Athleticism Unleashed: Empowering the General Population

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 266. Today I'm sitting down with coach Gerard Friedman and we are discussing how to help the general population with athleticism. 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 and 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 pushing play on another episode of the PT Profit Podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Simpson, and if this is the first time you're hanging out with me today, welcome. I'm super pumped that you're here. Today we have a very special guest coach, Gerard Friedman, who has over 15 years of experience with the athletic population and with athletic training. He is a certified athletic trainer, personal trainer, nationally board certified health and wellness coach. And in this episode he shares his journey from leaving the athletic population and transitioning from the NYC area to more of the cat skills area. He shares with us how he's been able to really use his expertise, his backgrounds to really building a a process for both the health coaching side as well as the training side for the general population. And how he has transitioned to building his own small business which is both in person and online. So without further ado, let's go ahead and roll that interview. What's up? Thank you so much for joining me on the show today. How are you doing?

I'm doing well, how are you?

I'm so good. Today's going to be such an awesome conversation, so I, I just really am so excited to dive in. So for those of you who have not been introduced to the pleasure of your work, can you please share with us a little bit about who you are, who you serve and how you got there?

Yeah, absolutely. My name is Gerard Friedman. I am a certified athletic trainer. I am also a personal trainer and a nationally board certified health and wellness coach. I spent my career as an athletic trainer, a full time athletic trainer working at the high school level, so close to 15 years working in youth sports and athletic trainers. Our primary job is to help athletes who are injured and manage the injury, rehabilitate the injury and get that athlete back onto the field as soon as we can. A big part of that job for me was also the prevention of injury aspect and Being prepared for sport, I think is one of the best prevention tools there. So I also worked with the healthy athletes that weren't injured in the weight room preseason preparing to play. That was all after school work. Because I worked in a high school, they were in class most of the day, which gave me the opportunity to also work with adults and general population in the beginning of the day. That's where personal training and health coaching came in for me. And I would, you know, just the kind of traditional gen pop goals that everybody kind of sees in New York City. Esthetics health comes second. And then just feeling good, moving good, and being able to kind of do the, the activities of daily living and a little beyond that is what people are looking to achieve there. I have since transitioned. I was living in Brooklyn and working in New Jersey with, with the kids. And I moved to upstate New York about a year ago.

Where is upstate?

Upstate? It's about, about three hours north of the city of Manhattan in a. It's in the Catskills, which is a big, like mountainous area in upstate New York. And I'm northern Catskills, so I'm near all the ski mountains, which is great because I'm a skier. And with that I'm done working in the high school level. I'm done working with student athletes for now at least, because I'm not commuting back to New Jersey every day. And I am now full time working with general population and adults and in kind of the same vein, getting stronger, losing weight, losing body fat, and also just trying to prepare for an older age and being capable of doing all the things that people want to do. And health coaching, of course, rides along with that. Big part of that.

Can't wait to dive in. So now Gerard and I have known each other from NYC days when we were both working in, you know, online but within, you know, similar companies. It was just very, it was just, it's such a. It was so fun to just see your face this morning because I feel like I have talked to you more than I have actually like talked to you in person. Like we've just emailed back and forth. So I'm in Westchester, so I also know that feeling of, you know, moving out of the cities. For me it was about kids, even though I was still commuting into the city. So I'm familiar with that. I also know the Catskills. Beautiful area. So something that I just would love some clarify clarification on in your context is you really differentiate a huge difference between like health coaching versus training. And so for me, and from my context, I feel like it's one in the same. So for you, what's the difference and how are you differentiating it for you and your clients?

