S5:E3 - Wolfs Den by Enterprise Fitness - Guest: Eoin Lacey

Hey, hey folks, welcome to the show that punches you in the face with information. My name is Mark Ottobre and welcome to The Wolf's Den. In this episode, I interview and have a really great conversation with Eoin Lacey. Eoin Lacey is the head chief and director, a head strength coach at the Irish Strength Institute, which is obviously in Ireland. Eoin is one smart cat and I really, really did enjoy this interview speaking to Owen on all things strength, conditioning, personal training, nutrition, you name it. We get into a lot of really great stuff, great content here. Owen, thank you for your time, sir. This was a very fun and very insightful conversation and loved chatting with you. So folks, as always, this podcast is brought to you by Enterprise Fitness, Melbourne's leading personal training studio. We are Melbourne's premier personal training studio. So if you are looking to get in shape, reach out to us. And if you are a trainer listening to this and you need some help in your business, whether it's training, nutrition, or the business systems and principles, check out Enterprise Fitness Academy, where I show the folks, the trainers— and I've had trainers from all over the world who've learned from me and our team how to be better on the gym floor and be handsomely rewarded for that and create head-turning results for their clients. So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, let me bring to you Owen Lacey.

Owen, it is a pleasure to meet you a bit online. I've heard a lot of great things. I saw on Facebook the other day, I saw you come up and I thought I got to reach out and have a chat, have a genuine chat between coaches. And I'm very curious to see what you've been up to. Obviously, I've heard a lot about you. I'll just give you kind of my background of where I've heard you around the traps. I did my PICP back in the day with Clark Finn. Clark said, you know, this is a guy in Ireland named Owen Lacey, and he's teaching physiotherapists, you know, how to do knee rehab. And, um, you know, he's a smart cat, and, and he does some great results. And from that, I think you, you were the strength coach— I don't want to be getting it wrong— but Conor McGregor, um, who I think is a national treasure for you guys over in Ireland. And, um, I mean, it doesn't, doesn't get much bigger than that. And obviously you've got your functional medicine stuff that's going on, the Irish Strength Institute. I've been seeing some, some great stuff coming out from you guys. So I definitely wanted to connect and just, yeah, have a genuine chat and see what's up. And yeah, so how are you going, sir?

Yeah, so we're good here. It's obviously, it's a challenging time with what's going on at the moment. But no, business is good. That's one thing I pride myself on. I was lucky enough to meet some really big mentors in my career over the evolution, and I've continued to meet other people since then. One of the things that the PACP really, for me, the people that got involved in the PACP were people that were early adopters, people that were willing to keep this journey moving forward in the search of excellence. So I've met some really good friends, colleagues, coworkers, people I still keep in contact with on a regular basis. So I think that level of coaching and specifically with program design and periodization, nutrition, I think it has self-selected a group of people that were on a journey to be successful no matter what they did. So yeah, I think it's been a It was a great journey for me to be involved in that for such a long period of time.

I can stand corrected, but you, my understanding, you, Andre Benoit, and John Connor actually wrote the material for POCV 1, 2, and 3, if I'm correct in that.

You are, but what I would say is writing is not exactly what happened. What happened was I was in college studying to be a physiotherapist. John Connor was studying a lot of stuff with Paul Chek. And we both worked in the same facility. And then we came across Charles' books back then. The internet wasn't really up and going around that time. So, we got his books and then we invited Charles over to Ireland. And we got Charles there and how it used to be, the whole, the PCP wasn't really formulated then. And Charles would teach a seminar and he would just go here and then here. So, we teach it, we teach a level 1 course. And back then it would be a day on back, a day on chest, a day on biceps, a day on triceps, a day on shoulder rehab and so on. And then other days he could come in and go off on a complete other tangent of 5 elements. And so what myself and John did, and what Charles, that's how we got on so well, we formulated his thoughts into a syllabus, if that makes sense, which allowed us a great opportunity to bleed information from him, but also to structure it in such a way that was suitable towards the people attending the course. Because Charles, as you know, his unique teaching style— unique is a great word to say there— and he was mainly dealing with athletes for the majority of life. When you train athletes, your coaching skills, your manner, your teaching style is different than if you're teaching an executive, you're teaching a personal training client. So what we were able to do is take the science of the strength and conditioning that he put together and put it in a syllabus that was usable for coaches that were dealing with athletes, were dealing with rehab, were dealing with groups, maybe boot camps or semi-private training, and also personal trainers to a certain degree. So that's how we didn't put it— we didn't make it, it wasn't our material in any way, it was Charles' material. We helped to formulate the levels all the way up to Level 5 and the advanced education series as well on top of that.

Yeah, it was fantastic. I remember when I was jocking for my Level 5 I said to Charles, hey, you know, I've got this client, she's won 4 Australian titles, who's a bigger competitor, she won the Arnold Classic. And he's turned around and he said to me, Mark, you train bumfuck athletes, train a real athlete. And I was like, okay, okay, all right. So I got my Level 4 and I was like, I'm gonna start training athletes. I started training boxers and I worked with Andrew Maloney, who won Commonwealth Games gold. So I finally did get my my level 5. But Charles always had that way of kind of lighting the fire under your ass in a way that I don't even think he meant to do it, but it was always just— it always came off in a— for me anyway, for, you know, for me it came up very positively when he laid the gauntlet down. I had to always rise to the occasion and do battle, so to speak. So it was always very, very fond memories. So with where you're at right now, can you talk a little bit about, I suppose, Conor McGregor, I kind of want to start there and just see, like, what was your involvement with him in his training camps and for how long? What type of time period?

Yeah, so, so when it comes to Conor— so, excuse me— Conor is involved in a gym called Straight Blast Gym, or SBG for short. And I was working heavily with it with Charles teaching at the time. And I got this athlete and he was a very good MMA athlete and he progressed from his club into SBG. So when he went to SBG, the head coach, John Cavanagh, Conor's coach, went, man, this fella's fitness and strength is phenomenal. He's mauling people. So John Cavanagh, the coach, contacted me, said, look, I like what you're doing with this guy. Would you come on board to look after the pro team? And at that time, Conor was in the pro team. Karl Pendrith, Gunnar Nelson, Ash Daley, Chris Fields, all top guys. And we had a one-time with 5 UFC athletes, uh, in the UFC at the time, MMA athletes progressed into the UFC. So we were looking after Conor for 10, 10, 11 years. And I actually was involved in Conor's, uh, camp against Cowboy, which was again before the last fight. So yeah, we don't do his strength and conditioning anymore. He has a company that he— it's called, uh, Fast McGregor, Fast I think he calls it. So he has the guys that he has that company with doing his S&C. But we were with Conor for 11 years, right up to his whole amateur career, right into his professional career, and then right into his 4 or 6 fights in the UFC.

Now, I mean, like, you obviously, you're in Ireland. Conor McGregor, the way— I mean, Australia, so obviously culturally there's a few differences. Um, but the way I see it, um, Conor McGregor for you guys is, is, as I said before, like a national treasure. I mean, in Ireland, it couldn't get any bigger in terms of athletes that you could train. I don't think— I mean, is that a fair statement?

Well, this is the thing. Yes and no. So Johnny Sexton, you know Johnny Sexton is a rugby player. Jamie Heaslip, Keith Earls, these are all big high-profile rugby players which I look after as well. Then I've got guys— I look after the Olympic Azerbaijan wrestling team. I have done for 8 years. So when you say when it's popular, you have to say what's the benefit of training Conor to my business? Or what's the benefit of training a high-profile rugby guy to my business? Helping athletes in all different sports is what we do. Yes, having the benefit of training Conor is good from a promotional side of things, but it doesn't necessarily bring you more business. It does open you up to helping other MMA athletes, but it's a benefit as in training Carl Frampton, another boxer, or training, you know, track and field guys who we've looked after. So it all depends. I think a lesson to see, coach, there's a guy called Alver Meal who's an absolute legend in the strength and conditioning world. He's the only coach to have an NBA ring, an NFL ring, and a Major League Baseball ring. And I did an internship with him based off Charles' recommendation. And he said to me, he said, "Oh, what's the difference between a baseball player or an American football player?" I went, "Oh, well, hang on. Let me tell you. I know all about this." And he went, "The uniform, Owen. The uniform." When you train an athlete, you train an athlete. You train their weaknesses. You develop their strength. You you put together a better physical conditioning athlete. So whether you're an MMA guy, once you understand biomechanics and energy systems and power development, endurance and capacity and energy systems, you can train any athlete. So yes, I'd like to say the benefit of Conor was down to my strength and conditioning, but I couldn't definitely say that. It's his skill set, it's his awkwardness, it's— he hit the mark at the time where it needed somebody that was cocky and confident and got a country behind them, and then when the, the divisions or the two divisions were optimal for someone of his capacity. So yes, it's great for them to have that, but I don't think you can— in my opinion, coaches shouldn't hang their hat on one successful athlete. It should be multiple successful athletes showing you their skills in that area. So for example, I worked for the Paralympic Council of Ireland. I trained the cerebral palsy football team. Now, I don't know if you know much about cerebral palsy, but it's mind-breaking. It's very difficult to train an athlete that can't hold a dumbbell or a barbell correctly. But Charles tells this story— well, he did tell the story much better than I did, but I trained this guy for the Beijing Paralympics in 2008, and he went to the Paralympics, and then after 2 games, he was assessed and they wouldn't let him play anymore. Because he had out-trained his disability. Now, for me to get an athlete, and this guy had gone to the Olympics before as a sprint athlete and had transitioned over to soccer, which happens quite often in that sport, but he went to the Paralympics and then got told he couldn't play anymore because his abilities weren't severe enough to classify him to play. Now, that didn't change the fact that he had cerebral palsy, but when you do strength and conditioning, you can enhance someone's physical abilities, change direction, speed, development, fitness, and so on. You can— and multiple sports. That's the— I think that's the, the true essence of a coach that can look outside the box.

