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 Real Skills Great Personal Trainers Build
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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 Gilden of the Gilden 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. Welcome back to the podcast, everybody. As promised, I'm going to do part two of the podcast today. Part one was how to be a good personal training client. In other words, how to get the most out of it. If you have any questions, as I've said in the podcasts and other podcasts, feel free to reach out because all this is to try to help you and help us help you. So part two today is how to be a good personal trainer. So, what is my job and how should I execute it best? So I have some things here we're going to cover. I have some notes. So today is going to focus more on just how do you become or how are you a good personal trainer. So part one, the first part is very critical that you really can't skip. You have to be your own first client. I tell my trainers that all the time. When I was teaching sports medicine at a university and teaching kids how to become trainers, those that wanted to get into that side of the industry, I said, you have to be your own first client, meaning that you have to have experimented with your own fitness. You had to get yourself out the door. You had to motivate yourself on what you need to do. You have to be able to push yourself and you have to see what has worked for you. Now, that doesn't mean that education and certification aren't critical because they absolutely are. But before you get into that, you have to have, I believe, some personal success of your own. Because if you don't, I think it's going to be very hard to help somebody else. It's kind of like, you know, um, I've spoken before when I worked in substance abuse when I was in college. The counselors that had their own experience in substance abuse, whether they were in AA or NA, were a lot better counselors with their degrees. I mean, but they had the experience first than the ones that were just going to college to become a counselor. There's just something about having a full understanding of what the challenges are that people go through. Experience it yourself and know how to work your way out of it. Nobody really wants answers out of a textbook, it just doesn't work very well. They really want to know and emulate your own personal experience. So you have to be your own first trainer and you have to have the passion. It's got to get you up out of bed. You have to be excited about working out. You got to love exercise, I believe. I think it's very hard to be a trainer and not have it be a huge part of your life. You know, um, when I travel, I just got back from a brief little trip in Miami. I mean, one of the first things I do when I get there is I check out the hotel and see what kind of gym they have because I have every intention on working out when I travel. And I can remember years ago having some friends say, you don't want to give yourself time off. Like, you do why do you have to do this? Why are you punishing yourself? And I just would laugh and be like, it's by no means a punishment. Like, I enjoy this, I like to move, I like to work out, I understand the value it has on me during the day. If I work out in the morning, I feel like my whole mood has changed. So by no means is it punishment. And just a little side note, this gym at a pretty upscale Miami hotel was an absolute pig sty. I'm not going to state who it was, but it was the belts on the treadmill were broke. I was just pretty horrified. What a dump this place was. But I didn't get on the treadmill, but I definitely was able to do a dumbbell workout, so it worked out just fine. So after you have the passion, after you've been your own first trainer, then you do, I believe, have to get qualified professionally. I think that education in the field is a, I wouldn't say a necessity, but I would say it's very important. I got my master's degree in exercise physiology after having a degree in psychology because I wanted to change fields. And um, I think it's important to do that, whether it be a bachelor's or a master's, I think it's important to have a degree in exercise science or health sciences or exercise physiology or sports medicine. I mean, I I don't, like I said, I don't think it's a mandate, but I do think it absolutely helps. Now, something you do need to do to be considered a pro is you do have to have one of the certified, one of the real certifications in personal training. And there are only four. I mean, there are people that run around and talk about different kinds of certifications, but a lot of them are just like non-accredited, meaning you can just take it online without a proctor. The only four that really require you to have a proctor where it's certified and legit is the ACSM, American College of Sports Medicine, the NSCA National Strength Conditioning Association, ACE, which is American Council on Exercise, and NASM, which is National Academy of Sports Medicine. So if you're keeping score at home, the must you must have so far is going to be the passion. You were your own first client, so you know it worked for you, and then you got excited about it, and you went out and got certified. So one of my uh new trainers, Casey, she kind of fit that mold perfectly. She uh actually kind of has always shown the passion because she worked for a guy when she was in her teens, and um, you know, then she went off. She had a family, she started her life, she's had kids, and she started training with me about five years ago, and she got in really good shape. She's in great shape. She started feeling like, man, this really helped her. She loves how she feels. So she uh, you know, went out and she got her certification. So she's kind of like finding all the right ways to get into it. She definitely has the passion. So you don't necessarily have to have that degree, as I said. I do think it helps, but