what we do that's the standard that's the standard yeah you get a trainer you're going to be a good you're going to be a good person you're going to be a good client yeah and if you want to to be the best you've got to see the best and i think that's why we both seek out charles and i said that charles is about you yeah you know you seek out people who are are the best at what you want to learn like you said weightlifting and things like that so you know people that will be attract now are those same people fortunately we're in a position where you know people that come to us are researching us first like they're not like it's not their first meeting like they watch this podcast or yeah you know something and they've gone okay i think actually like i really well learned from these so you know but that has taken so much like thousands and thousands of hours of expertise practice don't say hours years years well i mean millions of hours you know thousands of courses and things like that like literally i like that 10 out the thing with our industry is that that 10 000 hours you're looking at like one subject right we have a lot of subjects that do so we we cannot it's 10 10 000 or more for each individual thing we do you got nutrition you got lifting you got lifestyle you have communication you have the psychological component of communication like we're talking about last time about nlp and learning how to how to change someone's mindset and they're trying to get compliances there's so much in a positive way about using nefarious matters but there's so many things that we have to do it's you have to be you have to be a continual student the rest of your life you want to be at the top yeah yeah you never stop living like literally i don't understand people who don't like i don't know that like i i man i'm reading five books right now now none of that's for learning it's all fantasy stuff but like zoe and i have thousands of books at home um a thousand books on my kindle we're we're constantly learning max is all day he's learning stuff and asking me and we're going through stuff like we're just we're obsessed about it like and if you want to be a professional you want to want to be at the top you have you have to have an almost unhealthy obsession about what you're doing yeah because you love it you know it is an obsession but it's a passion yeah it's like because we get so passionate when we're all together and it's like you know i i wanted for to to document things a little bit more and like take the footage and do that i didn't do any of that because i was so immersed i was so present that it's like i didn't even touch my phone really It's like, I just wanted to like be there and just be a sponge, you know, and contribute where I could and talk to people. It's like, we're there for a reason, you know, it's like, and all these people, like we've all given up our weekend. We've traveled in. It's like, we're all there to dedicate ourselves to become better. Yeah. You know, that's why I like, and you say, I teach them. I don't stop. I don't stop. If people, if people, if people want to sit there during lunch, they want to eat there. I won't stop. I'll keep going and I'll stay. And we got booted out last night. They're like, why do you do that? I'm like, because it's the right thing to do. We have a weekend to do this and we don't get to do this all the time. So for me, I want to try to do as much as I can with the people who want to listen and want to stay and talk. So I will throttle myself all weekend and just be tired as fuck the next week because it's important. It's important to do this, right? Charles used to be like, turn the break. You don't bother me. I'm like during the break, bother me, bother me. But if you're scared, ask, what's bothering me? Like, I don't eat lunch. I don't eat. I don't do it. I do want to go have some beers. Let's go. Let's fucking go, because that's how passionate I am about this and helping coaches get better at what they do. Yeah, actually. And we are very passionate about what we do and will always be. I think like, when are you going to retire? What are you going to do next? That's like, I'm doing it like, you know, what is it right? Fuck what I do. that's what I say to people like what am I I'm dead like then by like do nothing like I don't want to do nothing like I'm going to be doing this in in some realm something you know it's like you're you're training coaches now so it's like you're training coaches to have great impact it's like yeah that's that's the goal right it's just continuing it's nice we're in it we're in an industry where we don't have to retire I won't retire I may dial it back at some point or I'm being like funnel it down but I'm never going to stop yeah I mean I mean I'm not working 60 70 hours a week, I may work 40 like a regular job, but I will never stop. And that's an old school thing too, especially in Texas. Like my father, my father was a mechanic and my father, he worked overtime. He was in his sixties, still working overtime. He ended up, he had back surgery and ended up getting cancer, multiple myeloma, right?

