There Is A Method to the Madness
This is a podcast where I will be discussing all aspects of physical fitness. I am an exercise physiologist and personal trainer and owner of Maxwell's Fitness Programs for the last 25 years. My passion is health and fitness and I am excited to share my views, some stories, interviews and much more with you.
There Is A Method to the Madness
The Power of Personal Training
Welcome to the Fit, Healthy and Happy Podcast hosted by Josh and Kyle from Colossus...
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Welcome to there is a Method to the Madness. My name is Rob Maxwell and I'm an exercise physiologist and personal trainer. I am the owner of Maxwell's Fitness Programs and I've been in business since 1994. The purpose of this podcast is to get to the real deal of what really works and, most importantly, why things work. Hence the name there is a method to the madness. Before I get to today's show, I want to thank Jonathan and Lynn Gildan of the Gildan Group at Realty Pros. They are committed to providing the highest level of customer service in home sales. Why don't you give them a shout and figure out what your home is worth? 386-451-2412.
Speaker 1:Let's get this podcast started, everybody. I'm going to talk a bit today about the value of personal training and value of personal coaching and let me explain why. I've got a new book coming out and it's going to be out at the end of this month, hopefully. I know we're real soon, real close, I should say. It's been at the publisher for a bit and we've been working on the cover art and all that and it's a really good company, so they're making sure everything's thorough and good. So we're there and he said probably end of September, but we're getting real close, so it's going to be soon. But anyway, I wrote this book because I think it's really necessary and important. I don't know, it sounds extremely self-promoting but it's really not, and when you read the entire book you will see what I mean. But I'm going to talk a little bit about that today.
Speaker 1:I'm going to talk about the solution, or a solution that I see to the physical fitness problem in our country, and in the first half of the book I talk about what the problem is. Like there's a problem, there's a major problem with health and fitness in this country, in the United States and, you know, really all over the world. I mean, we have a health and fitness crisis. Obesity has never been higher, sedentary lifestyle is continuing to stay the same and not really improve, and that is the biggest problem, and because of that then we see all kinds of different lifestyle, diseases and other complications. So I outlined the problem. The problem is that there's a major solution to help our health outcomes and that is to exercise and eat right, and people are not choosing it. So I write the book talking about why Like that's the problem People aren't doing it. Only 20% of the population is doing enough physical activity to get benefits. 20% I mean 80% aren't doing the minimum of 150 minutes of moderate activity per week and two days of strength training. They're not doing it. 80% of the people decided that less than 1.5% of your day isn't worth it and that's a problem of your day isn't worth it and that's a problem. And I get into why. You know what are the major reasons given for that.
Speaker 1:And then the second half of the book I talk about how the personal coaching has worked. Why do I know it's worked? Because I've done it. I've done it for 31 years has worked. Why do I know it's worked? Because I've done it. I've done it for 31 years and I know when people come to me with different problems of trying to get in shape, I'm able to help them solve it and they're able to stick to it. So for 31 years excuse me of experience, I've been able to come up with why I think having a personal trainer has been so effective. And then I that's my experience, that is my belief and then I went and did some research on it and found out, like some statistics.
Speaker 1:So today I'm just going to talk about those solutions, because I think we spend a lot of time in the negative. I mean just to give you a clue, like some of the reasons people give for not doing physical activity is, of course, you could probably guess, number one is they say they have no time. That is number one. And then number two is that they feel like they're not educated enough. They feel like they don't know where to start. So, like those are some of the problems given for why people aren't taking part in physical activity, and so, again, the main part of the book is the solutions that solve these problems. So I'm going to list them today.
Speaker 1:Talk a little bit about them. The first one is accountability. All right, that's the number one reason people give for hiring a personal trainer, and it is 100% so true, I mean, we have to have an accountability partner. And again, before you, you know, I don't, you know, I know most people aren't cynical, but before you think, oh, it's, you know, such a self-promotion. It's like, well, I mean I'm full, I'm busy, I'm not taking new clients right now. I'm saying that the industry itself, if you get the right trainer and I talk about that is such a way to help yourself with these problems, and accountability is one of the most important things.
Speaker 1:So, let's say, personal trainer isn't in your budget, okay, but an accountability partner might be somebody who is going to like meet you there, and even before I became a trainer, I almost always had that. I always had a workout partner. I always had a workout partner and we would train for a certain amount of time and then maybe I moved away, went to school or maybe they changed jobs, whatever I'd have another one. Like it's almost like the second most important person in your life oftentimes is your workout partner, and they don't even have to be like great friends, it's just you share an interest in fitness, you're pretty similar levels and you hold each other accountable at the gym. So personal training does that, because the hardest part for everybody is to get started. For me, too, like that's the hardest part.
