Elevating Lives Through Fitness: Mark Roberts' Journey to Building Community and Wellness in the Gym (Part 1)

Transcript

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Hey everyone and welcome to Exploring Health Macro to Micro.

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I'm your host, Parker Condit.

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In the show, I interview experts from all areas of health.

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This can be in areas you might expect like exercise, nutrition and mental health, while other topics may be in areas that you are less familiar with.

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Today is one I think a lot of people will enjoy.

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The exercise and fitness-related episodes tend to be quite popular, and that's exactly what we have in store.

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So today's episode is based all around exercise, fitness and coaching.

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Here to discuss that with me is Mark Roberts.

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Mark has been coaching in the fitness industry for over 10 years.

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He's the co-owner and head coach at Rise Athletics in Winter Gardens, florida.

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I've known Mark for a few years now and since day one I've had a deep amount of respect for him as not only just a business owner and a coach, but also as a person.

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This episode will be great for any trainers and coaches out there, but it'll also be good for people who are looking to join a gym, because we spend a lot of time talking about what it takes as a gym owner and a coach to facilitate community and creating a great culture amongst staff and members in a gym.

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So if you're looking for a coach or for a gym, there's a lot in here that will give you an idea of what to look for in a good gym a good coach and a good training space.

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We also spend plenty of time talking about the other primary contributors to health outside of exercise and go into many specifics.

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This is a long episode, so it's getting split into two parts.

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This will be part one, and part two will be released in the same week, so there's not going to be a big gap to hearing the full conversation.

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So, without further delay, please enjoy part one of my conversation with Mark Roberts.

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Mark Roberts, thanks so much for being here.

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Thank you for having me.

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So we've known each other for a few years now.

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Now I first came across you by reaching out to you on Instagram.

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It was just in the early days of research for Mod o Bio and you were kind enough to not only respond, but I happen to be in the Orlando area and you invited me out to your gym while you were doing something that we're going to get to later called the coaches collective.

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But you took a big leap of faith and just kind of inviting me in and kind of setting me up as one of the speakers for that particular night.

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So I've always appreciated that and it also just gave me a huge opportunity to kind of get to know you, get to know how you run your facility, the culture you drive there, and that's kind of how I want to start.

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So I want to give people a little bit of a backstory as to how we know each other.

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But you work with a lot of Olympic weightlifters, which is a highly technical skill, so you're a very technically sound coach.

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But you also in your gym you have a lot of gen pop classes, so you kind of work across the spectrum of clients across the world of fitness.

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So I'm curious, like how you think working with such a technical group of athletes and then also working with gen pop, how those two serve each other.

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Like, how does working with such a technical group of athletes and then also working with gen pop how those two serve each other.

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Like, how does working with gen pop force you to be better with your very technical athletes and then working with athletes, how does that serve sort of the other population you have as well?

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yeah, and this is a really good question because this also speaks to my background and kind of how I got into building Rise Athletics the way it is.

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And so for me, when I started out as a weightlifting coach, I found weightlifting after playing rugby at college and strength and conditioning for myself and I was very much kind of traditional strength and conditioning and as I moved into weightlifting, weightlifting was a very traditional sport, very old school sport.

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Where the popularity of weightlifting has grown was a very traditional sport, very old school sport.

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Where it's it's the popularity of weightlifting has grown so much over the last decade, but before that people either got into weightlifting when they were very, very little 8, 10, 12 because they knew people who were already in the sport, whereas nowadays there's so many people coming into weightlifting from other athletic backgrounds or even, just like you said, to gen pop.

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So people that maybe found crossfit and crossfit put such an emphasis on snatch and clean and jerk in their training that we found that you had 35 year old mothers of three that all of a sudden fell in love with a barbell and for us as weightlifting coaches, that was huge.

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That was.

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It was amazing because it's really given us a new life as, uh, as weightlifting coaches, in a career direction that we really didn't have before.

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Um, but when I was when I was a strength and conditioning coach primarily and weightlifting was more of my hobby and I was teaching a few weightlifters and coaching I found that, uh, everybody, everybody needs a foundation.

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And these new weightlifters that were coming in, these crossfitters who just loved the barbell and wanted to to improve their skills in the snatch and clean and jerk, they really didn't have that prerequisite foundation the core strength, the shoulder stability, the mobility in their hips.

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And, like you say, weightlifting has such a high technical demand and one of those is on flexibility being able to hit really, really great ranges of motion with an extreme amount of weight overhead meant that a lot of people were getting frustrated.

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They were finding that they couldn't hit these positions.

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They found they plateaued pretty early on and it wasn't because they didn't have the desire to work on the skill of weightlifting, but it was more because they didn't have that foundational strength, because they hadn't been in a traditional strength and conditioning gym that had built a solid foundation.

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They'd found a love for the barbell through CrossFit and it's never a rag on CrossFit at all.

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So I'm like I'm a CrossFit level two coach.

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I love CrossFit, I've coached CrossFit for many years, I own a CrossFit affiliate, but it's more just recognizing maybe some holes in the way that most people approach training and programming for CrossFit.

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So when deeper I got into coaching weightlifters, the more I recognized this need for more of a broader foundation for a lot of my athletes.

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Now I started as a traditional strength and conditioning coach, like I said, and so for me I understood core strength, I understood all these prerequisites that had helped me and helped me kind of rebuild my own body after quite a few rugby injuries.

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And so when I recognized it with me and then that need with other people, I figured, well, why not create an atmosphere, a gym, that prioritizes all of those different stages rather than just having a weightlifting gym?

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I found that it was going to be very beneficial to to be able to show people that if you want to be an amazing weightlifter, you still need to have that foundational strength and that foundational control, core strength, mobility, flexibility.

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So it was, it was very natural for me to be able to um coach everybody from gen pop all the way through to weightlifting, because it's just really in my mind it's layers.

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Weightlifting is just the top layer, but even the best weightlifters require all of those other layers, and it's what we in in traditional strength and conditioning kind of already know but hadn't been applied yet to weightlifting or maybe to CrossFit as well.

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Yeah.

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So I'm going to want to go into the distinction.

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For anyone who's listening and we use the term weightlifting, that's going to refer to Olympic weightlifting, not just lifting weights, which is can be confusing.