Yeah, that's fantastic. Actually, one of my, one of my very first clients named Daniel, he had cerebral palsy, and I actually trained him for free for quite some time because he was so fascinated and see what we could do together. Yeah, we did, we did quite, quite good. Like, it definitely changed his gait and his structure. But I mean, above all else, it changed his confidence, which was great to see. You said something on a podcast about having a special cerebral palsy bar. I've never heard of this. Um, is that— you've got like special equipment for cerebral palsy, is that right?

Yeah, yeah. So what I did, like, Charles, he, he was, he was great in ways, but then he used to slag me off. He takes me, oh, I'm gonna need Tibialis Machine. I'm like, what? You need a Tabialis machine. I was straight on to Atlantis. I need a Tabialis machine. Or he'd get dumbbells, thick grip dumbbells. And like, this is the funny thing. When we opened our fourth gym, I opened my fourth gym in 1999, and then when I opened the fourth ISO with John Connor, it was 2003 we opened the gym. But I bought Black Iron Strength dumbbells, the one that he recommended. They were $40,000. I had no business spending $40,000 on dumbbells, but I You know, you get into this of having nice little tools and different needs of condition. So when I train the guys with cerebral palsy, they can't do this. They can't get their hands behind. They're all in front. And because one hand will be inflection dominant. So I got special-made safety bars, safety squat bars so they could, they could hold on to the bar in front. I got buffalo bars and cambered bars so they could hold it down here so they could still— I got special-made Swiss bars or football bars or Cadillac bars. So they could bench press because they put their hand in a neutral position. And the greater the diameter of the bar, like we have 3-inch thick bars, the greater the diameter of the bar, the less flexion they're in. So it allowed them to do all the activities that other people would do in the gym, you know, and grip attachments and loads of stuff we have that are unique.

Phenomenal.

Phenomenal. I need to go—

there's so many rabbit holes I want to go down. But while we're on the topic of equipment, What is your dumbbells of choice this day? Is it Watsons or you're not so much fussed on what type of dumbbell you're using?

No, what I do is— so for me, the dumbbell is all about the person who's going to use it. So I like smaller increments. So, so the Black Iron Strength dumbbells we have downstairs in the gym, they go from 10 pounds up to 90 pounds in 2.5-pound jumps. So it's a very small jump. I did get a company called Black Box Fitness. They made thick grip dumbbells for me. Because their craftsmanship is phenomenal, but they're really, they're really good. So I have both the Black Iron Strength downstairs, we have Black Box, and then I have two small racks with small dumbbells from 2 down to 10 kilos. So it all depends on the people we're using, you know.

Yeah, nice. Now one thing you said that the Conor McGregor working with these high elite athletes hasn't done so much for the business front other than give you more UFC fighters. I find that really fascinating. I think that someone like Conor, having his notoriety, I know he did some work with Idale Portel and Idale Portel definitely rode those coattails for some time, especially when he won that fight. For business, you've noticed minimal gain from working with these type of athletes?

Well, this is the thing. The ISO, the Australian Institute, is one part of the business that we have. We've got 4 high-performance facilities in Ireland and one in Portugal. And then we have some nutritional clinics, we have corporate wellness, we've got a huge different demographic of business. But if I was to ask, I'm not quite sure what your business model is like, but most S&C coaches that I talk to, or most personal trainers, they all have this interest in training athletes. Right. And I'm sure you're familiar with the Pareto principle, the 80/20 rule. And most of the people that like to train athletes, They're not necessarily making 80% of the revenue from athletes. They're maybe making them from maybe fat loss, they may be making them from rehabilitation, or they may be making it from executives from the age of 25 to, let's say, 65, or 25 to 64. Training Conor McGregor doesn't necessarily open doors for that 25 to 65-year-old female looking to lose weight. Yes, it increases your profile, but it doesn't necessarily get you more of the paying clients that are going to generate 80% of the revenue. Now, for me, my own personal business, not the, not the OSO business, it is those open doors if you're going to teach a seminar. So when I went over to do my interview for the Azerbaijan Olympic wrestling team, when I went there, they did take on board that I trained MMA athletes for 11 years as experience with high-profile guys. But training an Olympic wrestling guy or training a Greco-Roman wrestling guy or girl It's very different than training MMA guys. As I said, it's the uniform, it's their abilities, it's their peaking, it's their conditioning. So it does open doors, but from a personal training point of view, not necessarily.

Interesting. How many people are on your, your team at the moment?

27 guys in total we have.

Yeah, all coaches got admin, or is that just mainly coaches that you got?

That's the coaches, including that is a physio and osteopath. Until then. That's right.

Awesome, awesome. And is it— so you've got 4 studios in Ireland, 1 in Portugal, so 5 operations. Are you managing all the operations yourself, or do you have someone on who manages that for you and you just focus on coaching?

Yeah, so each— so this facility I'm in at the moment, this is the biggest facility that we have. I run this one. I have actually a nutritional clinic just across the way where we do all our OEVs, all our blood testing, all our hormone testing. We have a recovery area with NormaTec and GameReady and a flotation tank. And the gym in the city center, Stephen Ward, he looks after that place. And John Connor looks after the other two places. So we have each— we have a director in each one of the locations that looks after the day-to-day running of that facility. The place in Portugal, it's only in operation when we're there. When we're not there, it's not in operation. It's only when we go to do a camp or do a training retreat or maybe an executive one or maybe it's a camp for a flight, that's when we go over.

So how do you find managing the difference between, you know, being a coach because, you know, you're working with some high-level guys, right? And working with high-level guys, they require a lot of love, attention, focus, you know, and then you've got the business commitments, 4 locations, 26 staff members. How do you go between practitioner/business owner back to practitioner?

That's a challenge. And what I would say is, at the early part of my career, I went into leisure management. I was the manager of what is still now Ireland's largest gym with 10,500 members. And for a young man to be in a gym where you're— we had a lot of staff, man. I actually can't remember. We had over 20 staff in the gym, and then we'd pull staff and tennis staff, we'd climb a wall. It was a huge facility. So going from that down to a smaller gym is much easier. However, when one day I'm over here, I'm in the clinic going through hormones and fertility with one person, then I'm over here maybe doing a rehab session with the guys, carpal tunnel or whatever it may be, and then you have to oversee the business. It is a challenge. And unfortunately, in my opinion, in this game, I still talk to a lot of coaches, do a lot of mentoring online from a business point of view. People focus on their to being a technician. And I'm sure you've heard this from the email. People are working in the business, not necessarily on the business. And I think the business acumen, people don't focus enough on it. So I think building a resilient team, having regular performance reviews and appraisals, having somebody objectively look at your business and having a business goal and strategic plan from every aspect, whether it be your numbers, your intake, your membership, your fees, whatever it is. I think that is as pivotal a part of the business as it is learning how to do Olympic lifting or learning rehab. Because I know, and I'm sure you know this too, Mark, you've got loads of friends that are probably brilliant coaches but terrible businessmen, terrible business people that they can't structure a business. So, and I know loads of osteopaths and chiros and physios that are phenomenal with their hands, but they're working all the time and making very little money. And unfortunately, these lessons are learned in the trenches, which they shouldn't necessarily be. Learning in the trenches is very costly. For me, buying $40,000 dumbbells when the gym isn't even open yet is moronic. But back in the day, you do these things and you learn as you evolve. And sometimes it doesn't break you down and sometimes it does. And I think now in the current climate, people need to be able to look at themselves objectively and say, okay, what aspect of my skill set do I need to improve? Is that marketing? Is that building a team? Is that staff training? Training, is that collaboration with other people. And one of the things I love about this industry, and I like to see it as a positive, is that we have— you're all the way over in Australia and we can have a conversation. We have so many things in common that if you ever rang up, gave me an email, Owen, I've got a client going to Ireland, can you look after them? The same way, I would gladly send someone over to you. So I think we should be more open-minded and have a more growth mindset to lean on other people within the industry. But sometimes I think we pigeonhole ourselves and and don't open up to learn from other people. So we're all standing on the shoulders of giants.