Speaker 1:Once you get into the workout, it's grooving, you've got momentum going, you're happy you did it. It's getting to it. That becomes the hard part and that's where your accountability partner is. I know plenty of people that run a lot and they meet people to go on their run workouts because it helps them get out the door. That's all the same thing. So when you have somebody there waiting for you, statistics show that you absolutely are more likely to show up.
Speaker 1:Let me give you a statistic your probability of reaching your goal is 95% better if you've told your accountability partner about your goal. 95% better, isn't that crazy? 95%. So just by telling somebody, hey, I'm going to, you know, lose 10 pounds this month and you know, naturally, it's got to be realistic you have now increased your probability. I mean, isn't that great?
Speaker 1:So, like there's statistics that show that it absolutely works to have somebody waiting for you, you don't know how many times in my career in 31 years, that when people showed up and they said you know, if I didn't have this appointment, I wouldn't have done this today. But you know, I knew I paid for it. Or you know, I knew I didn't want to leave you hanging. Whatever it is, it works. I mean, it's happened more times than I can say and it probably happens. Well, I know it happens every week. At least one person in the week is going to say if I didn't have this appointment, I wasn't exercising today.
Speaker 1:So that's the first thing that having a personal coach or trainer will do for you. It will give you the accountability to show up. The next thing and these really aren't in order outside of accountability. That's like number one is having somebody. Having a trainer or personal coach or accountability partner again will push you, not necessarily motivate you.
Speaker 1:I remember when I was in college working on my psychology degree, and I took a class called human motivation and it was really cool and I thought, you know, we're going to learn all these skills to motivate people, cause even when I was majoring in psych, before I got into exercise physiology for my graduate degree, I was in the fitness and so I thought, oh, this will help me motivate. And the instructor, the professor, wrote on the board. He said you can't motivate anybody. Like, oh man, how like deflating is that you know? So what are we going to do for these next three months? And what I learned was you how to help people motivate themselves. So one of the things that having your personal coach or trainer does for you is it pushes you.
Speaker 1:You know, statistics have shown that everybody does better with an audience. Most of the time that's good. Sometimes it's not like if you're competing with people in the gym who you shouldn't be competing with. You should be focused on yourself. I mean, that's probably not good, but most of the time it's a good thing and statistic after statistic has proven it. As a matter of fact, the very first study ever done in sports psychology was on social facilitation and it was done in somewhere around 1898. That is a long time ago and it was on professional bicycle racers and, yeah, I didn't know they raced bicycles before the turn of the 19th century, so but they did. Anyway, social facilitation and it showed if you want a little piece of history, the guy who did it, the psychologist, was Norman Triplett, but it showed that just by having other people around watching the bicycle racers run faster.
Speaker 1:So we've known forever that having somebody there pushing us and especially being encouraging and whatever it takes to get you to do more, that's what good personal coaching, good personal training, does. That's one of my favorite parts of it. Like I love when somebody really wants to be pushed because, look, nobody wants to go to the point where it's uncomfortable. That's a myth. Like nobody likes that, like it's biologically against our grain to do that. Nobody wants discomfort. So we none of us like I like to work hard and I like to be pushed and I do a decent job of pushing myself, but I don't like it. We all want that path of less resistance. I mean, that's just the way we're wired. We can do more. To inspire us, to spot us helps greatly and that's something that personal training obviously does.
Speaker 1:That's like the thing you see on all the light shows the programs. You know the commercials. They show the personal trainer and it's usually like inappropriate type of pushing, like too much yelling, too much screaming, the weights too heavy, like they show it in a bad light but that's not really accurate In a good light. It's just simply being there and saying I know you have two more or two more or three more or whatever. Like a good trainer is able to spot when the person really is done versus when the person thinks they're done, and there's a huge difference between the two. A good, experienced trainer is able to see that. They're able to see that the person's kind of like I mean I've been doing this so long I see it in facial expressions. I see it a little bit of change in body position, a little bit of posturing, breathing technique, a huff, a puff.
Speaker 1:Like I know, especially when I've worked with people for a few times, like I know their mannerisms and I know when they're getting ready to quit, like I just know and, like I'll try to tell some of my other trainers, I'll say hey, you know they're going to do this when they don't want to do another one, and to help them, watch out for those cues. So when you have to stop, you have to stop, but most people stop before they have to stop and to really get full benefits, we want to do the best that we can. I mean, that's just common sense, I think. Right. So that's what a good personal trainer that knows what they're doing can do. All right, let's see Another one.
