"Best Of" Series - Optimize Information Overload for Fitness Professionals

You're listening to the PT Proffitt podcast, episode number 28. Today we are honoring our best of series episode number three with Dr. Michelle Boland, all about optimizing your performance and education. 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 fit 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?

Beverly Simpson here. And thank you so much much for joining me for another episode of the PT Profit Podcast. I'm your host and today we are sharing the episode with Dr. Michelle Volen. This is our best of series where those of you who are new to the podcast, you get a chance to listen to some of our latest, greatest and most downloaded episodes. And today for our science episode, we are sharing Dr. Michelle Boland's interview that we did all about how to optimize our education and how to implement our education inside of our business. And what I love about this episode is she really talks about how to hone in your critical thinking skills, which is really important. She's going to dive into that in a training that's coming up early in October all about how to become a principle based coach and how you can find your own coaching identity and really use your critical thinking skills, especially as you dive into learning more information and how you can implement these processes that you learn, but more importantly how you can make them your own. So of course we will include that free masterclass inside of the show notes, so be sure to check that out and register and let us know what you think of this episode. And without further ado, let's go ahead.

And roll that interview.

Super excited to have a very special guest, Dr. Michelle Boland here who is going to be talking to us all about how we can make the most out of our continuing education as professionals. Coaches, trainers, clinicians, and I'm so excited to have her here. Dr. Michelle, thank you so much for joining me today.

Thanks for having me on. I'm super excited. Definitely going to be a full time listener on this.

Oh, I'm so excited to hear that doctor. So this is I said right episode number three. So I'm really excited. Right before we hit record she says to me, you're more nervous than me. And it's totally true. I am all right, So I want to just dive in, if you wouldn't mind. Could you just share with us, tell us a little bit about who you are, your history, how you got to being so smart, and just share a little bit with us about your story.

Yeah, sure. So I was a collegiate level athlete. I was working towards a degree in nutrition, and I went through an experience that everyone should have of experiencing that profession and realizing that I absolutely had no desire to continue with it. I worked underneath a dietitian at a hospital, and I just. I was like, I can't do this. So I decided to go basically the physical training route because I was just absolutely obsessed with the process of. From when I tore my ACL in high school to getting on the college field again. And so I decided to go to Springfield College, where I went for a master's in strength conditioning and then a doctorate in exercise physiology. And then I ended up at a collegiate, collegiate D1 institution to be a head strain conditioning coach. Absolutely loved it. Loved. Working with athletes and especially that age group was phenomenal. And that's where I kind of really dived into kind of the hard skills. So, you know, working on learning more about programming, coaching, biomechanics, exercise physiology, and the practice setting instead of in a laboratory. And then I kind of had to transition into, get better at, like, soft skills. When I went into the private sector, I became the director of education at a private facility. And now I currently own my own business called Michelle Boland Training. I got to work on that name. It's not very original. And that's where I really had to kind of transition my learning from. From the hard skills to the soft skills, and then also into marketing and business in terms of, okay, I have what I believe in with training, how I'm gonna coach people, but how can I convey that message to actually get clients? That was a difficult transition for me.

So what caused you to leave your job essentially, and start your own practice? Or is that even the right word? Start your own, you know, your own business, your own coaching program?

Yeah, I guess I was working at a facility that I didn't truly believe in. I didn't like working for someone else's, like, ideals or trying to make me something that I wasn't or wasn't, allowing me to be the type of trainer or professional that I wanted to be. I'm not a person who's going to kind of settle for something that I'm not truly enjoying that I found myself. I think there was quote by, like, Bill Gates, God I could totally be butchering this. It's like if you go to work for three days in a row and dread it, then you need to make like a change. It's something along those lines. But I was doing that every day for weeks. You know, it wasn't having to do with my clients, it was just having to do with like the environment and like the facility that I was currently at. I knew that I had the motivation and huge drive that I could do this on my own and I wouldn't be limiting. So the facility that I was at, you could only offer one flat rate for a 60 minute session. That's the only thing that you are allowed to present to a client. And for me, I felt like I was losing a lot of clients, wasn't able to like retain clients or offer them other services that they could benefit from. Such as currently I have like hybrid models. So like you could do remote training and maybe you can come see me a couple times a month in person and I could offer, you know, educational resources and I can offer full like remote coaching packages. So that's something that I really wanted to do and so I kind of just went all in and did it.