you absolutely have to have the passion. People will know if you don't have the passion. I mean, they could just tell. People can read the energy if you're not really into it yourself. All right, so part three. You have to have the hard skills, meaning there's hard skills and soft skills. Hard skills are the skills you learn to do the job, such as being able to make and create an exercise prescription, being able to know the correct form on every single exercise, knowing all the different varieties of exercises people can use for different conditions, knowing how to spot, um, exercise execution, like those are the hard skills, knowing how to do some assessments like blood pressure, resting heart rates, knowing how to use a pulse oximeter. I mean, I can go on and on, but you have to know the skills of working out. I mean, I think that kind of like goes unsaid. I mean, I had that advantage coming into it because I absolutely was my own first client first. I um started working out in the late part of high school. I went with some older guys and I kind of learned the ropes of how to be in a gym. Now, granted, I didn't know perfect exercise execution back then. Like I'm sure if I looked at my squats back when I was 21 years of age, even though I was squatting close to 500 pounds, my form was probably pretty abysmal. But ultimately, I knew how to do the exercises correctly. I definitely fine-tuned it through the years, but I definitely was learning how to do proper exercise in a gym. And I absolutely had the proper mechanics and know how to choose certain exercises. I can remember when I was working on my general education in community college for my how to do speech, I did for my speech class, I did how to do a dumbbell fly because my professor told me to pick something that I really feel like I know how to do well and teach it to the class because I was having a lot of anxiety getting up in front of people. And like I thought, oh, I can teach everybody how to do a dumbbell fly. So I brought in a couple 25-pound dumbbells, I think, and I brought a dumbbell bench in and I taught everybody how to do a fly. So this is long before. I mean, this I had no clue I was gonna go into personal training. So I already knew how to do the exercises, and that is so critical. I say it at my gym all the time. Form is everything. And if we don't know how to do it, how are we gonna teach it? So that is one of many of the hard skills that you have to learn. So, in short, part three is very simple. You have to know what you're doing, you have to be the expert in the room on the things that you are supposed to be teaching people how to do. The next part is going to be not soft skills yet. I'm gonna give that a little bit of a like a break because that's a big part. But the next part, part four, is you have to be the boss. Like, it is so critical that you have it in you to be directive, you have it in you to be assertive. Like, you have to be the boss. One of the things I talked about in my book is a reason why clients work so well in personal training is because of a thing called decision fatigue, meaning that one of the reasons why personal training works so well is because personal trainers handle decision fatigue for people. A lot of people that hire personal trainers are already alphas, they're already very busy, they're already, you know, they they're already thinking I need to do something assertively to help my health. And they're typically oftentimes the type of person that will overthink things, they'll go to the gym, they have the best intentions, but when they get there, they either do too much or they don't want to think about it, so they end up doing the wrong kind of workout for them. So a personal trainer needs to eliminate decision fatigue. You know, when the client comes in, the trainer has to be the boss. Never, ever, ever should a client be telling the trainer what to do. Even little subtle things like, I think I should do this, the client says, is absolutely telling the trainer what to do. I always told my students early on, I said, you know what? Even if they're right, don't let them know because you need to establish that boundary. Even if it's dead appropriate that they can do a certain exercise and there's nothing wrong with doing it, you need to say no and then bring it up to them the next time. Because if you don't, that client will learn that they can manipulate their workout and they're gonna eventually take over and you're gonna follow them around like a puppy dog. And there is nothing worse than that kind of trainer. Clients don't like it, and I would think the trainer themselves doesn't like it because it really is very defeating to walk around and have your clients telling you what to do. So you have to have it in you as a trainer, and I don't know if that's something you can learn. I really don't. I don't know if it's a personality type. I know that you have to have it, you have to be the boss. Does that mean that you shut feedback down? Absolutely not. I love feedback. Without feedback, people can't grow. For I had two clients this morning. My uh, no, I had I was pretty busy actually. So my
(Cont.) The Real Skills Great Personal Trainers Build
