How to Build a Powerlifting Community with Max Hall

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 256. Today I'm sitting down with Max hall, and we're discussing how to build a powerlifting community. 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, 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 today I'm sitting down with Max hall, who is a powerlifting coach of five years, personal trainer of nine years, and the co owner of Arctic Strength Powerlifting Club. Max believes in a sustainable approach to training and specifically train for life. He loves teaching people to be fit and strong and not for a moment, but for life. He believes that exercise is the key to having control over one's mental and physical health. And mental health is something he has struggled with for the entirety of his life, but through exercise and fitness, has been able to pull himself through the lowest points and experience the highs more frequently and able to maintain his mental and physical health. He works to teach all of his clients about self care, self love through strength and conditioning. And inside of today's episode, Max shares all about his journey, how he's been able to build a powerlifting community, how he's been able to take his experience in his life and really implement it and build a really powerful community in his career. He also shares inside of this episode what it really takes to create a meet. So if you're interested in more about building community and maybe even hosting your own meets, this episode is for you. Are you ready? Let's get started. What's up, Max? Thank you so much for joining me on the show today. How are you doing?

Good. My pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, I'm super excited to dive in today. So for those of you who are tuning in and have not had the pleasure of being introduced to your work, can you share with us a little bit about who you are, who you serve and how you got there?

Yes. So my name is Max. I am a online personal trainer. I work with mostly powerlifters. However, I do work with several general health people as well. I'm a fitness writer and write for a publication and I am a gym owner and my gym, Arctic Strength, is about to open in, I guess. Yeah, less than 10 days now. About a week from tomorrow actually.

Oh, that's exciting.

Yeah.

No. So can you tell us a little bit about that? How did you go from, you know, being an online business owner to deciding and working with powerlifters to decide, you know what? I want to open up a facility.

Yeah, it's actually kind of an interesting story and I have to give kind of credit to my business owners where credit is due or my business partners, where credit is due. So at the time I was kind of just working from home. I transitioned to being a fully online coach for the most part. I did have a few clients that were coming to see me in person, just at the gym I'd kind of built in my garage. So just kind of working out of there and working out, out of there, doing some like, twitch streaming of my workouts and stuff like that. And I had a few powerlifting clients that were working out, out of another gym in town and they just didn't really feel like they had a space specifically for powerlifting. That kind of encouraged everything that came along with powerlifting. You know, the free use of chalk and not having to feel guilty about it. You know, clanging of weights, lifting heavy, all that fun stuff. So one of those, one of my friends kind of turned around and said, like, I want to open up powerlifting gym. Will you do it with me? And at the time I was kind of like, ah, like I don't know what I want to do. Like, my girlfriend lives in Missouri. So like, I'm very like back and forth, but I'm like, you should like open it up with my brother. Like, he's like very passionate about that and be very, he'd be very interested in it. So they kind of started working on that together. And then we kind of have had the idea of opening up a kind of popular change gym here in Alberta. So we kind of explored the options of that and that's kind of when they brought me on because I had some of those connections that would let us do something like that. Then after exploring the option, we're kind of like, ah, like this is too much of a financial like, obligation for us. We can't afford a facility of the size that they wanted at the time. So we decided to just open up a small little powerlifting facility. And that's kind of how we ended up where we are now.

Okay, amazing. That sounds. I mean, that's amazing. Okay, so. So now is this gym, the facility going to be, you know, specifically for powerlifting? Or do you. For, like, what's the vision behind the gym?

Yeah, so the name is Arctic Strength Powerlifting Club. So obviously that's kind of our main focus is powerlifting because there isn't a. However. With that said, I do believe truly that strength is for everyone. And it's not like if somebody wants to come use our facility for something other than powerlifting, where you'd be like, no, you can't buy a membership here. You have to be a powerlifter. But it does have to kind of come with the caveat. If somebody comes and they're like, I want to buy a membership at this facility. And then they're like, oh, man. Like, the. The clanging of the weights is really loud. Can you tell people to put down the weights gentler? I'd be like, well, you know, that's not really the point of this facility. Like, another facility would probably be a better fit for you.

Got it, got it, got it. Okay, cool. So. So that's exciting. So now how do you foresee the. Your, you know, the. The allocation of your resources between your gym that's opening as well as your online business? What's. What's been happening there?

