Mike Silverman (part 2) | Owner of That Guy Fitness, Kettlebell coach, Army veteran & retired first responder

Alright, welcome into this week's episode of the platform podcast. This is part two of my interview with Mike Silverman, the owner of that guy training. When we last left off, we were discussing his journey into RKC and his eventual journey out of RKC and getting into how he now got into Kettlebell Sport and discovered the Kettlebell Kings and became a master trainer with Kettlebell Kings and many of the adventures along the way as well as some of our discussions of systems thinking and how you integrate different training concepts and principles across various disciplines. So I hope you enjoy, thank you for listening and let's get into part two of the interview with Mike Silverman. Probably about, yeah, I'm about the same time, I was adding more bells to my home gym and so I went on Facebook, Marketplace, this is probably what three years ago now I'll close to it and started looking up, you know, competition kettlebells, I decided on wanting some comp bells, I'd always played with cast bells so let's get some competition bells and met a guy by the name of Ryan Van Brakel, RVB and he was selling a bunch, he's reasonably local to me, you know, so God bless Facebook, Marketplace, right now. So he was selling off a handful of bells, not knowing anything about comp bells, you know, he's selling off a bunch of Kettlebell Kings competition bells. Shoot him a note, go ahead and get one of these things available and he goes, well, I got this one, I got that one, they were all sort of like odd black stripe weights and I was like, yeah, I'm really not looking for black strippers man, I'm really sort of like looking for the standard, you know, four kilo block outs here and I'm looking for doubles of all of them, what do you got, you know, you know, it's like I buy doubles of everything and he goes, well, shit, I haven't told him but, you know, we end up basically just bullshitting at this point it's like, yeah, I'm not going to buy his bells, right, you know, he sold off the ones that I want, once he's got left I don't but we end up just sort of like bullshitting and so next thing, you know, this, this, this, this, that influence of a friend of mine again now gets me interested in, so what is this whole GS thing? And it introduces me to some crazy old people like Nico Reetner and Brittany and Vassihalman and a bunch of bolt-bubbers and the next thing, I've never heard that before, I like that, sorry, the next thing is bolt-bubbers. The bolt-bubbers and I'm sitting there and next thing you know, I'm looking at it and I start like reading through the bolt rules, right and I'm just like holy shit, this thing matches my philosophy, right, which is you can pick your own weight, you adapt it and I was like this is like, this is exactly what a rookie league needs to look like, right because it's welcoming, but you can get really freaking hard core as you go up the rank structure, but you don't have to join in. You can actually engage with someone. The barrier of entry is low, it's a safe place, you come, come as you are with the ability that you have, show up, get on the platform and we will give you a framework in which you can achieve rank and be exactly if you want to go up there with a single 8k pink ball and stand up there and switch hands every fourth rep because your freaking palms hurt, rock on brother, congratulations man. It's not on the platform. Thank you very much, you know, clap, clap, clap, you had balls to get out there and you did it, fuck yeah, we love you. I was like, dude, I am all about you people. As I started, you know, playing in various bolt things, this is obviously in the before days, right, before COVID. But in the before times, you know, when we get actually being a facility next to one another and not have to all worry about wearing a mask or dying. And so, you know, I'm married to a pediatrician so I'm pretty protective of her. You know, it's like don't get your wife sick, right. She's treating patients daily, don't kill my wife, right. Go number one, go number two, don't kill my 74 year old mother. You know, some basic public health protection things, right. You know, the public health side of me still comes out from time to time, right. It might have been a dick, but it wasn't a complete dick. And so, and so I start getting more involved with that, you know, meeting, you know, folks like Abby, Abby Johnston and freaking Marty over in Fairfax. And, you know, and guys like you and Skinner and Chris over over in the UK. And I'm starting to rush like, wow, these people are really rational. So, I'm starting to get some things as rational as you can be when you suffer for fun, right. I was the fireman, right. We've already established my insanity. And so, you know, it's like any sport where the mantra is die on the platform is I'm all about that shit. And so, and so, and I start meeting these guys and, you know, I mean, you know, Solomon Rosskin, right. And so, we started jokingly calling ourselves the Jewish kettlebell mafia. You know, and some of the craziest rallies that are doing this. I want in that mafia. I'm not one of the chosen people, but I'd still, I'd still sign up, man. A dominant ominous ominous by the power of Moses, your member of the tribe honorarily, right. Woohoo! All right. We're a decentralized hierarchy, man. Welcome to the club. Welcome. Congratulations. You're an honorary launchman. Awesome. So, but as I start getting into these, you know, some of the GS groups and meeting some of the guys from like online kettlebell challenge cup. And just sort of start networking with