Fitness Research and Real Talk: Episode 2 | Trainers Talking Truth

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We are growing through lighting fitness facts and research where we delve into major intriguing questions related to fitness and exercise.

Podcast Introduction:

Welcome to Trainers Talking Truths. This is an ISSA podcast dedicated to exploring the fitness industry and uncovering the whys and hows of personal training. To do that, we'll talk directly to the industry experts and certified trainers. We'll dig into fitness programming, business tactics, nutrition, and more. You'll even hear from current training clients who offer insight from the other side. We've got the fitness industry covered, so turn up the volume and enjoy the drive.

Jenny Scott:

Hello, world. Welcome back for another ISSA podcast, Trainers Talking Truth. It's your co-host here, Jenny Scott here with, oh, I have a guest co-host, Mr. John Bauer. How are you, John?

John Bauer:

I'm excited. This was a fun one the last time around and now that we've had some audio training, maybe my audio will be even better than it was the last time.

Jenny Scott:

It sounds really good to me. And guess what guys? Hey, hey, it's game day. We're gonna have a little bit of fun like we've done in the past and bring back our Lightning Fitness Facts and a little bit of real talk with our trainers today. So a little bit of fun, but we get to talk about some research and why it matters. And I love research. I am a journal person to my core. I actually just got the newest version of Strength and Conditioning Journal in the mail the other day. I haven't cracked it open yet, John. It's volume 45. Number three from June, 2023, I've got right here. But I love journals, you guys, they're constantly doing research. Some amazing researchers out there doing amazing research on strength and conditioning, physical performance, nutrition, the way our bodies work, and we're learning so much. So I love to scour these journals and find cool articles, but then relay that information back to you. So let us know in the comments what you guys think of this kind of stuff. Cuz if you guys like it, we'll do it more. If you hate it, we'll stop doing it or do it less often cuz I enjoy it. But let us know what you guys think of this. But John, I've got a couple Lightning Fitness Facts. Are you ready?

John Bauer:

I think so. I think so.

Yoga vs dynamic stretching: Which affects body composition more? 

Jenny Scott:

He doesn't know the answers to these questions, guys. So let's test John. A little bit here. All right. So number one, John, A study published in the May 2023 Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research looked at the impacts of yoga compared to dynamic stretching on body composition, flexibility, and balance. Both modalities positive, positively impacted flexibility and balance. What do you think happened with body composition?

John Bauer:

That's a really good question and the way I'm gonna answer it is this, I think a lot of people who have not taken a lot of yoga think yoga is just stretching. But yoga can be a lot of work too sometimes. And if you're doing a lot of work, that means you're burning some calories. So I'm gonna say that potentially body comp went down in, or body fat percentage went down in the yoga group.

Jenny Scott:

You would be correct, John. Yeah. So again, between yoga and dynamic flexibility routines, the people who participated in yoga saw their body fat percentages drop to a certain degree. So there are 35 subjects in this study. 20 of them were doing yoga and 15 of them were doing the dynamic stretching protocol. Each group, which consisted of 27 females and eight males, and these are details that matter, which is why I'm calling them out, they met three times per week for 30 to 45 minutes at a time. Over the course of six weeks. The results found improvements in both flexibility and balance in both the yoga and dynamic stretching groups, but body composition was changed by around 15 to 30% only in those who participated in the yoga sessions. So what are your thoughts on that? That's pretty cool. You were right on about like, I mean, you're doing something different with yoga, right?

John Bauer:

Yeah. I mean this is the benefit as a longtime fitness professional and as someone who's tried everything, just so that I can at least speak a little bit about most everything in the fitness industry. I've done plenty of yoga and I probably was one of those people that thought it was just some fancy stretching. And depending on the class you're taking, like I said, it can be a lot of work and a lot of work that you're not used to if you're just doing kind of traditional lifting in the gym or maybe some traditional cardio. Yoga can be a lot of work. It can be relaxing too while still doing a lot of work. So, I'm not surprised by that data that you just gave us.

