S2_EP_26 Useful Tips for Fitness Trainers and Their Clients: Interview with coach Lee Boyce

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Dr Mike

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Transcript

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:00:01):

It’s Dr. Mike T. Nelson here. Welcome back to the flux diet podcast or how to gain more muscle and strength, better body composition with a flexible approach today on the podcast, they’ll have a good buddy Lee Boyce, and we get into a discussion of kind of everything around Jim. This, you could say culture, personal training clients, some tips that both of us have used over the years, if you are a trainer. And even if you’re a client and you’ve worked with the trainer, I think you’ll enjoy this kind of wide ranging discussion and first event or first saw Lee’s stuff on a teenager in the past and enjoyed a lot of his videos. And over the years been able to hang out with them several times. He is a personal trainer up in Toronto. It’s also teaching fitness professionals. They’re in an academic sense and every time they get to hang out, it’s always been really fun.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:01:04):

Just exchanging ideas with him over the years. So enjoy this conversation coming up as always, it’s brought to you by the flux diet podcast, which is this show from the flux diet certification of the same name. So if you want eight interventions to maximize nutrition and recovery with your clients or yourself, go to flux, diet.com F L E X, D I E t.com. And you’ll be able to get on the wait list right now. It looks like we’ll be opening up again around the first of the year January, 2021. So go to flux diet.com. Get on the waitlist. That’ll put you on the newsletter. So as soon as it opens, in addition to cool daily content you will have all the information. So check out this podcast here with my good buddy Lee Boyce. Hey, what’s going on? It’s Dr. Mike T. Nelson here with the flex diet podcast and I’m here with my buddy Lee Boyce. How’s it going, man?

Lee Boyce (00:02:07):

Going good, going good. It’s just trying to Dodge the snowflakes as they’re just coming down now for the first time for the year. So it’s an interesting interesting period.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:02:16):

And I see you’re hiding in your car, pulled off, hopefully safe in a parking lot, not with all the other crazy drivers, correct?

Lee Boyce (00:02:22):

Oh yeah. You know, I’m just pulled over here.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:02:27):

Yeah, it’s other enough that we had some snow in Minnesota so far, but it’s like 18 degrees Fahrenheit today, but no snow yet. So I’m sure it’ll, it’ll snow once again. And then I try to stay off the roads the first day of snowfall because people forget how to drive, even though it’s snows, like every winter in Minnesota, just like it doesn’t Toronto, but people tend to forget all the time.

Lee Boyce (00:02:49):

Yeah. So that’s exactly what I’m experiencing as we speak right now. One reason why I’m definitely pulled over for sure. But yeah know, like I think that with the COVID stuff, plus the fluctuating temperatures and everything like that, there’s going to be an interesting next couple of weeks with regards to weather changes and sickness and all kinds of stuff like that. So we’ll see.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:03:10):

Yeah. Are you guys still kind of shut down up there? I know Montreal was kind of shut down and different parts of Canada just seemed to be highly variable.

Lee Boyce (00:03:18):

Yeah, we we’re one of the, sort of like the hub transmission places. So we sh we just shut down again a week ago and we’re in like stage one lockdown down right now, which is like the most severe one. So only essential businesses are open. And I think that it’s going for a minimum of 28 days, which would take us to Christmas, which is clearly not going to happen. They’re going to go past Christmas and bring it into the new year. I’m sure. Because the second that they opened on, like the 21st of December, the only thing they’re going to, the only thing is going to happen is cases will spike right back up. So, yeah.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:03:52):

And I assume that’s going to affect your ability to be training clients, obviously in the gym. I would assume gyms are considered not essential. Like most cities.

Lee Boyce (00:04:00):

Yeah. So all the gyms are shut down. All the gyms are closed. Luckily I have a gym that I can train at myself, but I can’t work with clients until it’s all open again. So even when things did reopen, which was on the 7th of November, they closed promptly again on the 21st. So people were training clients for two weeks.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:04:18):

Oh yeah. Oh I feel so bad for people like, you know, like yourself and other people who train people in person. I’m lucky I converted my garage to a gym, so it’s been nice. And when everything happened, when we were originally in Costa Rica, we came back that, I mean, everything had just been closed up, so I didn’t have anything to worry about and just, Nope, not doing anything. No one’s coming over and yeah, but it’s pretty hard otherwise.

Lee Boyce (00:04:48):

Yeah. So I mean, like, it’s definitely something where trainers have to be savvy enough to be able to pivot to a lot of online platforms and stuff like that, if they want to still you know, earn and everything. So you know, for people who don’t have that I guess expertise or that background or who haven’t taken the opportunity to really, really make use of social media platforms or online coaching or virtual training, there’s a lot of trainers who are doing Skype sessions and stuff like that, not my thing, but it’s still one of several options that are available in alternative to you know, working with clients in person based on the circumstances. And it’s worth everybody’s time and investment of, of energy to try to get decent at this sort of thing, because it’s going to matter. And I don’t think we’re going to be out of the woods up here anyway, in the next couple of months, like once this is over, there’s still going to be some aftermath sorta thing that’s going gonna, it’s going to last for a little while. So we should, we should be on top of this.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:05:43):

Yeah. I mean, obviously John Goodman has said this a fair amount and I saw an online nutrition certification. So people are like, Oh, you’re just biased. But I’m like, I still think almost every trainer, I was even saying this a of years ago should have some online portion. Right. So even if you’re someone who works with the clients, like three days a week, they come to the gym, they do everything, just do some basic nutrition stuff online, like, cause they’re probably going to go on vacation. They’re probably going to go write them a simple body weight thing, like have part of even programming. If they want to only work with you two days a week, they want to do one day on their own right. And charge extra for that programming aspect. So when you build up the skillset to, you’re helping them get a little bit better result, you make a little bit more revenue.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:06:30):

And then now if you have to transition and even like harder because the gym is closed to me, like, okay, well, you know, write you a bodyweight workout or you got two dumbbells at home or a dusty kettlebell or whatever. And I think it just gives them more options. And it also helps the client stay engaged too. Because I mean, we all know that a lot of clients, especially people who work with someone in person tend to be kind of an all or nothing. Like they’re, they’re, they’re committed, they’re doing the stuff. And then when they’re not with you, it’s like, who knows what, what the hell’s going on.

Lee Boyce (00:07:01):

The thing is, is that like as trainers, especially we have to be we have to make sure that we maintain the mindset of giving the clients kind of like resources and the, the, the power to be able to not need us as directly as time goes on. Right. We want to give them the chance to learn and graduate to a certain level of their own knowledge. And so a part of that does come through a lot of programming and whatnot. It always hurts me when I think about a lot of clients that I have, or that I have had where the only times they’re working out of the times that they’re seeing me and that’s it. Right. And you know, that’s inevitable. There’s always going to be people who are like that, but the goal should be, if they said to me, Hey, you know, I want to start doing things on my own.

Lee Boyce (00:07:41):

I want to problem have a little bit better understanding of these concepts. Can you make something for me? Absolutely. I had hoped that you’ve said that for all this time. Yeah. So that’s a that’s, that should be the real goal and the intention for a lot of trainers. And if you have a client who’s been around for 10 years, which I’ve got clients who’ve been around for that long it’s gotta be a matter of choice for them at that point, rather than I don’t know what I’m doing. If I’m not with you right now. Right. You should have taught them something in that time period. So you know, that’s the way that I see it, that’s the way I try to approach it myself. And that’s what I’d like to promote because it’s, it’s very important.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:08:14):

Yeah. And I think even just, I don’t do any in-person training any more than just, you know, one-off type sessions, but, you know, I did work in a gym for awhile. Like the clients that looking back, I just didn’t like working with that much were the people who had to be told absolutely everything that they needed to do. And just, they just weren’t at that position to take that next level of ownership. And you can tell even by just the questions they would ask and you would ask them, you know, Oh, what’d you do yesterday? And just even small things were just kind of, not, not in their mind space where you had other people where they’re like, okay, so I’m going to be with you two days a week. I can train on Friday, you know, what should I do on Friday? You’re like, Oh, so awesome that you actually asked, because you can tell they’re taking more ownership of the process. And eventually when they transitioned to going out in the real world on their own, they’re going to be in a much, much better position.