So, so in 2016, actually, I've got a few of them on the line right now. In 2016, I started a program for trainers called Wolfpack, and literally trainers from all over the world have come in. We've got one guy in Canada, he's been to Melbourne now 3 times. And, you know, the feedback I always get is people, the trainers who come in, they're quite astounded at how open I am and willing to share information with them. Uh, because I think people are like, oh, you know, you're scared they're going to be a competitor. My take is that a high tide raises all boats. Everyone benefits from a high tide. So, improving the standard of this industry, my goal is to make personal training, to raise the standard of personal training worldwide. And to do that, you need professionals, an army of people who are all practicing by the same creed and who aren't the cowboys and Barbie females going out and just ass, tits, abs, Instagram this. Doing the wrong thing. It's that that does far more damage than, you know, uh, sharing information. You know, sharing information gets people better and it only does positives for the industry. So I'm 100% on board with what you're saying there. That's, uh, it's nice to hear. Question— yeah, I was going to ask, um, you've got 4 studios, um, what was the decision point that you decided to go, let's open more? Because on one hand, you could consolidate your business into, say, one bigger facility, but you've gone for 4. What's the process thinking around that?

No, no, that's— this is one of the things I would say, it wasn't a conscious decision.

Wasn't it?

It wasn't. It was not. We did not sit down and say, we are at capacity here, we need a second location, which would have made perfect sense. What happened was we wanted to grow the business. We had a good business model where we were, and another facility came available, and we wanted to capitalize on what was going on and the growth that we had. And we had— there was a facility closing down— excuse me— there was a facility closing down in the area, and we had staff that were, you know, sometimes going in between two. So, we sort of capitalized on that location. The location I'm here at the moment You can't see it now, but it's just past this wall here is the ocean. We're in a marina, so there's boats around us. It's in the most affluent area in the whole of Dublin. So when this came about and I had the time to take myself away from the other business, so it wasn't a conscious decision. In hindsight, we could have planned it much better, but it's worked out quite well because we've got very skilled and qualified people in each facility to grow it. But if I was to talk to a younger coach now, I would say focus on the one center, optimize your procedures, make your business franchisable in your mind, and then if you want to replicate it somewhere and it makes business sense, well then go ahead. We didn't necessarily do that with the— we opened our business when we were in a recession. So as we were still growing, we were coming out of recession, we capitalize on that. So when you have money and you have staff and you have the research and opportunities come up, you need to have a flexible business model and a team. That's one thing I don't think people focus on enough. This is a team industry. Like, I remember I got interviewed, this is way back when, and this lady said to me, "Genny MacCown, you're expensive." And Charles always told me to, you know, charge what you're worth, learn more to earn more. So I was studying and I was traveling, all these guys learning. So I put my fees up and I've been the most— I'm the most expensive trainer in Ireland and have been since 2006. No, I don't, I don't necessarily do that to be the most expensive. I do that because as I educate myself, I raise my fees. My fees are at a certain level. So when people come to see me, they may not necessarily train with me or do nutrition with me, but I can then filter them down to the staff. So when all the inquiries come in, I can grow the business, I can grow the team, and the guys can learn different aspects and I can oversee and supervise and help out. But I would honestly say a strategic plan is much better and aligning yourself, excuse me, with your business model rather than making decisions on the fly, which we did. We were young, we were naive, but it's worked out for us.

Yeah. So you just rinsed and repeated that kind of formula and opened a bunch in what seems like a fairly short period of time.

Yeah, it was a short period of time. Yeah.

And did all of those other ones, like the third and the fourth, did they come about because of opportunities like the second one that you were saying?

Yeah, so what will happen is we will see a location open up and we will do reviews. So for example, where we are right now, we're, we're exactly 10 kilometers from the city center in Dublin, and a lot of people will pass through the city center to do walk and then come home again. So what we try to do is we survey the clients that we had, and a lot of them were from where I am right now, the most affluent place. So what we would do is we would survey them, we'd ask them questions, we do market research to find out there's a lot of other places that could— a lot of other clients potentially could come to this facility. So by opening this facility, we were filling a niche. We were maximizing the clients that we had. So we would do research and make sure it was viable. Like the city center gym, when those gyms closed in the city center, there were 7 personal trainers in that facility that were working full-time. There was 11 personal trainers in there that were part-time, and that gym went bust. Not those guys, they were personal trainers, but the actual gym itself. So So here you have hundreds of PT clients with nowhere to go. And most of these guys have gone through our certification and gone through the POGP because we actually used to use that gym as a Polarkin core center. So we had all these clients, all these staff, all these clients, all these staff, and no gym to train them. So we turned around the gym in a very short space of time to capitalize on that area.

When you turn around a gym, um, you know, do you have to have stamp of Eleiko type Atlantis equipment, or you're not so much attached to the type of equipment anymore?

It's just kind of like whatever it is. Yeah. So all our facilities, bar the city center gym, have got Eleiko and Atlantis in that facility. And the only reason that had to happen, we needed to turn that around in 2 weeks. So while that gym closed down, we reopened. So we went through different companies. Now, it's really interesting, that city centre gym is really busy from 5 AM to 1 PM and then it's done. Nobody hangs around in the city centre. The centre business district isn't an area that stays busy, so we're not busy after that at all really. But the actual facility isn't to the same Atlantis, Elite Gold, Blackthorne strength as it would be at the other facilities, purely from it, we needed to turn it around faster, but all our other centres are.

What, what type of square meterage is your, like, your facilities? Like a 200 square meter, 1,000 square meter? What's the, the floor space that you guys are working in?

This one here, this one here is 5,000 square meters. This one here is massive. But I mean, here all the other ones are around 2,000 to 5,000, right?

Right. I think if we do the— I think there's a conversion on, um, basically we use metric units to what you're— so, so your, your facilities are monstrous. Is that, is that right? Like, they're quite large space.

Yeah. Yeah, this one is the biggest one. The rest of them— and then we have outdoor space. One, the city center is relatively small. I think that's 2,500, um, but that's the smallest one we have in the city center, which is spaces is prime in the city center. But with the 40 and move—

is that square feet or square meters?

Square foot in the city center.

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was thinking like 2 because we go square meters, right? I thought that was the case, so It's about like 2,000 square feet is about 200 square meters, thereabouts. So yeah, I get you. Yeah, yeah. Fascinating stuff. Now you've done a hell of a lot of work in functional medicine and something that— so basically, it's interesting. My wife's a naturopath and I was kind of going down the road of functional medicine and looking at that. I had to make a decision. Do I continue to go down that road or do I just focus and double down on business? My wife was getting into it, or she was already into it, and I was like, well, better use of my time is let's double down on business. You know, the wife put all her energy, resources, and attention, so she did her naturopathy. So we've doubled down. So basically I just refer all my, you know, functional medicine stuff. My wife does it all through our studio. So one of the things we're going to start implementing, you know, in hopefully sooner than later, is the IVs. And you touched on it just just before about that's something that you do. What utility, I suppose, have you found IVs? Because I'm not sure if you've seen it— obviously you probably have— the liposomal delivery system. When you look at something like vitamin C, the studies show that liposomal is as effective uptake as, say, intravenous. So it kind of makes the intravenous maybe a little bit redundant in terms of vitamin C. But at the same time, if you have intravenous like glutathione, and there's obviously other things you do with different amino acids. What utilities, how do you use the IVs? Is it something that you use for specific reasons or is it just kind of like let's optimize?