So training is obviously very much the physical aspect of things. People look for a trainer and start working out and exercising to accomplish usually aesthetic related goals. And if it's also health related, that's obviously going to help them accomplish that as well. And people can lose weight with exercise. People can get healthier with exercise. Obviously we know that. However, it is kind of just one piece of the puzzle. There are lots of different things that we can do to accomplish goals. And usually speaking, exercise alone is only going to get you so far. And we need to incorporate other things outside of the gym that are going to kind of achieve, align with what your goals are and help you achieve that. And that's where health coaching comes in. I do agree that they kind of live together. However, not everybody is necessarily interested in making healthy lifestyle changes, developing new habits that are going to align. They kind of see exercise as the thing that they're willing to do right now. And sometimes you can only do one thing, you can only start one thing. And adding too many things can be a little overwhelming when people are not necessarily. You know, we can take weight loss as an example. Sometimes when people start working out, you actually see the scale go up. Things change a little bit in terms of appetite and how much you're eating. And with health coaching, we really look to focus on some of the habits people have outside of the gym in their normal day to day things that necessarily, that don't necessarily align with their goals and look to kind of reverse those, see what we can, what changes people are willing to make and then develop the goals that they need and then the habits that are going to align with those goals. And then the final bit is the how so using some habit science to kind of bring that into a routine that they can be comfortable with, be happy with and do their whole life, because it's not just a six month thing. And then we go back to normal. We're looking to establish kind of an identity with what we're doing here, make it part of life.

Yeah, so what's interesting to me is that you said that, you know, in your training component or when, when people come to you for training, they're really looking and pursuing aesthetic goals, you know, for the majority of the time. And so I'm curious, you know, I know that training is a component to that, but so is food and so is nutrition. So how do you navigate whether or not the, you know, where the conversation comes in when you have someone with an aesthetic goal and here to train versus, you know, health coaching? So for me, that's an example of something that I would think is potentially a blurred line. So I'm curious for you how you navigate that.

We just try to be upfront and transparent, tell them that, you know, obviously exercise is important and is one of the pieces to the puzzle, but it isn't the only one. And you can't necessarily outwork a bad diet per se. So, you know, with that I ask what habits are and kind of what people's, you know, typical day to day looks like and if they want to make some changes along that, along those lines, because not everybody does. And I don't want to force anything on people. I like to give people some more autonomy and let them come to their own decisions. And in my experience, usually when I'm the one pushing for it, I not only get a little push back, but it certainly doesn't get people to where they, they want to be when they're making the changes that they want to make. So I, I try to get people aware that there are other things to do, especially when it comes to nutrition. And if they are interested in, in approaching that conversation, it's not going to happen necessarily in the gym between sets. That's just kind of little things here and there. But we will schedule a formal health coaching session and with that, I don't prescribe, I don't write meal plans. I just look to collaborate with that person to figure out what the best route is for them, what's most realistic, what's most enjoyable and sustainable, and then take it from there.

Okay, got it. So now with your move and now moving full time, are you primarily online? Are you working in person or you're online now?

Well, a little bit of both, which is nice. I like to have the variety. I like being online, but I don't want to be in front of the computer all day. I also like working with people in person. So I have a number of online clients that, you know, once Covid started, that's where people transition to and a lot of them stayed there. And with that I transitioned my garage. I have a one car garage. It is now a gym. Yeah, the roller door from the garage is gone. It's like a legit, you could, you could probably live in there if you wanted to. And it's full on gym and that's where I train one on One or two on one.

That's cool. That's cool. Okay, so can you walk us through your process a little bit? Can you tell us a little bit like when someone decides that they're going to come and they're going to train with you, like, can you give me a. Like, how do you. What's the flow of your process when you bring someone in?