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So maybe we'll go into a quick distinction about Olympic weightlifting versus powerlifting.

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But first you mentioned something how kind of the two ends of that spectrum.

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There's this principle in, like product design, where, if you're, the example that I learned was not that I'm a product designer, but I watched a documentary about it where they're trying to make a pair of garden shears and they're like we tried to design something that a very like well built, like meathead who can't even scratch his own head because his muscles are so big, like we need to make something that he can use.

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And then also the 80, 80 to nine year old who's very frail, like if you design for the two ends, you kind of take care of the middle and it seems a bit like that's kind of what you're getting to.

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So I wanted to mention that as a an example from a different industry.

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But can you just explain the difference between olympic weightlifting and powerlifting, just so people who aren't familiar with this world they might be thinking oh, weightlifting is just lifting weights, like doing bicep curls and stuff like that, but there there's a difference.

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uh, just so people have that language as we go through the rest of the conversation yeah, definitely, and uh, and I actually like for me, going through the podcast, I'll always kind of refer to it as weight training and weightlifting, for that distinction, so they kind of know.

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But, um, weightlifting is is the, the Olympic sport.

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So it's, uh, two lifts, it's snatch and clean and jerk, and we compete to.

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We basically get, we get three lifts in each and we try and hit the highest number we can in a snatch, highest number we can in a clean and jerk.

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We add those two numbers together and that's our total and so we compete for the highest total.

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Powerlifting is very similar, but it's three lifts, so you get squat, bench and deadlift and each of those you get three attempts as well and you combine those three lifts to get your total as well.

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So, um, slightly different, very, very similar format in the way that we, the way that the winner is is decided, but just different lifts in general.

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Okay, yeah, I appreciate that.

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Just people listening say weight training that's just kind of lifting weights in a very general sense, getting stronger using resistance training.

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Weight lifting is going to refer to Olympic weightlifting.

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I'd be curious how you've, because I've been.

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I've actually had the pleasure of being to your gym a few times now because I kept finding myself in Orlando over the past few years.

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You're always very gracious inviting me in, but you have a great community there.

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How have you been able to build that community amongst sort of these very different populations?

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that community amongst sort of these very different populations?

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Um, I I really think that, uh, two, two things there.

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I think building a community.

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Number one relies on, um, thinking about the culture that you want to bring to people, and for me, the community was always driven out of me, finding a home in a gym.

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I've always been in gyms my whole life.

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I've loved training, I've loved lifting, even as a rugby player.

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I found that the strength and conditioning side being in a gym and pushing myself in the gym where I actually didn't need a team around me to do it, it was just me and some barbells and dumbbells was always where I found most comfort in a lot of ways.

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And I was very lucky to be in certain gyms throughout my career where I found community myself.

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And I recognize that there's a lot of people that are looking for that.

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They don't know they're looking for that, necessarily, but they're looking for that.

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And in psychology you have something actually called your third place, and the psychological third place is based off of the idea that you have home, you have work, and these are both places where you find connection, social connection.

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But most people need a third place, and so it's somewhere where you don't have the pressures of work or you don't have family, where you can find social connection with other people.

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And I always found that my third place was the gym.

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Other people find it in other clubs.

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It could be dance, it could be, it could be a place of worship.

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For me it was.

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It was a gym.

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So I always wanted to create a space that that made other people feel as comfortable as I felt in a gym, because, at the end of the day, we all know that your regular globo gyms, uh, your LA fitness, your crunch fitness there's nothing against them, but they can be intimidating environments, and just getting healthy Shouldn't be intimidating.

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It's already intimidating, it's already.

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It's already hard enough as it is, and so why not find somewhere where everybody's supportive?

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And that was that was the goal in rise athletics I.

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It's the goal, it's kind of the meaning behind the name.

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Um, our hashtag a lot of the time is rise together it's.

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We always talk about accountability in gyms and we talk about accountability in training and it.

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Nothing is is better than going to the gym and your coach knows you by your name.

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So you walk through the door and they say hi to you personally, rather than a receptionist just saying hi and they make you feel welcome and a lot of that intimidation that goes with the discomfort of training and pushing yourself is eased just by having people around you that they genuinely want to see you succeed, versus it just being you by yourself every time, because that self-motivation we all know can be difficult yeah, all right, like the work itself is already hard enough, and then all the all the discomfort around a new environment, new people, new setting, um, so I think, even like the, the chain gyms that you mentioned, all of them are going to kind of advertise an idea of like building community, but that obviously gets lost at scale and these organizations are always like they're it's a top down thing, right?

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So you and Jamie co in the gym, so what are the things that you actually do, from interacting with members to training additional staff?

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Like, how do you actually facilitate that?

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Because everyone says like, oh, we want to build a great community and some succeed and some don't.

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So it obviously starts with you and Jamie.

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So, like, what have you focused on as owners to actually do that?

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I think personally, a little bit of my history so, and then I'll go on to us as owners to actually do that.

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I think personally, a little bit of my history so and then I'll go on to us as owners is is that we talked about gen pop earlier and I found, when I was younger, I was, I was overweight.

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I was always active, which is the interesting part of it.

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I was always active, but I was overweight.

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Yeah, so I was.

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I love playing rugby, I played all different sports, but, um, I was very lucky to have a family that always had family dinners and, like, portion control was my problem.

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I had a sweet tooth and portion control, um, and so it was always funny because for me, I I learned about health, uh, myself very early on.

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I was 16.

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I broke my arm playing rugby both bones, radius and ulna and I was stuck in a cast for eight weeks, sat on the couch, got even bigger and I just wanted to make a change.

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So I started making um changes in my health very early on, and so that goes to that gen pop side of things too, and I know we're going to talk about that later, um, about having that foundation, and so it starts not only just as owners but, as I think, as individuals.

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I place a huge emphasis on health in our gym, way before I place an emphasis on on fitness.

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Um, health underpins fitness, which is which is lost in a lot of weightlifting, uh, gyms or just a lot of high level sports, I believe.

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And so me and Jamie both of us Jamie comes from a high level gymnastics background and we both love living a healthy lifestyle so, before anything as owners, it's more as people we are both trying to live a very healthy lifestyle and we say a lot.

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I think it's lost the importance of it, but you have to lead from the front, you have to lead from example, and Jamie and I both believe that health is crucial to just honestly living a happier life.