Lee Boyce (00:09:06):

Yeah. A hundred percent. I thinking of a person, a particular clients, and especially during a particular time, like when I was a lot younger let’s say in the first couple of years that I was a trainer so I’m thinking age 20, 21, I would get upset if a training client came to me and said, Hey, yeah, you know, I went on vacation for example, for two weeks. And while I was on vacation, I picked up sessions with this other trainer out there and I did these sessions and I got through it, you know, I would be like, Oh, you, you, you train with another trainer. Like, what is the cheating

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:09:35):

On me, bro? Right. Whereas

Lee Boyce (00:09:37):

Now, whereas now I look at it and I try to encourage that sort of thing. So given to the person keeps you safe and everything like that, it’s promoting your consistency. It’s keeping you on top of things. It’s showing that you have the drive to actually do it on your own as well. And and seek out some kind of assistance. It’s even better than just training yourself on and following your own programming and doing it yourself. You have somebody to push you to have somebody to monitor your form and technique. So honestly it is something that, you know, we’re trying to help people. We’re trying to help people get better. And we’re trying to establish habits for people as well. That’s the biggest part of this. And so if we’re successful at that, then they will take on an approach like that, where they do want to sort of seek out, help if they’re in a different city, if they’re new in a different place, if they’re on vacation right now, if they if they’re, if they’re on their own, are they gonna look for you to help them with programming and so on?

Lee Boyce (00:10:27):

So they can do things themselves that independence sort of side of things, it’s, it’s something that is underrated that we should sort of bring up in our priority list as trainers to sort of try to promote.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:10:38):

Yeah. And that’s also a very, I would say secure, immature mindset too, right? Because you’re not worried that they, Oh my gosh, they worked out with another trainer for two weeks. Oh, they’re going to leave me and never come back again. You’re like, no, that that’s great. You’re going to be gone for two weeks. You got in when she needed to do great, you come back cool. We’re back doing, you know, what it is we were doing before. So

Lee Boyce (00:10:58):

Exactly. You know, it’s a revolving door with training. Like, and again, I’ve only after what 14, 15 years almost doing this is when I can really start seeing this happen where, you know, you have a client and maybe they fall off and they go away. And then all of a sudden, a couple years later, they swing back around and they say, Hey, you know I don’t know if you remember me, but I was wondering if we can just successions again, type of thing. You know, that has happened to me literally countless times over the course of my career where you think you’ve lost a client or a client has done or whatever, or they go and train with someone else and then things change. And then they’re back with you. I have so many people, or I’ve had so many people over the course of time where, you know, they’re here and then they’re gone or they train with you for three years and then a year, two years go by and then they come back, you know?

Lee Boyce (00:11:42):

And it’s, it’s just, it gives you a sense of calm a little bit, because if you do lose a client, well guess what more clients are going to come anyway, new people that you haven’t met yet. And then on top of it, there’s probably going to be some instance over the course of time where that relationship that you built with that client that you had over two years, three years, whatever it is, it’s not going to go for granted. They have a trust for you. They have a respect for your, your knowledge and your expertise. And they’re going to come back around at some point to work with you, you know? And you know, that’s just, it’s, that’s how it is kind of in most metropolis, especially. And a lot of trends and a lot of training clients are pretty loyal when, where that’s concerned, especially if they have you know, a decent head on their shoulders and you never hurt them or anything like that. It’s, it’s, it’s heartwarming to think of it that way, because it gives you a little bit more security in, in, in your, your work and your job, especially if you’re a private trainer.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:12:34):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I remember even man, probably about five years ago now I had two clients in particular. I was just doing online only. And they would just disappear for months at a time. Like, and at that time I wasn’t very good with tracking, you know, compliance and stuff. It was like, Hey, fill out this spreadsheet instead of, you know, online apps and stuff like that, where you just kind of click a button. And for awhile, I had this deep agony of like in the past, I would just fire him. I’m just like, Oh, you’re not doing the work. I don’t want to just take your money. And I think it was something John Berardi said was that, well, maybe you’re the only person in their life that is providing them any sorts of direction or any better information because I’d still send them their updates.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:13:17):

I still send them everything. I just didn’t hear anything back. So for all I knew they could have been doing the workouts that could have been doing all the training. We’re just too busy to update me or whatever. And one of the clients in particular would like resurface like every three months. And it turns out they were doing everything. They just, their whole life got busy, but they were still doing the work. And so I think sometimes it’s easy to forget that when we start losing some interaction and obviously you want interaction, you want to know what’s going on. You want to be more updated, but you know, sometimes as a trainer, you may be the only sort of positive or better information in their life at that particular time too. So we never know how the results are going to go or kind of what effect you have on people either.

Lee Boyce (00:14:02):

Yeah. You know, it’s funny you say that because NSCA they do the personal training, quarterly magazine and I contribute to it from time to time. And I was actually asked to sort of put one in a possible subject pitch in there for this coming up. What’s it called? Issue. And so he left it to me. The editor left it to me to sort of like come up with a good subject. And literally like 30 minutes ago is when I, when I submitted this pitch. And I said, you know, what about a subject that has to do with the roles of a personal trainer in terms of what kind of hats they’re supposed to wear for, for different kinds of clients to make a successful career, to make a career that’s really worthwhile. And I’m included in that, in this page that I said included in that would be things like being able to make sure that you’re managing the client properly based on their personality type, based on what their habits are like.

Lee Boyce (00:14:53):

With regards to, you know, are they somebody who is very social? Are they somebody who’s not social? Are they somebody who’s got a home-based job or are they somebody who’s out and about do they have are they young? Are they older? What kinds of details of their life can you sort of align with and help them sort of go to where they need to get or get them to where they need to get while sort of, I don’t know, what’s the word I’m looking for kind of pandering to their style, I guess, for lack of a better term. And you know, it’s, it’s really, really interesting to think about because it starts making you take on a role that you want. It’s not just somebody who just you’re giving them sets and reps of exercises to do when that’s it. And if you’re not following along, then that’s all, you know, there’s a lot more to it than that.

Lee Boyce (00:15:35):

And, you know, whether it’s, whether it’s recognizing the fact, like what you said, that they might, you might represent the only interaction of positivity or whatever their life at this time, or some kind of consistency or solidarity, whatever it is, you might be that for them. And, you know, I personally know people who they have clients where it’s exactly that they’re not training with that. They’re not training with that trainer just for the training they’re training with that trainer because they represent something so much more for them. It’s so important for them, even if they might not be the greatest clients or even if they might not have the best interaction or whatever, it’s something that it’s a lot bigger than just working out for them. And, you know, we have to recognize that we, without being therapists or being something that’s outside of our realm, we have a lot greater of an impact on a lot of people than we might even think.