So after the intake and, and all that. So day one in the gym, I start with an assessment. I want to know where that person's at. I want to know what their joints are like, if one hip is moving a lot different than the other, if they are really lateralized to one side, or basically trying to determine where their center of gravity is. Oftentimes I see the center of gravity is forward and to the right, and I want to look to make a, create a little bit of a shift and get them a little more centered, get them moving a little better. And it really depends on the person how deep we need to go with those. Not everybody. I do work with people that have, say, back pain, for example. And with those people, I spend a little bit more time in like kind of that physical therapy therapy realm. And as an athletic trainer, I have a lot of experience with that. So it's, it's, it comes pretty natural. And with that kind of based on the assessment, based on the interventions that get people back to kind of more centered position, I will, it informs me as to kind of where what we need to bias in training, where we need to go with the training program. And if that person is going to be seeing me a couple times a week, I'm going to then write a program, six to eight weeks or so that reinforces the positive outcomes that we achieved with kind of the interventions or physical therapy activities that I prescribe. And then in addition to that, write out the rest of the program based on what they want to achieve also. So oftentimes the physical therapy exercises or activities have nothing to do with biceps. And if somebody wants their arms to look good, of course, like, we'll get that going as well. So it's kind of, it's how I personalize a program based on what people need as well as what they want.

So when with your six to eight programs that you typically write out what are some of the adaptations that you are hoping to achieve in that time, and then how do you evaluate whether or not a program needs to be changed or whether or not they just need to stick to the process?

Yeah, yeah, great question. I definitely want to give it some Time about four to six to eight weeks or so to allow for those adaptations. And it depends on who I'm working with. If it's somebody who's coming in because they have back pain, I want to see that pain decreased. We might look to identify certain things that they do. Often. If I'm working with somebody that sits in front of a computer and works in front of a computer all day, I want to know how much their pain is at the end of the day compared to when they first came in. And we might identify some metrics, either give it a number on a pain scale or just more of a subjective thing where they tell me they're feeling a lot better and they're not having a lot of pain. So tracking pain is definitely one of those things. And I like to use activities that they often do to use that, to do that. In addition to that for more of a performance side. I track everything on the spreadsheet that the program that I put together is on a spreadsheet. So I'm tracking the weight that they're using, I'm tracking the tempo, I'm tracking the reps and sets. And I also asked them get a little bit of a subjective, some subjective feedback afterwards how difficult it was, how fatiguing it is, how much of a maybe pump, if that's what we're going for in the muscle that they get. And with that feedback, we can kind of determine, okay, maybe we should stay where we're at. Maybe that person is capable of doing a little bit more. And sometimes people aren't very reliable with their reporting. So I can kind of see based on just kind of the naked eye where somebody's at. If somebody is really struggling towards the end, it's going to be pretty obvious if they say it's really hard, but they're doing it quickly with good form, and they seem pretty efficient. I know that we can probably push a little bit harder. And towards the end of that six to eight weeks, you know, I can compare week one to week eight and see the difference in people's. People's performance and them being able to see that also is very motivating and allows them to kind of want to push further and continue.

Now, how often are you having them report in?

It depends on the person. Most people train about two days a week and I hope to give them something and hope that they do it on their own as well at home. But with, with tracking, I. I just look at it every week and, and we take one big look at it together at the end of the session. And it's not a big sit down thing. It's while they're on the bike warming up, I'll kind of show them the spreadsheet and point out this and this and that and that and where we might want to improve, where there's some room for growth and where maybe we need to stay the same and allow things to get a little easier before we progress. And usually people agree, you know, it's, it's pretty straightforward, pretty easy to represent and, and see. And most times people are going to say, yeah, like that's, that's hard enough. I don't need to progress from there.

Yeah, love it. Okay. And so now what I'm sensing and what I hear from your answers is that you have a very high comfort level when it comes to talking about pain and measuring through pain. And so I'm curious, you know, from your perspective, how, what brought you to that level of comfort? And what would you say as someone who is potentially a new trainer, a new coach who's Navy, who has to navigate pain, where would you say that scope of practice line is? And how did you continue to push out your tolerance, for lack of a better word, with comfort around pain?