I think that's awesome. And I think, you know, that's one of the things as a fitness manager in a big box gym, you know, we treat people, we're not trying, you know, and we need to make our program recommendations based on their needs. And yet we're forced to be, you know, cookie cutter. This is what we're selling this. And it becomes, you know, this person is a dollar sign and less about the actually solving the problem of the person.

100%. It goes both ways too. It negatively affects the client and their goals and then it also negatively affects the employee trainer because it becomes volume based service. So you can only make the income that you want to and the hours that you want to based on like how many sessions you can get in a day. Which also isn't healthy for the employee.

Oh absolutely. They start to change, they start to trade dollar for hour and they start to think in that way as opposed to actually, you know, taking the time to assess an actual body and goals and needs and think of them as a person. 100%.

Exactly. And it can negative effect like your interactions with, you know, if you're kind of going down a bad path and it comes down to a decision of do you want to create a profession based around your lifestyle goals or like the opposite, are you just having a profession that's dictating how you want to, like how you're going to live your life. And I think that's a decision that every, every professional needs to make.

Right? I think. And there's two things that I do want to ask you based on that, but first, when you say that you worked with athletes, did you work with like a specific, was there a specific sport that you worked on?

Yeah, so when I worked in the collegiate setting, I was kind of like known as like the hockey person. I just absolutely fell in love with like the hockey culture, their desire for off ice training. And the college that I was at was consistently in the top five nationally ranked teams in the country. And there was athletes on that team from all over the world on their national teams, you know, France, Sweden, things like that. And you don't, you don't have to motivate people at that level. And you learn deep, deep practical experience through interactions and coaching at that level. So that's what I absolutely love to do. Those were a great group of people. I also worked with the men's hockey team and then I was also responsible for the women's rowing team and the field hockey team as my primary sports.

Oh, that's cool. So now that you're on your own, do you still primarily work with athletes at that level? Who do you primarily work with now?

So I probably work actually kind of, that was like, kind of like the middle realm, like 18 to 22 year olds. Now I kind of work with like the polar opposites of like, I still stay in contact with those players and I still write for a hockey website. And my goal is to work eventually again with a collegiate level ice hockey team, whether that's like part time or anything like that, to stay in that capacity. Right now I work primarily, my general population clients are 50 or older or like 15 and younger. So right now I actually work with two middle school and high school level basketball players who are prospects at the collegiate level. So kind of preparing them for the collegiate setting because I kind of know what's going to be expected of them, what they're going to need to prepare for. That's cool.

And you also work with trainers, you also, who also are similar. Many are similar to, you know, you don't have to motivate them because typically they are hungry to learn to get better. So you do train and teach a lot of coaches to be better coaches?

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for bringing that up. Yeah. A lot of my remote training clients are physical therapists or fellow trainers. And those are some of my favorite conversations to have because, you know, we actually talk about what's behind a program and what my thought process is, and they want to be pretty involved in that. Those are probably definitely some of my favorite kind of interactions with people.

So going back to the two questions that I wanted to ask, since we were talking about breaking away from your typical gym setting into building your own business, I think two things happen. Which is, which is a perfect lead into what we're going to talk about today, which is that on the one hand, when you are in that gym setting, it gets easy to kind of let go of that continued education because there's such a push essentially to look at a person as a dollar sign. You know, how many hours can I train you as opposed to, you know, let me actually help and serve this person and get them out of pain and get them moving better. And so I think that there is a. There isn't enough of a stance on continued education. So they, people tend to not care about it. So how are the, you know, that's one component that I think that we can address. But then also at the same time, you've got people moving out of the gym and then they just don't know where to go. Like, who do you turn to? Because at least when you're in that gym setting, you've got each other to talk to and to learn from, you know. So how does one navigate the importance of continuing to sharpen the saw, especially given that things change all the time?

