A Performer's Guide to Being Stage Ready with Jonathan Munoz

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 89. Today I'm sitting down with Jonathan Munoz and we're discussing everything about how to prepare the Broadway athlete. Are you ready? Let's get started. Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance in movement, package and position their products and services, and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast. What's up, coach? Thank you so much for pressing play on another episode of the PT Profit Podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Simpson, and if this is your first time pressing play, welcome. Thank you so much, so much. I'm super pumped to get this episode out to you. This is actually a recording that I did with Jonathan on one of my Facebook lives and we specifically recorded it on Facebook lives because I am a former performer myself and so this means I have a lot of performing artists that I know love, hang out with and I wanted to make sure that they got cutting edge fitness information because the truth of the matter is that when it comes to changing or training the performer and performer, I'm specifically talking about dancers, singers and actors. When we, when it comes to training the performers, there's so many misconceptions out there that a lot of performers live by, like going to dance classes, that's going to be enough, like teaching that skill, you know, going to those classes that are going to teach the skill acquisition people tend to think is enough for their fitness, not recognizing that they are actually athletes and they need to be training in their on season and off season as an athlete because that's what other athletes do who make a living, who with their, with their body, in terms of their movement, in terms of their capabilities. And so we talk a lot of that out that inside of this episode because just so many people don't understand the differences and they're focusing on the wrong things, which is what we talk about in this episode a lot. And by wrong things, I mean they just, they're just, and it's not their fault. We're taught as a, you know, the fitness industry teaches them to just run, just do this, this is just take these hiit classes and your things that you're doing for your fitness levels. It might actually be preventing from getting to where they want to be. So without further ado, let's roll this interview. Jonathan. I'M so excited that you're here with us today. So for those of you who have never met you, can you please share a little bit about who you are, who you serve and how you got there so well?

I'm Jonathan Munoz, so I am a founder and owner of Jonathan Munoz Performance. I've been doing this. I kind of went on. Jonathan Munoz performance was basically found about a year ago, a year. A little over a year. A year ago. But I've been working in the fitness realm for about now, 11 years. Started with coaching little kids, coaching soccer little kids and coaching them in, like, competitive level, getting them all the way up to, like, college training college players, college soccer players. Some of them that now I like currently, some of them are really weird. Some of them are now playing for, like, some D1 universities that I coached when they were like 10 years old. And little by little, I started getting older and older and older until a point that I started coaching adults. So I moved to New York City and I started coaching some adults for a while at. I used to work at one of the commercial. The big commercial gyms. So I did that for about four years until I realized that there was kind of a. There was a bit of a niche that I. Or a bit of group of people that I kept on kind of gravitating towards. And I kept on, like, working, always working with in some form of way. And that was a lot of singers or former dancers or current dancers or actors. And also at the same time, I like, I was. They started dating my current girlfriend and I went on a tour, one of her tours, she had a contract and I went to see her over there. And I. While I was there, I kind of just like, it dawned on me that I've been working with this group of people for now a while. I had always, like, had somebody that was in the performance world for like the past, like three to four years. And I realized how little information. While I was talking to some of them, I would actually, I went to like, work out at the gym that they had in the. In the cruise. And I happened to see a lot of her friends there that were dancers, they were working out. And I started seeing some of the things that we're doing and I just kind of approached them and I was like, hey, what are you doing? We talked a little about what their journey was and how they did it. And then I realized how little. How little information was out there for, I guess for a lot of the performance world dancers, some singers, all this kind of that General industry on this. And so now I've been kind of dedicating the past year and a half fully full on focusing on, I guess, working with performers.

Yeah, no, I love that. And I loved. I'm so excited to dive into some of the misconceptions, mostly because I have a conservatory background. And I remember when I was in, you know, musical theater school, I call it music theater camp. But when I was in. All right, we would have, you know, three hour trainings that were intensives on. On dancing and dancing, specifically the craft. And, you know, and I paused there for a second because even in my act, when I was acting, we had like movement foundations, but there was never any discord on really preparing the body to perform at the levels that are required for us. Required for us. So I'd love just kind of dive into a little bit about that.