As an athletic trainer, my job was to deal with acute and chronic injuries and I spent about 15 years in the field. So with that it come, comes with comfort, it comes with competence and confidence. And I've seen a lot from like the smallest little things to dislocated knees. So just that wide spectrum allows me to be a lot more comfortable dealing with this. And at this point in the gym, things aren't acute, they're not as traumatic. There's more of just like chronic pain here and there. So having it, it is a little bit of a blurry line between a personal trainer and dealing with pain. As an athletic trainer, I have the professional capabilities of doing that, legally speaking. So as a personal trainer, there are some physical therapy models out there. I don't need to name any names, but I'm sure if you're in the business long enough, you know of a few that can provide a lot of direction when it comes to helping people with movement. And sometimes pain isn't movement related. As movement professionals, we have a bias here. And if somebody's coming in, you're going to assess their movement. If they have back pain, for example, and you assess trunk rotation and they have very little rotation to the right, but a lot to the left, you're just correcting movement there. If you can kind of get Them back to a point where they have an equal amount of rotation each way that could potentially improve their pain with rotation. So it isn't. You don't necessarily need to look at it from a pain perspective. And I would instead look at it from a movement perspective. If you see some glaring asymmetries in movement, there are a lot of physical therapy systems that teach you how to correct that, for lack of a better word, and just get people moving a lot more symmetrically. If that doesn't do the trick and pain is coming with training, it might be more of a loading problem or maybe a volume problem. Maybe they're doing something too heavy, they're doing too much volume. And with that high volume comes a breakdown in form and compensations in other areas. So it kind of depends where the pain is coming from. But I start by trying to do something about asymmetrical joints, asymmetrical movement in the spine. And usually in my experience, that plays a big role and does a lot for people with helping them move with more ease. And then from there you can write a training program to reinforce those changes.

That's great. So now I'm also curious, you know, your process and the way that you have things set up is very collaborative and it's very, you know, no wonder your clients are getting results. And I'm curious, you know, how do you help your clients, you know, stay consistent and adhere to the program because it's also can sometimes be very boring and mundane and, you know, how do you increase the buy in so that they can stay consistent? Consistent?

I mean, with training a lot of people, some people just train because it helps with accountability. So they have an appointment, they know if they cancel the appointment last second they're getting charged and that alone does it for them. With, with training, it's not really that difficult because people are kind of motivated to do it. They've reached out, they're the ones spending money, they get the appointments. And I try to keep them consistent with their time slots, just kind of reoccurring time slots every Tuesday, Thursday at 9 o', clock, for example. That alone kind of develops a habit and helps to just maintain their consistency there. With health coaching, it's a different story. It's kind of out of my hands. They're on their own, doing their own thing related to just general activity throughout the day, getting more steps or changing their nutrition things along those lines. So I am here if people need to reach out to me. However, I want people to develop some independence. And with that I tried to we set goals and we try to use the habit system as much as we can. Habit science to help to create the, the routines and the perspectives that align with those goals. And it's not easy. It's not just like, oh, habit science, boom, done. No problem. People spend a lot of years, decades, kind of developing habits and just turning them around, changing them like that is not necessarily an easy thing. It takes time and it takes a lot of motivation. So kind of going down the line of motivation, determining why they want to do what they want to do and just having them voice those things. Sometimes when you get something out of your head and you hear yourself say it, it's a little bit of a difference maker. And then like I said, having a plan and end goal and reverse engineering that, knowing day by day what we want to do week by week, and just trying to incorporate some sort of reward along the line, starting usually extrinsically and eventually getting to the point where the reward is intrinsic and people are feeling rewarded for doing those activities.

Okay, that's great. And, and much, much more energetically expensive. I feel like in terms of helping someone stay consistent. Yeah.

I mean, with, with habits, there's kind of a thread going where you can kind of just set it and forget it. Once you get the habit done, you don't have to think it's just automatic. But there, especially when habits are new, less than a year old, there's always has to be some sort of cognitive oversight. There always has to be the thought in the head that, hey, I still need to go do this. The brain consumes the most energy out of any other organ. So, yeah, it takes a lot of energy. It takes a lot of willpower. It can be exhausting. But like we said earlier, we don't want it to be overwhelming. Sometimes people have three different things they need to address. But right now we're just going to work on the most important, the most emotionally charging topic. So based on who that person is, based on what their experience is with changing habits and breaking and making new ones, it's going to vary a little bit. But ultimately habit science is really helpful. And goal setting is, is, is really what I look to use.