That's a great question. So there's multiple factors to that. So one of the things is it depends on the facility. You know, some people say at least you have other trainers you can kind of bounce ideas off. Well, if it's a volume based kind of facility, how much interaction are you actually having with other trainers when you're just working, you know, eight sessions in a row or 10 sessions in a row, and you have to rush back to kind of take care of like your personal responsibilities. I think, you know, one of the goals that people should have is interview the facility that you're going to work at just as much as they're interviewing you in relation to what kind of continuing education benefits are they giving you? Is that a part of the employee package? Do they provide maybe, you know, a budget around being able to support you going out to seminars and courses? Are they giving you education as a staff? Are they prioritizing education within their facility? I think that's probably like the biggest key. You know, those conversations between fellow trainers are going to be so important. I Think there's very high value for that. And then yeah, the problem with when you go off on your own, where you getting kind of trying to continue that I think, you know, if you're off on your own, you're a business and you should allocate resources towards growing your business. One of that, one of that component is education. So do you have a continuing education budget that you're giving to yourself? So setting aside money to maybe go to at least one or two courses a year. And it's not just about a course acquiring information. Can you actually take that information and make it useful? Fill in gaps of your knowledge, understanding and business? A big part of that too is knowing what to learn. So if you're going off on your own, your education might transition to actually how to portray the message, marketing business tactics. And that's really focused on reaching out and establishing a network. So you're not just kind of an isolated person, you have people to reach out to, you know who to go to for resources. So it's kind of just transitioning into maybe being spoon fed information through kind of when you're surrounded by other people to actually being able to identify where you need to improve your understanding and going out and being able to do that successfully.

I love that you brought that up, that whole idea of getting a network and especially because you know the people that I work with, they tend to be the really smart trainers. And I feel like we get into this coach's curse where we feel like, you know, we always come from this, there's more to learn, there's a beginner's mindset and so, so many, which is such a gift. But then so many people, they just don't go after or they don't really recognize how much value that they can bring to their current clients or the people that they are trying to attract into their, into their business. So having a network is just so, so important.

Absolutely. And it really is working backwards from something. So you kind of just mentioned like you know the people who you want to work with. Well, can you identify the people who you want to attract or are you just trying to throw out the this net to kind of get everyone and anyone you can because your message won't be clear and obviously I'm preaching to the choir right now. You have to know the end game to be able to change your personality, build relationships and communicate based off that end goal.

Yeah. And something else that you said I think is so important that I just want to reiterate which is the fact that you said that. Do you even know what you want to continue to study? What are you basing that information or that next certification or that next seminar on? Are you basing it on your clients and trying to identify what it is they're struggling with? So you want to learn more about it, or are you just doing that because that's what you've been told you need to do, or you're just trying to tick off a box 100%.

It's like identifying gaps you need to fill in your understanding related to, you know, what's. What am I having? Where am I failing with clients? Where am I having trouble with clients? What do you think is going to be the best intervention to be able to get a better understanding of, to address? And then it's also being able to be okay with stepping away from the hard skills. So, for example, like, you know, it's okay not to be studying and learning things new about, like, program design and exercise selection and all that stuff? Yeah, that stuff's important, but you probably are at the point where you already know enough. It's developing maybe the soft skills of how to communicate better, how to use certain words and language with clients, how to, you know, step away and take time to learn about marketing and business and not necessarily the, like, craft of, like, coaching and programming and all that.

So what would you say is the, you know, number one or not? Maybe not number one, but like the top struggles that you have seen in your practice, in your business with trainers who are navigating, with navigating this new, you know, building their business, essentially, whether it's in the gym or out.

I think it's kind of that word navigation is like the inability to navigate. I've seen a lot of trainers, and I think the biggest struggle that trainers have is this is constant consumption of information, bragging about how many seminars and things they go to, but then they actually have no idea how to apply and consolidate that information. Like, where does that information fit in? How can you actually implement it into the setting that you're in? I think that's where a huge gap comes in with education.