Yeah, so what I've noticed, I mean, it's kind of. That's very, very true. Like, the more I like the more you dive in and the more you hear about a lot of the history behind the upbringing of the pedagogy aspect of dancers or performers in general, even like musical theater, right. You are exposed to all this different kind of. All these different aspects of dancing or different parts of like, you have exposed to jazz, you're exposed to tab. You're exposed to like, some ballet, some old. Like just all these different disciplines within the dance industry, within the musical theater industry. At the same time, you're also doing your craft. You're working on craft for singing, and then you're also working on these other things. Um, but what they don't never. They never really talk about is like, the level of stress that that imposes on your body and the level of like, dedication and demand that that takes on your body. It is kind of like this unspoken. Just taking. You just accepted for what it is. And there's this unspoken rule that you're going to be working like this all the time and you're going to be. Your body's going to be training and moving and going from here to there, from there to here, and then you're gonna have to like, wake up early the next day and repeat it and go over and again. And then after you three hours of this intensive that you say you have, then you have to go on your own and then practice again and keep doing it. So really you're talking about like five to six hours of like, you constantly putting your body at a. At a high level of like, performance, Right? Essentially. But the aspect of this is like what I've noticed, a lot of it is that it is taken like that it's taken for granted that, you know, you're overworked, you're over trained, you're just stressed. And on top of that, you're expected to like, just bring it on every single time without ever really being taught how to get there or how it'll come down or how to get your body to be resilient enough to do that consistently without it physically and mentally affecting you. So I think a lot of the biggest problem with that is that you're talking about kids, right? You go and you're talking about little kids growing up and just getting on their head in the idea that it's okay to get hurt, it's okay to work over through an injury, it's okay to like move through this. Because that's kind of part of the business where in reality, like the moment you get hurt, this is, it's your body. You need your body for dancing. You need your body even as a singer. If you are a musical actor and you're singing and you're also expected to dance some parts and say you get hurt in one of them, that's gonna affect how you move, that's gonna affect how you sing and all those kind of things. Like, it's, it's. If your body is the only tool you have and your body is the one that's gonna get you that job, that, that, I mean, that career and that professional path that you want to take, wouldn't you think that you would expect like the industry and yourself to just take care of that body? The same way you put in the amount of effort and the amount of like, stress you put it into it, you want to give up like reciprocal care and reciprocal attention in the other side of things. I think that's, that's a huge thing that people often, often miss.

Yeah. Because I feel, I feel like they, you know, we look at other athletes. Right. Or other people that are operating in, in that, at that high level, you know, and of that high level of physical and mental really stamina.

Right.

They're, they're training their craft in addition to training their body for their craft.

Right, Right. Yeah. I mean, this is coming also. Like I, when I was training, like the little, the girls that were in college, I mean, they would go off season, it was like they weren't, they weren't on the field. We're in playing skills on the field during the off season, we were training their body. It was a lot of conditioning. It's a lot of making sure your body is going to be ready and back to work on the craft that you need to work on, to work on the skills. So the off season and even during the time that you were playing in season, you are working constantly different levels, right? Different intensities. When you're not on stage or you're not on the field as professional athletes, you're not on the field, you're working on your body, on making sure your body's ready, making sure your body is strong, making sure your body works if there's any tweaks or anything like that, checking in with your body. And as you get closer and closer to those performance days of season, or in this case, when you get closer and closer to your show, then you start tweaking things around so that now you're no longer focusing the same way on your body. Now you're focusing on getting tweaking things so that your craft starts picking up a little bit more. And then this becomes now a support for your craft rather than a focus on just kind of reigniting the awareness of your body and rebuild. And now you're just building up, giving that backbone for the craft, right? So, yeah, totally. I mean, it's. It's also kind of thought, I think that people don't. Don't think of performers as these athletes. They just think. And I was like, oh, you're in the arts, but it's performing arts for a reason, right? It's perform. There's a performing aspect to it that often gets forgotten. It just gets piled in the arts and performing part of it gets off and just thrown out the window. And I think that's. That's the biggest. The biggest of all the, I guess, misses and disconnects between people.

I love that. Okay, so what are some of the things that dancers and people who train other performers, Right. What are some of the things that they need to be paying attention to and need to be focusing on in their off season? Especially now, as we're dealing with this, you know, global pandemic, and people are asking themselves, are we in an off season? How much longer are we in an off season? Things like that?