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I don't think people realize the positive benefit.

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I actually posted something else.

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It was another study talking about how training impacts mental health.

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I think that some of these lifestyle factors that we'll talk about later genuinely allow me to live a happier life than a lot of people.

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Not many people like me when I say that that I'm happier because of these health factors, but I truly believe that it is true, and so me and Jamie really try and emulate that and lead from the front to begin with.

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And then everything that we do in the gym kind of builds on that.

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Because I don't think I think it can almost come across as fake if we are trying to promote all of these things in the gym community and health and all of this but yet we're not living those, live that lifestyle ourself.

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And I know a lot of gyms that they'll train and then at the end of the day they'll throw a monthly party and they all go and get drunk and they'll be drinking and all sorts and and for us it was.

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It's kind of we always said we, we do things like that.

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We have community events, we have potlucks, but they're they're always more about coming together as a community and being healthy and rather than a party, so to speak, or like, oh, let's come to our christmas, new year's party and everyone's drinking.

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That's not really our vibe.

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Like we try and do like community bike rides, we try and get out in the sun, we'll hire a yoga instructor to come in and do more things like where?

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So those community events are kind of built on top of um, that lifestyle that we're trying to promote.

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I think that's one of the big things that we do as owners is is trying to get people to realize that the gym is is a very small sector of the overall lifestyle of being healthy.

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Um, we taught, we have.

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We have all sorts of things I'm sure we'll talk about later on about lifestyle, um, but I always tell people I'm like you're here for an hour a day.

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There's 23 of the hours of the day where you have to be trying to promote your own health and so when you come into the gym and your coaches want to see you do your best, absolutely 100%, but you've also got 23 other hours where you have a responsibility to yourself to still be healthy.

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Yeah, that's a great point.

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Um, I think, yeah, I think, I think a lot can get lost in just the idea that you know, fitness by itself is going to solve it.

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Um, and like, most people aren't even in there every day of the week, right?

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So you say there's 23 hours in a day.

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Usually it's like two to three hours a week, two to four hours a week.

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You're going to get somebody, which is still a lot of time, like if you, if you do it well, like I used to have this thing where I would occasionally, as a trainer, get in disagreements with somebody who's like medical doctor about, like, what would need to be done, cause they would give what I would think were not great suggestions from the fitness side and I would want them to push a little bit harder.

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Um, but the doctor would see them once every three months, once every six months.

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I'm like you've got 20 minutes, 20 minutes with them every few months.

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I'm like I'm getting them three days a week.

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I'm like I'm sorry, but I'm like I'm gonna win that argument.

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Um, like I'm gonna to win them over.

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I'm like I just have more time with them.

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And it's not, and obviously time plays a big role in that.

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But you time and I think this may have been that coaching collective that you came to, or it was one afterwards where I spoke about trust and building trust.

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I don't know if it was that one.

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It was that one and I mean that's one of the biggest things is you.

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You have medical professionals, like you say, that you go to, and they see you for 30 minutes.

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Some of my athletes I see for 12 to 15 hours a week, some of my elite weightlifters, and so if a medical professional, I'm sorry to say, thinks that they can build better trust and a deeper relationship with somebody in 20 minutes than I can in 15 hours a week, they're sadly mistaken.

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Trust doesn't work like that.

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And if you look at the psychology of behavior, change trust comes.

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Change, sorry comes from trusted individuals.

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It's a ripple effect.

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It's not.

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It's.

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One of the reasons why social media is so bad these days is you're trying to change the opinions of people that are miles away and they don't.

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They don't trust you, and so all you do is put up walls, get defensive, whereas actually to create proper change, you have to have trust, and that's something that is, I think, unique to coaches, um, and it also speaks to the importance of, of of what we do as coaches, which I think is really, really undervalued these days in the industry for the positive changes we can make because of the unique position we're in, but yet we are undervalued in some of these health areas that I think we could be utilized better with.

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Yeah, I totally agree.

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I think you know there there's a lot of conversation around like what jobs are going to get replaced with AI?

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Um, even when I was still training just the idea of the significant shift to online training models and like tonal and Peloton and things like that I think for people like you, there's never really going to be a concern.

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I think like, if the coach is good enough and has those strong relationships, it's never going to be a concern.

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I think like if the coach is good enough and has those strong relationships, it's never going to be a concern.

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I think it's for the people who aren't necessarily taking advantage and kind of honoring the relationship between the client that those people are going to be vulnerable.

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So more message to kind of the coaches you're saying how much time you do get with your clients each week.

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It's like it's such an honor and like you have knowledge that they don't like.

00:20:57.645 --> 00:21:08.760
If you're not really taking advantage of that relationship and that time to positively help them, I think there's a responsibility that you owe to them, especially like we charge a lot of money, right.

00:21:08.780 --> 00:21:12.036
Yeah, so you can charge a lot of money.

00:21:12.036 --> 00:21:13.650
That I think that's one of the big things.

00:21:13.650 --> 00:21:26.010
You can charge a lot of money, um, if you provide that value, and it's a big if, because I could jump on social media and spend an extra three or four hours, gain more followers and then sell programs.

00:21:26.010 --> 00:21:41.701
But the programs aren't what make the changes in the person and and that's such a misconception these days that that we've created in the industry is that, oh, it's just the program, and when people come to our gym we talk a lot like this isn't a transactional relationship.

00:21:41.701 --> 00:21:59.382
You cannot pay me X amount of money per month and you get health in return, but you can pay to have access to my knowledge, my support, my motivation and all of these things that if you want to buy in and invest in yourself, you can pull out things that are priceless.

00:21:59.382 --> 00:22:09.535
But I'm the co-pilot, you're the pilot and I'll sit on the tarmac all day long in this plane and it won't take off unless you get on board.

00:22:09.535 --> 00:22:12.420
And some that's some of that.

00:22:12.420 --> 00:22:25.053
It goes to just how you interact with your client, like you say, how you build trust and then and then getting them to understand that they have to relinquish quite a bit of control and invest in this process to be able to get the most from it.

00:22:25.736 --> 00:22:30.959
I remember telling somebody I said well, are you going to move online after covid, like our gym closed down?