SPEAKER_00second and third, no, third and fourth client of the day both came in with a little bit of shoulder issues. Both of them are very well trained, and they come in and they said, you know what? I need to tell you, this is bothering my shoulder. I just want to let you know before I work out. That is the best way to handle it. And they trust me, so I looked at them and I said, Okay. So I gave them some recommendations on what to not do at home, and then I said, So with today, we're gonna go through your normal workout, but not do things that bother it. They said, Okay. They didn't tell me I don't think we should do chest press, I don't think we should do dips. They didn't say any of that because they know where they are in the relationship. And the exact same thing happened with the next client, shoulder again. I don't know what it was about Memorial Day in the long weekend, but apparently people tweak their shoulders. Same thing. Told me what was going on and allowed me to come up with a solution. That's the way it is supposed to go. So, part of what I'm talking about here being the boss is you have to have boundaries. You have to, as a trainer, learn how to have boundaries. Again, I don't, well, I do think people can learn to have boundaries. I was gonna say maybe it's a learned thing, maybe it's not. Boundaries definitely can be learned. And you have to have boundaries. You have to be the boss, you have to sometimes confront people, you have to make sure that the order stays you, boss, them not boss. So you have to have those boundaries. Next thing you have to be able to exhibit, this is all going under the category of you've got to be in control, is you have to exhibit tough love. Like letting clients do what they want to do isn't love. That's the opposite of it. That's like enabling. They are there because they have a problem that they're trying to get better with, whether it be they're overweight, whether it be they lack tone, whether it be they're weaker, whether it be they're trying to add muscle. There's a lot of different things that could be. And they're coming to us, the trainers, for expert advice. We know what we're talking about. Tough love means that you're getting them to do what they don't always want to do. And sometimes you have to say the hard things. You can't tell them their form is good just because you're afraid you're gonna hurt their feelings if it form isn't good. You have to say, look, no, that's not good. You have to do it this way. I'm trying to show you this. You have to exhibit tough love to help somebody. If you don't, it basically shows that you don't care. So if you're just kind of like there and watching people not saying much, I mean, you don't care. I mean, we all know, we all remember from high school or junior high or middle school or whatever, maybe even grade school, when you got a substitute teacher, they were the epitome of soft love. There's no love at all. They were getting paid for the day. Maybe they were trying to get a job as a real teacher or whatever, but their motive wasn't necessarily to change the environment or to educate any of the kids. They were just simply there. And so we all know it was a party in the classroom. We could send notes back and forth to each other. We could get up and go to the bathroom left and right whenever we wanted to. We can lie to them and say that we're allowed to get up five times during the class to go to the water fountain. I mean, these are all things we did. We took advantage of every substitute teacher we ever had because it was fun. That's what we're going to do. When clients come to the gym, it may not be that extreme, but they are going to try to take advantage because hard work is hard. It's not easy to go through a hard workout and do what we don't want to do. So if we think we kind of have a careless trainer a little bit, we're going to stop a little short. We're going to maybe not go as low as we should go. We may not push as hard as when the real teacher is there, so to say. But eventually every client figures out that they don't like that and it's not good for them and they quit coming because what they want really is someone to make them do what is absolutely best for them. So a good trainer needs to be able to exhibit tough love. The next step under you have to be the boss is you have to be confident. You have to absolutely be sure of what you're saying. That does not mean that a good trainer has to know everything because we do not know everything. I don't know everything. There are things people will come up to me and tell me as they start or they have a consultation. They'll say that they, you know, have a certain condition. Most conditions I've heard of, but occasionally there are some that I don't. And I'll say, well, I know how to handle most every condition, but I'm going to have to do some research on this one. And I will get back to you before I tell you I can help you on this. Saying that is still confident. Lying through it and getting caught is the furthest thing from confidence. Confidence is admitting when you don't know. That's perfectly fine. But when you do know things, you have to be able to express it in an absolutely confident way. You just can't dilly-dally, you can't be mealy-mouth, you have to say what you mean to say, and sometimes you have to say the comfortable things. I tell new trainers all the time, don't get caught unprepared because there are many things that they really need to understand. Again, there are so many conditions that every trainer would probably have to look up. But there are things that are basic to the craft that a trainer needs to know and not get caught unprepared. So, as I used to teach the students, you need to make sure that you're prepared and preparation will build confidence. You ever notice one of the things when you were having to do a speech in college or whenever, when you had to do a presentation, all the good instructors would say the same thing. They say, You don't want to be anxious? Yes, I don't want to be anxious. Okay, be prepared. Because if you're prepared, you're not going to be anxious. It's a horrible feeling to only have done half your homework and get called up and have to teach the class something. I mean, you just feel like a fool, you look like a fool, and you brought it on yourself because your lack of preparation. So a good trainer needs to be confident and they need to do the homework to be confident. I've been doing this 31 years, and I promise you, I do my homework every day. Not because it's a duty, but because I enjoy it. If I don't know something, I love to go look it up. I love to go figure things out. I do my homework. Before I work with the client with the condition, I do my homework because I do not want to get caught off guard. I recently