Lee Boyce (00:16:28):

And those people might not communicate it to us at all, but it’s worth realizing that this is, this is a bigger thing than that. And how much fitness and health fitness and training and nutrition affects mental health. It’s a, it’s a big, big piece of the pie. And, you know, sometimes it’s behavioral that we don’t even, it never gets identified, but it’s, you can see it right in front of you type of thing. Right. I made I made a post on Instagram. Maybe it was a few weeks ago now and I was talking about something that’s very interesting in terms of how training seems to affect from what I’ve seen anyway, what, how mental health seems to affect people’s relationships with training. And you know, there’s a lot of people out there who, when they’re in a bad place, mentally speaking, when they’re challenged with their mental health, that’s when they will avoid training altogether.

Lee Boyce (00:17:19):

Right? And so they’re not motivated to train. They don’t want to work out and everything’s just terrible. And then the other hand, there are some people who, when they’re going through stuff, they use training to actually sort of help them sort of stay like this. And so all of a sudden, it’s the remedy for mental health issues or challenges with people’s mental health in other trains of mind. And then if people are going that person who’s down here goes up here on their own, then all of a sudden they’re back to training, right? Whereas the person who is using the train up here and then they fall off or something and that’s what makes them fall off. So it’s just interesting how it can affect people in different ways. And so the role of a trainer or a coach can be kind of like multidimensional in that regard. And it can be very important, very pivotal to sort of, I guess put the hammer down on that consistency and understanding for the person that this is something that should never go away. You know, fitness is something that should always remain a part of your routine and something you should draw value and treasure, and I’m here to help you navigate that path.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:18:21):

Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, I think of it as pushing people back towards that middle just consistency day in, day out, getting it done because I’ve had clients the same way I know, after working with them for a period of time, if they get super stressed, they just go stew, they just disappear. I know they’re not doing anything and I, I get it. So my goal with them is exactly what you said. Okay, can we get you to go for a walk community to get you to do, you’ve got a rower in your garage? Can you just do two minutes in the morning? Can I get you just a little bit back, closer on track? And then I’ve also got other clients who they get super stressed. It’s like, I’m headed to the CrossFit gym and I’m doing the nastiest Metcon. I can find woo.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:19:01):

You know, and I’ve watched their HRV, just, you know, plummet the next day. And they’re destroyed for two days. And in the past, I’d used to just cause me to pull my hair out and gray hairs and drive me insane. And now I’ve kind of realized to your point that that’s what they, this has nothing to do with their, their physical, they needed to do that, to manage their mental state. That’s what they needed to do at this point to manage their mental state within reason, as long as they don’t get hurt, I’m probably gonna let them do that, but I’m also going to try to educate them and show them, okay. Yeah, you did this, that’s fine. But now you can’t train for two or three days because you’re so wrecked from it. Or you’ve got some other weirdness going on. Can we modify that a little bit?

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:19:44):

So maybe you do a harder session, but maybe not quite so hard. Right. Can I kind of get you back to that middle a little bit? And then long-term, I’m thinking, can I get you to do something to handle stress that involves either movement or also no movement? So to me, those are like the two ends of the spectrum, like yeah. A lot of movement to modify it, but maybe for that person over time, could I get you to just chill out and meditate and do some breath work for five minutes? Right. That’s like the opposite polar around, because when we talked about going on originally, like how do you set up clients for longterm success? To me, like the more strategies you have to deal with that I think you’re going to be better off. And then hopefully based on how you feel, where you’re at physically, you know, like, well maybe only going to do a 10 minute Metcon today and I’m going to do 10 minutes of breathwork instead. Right. Can we try to teach them the skills to kind of self moderate over time?

Lee Boyce (00:20:39):

Yeah. you know what you’re saying, sort of lends to the idea of like a part of the fitness culture that I honestly, it starts the older I get, the more it grinds my gears. And that is the fact that it’s the fact that the hard core or die type of mentality, you know, fitness industry as a whole is a young industry, the average age of a fitness professional. I could only imagine what it is at least in, in Toronto, it’s probably like 26 or something like that. It’s probably really young. And so when we start applying the mentality of fitness from that age, vantage point, you know, where, okay, we’re 24. We like to train hard, we train heavy, we don’t get injured, we don’t get her. Nothing is wrong. And we can look at weights and grow and we could look at weights and get stronger, or we can eat whatever we want and get away with that.

Lee Boyce (00:21:30):

We don’t own any condo or house or anything like that. We don’t have a wife and kids. We don’t have all those responsibilities. Our stress levels are pretty good, you know, and everything is just kosher in that regard, when we start applying that thinking or that invincible kind of nature to our clients and thinking that they should be training hard or go home going home, or thinking that training for life is all about never stopping, trying to get stronger and stronger and stronger and things like this. It’s just, it’s a way to get hurt in a hurry. And it’s a way to have a bad mental attitude towards fitness and health, because you start attaching yourself to your PRS, for example, and other really, really bad things like that. And you know, bringing it back to the mental health aspect of things, we know how important that all is.

Lee Boyce (00:22:18):

So if you’re going to try to start, it’s important to get this under your belt and be like that in certain points in phases and so on and train hard, that’s important. Cause you’ve got to get results in some way, but at the same time, if you don’t realize that there’s going to be a point where you have to really, really change those values and go like this with the heavy and hard stuff, versus the long-term longevity training, intuitively scaling things back, recognizing that other factors like, you know, sleep like rest recovery nutrition and all those other things you know, breathing work meditation, self care, even like seeing a re a resident, registered massage therapist, chiropractic treatment for tuneups, all that sort of thing. They’re going to get more and more important. How important is cardio training to you? How important is mobility and flexibility work tool to you?

Lee Boyce (00:23:08):

Would you ever get out for a yoga or Pilates session as somebody who’s carrying a ton of muscle on you? You know, like what, what do those kinds of things or pursuits of fitness represent to you, the lifter to you? The trainer. And I, would’ve never dreamed of saying that I want to try Pilates when I was 24. Now at 33, I want to try Pilates out. So these are kind of like the sort of change in mindset that I think is very important. And you know, the more we could instill that in our clients, it comes with, I have to say that this sort of thing does come with age a little bit as well. You know, it’s not incidental to a young, fresh youthful trainer. And so on. You got to be in the game for a little while training and working with clients and so on for a long time, because then you’ll realize that like the way that you’ll approach a 23 year old, who wants to get big and strong is not the same way that you’re going to approach a 53 year old who wants to get big and strong same goals, probably going to take a different approach to training and nutrition and everything else.

Lee Boyce (00:24:08):

And you know, it’s a realization that can be very humbling and something that can be sobering a little bit for a trainer who thinks that there’s sort of a one size fits all approach to everything. And it would really, really change the landscape of the industry and its culture. If there were more peoples recognize this.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:24:25):

Yeah, no I’m preaching to the choir. I agree. A hundred percent. I haven’t switched all my assessments about two and a half years ago now to include at least some factor in each one of those, some mobility assessments. So movement assessment, obviously their goals of full cardiovascular profile. Breathwork CO2 tolerance, all this stuff that takes about a week for them to do. And even if like pretty much everyone goes through the same assessment, it’s changed a little bit depending upon their goals, but there’s always some component of each one in there. And even if someone comes in and goes, ah, bro, I just want to get like as big and strong as possible. I’m still going to have them do a cardiovascular assessment, right. Cause I know that may not necessarily be their goal, but I know that once those things get to a threshold where they can no longer do certain things, like if you need four plates on a squat per side, just to hit depth, that may be okay for power lifting.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:25:18):