Well, right now we're. I mean, you would ask me. It's funny you asked me that question maybe three, four months ago. I would have been like, we are in, like, I have no idea. But you want to be in a place that you're kind of aiming. You're kind of constantly like listening to what they say, constantly listening to what's going to be. But like, three months ago you were in the. Or three or four months ago, you were in the stage where you're like, thinking, all right, if things are to return in September or something around there, then you want to start building your body back up into it. Which means if you've been sitting around for, like, I don't know, 12, 13 months, say you're doing a class here and there, you want to start ramping up little by little, back up to that. Back to that movement quantity. Like a quantity of movement that you were doing. Not so much the quality yet, because the quality is going to come as you get into it, but just giving you the capacity to move again, the capacity to last that long while you move in. So three or four months ago, you're talking about. Yeah, it takes about. I mean, in off season, it takes for somebody if you've been sitting out. There's a lot of data on this that says that you. It takes. I mean, and then elite. Elite. We're talking elite performance about 12, 8 to 12 weeks to, like, come back from. I think. I believe it was a month sitting down. It's just it. It takes a while. It takes longer to come back than it does than what you think. And if it takes that long to get your body from being completely sedentary, imagine what, like 12, a year of it sitting down with, like, very too little, like, none. Too little movement happening. You have to kind of give yourself an even bigger cushion. So right now, I've had the luxury of having some people that I've been training for a year now, and they're about to start rehearsals this. Actually this coming month, this coming week. And right now they feel. I mean, they feel amazing. They're like, oh, my God, I feel ready to go. It's great. It's that recognition again that, like, hey, I can actually dance again. They started hitting some of the rehearsals. They started preparing again. They started incorporating a lot more dance in there, in their. In there. We started incorporating a lot more dance in their routine. And what I keep getting back is, like, it's. It's nice being able to remember, like, oh, yeah, I am a dancer. I've been preparing myself for this again. And them hitting the floor in the stage and you'll be able to get a feel that release again. The confidence that they have in the fact that they can do it again is what. What drives that. Whereas I have other people that they still like, there is still that aspect of the mental aspect of things, right? And then and people disassociate a lot of times, like what your physical. Ask what your physical readiness has to do with your mental readiness. And if you're not confident enough mentally, your body is going to take a toll on that. So if you're coming in and you're having built up yourself in the past months to be able to get yourself back on stage, to be able to get yourself back on the studio or be surrounded by people and keep up with the choreo and keep up all that stuff, mentally, you're gonna get in your head. I mean, you get in your head and what happens is physically you start kind of just bugging down. And the same goes physically right now. Physically, if you look at yourself and you're like, oh, my God, this is not the body I had and this is not the movement I had 18, 19 months ago. Mentally now you're going to be even more anxious, even more into your head. So right now, I think it's just a moment where you're like, if things are supposed to. And expect to open up in September, we're talking about a month. If you haven't started, like, now is when you. I mean, you have to get yourself beyond just the fact of, like, taking class, class, class, class. Class is you have to take a big assessment and, like, look at your body and be like, where am I? How do I feel? Do I feel like my hips tight? Do I feel. Do I still have the hip extension I need? Do I still have the, like the, the movement through my thoracic that I need? How my shoulders feel? And how am I, how's it like? How is my internal addition, my external vision, how do I move from one. My transitions, how do I feel my transitions? And even just like certain positions that you normally add, can you hold those positions for as long as you could before any of you can't? Well, there's a big shocker. I mean, it's, it's. You're going to have to, like, start now. And it's, it's. And it's not going to be. It can't fall under. Just like going to your dance classes, you're going to have to put in a little bit extra work because you can run the risk of overworking again. And you're going back to, like, the same ideas that you keep breaking the industry over and over again, which is overworking over training, over stressing your body. And instead of starting in a better place, you started in the same place, but now a little bit more run down, worse than you were before.

Yeah. Essentially worse off.

Yeah. So. So right now, I mean, if you. Yeah, it's. It's. It's not so much like, how do we do it? It's more of like, where are you at? And then meet you where you are, and you have to incorporate. What is it that your body needs, aside from. Aside from your craft. Yeah, exactly.

Okay, so there's two places I want to go, especially as we're talking about performers, because I feel like there are two categories. You know, the singer, actor, or, you know, the actor or. And then you're. And people think of dancers even though in reality, you know, your movement's number one, like, whether you're a singer, actor, or not. So what would you say are the main differences that. In the way that you approach training for your singer, actors, versus your dancer, people who consider themselves dancers?

