"Going to the Well-Ness" with Dan Rogers

Welcome to TFR This Feels Right podcast. Every episode, we're sharing impactful communication skills you need, or you didn't even know that you needed them until you've listened to this episode. I'm Joel Silverstone, your host, and I'm excited to have you on this journey with us. I'm also the founder of TFR This Feels Right, where for over 25 years, we've been helping leaders, and teams from top organizations build and elevate their communication skills in presentations, team building, and difficult conversations. And if you want to learn more, head on over to thisfeelsright.ca. All right, before we get to our episode, we kindly ask you to do us a favor. If you could leave a review, a rating, and subscribe so you don't miss an episode of impactful communication skills that feel right.

Let's get to our show.

Going to the Wellness. I'm joined by Canada's corporate fitness coach, Dan Rogers.

In this episode, we're talking practical, real-life wellness. How to build movement into your day, boost energy before meetings or important events, and create habits that actually stick. Dan brings over 15 years of experience and 30,000+ coaching hours. And his caring, curious, and action-focused approach to helping professionals stay active, motivated, and mentally strong.

And I like this quote from Dan about this episode. I think this says it all. Better doesn't mean the best. Better doesn't mean better than somebody else. It means a better version of you.

So if you've been meaning to get back into it, this one's for you. Let's jump in and meet Canada's corporate fitness coach, Dan Rogers. All right, here we are at TFR, This Feels Right Podcast. We got a terrific guest with us. We're going to talk about going to the wellness, which I love that title, Dan. You came up with that. As you said, you got a gentle nudge to come up with that. Oh no, you came up with that just like within 10 seconds.

Without AI.

Without AI. Yeah, I love that. Now, so before someone— and you do a lot of work with the corporate world, so I'm just curious, do you have people do like a warm-up before? Like if they say they have a big meeting today, like do you think that it's important for people to do a warm-up? you do a warm-up today? Well, let's, let's start with you. What was your warm-up today?

My whole day is movement. So I have a standing desk, I'm moving around, and I have things that I do definitely before a podcast to get my brain right, get my words right. And for a corporate individual, I like to show them, if I'm capable or able to, that there's different brain activity between when you go for a walk and when you're sitting down for a period of time, and that your brain's very active and there's lots of stimulus that way. So to be able to maybe go for a 5, 10-minute walk if you do have a big meeting, big presentation, and if you want to break up your day in terms of giving your brain a little bit of a boost.

That, that's really good. And I think, you know, even just that 5 to 10 minutes just to stop staring at a screen, stop staring at your phone. Absolutely. So important. So you said you, you yourself do a little, a little warmup to get your brain going for before going to a podcast or something. What are, what are some of the things that you do for yourself?

Rehearsal. So we've, uh, a little bit of rehearsal of some common things that have happened in a podcast or questions. So there's that element to it. There's also just the, um, not that you're not always helpful, but if I'm making myself eggs in the morning, I'm making myself eggs as Dan. But then there's the whole coaching side of things where getting into a very, uh, crisp and helpful mode. And that's what I want to try to portray in this conversation is that Giving things that are helpful to the audience. So just thinking of ways in the past from memory, from our previous interactions with clients and groups of things that were helpful pertaining to the topics that we're gonna cover to try and get those things brought up, write them down, have them prep present and just move into that mode. And then just walking. I go, I went for a big walk earlier with no phone and just did lots of breathing, soaked in the sun and kind of went through a couple of things. Like I said, that I wanted to talk about today.

You know, if everybody did that before, not even just a podcast, but just before going into a meeting or before going into a conversation, just taking a few minutes to, like you said, to turn off your phone, do some breathing, go for a walk, change of air, man, we would have such amazing conversations. We'd be so present, as you said, coming with this intention of how can I be helpful today?