00:22:30.959 --> 00:22:35.496
And I remember saying if, if we're going to go online, I'm going to change industries.

00:22:35.496 --> 00:22:36.018
I'm not.

00:22:36.018 --> 00:22:36.619
I don't.

00:22:36.619 --> 00:22:38.887
To me, this is I don't do this.

00:22:38.887 --> 00:22:45.542
To be online, like online, like social media, like this, is amazing because of the impact and the reach we can have.

00:22:45.542 --> 00:23:00.538
But when it comes to somebody going to a physical place and being surrounded by people that support them and want to see them grow and want to see them succeed, I honestly didn't want to be part of a fitness industry that wasn't going to have that in person contact.

00:23:02.342 --> 00:23:06.355
Yeah, I can totally see that for you and where you're like, if I wanted to be online, I would be.

00:23:07.398 --> 00:23:12.820
Yeah, I could have stayed online, I could have transitioned, but that's not why I do this.

00:23:13.710 --> 00:23:16.458
Yep, so we've mentioned the Coaches Collective a few times already.

00:23:16.458 --> 00:23:17.510
Can you just explain what that is?

00:23:18.251 --> 00:23:47.253
So the Coaches Collective is basically a network of coaches in the Orlando area that throughout the years of coaching so I've coached in Orlando for about 10 years and it's just a network of people that I've met coaches, clinicians um, doesn't matter what kind of coach you are personal trainer, you could be powerlifter, crossfit, weightlifting, kettlebell, yoga but just a network of people where we can reach out to each other, ask questions.

00:23:47.734 --> 00:24:00.747
We plan meetups and currently I'm trying to put together like a study group so we can try to see who's interested in passing a certain certification and we'll study for it together.

00:24:00.747 --> 00:24:20.574
Just a place where we can spread information rather than kind of keep it to ourselves, which is one of those things in our industry again is the idea that somebody has all these secrets and it's why they're successful, um, and they don't want to spread it around when it's there's no, there's no real secrets in in fitness.

00:24:20.574 --> 00:24:36.192
I mean you, you don't need to be doing the most advanced training with velocity based training or this new french contrast training or so many, so many people think it's about that high level stuff and it's really not.

00:24:36.192 --> 00:24:41.813
So it's about just the same community that I've built in the gym for people trying to get healthy.

00:24:41.813 --> 00:24:52.594
The same thing for coaches to try and create a bigger impact with their own clients and find the support from other coaches that have been there, done it and want to spread that information on.

00:24:54.056 --> 00:24:55.157
Yeah, and it's all.

00:24:55.157 --> 00:24:56.921
It's largely in person.

00:24:56.921 --> 00:24:59.464
I don't know if there's any online aspect to it.

00:24:59.464 --> 00:25:01.194
I think there's probably a Facebook group.

00:25:01.194 --> 00:25:03.580
But that was one of those things that I was like.

00:25:03.580 --> 00:25:09.111
I was so impressed that you were organizing and spearheading, because so much now it's like join my online community.

00:25:09.111 --> 00:25:09.932
It's a great community of professionals.

00:25:09.932 --> 00:25:10.816
But it's like, oh, join my online community.

00:25:10.816 --> 00:25:14.104
It's a great community of professionals, but it's like you never meet each other.

00:25:14.104 --> 00:25:16.337
It's surface level engagement.

00:25:16.691 --> 00:25:27.736
But I was really impressed with I think I've been to two of them amongst other times that I've been there but the depth in which you're willing to go especially because the first one I went to is all about, like, trust and vulnerability.

00:25:27.736 --> 00:25:42.789
As a coach, I think that was like the large topic and you were incredibly trusting, inviting me to sort of present without knowing really anything about me, and then you also being very vulnerable to you know, feedback and opening yourself up, being like I don't know everything.

00:25:42.789 --> 00:25:55.300
It's largely a self-serving group as well, right, when you can bring these professionals together and you're like I'm going to get free education from them, but a lot of people don't have the humility to put themselves in that situation.

00:25:55.300 --> 00:25:58.730
So anyone listening to this in the Orlando area.

00:25:58.730 --> 00:26:03.180
If you're a coach, uh, get in touch with Mark Um.

00:26:03.180 --> 00:26:04.201
Is it strange?

00:26:04.201 --> 00:26:08.776
Or are there any struggles, kind of running a business with your now wife, Jamie?

00:26:09.696 --> 00:26:10.898
I thought that question might come up.

00:26:10.898 --> 00:26:14.644
Um, it's been difficult for sure.

00:26:14.644 --> 00:26:17.978
Um, it's never been rainbows and fairy tales.

00:26:17.978 --> 00:26:26.144
We, um, jamie, jamie and I started dating, uh where, just before I actually started my weightlifting club.

00:26:26.144 --> 00:26:37.340
So I was coaching at multiple gyms, had my personal training and, um, through just a couple of different events, I ended up taking the plunge and opening my weightlifting club out of one of the gyms that I my personal training and, through just a couple of different events, I ended up taking the plunge and opening my weightlifting club out of one of the gyms I was working at.

00:26:39.451 --> 00:26:50.722
Fast forward a couple of years, it was just after the pandemic and that gym was moving and a gym came up for sale and it was like, well, I told this story today.

00:26:50.722 --> 00:26:51.704
Actually I was 29.

00:26:51.704 --> 00:26:54.960
I was kind of going through like existential crisis of like, what am I going to do?

00:26:54.960 --> 00:26:57.659
Am I just going to be subleasing a space my whole life?

00:26:57.659 --> 00:26:58.855
What's the big picture here?

00:26:58.855 --> 00:27:01.259
We want to have a family and so on and so forth.

00:27:01.259 --> 00:27:13.482
And within two weeks, everything changed Purchased a gym, moved in, jamie graduated that summer and quit her job and just came full time in a gym.

00:27:13.950 --> 00:27:15.477
Neither of us had business experience.

00:27:15.477 --> 00:27:18.057
I had been coaching my whole life.

00:27:18.057 --> 00:27:29.259
Jamie had just graduated with a degree in physical education and it was basically hit the ground running and figure it out, and so there has been a lot of figuring it out.

00:27:29.259 --> 00:27:31.657
There's been a lot of stress.

00:27:31.657 --> 00:27:33.164
There's been a lot of figuring it out, um, there's been a lot of of stress.