Jenny Scott:

Yeah, I love it. And I would also venture to guess that most yoga sessions, depending on what type you're doing, are longer than most dynamic stretching protocols, right. Dynamic stretching, generally speaking, we teach 10 to 15 minutes for a warmup protocol, including your dynamic stretching. So most yoga classes that I've been to are anywhere from 60 minutes to, most of the ones that I go to anymore John, are 75 minutes. Right. So they're far longer. So yeah, you're doing more work for longer potentially with a yoga protocol. But I love this cuz the big takeaway is that most people out there need to be doing some kind of flexibility training, right? We're not just saying like a whole session on stretching, but most people could benefit from doing deliberate flexibility protocols. And you don't have to program just a stretching routine, incorporate other things like yoga that might have the same impact but offer something different to improve their engagement, exercise compliance, and they have the opportunity to increase their calorie deficit enough to potentially promote weight loss, assuming all other factors are honed in. So lots of opportunities out there. Are there any other things as far as flexibility protocol that you'd like to call out or bring up for these guys today?

John Bauer:

Yeah, so, you know, I was kind of downplaying the flexibility side when it comes to yoga, but that's also a major part of it too. And I know for me, when I take yoga classes, it's asking me to test my flexibility and my strength in positions that I don't often get myself into when I'm doing traditional workouts. So, the benefit to me then is I'm kind of working on some of my weak points and working on some ranges of motion that my body's not used to with most of my normal workouts. So for me, I see that as a real good addition to my overall health and fitness plan.

Jenny Scott:

Yeah, I agree. Yeah. And as a bodybuilder and volleyball player, like I go to yoga at least once a week now. I'll spend two days or two times a week. I would say two times cuz it's usually twice on Sunday, if I'm being honest. One's at 6:30 in the morning and one's at 10:30. I'm that person. But it's something different, right? It challenges me like stretching your arms up overhead, John, you know how you do your, the beginning of tree pose where you start with your arms up overhead. Like you can see me, but they can't, my elbows are really far away from my head. I'm really stiff through my shoulders. Like I have like some mobility issues in my shoulders, in my neck, but I'm working on it. Nobody's perfect, right. I'm working on it, my little side bends and stuff. But it's different and it challenges me in a different way, but it also helps me stretch and keep myself mobile and recover from some of the hard workouts that I'm doing. You and I have been on that deadlift train lately. I don't know what's gotten into me, but I get sore. So it's kind of nice to switch up what you're doing and try something else. So that's awesome. All right, you ready for number two here, John?

John Bauer:

Absolutely.

What can training muscles at a longer muscle length or lengthened position promote?

Jenny Scott:

All right. A recent systematic review by Casciano et al found evidence that training sore muscles or some muscles, sorry, some muscles at a longer muscle length or a lengthened position can promote what?

John Bauer:

You know, I don't know if it's the same one that I read, but I did recently read something about this. So, to your point earlier, you and I are both people who read a lot of journals and a lot of a lot of studies and I think people are able to grow some bigger muscles when they're when they're training in these lengthened positions.

Jenny Scott:

Yes, absolutely. And I was listening to a podcast the other day actually while I was working out. I'll get the name in a second here, but Brad Schoenfeld, who we talked about last time we did this, was on there and oh, the Revive Stronger podcast. Love that podcast. But he was on there recently talking about some of these things like length matters when you're training for hypertrophy, but they were talking about like the growth happening at the distal end and all this kind of stuff. So there's some nuance to it and some interesting things that they're finding. But yeah, evidence suggests that when training at a longer muscle length through either partial range of motion or full range of motion, some muscles such as the quadricep femoris, biceps brachii, gastrocnemius, and triceps brachii tend to experience optimal growth. 

All of the studies examined, again, this was a meta-analysis. All of the studies examined, looked at various landmarks like the knee joint during a squat or the elbow during a biceps curl, and observed the muscle growth when using various degrees of range of motion. Many also compared growth at the distal, medial, and proximal regions of the appropriate muscles. While some research found that there was little or no difference in growth at any place along the muscle, many did find a statistically significant difference at the distal end, which is what Brad was talking about, when executing a partial range of motion training from the extended position. So that's like zero to 50 degrees or zero to 90 degrees depending on the joint, right? So from extended to halfway up, not halfway up to all the way up is how I would break that down. So I thought that was pretty cool. There's evidence to support that both partial and full range of motion should be programmed for hypertrophy training. Pretty cool.