Exactly. I like to do that for my meetings that we're like a podcast that we're having and a meeting that I'm gonna have and, If it's important, prepare for it. And I'd like to— it matters to me to do a good job. I respect you, Joel, with having me on the podcast, and I'm grateful for the opportunity. So I want to hopefully do a good job and prepare for it that way.

All right. Yes, thank you so much for that. And as you're saying that, I'm wondering, because I know, and as we heard in your bio, your previous semi-professional, I guess, hockey experience is, you know, so many years of being basically in professional sport.

Is—

do you think this is what really helped you create that discipline, uh, to, to want to be prepared and have that routine? Absolutely.

So my background is that I played junior hockey in the OHL, which at that age is the highest you can play for your age group globally, and other than pro hockey. And then I went on to luckily go to Lakehead University on a scholarship and play hockey there. So part of my Any success that I had with playing at those levels was rehearsal. So I would do a rehearsal of common scenarios that I was going to be on the ice as a defenseman and the style of play that I had. And I would envision those scenarios being successful before I even stepped on the ice. So I'd have successful outcomes being run through in my head over and over. And I would have the thoughts, feelings, and actions already pre-rehearsed. And I had success with that. in my hockey career and it helped me feel prepared and it helped me feel at my best. And I've used that in its own way going into different business meetings and coaching and interactions. And it's served me very well. I try to advocate to that, to the young group of getting them to read a book. It's the book I read was The Complete Hockey Player by Dr. Saul Miller and it was an excellent book. And they just look at me like I have 3 heads asking them to read a physical book. So strikeout.

Isn't there like a TikTok video that could just do it in 20 seconds.

I think so. They gravitate to that a little bit more. So I gotta, you know, be better with trying to get that work done.

But this is, I think, what you're saying, I think is so important for you. What you were talking before about being helpful, uh, as well, which is if I was one of your clients, uh, going through, going, working with you, I love this idea that you, you able to visualize ahead, like you're thinking ahead, you're, you're playing out the different Uh, I don't know, different patterns, I guess. The different— what's the— what would be the word? Um, scenarios.

Scenarios.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, so you're— so I love that. Yeah, go on.

Yeah, so that's part of the— one of the points I wanted to make was, you know, uh, is that I have to paint that picture for a client or an individual, and it's not easy. But with, um, having some time spent on What do you want your life to look like in a year? What are some of the things? Vivid Vision is a great book that represents that in terms of mapping out and articulating all the elements of all the senses of what you want your vision of your life to be or what you want your vision of your business to be. But we're talking about a client coming on with me. What do you want that to look like? Like how often do you want to be active? What type of activity does that include? Who are you doing it with? What time of the day? Is it changing in the seasons? Are you open to new stuff? Are you revisiting stuff from when you were younger? Or is there a new thing you haven't tried yet you'd be wanting to— like, what does that vision look like? And then mapping that out, and then, and then believing that they're going to be able to get there, and, and working with them based on that initial kind of crafting of their vision.

Questions that people don't ask themselves. We, in our minds, we've figured, you know, in a year from now, I'm But I haven't really answered it. So when you ask them those questions, it's forcing them to really think about it and say it aloud. Because really, in our heads, we're just like, a year from now, I'm probably doing exactly the same thing I'm doing now.

Yeah.

I'm no further along. But to actually get them to verbalize what that looks like, I think is really— well, I guess goes back to a lot from your playing career and having that discipline to really— I love that you said that you're thinking about the different scenarios.

Mm-hmm. That's, it's very helpful. So I, I, I want to be able to do, it might be performing individual physical tasks as a thing that a person is striving for in a year's time. So it could be a pull-up, it could be running without pain.

Mm-hmm.

It could be getting back to recreational soccer. There's a whole bunch of different things and being able to keep up with their kids without being out of breath.

Yeah.