But that scares the out of me for you walking around day to day, that tells me that there’s probably not something right there. So if your goal is just to get bigger and stronger, I also think as trainers, part of our goal is to have some sort of assessment or at least education to bring up these other things before they actually become issues. Right? We don’t want your cardiovascular fitness to degrade to be so low that you get winded walking up a flight of stairs. You know, there’s probably some threshold you need to keep as just a normal functioning human being. And I feel like part of the job as a trainer is to keep an eye on those things. And even like pain is a big one too, you know, like I, I just don’t like being any pain from lifting now. I just have such a very excrutiatingly low tolerance for it where, eh, 15 years ago, even, maybe I’d be like, eh, that’s just part of it.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:26:11):

That’s just the way it is because everybody I knew at that time always had pain. So that was like my normal. And then I remember getting just so destroyed. Once I went to a seminar, I remember laying in a, an Epsom salt bath going, what am I doing to myself? Like I am destroying myself by my own free will for, you know, numbers that like high school chicks were doing. You know what I mean? It wasn’t like I was going to be a professional at powerlifting at all. I remember asking him one of the coaches I worked at the time. It was very, very observant, but never really said anything out loud. And I told them what I was thinking. I said, well, you know, what should I do? He’s like fire your current coach and do like everything about 180 degrees, the opposite of what you’re doing now. And I’m like, yeah, that’s solid advice,

Lee Boyce (00:27:04):

You know to what you said there. And it just made me think about the fact that like there is a trade-off with every goal that you pursue in fitness, whether it’s to get very strong, if you want to get very strong, you could probably get it. You could probably expect your conditioning to start to go down. You could probably expect your body composition to change in terms of body fat percentage and stuff like that to achieve really great results in terms of strength stuff like that’s going to happen to achieve great results in terms of size. You’re probably going to lose flexibility and mobility, you know, to achieve great results in cardio respiratory capacity. You might lose some muscle mass, you might lose some, some strength and so on. You know, like everything comes with a little bit of a trade off.

Lee Boyce (00:27:50):

So right now, especially in the strength and conditioning world, a lot of the emphasis is usually placed toward the strength side of strength and conditioning. That’s just how the nature of it is. And so with that said, and with that in mind how strong do we need to get how strong is strong enough and why aren’t more people talking about this, right. It’s not to say that we should all be okay, well I can bench press one plate. So I’m good for light. No, it’s not that, but it does mean, it does mean that we have to realize that there’s going to be a certain point where there’s going to be the risk reward is going to sort of change and its values, especially as time goes on. Not only as time goes on calendar age wise, but as time goes on, as far as what PRS you achieve.

Lee Boyce (00:28:34):

So I might have less collateral damage when I can bench press one 35 and then a little less collaboratives when I do two 25, but what I start getting to three 65 and 400 pounds and so on, like there’s probably an injury I had to sustain along the way to get there. There’s probably less mobility and a lot more muscle on my body as well to start subtracting from those other goals. I was talking about the trade-offs and so on. They’re just factors that now start influencing what your capability is in these lifts. You’ve also, you’ve also probably spent a whole lot of time bench pressing to get that four Oh five bench press. So what other exercises can you have done during that period of time that could have been more healthy for your shoulder or more better for your conditioning or whatever have you?

Lee Boyce (00:29:20):

So my point being that when it comes to strength gains and trying to push PRS all the time and so on, we have to realize that beyond a certain point, that still makes you a healthy, functional well-rounded individual from an athletic perspective beyond a certain point. Now we’re starting to get into a hobby. We’re not getting into things that are mandatory, that we need to look into and me trying to improve on my five, 15 deadlift it’s not needed, whereas somebody who might have, you know, back pain from just bending over to pick up the empty bar. Okay, well they need to deadlift and they need to get strong in the deadlift. You know, so it’s just, we have to recognize when we sort of set the limitation and say, okay, you know what, I’m going to step back away from this kind of goal and start pursuing these kinds of goals instead.

Lee Boyce (00:30:05):

And it, it can mean a world of difference for the experience of chronic pain that you deal with a world of difference for your mental calm and your mental health, because you’re not gonna think about, Oh, well I only dead lifted four 75 today instead of five Oh five. So I’m off my game and that’s going to, I’m going to take that home with me. Right. And so like that kind of culture is the sort of thing that needs to die. If we really want to think about you know, being able to have an impressive workout or have an impressive physique or have an impressive performance when we are 70 and 80 and 85 years old, you know? And if you ask anybody who is that kind of age, who does have impressive stuff behind their belt and who does have a great physique and who does have great look and movement patterns and all that stuff, you ask them.

Lee Boyce (00:30:51):

So like, what have you done the last 40 years? They’re not going to say, Oh, you know, I pushed my PR and the bench press, I’ve pushed my squat deadlift. They’re not going to say that. Right. They’re going to say, Oh yeah, you know what? I do a lot more cardio. I focus on stretching and mobility work a lot. They say these types of things, they’re going to say, I focus on you know, proper movement. I don’t train too heavy anymore. I train for repetitions a lot more often these days. Th these are the kinds I do. I do a yoga session every week. I’m in Pilates or whatever, you know, they’re going to talk about a lot more of diversified approach to their training. That probably doesn’t involve going hard as you can against balls to the wall, every single workout. That’s, that’s definitely not the way to get sustainable results.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:31:35):

Yeah. And a lot of the people think that it’s just the human brain wants to think. Everything is just nice, neat, and linear, and most things are not linear at all. And I think that curve is an exponential curve where you start pushing lists to whatever your capacity is. And you’re trying to gain, you know, another 15 pounds say on your deadlift. Yeah, definitely possible. You can definitely do it, but you’re getting to that point of the curve where the risk reward starts getting steep, you know, for us small gain overall, compared to the standard pounded, you’re moving, the risk starts to getting exponentially higher, you know, and I think it’s, where are those points? And to me as a client educated about that. And if they’re like, you know, my goal is to hit, you know, five 45. I know I’m taking a little bit more risk.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:32:23):

This has been my lifelong goal. It’s what I want to do. Okay, cool. There’s things we’ll do to try to mitigate the risk. And if you’re okay with it, then that’s cool, man. I’m okay with it. But I want to make sure that I’m educating them to understand the process and so that they can make a real informed decision. And that even gets back to like, what are the overall goals? Like I’ve gotten the habit now of asking clients like, what’s your, is your lifelong goal? Like what’s five, 10, 15, 20 years from now, like, as you’re training, you’re lifting whatever you’re doing. Does this fit into your life now? And do you expect it to fit into your life in the future? Right. Like for myself, probably as a five years ago, I had to kind of step back and go, okay, well, what is it that I really want to do?

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:33:08):

Like, what is like my number one, just general movement goal. And even now it’s still kiteboarding, you know, if I could go kiteboard every day instead of lift, I would, I would do that. Obviously I’d probably do both. But then you go, okay, well, what is the risk of that? Like, so my goal for this year is trying to, you know, jump 20 feet in the year vertical, which I’ve done a few times, but try to do that, you know, whenever I’m able to, the chances are that if I screw it up, I’m going to get dropped out of the sky 20 feet under the water, like a sack of potatoes. That’s a pretty high risk, but I’m okay with that because that’s my goal. I understand the risk. I know what’s involved in it. Yeah. There’s ways that you can do it safely and progress and things like that.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:33:50):

But to me, that’s a higher goal than, and pushing my bench press and my right shoulder hurts a little bit. Nah, bro, I’m just going to push harder. You know, we’re some people from the outside looking in would be like, well, that doesn’t make any sense at all. Like why are you taking this massive risk over here, but you’re not taking a smaller risk. And that goes back to what are your goals and what are your tolerances? Like if I get injured, kiteboarding, as much as I don’t want that to happen, I’m trying to do everything I can to mitigate it. I’m okay with it. Cause I know I’m at the point where I’m pushing the risk higher to me. If I get injured in the gym, that’s me being stupid because it’s a hundred percent completely controlled environment. It usually means my ego got ahead of me and something bad happened to me.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:34:34):

All of those things can be controlled and I know that freak injuries happen, but this should be relatively rare. So I think also having those discussions with your clients of, you know, Hey, this thing you’re doing in the gym, does this fit into your lifestyle now? What are your goals in the future? And is everything, you know, lining up, if not, can we get like some rough timeframe of, you know, okay, you’ve got one year to hit, what, five 50 on the deadlift. And after that, we’ll reassess to see if it’s worth the risk or not, or you’re waking up in the morning, your pain on a scale of one to 10 is like now starting to hit a four or five. Is this something you still want to, you know, progress? And to me, like, I mean, I never had any of these conversations with clients even five, eight years ago. I was like, ah, just try and just do more sets and reps. My goal is to get you to your goal and we’re all good. So I think that’s also the next kind of level of making sure you’re, you’re kind of, I don’t want to say protecting them from themselves, but you’re educating them about stuff along the way. They may not see. Yeah.