Yeah. So, it all depends on the person. If somebody is getting chelation therapy or getting heavy metals taken out of the body, I would generally use an IV for something like that, DMPS or DMSA. If someone's getting chelation therapy, if someone— a lot of our guys travel a lot, we're located right beside the airport. We've got a lot of pilots and air hostesses as clients. So, when they've done a lot of flying, they will have a hydration IV. When it comes to glutathione and vitamin C, the liposomal formation has been shown to be very effective from a bioavailability and uptake standpoint. If guys have a heavy training camp, we would also use those to help them recover during the times. However, IVs now in the UFC and a lot of MMA organizations is banned now. Injection of any more than 50 milliliters of any fluid is prohibited. So that's not something that we do with those guys. But other executives that are looking for a boost in energy, we might do a Myers cocktail, we might put some glutathione on, but these are boosters. This isn't a staple. They're not getting an IV once a week. They get an IV when they come back from the Hamptons or when they've done a lot of business in Hong Kong, they come back, they want a booster. So it's in conjunction with a comprehensive plan. But IVs on their own now, we used to use a lot of them in the past, but now we use them sporadically with executives that are flying a lot, people that are burned out, they need that little bit of a kick. But stuff like I just said, liposomal vitamin C and glutathione are super effective. The only issue that I would say, and I talk to coaches all over the world on this, if we were sitting in a room now, Mark, with 50 coaches in it, and we asked those 50 coaches how many of them are taking supplements, I'd be pretty confident that about 80% of the room will put their hand up and say, I'm taking supplements. If you were to ask those, those 50 trainers, how many of those have had testing done to direct them towards those supplements? I would suggest maybe only 10% will put their hand up. People aren't testing, they're not doing their organic acids, they're not doing their blood chemistry, they're not doing any hormonal analysis, but yet they spend quite a lot of money on supplements to modulate the hormones or to improve insulin sensitivity. Activity where they don't even know what their insulin resistance score is. So, for me, I think a lot of trainers will jump down the supplement route but not necessarily the personalized report that that person actually needs it. So, we do as much testing as the client will need, but allergy testing, gut testing, hormone testing, blood chemistry I think is phenomenal, by the way. It gives you a big window into what's going on. So, we do much more blood testing to find out where someone's nutritional status is. We obviously do a dietary evaluation as well. And, if we feel vitamin therapy is needed in their treatment plan, we will put it in. But, if not, we'll just go with supplements and then the different formulations or delivery methods as you mentioned.

Yeah. Amen, brother. Amen. You just said it so succinctly and so spot on. And, that's one thing definitely at Enterprise we do is let's not guess, let's do do the sniper approach. Let's see what's happening. Let's get some blood chemistries going on. Let's send you to Christine, you know, and let's, let's take the right supplements based on what the, what the chemistry, what your numbers are saying. And that's exactly, you know, that it's— and more coaches need to hear that. Um, absolutely, that's phenomenal. So I imagine though, offering the service of IVs to your execs and maybe some, you know, bodybuilders and that who are coming in, it kind of seems as the magic bullet, and people want to like jump onto it and do it more and kind of overprescribe? Is it quite popular that you offer that?

It's quite popular that people jump on the IV route.

Yeah, is it a popular service that people want from you or not really?

No, I would say that for me, my clinic clients, I'd say maybe 20%, maybe a little bit less of the people that I see would get IVs on a regular basis unless they have a problem. If it's chelation therapy, then they may get a bit more. If they've got something like Lyme disease, they may be getting it on a more regular basis. It's very specific. So, if I can just— so, I don't want to confuse the listeners. So, in the clinic, so let's say for example, the calorie model, okay? So, we have this situation where people say, reduce your calorie, go into calorie deficit, you lose weight. There's 80% of the people in the world that won't get results from that though. They may have a thyroid problem, they might have a gut issue, they might have a hormonal problem, whatever it may be is, and they don't get results. 100% of the people I see are those 20%. All the people I see that come into me in the clinic have something going on. Low thyroid functions, Crohn's disease, PCOS, whatever it may be. So, when they come to see me, I'm trying to put together a treatment plan for them. So, they're already at a high— they're already willing to do something that's going to help them. But IV vitamin therapy is something that I would use in conjunction with my physician if that's what they need. But it's not always the be-all and end-all. I'd rather somebody— you could spend a lot of money on that, so I could get a really good comprehensive plan for somebody for 3 months with supplements rather than getting 2 or 3 IV treatments. So you have to look at the cost, and if someone's gonna— if someone's gonna get an IV and then go off drinking the weekend, that's not a, you know, good approach. So I try to make it very personalized, and that's one thing we focus a lot on is a personalized performance plan. Every athlete, every client I have, when they come to see me, they're getting a personalized performance plan. And that plan could be for a fighter, that could be for a track athlete, that could be for an executive looking to manage their work-life balance, which is no such thing as work-life balance. It's a load of horseshit. It's work-life integration. You don't have, oh, 10 hours of work, I'm going to clock off and go home. As a businessman yourself, you know, the lines are blurred, but when you're in one place, you need to be in the one place. So what our executives do, we make them perform better, have more cognitive function, you know, their resilience is better, they get over jet lag, they're sleeping better, everything they do during the daytime is better. So we put together a very comprehensive plan with training, with nutrition, with supplements, with IVs if that's what they need, or maybe be float therapy or sauna therapy or massage or ART or chiropractic. But every time they get up in the daytime, they have a whole system their routine in the morning, what they should eat, if I have to get food delivered to them. Sometimes when people come to me, I see their biggest issue is just pure poor meal prep. So I'll hire a company to put together a plan for them for a month, and then as that comes off, we wean it away. We only have them a month for breakfast, and then maybe it's only a month for dinner. So we're building a plan all the time. We call it the health sat nav, that we're going in one direction. One, we know where we are, 2, we know what the destination is, but it's never a straight line, as you know. So as we move along, if we make a wrong turn, we do a performance review, we change the plans, we move forward. But in my opinion, if I can use the sat nav as an analogy, when most coaches see a client, the person that's always driving the car is exercise. And as a coach and as a gym owner, that's good for us. But if I was to say to you, what's the average amount of times your clients train with you in the gym? I wouldn't say 5 is a normal time. I wouldn't say you'd have someone training with you 4 times a week. I've got 2 clients that train 4 times a week, but the majority of coaches don't. So if you train 4 times a week, that only represents 2.9% of the week. So exercise can't always be the person driving the car. Sometimes it has to be nutrition, sometimes it has to be lifestyle, sometimes there may be something additional, maybe a lab test, but always focusing on exercise to get people towards a health journey. It's going to end in some sort of damage, wear and tear. And that's okay when you're 25 and you've no kids, you're not operating a big business, or you've got a lot of meetings or traveling. So for me, our personalized plan has exercise as a core part, but it's not always the driving force. It's a component, but it's a whole blended approach.

Good analogy. Love it. Love it. On the point about meal prep, I'm going to say this story. We had a client who came to see us, quite a wealthy guy, very, very successful guy, but didn't own a fridge or a stove. And when asked, you know, how are you going to prepare food? He's like, nah, I don't want food in my house, basically. So we called a meal prep company. And that's the most extreme example we've had is like, I just don't do meal prep. I don't prepare my food. I don't buy food. I have to get it all out. So, I mean, he lost something like 20, 26 kilos. Phenomenal results. But, um, to your point, you know, it is all about entering into the client's worlds and seeing what is the, what is the linchpin. That's kind of what I look for is what is the linchpin, you know, what's that Jenga block. If I just pull this one block from this massive stack of tower, that's going to have the, the most, uh, effect on, you know, tipping, tipping the balance, so to speak. And as you've had eloquently put, you know, it's usually not training more, it's focusing on the lifestyle, you know, drinking less, balancing out your meal times or actually sitting down with a client saying, when are you able to eat? When can you plan your meals? Can you eat breakfast? Can you go for a walk? And if the answer is no, instead of trying to beat them over the head with a club, trying to get them to do something that just doesn't fit into their model of reality, talking to them and entering into their world and getting it to work so it can be part of their routine and habitual process. So yeah, I think that's really beautiful. Question on the flotation tanks. Something I'm a big fan of. And, I know that you have metrics and things that you look at. What value have you found? I don't know if this is something you personally do once a week or once every month or whatever it is. And, with clients, what have you found the greatest benefit of flotation tanks?

Okay. So, this is the thing. So, I have this Whoop band. I also use an Omegawave to assess recovery. Omegawave gives you much more stats from a central nervous system recovery point of view. So it's very hard to—

sorry, just on that, you've seen the Oura Rings? Do you like the Oura Rings? Or you— yeah, you're a Whoop fan more than the Oura Rings?