Yeah, it's definitely, like, a hard balance, especially right now with the grand opening coming up and, like, so much on all of our plates. I have kind of said, like, you know, I'm an online coach first. I. I've kind of said, like, I don't really expect to make a ton of money out of the facility, nor do I really want to. If it does work out where we end up making money later down the road, that's fine. But it's like, first and foremost, with any new business, it's like, you're not really going to be making money off the bat. So it's like, I have to take care of my bills, I have to take care of, you know, putting food on my plate and all of that fun stuff. So my job as an online coach definitely comes first and basically full as far as clients go. So it helps that I'm not allocating a lot of resources towards, you know, trying to market and find new clients, like, constantly in, like, a state of, like, panic. Like, I'm pretty. Pretty settled on that front. So that allows me to allocate some of those resources more towards the stuff that's more towards building my brand towards the gym and helping kind of like, put that time and effort into getting more members into the gym, rather than spending it trying to find more clients.

Okay, I love this. So now I'm just curious, in your opinion, as somebody who considers yourself, you know, online first, what are you, what would you say is some of the biggest differences between running a, you know, I mean, I know maybe I'm 10 days short, but, you know, running a facility or an in person experience versus the online experience.

Yeah, I mean they're both like very, very different. Like coaching and being a gym owner are just like two very separate things. Like as a gym owner, it's honestly like a lot of cleaning. Okay, yeah, yeah, first and foremost, but. And you know, just a lot of like chatting with people and stuff like that. And the online coaching is a lot of just like communication and making sure everybody gets their programs and you know, trying to troubleshoot issues kind of. Before it came. I started as a in person trainer for coming up on 10 years. Now I do still work with a few people in person, but it's definitely more limited these days. But I did find like, when I was more like in person one on one with clients, it was a lot easier to like troubleshoot issues because you're there, live with the person at the time trying to like, figure things out. Whereas with like online coaching there's, there's a different skill to it of like a lot of times people aren't going to be super detailed with like the problems they're having and the issues they're having. So you have to kind of be a little more proactive about reaching out and trying to problem solve things kind of as they're happening and not let people kind of just like go in the dark. And then all of a sudden, you know, four weeks later they're like, ah, everything's been going really crappy. It's like, well, why didn't you let me know? So it definitely when I made the transition, at first there's a big wake up call of trying to put systems in place to better communicate with online clients and be able to get that information out of them at all, if not sooner because you're not there, live with the person being like, oh, like, you look like you had like a wince of pain on your face. Like, is something going on? Or like, like what were, you know, how did that set feel? Like you don't get that same experience with online coaching that you do with in person training. The one kind of blessing about the facility has been though that a lot of my clients that do train with do train out of the facility now. So kind of a blessing And a curse. Instead of having to communicate as much with me through the online platforms, they just walk up to me and they're like, I'm just having this issue and that's totally fine. But with the back and forth, they. They have to kind of be able to get in the groove of communicating more with me through the app and through dms and stuff like that when I do leave for several months at a time. So.

Okay, I love this. So would you. Would you expand, if you don't mind, more on what are of the systems that you do have in place to encourage client adherence? Because what a lot of my clients will tend to ask me is, you know, how do I navigate? And these are my words, my interpretation of what they say. But mostly, you know, the essence of their question is coming down to how do I navigate what, you know, is ghosting because the client. Because the program's too hard or whatnot, or versus versus, you know, you know, and re. Engage your adherence versus, like, you know, indifference.

Yeah. So there's a couple different things. So when I first started online coaching, I used a lot of spreadsheets, and I think there's a lot of like, plus sides to using spreadsheets. But it did make it harder from like a client adherence side of things to see what clients were doing and what clients weren't doing. There was like little like, sections to fill out the weight that people were doing, but sometimes people just wouldn't fill that out. And it was hard to kind of differentiate whether somebody was just not filling something out or whether they weren't workouts. And more often than not, it was not filling things out because it just felt like a pain to fill things out that way. I ended up switching to a coaching app called Train Heroic. Check the boxes as they kind of finish things up. So that's been like a big help in that process, is it makes it easier to see what people are doing and what people aren't doing.

And.