Lee Boyce (00:35:38):

You know, taking on a, that mindset of you know, just changing your approach to it’s not all about grinding out these reps. It’s not all about getting to a certain PR just because then it’s not all about, you know, elevating the amount of risk that’s associated with it, by the things that you’re attempting on the regular and disregarding your, your levels of health while you do it. I think that one thing that’s kind of I sort of liked to try to strategically put into my programs a lot with my clients, especially online clients who I can see in person is things that are not quantifiable, right? So I will give them exercises that involve, they can’t track it in a way they can’t really measure just how well they’ve done. You know, they might be bodyweight oriented. So it’s like, you can’t say how much weight you’re lifting or, or they might be isometrics as well, where you get to use a hundred percent of your max effort all the time.

Lee Boyce (00:36:34):

Every single time you try it, you know? And so you’re getting destroyed by this sort of thing. And the risk factor is way down because there’s no movement in the skeleton. And you know, you just, you get the greatest benefit from it from a neurological perspective, you get a brace method from a muscular contractive perspective, all that stuff. So it’s great. It’s covered. And using different approaches like that and tactics like that a, it usually can be kind of humbling for the person too, because they’re like, Oh, well, you know, I benched 300. How come I can’t do this isometric chest chest press or whatever, or, or you know, or, Hey, I can do a 500 pound deadlift. How come this Chinese plank with 30 pound dumbbell is killing my posterior chain right now? You know? So just doing things where it forces you a little bit to realize that there are weak links there and these weak links will definitely contribute to your overall goal of getting the heavier deadlift or whatnot.

Lee Boyce (00:37:27):

But on top of it, practicing them on their own as their own workout is going to be as beneficial or more beneficial to you because it’s something that you’re not good at. It’s something that’s going to challenge you in a different plane of motion or a different sort of a curve of force or whatever have you. And these are the kinds of things that are going to really make you more athletic and really exploit the areas that you have been neglecting for such a long period of time. And it might even just naturally turn people’s minds away from that sort of like one track minded sort of state of being where it’s, I got to get stronger, I got to get stronger in these particular five lifts and that’s it, you know? And then when you don’t compete in anything that involves those lifts, you got to ask yourself after a while, like, what am I, what am I really trying to do here? You know, do I need to keep on pushing and pushing the pedal to the metal with these movements or what?

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:38:18):

Yeah. Yeah. And similar to that, I like exercises. And some of those are those two where they’re almost, self-limiting like, I could tell you to do this exercise and I know that you probably have to execute it at least relatively well or you do it. Right. So for some clients, I don’t trust a lot of overhead pressing. I’m like, okay, sit flat on your butt, on the floor and your legs out about 45 degrees. You’re going to use a dumbbell or cut up on, you’re only going to press with your one arm at a time. Yeah. And they’re like, this is weird, but what they figure out real fast is I can’t hyper extend too far back. Cause I’m going to fall over. I can’t really move anywhere else. And it’s more, almost a contralateral stabilization than it really is an overhead press.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:39:04):

Right. So if they can’t stabilize on the opposite side there, they just can’t do it. Right. Same thing with that grip stuff. Like in the past, when I was doing more stuff here at the gym, you would have some, you know, usually younger males that would come in and like, bro, you got to see my dead lift. It’s amazing. And it looks like a pooping dog and you’re just like, you’re doing like the face Palm thing real like, Oh my God, that’s so horrible. Please don’t injure yourself here. You know? So I’m like, okay, so next time you come over all your dead list for the next foreseeable future are double overhand on a two inch axle that doesn’t rotate. Right. It’s the weirdest sensation to do something you could do before with a mixed grip or kind of crazy form to have your grip now the main limiter. So you’ve cut their top in on purpose because most people, their is going to be, you know, the weak link. And it’s a, it’s a weird thing. But the nice part is that it’s almost an auto limiting exercise too. Especially like I train most of my clients now online. So, but you’re still having them do something and you don’t feel as worried about that kind of that risk reward ratio we’re talking about too.

Lee Boyce (00:40:13):

Yeah. You know, like just different things to sort of, again, like sort of limit their, their, their sealing, their, or their feeling of, of capacity or capability. So that now they are placed in a, in a disadvantaged position and they have to overcome that in order to perform the Lipsey and do well in the lift. Right. And you know, people don’t realize like, okay, let’s talk about a 405 pound deadlift. There’s a lot of people out there who train, who can pick up 405,000 stand up with it. It’s a lot of weight, but there’s a lot of people who can do it, but the amount of people who can do that with a good, proper posture throughout the entire force curve and make it look like they’re actually recruiting the right muscles to do it. And so on. Well now we got to take that, that percentage and it’s a fraction of the percentage.

Lee Boyce (00:41:02):

So people don’t realize just what kind of skill and what kind of level of training proficiency you need to acquire to really make a relatively decent to heavy weight look good and appear proper. Right. there’s a lot of moving parts to this as well, but that’s, that’s the base statement that I’m going to make there. And then when you start seeing people train with a mixed grip, for example, or do things with different stances or whatnot, people will say, Oh, well, you know what Eddie hall lifts with a mixed grip. So that means that it’s the right way to go. I it’s like, well, Eddie hall had probably has done double overhand for so long where he’s like, you know what I mean? And when he’s trying those 900 pound pools, then he mixes it up and he doesn’t do that through the other sets and whatever.

Lee Boyce (00:41:43):

Right. So my point being that like sometimes people don’t have the whole story and they apply what the best people in the industry or in the, in the arena that we’re talking about, they apply what they are doing to them when they don’t need to be when they shouldn’t be. And they have to look at things sort of more on an individual level talking about what things can humble a client or what things could make a client sort of realize that they have other areas that they can look at for a new ceiling. Right. what you were talking about with the axle bar, for example, right? The no rotation, the grip strength being the stronger, the biggest limiting factor and so on. So it’s sort of like what I, one thing that I like to do, which is, okay, so you squat X amount of weight, so you dead lift X amount of weight.

Lee Boyce (00:42:28):

So you bench press X amount of weight. Okay, well, let’s change your tempo up simple change, right? You’re not going to rush through your negative rep. You’re going to go into your negative rep with a four second he centric, and you’re gonna be strict with that. Then at the bottom of the repetition, you’re going to pause there for a two second count and you’re going to hold that. Then you’re going to come up to the top all of a sudden, when you used to be able to lift 405 pounds, well, now you could only do 310 pounds be with the same amount of reps because of how you’ve changed your temple. And the profile of that resistance is a little bit different as well. Like it’s just a world of difference. And all of a sudden you have the same training effect without your joints being exposed to the same amount of absolute weight.