Speaker 1:Oh, you know, along those same lines I'm looking at my notes here and along those same lines with pushing somebody is, sometimes you're not always pushing them in that direction. Sometimes you're pushing them to be more accountable, and that's a part of pushing or encouraging. Sometimes it's not you got one more, you got three more. Sometimes it's like so why haven't you logged your diet? You're telling me you want to lose weight. You keep telling me you want to lose weight and I tell you one of the best solutions you can ever do is to log it into MyFitnessPal or a similar type of app. And you're not doing it. And every time I ask you this, you basically tell me that you don't have time or you forgot. So a good trainer, a responsible trainer, is going to practice tough love and say, look, you can keep telling me you want to lose weight, but until you start doing the actions I'm telling you to do, we are both wasting our time. A really good trainer and I do this. I'll just say, look, I'm not going to help you with this because you're not following the advice, and that's what a good trainer does.
Speaker 1:Also, to push somebody. To push somebody, sometimes you have to push limits. You have to make sure that you push back on the limits and say I can't do this for you. You're going to have to do this part on your own. That's pushing somebody. Never had a bad outcome of that. I mean, some people need that and usually they come back and they say you know what? That's why I'm paying you. So a good trainer can't be a people pleaser. They have to be. Like you know, if the client gets mad at me because I tell them what is in their best interest and I'm trying to help them, then they're not worth having as a client. Like you know, a good trainer has the experience, the knowledge and the confidence to be able to cut people loose when they're not doing it. That's pushing somebody. It's not just like letting them kind of violate your boundaries all the time, like you've set the rules. And if they constantly violate the rules that you're trying to set for them to help themselves, then the good trainer holds them accountable. So that is also a part of pushing and I'm glad I looked at my notes because I didn't want to miss that.
Speaker 1:Another thing a good trainer does that can help people with this curse of not doing the activity they need to do is they provide the education needed they need to do? Is they provide the education needed, and that is so important. I mean, so many people are confused as far as what they really need to do and there is so much misinformation out there on the internet. I don't know if there's another subject area that has more misinformation about it than physical fitness and health. I mean, my goodness, left and right there are theories, there are opinions, and I constantly tell people to follow the science and follow the facts, because they're out there. They haven't changed nearly as much as people think they have over the course of the last 20 years. They're pretty consistent. Yes, opinions change, but that's because you're listening to the opinions of hackers and people that don't know what they're talking about. So one of the perks of having a good trainer is you get that education. And that's another thing I really really like.
Speaker 1:I like when people want the information Say, hey, I was seeing this the other day, what do you think of this? And I can tell them. I had somebody asking me the other day about creatine. They said that their girlfriend wanted some advice on a particular brand of creatine or something like that, and I'm like, no, you're not bothering me. Like, I like this stuff. Let me give you this information on this. So, like that's, one of my favorite things to do is to actually help People solve problems, and a lot of the problems, as I said I outlined in the first part of the book, is what's the problem?
Speaker 1:Well, one of the problems is people are confused. I said that was the second reason why, outside of time, that people are not doing it, because you know there's paralysis of analysis. They're like I don't know, man, I'm just not going to do anything and I get it. I mean, I get the frustration. I'm not picking on the people that aren't doing it, I want to help them. I really pick on the people that give them the wrong information.