John Bauer:

Yeah. And you know what, if you think about it, like if you think about your own workouts, probably the position that you spend the least time in for each repetition is the most lengthened position. You know, cause we're trying to get to that next rep. So I can see how that part of the range of motion gets kind of left out in comparison to the rest of the range of motion.

Jenny Scott:

Yeah, that makes sense. I'm thinking of like some of these things like a leg extension or a biceps curl with some of the muscles that they're talking about. Again, the biceps, the quads the gastrocnemius. So your calf muscles and your triceps. Yeah, a lot of 'em. Yeah. You're ready for that next contraction. Right? They're trying to get to that full range of motion instead of staying towards the beginning of that range of motion for most people. But also, I know we talk a lot about hypertrophy and some of the, you and I do anyway, John, about the, the different revelations we're having about hypertrophy training that, you know, the weight doesn't have to be super high. It's all about overall training volume. We're talking 20 to 30 or 25 to 30 sets, I believe is what Brad Schoenfeld called out, on a certain muscle group per week, for example, to get the right amount of training volume. Well, how many reps do you do at a time to get to that type of volume? Well, it depends on the load that you're using. We're finding that the range of motion matters, right? The tempo. A lot of people get so stuck and it has to be, you know, eight to 10 reps and it has to be this tempo. But what we're finding, especially with hypertrophy, is there is a right answer, but there's a lot of different right answers. Right?

John Bauer:

Yeah. I mean, you, you want the muscles to do a lot of work, meaning a lot of volume, meaning a lot of time under tension and there's more than one way to do that. And they're starting to show pretty conclusively that with lighter weights and a lot of reps, there's still a lot of time under tension. So therefore a lot of work. And Jenny, I know you and I have talked about this a little bit, but I know this cause I just saw a picture of myself pop up from about six or seven years ago, which is when I first started to catch wind of this stuff. And I'm about 35, 40 pounds bigger than I was then. And over the past six or seven years I've been doing kind of hypertrophy months or two out of every year. And it's usually kind of moderate load, but a lot of work, a lot of like almost German volume style training. Where it's like 10 sets of 10. And it's a lot of work, but kind of easier on my joints. Well, you know, which is a big point for me cuz I want to take care of my shoulders and my knees and my hips and my back.

Jenny Scott:

Absolutely. Yeah. I'm the same way cuz I'm actually playing really high-level volleyball right now, so I still need to be movable. Right? I train a lot of shoulders cuz in bodybuilding, that's my weak point. But when your shoulders are stiff or not mobile right, or your joint is all messed up cuz you're lifting too heavy overhead or something. Like, I can't play volleyball the way I want to. So that's a great call out, John. Cuz, yeah, most people don't want to get hurt. Yes, you can push yourself. We've actually had somebody in bootcamp a couple months ago, who, do you remember this person? They were like, I trained to fatigue or to failure in every set. And I was like, wait, every day? And I think this person was older too, like in their fifties and he was like, yeah, every day. And I was like, Ooh, that's like, good for you if you can do that. But most people can't, you won't recover well enough from it. Like, how are you actually performing at your best if you're constantly fatigued like that? And if you're training to failure with—and he said specifically—with heavy weights, like towards his maximum. Like, we were like, oh, okay. Like, what do you say to that? 

John Bauer:

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know what, I've been there because that's kind of gym culture sometimes, is do hard and heavy. That's what you gotta do. And I used to train that way. In my twenties I trained that way a lot, but I did notice that in some cases I started to become less athletic, less mobile. I was sore more often than I wanted to be. And that wasn't quality living for me. So, taking a step back with some of the weight and focusing on the work and the volume, the technique was really beneficial to me. I mean, let's face it, I just wanna look like I can move tons of weight. I don't necessarily need to be able to move tons of weight, just enough to be able to get by on a day-to-day basis.

Jenny Scott:

Fair. Same. I love it. 

What effect does stretching before resistance training have?