Well, that's. It's. It's. It's very. There's a lot of similarities. I mean, a lot of times. I mean, we as humans are built very similar in a way, ultimately. So there are some overlaps. However, the level of demand that someone that is an ensemble versus or someone that is in a dance company, in ballet, ABT or New York City Ballet or any other companies out there, Martha Graham, anything like that versus someone that's gonna be someone who's gonna be a principal. You're not gonna have your principal singer running around the stage, jumping, leaping, carrying, moving, like, all these things. Most of the times they're gonna be just. I mean, they're there, they're moving around. There'll be some minor dancing, but most of it is gonna be based on, like, them being able to create attention, that they need to be able to hit those notes, be able to get ready to be able to hit those. The notes that they need to do and have the stamina to be able to hold that and go over and over and over again and obviously perform that same quality, the same caliber, eight times a week. Right. So when you talk to a musical actress, it's mostly singer. You do want to create movement, but mostly if you want to focus a lot on, like, just make sure that they have that connection with their core, make sure that they don't have that. There's a connection with the pelvic floor and how they are able to kind of. Whether it's pushed down to create certain tension or pull up the pelvic floor to create the other. Another kind of tension where you kind of build everything together to hold the air, to control how much air they're going to use for certain notes also at the same time to be able to not just depend on the superficial part of your abdomen, your six pack or anything, but be able to kind of call on those deeper, deeper stabilizers, right? Call on those deeper part of your muscles of your abdomen to really hold you and stabilize you and keep you keep that tension internally throughout your whole core, like 360 degrees. So you're able to really, really have control of the positioning and have. Maintain that pressure that you need for all the different notes that you're gonna have. There's a lot of like. It's funny because singers and dancers both come from like a very tense, like up here on the upper back, you'll see them very much like here and then there's a lot of tension held there. So in the way that they do overlap is being able to kind of keep. Bring back some of the mobility on their upper back, be able to kind of open up some upper back through respiratory movements and respiratory, oh my God strategies. So be able to kind of bring back some breathing back to them and, and in a, in a health aspect, be able to kind of give them not the stress part of like performing, but be able to bring it back to a more health conscious parasympathetic state where they're able to kind of just relax, let their body recover, let the body come off of that big performing stage and then just get ready to like, just wind down and calm down. So for them, it becomes a lot of that. Right? But ultimately in be able to make sure that they, within their movement, they still move well, they still, some of them care a lot about aesthetics. If it's aesthetics that they chase, sure, we can get aesthetics part of it, but let's make sure that within the aesthetics that you're trying to get within your body, you're comfortable enough that you can still perform and you can give the performances they expect from you. Right. Ultimately, what you want is to be like, be able to use your boys the way you're supposed to use your voice. It doesn't matter ultimately whether you fit whatever size or whatever. I mean, your role is going to be your role. And as long as your body's performing the way it's supposed to perform, that's what we look for. That's for singers, actors.

I love that you're bringing that up though, because it's funny because I think that that's singers and actors. But a lot of dancers combat this to like the aesthetics component and the look, the, you know, the Pressures. Singers and actors, for sure, but the pressures of what is expected of them in terms of requiring to look a certain way.

Right.

How do you navigate for your dancers and singer actors, you know, the new one, the differences between that, Chasing the esthetic goals, but without sacrificing stamina.