Lee Boyce (00:43:06):

And that could be a really good thing for people, especially if they’re not again, 20 or 21 years old, but even if they are too, you know, and you know, that’s a, that’s a great sort of tactic that I like to use. And just as monitoring and modifying tempo and the way that reps and sets are being performed. And you know, the more things that you can sort of incorporate into a program that sort of exploits that because most people ignore it. The better it is for everybody, for you as a, as a trainer who might be liable for a client who might be a, you know, in need of a plateau to be broken or for further results or for regarding their age and their, their, their previous injuries and whatever. All of these kinds of things, it can really, really be affected positively by just looking at the way the reps are performed. And even if you don’t have all the fanciest equipment, will all of a sudden you doing bicep curls, well, guess what, you’re going to slow them down. That’s all you’re going to do same weights. Right. And it changes the game a whole lot.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:44:05):

Yeah. I’m a huge fan of that. I’ve done a lot of try phasic training from obviously from Cal deets of, okay. I use it a lot in online clients, especially on their squat, because if you move fast, you can basically kind of hide flaws. Right. You won’t feel them as much. And I don’t necessarily want people incredibly in their body when they’re, when they’re doing the actually execution of a rep, especially a heavier load. So just saying, okay, like you said, four second to five second East centric. And if I don’t trust them, like send me a video because I know if I say five seconds, it’s going to be about two seconds. So send me a video. And even then, like the amount of improvement in their form is pretty drastic. Like you said, just by changing the tempo you no.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:44:53):

And that’s, I think something that we tend to forget and then, okay. Especially if you’re bouncing a lot out of the bottom, okay. Now you’re going to go down. You’re going to pause at the bottom for four to five seconds. You’re not going to rest on your joints. They’re going to come up about an inch just from where you’d be hanging out on all your soft tissue and you have to hold that and then now come back up. So yeah, I think stuff like that is super useful in underutilized, especially when clients you’re trying to fix some form stuff or they’re trying to learn newer lifts too.

Lee Boyce (00:45:24):

Yeah. you know, and like you said, sending a videos for online clients, big time, you know, it’s, I was feeling a little bit embarrassed because when you were telling me your, your intake process with new clients, it’s like, it’s so much more exhaustive and elaborate than mine. All I do is I’ll get someone to fill out a questionnaire for me that details their life and their training habits and all that stuff. And then I’ll ask them for videos, if they’re major lifts, you know, most of the clients who come my way, they already have a lifting background. Hence they’re looking for online coaching. Right? Yeah. So, you know, like I’ll say, okay, I want to see your bait, big movements, your major lifts. I don’t need to see your maxes. I just want to see gimme 10 reps of a squat. Give me 10 of a dead.

Lee Boyce (00:46:04):

Give me 10 of an overhead press. If you knew chin-ups give me a few chin-ups give me any roll pattern. I want to see how your body is moving and what kind of technique that you have. And then I’ll get back to them with all of my feedback on a detailed level of what kinds of things that I’m seeing and what recommendations that I might have from it. So that’s usually the way that I, it goes when it comes to my intake process. And it really, really can start helping me clear things up in terms of what technical modifications or how, which direction I’m going to go with programming for them since I make it custom for everybody. Right. And you know, that sort of approach to things or, or just being thorough enough like that, it’s going to be super important because like, if you have somebody who thinks that they’re doing really, really great stuff and they have the perfect form and so on, then you find out that their depth is poor or their mobility is really lacking in this particular area or, or whatever.

Lee Boyce (00:46:56):

They might not have even ever taken a video of themselves lifting. And the first time they’d done, this is for you for this intake process. And then it exposes a whole bunch of stuff. They didn’t know they were doing poorly. Right. So yeah, you know, it just, it’s, it’s a game changer. And I think that filming and recording your own sets, even if it isn’t for somebody just for yourself, it’s going to be super important because, you know, there’ve been a lot of times where someone says, Hey, Lee, I read your article on a T nation or whatever. And I want to get in touch with you for an in-person session so that you can give me a workout or whatever. I said, okay, sure. This is where I’m training clients, blah. Right. And so then they meet me for the first time and they tell me all this stuff, they read all this stuff, they have all this knowledge and so on.

Lee Boyce (00:47:35):

And they do. But then because of the fact that no one’s ever watched them train before, they don’t realize just how poor technically they are. So they can’t really connect those dots. Right. And so they have all the knowledge and they know that they should be doing this. And they talk about try phasic method. And they talk about all kinds of training programs and elaborate stuff, wave loading and German volume training, ratchet, loading, and so on. And they do all this stuff, but I watched them lift. And it’s like, you shouldn’t be doing much of this stuff yet because you don’t have the foundation. Right. And no one’s told you, you don’t have the foundation and you’ve never watched yourself. So you see videos of Christian, Tibideau doing a bench press with perfect form or video of Mike Nelson doing a dead lift with great form, or me doing a overhead press with good form.

Lee Boyce (00:48:20):

Sorry about that. And it’s like, okay, so I know what to do. So I’m going to try to do it the same way, but I don’t watch myself. I only watched them. So I feel like them, but I don’t look like them in real life. Right. And so I think that that, that factor, the factor of not being able to sort of see what you’re doing, it’s a big, big chains, a game changer for a lot of people. So, I mean, videoing your sets. This is sort of my recommendation to everybody. Who’s sort of watching and listening right now is like videotape and record your sets and take, you don’t have to do it every single time. But take note of what you look like when you’re lifting, because it’s the next best thing for a, to not having a trainer there is having that visual cue. So you know what you’re actually looking like, and you can sort of self-correct as you go along, hopefully, so it can really help you out. It’s, it’s invaluable to be able to see yourself and a mirror. Isn’t the same thing. It’s not the same thing as using a mirror while you’re doing it.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:49:13):

No. And even with my advanced clients, I’ll sometimes depending on where they’re at, they’ll do a video and I’ll write back, what do you see? Right. Because I want them, and especially I do this a lot with newer trainers too. And it’s crazy. I remember, like I used to teach at a global university for awhile. We had a full program for two to four years that only taught personal trainers. Fortunately, they went out of business. I know you teach a lot of personal trainers in academia now, too. And you forget sometimes that what you see is not what everyone else sees. So I used to do this drill where I would show a picture of a squad and I’d show it to the class. I’m like, all right, what do you guys see? And it all kind of first, you know, stare at each other.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:49:55):

And then to, to me, it’s obvious after having done it for thousands and thousands of reps, but it was very helpful when someone did this to me when I was learning, because you forget that. Yes, you’re seeing it. But if you have nothing in your brain that makes any sense of it. You actually don’t see it unquote. So it would take a while and they’re like, I don’t see anything. It looks good. I’m like, okay, look at their knees. Right. So you’re trying to get them closer. Oh, okay. Oh, the right knees coming in a little bit. Okay. Right now we can discuss later if that’s good, bad, indifferent, whatever. Right. Then my first step was you all saw the exact same video. Like that image came and registered in your brain, but you don’t have the experience in the reps to know what to look for or what to do with that information also.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:50:45):

So try and do that process. I think with clients has been super helpful. The good buddy of mine here, Sean, Mischka a tip I got from him was he would video clients or watch them. And then he would ask them, he goes, well, how does it feel? And he’s like, the mistake I made and I did this wrong for years is the second they racked the weight. I would have them watch a video or I’d ask them, how did it feel? And almost invariably the response would be, Oh, good. And he’s like, you need to give them like five, maybe even 10 seconds to stop. Think about what actually happened during the lift. And then actually give you an honest answer because people want to please you and give you the answer that they expect subconsciously they’re supposed to give. So he’s like allow them some time just to process and think back on it.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:51:34):