Oh, that's so good. So what you're saying is that you see them studying because they care about it, but then they can't implement it.

Yeah, exactly. They'll go to, you know, weekend courses consistently, whether it's they're paying for or their employee, but then they come back and they're not able to explain their biggest takeaways or extract concepts that they can utilize within their own training. Mostly it starts from the inability to understand, like, what you stand for, what you value. Because if you don't understand that, you can't have a. You don't have a place to put.

New information that's so good and so true. So what, what would you recommend? What do you typically recommend to those trainers that are. Or coaches that are struggling with, that.

Spend more time consolidating information or if you acquire new information, take time to sit down and think about where that information sits with what you're already doing. I think this is where the academic system really fails us because we all, you know, have degrees or go through at least a bachelor's degree, but we're not actually told, like, why it's important that we're doing things, why it's important that we write essays, what's the underlying reason, and what are we trying to work for and then what to do with that information. So they don't really give us learning skills. They kind of try to indirectly provide that, but it's missed by a lot of people. And so I think it's really sitting down, even just learning how to learn. You know, there's great resources out there, such as, like, the book Make It Stick. It provides kind of tips on how to navigate this world of like, vast information, what to do with it. So I think it's actually not just taking in new information. It's sitting down and thinking about how you're actually going to use it, what it means, and then taking the time to say, okay, what's important to me? What do I value in training? Who am I as a coach? And kind of developing your own identity instead of using other people's information to fulfill your own identity. And that's one of the biggest gaps or failures, I think, from the academic system is that they don't actually teach us learning skills. And so I think we have to step back. If we're people who value education to be actual, take time into figuring out how to actually be better learners. So there's great resources called. There's one book called Make It Sick that gives you kind of tips, helpful information, how to remember things better and how to take information and apply it to your settings. I think those are probably the most important skills when it comes to containment education. Because a lot of what I see with trainers, I previously stated this, but it's going out and going to weekend seminars or seeing someone else, you know, on social media, doing something and kind of just implementing it without an understanding. And this, it kind of weans out after A while, like you try something new, you don't really get it, so you don't find it important. It's also being able to create your own identity. So are you going to these seminars and courses that are probably teaching some sort of system and are you just embedding yourself in that system and trying to become it? Or do you have an understanding of who you are, what you value, what's important to you in terms of training your clients and developing your own identity? And can you just extract things that are going to fill your gaps, improve your level of understanding, improve your clients results from that information? And that's a huge skill that I think a lot of people lack. But I don't think it's their fault. I think it's just overall how we're educated as, as a whole.

I think that's such an important point. I mean, one of the things too that you said is that you were talking about weekend seminars. But even to me, and in my opinion that's a step up. I mean, I got my certification from a book. Like I just read a book and then I got, I went and took a multiple choice test and that's how I all of a sudden then got deemed an assumed authority on human movement. I think at least the weekend seminar is a step up. But the truth and what I have found where I feel like the, you know, the academic system has failed us, is that you don't learn how to swim by reading a book on swimming. You have to get in the water and you have to try things out. And like you said, is that these, what happens is that these trainers, whether they're in or out of a gym, is they go and take this seminar, they learn it, they try a few things, but then they don't know what to do based on the information or based on the outcome of their own performance or their client's performance. And then they're kind of just left waddling to their own devices thinking, okay, well you know, did it work or did it not work? And then there's just. No, it's just kind of like an empty space to figure that out.