Jenny Scott:

All right, John, I got one more for you. And this one I'll give you some choices for your answers. So I have another meta-analysis. By the way, all of the studies that I'm referencing, you guys are in the show notes. So check it out if you're interested in reading these or learning more. But another meta-analysis by Toms et al looked at 35 studies examining the effect of static stretching on muscular strength. For a stretching protocol three to four days per week lasting an average of eight weeks with four sets of stretches, which lasted approximately one minute each. The evidence found that stretching before resistance training has what type of effect? I'll give you some choices. So, A, no effect on strength regardless of the stretching program duration. B, a small to moderate negative effect on strength gains when stretching programs lasted eight weeks or longer. Or C, there was a major negative impact on isometric strength regardless of stretching program duration.

John Bauer:

Okay. So this is one of those topics that we've heard a lot in our world over the years. I can't bring myself to think that the answer's gonna be that there's a major effect. So I'm gonna say it's, it's somewhere between no effect to maybe a small effect. So, for this one, I'm gonna pick no effect to see what you got for me.

Jenny Scott:

John's going with A, no effect. Okay. So the correct answer was B. There was a small to moderate negative impact on strength gains when a program lasted eight weeks or longer. So they did call that out specifically lasting eight weeks or longer. So over 1,100 study participants in all were examined in this meta-analysis. So that's a pretty good sample size, or n as we like to call it. While the data was split, there was a slight small to moderate association and specifically strength gains when a stretching protocol was performed before resistance training enough to make it potentially not ideal. Instead, the researchers suggested that static stretching could be best utilized distant, air quotes,, distant from resistance training sessions or basically not right before to see the most minimal or smallest impact on muscular strength and strength gains, which the gains come from the recovery piece too. I will point out that some of the studies included in the meta-analysis observed dynamic and PNF stretching, but an overwhelming majority of these studies were looking at static stretching specifically. So yeah, this kind of reinforces what we already know about flexibility techniques and when they should be used. 

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John Bauer:

Yeah. Yeah. And you know what, I'm not surprised by that answer. You know, I thought maybe you were throwing me a curve ball. But it kind of brings me back. I remember when I was running track in college in the nineties and we'd had trainers and back then part of the way we thought of warmup was just stretching. Just stretching, stretching, stretching. There would be the dynamic stretching, but the trainers would sometimes stretch me out to the point where I can rest my forehead on my shins. So I'm just flexible as can be right before I gotta go sprint. And I don't, looking back, I don't think that helped me. In fact, I think it might've hurt my speed. But I'll never know. But given this information, I tend to think that maybe a little less stretching might've been a good idea for me back in my track days.

Jenny Scott:

Yes. At least before you ran, right? 

John Bauer:

Right.

Jenny Scott:

Yes. Yeah. Static stretching definitely impacts the length-tension relationship. I don't know why, but the length-tension relationship, John, I know every time I bring it up in bootcamp, you like eyeroll, you're like, oh, here she goes. Cause I love talking about it. It's so interesting to me. I've actually done the research and like looked at the optimal micrometer length of overlap between your actin and myosin where you can get the best— Like it's insane. They've narrowed it down, but it basically impacts the muscle's ability to generate force. And static stretching should be executed as active recovery, or on active recovery days, I should say, not during a training session. Or after resistance training, because it can increase the range of motion at joints or any joint that you're using it on and offer both objective and subjective relief from tightness and muscle soreness.

I always like to point that out, John. And as a track runner, I wanna hear your opinion on this. The relief from any recovery technique or any flexibility technique when it's used to relieve soreness or stiffness or, you know, muscular pain, whatever it is. It could be cryotherapy, it could be heat, it could be thera-guns, like the percussion guns and stuff, any of that. It's all subjective. There is a little bit of science behind all of these, right? We talk about it in our exercise recovery course and some of the lectures that you and I have given. We talk about that it can do these things, right? We list off the things that it has been found to do, but the subjective measures of pain relief, right? Stiffness, that soreness that you're feeling, that is completely subjective, right?

John Bauer:

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, some of us are gonna kind of veer toward one sort of recovery method versus another. As you know, this year I kind of got into some of the cold plunge stuff and I think I've come to the conclusion that I don't like it. It feels great afterwards, but it is really, really challenging. Whereas, you know, the percussion guns, I love those things. Now. I don't know if I'm getting exactly the same result, but the process of it is much more enjoyable for me than doing the cold plunge. With that said, a lot of people are seeing great results from being almost daily cold plungers in terms of how it makes their body feel, how they recover. So, yeah, I think you're right. There's a lot of different methods in order to reach recovery. And the good news about that is it opens you up to being able to choose which one is right for you or which one is right for your clients. And in that way, I think there's more, more of a likelihood to get people to adhere to some method of recovery as opposed to there just being one.