But you're primarily doing the athletic training now or the training component now, correct?

Personal training? Yes.

Yeah. Do you miss the health coaching?

So I still health coach. I do health coach with some of the clients that I work with. Oftentimes they health coach later on, if they see like, hey, yeah, I'm getting stronger, I have better endurance, I'm Able to do things with more ease. My back doesn't hurt as much, but I haven't lost any weight. It's like, okay, let's figure out why. Let's take an hour, sit down and then determine, you know, what's missing, what we need to add, what we need to modify or change. And oftentimes it takes people a little bit to get there, but if they see they're not really accomplishing what they want to accomplish, we can kind of take a seat and spend some time to figure that out.

Yeah, I love it. Okay, that's great. So now how would you say, you know, you know in your, you've been doing this for 15 years, right? So what are some of the things that you continue to do to reinvigorate the passion that you have for doing what it is that you continue to do?

Experimenting myself, I would say is probably the best answer to that. Learning different training methodologies and using myself as a guinea pig. So traditionally working with gen pop, especially maybe if they're only coming in two days a week, both days are very, you know, compound movement based. We're doing full body type of stuff because, you know, they're only training twice a week, so we can't do an upper body and a lower body split necessarily. And that's how I also trained pretty much my whole life. And just getting into new methodologies like bodybuilding type stuff, for example, and going really high rep, for example, which are things that I haven't necessarily done in the past. And just playing around with different things. Usually the exercises kind of remain the same. We're just doing them a little bit differently, pairing them a little bit differently, playing around with different rest periods and different loading strategies. And that's how I keep it fresh for myself. And with the experience that I personally gained from that, I am able to kind of utilize that with people that I work with. And I'm going to do it from more of a well rounded perspective. I'm not. There's no guessing games. I felt it myself. I've been doing it for six weeks. So we can start playing around and changing things up a little bit as well.

Love it. So now what was the transition for you from a professional, what was that transition like going from athletic performance and really changing for a really training for athletic performance to more of the, you know, everyday ex, like everyday gen pop, general population type of, of person? What would you say were some of the most challenging transitions and some things that actually surprised you in. In that transition?

The biggest thing that comes to mind. And I was doing both for many years. So it's not a big shift necessarily into a different world. But the biggest thing that comes to mind I think is effort and, and intensity. Working with healthy athletes, football players were mostly the people that were that came to the gym. So working with a group of 20, 20 kids that are in their teens that have their coach standing right there watching them, they put forth a lot of energy, there's a lot of intensity. They kind of bring the fire to the training program and it's also loud, there's music blaring, People are kind of talking smack. It's a fun environment. It's, it's the opposite of the classroom and I like that. I want kids to get that, that, that variety and it's a lot of fun coaching in that environment. Also very different than working with, you know, some 60 year old grandma, you know, who is working out for the first time in 25 years. Even, even people who are, you know, middle aged, it's not the same effort. There is a, it's a little conservative. Some people come with a very kind of conservative angle and I have to help them kind of develop confidence. Kind of know that putting forth effort and going a little hard is not necessarily going to hurt them. It's not necessarily going to be a bad thing. And just getting them to kind of come out of their shell, so to speak, and drop their barrier and just get a little looser and have a little more fun with it and not be, I don't want to say stiff necessarily. People aren't necessarily stiff theoretically, but just kind of creating that same playful environment. I want people to have fun. If they're having fun and, and they', well, they're probably going to come back. And I also look to gear things towards what they do well already. So I want them to feel like they're being successful. If you get somebody new and you give them a bunch of stuff that they're not so good at, they're going to struggle and might not want to come back very often with the kids, I, it didn't matter. They had to come back if they wanted to be on the team. So I wasn't as nice. I worked on the things that we were really bad at and didn't necessarily, you know, give them that confidence boost to make them walk out of the gym feeling like a million bucks. We always ended with some fun stuff. You know, perspective was a part of that. Everybody had fun, but I'm a little more, you know, quote unquote, nice to the clients I work with and, you know, give them workouts and things that they are going to be able to accomplish and do it well.