So if you’re doing it with video, what I’ve done too is I’ll take the video. And before I look at it, I’ll write down, okay. Here’s what I think happened. And so for like, I did this last year with front squats and I’m like, man, it felt really slow at the top. Write that down, look at the video. Oh, actually it wasn’t that slow at the top. You know? So sometimes what you feel or what you think you feel isn’t necessarily there were in the past, I would look at the video right away and I want internally try to think about what was actually going on. Right. Cause I want my internal nap to match the actual external map and those to be congruent, which is kind of a skill set,

Lee Boyce (00:52:13):

Big time, big time, you know, and again, it does come down again to like just being able to see what you’re doing and yeah. You know, having that delay sometimes if I’m training myself and I’m filming myself as well, many times it’s due to negligence, but I’ll record the set and then I’ll turn off my camera and then I’ll go into my next thing. And then I’m like, Oh wait, I never even watched that SWAT video that I took like seven, eight, eight sets ago or something. And then I’ll look again and I’ll be like, Oh, okay, well, you know, and it gives you that feedback regardless, whether it’s something that you want to want to see or something you don’t want to see where it’s like, Oh, well my, my heels came up a little bit there. Or my, my knees wobbled here and there or whatever it is or my hips shot up early in this set and this repetition, you know it’s, it’s really, really good.

Lee Boyce (00:52:58):

And you know, everyone’s got a smartphone now everyone’s got a phone with a camera on it. People will say, Oh, I don’t know where to put it. Or I don’t want to ask somebody, please wrap it up somewhere, use another dumbbell, whatever it is. Or if I got a tripod that I’m using to do this call right now, you know, like, you know, just these, these kinds of little gadgets and little things, they’re everywhere. Just grab one the same way you go and grab a pair of straps or an hour or a iron water bottle, whatever, grab your tripod and grab your little hardware for you to film your things and record your sets. It’s not going to get in anyone’s way and you just do your thing. And that way you have that feedback, it’s amazing how much of a changer it can be to understanding where you’re screwing up, what your form really looks like and how to improve on it. And you know, form matters above everything if you asked me. And it it’s, especially, again, as time goes on, it’s less about, you know, moving loads and it’s more about loading movements. And so you want to do that the right way.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:53:55):

Last question, as we wrap up related to this, do you think, cause now there’s this massive rush to everyone wants to be an online trainer quote unquote. And just, I think we saw from COVID like a influx of, I would say very crappy online training material from questionable resources. But do you think people should have some experience of in-person training before they move into online training and especially in regards to exercise, I guess see nutrition is going to be a little bit different, but especially considering what we talked about with, you know, forum and cues and movement and everything else.

Lee Boyce (00:54:36):

Yeah, I believe so. I think that it’s, I think it’s important. I don’t think I’ll ever pivot from that stance regardless of how severe COVID closures and Jim employment becomes or whatever, in terms of the difficulty. I still think that it’s really, really invaluable and the most quintessential piece of the pie to have that in-person one-on-one training background sort of there it, it’s better because, you know, here’s one thing, you know, someone submits a video to you online and you and I, we can do it where we can watch what’s happening, but they have it from one fixed angle. Right. And so they’re taking that video from a three-quarter angle behind them doing the squat.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:55:18):

It’s always at an off angle too. Right. It’s never 90, 90, it’s like 46 degrees behind at an angle kind of squat rack pavilion or something.

Lee Boyce (00:55:26):

Exactly. Right. And so it’s like, we’re good enough to be able to really say, okay, I can see this, this and this. And I can even assume that this isn’t, this happens too. Right. you know, a lot of times people will submit me their deadlift video from a complete front view. And I’m sorta just so I can tell that your knees are staying straight, but at the same time, like what is going on with your spine behind? I can’t see any of that. I could only assume things. Right. So, you know, whereas when you’re in person, like there’s no trainer who’s worth their salt, who’s going to say that they stand in one place while they watch the client do all their exercises, like period, they’re going to be moving around a little bit. And that, that, that in itself shows just how much more important that sort of thing has and the feedback that you asked for yourself as well.

Lee Boyce (00:56:12):

You know, how did that feel after the set? What did you notice? What do you see when you do this, these kinds of things, that feedback and that communication and that response being able to sort of that interaction with a client is going to be worth its weight in gold. And there’s always going to be those things that you can’t sort of predict. For example, I remember having one client when I was 20, when I was a first year trainer and she was a total beginner in working out and I was getting increasingly frustrated with all the things that I was trying to make her do that just wouldn’t land. Well, none of them would land well, she wouldn’t feel the spots. And I think it reached its sort of, its sweet reached the peak for me when I said, okay, you know what? I’m just going to get you doing hamstring, curls, prone, hamstring curls on the machine, just like this, you’re going to do it, set you up your knees in line with the axis of the machine. You got your heels in the right spot. You got the Pat on the, on the, just above the heels, everything is set. You’re going to hold on tight, squeeze your button, you’re going to curl. So she does it and she does a great look and set. I said, so where did you feel that? Right? And she told me her quadriceps,

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:57:18):

Are you sure?

Lee Boyce (00:57:20):

Like three times? And then she pointed to her quadriceps saying, this is what’s burning. And so it’s like, I had zero answer for this. I have no idea what I was doing. And that just goes to show that there’s always going to be those freak cases out there where something doesn’t register or the lie, the wires across a little bit, as somebody gets a certain training effect from a certain exercise, that’s not intended for that training effect. And so on. This is sort of the mystery of the human body that we have to account for is that all of our research and all of our things that we say in all the claims that we make, they’re still based on some kind of inference. They’re still based on some kind of guesswork, educated, guesswork, and things that research might suggest and support, but nothing is for sure, right?

Lee Boyce (00:58:05):

That’s why one person might get bigger calves from doing bicep, curls standing. Whereas another person won’t get bigger calves from bison Crow standing, right? This is the variability of this sort of industry and what it is. It’s, it’s the human biology, it’s different. And so with all of that being said, being exposed to those kinds of intangibles in person with a client are just like, they’re so important to have that sort of under your belt. And it just makes it a lot easier for you to make the transition to online and work with clients online where you can’t see them where you can’t have those conversations on the fly. You know, it’s, it’s very, very different when you’re just prescribing exercises and you want them to just do them, right. And you could only intake so much and even getting videos back, it’s still only the next best thing compared to the real deal. And you can usually always tell when somebody has that foundation of working with clients in person compared to just working online with clients it’s, it’s, it’s usually pretty obvious. So that’s, that’s my answer to that. I believe that they must have a background in that sort of thing in order to really, really be a legit.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:59:14):

Yeah. I mean, I agree. I mean, 14 years ago I started, I thought I’m going to be an online trainer cause I’d worked with online trainer then, and I just didn’t have that much in-person experience at the point. I had only done made a couple of years and I remember doing it for about a year. And at this point, like getting videos with super hard, you had the old school, like flip phones had just come out where that was like the brand new thing and videos were just grainy and took forever to upload. And it was a disaster. I feel so bad for like any people I trained back then, because like you said, I had no idea how bad people could screw stuff up because I didn’t have any in person movement to know that, Oh wow, you could screw up a squat like that.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (00:59:58):