No, like the percentage. You can do the chemo. We can do the radiation. You're probably going to die. My mom lied to him and said, no, no, no, doctor said you're fine. Just do the medication. Because we knew if we told him he was going to die, the doctor said he's got like three months. He ended up living like two and a half years longer. He worked until the day he died. He worked until he got to the point where his mental capacity couldn't work anymore because of all the treatments, fuck his brain. But I asked him, what are you doing? Why don't you just retire? He goes, what else would I do? because i enjoy what i enjoy and so he enjoyed just going to the shop and working on the machines and stuff and he goes i i'll work until they tell me i'm not allowed to work in him like okay that's that's how i was yeah i think that we're blessed to be doing something that we love so we don't really need a break from it like we were happily working seven days a week you know i'm going yeah going back to adelaide and i'll be going straight back to work no rest like it's just like Like, we love it. It's enriching for me. Yeah. It's really, I just feel like I learned so much and I pass it off. And it's like, there's just so much, there's so much I get out of it, like helping everybody else and then learning from the students too. Right. Especially when they ask me questions. I'm like, man, let me think about that. Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. It's cool. It's great. Yeah. All right, Luke. Well, I want to be respectful of your time. And I know you and I can talk for ages and ages. but a question I ask everybody is what does summoning your superhuman mean to you? Summoning my superhuman, summoning. So can you, can you, can you unpack that a little bit more? Summoning my superhuman. Yeah. Well, I guess the big emphasis is always trying to be better, to be your best self. And I think you, you definitely live by that. So I, hence why the whole podcast is, is summoning your superhuman, right? So do you want to help teach people how to find whatever's in them to, to find a career that they're just as passionate about as we are? Cause they can see us like, man, they really love what they do. It's like, I want to be doing something that I really love or a coach might be listening to this and they might want to reach out and want to like learn more so um but for you in your life and where you at you know you achieved a lot and i know you say that you like you still waiting for the you know you are not satisfied with what you've achieved you're always looking for more right so um what does somebody you're superhuman then mean for you like what how do you continually find that passionate desire within i guess that's a really good question i like that that's good um look i don't know i'm just like i just have this i've always lived by zigzagler's statement of help enough people get what you want out of life eventually you'll get what you want so that's kind of my underlying fundamental value right and the way i do that is by teaching like um let me let me teach you my experiences let me teach you through my education um and let me let me have a big impact on everyone else through you right and then you at some point those students will become teachers as well and then they'll pass that forward so it's to me it's like building a legacy right like i don't need to be like the charles paul i don't need people to have my name and remember me and all that i want to be remembered through passing that through other people and it is true what they say if you're passionate about what you do. You never work a day in your life. And I'm not going to, I'm not going to try to fool people and say, there aren't days that are really hard. There are days where I just don't want to do this, but those are very few. That's days where I've been traveling and I've been working for like 28 days straight, 12 hours a day. And at some point you just burn yourself out. You take a week off, you know, you do some mushrooms and you play some video games and you decompress, you go, okay, I'm ready to go again. It's like, I just have such a love for this that I just don't feel like I ever have to work. Right. So, you know, that kind of summing my superhumanists, it doesn't matter what industry you're in. If you can find something you're passionate about, you won you won you won think that you working You won think that it a pain in the ass You want to do more It never be a factor of how do I make more money doing less It's more of a factor of, how can I have a bigger impact? How can I do even more than I'm doing now? Can I channel my Superman? And like, how do I make this more economical, more efficient, faster? How do I relay this information in a better way? how do i get people to get a better understanding how do i simplify the process um and like that's i guess what some people if you said what's your superhuman power i think a lot of people say that that i have an ability to take a really complex subject and and refine it down a really simple concept without losing any of the context or losing any of the power of that information yeah yeah absolutely yeah cool i have a really hard time talking about myself i know you still talked to me that made it sound about like i think that the seed is is the desire is about other people right like we're both fueled by our desire to help that it's hard to to just hone it back down into because we're so satisfied like it's a level of satisfaction when i was listening to you it's like job satisfaction people would normally call it job satisfaction yeah it's like it's a it's a level of satisfaction with what you do and the pride and the obsession and accommodation of all of the above and having fun. Right. Cause like, even though we've talked quite seriously, I guess today, but it's like behind the camera and behind the scenes, we like to actually laugh and have a lot of fun. So it's like you can have all of those things. If you find the right things for you or you find, you could be in a job that you maybe don't see the positive impact that you're making, that we're in a position where we can, we can see it generally that we hear about it. of like how you helped me has trickled into this and we're like oh it's amazing like that stuff like that's better than any medal that i could have given you know it's like it's well it's like if you like it's always being the love languages thing and uh and mine would be like words of affirmation like if you tell me i doing a good job and i in an impact in your life that like i still need to be paid because Danny got bills and he got dogs and a wife and all that but uh and you gotta keep the business right But like um for me like 50 of the salary that I make is just hearing other coaches go, wow, like that stuff you helped me with. I gave it to all my clients and I can't believe how well that worked. I'm like, awesome. And it's like all the other coaches in my facility want to know how I'm doing this. And I'm telling them like, I'm giving bits and piece of what you're doing like oh yeah that's that's that's what it's all about yeah like take it and give it to other people you know and let's let's just make everything better make the industry better so like half the reward is just like having that impact on people and i'm so and i've never made it a a money focused business because when you make it that way you have to make it we're selling a service we're selling education it has to be about the students it can never be about getting rich off the industry right it's just like how can we keep the keep the train going so we can help even more people and i'm just i'm just every day i wake up and i can't believe people actually want to hear me talk and like want to actually like listen right and and sometimes i go i can't believe i can even stand up there and do that because i was terrified of public speaking. When I went to college for computer science, I had to take a mass communications course and I was shitting bricks every time I got to talk. And when I did my first lecture or two lectures, I got shitting bricks. And now people go, do you get nervous? I go, no, I can't wait to get up there because I'm having so much fun and I'm hoping that everybody else is having so much fun. So yeah, man, I think this is my dream job. Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. Thank you so much, Luke. Luke, the king muscle nerd. Gunner. Get in there. I'll put everywhere you can get in contact with him and follow them. They're amazing. They're just great people. And thank you so much. Thank you.