No, no, not particularly. Not particularly. Um, the Oura Ring, I actually did a presentation, uh, back in 2016 on the Oura Ring. I do like it. I think it's very effective. I don't think it's good for exercise. I think it's good for day-to-day monitoring and it's good for sleep, but for, for tracking exercise, I don't think it's as effective as as a heart rate monitor across the chest would be, and that's been proven. Well, from a functional medicine point of view, they are linking with a lot of functional medicine physicians. Actually, I spoke to a girl in Australia, and that's what they're doing. They're trying to link lab tests and the Oura Ring together. And the Oura Ring is very good. The Whoop Band, the reason why I have a Whoop Band is I have clients that are also in it. So, we share, they see my sleep, I see their sleep, and I give them feedback on it. So, it's a little tracking device or coaching device. At the same time. Well, I have an Oura ring as well, and I just sporadically will go between different ones to track it. The Omegawave is very unique as well. The benefit is, unfortunately— sorry, the benefit— the challenge is when someone gets into a float tank, some people are very good at meditation. And years ago when I started to sort of meditate, I'm like a big gym monkey. I'm sitting there and there's crazy things going through your head, and I wasn't very good at it. But I think it's called a practice for a reason. You get better at it. Or you get some sort of mindfulness from it, you get a bit of escapism, whatever it may be. But the float tanks, it's different for different people. So maybe for me, when I get in, if I've had a heavy week of training, it's very physically restorative. Or maybe some weeks that I get in and I've had a tough week with business or whatever it is, from a mental point of view, it helps me center myself. So it's very unique, the benefits. However, the deprivation, blackout, float, they're actually floating the epsom salts. There's a multitude of things that it helps. But for people that can't quieten their mind, that can't switch off, I find those people are not going to get the best from it. So I think you have to be some way able to switch off a little bit to get the full benefit from it. Or if you're not going to switch off a little bit, I think you're going to be in a situation where you may just be like floating in a bath. You're not going to get the full deep mental and physical restoration. You get the physical restoration, but not the mental component.

Right. Do you notice— so you do that like once a week?

So actually last week, my manager from this facility was away. I did 4 in a row. That's the first time I ever did 4 in a row. Because I was in the clinic, I had work done and I scheduled myself to do it. And after the first one, the next 3 I did, I fell asleep. In deep, deep sleep. And that's when I felt I got really good restorative from it. But normally I would do one every two— if I was honest, one every two weeks is probably what I do. Last week was an exception because we're locked down, we're not doing anything. I was out in the clinic, I said I'll do it anyway.

So when you say four in a row, you mean like one every day for four days? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And half hour, hour, how long do you float for?

Yeah. So, this is the funny thing. So, there's a system that you can gently wake you up. It's supposed to be 45 to an hour is what it normally should be done. But, the first time I went in, I set my alarm and my alarm actually woke me up and stimulated me too much. So, the other 3 I did, the first one was an hour, the other 3 I did were over 2 hours.

Oh, really?

I felt— and I actually got out, I mean, no way. I woke up as, "What's going on?" But, it was— and the feeling you get from it and how I slept that night, my headspace, It's much better. And then you can see this in your HRV as well. So, you see this the next day. So, I think, but if I was to ask you and I do this to all my clients, I ask people, what do you do to recover? What do you do to enhance your recovery? And what they say is, oh, I take a day off. No, my friend, taking a day off isn't recovery. I watch television. Watching television isn't recovery. Putting a pair of Normatex on, getting into a sauna, getting a massage, doing a float, doing an IV. You have to do something to enhance your recovery. Doing nothing is not a recovery intervention. Doing nothing is doing nothing. So people have to actively— and I see people's weeks, and that's what we do when we have a client. We'll plan out the whole week, and then what are you going to do for restoration? That could be a walk. I actually had the pleasure— my uncle lives in Melbourne. He lives on Richmond right in front of the MCG.

Really?

That's where we are. Is it really?

Yeah, yeah.

No way. Small, small world. He lives right in front of the MCG. So it's funny, I did a course in, I'm going to say Cronulla. I don't know if that's correct. PSP 1, 2 and Biosig. And then I flew down to see him. How many stadiums have you got? I walked from Richmond down to the city and there's like Olympic stadiums all over the place. What are you doing? You're building one for a football team?

No, what happens in Melbourne, Melbourne is the most organized city probably in the world. That's why it won most livable city in a couple of years in a row. So if you look at the layout geographically of Melbourne, it's all on a grid. So it's almost impossible to get lost in Melbourne. So when they decided to put their stadiums, they put all their stadiums literally next to each other. So you've got like Amy Park, you've got the MCG, you've got whatever the tennis one is, a lot of— Rod Laver Arena or whatever it is. I think that's changed now. Someone's going to correct me on that one. All the stadiums in Melbourne are literally like side by side. Um, so it's just, I think what Melbourne's done really well is they've laid out the city design. Um, so, you know, if you're going to go to a stadium, they're all in the same kind of, uh, yeah, place. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's lovely.

It really is nice. So when we plan out the whole week for people walking, sometimes I'm not a huge fan of necessarily going walking. For me, walking is an exercise, it's activity. And it can help people get recovery if they've done enough training during the week, but there has to be an actively stimulating recovery intervention put in place on a weekly basis. Having a night on the drink, going out partying is off from training, but it's still a serious— to help hampers down recovery. So for me, flotation therapy is very effective.

Amazing, amazing. Yeah, what tank are you guys using? And I Sopfos, I think it's called, or a DreamPod? What's the tank of choice for you guys?

You know what, the one across here, they came from China. I'm not quite sure the name of that one. One of the city center is, I'm gonna say DreamPod or something Dream. I don't know the name of it.

Yeah, DreamPod. Yeah, yeah, I'm looking at getting one in the near future. I think they're great. And as you said, I really do think recovery needs to be something that you actually focus on. As you said, it can't just be, you know, doing nothing, because doing nothing is, is exactly that. Um, Owen, it's been an absolute pleasure to speak with you this evening. Um, I've got a bunch of Wolfpackers on the line as part of the Wolfpack program, and I know a couple of them would love the, the opportunity to ask you a question. Um, so would it be okay if I open up the lines and bring some fresh questions on?

So no problem.

Folks, chuck your, uh, check your webcam on. Let's do the obligatory Facebook— uh, it's not Facebook— Instagram photo. Whack on your webcam. James, George, Michael, let's get this cranking. Take yourself a photo. Let's go. Uh, you can give a cheeky flex if you like. Georgie, where are you, mate? 3— there he is, he's coming on. 3, 2, 1, click.

Good.

All right, I'll tag you guys in a sec. Um, all right, who wants to kick us off with, uh, with one of the questions? Michael, we'll go in order. Hey, go ahead, Michael. Mark, how are you?

Yeah, very good. I just had a question, and, um, just coming up with your background, like initially, how did you start, mate? Did you, like, uh, you started off with physio first and stuff, and how did you create, from your perspective, the opportunities to, to work with the types of clients you do and that? What, what do you you pit that down to?

So the type of clientele, as in the— as an athlete or as an executive?

Well, both. They both are high-end performing athletes and people that value, say, your expertise at that level. Um, so with the opportunities, like, you've done a lot of stuff, and would you— would you say it's just that constant, like, you're chasing excellence just constantly? Like, you've done functional medicine, you're always looking, and it sounds like you're always trying to package a whole performance and a whole holistic performance. Is that what you credit it? Like from the start, it's just your pursuit of looking where you can make humans basically better?

So, one of the things that I learned, I worked with this guy called Enda McNulty. He was a psychologist and he brought me in to train this billionaire, Ireland's richest man. Excuse me. I did a training session with the guy. At the end of the session, Enda, the psychologist, said to me, "Oh, was that an excellent session?" I said, no, it was a good session. He says, was it an excellent session? I said, well, no. He says, how could it be more excellent? And I listed down some things that I could do to make it more excellent. If you look at the type of clientele you want, whether they're millionaires or billionaires, they all have a certain, want to call it, group, a restaurant they go to, a tennis club they go to, a golf club they go to. And if you can get in with one of those guys and showcase your level of excellence, your level of detail, that you can provide to these guys. And if you get these guys to lose weight, to sleep better, to have better brain function, they'll refer everybody to you. So what he said to me was, he says, you need to get in front of the people that value what you have to say the most. So you as a personal trainer, as a strength coach, what are you going to offer them? And this is the thing. One of the things I did for this billionaire guy, as Mark says, he doesn't eat at home. He eats out every single day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, he eats out. So what I did was I contacted his PA and she listed down all the top places he goes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And I had one hell of a week. I went to every single one of these restaurants and I got a copy of the menu and I listed down every single thing that he should have if he goes to these places. So when he turns up, he says, oh, here's Owen's message, I can have this for breakfast. When he's on his plane, his private plane, I have it. I spoke to his chef and I've listed down what food he can and can't have. Go above. As they say, the extra mile is never busy. So if you overdeliver to your clients, they're like, man, why didn't I know Michael before? Now I need him, I want him. And if I'm training in a different country, he knows, he sends a program to that coach. He talks to my massage therapist before I get my treatment. So if you go above and beyond and these people value what you have to offer, it will just grow. It will just grow. And all these guys are friends. All these guys and girls are friends. So If you do an excellent job and you're always looking to step up to the next level, you'll get busy. You really will. The fact that you're already in this network with Mark and with the rest of the guys showcases your resilience to be better, to step it up. It's just a matter of stepping back. What did I do this week? What could I do better? I have this diary. It's called the Full Focus Planner. I don't know if you've seen it before, but what it is, every day, every week is planned out. So your objective, your learning objectives from a business point of view, from a training point of view, from a starting point of view, but just be honest. Look for excellence, grow your business, align yourself with people that are supportive, both to the right and to the left of you. But get in front of the people that value what you have to say. And I've seen a lot of coaches in this industry and they have energy vampire clients. You know, those guys and girls you train and go, oh shit, I have to train her now. She drains me. We all have those clients. Get away from them. Get clients that when they see you, okay, you might go, what's today's session like? They're up and going. When they go to business meeting, they're focused on their P&L, the profit. With you, you give them your insight, you're enhancing their life. And then what I would do is once you do that, these business guys and girls, you can learn so much from them. And then once you get into their group, you're the go-to guy. You're my fitness guy. You're my nutrition guy. And that's how you make a business. You be that person that they can't do without.