And then there's also kind of a built in, like, notes section to that. I know there's many other apps like this as well, but I really like the note taking function where people can leave me like session notes and if there's issues that need to be resolved, they can kind of leave it in there. I can see it that way. They can leave like, notes on how things feel. So that kind of helps a lot as well. And then within that, they can also leave their videos in there. I found when I was doing the spreadsheet cheats, it was a lot of like people who weren't necessarily like sending the videos. And instead of having to just like chase people down for videos to review form and stuff like that every week, it's like now they just leave it in the app. And then if they're not leaving the app, it's very obvious I can, you know, when I do my weekly review, I look at everybody's calendar and I see, you know, what they've done for the week. I see that there's no videos in there, or I see that there's no notes in there, or I see when workouts aren't filled out. So that's, that's the time where I can kind of reach out and be like, hey, like, what's going on? Like, nothing's filled out this week. Or there's no videos. Like, is everything okay? Like, what's going on? And then they get a chance to kind of communicate back. I found with the spreadsheets it was kind of very hard to go through that process. So making that process simpler was a very big part of it for myself. And then also instituting in like weekly check ins where I send people kind of like a questionnaire of like, how was your sleep this week? How was your nutrition this week? How was your stress this week? And kind of getting an idea of where people are at that way. And then, you know, just trying to also, as I'm kind of reviewing people's stuff on a weekly basis, I usually try to send some words of encouragement and stuff like that, of like, hey, you did a really good job of this this week. And that keeps those communication lines much more open than they used to be when I kind of first transitioned. And it was like drinking from a fire hydrant of like, there's all these things that need to get done. But how do I create the systems on a weekly basis to actually do them?

Yeah, so good. So good. Okay, so now what would you say are the. Some of the skills that you will take into your gym or training in person rather that you have also used from your online business?

Oh, man, that's. That's a tough one.

And I'll also. Yeah, I'm gonna give you a two part on this one. Right. Because.

Okay.

There are things that, you know, and I'll share my perspective and really like kind of the context of why I was asking this is because what I tend to find for a lot of coaches who are new and entering the world of online business. Okay. Is that you have to be as good at communicating your programs, your offer, your Services and building an actual business as you are at coaching. And a lot of people get that a little bit. You know, they. They want to delegate that or they want to throw money at that to say, you know, to try and solve that problem. When in reality, we just need to remember that we're actually a business owner and shift our perspective in addition to our expertise as a coach. And so for me, this is one of the skills that are going to get transcend for you in building this brick and mortar business, is that you've. You've done that part already, you know what I mean?

And I have, and that's useful. I would be lying if I said that I had any part to do with that. With Arctic strength, though, my brother is the media guy. He is absolutely phenomenal with media. So while I do my own media for like, my coaching business and stuff like that, and I have skills there, he's much better at it than I am. So he handles it for the physical facility, the business side of things, the bookkeeping, you know, the admin type of stuff. Again, stuff I've done for my online coaching business, but not something I actually do with the business. You know, that's completely on one of my other business partners, Tom, and he's really good at that because that's kind of his background is he comes more from business. So the skills and the things needed for me are kind of the. More of the things on the fitness side of things and understanding, you know, what it's like to be in a gym and how to draw people in and communicating and setting up events and stuff like that. So that's kind of where my responsibilities lie. I wouldn't know if I would say that the online coaching side of things has helped a ton with that. It's. There's been a lot of crossover where like, a lot of the people I coach in the area have moved over to the gym because, I mean, a. They want to be in a gym that supports me as well as a lot of the clients I train are powerlifting. So they want to be in the best powerlifting gym in the city. So that. That has been kind of helpful for the business. And then, you know, with the new powerlifting gym opening up and having more people in the city kind of wanting to get into powerlifting, there's kind of been the crossover of like, well, they want to do powerlifting, they want to go to a powerlifting gym, but they don't know where to start, so they need to coach. So then there's the crossover of having myself as a coach there and having the other coaches that I've kind of built relationships with throughout my time as a coach. Being in the facility and contracting over here has been big as well. But yeah, the biggest thing I offer to the business is like connections and stuff like that, which I guess is definitely something I've kind of built up through both in person coaching. But it definitely became more important when I switched to online coaching. You're networking with more people. You're not, you know, you kind of start to learn those skills when you're starting out in like a brick and mortar gym. You're doing your in person coaching, you're doing, you know, talking with the other trainers and you're talking with the people in the gym and you kind of create your little network there. And when you switch over to online, you no longer have that because, you know, you can kind of feel isolated. So it's very important to build that and reach out and build connections that are also doing the same thing as you and the community. I'm sure something big you do with this podcast and connecting people together, that's definitely like a skill I kind of developed starting off with like online coaching. I started to build all these connections with different people and then those connections have been able to lead to different things for the gym. Like with our grand opening, we have my coach who is a junior world champion powerlifter as well as very competitive in the open and in powerlifting. We just had this big event that was like kind of the best of the best called the Sheffield, and he placed very highly in that. So he's a very popular powerlifter. He's coming and then, you know, through him we were kind of able to create connections with some other world champion powerlifters that are coming out as well. So that kind of stuff has been, been, been helpful. And that's the skills I had to develop as like an online coach is starting to create those connections with the community around me through the online space. Because it isn't, isn't as simple when you're doing the in person training and your community is the people you see every day. Whereas online coaching, you have to create that community for yourself, which is a blessing and a curse because it can be a lot of work to create those connections with people, but also it allows you to kind of choose your circle. It's not really chosen for you anymore.