00:27:33.164 --> 00:27:54.411
There's been a lot of sacrifice, but I think one of the things we've learned is to really work as a team, uh, communicate well, um, we struggled to find balance, I think, as, as all young business owners and and uh and couples who are business owners have found Um, but at the same time, there's no one I'd rather do it with.

00:27:54.852 --> 00:28:07.790
Uh, we, we literally we're in there all the time we come home and we said we talk about it all the time it's 100, all of our lives but um, at the same time, uh, we, we get to sit back and we get to say we created this.

00:28:07.790 --> 00:28:09.271
It's not I created this or she created it.

00:28:09.271 --> 00:28:09.732
It's we created this.

00:28:09.732 --> 00:28:12.675
It's not I created this or she created it, it's we created this.

00:28:12.675 --> 00:28:13.616
And there's a.

00:28:13.616 --> 00:28:17.141
There's a lot of pride and sense of accomplishment so far.

00:28:17.781 --> 00:28:22.992
Um, and to to like we, we got married recently.

00:28:22.992 --> 00:28:23.575
So it was.

00:28:23.575 --> 00:28:37.057
It was awesome to see the people that we had at our wedding that had supported us through this journey, and to have to have so many good people around us that have supported us and and not forced us to grow.

00:28:37.057 --> 00:28:39.842
But, um, wouldn't let us fail either.

00:28:39.842 --> 00:28:50.134
That kind of thing and and so it's one of those things where I'm sure it's the same answer from a lot of couples that are business owners together, but it's.

00:28:50.134 --> 00:28:57.317
It's one of the most stressful, difficult things you can do in life, but also one of the most, if not the most, rewarding thing I've ever done.

00:28:59.451 --> 00:29:04.059
But, like net-net, you think it's probably been beneficial for your relationship.

00:29:04.059 --> 00:29:13.270
It's probably forced a lot of things, forced you to confront things that probably could have gone unaddressed much longer without having this business structure sort of forcing you to look at it.

00:29:13.612 --> 00:29:14.594
Yes, definitely.

00:29:14.594 --> 00:29:16.597
I mean, there's no putting things off.

00:29:16.597 --> 00:29:20.532
Um, there is, there is, it's, it's.

00:29:20.532 --> 00:29:33.522
It's weird, it's, and I'm sure that people understand this, but where, where life kind of keeps throwing the same lesson at you until you learn it, and and for us it's we have to learn it because our business and our livelihoods depend on it.

00:29:33.522 --> 00:29:39.743
So we recognize those things so quick now and we're able to overcome them together.

00:29:39.743 --> 00:29:46.542
And we're able to recognize when she's struggling, so I can put in some extra effort to support her.

00:29:46.542 --> 00:29:51.201
She sees when I'm struggling and she puts an extra effort to support me.

00:29:52.191 --> 00:29:57.296
We're both still competitive weightlifters, um, both of us ex-athletes, with a lot of injuries too.

00:29:57.296 --> 00:30:20.240
So we and as any high level athlete or long term athlete knows that uh, a lot of the time our ability to train and work out is very much linked with our mental health as well, and so we both have those those uh highs and those lows through training and uh being able to um adapt to each other and how we're feeling in different times.

00:30:20.240 --> 00:30:22.982
Like Jamie's in a bit of a phase of rehab at the moment.

00:30:22.982 --> 00:30:31.829
Um, I've just come out of one, and it's my last year as a senior lifter to be able to compete at the state championships in Florida, to be able to compete at the state championships in Florida.

00:30:31.829 --> 00:30:33.332
So she's extremely supportive.

00:30:33.332 --> 00:30:40.498
Even though she can't train the way she wants to right now, she puts how she feels aside so that she can support me and my goals.

00:30:40.498 --> 00:30:49.196
So it's really cool just to see how much of a team we can be and how much we can overcome and adapt to together.

00:30:50.701 --> 00:30:51.301
Yeah, I love that.

00:30:51.301 --> 00:30:57.057
Do you still do your own programming or do you outsource some of that because you're still competing at a high level?

00:30:57.057 --> 00:31:04.570
Um, and it's one of those things that people who don't work in the industry probably would be like why would you ever outsource your training?

00:31:04.570 --> 00:31:05.653
But it does happen quite a bit.

00:31:05.653 --> 00:31:13.122
I was just curious do you do you do your own programming for workouts, nutrition, recovery, or do you kind of hand that off to somebody else?

00:31:13.609 --> 00:31:16.455
So I, I do my own programming pretty much.

00:31:16.455 --> 00:31:36.200
Um, like I say, I unfortunately from rugby rugby is not a very forgiving sport Um, so I have I have quite a few injuries coming from that Um, so I manage all my programming or my nutrition and things like that, and I always kind of tell people that the hardest athlete you'll ever coach is yourself, um, unless you coach your wife, maybe I don't know.

00:31:36.200 --> 00:31:52.502
But um, um, and so kind of to figure it out myself with my own body, because I have all of those biases on what I want to do, um, I think has actually been a huge, a huge player in, in, in my success and my growth and my learning.

00:31:52.502 --> 00:31:57.818
Um, but I do also have a coach so I can always bounce ideas off him.

00:31:58.220 --> 00:32:53.463
Uh, when I compete at meets, he's there and so he, he coaches me when I compete at competitions, um, but the rest of it is is me kind of training myself and figuring out myself, but kind of, like we were saying with the coaching collective earlier, I might do this by myself in the day-to-day, but but I have a support network, um, I have a physical therapist who has identified a few things, uh, a few few of my old injuries that I didn't realize maybe had the severity that they do have, um, and so I've been able to bounce ideas off of her to manipulate my training, which has really helped me come back in the last three months, because I had some lower back pain that was really debilitating and had to take out certain exercises, and without other people being able to still be there to support me, I wouldn't be able to train myself and program for myself in the way I can to find success.

00:32:55.111 --> 00:33:01.751
So as a gym owner, you probably get a lot of requests from people that may or may not fall outside of your scope.

00:33:01.751 --> 00:33:04.077
Um, like, how do you handle that?

00:33:04.077 --> 00:33:08.176
Because you know, to a certain level, like you can you can handle nutrition requests.