Jenny Scott:

Yeah. And whatever works best for them. I actually, short story, I just got a new cup, like the cupping sets. I have a cupping set with like the hand pump. And I'm not gonna lie, I don't use it very often. My athletes use it more than I do. But then I got like one of the electronic ones where you just push the button and it creates the suction for you. But it's got like a little heat piece in the middle so you can turn on like one of 10 temperature settings. Like, not gonna lie, John, I used it yesterday. You, you can see it, but they can't. There's a little circle on my shoulder now. I was using it on my delt after my back day yesterday. I worked out in the morning and I did it right before bed. And my shoulder feels great.

The shoulder that I tried it on, my left shoulder feels amazing. My right shoulder is sore as I'll get out. So I did it like that on purpose cause I wanted to see if just increasing blood flow to this delt would make me not get sore from what I did. Cuz I did the same thing on both sides yesterday. And surprisingly, my own little anecdotal evidence, it worked, it made a difference for me. So my right side is a little stiff and a little sore on my delt specifically. and my rear delt, my left side, where I did the cupping last night is not. So, subjective. 

John Bauer:

Nice. And I'm guessing—I've never done cupping before—but I'm guessing it's less brutal than dipping my entire body into ice water.

Jenny Scott:

Very much so. It is, cupping is mildly uncomfortable, right? Because they're pulling your skin into a cup, essentially. So it's uncomfortable, but it, from what I understand, cupping should not be painful. Right? Uncomfortable, painful. See how the words are different, two different things. So yeah, I mean, it, it works for me. I guess I need to start pulling out my cups a little bit more frequently. That's awesome. All right, John, well let's get into some truths. Let's start talking some truths. What do you have for us today?

Truths: The fitness industry is much more than just personal training.

John Bauer:

Yeah, so, you know, there's, there's a lot of different topic topics we can cover when it comes to personal training. But I wanted to expand on just personal training. Cuz the fitness industry is so much more than just personal training. I'm living proof of that right now. I've done a ton of personal training. They say it takes 10,000 hours to reach mastery of something. I have way more than 10,000 hours of personal training.

Jenny Scott:

Super mater.

John Bauer:

Yeah. But also, you know, at some point I wanted to move on from it and I don't really do any training anymore for the last couple years. You know, my main day job is here working at ISSA. So it's more about the doing things on the education and the content development side. So that's something I wanted to talk about today.

The fact that the fitness industry is so much more than just personal training. There are a lot of job opportunities for people, even people who've never really been into personal training but are into health and fitness and want to be a part of something. As a matter of fact, we have a lot of employees of ISSA who've never been personal trainers, but they love the health and fitness world because it's something that, you know, every single one of us can relate to. So we've got people in sales, in marketing, some of our business leaders who haven't necessarily been personal trainers, but they now work in the fitness industry playing their role in a company like ours. So lemme just give you a few ideas of some of the opportunities that are out there outside of personal training.

Now I'll mention some that are probably kind of obvious, but then there are some that are maybe not so obvious. So there's a lot of people who go toward being a group fitness instructor, and there's a lot of reasons for that. Some personalities, they want to be up on stage, they want to be in front of a bunch of people and just have that energy of leading classes. I've seen some Zumba classes. I used to work in a place where we had large studios where we'd have over a hundred people in our Zumba classes. Yeah. And just imagine being that instructor up there who's leading the way for this choreographed dance class of people who are just loving every minute of that class. So that is a route that you can go. 

There's the health coaching side of it, which has been talked about quite a bit via a lot of ISSA channels because that is one of our courses. But in that instance, you're not necessarily leading people down the path of fitness. But you are coaching them on a lot of other things that have to do with health because although we do love the fitness side of things, there are a lot of things that contribute to a person's overall health and wellbeing. 