Yeah.

Yep.

So position yourself and overdeliver, basically, there, like, summing it up. And too, with that diary you just had before, just what's the— I've never heard of it. What did you say it was before?

Full Focus Planner. Yep.

And what's the ideology behind that?

So it's very straightforward. So it's basically just a diary that keeps you in schedule. So your morning routine, your start of work day routine, your end of work day routine, and your end of day routine. Then your perfect week. So if I was to say to you, what would your perfect week look like? Have you ever even wrote that down? So how many clients I see, how much money I earn, how many, how much I'm with the kids, how many I went out on a date night, I had my time to see my mom and dad, or I went to a restaurant. The whole week is planned out. And when you have the whole week planned out, it can go to plan or can't go to plan. Then you can review at the end of the week. But for me, it keeps me accountable. The big rock. I get my big rock going every single day. I see the clients that I need to do. I'm moving forward. So many people, and there's a great book by Napoleon Hill. It's called Interviewing the Devil. And what he says is the biggest thing that causes people not to be successful is drifting. They let life happen to them. You know, the decisions you make every single day will move you forward. So for me, it's about taking action of your own life, of your own business, of the people you associate with, your thoughts, your study, and moving forward. And for me, it just— I like writing stuff down. I like to be away from the phone, away from the computer. I write stuff down and then review it every week. What worked well? Chatting to Mark was good. I helped some people out. They can go off and maybe implement it in their business and not make their mistakes. And one of the things I've made a lot of financial mistakes in my life, we're invested in equipment and gyms that I probably should have been better from. But the most precious thing you have is time. Don't waste your time on stuff. Fail fast, as they say. If something isn't working, try to modify it, work on it. But if it's not for you, move on. So, it's moving forward all the time.

Yeah.

No, no problem. That sounds good. Now, that's all the questions I had, mate. I really appreciate your time and yourself, Mark, organizing this.

Thanks, Michael.

Alrighty, George, you're up, mate. What you got for us? Any questions?

I'm just trying to take it all in. This has been awesome.

Yeah, it's so good.

Um, I guess I didn't have something. Um, when you do meet with an athlete or even just a general client, what is like one of the first things you're kind of looking at to get is the best results possible and the best experience possible. So for me, when you meet an athlete, it's vitally important that you're not a fan, that you're there as a consultant. And as a consultant, I always list down what I want the process of the consultation to look like from their point of view. So I know this might sound silly, but the setup of the room, the water in the room, the whiteboard that you might be using, your assessment tools. You want it like a Michelin star. You want a 5-star treatment. So when someone comes in, realize that most coaches or consultants that they've seen might have assessed them on a gym floor or might have talked to them in a small office. So you set the stage for success, your clothes, the people in the room, the water, and what the learning objectives are going to be. So when this athlete leaves the consultation with you, what's their experience going to be? And for me, it's always like you're trying to give them something that they haven't been given before, but you can't overwhelm them. So let them talk, you know, ask open-ended questions. How is their career going? Where do you think they feel? So for example, if I was to say to you now, we call it the two functional medicine questions. What could you do right now to take away from your life that would make you healthier? And if you talk through your life, maybe it's smoking too much weed. I don't know. I'm not going to ask you. Maybe he's drinking too much, I don't know, right? But you know your life better than me. So an athlete comes in to me, I say, okay, so what are you doing well? What are you doing in your life that's really helping your performance? Well, I train here and here and I take this supplement. What aren't you doing? Well, what should you take away? And then they start to open up because these athletes have been just told what to do all the time. And particularly for me in rugby and in Gaelic, and I'm sure maybe with Aussie rules, when you're a coach to a team, You don't have that one-to-one time. So use this one-to-one time to investigate where, and as Mark said, his Jenga, his table, if you take one piece out, we call it the lowest hanging fruit. Maybe it's sleep, maybe it's marital problems, maybe it's anxiety, maybe it's depression. Has somebody given this athlete an aim for therapists? Has someone given this guy, you know, a massage once a week or sauna therapy or nutrition or whatever it may be? So for me, it's about setting it up for a professional consultation, quizzing and interviewing the client and letting them speak, and then building a plan for them. And once you do something like that, like for example, when I turned up, my client texted me and said, oh, I just got this off Amanda, who was the PA, of all the restaurants that you did. He just said, excellent. His message was excellent. And I've lived really much off him referring people to me all the time. If you're doing a standing job with a client, you're their go-to guy, you know, but overdeliver. Always see what else, what else can they do, what else can they do, you know.

George, just unmute yourself if you want to follow up. Yeah, no, that's amazing. That's awesome. That's really good.

Let me challenge you there, George, right? The last consultation you did with an athlete, Yeah, think about it. Was it good? Give me a percentage. What was it?

Oh, with a real— I haven't really had one with a proper athlete, to be honest with you. Like, with someone I'd really consider an athlete.

Well, what I would do is I would role play. I would, I would meet up with— the first time you do this, it's like sex, you know. The first thing you do, though, with some supermodel, you want it to be— you want to practice having beforehand. So what to do is role play that, set it up. But the first time you do this, don't have it to be with a professional athlete. Professional athlete walks in and you're there and this isn't your first time doing this. You need to build a platform of success. So trial that out beforehand, get proficient at it. Don't be the first time get in front of these guys. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Walk with clients, maybe volunteer to deal with some athletes to help them out and use that as a building block. But then Don't have it the first time be on the main stage. Rehearsals are for a reason.

Very, very good advice there. Yeah, actually what I said to my guys is you always, you always fall to your level of training, you know. And like you said, you know, if you're doing, let's say, a bio sig and you've got, you know, the superstar athlete in the room, you might be shit nervous. But if you've done this 10,000 times, which you've probably done it, if you know, if you've coached, uh, for a couple, you know, for many years, then you don't sweat it. Like, you might be, you know, sweating. The client— this is a high property, you got to deliver. But you don't treat them any different than you would, you know, anyone else. And you, you kick into that level of training and you've got it, you know, you've got it every day of the week.

You've got it.

So that's, that's great advice. Right, thank you, George. Great question.

Thank you.

Let's move to Hua. How you doing tonight, Hua?

Hi, Mark.

Hi, Owen.

Um, how are we doing? Good, thank you.

My question is, um, I have a couple of athletes, um, but like, oh, what I found with, especially in Australia, I feel like, um, often I would have times where I can't train them. They'll be with their programs with AIS or whatever, so I get like 2 weeks here, a month off, 3 weeks here.

How—

it's very hard to periodize for them and like stay consistent, and especially if they get sick or whatever during the time limited time that I do have. Um, have you got any tips around kind of maximizing that?

Yeah, so that's one of the things. The AAS is Australian Institute of Sport, is that right?