00:33:08.176 --> 00:33:10.230
But then it's like, oh, what if they have like?

00:33:10.230 --> 00:33:12.217
What if they have a specific disease to be Be like?

00:33:12.217 --> 00:33:15.487
So there's a lot of nuance to handling those requests.

00:33:15.487 --> 00:33:18.194
Have you just built like a really good network that you're for out to?

00:33:18.194 --> 00:33:26.553
Or basically, how do you handle all those requests that maybe fall outside of what you're comfortable and you feel is kind of safe and ethical for you to handle?

00:33:27.536 --> 00:33:29.180
Definitely a network, a hundred percent.

00:33:29.180 --> 00:33:43.095
Um, there's, there's definitely a network of people that I refer out to chiropractors, soft tissue therapists, physical therapists, rds, um, and we always kind of have those, those people, in our back pocket ready at any point.

00:33:43.095 --> 00:33:45.903
But I think the biggest thing is honesty.

00:33:45.903 --> 00:34:06.536
Um, we kind of, since you've been to the gym, we've put up our values literally on big flags in the gym to kind of really hone in on that community, that culture and uh, and so, when it comes to things that we can't handle, it's my expectation from my coaches is always that they they speak with honesty and they set expectations first and foremost.

00:34:06.536 --> 00:34:14.139
So it might be uh, like pretty common, but this is a good example is, uh, somebody who wants nutritional help?

00:34:14.139 --> 00:34:21.273
Uh, and we find out like, uh, they had their gallbladder removed so they can't digest fats in the same way.

00:34:21.293 --> 00:34:25.994
It's one of those things where we always say like, look, we have nutritional knowledge.

00:34:25.994 --> 00:34:32.621
We can, we can help you with the basics and we can give you, we can give you education around nutrition.

00:34:32.621 --> 00:34:39.990
Um, but the specifics of what you might need are going to be different compared to the specifics of what somebody else might need.

00:34:39.990 --> 00:34:45.101
And so when, if, if they kind of want to start that process with us.

00:34:45.101 --> 00:34:47.713
We we kind of start with those caveats of of.

00:34:47.713 --> 00:35:10.373
At the end of the day, you might have a gold ladder, you might not have a gold ladder, but energy in, energy out still plays a role, and so we can work on high level, um, high level things and just some of the good pillars of, of of health, with people that might have um a few areas that require specialist help as well, and so I always tell people you can, we can, work to a certain point.

00:35:11.235 --> 00:35:26.130
However, this is not my area of expertise and we may need to, and if at any point you feel uncomfortable or you feel like you want to go to somebody who has more knowledge than me, I'm never going to be offended, and that's something that a lot of coaches are.

00:35:26.992 --> 00:35:59.373
It's a, it's a quantity over a quality thing, and and that's where we talk about the value in what we charge and things like that is is sometimes people will actually value you more if you say, no, I can't do this and give them honesty and say I'm willing to work with you for as long as I feel comfortable and you feel comfortable, but if any point that you feel uncomfortable uncomfortable, it's your job to tell me, and if any point I feel uncomfortable, I promise I'm going to tell you so we can creatively solve this problem together.

00:35:59.373 --> 00:36:18.336
Just because I might not have that specialist knowledge doesn't mean that we can't still create a coach athlete relationship and get you to a better position than you're in right now right and, generally speaking, you're going to be more knowledgeable than the patient or the client about whatever that subspecialty might be.

00:36:19.159 --> 00:36:24.199
So you can always help as a quarterback in that situation, because it's very daunting to be like.

00:36:24.199 --> 00:36:48.092
Now I need to manage all of these other relationships, whereas a coach you can help with that coordination, you could reach out, you can see what those recommendations are, so you can kind of work together for like a synergistic solution where it's not just like much of what happens in the traditional medical communities where everything is just siloed, it's like you can have very conflicting interventions just because the providers aren't speaking with each other.

00:36:48.614 --> 00:36:55.632
Yeah, 100%, and at the end of the day, that really brings that, integrates health in a much more holistic way.

00:36:55.632 --> 00:37:13.643
And holistic health is is we know is is way more, is way more successful than when you do just go and go okay, well, I need to go get this one pill for this one thing, which then has a knock-on effect, like you say, the the next silo over there, so you're going to go to somebody else where it's like, well, hang on a second.

00:37:13.643 --> 00:37:21.101
Why don't we just baseline better and then touch on a few things over here and integrate?

00:37:21.101 --> 00:37:36.106
Well, if you're feeling down, you're feeling some mental health issues, but you're not going and getting some sunlight every day, like, how about we start working on some some getting some daily sunlight?

00:37:36.106 --> 00:37:44.273
How about we start working on some daily exercise before we just jump ship and then maybe start looking at medication or something like that?

00:37:44.273 --> 00:37:48.492
There's there's lots of different ways we can approach this and then escalate when we need to.

00:37:50.458 --> 00:38:01.873
And again, like the coordination between a coach and a therapist can be so valuable so both of you can make better decisions than relying on the person who's already struggling with a particular situation.

00:38:01.873 --> 00:38:12.518
You're like you translate what I'm teaching you to them and it's like it's different languages generally, neither of which the person or the patient generally speaks.

00:38:12.518 --> 00:38:18.603
Yeah, so you like being a coach, you can really help kind of bridge those conversations.

00:38:18.603 --> 00:38:33.213
You mentioned kind of pillars of health and I did want to end up talking about like sort of a hierarchy, because a lot of people, especially with how easily information is disseminated, now there's just like little nuggets of information about health.

00:38:33.213 --> 00:38:38.336
It can just be like very amorphous and be like how do I structure this into my life?

00:38:38.336 --> 00:38:40.784
I have 40,000 protocols I can do.

00:38:40.784 --> 00:38:43.512
Right, you mentioned morning sunlight be like where does that fit in?

00:38:43.512 --> 00:38:52.952
So can you kind of break down like how you describe pillars of health or maybe a hierarchy of how you teach people so they don't get overwhelmed with all the information that is out there?

00:38:53.320 --> 00:38:57.047
Yeah, that's something in our gym that we're very, very specific on too.

00:38:57.047 --> 00:39:09.208
We, whenever somebody comes into the gym, they do get two sessions, one-on-ones with coaches, where we we first of all take them kind of through like a we call it a movement education session versus a movement assessment.