Having the ability to, to help their, their elder parents with, with household chores because their parents are older and, and they're not able to. You name it, there's a whole bunch of things. But what are those things? And I had a client who came to me and it was every day of every moment with her kids, she was worried about her back slipping on her and going out of place. She was worried about it constantly. And I said, you know, let's fix that. That she'd communicated, that's a big part of the reason. And she said to me today, you know what the best part of training has been in the last over a year is that I don't think about my back at all in any scenario anymore. And I was very fulfilled hearing that as a coach. But that was the thing she communicated, and then we talked— I talked through with her about how we're going to achieve that in terms of the exercises that we're going to do and how we're going to go about it, the progressions of it. And it was very helpful that just have her articulate where she wants to be in a year and then us work towards it.

Yeah, yeah, no, it's really clear. And I think you might have answered this question, but maybe, maybe there's some other elements to add to that, which is We know it. But maybe you can articulate it differently. Why is wellness so important in our work? And maybe a lot of it is a lot of people working remote. Maybe our one listener right now is working remotely as an example. But why is wellness so important in our work?

I mean, where do I start? There's a lot of different workplace environments that have arose in the last 5 years. We know this. Some of them are back to office, some of them are hybrid, and then some, like you said, are fully remote. And the fully remote can be isolating if you don't have an established social routine or you're not seeing some of your coworkers in person for meetings and lunches and things like that. So it's challenging. So you have to recognize that. So if you are a work from remote or work remotely fully client or employee, it's finding those opportunities for social. So it's getting a walking friend that's in the neighborhood or a family member. It's becoming part of a club or volunteering or recreational club that— or sport that you can get out and be with other people outside of your 8-hour workday that's on a screen. And there's a variety of other things. But why is it important? It's important for productivity for whatever you're doing in your workday, right? It's important for, uh, team building if you're in person to, to have wellness as an element. So you're able to— you're a communications guru in my eyes. So having the ability to amicably and productive and, uh, like successfully communicate with your teammates is a very important thing. And then it's very helpful to have it be a place that people gravitate to with their workplace. If it's really bad communication, there's often, you know, angst moving into every workday. But if it's very good, there can be a lot of really good cultural things that happen. Avoiding burnout or just managing the elements of burnout. So, it's a huge thing that is a reason why wellness is important. And I'll just mention this, which I kind of already mentioned, which is the hats that we wear. So, people have kids.

Yeah.

And to be able to be at your best for anybody that you care about in your life. Wellness at the workplace and outside of work is important to be able to take care of those loved ones, whether they're youth and they're looking up to you as to how am I supposed to take care of myself, and you're setting an example, or elder people in your life, which a lot of people in corporate have, and being able to be there for your loved ones. And stress management too. Obviously, there's just a lot of reasons why it's important. I could go on probably from that, but those are some of the main things that I've Come across and try to help people with.

Yeah, yeah. Again, like, like asking the questions. These are really important reminders of why wellness is so important and the impact that it has and the ripple effect that it has amongst coworkers, amongst your family, amongst friends, amongst your community. Has a huge ripple effect when you take care of yourself mentally and physically.

I absolutely agree. It's— we don't just wear a hat. as a worker at our job. You know, we have all these other hats that we're wearing, and it's important to recognize that if you're, you know, it's really challenging to take care of others if you're not taking care of yourself. It's that whole face mask on an airplane analogy, to don your— to put your mask on first before helping others. And it's not easy to do because people feel guilty about it, about taking care of themselves with wellness.

Right.

But it's very important for if you love You know, people say all the time, Joel, they're like, I would die for my family. You know, it was, well, let's live for them. You know, let's live.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I like that thought.

That's a good one. Yeah. Don't worry about dying for them. Do it. Who knows when that time will come?

Yeah.

This is what you could do right now. Start living for them.

Yeah.

So, and maybe this ties into maybe, again, thinking about our one listener who's going, what, Yeah, I wonder how Dan motivates people because this is probably one of the hardest things is people always have excuses or they've gotten into bad behaviors or into bad ruts. How do you, if you can share maybe some of your secret here about how do you motivate others?

Yeah, I mean, I yell a lot. I just, I'm a big yeller.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I—

The drill sergeant, yeah.