So you. That's great. And you brought something up that I'm. I'm just. I'm curious a little bit that I want to dig. I want to dig into and dig your. Dig into your perspective is that the. The pressure of the fear of injury. And so the reason why I'm bringing this up is because what comes to my mind, right, and at least from my context, in my experience, I feel like for people who are going after performance goals, there is a. There is more of a threshold. So, like, reach limits. Like, there. There's the. To me, there is like, almost like a less, like a sense of, you know, maybe there's less apprehension or fear, except the fact that, like, if no one wants to be Aaron Rodgers. Okay, so I'm.

I wouldn't mind being Aaron Rodgers. I'm just going to put that out there.

Oh, my gosh. I know. 24 minutes of the game and then, like, bust out, right? No one wants to pay 24 minutes of a game and then, like, like be out for a season, right? So there's that kind of fear limit there. But there are still, I think, and this is just my opinion, speculating, you know, more of a. Of a perpetuity or like, sense of it's okay if I get hurt versus a grandma who's like, no, if I get hurt, like, I'm. There's more fear here, right? So I'm kind of curious your perspective on how you navigate that. And I'll give you like, a perfect example. Like, I got hurt myself yesterday. I'm like, my back is, like, dying, but I'm okay. I'm going to be fine. And I have more of a mentality of like, oh, well, this is just normal. It's just par for the course and I'll be fine in a week. Right. So I'm curious how this goes. You know, how you guys, how you navigate this for your clients and how you help, you know, their sense of safety.

If you've been on a ski slope, you know, the most reckless people on the ski slope are the younger ones, the teenagers. So I think part of working with youth sports is that they haven't developed that sense of danger yet in their brain. They're more willing to take risks. They're more willing to just put it all out there. And you can see it on the ski slopes also, kids are just more reckless. They're more willing to kind of risk themselves, which is great to a certain degree. So that kind of comes out in the weight room when working with kids. And also the fact that they're working out with 19 other teammates that are all trying to work hard, they're kind of feeding off of each other and are willing to push themselves a little bit more because of that. It just. The environment breeds kind of that. That perspective. And I obviously don't get it to the point if somebody is just not doing something well and has really poor form, I'm probably going to change something about what. What it is they're doing. When it comes to teens, they probably just have too much weight on the bar. Everybody's just trying to go up and wait up and wait up and wait. And I usually had to dial them back in order to get some better quality from what they're doing with adults. If you've been working with Gen Pop for a while, you're going to see that most people, even if they don't come in with like some sort of chronic injury, they have some sort of ache and pain that they deal with, whether it's significant or not. Like, most people have something. So the fact that they're dealing with something, it's always kind of in the back of their mind. They don't want to make it worse. It's pro. They probably had a significant flare up at some point that they never want to go back to. So that can kind of, kind of breed that conservative. Conservative perspective, that conservative outlook. And we can start conservative if that's the case, especially if I know somebody is coming to see me because of some sort of back pain or, or a chronic pain that they're. That they're always dealing with. Just want to start conservative and pick exercises that I know are going to be safe, that they know that they're going to be able to do well with, that they start proving to themselves like, oh, all right, I did that. My back doesn't hurt. My quads are super smoked. I can see that was the goal of the exercise. And I don't have pain with it. And as they get stronger with all the fundamental things that we're doing as well as kind of those physical therapy activities, they should start having a decrease in pain week to week. And with that is just going to increase their confidence. So I try to kind of go along the lines of just being super conservative. And like I said, with. With the experience that they're getting, the confidence comes with it, the strength comes with it. And we're able to kind of open up the playbook and add more to their repertoire.