Yeah, I mean, it's. Unfortunately, the industry is surrounded by like. Or it's navigated around basically, like, this whole thing is just. It's esthetics. Right. Aesthetics drives the industry, unfortunately. However, I think. Because lately there hasn't been a lot more. The opportunity to be more conscious about. Does that really, like, is that really a defining factor for your performance? I think a lot of people are. Now, there's a lot of pushing for. That's not. That's not what drives performance. That's not what drives great shows. That's not what drives you or defines your talent. However, they will still be a little bit. Because a role will look for a particular characteristics, and if that is the case, I mean, esthetics, part of it is you got to get one without losing the other. Right. You got to have a good balance. When it comes to dancers, when it comes to specific dancers, aesthetics is a huge, huge, huge, huge factor. Talking about, like, there's two. There's different kinds of bodies. When you're talking about dancer, more. More classical ballet people, you're looking at, like, very slim, very thin, very. Like, just. They want to. I mean, let's call them lean. Let's put for. For the lack of a better word, just lean actors, lean dancers, lean performers. Where the biggest fear is to not put muscle on. But, I mean, you're squatting literally the entire time, so it is. Yeah, there's this. There's this part of your body that is like, you're. You're taught to not. You're told not to be, like, big and not to, like, get muscle, all these things. But the things that require you, like, you got to have muscle to do the things that you got to do, and there will be some muscle in there. Now, how do you navigate? Like, it's. It's. It's. People are, like, afraid of bulking up and all this part of dancers, but what I found is that you're not. If you're. With the amount of movement that you have as a dancer and the amount of exercise you're putting on. On. On. On studio and on the classes and your rehearsals, the type of exercise, the amount of exercise you're going to be doing, the physical training that you do should not. It's not going to and should not be aimed to like build. You're not training like a bodybuilder. You're going to be training like a power lifter. You're going to be training to support those movements, not necessarily do the same movements because you don't need to do the movements over and over again. Like if I see a dancer that's working on arabesques and working on all these different things, I'm not going to have them do arabesques in the, in the gym because it just doesn't make any sense. I'm going to have them, instead of working on their extension, I'm going to have them working on, be able to move within, from extension to flexion, be able to access different parts of the body that they often do not, so that they can ultimately have control in the things that they have to do. Right. So aesthetics will come. But I think aesthetics when you're a dancer, when you're a singer, when you're a performer, look, genetics are. Genetics play a big, big part of it. And a lot of times what I see is like, I mean, you see all this trainers or all these coaches that have famous dancers, famous singers, like actors and everything, and then, and then you see like they look great. Well, yeah, I mean, it's easy to turn a great looking or someone that already looks great and turn them into looking again great. That's the theory. Like you take a professional dancer from ABT and they come and trim with you. If you screw that up and now all of a sudden they gain like 15 pounds, well then you. I mean, I don't know how that happens. I don't know how you do that when they already look. I mean, you don't have to. Yeah, your goal is not to make them bigger. Your goal is to make them resilient. So aesthetics will come in through what they do, the amount of movement, their nutrition, all the stuff that they do. What we work on is making sure that their joints, that their hips move well, making sure that their shoulder, shoulder blades are moving, making sure that their core works. All those kinds of things will balance out and ultimately the whole picture brings that, that aesthetic that they're looking for. Right. Um, but yeah, I mean, aesthetics, I try to stay away as much as possible from driving aesthetics and let the aesthetics come as a secondary thing within it. Um, just because I find it that they feel much, much more empowered when they realize that, oh my God, I'm dancing and I'm doing what I'm doing and I'm still Performing well. And I can hit the same thing that I was hitting, but now I do it in a way that I feel much more conscious about how my body's moving and how I'm achieving that, rather than like, oh, my God, I look amazing, but my hip hurts, My hamstring school, my groin hurts, my ankle is like tweaky. All these things. But look at how great I look.

Yeah. Performance always will win. So I'm curious, right? You know, this is great. Thank you. You've already given us so much, so many different things to think about. And I've got some movement specific questions that I want to get into because you kind of did mention it. But I'm just curious, you know, what are some of the things that dancers and performers miss or think that, you know, they need to be doing? Like, what should they be focused on in terms of their strength training, in terms of their fitness, in terms of working out that, that you feel like they miss right now?