Even though I said squat to a chair bodyweight only, wow, you can really, you can get some crazy going on that you just, you don’t know what you don’t know at that point. So luckily I had enough intuition to stop because it was a disaster. And I said, okay, I’m not doing this again until I have a way of evaluating everything. And I have a lot more experience in person, you know, looking at different angles, you know, I’ve worked with a lot of general population clients at the time, just trying to figure out in essence, all the different ways they can screw up a movement. So when someone says, Hey, this doesn’t feel good. I kind of feel it here, you flash back to those clients, like literally in your head of like, Oh yeah, this guy or this guy or this guy, Oh, okay. We did this or this or this. You have like some options to pick from and you have some kind of relevant experience you can draw from too, which I think is invaluable

Lee Boyce (01:00:51):

Big time. And of course it goes without saying that being on top of training for yourself is going to be, I tell all my college students, well, like you got it, you got to make sure it’s like who in this room first quote, first class of the year of the semester, every single time who in this room, trains in the gym regularly, you know, everybody’s hand should be up right now type of thing. You know, if it’s not, that is like homework lesson, number one, like you got to get in and do this stuff. So you understand that what you’re prescribing and how it should feel. Right. and, and what kind of responses it might give you because somebody might not think that you know, a great movement like a Nordic curl or a glute hamstring raise could cause like PCL stress on the potential of the posterior cruciate ligament, that type of thing.

Lee Boyce (01:01:37):

And that, the only way that I started talking or writing about that sort of thing was from my own personal experience from realizing, and then I had a client, client, client who said the same thing over the years, you know, you have the back of my knee kind of hurts when I do that. I don’t know. It bothers me. I feel my hamstrings, but my knee. Right. And then it’s like, Oh, well I thought this was this Bulletproof exercise, but it’s clear that it, I’m not the only person that it affects this way. So, you know, just little things like that, where you realize through anecdote and through that personal experience and through being in the trenches and training yourself and so on, like how, how things can affect the body and so on. Right. I write and talk a lot about tall lifters and different and leverages and so on as well and how certain movements and certain loading can affect that body type or different kinds of body types in different ways, because there is going to be an ideal body for certain lifts and for weightlifting as a whole, there’s going to be an ideal body type for that.

Lee Boyce (01:02:36):

Just like there is an ideal body type for swimming and just like there’s an ideal body type for a sprinting and so on. Right? So we shouldn’t sort of take that for granted, especially considering that just like sprinters are trying to perform their best. Swimmers are trying to perform their best for a lot of people who are out there, weight training, they want to get their performance at the top too. They want to perform as best they can and reach a certain potential. And so we have to realize that if we’re gonna approach that like a sport too, then we have to realize that there’s going to be certain things that have to sort of give and certain things that have to be going for us body composition wise. And they’re going to be limitations if we don’t have that sort of proportions and those sorts of anthropometry and leverages. So we’ve got to recognize how to train around that sort of thing if it is present.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (01:03:19):

Yeah. I remember I taught a graduate labs for exercise physiology. So 400, you know, exercise four 35, and they had to come into the lab and do exercise. And we would do, you know, metabolic cards when Gates we’d do all this stuff. So they get practice being a participant and actually doing it. And it was just mind blowing to me that like probably half to maybe sometimes two thirds of the class who was in a four year undergraduate degree for exercise phase and granted, some of them go on to be, you know, nursing, physical therapy, that type of stuff. They’re not all going to be trainers. They didn’t exercise. Yeah. I’m like, but you’re, you’re doing a four year degree in exercise physiology. And even my PhD advisor, he did some biking, but that was about it. I remember asking him one day and I’m like, why do you not care about exercise performance? Like to me, that is like exercise physiology. And he’s like, Oh, was like, I don’t give a. He’s like, I just use exercise as a stressor to just like push stuff around in the body and see what happens. I was like, this is so weird to me. It was just like, so we always had this constant battle of, I’m trying to think of it in performance and stressors. And he’s just like, nah, we’re just thinking of it as a stressor. I don’t care about performance doesn’t matter. And yeah, so it was very odd,

Lee Boyce (01:04:37):

Very interesting. You know, for me, I think that like, you know, if you can’t, if you can’t do it or you haven’t done it, then don’t coach it simple enough, you know? And that’s you try to set that foundation early with the young students or so on. Who’s you know, trying to get the understanding of these concepts and enough kinematics and kinesiology as a whole, like, you gotta be able to understand how to move yourself and how to exercise and what loading feels like and what cardio feels like and all those things. So you know, I stand behind that thinking as well.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (01:05:08):

Yeah. I call it to clients. I’m like, yep. I, if I’m forcing you to do a max two K, then I’m gonna do a max two K or at least I’ve done it relatively because you know, you have to eat your own dog food also.

Lee Boyce (01:05:21):

Exactly, exactly.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (01:05:23):

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for all your time today. Where can people find more about you? I know you’ve got a bunch of stuff you do online training, you do a fix your forum. People can send in videos, get your professional opinion on them. Give us the lowdown.

Lee Boyce (01:05:37):

Yeah. so first of all, social media, I’m pretty active on that stuff. So coach Lee Boyce is the handle across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram coach Lee voice. And also my website is Lee boise.com. So you guys can check out archives and archives and archives of articles for different magazines and publications online and then print. And also my own blog where I talk about fitness culture and a lot of the things that we were talking about here today, that kind of subject matter enters the blogs a lot. And that’s on, that’s on the main page of the of the website. So you’ll see all of that stuff there. And I share all that stuff at some point on social media anyway. So you know, you’re pretty much covered no matter where you decide to follow,

Dr. Mike T Nelson (01:06:18):

I think you have a newsletter to correct.

Lee Boyce (01:06:20):

Yeah. Yeah. So I got the newsletter as well. And so you can subscribe and you know, you get the updates as well. Whenever I put something out and yeah, it’s all, it’s all taken care of there. And if people want to hit me up for online coaching or anything like that during this time, people are building up their home gyms or their their garage gyms and so on because of no gym openings in real life. So because of that, there’s a lot of waves with the online coaching, which is one of the services that I do offer. So feel free to hit me up for that or even a form check like you mentioned.

Dr. Mike T Nelson (01:06:51):

Yeah. Well, thank you again so much, really appreciate it. And hope to see you again in person. I think the last time you hung out was the virtual conference, oddly enough, for the NSCA. Cause we overlapped filming by like a day. So we got to have breakfast, I think in Colorado Springs, I think, but yeah,

Lee Boyce (01:07:06):

Colorado Springs. So that was back in 2029, 2018. Wasn’t it?

Dr. Mike T Nelson (01:07:11):

Yeah. No fitness summit this year, unfortunately. So yeah. Yeah. So hopefully after all this, we’ll, we’ll be able to get together and hang out again and you can give me some deadlift tips. Of course, man. Cool. Awesome, man. Thank you so much. Have a good lift. Thanks a lot, man. Cool. Take care. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Huge shout out and thank you to leave for doing that from his car. He was safe in a parking lot on his way to the gym today. I always enjoy talking to him. I really encourage you to check out his stuff. He’s got great stuff he’s been putting out for many years and just really enjoy your conversations. This is brought to you by the flux diet certification Yoda flex diet.com F L E X, D I E t.com for eight interventions on nutrition and recovery. Everything from protein, carbohydrates, fasting fats sleep neat. So non-exercise activity, thermogenesis exercise and more go to flux diet.com. Go to the waitlist. That’ll put you on the daily newsletter where you’ll get all cool information and you’ll be the first to be notified of when the flux dive cert opens up again. And if feedback for me, please hit me up and admin@flexdiet.com or you can find me via other channels. Leave any comments, any feedback is greatly appreciated. Thank you all so much for listening.

Speaker 3 (01:08:48):

Talk to you again soon.