I love that.

That is so powerful.

Okay, so now you were starting to talk about the different meats essentially that you know that and Events that are happening in the powerlifting community. So just for my context, are you, will your facility host novice meets? Is it your intention to, you know, to train the people who want to learn for sport or for the people who want to compete?

Yeah, well, that kind of, that goes into my role within the company pretty well actually. So the very first thing we did, we're having our grand opening, but we've actually been soft open for about five months now. And we, we rushed to get our facility not done because it wasn't finished, but we rushed to get enough equipment to run a powerlifting meet. Because I actually had planned and submitted a bid to run a novice entry level powerlifting meet called Heroes classic back on March 25th. So we ran that, it went really well, but we had like just barely like finished up like the painting and the flooring and getting in like, just like the powerlifting racks and the bars and the plates so that we could do that. We kind of like rushed to get all of that done so we could do that. And then we had that were like, hey, people can start training here. But we were without our machines and without a bunch of different stuff. So we did have to wait for some of our manufacturers to finish that till our facility was fully finished, which is kind of the point we're at now. And now that it's fully finished, it's like, okay, now we can do our grand opening and we can announce to the public that, you know, we're, we're fully open and ready for anybody to train. Not, you know, if you walk into our facility, it was basically all just like bars and combo racks and plates. You'd be like, ah, like, I don't know how to use any of this stuff. Says like, definitely for the more hardcore powerlifters, not to say that they don't know machines, but like we were like hanging cables off of our like power cages and like creating our own cable machines. And so it was, it was, they were fun days for sure, but not very facilitating days until our machines came in, which is the point we're at now. They've just recently arrived and got set up so we're finally ready to open. But yeah, so I've ran that novice meet and that was like the first thing we did as a facility. Like as soon as we kind of got enough stuff to do it, we instantly ran a meet to kind of start creating that community and give people opportunities to compete. I will probably run that meet again next year and I will actually be hosting our provincials next year. As well in Lethbridge. So that's another part of the facility. Our facility is very small. So. And now that all the machines are in there and those are kind of immovable objects because they're very heavy and very hard to take apart, we probably won't be running any MEATS in the physical facility anymore. We'll probably just be taking our equipment to an outside facility to run MEATS kind of moving forward. But we, I do plan on running meets outside of the facility, both locally and provincially, to help keep growing the powerlifting community within Lethbridge.

Okay, that's cool. So now can you tell me a little bit about how you got into powerlifting? And I'm curious, you know, as you say, I want to grow the powerlifting community. What are you, you know, how are you going to introduce the sport to more people?