Right now? I mean, I think I see a lot of people going into just driving their, their workouts based on, based on just like the typical, like sweat or like, let's just call it the sweat culture, right? They'll just go in and just get as much done as possible. Work out one, two, three times, four times a week. I mean, a week, a day. I've had conversations with people that they just like add on workouts and workouts or workouts. Like they'll do three workouts a day. It's like sometimes it's, it's. I mean, you're at this point, you're giving your body so much, so much overtraining that you're missing the point of what the focus is for your body and what your body needs, because you're just giving it. You're over. You're just like pouring water and water and water. But like there's a big hole on the side of the tub and you just keep pouring water into it. So what you really need to do, what a lot of them have to focus on right now, what I've noticed really is, is really kind of strengthening this a lot. For example, dancers, that true extension, that idea that their extension, I mean, they go into hyperextension a lot and they're incredibly flexible and just have this gift and this way of moving that is just like the ability to reach, to do some crazy, crazy movements through their spine, through the lower back, through all these things and still. And still come back and be just like nothing happened. I mean, I wish I could do that. A lot of times what happens is that they miss that you have them just kind of do a regular movement that has. Requires just normal extension or just normal internal rotation and they can't achieve that. Right. So if you're getting all these movements in and you're getting this incredible flexibility working and you're stretching and all that, but you still get in them through compensations that you've created over, over time, you're not really preparing and you're not really getting your body or giving your body the, the variability or the ability to be able to move within a. Let's call it within, let's within a spectrum that is necessary for you to be able to achieve those movements without hurting yourself. Right. It's. It's kind of like little by little just carving out at something and just chiseling out of it. And then eventually you're going to run out of things like carving out and it just kind of. There's going to be nothing left versus giving the ability to be able to have just you chisel something out, but at the same time you give it enough time to like rotate a little bit more and now you have somewhere else to choose a lot instead of choosing the same thing over and over and over and over again. So I think for the answers when it comes to it, it's not so much working at achieving that extension or working on the same things you'll be doing on studio, but it's actually given them the opposite. Can you give them the ability to stack themselves, the ability to use their core to find the public floor? Again, same thing similar to singers, be able to use a public floor and find their core as they move through some of their typical positions that they're going to go through. Looking at landing, can you land properly and have the stability on your body, on your hips, on your knee, on your, like your foot as you land and the landing mechanics that you need so that you can repeat that over and over and over and over again without it affecting as it travels through your body. Right. So that's, that's one of the things for male dancers specifically. I think there's a lot of things happening where like they never took the time to learn how to lift. Right now you're talking about lifting something, lifting somebody. Half the time when I see male dancers or male performers left someone is. They're lifting and you see this huge. All of it just kind of all the way, just coming down into like the lower back and then you hear about, oh my God, I have lower back Problems as a male dancer, or you have wrist problems, or you have shoulder problems. A lot of that comes from the fact that they never took the time to properly strengthen the right way to lift, to move the right way for your shoulder blade to move within your body, the right way for you to be able to engage the part of your deeper abdominals again as you lift somebody so that you're not just putting all the stress on your back. There are very, very much specifics on that sense that we can get a lot more into. But I think in general, when you're talking about often missed singers, musical actors and sing and dancers, is that they take big brushstrokes over everything, right? So you'll go to your group fitness classes and a lot of those are designed for big brushstrokes. So you'll just take exercises that are generalized and just like paint over everything. But you miss the cracks. And I think them focusing right now on those cracks. So taking that smaller paintbrush and really focusing, honing down on specifics for them, specific movements that are particular to them, feeling the right things, moving the right way, reconnecting with some of the deeper things that they have in their core is what's going to benefit them the most right now. Rather than going for, I mean, going for your, your typical, like your berries or your other group fitness classes or your just big sweat culture, going for it. You know what I mean?

Yeah, I do for sure. So this is, this is a great segue into that, you know, what are, you know, you did mention some of the things that you focus on, like pelvic, your pelvic floor and core. Like, what are some of the, the, you know, strength training components that you focus on and think that dancers and performers really need to focus on and.

Primarily pay attention to landing mechanics and be able to, like, for danza, like landing mechanics is a huge, huge one. So a lot of the things that I focus on when I work with them initially is reconnecting them with the hamstrings, reconnecting them with their pelvic movement, like their, their hip mobility and how that starts to relate with all the other movements that they have to do. So a lot of times they get stuck in a certain position and they don't recognize that there is another extreme and they can't find what a posterior tilt is or true posterior tilt. They get stuck in anterior tilt half the time. And the same goes with singers, right? So I think the first thing that I like to do with, with a lot of singers, dancers, is reconnect them and show them what their hamstring is like, reconnect them with their use of their deeper abdominals. And then from there, start working in how they're able to take those, use those as they're using, as they're doing a lot of this, the daily or the more natural movements that they tend to do, which are all around landing, jumping, leaping, left in. So if we're able to go back and lay down a more foundational, a more solid foundation in those particular parts of their body, you'll see how, like, they tend to see it naturally. A lot of other movements that before we're hurting or that before they cause certain pain or certain aggravation, tend to kind of just dissipate a little bit more. And then they find also that as they move from one exercise or one movement to another, as they start to transition and put movements together, their awareness of how they move or how they get that rotation, how they get like those spins or as they move from one ground, and then they switch, and then they go from high to low, and then from low again, they have they on the ground, and then they have to, like, immediately lift and then explode off the ground to get back up. All those explosive movements, all those rotation movements, they come from your core, they come from your legs, they come from your hips. They come from all these things that ultimately are the things that I tend to focus a little more, and they come back down to three things. And it's like, I love. I want to give you hamstrings, I want to give you hip mobility, I want to give you core, those three things. If I can give you those three things, it just corrects so much immediately right off the top, right off the bat.

I love that. So now, what do you mean specifically, like, when you talk about the core? Because I feel like most performers are like, you mean my abs?

Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, and this. I think abs. Yeah, abs are great. Abs are pretty. We all want to haves, especially right now in the summer. But what I mean by core and I mean it's. It's. I really do mean your deeper, deeper layers. So we want to look at your core, and we want to see it as like this giant, this belt that goes all around your body. Core is not going to be just those six packs, eight packs that you see going around in the beach or anything you see. It's really deeper. Goes deeper. Deeper than that. And a lot of times, performers tend to miss how to find those. Tend to miss what. What they actually entail and if you can't find or create the internal pressure with those deeper abdominals that wrap around your body, that wrap around like your obliques, your, the front even around all the way, goes all the way around to your back, all those deeper deep obliques that connect also to your pelvic floor and they connect to your diaphragm, all that, that core, that tension that you can create, all those things if you can't find, find them, if you don't strengthen them, what's going to happen is other parts of your body are going to start compensating for that, are going to start making, are going to start being recruited to make up for the lack of internal pressure you have, for the lack of stability you have. That's what you have a lot of times where a lot of singers tend to kind of like lean forward as they go through their performances, right? You have your abs start getting tired, so now you start leaning forward a little bit more because you have to like rest or you kind of create some kind of tension by just leaning it forward. But then now you're trying to express your from other places instead of being able to reach from within, being able to find that internal, that knot and use that. So, yeah, it's great to have abs and it's great to have six packs and all that. Unfortunately, not everybody can have six packs. That's the real, that's the truth. You can have people that are like single digits body fat percentage and they do not have abs, they don't have six packs, they're in the single digits. So it's, it's like. But do they have great strength and they're able to kind of hold notes for long and they're able to like hold themselves and then find a diaphragm? Yeah, they can. And that ultimately benefits them more than having those pretty muscles in the, in the abdomen, which by the way, it's going to be half the time covered. So there's that.

Yeah, that's true. That's true. Okay, so when you are, you know, first, you know, working with a client or working with a performer, specific client, like what would you say, you know, what's your assessment process that you feel like sets you apart from, you know, just general fitness?

Well, it all starts, I mean, with the. I like to really kind of find out where they're coming from. And by that and where they're going, obviously by that, I mean, it's like, yeah, you're a performer and you have the background of like, well, just find out what craft you are, right? Depending on your craft, depending whether you're a singer, dancer, whatever you are, that will dictate a little bit already of how we approach certain, certain exercises, certain principles. Even though the principles of my training will always remain the same, which is more dictate, it's more of what aspect of that principle, how that principle gets applied into the training. So once I find out a little bit more like their background, with their history with exercise, their history with nutrition, their history with. Within their industry, how they move and where they want to go, I start to look at. Sorry, I still look at how they move. So I look, yeah, what's the background? But then we look at where is it? What is your timeline ultimately? Are you right now, are you in between shows? Are you, is your timeline that you're preparing for a, for a show that's coming up? Or are you just preparing for auditions or are you in the middle of a show, are you in rehearsals? Different aspects, different stages of the performance process will require different approaches. So you're not going to train somebody that's in between shows the same as you would someone that is already, that is currently in a show. Just like you wouldn't train somebody that has just come off a show the same way that you would train somebody that is getting ready for auditions. There's different intensities, different levels, different things that you want to look at. Once more recovery, once more just maintenance, once more building up. The other one is just being able to give your body the. I guess the more the. The resilience and then the becomes more of just like giving your body the opposite because you're performing before and performing, you want to give your body a little bit more of a endurance and rest and recovery as you move more like actively moving through it. So we learned, I learned about that. I learned the aspect. And then from there we go into like, how do you move? What is it that you're doing? And if you have any injuries, if you do have injuries, then we have to like, that plays a big factor. But otherwise, are you often you a concert dancer? Are you a commercial dancer in theater or are you in a company? Because that's going to also dictate different kind of things. So there's a lot of little minute details that go into it. And then we create a movement assessment. We go through a movement assessment for them where I just have to look at whether they have extension, their internal rotation, external rotation, how their shoulders move, if they're stuck in certain positions, how they're breathing. And obviously, again, going back to the breathing pattern, are they able to kind of feel and find their. Their abdomen, their deeper core? If they're able to. Like, that's such a minor, tiny detail. You would think, oh, yeah, I get this. But you'd be surprised at how many people you train that don't understand what finding your pelvic floor by finding your diaphragm movement, breathing to your diaphragm, and using that actual movement to actually efficiently breathe a full breath. It's just like, unknown to a lot of people. They think they're doing it, and then you show them, like, oh, I've never. Never felt that before. What is that? So those little things tend to apply into, like, the process. And then we come up with the program, essentially. That's.