One thing that I get a chance to talk about quite a bit, like in bootcamp, is becoming a leader and becoming a business leader and a manager. There's a lot of skills that you need to learn and then can learn while doing the job that will lend themselves to your future. Particularly if you want to grow and grow into higher leadership positions or at some point start and manage your own company. I would feel a lot more confident in doing that now because I've had the benefit of having a lot of experience of managing, in some cases, some major health clubs.

One other thing that has really grown and there's a lot more opportunity for now is fitness writing and blogging and influencing. There are people who are making real livings doing just that. So much so that sometimes I think, am I doing the wrong thing here? 

Jenny Scott:

Right?

John Bauer:

You know so, again, that is a huge opportunity. So if you're a fan of the health and fitness world, but you don't necessarily want to be seeing clients on a day-to-day basis cause maybe that's not your thing then maybe writing and blogging and doing online influencing is a way that you want to go. And I think that can be a great way to go. 

There's also a lot of room for entrepreneurship. In fact we had, we had Pete Holman on the podcast once and he's basically just an inventor now. He just invents products and he has been through it before. So he kind of knows the channels to go through in order to take an idea all the way to the point where he is taking his new fitness invention to market. And that's, that's kind of his main gig now, is creating these products and getting them to the market and what a, what a cool thing to be able to do, to have an idea that becomes a real thing that you all of a sudden are seeing in health clubs all around the country. I know that I've been in contact with a lot of people who sell equipment like that. 

So fitness equipment, sales is, is another opportunity that that's out there. As someone who used to run some big health clubs, I used to have to buy a lot of equipment. And typically you have reps that you deal with from a lot of the different companies. And I gotta tell you, I know that some of them do really well. They make a great living. And if you're the type of person who builds relationships well, and you love that, you love building relationships and you love the thought of being on the road and maybe doing some traveling, that could be the right job for you. You get to become a master of your brand, your equipment, and then you get to play the role of the person that is helping health clubs, personal trainers out there, to get their facilities equipped with all, with all the right equipment so that they can run a successful business. 

Jenny Scott:

Well I’ll even go one step farther with that too. Not only just the sale of that equipment, you also have to what? Maintain it. There are quite a few companies I know when I was at Orange Theory was the first—and LA Fitness, I see the same company here in Phoenix—but when I was at Orange Theory, we used to have somebody come maintain our equipment, especially like the treadmills, which took a big pounding all the time. The rowers would break periodically, not so much the weight room stuff, but like the mechanicals of the treadmills on the rowers had to be maintained or fixed or oiled or whatever. Every now and again. And it was always just a shout out the name of the company I knew American Fitness Services, AFS, and I see their little vans all over town. So if you're somebody who's mechanically inclined, you like tinkering with stuff, but you like fitness, that's a great way. Right? 

And you're doing service calls for this equipment cuz they do have to maintain it. Actually yesterday, I think it was, I was using the glute kickback machine at LA Fitness and there's a guy sitting over on a chair like staring at me and my friend, we were just chatting away and we finished our sets and we were walking away. He's like, oh, you guys done? And he starts working on it. I was like, could I have died? And you didn't say anything, you let me use this. He's like, no, I'm just looking at it. I was like, oh, okay. But yeah, so there you can maintain the equipment too. That's a great opportunity.

John Bauer:

Yeah, I definitely had some of those guys on speed dial there. Something would go down. And when it was beyond my scope, cuz you know, there were some things I could do to fix some of our equipment.

Jenny Scott: 

Power button off.

John Bauer:

Yeah. Yeah. I would unplug it, plug it back in and cross my fingers. 

Jenny Scott: 

That's about the extent of me. 

John Bauer:

But when it was past that, then I had to call my guys to get them in there to fix that equipment because you know, believe it or not, members like all the equipment to be working all the time. So it's definitely a need to get that taken care of.

Jenny Scott:

They're so needy. Oh my gosh.

John Bauer:

Sooner than later. Now Jenny, you and I know, there's also people in the fitness world who put on fitness events. So I could be talking about conferences. And these are big undertakings. If you've ever had to just organize a birthday party, you know how difficult that can be. These people are putting together events for, in some cases, tens of thousands of people. And they have to have it organized in a way where you're taking care of all the presenters, you're getting all the invites out for the parties, you're setting up dinners, you're setting up events for the attendees. And again, if that's your thing, that can be a great opportunity to work in the health and fitness field outside of personal training. 