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah. So what I would do is there is— and I don't mean to insult people, but fuck periodization. Everyone thinks that making these 6-month and 12-month plans, it never works out. It never works out. People get injured, they have their period, they have surgery, they get sick. All these things happen. So for me, every athlete will have an A, B, and C program in a block of training. An A program is you got this, you're feeling good, you're sharp, you're strong, let's smash it. The B program is, oh, did a bit too much track work, did too much resting, did too much sparring. I'll do the B program, which is lower in volume, but there is some key stimulatory volume in there. And the C program is in a bit of stretching, a bit of mobility, a bit of restoration, and they have the ability to assess that. So they have an A, B, and C program through the whole block. Next thing that they have to do is, if you don't see them, there needs to be some accountability. So when they do their training or they have their loop band or a HoRi, they need to check in with you on a regular basis of how well they're recovering, and then you can do some real-life coaching on the spot. So if you don't see them for 3 or 4 weeks, they still need to report to you at the end of every session that they did. And then maybe they send you a screenshot of their heart rate and then maybe send you a screenshot of your HRV. Hey, coach, did program A, feeling really good. Here's a review. And then all you say to them is every Sunday or every Saturday morning, you give them a review, a bit of an audio. Great session this week. Volume is a bit high. Your HRV is low. Let's bring the volume down a little. AA, BB, C next week. Great job. See you when you get back. So it's that contact that you have with them that you're still involved in the coaching process. You're making it specific to them. We're just giving someone a program and saying, I'll see you in 3 weeks. It doesn't get you involved in the journey because, as I said, the health sat nav, you're never going to go in a straight line. But if someone's gone off track and they're burning out, we want to make a detour or rerouting as fast as possible with that. With that athlete. And they'll love that because they won't get that in the AIS because there's so many athletes there, they're not getting that one-to-one attention. But if you have their HRV, you have their volume, and you have their screenshot of the workouts, that's when you're making real-life coaching corrections while they're in it. Phenomenal. Just one more thing. Go— there's a company, you know, I'm not promoting a company in Ireland, but what I'm saying, there's a company in Ireland called Kitman Labs. And Kitman Labs, they make this program where they take all the data in together. So maybe look them up. They have a few different things that they use to collect coaching stats to make real-life coaching decisions— GPS, heart rate, and so on. But if you could link in with somebody in that area, or maybe just find out what they're using from a GPS or from an HRV or whatever it is, So you can have people be more familiar with what's going on from that point of view.

Yeah, that's good advice.

Thank you.

No problem at all.

Fantastic.

Thanks, Mark, for the question. And, uh, James, uh, go ahead. One of our master coaches, diamond level coaches at Enterprise. Go ahead, James, ask the question. Hey, how are you guys?

James Kelly, where are you from? Liverpool. Liverpool. That's an Irish enough name, close enough.

Everyone thinks he's Irish anyway, so yeah.

Actually, Liverpool and Irish, we let it go, we let it go for it. Liverpoolians, cool. Same, same.

Um, my question, um, is around athletes and one of the, one of the most challenging sports I find to coach with and program for is triathletes. Um, so obviously they've got, they've got their coaches that coach their disciplines in their own right. So obviously the run, the swim, and the cycle. Um, and then the biggest challenge I suppose I find is the amount of volume those guys are doing. Like the guy I've got at the minute, he's doing— he's literally training 7 days a week. He's doing 3 to 4 hours of training every day. So then trying to find the right things he needs to do and the right intensity and volume to give him from his training perspective when he's in the gym sometimes can be a challenge. And I totally agree with what you said there in terms of having that ABC program. Whereas I find with triathletes and especially him in particular, It's literally a case of seeing how he comes in on the day, seeing what he's done previously, seeing what he's got coming up for the week, because his schedule is always changing. It's never quite the same. Um, so yeah, I wanted to pick your brains to see if you had any, any insights or any thoughts as to how to program and kind of plan for that better.

Right, so, so triathlon triathletes are, are a whole different athlete altogether. And I've had a lot of experience with them. So they say that it's a 4-discipline sport: biking, swimming, running, and recovery. So recovery has to be the key component. So what you do is from an— from— let's talk from an S&C point of view. So from an S&C point of view, the more relative strength that this guy has, the higher percentage that he has, the better his endurance is going to be. So for me, when I'm conditioning athletes like that, I work on relative strength. The second thing I work on is offsetting movement patterns. So, swimming, running, and biking all cause a postural and a muscular imbalance in the body. So, when you're training them, it's very important to go from programs of relative strength to programs of corrective balance in the major joints. So, vastus medialis, glute medius, tibialis, and so on, and core strength. So, we're working from that component. The next thing is these guys, the carb intake is through the fucking roof. For the majority of these guys. So when you consume carbohydrates, you need magnesium. Magnesium is essential for the utilization of carbohydrates. Every time you sweat, you lose magnesium. So when I assess these guys, magnesium is always low. Vitamin D is always low. That may not be an issue in Australia, but I need to assess that. Next thing I look at is carnitine is low. So doing a blood chemistry on this guy, ascertain where his electrolytes are, where his recovery is. Then, we need to track his HRV in some way to see how he's managing his volume. So, every time a muscle contracts, we use calcium. Every time a muscle relaxes, we need magnesium. So, magnesium is really common for deficiency in any sort of high aerobic capacity movement. So, relative strength, corrective offsetting of— we call it sport-induced muscular imbalance. Particularly knees, particularly lower back, particularly ankles and shoulders may be an issue if he's swimming, if his stroke is okay. So offset injuries, maximize imbalance both muscularly and nutritionally from what he's doing. But it's all about recovery. And he knows some days he gets on the bike or gets onto the road and he flies. And other days he's dragging his ass. It's not good enough just to say, I don't know why. We need to peak the volume, the volume and intensity. For these guys, the volume is super high. The intensity isn't necessarily there, but the better you make him recover, the better you make him sleep, everything will improve. Also, testosterone. We have a big thing in Ireland where a lot of guys will cycle. Your testes— I don't want to go off on one, Mark, I apologize— but your testes are outside your body for a reason. They need to be at a cooler temperature. In order to make spermatozoa and testosterone. When you're in cycling shorts and you're rammed up in cycling shorts and you're sitting down like this, that's not an advantageous position for your testes to be in to optimally make testosterone. So for me, a lot of these guys, they actually— their testosterone goes down. They eat so much carbs because of their volume, sex hormone binding globulin goes up, which even brings testosterone down even further. So for me, the training, you're going to train him to keep him injury-free, but you're going to help him with his recovery so he doesn't dig a bigger hole from his triathlon training. And then nail him on his nutrition. Like, his nutrition should be his fourth discipline. That's what I say to them. You can spike, you can swim, you can cycle, but we need to sleep, you need to recover, you need your float, the massage, or whatever it is. But that to me is going to be the key thing for you, James. And triathletes are tough to deal with anyway. How many times a week do you see him? Uh, twice a week at the minute. Well, that's not too bad. What do you do for a living?

He owns a landscape garden company.

Yeah, of course he does. He loves the money. That's why he can go off cycling for the whole week, you know. And it tends to be very successful. That's what you have the time to do that. Um, but yeah, so what I would do is get his blood chemistry, get his nutrition dialed in, get his recovery dialed in. And then you can play around with the training in the gym. But the training in the gym, believe it or not, it takes away from the body. So we want to make sure that we're not doing too much with them. We're keeping them mobile, we're keeping them flexible, we're keeping the joints compromised. Even doing some stretching, some PNF stretching with them, doing some ART or fascial stretch therapy will be beneficial for them.

Yeah, for sure.

That's pretty much—

that's now what I've been doing with them lately. I've been giving them pretty much one round of strength session a week and then before his weekend, which is kind of where he does 3-4 hour cycles off the bike straight into a run, um, which is a bit more, like you said, more structural stuff, just making sure his hips and his shoulders are as healthy as they can be so we can get through those sessions without pulling up, pulling up super sore. Um, just a question on that as well, um, have you ever found it a challenge working in that instance where you've got another coach who's focused on the other aspect of the, um, the athlete's sport where they've kind of got that preconceived idea that it needs to— he needs to hit all these things for the week otherwise he's not, he's not getting to what he needs to be, he's not improving at the rate he needs to improve up. And like, how do you, how do you work with them to manage that? Like you said, I, I understand the importance of the recovery and the nutrition side, but those guys who set like the triathlon training, they don't necessarily understand that value as much as, let's say, we hear.