Yeah, it's so interesting. I want to be mindful of your time, so I'll probably, you know, this. Just a couple more questions, I swear. But you know, when it's interesting to me because do you ever run into that feeling or run into those people who are, you know, actors, singers, dancers, specifically, and you're like, all right, let's talk about breathing and core. They're like, no, no, no, I already, like, I know how to breathe. Like, do you ever come up that. Because I'll tell you what. For me, I learned how to breathe when I. From strength training. And I always say to myself, or I often have said to myself, if I knew then what I know now, I know I would be a different performer.

I've said that so many times to myself, too, but same thing. As a former soccer player, I was like, oh, my God, if I had known then what I know now, I would have changed the world as a soccer player. But no, I do. I get some people that. They look at me like, what does this have to do anything with anything. I think if what's the. Who are the easiest one to kind of just relate to in terms of this are singers, right? Music, a lot of times musical actors, because they learn and they hear so much about breathing and singing and how that kind of relates talking to them about breathing patterns within an exercise or how to start utilizing how you breathe within a particular. Just a similar. Like a regular exercise that you would have done, like a regular press or regular lunge. Once you start giving them that aspect, they're able to sink it much quicker and much easier than when I give sometimes a dancer just that aspect. But that's not to say that is that they don't get it. They actually get it pretty quickly, but it's until they actually do it that they get, oh, now I see what this is doing. Oh, now I understand, like, why we focus a little bit on this kind of this particular breathing pattern as I do this particular exercise. Um, so I do get. I've gotten a few people. They're like, eh, abs. Or I want abs. Like, they'll ask me specifically that they want, like, ab exercises and they'll use average size, like, crunches and things that. And it's. After they do a couple of sessions with me, they'll be like, they'll realize that I don't have them do any, like, crunches, but they leave and they're like, I felt. I felt my. I felt my internal. Like, I felt my core work. And the next day I was like, feeling a little bit of this. Yeah, because we're working your abs. Just because we're not doing crunches doesn't mean we're not working your abs by asking you to breathe in particular ways or asking you to, like, brace and create some brace through your core. All those kinds of things. It's a bit. Sometimes, like switching or turning up a switch or you're switching a little bit of mindset on some of them. But once they get it, it's like, wow, oh, my God. What is this? I had this. Yeah. Kind of thing. Yeah.

Really does. It really does change the game. Okay, cool. So I definitely want to be mindful of your time. So those of my performing friends, which I have a million of you, so, you know, they want to learn more about, you know, how to really maximize their on season and off season where. And they want to, like, just go connect with you more. Like, where's the best place for me to send them to you?

Well, you can always find me on Instagram. There is. It's under Jonathan Munoz performance. Munoz is M U N O Z. Just in case people are like, Munoz who? And then there's also. I do have a Facebook group called Broadway Athletes. You can get that also through the. If you go to Jonathan Munoz performance, there should be. You'll be able to see that there is a group for that. For Broadway Athletes. Or you can just basically DM and be like, hey, I'm interested in this. I can send you an invite. Boom, you're back. And it's a private group of a lot of people right now. We're over things. Over. Oh, my God, I have no idea. Maybe over three dozen, four dozen. Close to over four dozen. Something like that. People that are there, that are Just kind of performers. They're all singer dancers, different backgrounds. And what I'll do is I'll post here and there things about therefore movement. I'll do how to's break down an exercise for them that is particular to them. Or I'll sometimes even post. If I hear from auditions or I hear of some stories that are coming in about shows opening up, I'll put some stuff in there. It's just kind of like a little resource for people to kind of go to. And then the last thing is. Well, actually just that's it. I have those two. That's the, those are the two easiest ones to find me on for, for anybody that's interested.

That's so cool. You also have that free week.

I do have that free week. So right now I do have kind of this have you performance. You'll be able to get a 37 day week if you want to kind of see what training, whatever kind of training that I kind of focus on a little bit that's not so much based on, on, on. On your burpees and everything like that, but it's more of a little bit more honing down on certain details about your breathing, certain details about pelvic floor, certain details about just the internal like your hamstrings and how all these things be able to strengthen your hamstring, be able to strengthen your core and how you can apply those into your movement. That seven week template that I have out, you can grab it there. Jonathan's performance there'll be under the programs tab you'll find that it says get your seven week template. It's a quick snippet but it's a pretty good idea as to how you can start connecting these movements that are outside of the stage back into your regular movements and strengthen some of the core and start be able to see like be able to find those connections back again.

Okay, cool. So I've linked that up for those of you who are watching live and if you're catching the podcast then I'll make sure that all that is linked up in the show. So thank you so much for hanging out with us today.

Thank you Beverly.

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