Yeah, it's, I carry a whistle around and it works. So no, I don't do that. But I try to communicate to the best of my ability with that individual that I believe in their ability to become better. So some people don't— they have a block mentally that they just think what they are in the moment that we're interacting for the first time, or 3 months later, that that's going to be them for the rest of their life. And I have seen too many transitions and, and transformations, etc., with 15 years of coaching and 30,000 hours to think there's a different, uh, path. So I, I very much believe in The ability to change and become better, and better doesn't mean the best. Better doesn't mean better than somebody else. It means a better version of you based on what your metrics are for better. So that's also different. Nudging towards autonomy is a note that I put here. So I definitely can't take on a client for 20 years. So it's just not reasonable. So what I try to do is create independence and autonomy with a person's path. So part of like how I'm motivating somebody is that they're involved in that journey towards becoming better. They're involved in. Where we're taking things in terms of, hey, reading's really important to me. Okay, then on programming on Sundays, we have reading in your programming. It's not bicep curls and squats and running. There's reading there. And that is a thing that people feel a lot of fulfillment with because now they're doing the thing and working with a coach on the thing that they really are interested in. So autonomy and some independence there. I'd like to be able to you know, qualify a person to be able to take on maybe on the 3rd day of the week, they're crafting the workout and they're telling me what the workout is and I'm able to give them feedback. So I'm teaching them how to craft workouts. So somewhere down the road, I'm gonna be able to release them into the wild, so to speak.

Mm-hmm.

And have them independently with autonomy have their workouts and they're taking care of themselves and they've got this like confidence to do so. So those are a couple things. And then last thing I'll mention here, and that's different for everybody, there's different ways of going about that and frequencies and things like that. But just constant perspective. So a lot of people beat themselves up. So I'm giving insight on stuff and I'm giving, you know, I'm being a sounding board and asking lots of questions to help them realize, hey, like, I'm doing pretty good here. Some of the things that I'm accomplishing should be highlighted a little bit more. I'm a perspective from my coaches, huh? I didn't, I don't think like that. I'm very positive. I'm not toxic positive where it's like, if I'm gonna, if I'm stabbed, I'm thinking this is great.

Yeah.

No, I'm not like that. But I have a very good outlook on life.

I just generally do.

I've just— that's how I am and it's how I've been. It's been done well for me. So I try to portray that to that person and give them insights on how to maybe, you know, shake out their day a bit.

What sticks with me with that, I mean, there was a lot of great insights there. What sticks with me is the idea around trying— not trying to be the best, but trying to be better.

Yes.

And being true to yourself. Like, if reading is really important to you, like, it's like, you know, stop beating yourself. And again, you mentioned that, stop beating yourself up about it. Like, so, okay, so part of the program is reading. And part of it is we know deep within what our better is. We just have difficulty getting there and expressing it. So again, it's, you're able to see the scenario. You're able to see, you know, down the ice, so to speak, the plays happening before and guide them towards that. Uh, with your drill sergeant whistle.

Yes. Yeah. And you have to give some contrast. I reminded, uh, somebody last week, I said you could not do this variation of a movement with body weight. So no additional weight, nothing, to a higher target. You couldn't go through a single leg, like a lunge was a version of it, a split squat, with body weight without fumbling and moving, uh, 3 months ago. You just, you couldn't balance-wise, strength-wise, confidence wasn't there. And now you've got dumbbells in your hand, you've got yourself going to a full range of motion, you're doing it for 10, 12 reps with confidence for multiple sets. I'm like, if I didn't bring that up now, you maybe would never remember the contrast to you from 3 months ago to today. And I like to bring those up in a variety of different ways, uh, based on the, the, the client. And we have to do that. I did that at Christmas. I wrote down everything I accomplished in 2024 to give myself a good vibe and a good feeling about personal, professional elements I've accomplished and think, you know what? Yeah, you've done a good job. You're doing well. You're progressing. You can't look at like today as if there was a day that you struggled as your day that defines your life. It's, you gotta do some contrast with yourself.