Yeah, no, I get that. It's all the time, all the time. And particularly when it comes to guys that have maybe competed in cycling or triathlons themselves, they feel they need to take the same method and that these athletes need to hit the same markers to get the same benefit. And that's the difference between a technical coach and an actual, you know, more of a holistic or performance coach. So what I say to the guys is I generally use my phone as an example. This guy is pushing your athlete or your shared athlete to hit markers on the bike, in the pool, or whatever it may be, to hit those markers. I ask him, what mobile phone has he got? You got a new mobile phone? So what happens is they move with the times. They buy a new phone, they buy a new car, but they're still following archaic, out-of-date programs. If all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail. If all he knows is triathlon training, things have evolved from now. There's more tech on the bikes now than ever before. Heart rate training. And this is the thing. If you say to him, look, why don't we trial these? Every athlete is different. If you have a benchmark or a barometer of assessing his recovery, well, then you should say to him, well, don't, don't, you know, be negative to him. Say, I understand the volume you're placing on him. And what markers you're looking for. But if we enhance his recovery, he can do this. Every person is different. So let's try and just, you know, change the volume a little bit to see if we can get to these markers. But we need to move with the times. And unfortunately, if you're in boxing, I get a lot of boxing coaches, they're sparring hard all the time. A lot of guys that do a lot of cross-country running, it's a huge amount of volume. People aren't able to sustain the same volume as they may have done before. So take into consideration that he's his own landscape gardening company, he's got his own stresses going on. So work on building a better athlete so he can perform the sport. But wearing him into the ground is going to only get— like, the two things that will always hamper performance is injury and illness. And this guy may not be able to sustain the same level of training that his technical coach is asking him to do. Definitely work on technique, definitely work on swim technique and so on, but the volume has to be just back away. See if he's open to backing away or see if he's open to monitoring how well his HRV is for a month with his current volume and then say, "Well, would you give me a month to modulate his volume to see if it changes HRV and then we do a test or a trial test at the end of it or something like that?" Might get him on board. But it is a challenge, James. We appreciate that. But, walk with them slowly. You might be a bit resistant to that. People tend to be quite resistant to that, but see what you can do.

Yeah, too easy.

Beautiful. Cheers, man.

I appreciate it. No problem. Happy to help.

Phenomenal, phenomenal advice, Owen. Um, just if I may just squeeze one more question in on heart rate variability, because it sounds like you know a lot on this topic. One of the things I find with heart rate variability, obviously, like using the Oura Ring, the Whoop Ring, the other one that you mentioned the Omega Wave. Omega Wave, is that— am I saying that right? Yeah. Um, with these, uh, Omega—

Omega 3s, Omega Waves.

Yeah, yeah. Um, with, with heart rate variability, what do you look for? Because it is quite individualized, you know, with the Oura Ring, they talk about how, you know, you need that week to kind of, uh, get a set point of, of what's happening with the heart rate to actually indicate. Like, are you looking at a certain range or just looking at someone of what they've done in that week? Like, are you looking specific numbers, or is it always relative to the client?

It's always relative to the client. One thing I would say about the HRV, I tend not to let my athletes see the HRV. I just get it. So I don't want them assessing it. If you wake up and you're red, guess what you're going to think? Oh, I had a shit night's sleep. I'm stressed out. It might be just you had a nightmare. You're thinking about your accounts or whatever it may be. I'm looking for trends. And then what I do is I take the trend and I match it to their training diary. So, based on the volume that they did, based on their HRV, and the trend during the week is what I look for. The same thing will come to nutrition. From an enzymatic point of view, from a metabolic point of view, and a hormonal point of view, no diet can be shown to be effective unless you do it for at least 10 to 14 days. So, I'm looking for a trend of how well that person responds to the volume. And I might change the caloric intake, I might change the carb intake, I might change the volume based off the HRV. But it has to be a consultation. I don't just see a number and then say, this is what we're doing. I have to investigate around the area, which is what real life coaching is. And that's when the person gets invested in the process with you. When they do their sauna or do the float tank and all of a sudden they see their HRV improve and the next week they feel great. Jerry Seinfeld says, "Never break the chain." We're linking great days together. Every single day, they put a great day together, they have better weeks, better months, better years. It's all together.

Thank you so much for your time this evening, Owen.

Where can people—

give yourself a plug. Where can people learn from you? What do you want to talk about? Where can people go to really getting involved in what you've been doing?

Well, initially, I love teaching live seminars. That's my passion. That's what I've always done. But because of what's going on now, I put a lot of stuff online. I turned 40 at the end of last year and I joined social media. I know, a 40-year-old joining social media, there's a lot of shit in that social media, let me tell you that for a start. But I have an Instagram page, it's @ownaceeducation. You can check that out. And then I have a website, ownaceeducation.com, which is loads of courses. On sleep, on nutrition, on corrective exercise, loads of unique stuff. One thing I would say is, Mark, and all the guys on board now, you learn as you go. We've all learned as we go. So sometimes it's great to be able to learn from someone that's made a lot of mistakes in that area, or just to come at things from a different point of view. I see a lot of coaches saying, this is how you should run your business, this is how you write your programs. No, bullshit. You write your program to suit your client. You write your program to suit your business. You write your programs to suit the facility that you're in and the area that you're in. So for me, my courses are all about empowering coaches to understand the science and giving them templates that are modifiable to do anything you want. So I have a course on strongman training. I don't train any strongmen anymore, but I do train a lot of teams using strongman training, sleds and ropes and so on. And prowlers. So the fact is, the information is there. Hopefully it's usable. That's one thing I pride myself on. Any information I give out, it's usable for clients the next day in their business. So if you want to check it out, please do jump on board. And if there's something that you guys— if something comes up in time that you have a question, just shoot me a message on Instagram. I have this client, or I have this, or I got this blood test, and I'll direct you towards someone that I know because I'd love to go through, guys, I go to go ahead hormones and blood chemistry and osteopathy and IV. So you need to build a network of professionals that you can lean on like you're all doing now at the moment, but particularly maybe in business, particularly maybe in marketing, whatever it may be, but build a network of people that are helping you push you forward.

Fantastic, Owen. Thank you very much for your time. I feel like we're going to do this again. Maybe we'll give the old Instagram Live a crack at some point in the future and do it on there. But Yeah, thanks for your time tonight, Owen. I, I very, very much enjoyed this conversation. I knew I would. I didn't actually prepare too much because I knew I would just sit down and talk to you and I'd already have, you know, 100 questions ready to go. So thank you, sir. It's been, it's been a pleasure. Uh, final thoughts?

Final thoughts from me?

Yeah, yeah.

Only thing I say is, and one thing when I talk to coaches, particularly young coaches, is They have— they're very goal-oriented. And what I would say is enjoy the journey, enjoy the process, enjoy training your clients, align yourself with people that you respect and you can enjoy your journey together, learn as much as you can. And the people that are out there that are not— are closed-minded, that are not willing, don't get involved in them. Focus on yourself, look after your family, your business, align yourself with positive people and enjoy it. This is a great job, it's great crack, you know, it's great fun. That's why we're in this job. But sometimes people the next goal, the next goal, the next goal. It's okay to have a bit of fun. Okay, to have a bit of crack.

Awesome. All right, what a great message. All right, guys, I hope you all enjoyed this. Uh, as always, I want you all to train hard, eat well, and supplement smart. Until next time, folks, we'll, uh, we'll do it all again. All right, bye.

Cheers, guys. Take care. Cheers, Mom. Take care. Bye-bye.

Hey folks, Mark Ottobre here, and firstly, awesome, high five to you for listening to this podcast. You just did your mind a service and leveled up your, your knowledge. I know you probably— there was a lot of knowledge bombs throughout the way, and if you want to get more knowledge bombs just like the knowledge bombs in this podcast, head over to our iTunes. It's the Wolf Standby Enterprise Fitness, and hit that subscribe button so you get all our upcoming updates, and if you want to hear more great episodes, you want me to do new episodes, I'd be oh so appreciative if you could leave us a review. It really does go a long way. Share this message. We want to get— I want to get the message of health, fitness, and strength conditioning, all the good knowledge that you guys are getting on this podcast. I want to get it far and wide. So sharing it and leaving us a review certainly does go a long way, and I would be most appreciative. So I'm going to thank you in advance.

Thank you.

How's that? Thank you in advance for leaving me a review. Now, folks, if you're listening to this and want to get in the best shape possible, if you're in Melbourne, well, come train with us at Enterprise Fitness. And if you're online or maybe not in Melbourne, you can certainly reach out to us. We've got some online coaches who can help you out with that. And if you're a personal trainer wanting help with their business or wanting to help getting those head-turning transformations and training champions and athletes like we've become known for at Enterprise Fitness, head over to the Enterprise Fitness Academy, folks. I am running internships. I'm running the internships. They're 3-day courses with me where I download as much as I can on training, nutrition, and business. And I know that you're sure to enjoy. I try and really make this program an absolute no-brainer. So trainers, new or old, just look at it and go, yep, I want to do that. You're going to train 6 times with me over 3 days. Your bodies will be sore and your minds will be filled with the goodness that is training, nutrition, and business. So folks, again, thank you for listening. Stay tuned for more great episodes and hit subscribe. And if you're new, if you're a new subscriber, if you're a new podcaster, I welcome you to the tribe of enterprise and look forward on helping you along journey. Till next time, folks, train hard, eat well, and supplement smart.