00:39:09.208 --> 00:39:11.302
Um, cause it's not pass or fail, it's.

00:39:11.302 --> 00:39:27.141
It's more about finding out where they are with their movement and understanding of movement, so we can better coach them going forwards, versus saying, oh, you can't do this, you can't do this, you failed this, you failed, which just makes them feel like a loser and they walk out the gym feeling like they didn't accomplish anything.

00:39:27.141 --> 00:39:29.927
Um, so that's a lousy sales tactic.

00:39:29.967 --> 00:39:37.307
Okay, oh yeah, you, you need me kind of thing which is super lazy sales tactic, exactly, um so um.

00:39:37.307 --> 00:39:37.889
But the?

00:39:37.889 --> 00:39:42.425
The second one is really the, the one that I think is the most important.

00:39:42.425 --> 00:40:10.367
But, unfortunately, even as a gym owner and knowing everybody that comes through the gym and all our members, is probably not the thing that people realize is the most important, and it's our lifestyle session and we categorize it and I don't know whether these are, these are not all inclusive by any means, but we talk about sleep, nutrition, mindfulness and daily movement, and so we we go over those four things, um and uh.

00:40:10.367 --> 00:40:17.931
Obviously we know what sleep is, we know what nutrition is, and we basically go over some foundational principles of nutrition, some foundational principles of sleep.

00:40:17.931 --> 00:40:22.909
Um, daily movements is is one where people go, oh so, going to the gym.

00:40:22.909 --> 00:40:25.954
You know well over some foundational principles of nutrition, some foundational principles of sleep.

00:40:25.954 --> 00:40:27.858
Daily movements is one where people go, oh so, going to the gym.

00:40:27.858 --> 00:40:28.500
Well, that's one part of it.

00:40:28.500 --> 00:40:37.570
The other part might be making sure you get your step count in per day, making sure that you do some stretching and some self myofascial release and foam rolling, some things like that.

00:40:37.570 --> 00:40:41.101
Um, and then uh, uh, mindfulness.

00:40:41.302 --> 00:40:42.724
One is more where it's.

00:40:42.724 --> 00:40:45.030
It's based around stress reduction.

00:40:45.030 --> 00:40:49.347
Um, we talk about the fact that stress is not just physical.

00:40:49.347 --> 00:40:56.463
Stress is mental, emotional and the body for, for simplistic terms, processes it all the same.

00:40:56.885 --> 00:41:01.302
So when you are a prime example, we have some weightlifters that are accountants.

00:41:01.302 --> 00:41:15.172
It's tax season and so we drop their volume of their training down and we manipulate their training more during tax season because they're more stressed at work, so their ability to recover from training goes down just because their work stress has gone up.

00:41:15.172 --> 00:41:22.206
And so we talk about things that we can do to reduce stress non-sleep, deep rest, meditation kind of thing.

00:41:22.206 --> 00:41:26.451
We talk about daily sunlight, getting outside in nature.

00:41:26.451 --> 00:41:44.902
We could even go as far as grounding Some of these other things, journaling ways in which they can introspect and kind of stop consuming social media and other things and start actually looking inward to figuring out their own thoughts, their own emotions and kind of reduce stress from that standpoint as well.

00:41:44.902 --> 00:41:55.641
So those are the four things that we baseline as the important things that we want people to be focusing on inside and outside the gym, and then everything kind of gets layered on top of that.

00:41:57.085 --> 00:42:00.253
So you alluded to something really smart there.

00:42:00.253 --> 00:42:03.027
I want you to kind of break it down a little bit more.

00:42:03.027 --> 00:42:06.728
Injuries they can be acute, right.

00:42:06.728 --> 00:42:16.693
Sometimes things just happen you step off of a curb and you roll your ankle acute injury A lot of times injuries occur, but even then you might be vulnerable because of what I'm going to discuss.

00:42:16.693 --> 00:42:21.523
Even then you might be vulnerable because of what I'm going to discuss.

00:42:21.543 --> 00:42:35.409
So injuries are generally like a, a load management issue, where the person is just inadequately recovered or the amount of volume or the amount of training stress was too great and that's going to put them in a vulnerable position where they're not adequately recovered, however you want to describe that.

00:42:35.911 --> 00:42:40.382
But you mentioned that your Olympic weightlifter some of them are accountants, so they're taking on more stress at work.

00:42:40.382 --> 00:42:53.492
It's hard to quantify all these things, but when you look at like an exercise based injury or an exercise based workload, you can't just be accounting for the exercise based workload.

00:42:53.492 --> 00:42:57.414
You need to see what's happening like what else is happening in their life.

00:42:57.414 --> 00:43:02.525
The accounting one is a great example, because people can understand that accountants get busy during tax season.

00:43:02.525 --> 00:43:14.661
But there's all these other factors that even if you're managing your sort of exercise, training workload appropriately, maybe using like an acute to chronic workload calculator or something like that.

00:43:14.661 --> 00:43:20.822
If you're not looking at these other factors outside of that, you're probably going to be vulnerable.

00:43:20.822 --> 00:43:28.902
So if you could just kind of speak to anything about how you try to do that, even though you can't necessarily quantify it, just kind of like the skill of a coach though, right.

00:43:29.282 --> 00:43:37.108
Yeah, yeah, and and that's and that goes back to me saying I don't want to work online, right, I is.

00:43:37.108 --> 00:43:39.655
Is that these people that come to our gym?

00:43:39.655 --> 00:43:47.681
Um, I kind of one thing I always kind of say is is, I have my coach's checklist and it's kind of like, like, how's your day been?

00:43:47.681 --> 00:43:50.568
How's your nutrition, how was your sleep, how are you feeling?

00:43:50.568 --> 00:43:50.789
Like?

00:43:50.789 --> 00:43:53.867
What's kind of like, hey, what's going on in your life right now?

00:43:53.867 --> 00:43:55.172
Um, how are you feeling?

00:43:55.753 --> 00:44:02.159
And people think that's a very surface, surface level question, but in reality, as a coach, coach, it's actually a very deep question.

00:44:02.159 --> 00:44:05.306
I want to know, like, what was your?

00:44:05.306 --> 00:44:08.813
Where was your mental point coming into this training session?