started with a client a few months ago that has Parkinson's. I've never really trained anybody before that had the level of Parkinson's that they've had. I've had some that like had the beginnings, but this person has Parkinson's and it shows. And I wanted to make sure I was completely repaired. It would have been completely irresponsible of me to go into it treating him like every other client because Parkinson's is a special condition. It's a different condition, as all conditions are, that responds differently to strength training regarding the exercise selection, regarding the fatigue level, regarding the frequency. I had to do my due diligence and I did. That way, when he came in for his first workout, I was very, very prepared. And he was very, very confident when I talked to him about what I had learned and I printed the sheets that I printed. He felt really good knowing that he's walking into an environment where a person didn't think they knew everything, but made sure that they did their homework. With that in mind, then the other thing that we have to consider in this part of being the boss is you have to love your craft. Again, if it comes across as you're kind of just getting through the day or you're just doing your job, it's not the kind of job that you can do that with. You have to love the craft. So when you're teaching an exercise and you're speaking confidently, you're not doing it to be an asshole. You're not doing it because you're looking to get paid. You're doing it because you love what you're doing and you want to make sure that the person learning under you learns to love it too. So you do have to have the love of craft. So I keep going back to you have to have the passion to be effective in this industry. And finally, after being the boss, you have to learn how to push. You have to be the type of person that can push another person to be the best that they can be. That takes confidence. You have to be able to. Know when they have more in them and when they don't. You can't always rely upon the client to tell you or no, because a lot of clients aren't what we call kinesthetic. They don't get it. They don't have the feel. They're not overly confident in what they're supposed to feel. So good trainers have to be able to watch the cues. There are things I look at all the time. If somebody starts turning their toes around on a leg extension, I know they're getting fatigued because their toes really weren't moving until they started to get tired and then they started to compensate. If their breathing pattern changes, if their range of motion changes, I know they're getting fatigued. So a trainer needs to know how to push. Some people need to be pushed in a direction of doing more. A lot of people do. But an equal amount of people need to be pushed in doing less. And that's also pushing somebody. Someone will say, Well, no, I think I have another set in me. A bad trainer will go, okay, let's do it. A good trainer will say, We hit our objective already, you're injury prone. We're not going to do that. So a good trainer knows how to push, and pushing isn't always to get more out of somebody. Pushing sometimes is to make somebody do less. I mean, it is very, very critical that a good trainer can say, I can tell your shoulders bothering you. We're done. Now, alpha males especially hate to generalize to the sexes, but it's kind of more common. Alpha males will tell you that it's okay, and they'll continue to try to push through it. And you're going to have to say, you know what? No, we need to stop. And it's not just because you are looking out for them, you're also looking out for you. And I can tell you from experience, because one of the worst situations to be in as a trainer is to have a client who's chronically hurt. And every time they come in, they have something wrong. And a lot of times that happens because they're their own worst enemy. So it's not just for the client, it's also for the trainer. So they don't have to go, come on, man, your shoulder again. Okay, let's deviate this exercise again. Let's change this exercise again. So you have to be able to do the hard work up front. Up front means no, I'm not going to let you do this. And if you want, you can even add to it because I don't want to hear you bitch and complain in two days. I mean, sometimes a good trainer needs to say it. You need to be absolutely up front. And one of my new trainers, as I said, she did that just the other day with a client who will remain nameless. And I kind of smiled and chuckled. I said, there you go. Sometimes you have to tell them, look, you think you can do it now. Your eyes are bigger than your stomach, sort of in that old analogy. You're going to try it, you're going to get hurt, and then you're going to complain in a couple of days. So sometimes you have to show that tough love and be the boss and push them to do less and push them to do more. A good trainer needs to learn which direction to go with each person. Now, part five, I think we're on is communication skills. You have to be able to communicate. Earlier, I talked about the hard skills as a personal trainer, exercise technique, exercise selection, being able to do assessments, being able to do those things. Those are the hard objective skills that you can measure in a lab. The soft skills are the communication skills, and that is huge. Way bigger than maybe gets all the attention. Ellen was the massage director at Kaiser when I was there teaching sports medicine. We both had to add, actually, it was added in force because everybody knows it's important, different soft skills training for the students. Soft skills are communication skills. Bedside manner. This isn't the type of industry where you can have crappy bedside manner. You just can't. It's not like your orthopedic surgeon who you basically just want to get your knee right and they have the personality of a rattlesnake. I don't care the personality of my orthopedic surgeon because I'm not even communicating