Yeah. Okay. That's actually fun because I think those, those two things tie together very nicely. When I first got into powerlifting, I think I probably would have started competing much sooner than I did if there were more opportunities to compete. So I, after I finished playing college football and I moved back home, I kind of got back into the gym after some time off and kind of fell back in love with the gym and lifting weights. And I was super into bodybuilding at the time. And I had heard kind of about this, this powerlifter named Ed Cohn, this super strong guy. And I'm like, oh, this like powerlifting thing seems kind of cool. You know, you do the squat bench and the deadlift and you know, I used to do those movements when I played college football for strength and conditioning. And it was always fun. Like, I liked lifting heavier a lot better than I liked, like the bodybuilding stuff. So I was like, hey, I'll do this like power building thing. And I kind of like started self identifying as a powerlifter, even though I had like no clue what I was doing at the time. And it wasn't until I moved to Calgary to start working as like a full time personal trainer at a commercial gym that I kind of got introduced to another power lifter that had actually competed and actually knew about competing and stuff like that. And him, along with my fitness manager at the time, kind of pushed me, like, okay, you're passionate about this powerlifting thing, but you should try actually doing a meet and not just, you know, squat benching and deadlifting in the gym. So it's like, okay, yeah, that, that seems fun. I'll try that. And that's kind of when I got the Rude awakening that there are rules to the sport. You have to squat to depth, you have to pause your bench presses, you have to listen for commands. None of which I was aware of. Of going into my first meet, I figured it out on the morning of and almost bombed out. So that was kind of my like introduction to powerlifting. From there I kind of actually went back to playing football for a little bit and then got back into the powerlifting and kind of fell in love with it and decided that it wanted to be like my main thing I do. And then I was done with football, finally started doing more and more meets. But at the time I was living in Calgary where meets were very accessible. And kind of going back to when I started powerlifting, I think I would have got into it probably about 2 years sooner and done my first meet about 2 years sooner if meets were available. And specifically different kinds of meets. Powerlifting is kind of convoluted in the way that there's many different federations, all of which kind of have a different feel and a different vibe to them, which is a great thing because it means that there's something for everybody. But the one federation we kind of did have in Lethbridge before wasn't really my vibe, which is a big part of like me not getting into it sooner. They only ran untested meats and I had no interest in, you know, doing any performance enhancing drugs. I wanted to stay drug free. So I wanted to kind of bring drug free powerlifting to Lethbridge. And there was some different beats and some different opportunities that started to kind of come up. And then, you know, when I moved back to Lethbridge several years later, I was like, okay, like Lethbridge's powerlifting hasn't grown. Like, we've always had the same two meets and you can tell that these meets are very behind what we're kind of seeing in Calgary. So we. So my friend who was also into powerlifting was interested in running a meet. So I set him up with a different federation to run a drug free powerlifting meet. And that went really well. I ran my meat and then actually the other meet that had always traditionally been ran, always traditionally had been ran in Lethbridge, added a second day, which was a drug tested day and definitely like really stepped up kind of their production and stuff like that. So you kind of see as I started to like introduce powerlifting into the community, all. You know, they say a rising tide lifts all ships. And you could tell that the community was starting to grow. And we went from essentially two meets a year in the Lethbridge area, one that I had never even heard of until like later on and the one that I had heard of, we now saw that basically double to five meets with the addition of the other day on that. So it is a growing community, which is super cool. But that's kind of what I mean by growing. The community is just trying to give lifters more opportunities to actually compete and to get into the sport so that there's left less lifters stuck in the situation that I was in where I was interested in the sport, but I didn't really feel like I had the opportunity that fit me to compete now. Now there's a lot more opportunity within the city for people to actually get into it.

Oh my gosh, that's amazing. So now I've got two things, two questions I want to ask you, but I'm going to go one at a time. Number one is, from my understanding being drug free or performance hansing, you know, use is a controversial or widely discussed topic. So I'm just, I'm curious what causes you to want to be in the drug free sector of powerlifting meat?

Yeah, I'll kind of say first of all that, you know, it is personal choice, like whatever somebody wants to do. I'm not the type of person that's going to judge somebody for not wanting to be drug free or wanting to be drug free. Like I do think it should be a person's choice and they should be free of judgment for choosing to go either way. And that's why I think it's important that, you know, both options are kind of presented to people so that they have options to compete. For me, it's a lot of the like negative health consequences that kind of come down to it, especially from like overuse. That's just not something that I ever wanted to do. A lot of the reason I got into power lifting and fitness in general is longevity. Wanting to live like a very long and healthy life and wanting to keep doing this until I'm, you know, 80, 90 years old. There's a power lifter in Pincher Creek that he's 92 now and he still lifts, but he competed at 89 years old and deadlifted 440 lbs. At 140 lbs body weight and stuff like that is absolutely phenomenal. And that's kind of what I wanted to get to. And not to necessarily say that somebody that is using the performance enhancing drugs couldn't get there, but I think that it would take A lot more care and a lot more effort and a lot more work to kind of continue to lead a very healthy life free of consequences from using performance enhancing drugs. So personally, that's just a risk that I wasn't willing to take for, you know, a competitive outlet. And I think like, kind of a neat part about powerlifting is if you're using that stuff, there's a competitive outlet for you or you can compete against other people using it, or if you don't want to use it, there's also a very competitive outlet for not wanting to use performance enhancing drugs and competing against other people that don't want to use them as well. So it allows you to kind of be on equal footing with or without. So it's kind of like, why, why use something like that when I'm going to be on equal footing? Either way, it's just not something I want to do. I also think these days there's immense pressure for young kids to jump on performance enhancing drugs. I think there's a lot of media pressure. You go on TikTok Instagram and there's all these influencers, you know, basically saying, like, you need to use this stuff. And you know, the age of which kids are jumping onto them is getting younger and younger and younger. So part of it too is I wanted to be a role model for kids and be like, hey, like, look, you don't have to use this kind of stuff to be really, really strong.