That is such an important part. That's such great advice for, again, for our listener, which is marking down your wins, as you said, to sort of contrast that, whether it be on a daily basis, on a monthly basis, or even on a win, and just to realize how far you have come. Because we're so focused on things we didn't accomplish.

Always.

I did. Maybe I didn't lose that 5, 10 pounds, but I've gotten stronger. I've gotten faster. Or even just, I'm just more consistent as an example. Or I've tried a variety of exercises this year. I've challenged myself to do a variety of things. So, there's always a way to find those wins but not not to focus on maybe the wrong goal.

We, we live in such, um, self-perpetuated, like, personal deficits. We put ourselves in a def— a mental deficit by focusing on things that we're not doing all the time. And I kick off health and wellness accountability calls and, and check-ins with clients on wins. What's going well? What are some things that have gone well And I'll poke and prod sometimes to try to find it. And it might be the consistency thing that's that they may not have had the best workouts in terms of what they accomplished, but they showed up 3 times a week.

Yeah.

And 6 months ago they were doing zero. And we need to make mention of that. And there's obviously a different, there's a spectrum of different things. And it's just, I get excited. So talking about motivating others, I get very excited about being part of that journey. I'm like, this is great. Like you were doing zero. And now you're doing a ton. Like, isn't this— and they're like, yeah, this feels good. And then we kind of go back and forth. Like, isn't this great? Like, you know, you could do this certain movement and you couldn't do it before. Like, you are a new version of yourself. And they're like, yeah, I am. And it builds and builds and builds from there. It's great.

So are they saying this feels good or this feels right?

This feels right.

All right, great. We got the soundbite.

Perfect.

Thanks, Dad. You know what, absolutely. This is, you know, it's great to be able to reflect, uh, what's going on because, yeah, we lose, we lose that. We have that self-fulfilling prophecy all the time and we get, we get stuck in that. Um, okay, so what's, you know, again, we're listening to this, they're going, oh yeah, uh, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna hire Dan, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna start working out. It's like, okay, what's one thing besides, you know, emailing you, what's one thing that they can— that someone can do right away to maybe take a step towards wellness or, you know, physically or mentally?

So the thing that I would say is the hardest part— somebody is not working out or not as active as they want to be— you're going to strike out. You're going to have days where you're not your best. You're going to have days where maybe you did get to the gym or go to recreational sport or choose to go for a run or stretch and it's not your best stretch session or yoga session or whatever it is, and you didn't knock it out of the park, you didn't have like— you weren't on in your, in your best way. That's going to happen. Most of the days are not going to be these big, grandiose, amazing, perfect days. We're adults, we're busy, we're stressed, we have things going on. We just have a lot of things that would otherwise not make it be great. So just know that in advance of starting that It's not going to be perfect along the way. There is no perfect program. There's no perfect lifestyle. There's a lot of parameters and things that matter to me, matter to you, matter to somebody else is different. So it's just not going to be perfect. So that's something that I like to make mention of. And starting very small, you do not have to— like, if I give this a contrast, so if I said to a person, in 30 days, if you did 3 hour and a half perfect strength conditioning, bands, weights, intervals, you did 3 of those sessions versus if you did 27 days of walking every single day, like which one will you take?

Hmm.

And every time it's a person would say, well, I'd take the consistency of the small stuff, which is like a 20, 30-minute walk without the strength stuff. I said, exactly. So just focus on the fact that you show up a little bit every day. What happens in that 15 to 45 minutes doesn't have to be this grandiose, perfect, Uh, performance. It's just that you've showed up for yourself and you've, and you've invested some time in yourself for all the hats that you wear. You're using it and not for the aesthetics version, but for the stress management benefits. Um, the, the where you, where you have your mind in terms of a person talking about like a couple things to help, where's your mind? The mind is on the finish. So the end of the walk, the completion of the task, and that type of element Mindset going into being active and staying active is super helpful. And so I don't want to work out as a as a fitness coach, as Canada's corporate fitness coach. I don't want to work out every day, and I don't focus on that. I focus on what the version of myself I am on the other side of being active. I focus on the finish of the activity. I focus on it being a stress management tool, and I just focus on other stuff other than this. alarming blaring noise of like, hey, I don't want to do it today because of ABC. Just work towards that. Those are hopefully some tips that help and some mindset things that help.