with them when I'm under anesthesia. But I absolutely care when I have to be in somebody's presence for 30 minutes that they have good communication skills. So that is a big part that trainers, some of them have it naturally, some don't, but either way, have to be learned to have them, have to learn them, sometimes have to practice them. The first part under good communication skills is you have to exhibit the energy. Again, that goes back to passion. You have to love what you're doing, you have to love exercise. You don't have to love every client that comes into the gym or like every client that comes into the gym. I've said it before, and some of my clients, I'm sure, are going to listen to this. Most are, no, we don't love or I don't love every single client. I mean, if I did, I'm the old joke goes, I haven't met enough of them. I mean, that's not important, but I need to be consistent with each and every person. I do have to love the industry. I do have to love what I'm doing and love exercise. And I do. So I could be in the presence of somebody who I absolutely can't stand, and I could still show a lot of passion and energy towards exercise because I love it. So I don't take things personal. I mean, it doesn't matter. I have to be able to exude that energy. So energy comes from really loving the field of exercise and understanding it works. So your first step of having good communication skills is having the energy. With the energy, then you're going to have the other E, which is enthusiasm. You have to be able to exhibit enthusiasm for what you're trying to teach somebody. Now, sometimes you have to work on that, meaning that, you know, if you're doing the same workout over and over and over, it's probably getting boring for you. It's probably getting boring for the client. A good trainer knows how to change that around a little bit to create new enthusiasm. Working on clients' wins, meaning little things that they're able to accomplish will be able to bring out enthusiasm. But you, the trainer, have to have a level of enthusiasm. You don't have to be up on top of the world every day. But certainly if you're down all the time, if you look like a Schleprok every time somebody's working out, nobody wants to train in that kind of environment. So a good trainer has to be able to have enthusiasm. The next thing they need is communicating with communication skills, is the ability to speak up. Like again, assertiveness and confidence. You have to speak up. If a good trainer sees something they don't like, they have to speak up. But I don't just mean speak up, I mean speak up. The tone of voice has to be elevated. It's one way you remain in control of a room. If your O is kind of muttering, if your O is kind of like not raising your voice to the appropriate levels, most people don't like that. Clients want clear directions, they want to be able to hear you. So literally, you have to speak up. Usually a trainer, a client, anybody that isn't speaking up is usually showing their lack of confidence. That's 99% of the time what happens, you know, you can go to a presentation and there might be some poor guy or gal, shy person in the audience. And I I mean I've done presentations and I'll call on somebody, and you could tell somebody really wants to ask me a question, but you could tell they're kind of nervous. And then when you call on them, they speak very softly. Because why? Because they're not confident. So typically speaking too quietly is because you're not confident, but again, confidence is a trait a trainer needs to have. So if they're not, they need to again work on that. The next thing a good trainer needs is consistency for their soft skills. I said it earlier. You can't, I mean, you have to learn to meet people where they are. Everybody is different. There are some people that like want to like go through a wall with their kind of intensity with workouts. So you push them and you try to get the most out of them. Some of them don't quite have that work ethic, some of them don't quite have that intensity. To say that they're not getting anything out of the workout, though, isn't true. So you do have to meet people where they are. At the same time, you can't be inconsistent. You can't tell the person who you're pushing really, really, really hard that that's the only way to get fit. I mean, kind of is. You do have to go hard enough. But the point is, then you can't go to the person who doesn't like to work hard and make up some lie, like, well, that's okay. Research has shown that very low-level intensity workouts are greater than high-intensity workouts just because you're trying to make that person feel better. You can't do that. You have to be consistent. You just be honest with them and say, look, I know you don't exactly like to go to failure. I know you don't like to get close. The fact you're here is good. We're going to do the best we can to push a little bit further. You have to be consistent as a trainer with what you tell people. Nobody likes that guy that tells one person one thing and another another. They're working with somebody who maybe is doing the old, you know, paleo diet, low carb, higher fat. And then because they don't feel like getting into it with them, they tell them that's the greatest diet on earth. And then they work with somebody who's plant-based, high carbs, and they tell them that's the greatest. You can't do that. A trainer needs to have their own views and opinions on that. And they need to be clear and concise and consistent with those things when they come up with clients. You can't be wishy-washy on that, or it will absolutely show, and you will definitely end up pissing somebody off, you know. So there's no point in it. You have to be able to communicate very, very consistently. And then you need to learn to be sincere. I mean, as I said, I want everybody that comes into the gym to get better. There, of course, there's no question about it. And also, I'd be lying to you if I said that I like and love