So I also think, you know, with the media pressure, you know, and I will circle back to the second question, but with the media pressure, I think in addition, is that as just human nature, but we're also, we're also, you know, really wrapped up with speed and we're wanting to get the results faster, more convenient. And so there is, there is almost an incentive to, you know, want to, want to move to performance enhancement. Because if you don't, then the consequences will be greater if you do. So I, you know, I can respect that and understand that it, it's, you know, nuanced and personal choice. And really, at the end of the day, it comes down to knowing all of what's at stake for you to make an educated decision that's right for you.

Yes. And I don't think young kids are in the frame of mind where they're considering all the consequences to make an educated decision about that. So there's the speed thing and there's also the, you know, a lot of, a lot of kids hit plateaus and they're like, oh, like My, my lifts aren't going up anymore or whatever. They're like, oh, I can never make it to this, like, super high level of lifting these, like, super heavy weights if I don't use performance enhancing drugs. So they definitely need role models of people kind of showing them, like, no, you, you can reach those levels of strength without the use of that if you so choose to. And you're probably better off, even if you think it's something you want to do in the future, spending some more years getting stronger without them thinking about it before kind of jumping into that frame of mind. A really good kind of podcast I once listened to kind of dove into it was a guy that started taking performance enhancing drugs before he knew what he was doing. And he kind of talked about. He's like, man, it like changed my personality. He's like, it doesn't go back. He's like, that's something. He's like, you won't be you anymore. He's like, is that really, like a risk you want to take at that age is like just never being yourself again? You're a completely different person. You don't know what person is going to come out of that. Right. And yeah, so it's just, it, it was a very interesting view of, like, there's these psychological factors beyond just the physical as well, that aren't really being considered by a lot of people in that space and should be considered because it's. It's a big commitment that I don't want to say you can never go back on, but there's definitely aspects of it, the longer you take them that can never. You can never go back on. So you should be fully informed before making that decision for sure and 100% be sure that that's the, the route you want to take. Yeah.

Okay, so good. All right, so the second question I wanted to ask is, you know, what are some of the things that goes into setting up a meet inside of your facility? A lot you really need to want to do it.

Yeah, it's. I like full disclosure. Like, I, I didn't make a penny from running the meet. You. You have to really love it. And the hard part about that is, like, we need more meet directors because the sport is growing so much, people need more opportunities to compete. But it's really kind of a, I don't want to say a thankless job. A lot of people were very appreciative of it, but, you know, there's not a lot of, like, monetary incentive to do it. You kind of just have to do it for the love. And you know, if you are getting a lot of monetary incentive, it's because you haven't spent enough money making the meat good enough. And like, you know, you could just throw a platform on a piece of carpet and you know, call it a meet and take people's money and you know, make thousands of dollars off of it probably. But you know, if you want like a really nice, well done backdrop and you know, you want to do the lighting just right and you want to make sure you have really good equipment and you, you know, I even like the fine details, like picking the exact carpet that lifters would really enjoy is something that I took very seriously. More seriously than like any human should take the picking of carpet. I was like in like the carpet store, like with my like powerlifting shoes, like testing each of the carpets to see how grippy they were for like leg drive on bench press. And like I needed to find like a very dark carpet so that it was a carpet that would like look almost like black because we were trying to go for like a very dark complexion so that the lights would show up very nicely. You know, you gotta go find chairs and stuff like that and curtains and carpets, other carpets, like carpets by the chalkbowl and carpets by the baby powder station, which I did not do. And now we have like white stains on our floor because everybody's walking on the chalk. It's stomping to the floor so much. And yeah, it's, there's, there's a lot of like very fine details to kind of think out as far as like meat directing goes, the setup of the warm up room, how things are going to flow, Getting a microwave for the lifters. Yeah.