00:44:08.813 --> 00:44:10.425
Like, what was it?

00:44:10.425 --> 00:44:10.827
Was it?

00:44:10.827 --> 00:44:13.266
Yeah, I feel fantastic, everything feels great.

00:44:13.266 --> 00:44:16.186
I want to PR today, or is it actually?

00:44:16.186 --> 00:44:31.023
No, I just broke up my relationships down the sink, uh, or I just found out that a loved one was, was, uh, diagnosed with some some kind of disease, or uh, and, and so it's, it's really it's.

00:44:31.023 --> 00:44:39.568
It's me figuring out, um, kind of like, how HRV works, but from a from a more psychological perspective perspective.

00:44:39.568 --> 00:44:51.523
Um, like for those of you who don't know who, what hrv is is it's a measurement of, um, of recovery, that we can use in in conditioning, workouts, cardiovascular health, things like that.

00:44:51.585 --> 00:45:01.672
So, but this is me figuring out well, are we, are we in a in a session where we can push the percentages today, or are we in a position where we actually have to pull back on them today?

00:45:01.672 --> 00:45:05.710
And, like you said, there isn't really a way to quantify that?

00:45:05.710 --> 00:45:14.331
I think that's where the value of a coach really comes out and comes into fruition, because it's about reading people.

00:45:14.331 --> 00:45:17.710
It's about how well do you know the people that you're coaching?

00:45:17.710 --> 00:45:28.246
How well do you understand the people that you're coaching, um, how well do you understand whether they are hiding something, whether they say they're great, but you, it's a surface smile and actually, deep down, they're actually going through something.

00:45:28.246 --> 00:45:37.269
Um, that that really dictates whether I mean I, from years of years of doing this.

00:45:37.269 --> 00:46:05.121
But you can see it in the way they move, you can see it in their body language and and I don't think there's there's necessarily a way to quantify it, unless you've got somebody to do a questionnaire every day and and then went through it and I used to be a very, uh, very objected, very analytical coach in that way and try and figure out ways to really get the numbers and dive into the numbers and and what I realized over time was I was just missing the personal connection.

00:46:05.161 --> 00:46:06.864
That is really what you want in coaches.

00:46:06.864 --> 00:46:08.750
Um, the?

00:46:08.750 --> 00:46:18.603
I have great mentors, I have a phenomenal coach, uh, and it's not because he got me to do a questionnaire before I trained, it's because he could.

00:46:18.603 --> 00:46:26.389
He could, he knew what my goals were, he knew what drove me, he knew what motivated me and he could see when I was having a good day and when I was having a bad day.

00:46:28.139 --> 00:46:35.954
And so it's kind of a bad answer for other coaches to kind of say there's no real way to do this other than experience and invest in your athletes.

00:46:35.954 --> 00:46:42.949
My coach actually told me this a long time ago and he said the biggest mistake coaches can make is thinking that it's about them.

00:46:42.949 --> 00:46:48.331
My career won't be successful if I focus on me and me being a successful coach.

00:46:48.331 --> 00:46:53.012
Coaching is one of those things where, if my athletes are successful, I become successful.

00:46:53.012 --> 00:46:56.813
I won't be a successful coach without having successful athletes.

00:46:56.813 --> 00:47:01.606
And I say athletes but that's just just success stories all around the.

00:47:02.307 --> 00:47:10.822
The mom who had a first baby that can't lose that baby weight that didn't think she would ever be back down to her pre-baby weights or be as strong as she used to be.

00:47:10.822 --> 00:47:26.907
And you see her come in and she's disheartened because she hasn't seen progress and instead of pushing her to crush her in a workout, you take it to the side and have a conversation about maybe we can change a few things outside the gym, or maybe we're not looking in the right places and we can motivate her in a different way.

00:47:26.907 --> 00:47:32.606
Those are really the things that I think differentiate good coaches from great coaches.

00:47:32.606 --> 00:47:39.902
I feel like I need to give an objective measure, but there really isn't an objective measure in there.

00:47:39.902 --> 00:47:54.556
You can you can create systems around that, but the more systems you create, the less you have that personal relationship again, and to me it comes back down to being able to have a personal relationship with everybody that you coach.

00:47:56.141 --> 00:48:12.844
Data is great, but too much data or poorly structured systems can kind of create a barrier between you and the person where it's like, yeah great, you're doing velocity based assessment to start the session, to see what their nervous system is telling you and you have HRV scores and stuff like that.

00:48:12.844 --> 00:48:17.362
But you know you might just be missing like the look on their face where, like, they don't have it today.

00:48:18.344 --> 00:48:20.307
Absolutely, and it goes both ways right.

00:48:20.307 --> 00:48:34.086
Some days people are so focused on the program and sticking to the program and you miss an opportunity to actually hit a PR and you don't get those opportunities very often the more elite of an athlete you are.

00:48:34.086 --> 00:48:36.532
So it goes both ways.

00:48:36.532 --> 00:48:41.710
To see if somebody is moving well and they're in a good mood, take advantage of it, big them up, pump them up.

00:48:41.710 --> 00:48:56.103
Let's go for something big, because you you might not get that opportunity again for a while, and so it definitely goes both ways in the way you can kind of look at those athletes and and see how they're feeling and and pull the best out of them at all times.

00:48:56.103 --> 00:49:04.431
And I talk a lot about creating success in training sessions, not just like following the program or the program will do the work.

00:49:04.431 --> 00:49:09.130
It's, it's up to the coach and the athlete to create successful training sessions every day.

00:49:10.253 --> 00:49:11.826
Yeah, you got to cook while the skill taught.

00:49:11.826 --> 00:49:15.909
That's one of those things that I've noticed getting older.

00:49:15.909 --> 00:49:18.469
Those days are less and less frequent.

00:49:18.469 --> 00:49:33.840
Like I used to have a lot of those days where I'm like we're just, we're always cooking and now I'm like you really got to feel for it and be like, okay, these are the days where I really do have to be aggressive and take advantage of it and just trust that, like I'm, I'm well-rounded enough to really keep pushing at this time.

00:49:34.201 --> 00:49:35.922

Elevating Lives Through Fitness: Mark Roberts' Journey to Building Community and Wellness in the Gym (Part 1)

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