Yeah, exactly. I think it, I think it really just comes down to understanding or thinking in an abstract way. So like overarching concepts. And really that's a lot of it has to do with like model development. And what you're saying is basically like there's multiple tiers when it comes to the learning process. At the bottom it's understanding, remembering, and then you're getting into maybe the middle tier of applying, but the higher levels are creating, evaluating, and analyzing. And that's where, like, the fun happens. That's where, like, improvement. That's where the great people lie. Because they're creators. They can figure out if what they're doing is actually working or failing. And then kind of coming back full circle by remembering, understanding, and learning new information and then embedding it into kind of modifying what they're doing. And so it kind of comes full circle. And that's really thinking abstractly in terms of like model principles and elements. It's kind of like the things I talk about and then moving all that information into adding context to it by creating systems. So this is. Systems is basically just. It's not like a rigid term. It's basically like the overall encompassing of like, what you're doing with the people that you're working with, what are the strategies and methods that you are doing on a daily basis. And models and like, abstract thinking is just like where all this is coming from.

Oh, I love that. And honestly, you know, I'm smiling because I say the same. I say something very similar when it comes to marketing, because marketing is all about guessing, testing, and then assessing. Right. That's exactly what I talk about. You have to assess. And inside the num, which is where I think many people miss the mark, is that, you know, they just throw a whole bunch of spaghetti on the wall and then to see what sticks, but they fail or they miss not. It's not their fault, but they miss the fact that they need to assess what happened. And the numbers are going to be able to tell you where the pitfalls are, where your lessons are, where your successes are, what to do next. And I think that people miss that. They can't get to that if they can't understand what it is they're assessing.

Yeah. And maybe that's an important point that people like, if you're not. If you don't have the ability to do that. Because one of the biggest things I've learned from you is that of like, I kind of just like threw things out there and was just like, oh, I'm doing something. But it's like going back and analyzing, like, who's opening your things, who's clicking, like, is what you're writing, addressing the message or like the transformation that you're trying to create. And that basically comes from who is doing that and then trying to learn from that person or seeking them out. And that's a huge step.

Yes. And then also having that community because people come for content, but they stay for community and the support system and the network that is created. Like minded, attract like minds.

Absolutely.

Part of the reason, what caused you to create, you have that MBT strategy course and then also the group classroom, right?

Absolutely. I've kind of gone through the academic system and I feel like I've been able to identify where that fails in some aspects. And then going to taking my own continuing education seriously, being around trainers who kind of talk about their biggest struggles through that process, I kind of took all those experiences and created a course of my own that helps trainers really consolidate information, identify who they want to be, be in this profession, and then provide them with learning skills and take them through how to create concepts to work from, and then create systems, methods and strategies that fit into that. So, like, you'll never get lost in information if you have that foundation. So it will allow you to have an underlying foundation. And now just moving forward, creating a trajectory in your education and career, you'll be able to just fill gaps in, you'll be able to kind of fit in new information and you'll just build new scaffolding without, like, becoming lost in this. In this, like, vast, crazy amount of information that you're being fed.

I think that's so good, so true and such. You know, I feel like a lot.

Of people miss that. Yeah, it's just, it's not another course that's giving you more training, information and more, you know, modalities to be able to use with your clients. It's stepping back from that and saying, okay, when I go out and learn more about that, how can I be better at extracting things that are more useful for me and my clients? So it's basically teaching you how to learn better in this industry.

And I think that's so good and so important. First of all, I want to be very. Or I guess last of all is the way to say it. But I want to be very mindful of your time and thank you sincerely for joining me here. But if somebody wanted to learn more about you, where are you hanging out? Where can I send people?

Perfect. Yeah, I'm very active on Instagram. That's where I put a lot of my content up. It's MichelleBoland. And in my profile, you can find like a wait list for my upcoming group classroom that I do for my strategy course. So it's a much more personalized experience with a group of your peers. And you can also find some other things that I'm kind of doing on that platform.

Okay, great. And we'll. I'll be sure to link all of those. So I'll link the wait list in the show notes. I'll also link the Instagram profile in the show notes as well.

Perfect.

All right. So, yeah, I love the ig. So I thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. So if you like this podcast, be sure to subscribe, come say hi, tag us on Instagram, let us know that you listen to it and what your biggest takeaway was, because we definitely want to celebrate you for spending the time here with us today. So weird. I want to just like wave and say bye.

Thank you for listening to the PT Profit podcast. If you like this episode, chances are.

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To a wait list of clients ready for your services.

Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you on the next episode.