Speaker 1:But having that good trainer with the right education and right experience and right level of certification cuts through all that. Anymore you don't have to worry about what you know, internet, or what program you need to check or what accounts you should follow on social media. It's like you can do all that if you want. But you can go or I can just ask my trainer who knows you know, and again, I get a lot of that and I and I feel like that's a compliment to me that I'll get that I'll get it in emails from clients or past clients or friends. You know I'll get emails. Hey, what about this? I like that and personally I think it's a huge perk for clients because, man, that's pretty cool to be able to go somewhere and have somebody be able to answer those questions for you directly, you know, without you having to look it up. I think that's huge in any area. And next there's support. I it's huge in any area. And next there's support. I mean, you know it's without support we struggle, right, and oftentimes people don't get a lot of support. I mean most of the time when people embark onto a health and fitness journey, they're doing it alone. You know I mean so many of my clients through the years and so many people I've known through the years have said you know, I'm on this game, but my husband won't, or my wife won't, or my family won't, or my kids think I'm crazy, like it happens, and that's okay. We should only be trying to change ourselves. I think people get very frustrated, and kind of rightly so. But if they didn't try it, they wouldn't get frustrated, but trying to change their family too. And they'll say I just can't get so-and-so to do it. It's like, well, they're not on a program, they're not paying a trainer, of course, they're not going to do it, they're not showing the interest right, so you can't change other people. Having said that, that now makes the person who's embarking in their new journey feel alone. So good coaching and good training helps them not feel alone. They're getting supported. They're getting the data boys, they're getting the fist bumps. They're getting the there he goes. They're getting the hey man, you did that race. They're getting whatever. They're getting that and that really, really, really matters. Now, if you get a trainer who's too like, preoccupied with themselves, likeied with themselves and it happens they talk about themselves all the time or they tell you their accomplishments. I mean, yeah, then that's not good. But that's why the very last part of the book almost second to the last part of the book I talk about what you look for in a trainer. I mean, personally, I don't like to do that because I'm I don't know. You know, in many ways I'm shy, like I don't like to talk about myself, like I don't like to talk about accomplishments. It makes me feel uncomfortable and so it's kind of like naturally falls in there to where, when somebody needs that support, I'm able to do it because I don't want to talk about myself. So you know, that just I think comes a little bit natural. But like, if it doesn't for somebody, they need to learn how to take themselves out of the equation and give the support to the client who's paying for it. And that is a huge perk to getting that. And if you're not getting the support, there's a problem. They should celebrate the goals with you. They should celebrate the wins. I love it, you know. I love it when I see numbers going up. You know, I had a client a little bit ago, leslie. You know she's gotten so much stronger and you know I'll tell her all the time. I'm like look at your numbers going up here, man, they're fantastic. And it makes her feel good, makes me feel good because it tells me what we're doing is working. That's support. And if nobody gives you that at home or whatever, okay, granted, in a perfect world we get it at the gym and we get it at home, but it's better to get some support than none, so that training will absolutely give you that support. All right. Another thing you get benefit is decision fatigue. Decision fatigue means that you get so tired of figuring out what to do next that you don't do it. And you know, out of all of them, that's probably the one that I could relate to the most. When I go somewhere for help whether it be like I used to go to a swim coach or or whatever it's like I solve people's problems all day. I try to. I want to go somewhere else and have to think about what to do next, like I used to. You know people are like well, my swim coach doesn't explain enough. I'm like, who cares, man? They're telling you what to do, do it. They're telling you the important stuff, like so for me I don't care, and you know I'm an exercise physiologist, so I would like if they got to know that, which was always a little bit like unfortunate, because then they would start being oh well, you know, you know I'm like no, no, pretend I don't know. Just, I'm here to do what you tell me to do. I don't want to think about it, I don't. Don't, don't make me make up your mind for you. You tell me what you want me to do. That is huge. Like I do that for clients here, and good trainers do that. I write the workouts and I love writing the workouts, I love doing that. And when they come in they're ready to roll. You don't have to think about what to do next. You simply can show up and follow direction. You don't have to go. Oh man, what am I going to do when I get to the gym? I mean, if you like that, great. But that's one of the reasons people don't go to the gym is because they don't know what to do. So one of the perks is you're on your way to the gym and you go, man, I just show up, I get myself in the door. That's hard enough. And you're right, that is hard enough. And then when I show up, there's my trainer with this little clipboard, her clipboard, and like, all right, we're doing this today. Like I mean, ladies and gentlemen, I cannot state enough how important that little perk is. All right, so that is it, my friends. Like those are the biggest reasons that coaching works. And again, if you can't afford it, I get it. I mean, yeah, but you can find an accountability partner, you can find somebody that will help you do these things that I just outlined, because I really do think that if we found that somehow, some way, we cut down on that lack of people coming to the gym, you know we turn that 80% not showing up higher right, because one thing I know for sure is, once people start working out with me, they get under a program. That's not the issue anymore. They show up. I mean, there's always things, people get sick and people travel, sure, but they stick with it. So obviously these things work. So how do you find these things in your life? All right, that's the challenge, that's what I want you to think about and until next time, just work out. Thank you for listening to today's program. I ask you to please follow the show wherever you get your podcasts, and please select automatic download, because that really helps the show. Now I want to thank Overhead Door of Daytona Beach, the area's premier garage door company. They have the best product. They have the best service. I personally vouch for Jeff and Zach Hawk, the owners. They are great people with a great company. If you have any garage door needs, please give them a shout at 386-222-3165.