every single client the same. I mean, that's ridiculous. I've had some clients that I've known for 25 years literally training under me. I know almost everything about them. And then I've had literally a lady that just started today. So it would be ridiculous to say that the feelings are the same. But I am sincere in my desire for every single client that comes in here gets better. I'm absolutely sincere in that. You know, have I had clients that I personally don't like? Of course. I'm not going to sit here and lie. There are things that I, you know, I'm like I would never socialize with outside of the gym. They're just not my cup of tea, and I'm sure they feel the same way about me. And it absolutely doesn't faze me one bit. I would still absolutely give them my best training, and I would absolutely hope and pray that they get better because I really, really care about what I do. I take what I do very, very serious. And then finally, part six of how to be the best personal trainer you can be is you can't forget the big pitcher. I tell that to trainers all the time. Like, don't forget the big pitcher with the clients. Remember, they're training to get better. Everybody is a little bit different in their goals, in their desire, in their motivation, in their life situations. Everybody's different. Don't forget the big pitcher. So I'll close this with a good story I learned years ago when I was teaching the American College of Sports Medicine workshops for personal trainers. I got to go up to Boston and get trained by the ACSM. So I was trained to be a trainer. So we had some of the senior trainers up there, um, older folks, you know, they were these trainers were in their 60s and 70s teaching these workshops. So make sure that we were telling everybody consistent material. So it's the right thing for them to do. The lady who I had in one of my groups told this great story that hopefully I never forget. But she said that she started when she was early on as a trainer, she started working with this older lady. She described her as an older lady who came to her for an assessment. And when she said, What are you trying to accomplish? She says, I really want to be able to have the fitness levels to where I can walk with my daughter because it's the only time it seems like my daughter will spend time with me is if I walk with her, but she's more fit than I am, and I can't quite keep up. Trainer says, Oh, okay, so we're going to work on your cardiorespiratory endurance. We're going to help you become a more proficient walker. So she designed her this really complicated, I don't know if it was overly complicated, but definitely heart rate-based and how long and how far this kind of workout. She had her on a heart rate monitor and all that good stuff. And the lady came back maybe one or two times and she would go through the workout that she made for her. And then the lady quit calling coming to the workouts. So the trainer called her up and said, Hey, where are you been? You haven't been showing up. And she got her on the phone and the lady goes, Well, do you remember why I said I wanted to come to you? I wanted to come to you because I really wanted to spend time with my daughter. But you know, the the way you have me doing my walks, I can't do any of that because now we're definitely different in our paces because I have to follow these zones. So I guess I'm just not going to do this anymore. And she quit. I don't know what happened. I don't know if she brought her back. I don't, you know, she didn't really get into it, but she made a powerful story. Like she totally forgot the main thing. The the lady's whole motive was to be able to walk with her daughter. And what she did was she made her such an isolating program that the lady was stuck not being able to walk with her daughter. So, what was the point of it? So, good trainers really, really need to learn to keep the big picture in mind and keep the main thing the main thing. We can get so caught up in little things trying to prove ourselves as trainers that we're really missing the big picture on things. And again, to circle back, I think all of that gets settled when you followed the very first rule, which is you have to be able to be your own trainer first. Because if you've gone through that step, then you absolutely know what the big pitcher is, and you know when to focus on important things and when to give certain little things, you know, like maybe they didn't quite get three reps on a kickback or something like that. Like that is so minuscule compared to the big pitcher. All right, so hopefully you've listened to this full. And if you have any questions, hit me up. Please listen to the one on how to be a good client because put these two podcasts together, and I think we have a really good win-win type situation. All right, thank you everybody for listening to today's show. I really appreciate it. I want to remind you to please hit automatic download. It really helps me and it helps the show. And now I'd like to thank Overhead Door of Daytona Beach, the area's premier garage door company. They have the best product and the best service. I personally vouch for Jeff and Zach Hawk, the owners. They are great, they're going to get you exactly what you need. So if you have any garage door needs, give them a shout at 386-222-3165. And now I'm very excited to add another sponsor. Procharge Liquid Protein Enhancer has joined the team. And let me tell you, they are a great product. I pop one after a workout. Each container has 40 grams of protein, so that's two servings. I take 20 grams after I work out. What's really cool about them is it's portable. You can throw them in your suitcase. You don't have to worry about mixing powders and making a mess. At least that's an issue I've had with some of the protein powders through the years. And you know what? They taste really, really good. So you can check them out on my website, fittothemax.net, or you can go right to them at Prochargeprotein.com.