That's great. It's great. So good. So, you know, I want to be mindful of your time and respectful of your time. So I'm curious, you know, for. For a new coach who's potentially, you know, new to training, new to health coaching, you know, what would you say? What would be your number one piece of advice that you would want that you wish you had heard when you first started?

Wow, that's a tough question.

Maybe not. 1. Give me like your three biggest, like, I wish I knew this when I first.

So from a professional perspective, I would say try to develop a wide range of skills and abilities. You know, put yourself out there and learn different models. Having knowledge of this model and that model and the other model is just going to make you a more well rounded coach. Some things don't work for people and something else might. So having that knowledge and the skills is going to make you a better provider. The knowledge only takes you so far though. You can go to every course in the world. If you don't apply that, though, it doesn't always work as they say it will on paper. And you might have to think on the fly and be able to kind of change up what you're doing. So getting as many practice reps under your belt as you possibly can is super important. You can't necessarily practice with paying clients, not necessarily why they're there, unless like you really are upfront about it and they are their game and they're down. I had the pleasure of having freshmen at my disposal. So during like football practice, I can grab a freshman and pull them off to the side and just experiment with different things. And you know, the coach doesn't care. He's not getting into practice anyway. So that really gave me a leg up. Like I just came from this course this weekend course. I need to practice these things. And if you don't have freshmen available, you can work with friends, you can work with family, or you can work with clients, maybe separately, maybe for free for 15 minutes. Maybe they want to compensate you for that. Just knowing though that like this is something new I want to get better at. I'm not necessarily an expert, I'm not even that competent yet, but I want to get better. And oftentimes people are happy to be a guinea pig, especially if it's in, within, you know, a safe, safe space and they know that you're not going to injure them. People are happy to oblige. Knowing that you're trying to become a better person for them, a better provider. So that is definitely my my best professional advice. And from personal standpoint, I would say for me just, just take risks, be willing to go out of the conventional realm and and what you think is the way you should go. If there are opportunities that are presented to you, like take those opportunities. It might not be quote unquote part of your plan, but we don't really know what the. What the future holds. And this might be part of your plan and if you stop it and you put blockage up, you might be taking away from a really good opportunity and experience that you otherwise might not have had. So feel free to take some risks, put yourself out there and try to get as much experience as you possibly can and learn from as many different people as you possibly can.

So good. And staying open minded. Right. I think that these things I wish I could go back is I and I recognize it in myself and also like in other professionals is that the more dogmatic people tend to become is just is a sign of their novice and it's okay.

Yeah, yeah. And we all. Yeah, yeah, of course, of course. It's part of the learning process. Right. And then the more you learn, the more you realize that there are a number of different ways to achieve the same thing and you have to pick the one that best resonates with that person and just be like, yeah, I would say kind of the last thing is is just trying to develop as much self awareness as you possibly can. That way you can see what your biases are. You can see when you're going down a path that you want to kind of fit somebody trying to fit a square into a circle. We want to be aware of what our biases are, how those biases are reflected in our behavior. And the, the best way in my experience to become more self aware of what's going on in your mind is meditation, mindfulness. I it's like the superpower that it.

Is the super power.

Oh yeah. So like if coaches can get into that from an early stage, especially when you're younger and just stick with basic general mindfulness thing, it doesn't have to be spiritual or anything like that, just basic mindfulness. It really goes a long way to making you a better professional as well as just a better person.

Yes, yes, yes. So good. So good. Okay, so for those of you who want to hang out with you, Gerard, where should I send them? What are some of the best places? Where should I send them?

My website is Bellhouse Fitness dot com. I sometimes write blog posts. Not. Not that often. But when I do write them, they're pretty good. And I am also on Instagram at Bellhouse, Underscore Fitness, Underscore.

Love it. And I'll make sure they put all of that in the show notes. And thank you so much for pouring into me and to us today. I really appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you.

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