So wow.

Tons and tons. Lots of, lots of graphic design. Trying to make things kind of look very nice. Being able to kind of do why.

So many people don't do it.

Just kidding. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm kind of a nerd for it too. So I feel like I kind of went above and beyond on a lot of things. But there is just like a ton of work to do. And you do see a lot of like meet directors like myself where they go like very above and beyond for the first meet and then the second meet they kind of just settle. Right. They don't put as much energy and effort into it. And it's something where the more energy and effort you put into it as a meet director, the better the experience will be for the lifters. So it's something you should take very seriously. And you should put a lot of time into, but you're also going into that knowing that you're not going to make any money for that time. You're going to invest a lot of time, energy and stress into something that you're probably not. Not going to really make anything from. But it does feel worth it because, I mean, especially for me, it's something that builds your brand. When you're willing to do that as a coach, it shows a lot about your character and makes you more desirable for lifters to want to work with. But it's also just something that feels very nice to do. Like, as somebody that participates in the sport, coaches in the sport, but also is just a massive fan of the sport, I want to see the sport continue to like, level up and grow and get better. And if I can even just be like a small part of that change of like, leveling up and producing better products as far as, like, local meats go and meat directing in general and, you know, showing what's possible when you can put in a lot of energy and effort, it helps raise the standard. And I would like to think that other meats in the area that aren't associated with the same federation as I am as well, they saw that and they rose the standard for their lifters as well and were able to put on some, some pretty cool stuff from at least what I've seen in the past from, from those same meets. So I, I think that's pretty cool.

So now what I'm going to ask is going to sound, I think, meaner than I intended. So let me just, you know, I want to just clarify and give that context. But are these like, you know, that level of care, Would you say that, you know, your power are aware of that or is that just something that they don't really understand, goes into the.

Into the yes and yes and no. Yes and no. I think to some degree there's a lot of lifters that are kind of naive. They're like, oh, like why, why can't you? Or why don't you just do like, X, Y and Z? They maybe don't understand all the logistics that go into it and why that thing might not be possible. Like, they might take it for granted a little bit. But in general, I think anybody that knows a MEET director is like, man, I've never, like all of my athletes and all of my friends are like, I have never seen Max so stressed in his life. Like, he, he looked like a completely different person. Like, we, me and my business partner Tom were up till it was like 1am playing around with the ref light system because, you know, part of the meat too is you want to have like a really good live stream so that the viewers watching it get a clear, crisp image but also have overlays that kind of explain what's going on. So they're not just like, it's not just a bunch of people walking up and lifting over and over again. There's, there's a little more context to it. Right. So the lights will actually link directly to the overlay for the meets. But which is super cool because then when a lift is good or bad, the lights show up at the bottom and then the people in the audience can see like watching at home watching the live stream. We were the first ones ever to set up the light system where it automatically link like that. So we were like searching all over the Internet to how, for like how to get those things to work. And like originally we were trying and it wasn't working. And we figured out is because it like wasn't linked to the same like WI FI networks and there was like a guarded WI FI network and it was, it was a whole mess. We finally got it set up and we're like looking at the time, we're like it's 1am and we had to be back at 5am for weigh ins. So it's like go home, sleep three hours. And then. Yeah, so it was just wild. But yeah, lots of, lots of little details. But I think to some degree some lifters might take it for granted. But I, I do also think that there's an appreciation for seeing how much work meat directors put in things. And I think for better, for worse, there's also, they see the growth of these meats and how they keep leveling up and getting better. And they have like an idea of like, well, this is what meats used to look like. And we see these meats doing things better. So there's an appreciation for that side of things.

Okay, I love that because I asked that question because I was like, if it were me, I probably would have no idea that the carpet mattered or that the carpet, you know, actually helped me with my grip of my, you know, bench press. I probably would never like associate that. That's why I asked that. Do they even realize like, yeah, listen, your meet director cared this much to help you enough. Okay, so now are you still competing?