Certainly a lot of people move toward the teaching world and become PE teachers. I've known a lot of personal trainers who've moved on and become teachers. 

Another big thing that's really kind of blown up in the last 10 years is there's so many fitness retreats out there now. And there's some great ones out there. In fact, I have a friend who just did one in the Dominican Republic and it looked incredible. It looked like so much fun. And this is a thing now, people want to travel, but not everyone wants to travel and just eat and drink all day. That can be fun. But some people like the thought of a sense of adventure and a sense of being able to get out and move and maybe be in nature. So again, a lot of these retreats are a great new addition to the health and fitness world and some of the opportunities that are out there.

 And then lastly, and I'm sure there's more, and Jenny, you might have some more opportunities that are out there, but there's so much technology in the world of health and fitness now that we need tech people. Here at ISSA, we've got tech people that help us out a lot with basically everything. And now you think about a lot of the companies that are out there, there's a lot of fitness tech. Well, we need tech people to be able to put together the software, put together the hardware, and then within those companies, there's people who are marketing and selling all of this technology. So again, really, really cool opportunities that are out there. And I really like the thought of you know, maybe people dipping their toes in the waters of personal training, but then seeing that there are other opportunities that are out there and being really excited about those opportunities and then working toward those opportunities. So the, the grand thing that I wanted to get across is that there's so much more than just personal training. Not to diminish personal training. I did a ton of it, like I mentioned earlier, but there is so much more and so much that you can look forward to in the health and fitness world.

Jenny Scott:

Yeah, absolutely. And you kind of mentioned the ones that I was gonna add on here, like marketing, right? And I'm not just talking about like, we have a marketing department here at ISSA full of people that are into fitness, right? Same thing with our business to business, our B2B group, the people that help us make partnerships with gyms and clubs. So if you're a partnership or relationship person, there's those roles. But guess who also needs that kind of stuff? Marketing and business to business and building relationships in the community? Those gyms, those studios, right? It's not just management of managing the trainers, right? There's other aspects of running these clubs or running these small studios or running that Anytime Fitness that they need people to help them with. So if you're a marketing person, if you like to pound the pavement and go out and talk to people and host community events and things like that, there's lots of opportunities for things like that.

I used to be part of the opening crew with the Orange Theories that I worked at, and I was there to open two different studios and they would send us out and we'd set up a tent in the parking lot and everybody who drove by, we'd flag 'em down and give 'em some information. People would walk by, try to get as many pre-sales as we could. Like that's a part of sales and marketing that who knew that was there? But we can bring people into these spaces and still be involved in fitness. So yeah, great call out John. There are, there are a lot of opportunities outside of just personal training and that, again, I love personal training. I'm still doing it to this day. It's been 14 years for me. And I don't, I don't foresee at the very much the chagrin of my husband. I don't see a time where I'm not doing it in some form or fashion. I just might not do it every day anymore. But I don't see a point where I stop doing it because I do love it so much. 

But there are opportunities to move into it and do like what we do or something else where you're still very much connected to it and you can still share your passion, but you don't have to do it every day. You don't have to be in the trenches every day. So thank you for sharing that, John. This has been fun. Super fun. I love doing little offbeat stuff like this. 

So again guys, if you liked episodes like this this is our second time doing this, me and Mr. John. If you guys like this, let us know. Throw it in the comments for us. Send us a message, shout us out on Facebook, share the podcast. But let us know if you like these and if you do, we'll keep doing it. John, any last words for this crew?

John Bauer:

Well I feel like I got a little smarter today with all the knowledge that you gave us. And it, you know, it is important to, you know, this is the whole point of this, kind of understand where your information is coming from and be able to cite resources like Jenny is doing so well in these podcasts. There's a lot of information out there. We just gotta make sure that we know what the right information is to share with you guys and for you all to share with your clientele. So yeah, again, this is really fun.

Jenny Scott:

Absolutely. Yeah. And thanks again for joining me and thank you guys for listening. As always, go out there, be fruitful, do all the things, and of course, make good choices. We'll be talking to you soon.