Oh, well, that is great. You know, and I love this idea about, which could be the title of my book, it's not perfect.

Yes.

And we put so much emphasis that if it's not going to be perfect, so I don't do it. So these, these small steps and consistency, I think, are so valuable. And I love the idea about seeing the finish and what that, what that could look like. Because, yeah, I call that, I call that my future Joel.

Yeah.

Because future Joel is a real jerk. He's a real pain. So I know that if I didn't Like you said, go for a walk, or I didn't, I didn't do something today maybe towards some sort of self-improvement. Um, that future Joel will be really disappointed, go, mm. But that re— but the idea what you said earlier was about recording those wins.

Mm-hmm.

Because then you, you may not realize that you actually did something.

It, it feels good to, if you, not everybody is into journaling or writing things down or tracking. Mm-hmm. And I'm not advocating for people to get more apps by any means. Believe me, but I am advocating for if you need to that you have a physical journal that you write down what you got done. You date it and you just write down what you got done. Fifty-minute walk. I did a strength circuit. I was at a played soccer or basketball, and you write that down. And if you look back at that after thirty, forty, fifty days, that feels pretty good to to have captured the memory of the things that you got done versus it being in your head. In contrast to work-related things, being a parent. Having a household, if you just individually on your own can track that stuff, even very brief and very loose titles, it feels great. There is another thing here, Joel, that helps. I think it's important to mention to the viewers, and it's that a social audit. So a social audit is just the concept of are the people that you spend time with away from work or on the weekends, in the evenings, et cetera, the people that you have free time to spend time with, Are they active? Are they exercising? So is your social circle active and participating in movement? Are you— are your meetups and your hangouts revolving around being active? Do you talk about it? Do you share information, resources, etc., about activity and movement and things like that? And if you do, great. There's a good chance you're insulating your days with being exposed to and around activity, and you'll probably, if you're not, become more of that. Or maintain if you already are, you know, in that, in that social circle. So our social audit is extremely helpful for like, who do I want to be and who do I want to become? Surround yourself with those people. And I've done that. And that's been the thing that's helped me a lot over the years with staying very, very active. And it's helped a lot of other people too that I've coached.

That's really sound advice. And so it's Dan Rogers, Canada's Corporate Fitness Coaches. Dan, where can our listeners find out more about you or get in touch with you?

3 ways. So our website, rxrecourse.com, there's lots of information there that highlights what we have going on and what we have to offer. I'm heavily active on LinkedIn, so you can always send me a message on LinkedIn. And then just email danrogers@rxrecourse.com, and I'll be able to set you a link for a meeting if you'd like, a discovery call, or just answer any questions that you may have.

Dan, this has been wonderful. Lots of great tips here, and I look forward to hearing everyone going out there and doing that one small thing before they reach out to Dan to, you know, exactly. It's not about being perfect. Take that first step. Dan, thanks so much for being a guest on TFR, This Feels Right podcast.

Thank you, Joel.

Thank you for listening to this episode of TFR, This Feels Right.

And if this felt right, then please leave a review, comment, or ask us a question. And of course, we ask if you could kindly follow us so you don't miss an episode of Impactful Communication Skills. And speaking of Impactful Communication Skills, you can learn more at our website, thisfeelsright.ca. I'm your host, Joel Silverstone, and happy to connect with you on LinkedIn. And we'll see you on the next episode of TFR, This Feels Right.