I am, yes. My last meet I did was back in February. It was CPU nationals. It was my first nationals Federations now and I Kind of slowly worked my way into what is the big federation in Canada and the world, but nationals. And my goal is one day I have a lot of get there. It's more progress I make. It sounds kind of like counterintuitive, but when you're kind of peaking for a meet, you're realizing the strength and expressing it, but you're not necessarily in as advantageous of a position to build that strength. So I'm in a very long off season. I'm currently still about 11 months out for my next meet. So It'll be about 15, 16 months in between my last meet and when I do my next one. But I do plan on doing provincials next year as kind of a warm up meet and then September or I'm sorry, nationals got moved from February to September. So those will be kind of my two meets next year will be provincials and then nationals again.

So last question, and this is probably going to open up a whole can of worms, but I'm curious, you know, when you have a 16 month gap, 18 month gap like that, how do you stay motivated? How do you stay disciplined to, to the actual goals when you have that long of a journey ahead of you?

Yeah, and that's an interesting one because I think early in my lifting career that's not something that would have happened. I would have had to continually kept competing in order to stay motivated. So part of it is experience. When you've done 15, 16 meets, you can get away with being like, I don't need to keep doing these things. I've done a lot of these things. Well, the short term goal of competing and seeing where I'm at matters a lot less to me than my long term goal and staying focused on that. So that part of it helps too. And then I think there's also just like a, a gear that was almost kind of unlocked, I want to say maybe like two years ago where you know, I was, I had been competing and I'd been competing very casually and I was like, well, you know, do I want to, like what do I want to do? Like, do I want to keep competing casually and am I okay with just kind of like slightly getting better than I used to be? And there's nothing wrong with that, that would have been totally fine. But like, what drives me, what makes me really want to compete? And at the time, you know, I was battling with a lot of like the struggles the came with like realizing I was autistic and you know, figuring out what that meant for me, you know, kind of Coming to terms with a lot of the things the child. I. I felt like I had to hide a lot of parts of myself, specifically, like, the nerdier part of myself. So, like. Like. Like, what does powerlift mean me? And why? Like, why do I want. And lifting means back. I would like to be an inspiration to other people, and I would like to show them what they're really capable of. And when that goal switched from being myself, because it was about myself in a time where a lot of my life was about my clients and my work and not really about myself. And it was the one thing I kind of got to be selfish about. But, you know, when I got into a point where I was able to be a little more selfish about my work and my time and my relationships, and I kind of came to better terms with those, powerlifting didn't really need to be something selfish anymore, and it could have continued to be that way. But when I asked myself, like, what. What do I really want to do with this? And I look, I'm like, hey, I really want to inspire people. I want to show people what they're capable of with powerlifting, and, you know, that they can be strong, whether it's in powerlifting or just in life. And when that kind of switched and when I found that, like, extra gear in myself, it's like, it's been a different kind of experience training. Because, like, every day, I've been just, like, beyond motivated for, like, the last two years. Like, motivation kind of like raises and dips, but in general, it's been two years. Like, it's still dips and raises, but it's a lot more even keel. Like, I train hard every time I train, regardless of whether I have a meet coming up with a. And that. That's really what kind of lets me be like. Like, I don't need to be months, because it doesn't. I want to do what's best for working towards that big goal.

So, yeah, yeah, I get it. I definitely get it. Okay, so I. This has been an awesome podcast, Max. I mean, and I could probably ask you. You brought up a whole bunch of, like, other stuff. I was like, oh, I want to ask about that. So maybe another time. But thank you so much for pouring into me, into the community. So for those of you who are, you know, interested in setting up a me or wanting to, you know, work with you or learn more about you, your process, tell me, what are some of the best places I can send them?

Yes, Best place would be my Instagram. Max hall. Fitness. Feel free to kind of go follow me on there and shoot me a DM with any questions or anything like that you have. Like I kind of mentioned earlier, I am full as far as clients go. So, you know, if you're interested in working with me, feel free to like pop into my DMs and be like, do you have any open spots? I. I might, I might not, depending on when it is. However, I do have some coaches that work with me that are looking to kind of build up some clientele as well. So if you're looking to get in powerlifting and find a great coach, I'm sure I can help set you up with somebody.

Cool. I love that. Thank you so much and we'll be sure to link all of that up in the show notes and I'll talk to you soon.

Awesome. Thank you so much. Beverly.

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