these folks around there and realizing that this is this really neat kind of like underground. Nobody's a blissful. Nobody's ever heard of kind of situations. But I'm noticing that there's something phenomenally different between that and the hard style people that I'm working with. And that when I bring up, you know, a question and a hard style of, hey, so what do we, you know, when we're talking about this particular muscle group or this joint angle or working with a client who's got a goniametry challenge for shoulder extension. And they're just like, Oh, come on. And the GS guys are sitting there going, well, how's this thoracic extension look? And I'm like, oh my god, I found my whole. And they're like actually talking rationally about exercise. And they're approaching it, you know, scientifically, very clinically. And make no mistake. These are not soft humans. But these people are fucking insane. I mean, it's like, please tell me Dennis Voslev is a soft human. But by this encoding, the guy can actually explain the anatomy of what the hell he's doing, right? And you know, Steve Carter is a whoos. But by the same token, the guy will explain to you down to the endocrine level, why is a vegan? And I was like, oh, yeah, let me talk to you about this metabolic equation that I've been using. I'm like, holy shit, the GS side of the house is way more normal. So, you know, and so, you know, like a couple of years ago, and I'm sitting there. And so they kind of, you know, and so I found a very different community than what I found in the hard style side of the house. That was former rational, former understanding that there were form deviations, right? So, you know, you'll ask questions in GS, well, you modern or classic style for snatch. And to somebody who's who's who's in a GS kind of environment, they understand that that's, you know, same like driver opposite leg drive, right? They understand exactly what that means and both are correct form. If I go into a hard style thing and say, well, how do you prefer to do your snatch? So they'll be like, well, there's only one way. And it's the way that Pavel wrote it in the book and God damn it, you're a heritake if you say anything other. And it was such a different change in just the corporate culture. And it's just a phenomenally different rationale by the way that people interacted with each other that it was refreshing. I knew it was, it was just people cheering for each other. Like crap, I'm going to compete against you next month. And you're sitting here going, bro, you're awesome. Like, oh my God. We're all in this together, but alone. That's my favorite, that's my favorite saying I picked up from the GS community. We're all in this together, but we're all in the platform alone. That's exactly it, right? And so, right, the first time I go out there to meet, I'm sitting there and I'm hearing the dude on the platform next to me. I think he's going to fucking die. And I'm sitting there as a bolt match. So, I'm like, well, if I have to set it down, I can help the guy first. As long as I don't get off my box, I'm good, right? Because he's going to die. And then, of course, the psychopathic side of GS comes in and I go, I got six reps on him in a minute and a half. Fuck you! Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You know, and I just started sprinting because I'm a dick at that point. You know, you're just going to hear, oh. And I was like, I'm sitting here. I was like, I will throw up before I put this belt on. I will project the vomit on this platform before I let this guy beat me in this. And at the end of it, you know, we both finish and we both, like, you know, up and wet and sit there on the platform. He looks over at me and we high five each other and his wife comes over to give me a hug. You know, I'm sitting going, yeah, you would not find this in the hardstyle world. You just wouldn't find it. And so, about the same time, I start looking to buy more bells. And so, I'm still buying, you know, kettlebells are, you know, a bit like crack, right? You know, they find them next thing. You know, they tend to breed. It's like, no, honey, I didn't buy another bell. Why is there a box in the living room? No, I mean, she knows the boxes look like this point, right? Mine are pretty obvious. They've got a big king on the side of them every time they show up. You know, funny soda miner, right? And so, and so about in the same time, right? I sort of, I had met Marcus, you know, through something, you know, some sort of a one-line thing. Marcus and I had spoken a couple of times. Marcus Martinez. Yeah. Marcus from kettlebell kings. And so, I bought a couple of bells. And I get a note from Jay Perkins. And he goes, hey, why don't you take one of our shirts? You're pretty active with people who you are. I mean, you know, it's like you're, you try to help people out the community, you know. You want to take one of our shirts. And it's like, all right, cool. So, I took their fundamentals course. And, you know, and it's all online. It's all, it's nice computer-based, high-gloss, really well-produced videos. And the thing that stood out to me immediately, you know, in the way that the academics were, were done, aside from the fact that Marcus is just an absolute freaking pro, is in the system I was in before, it used the word you a lot. In the kettlebell king system, the living fit model, it used the term you're client a lot. Settle, but really, really significant of when you do a snatch, you do it this way. When you're helping your client do a snatch, here's how you might help them progress. It's home matters. And so I start getting deeper into the program. I was like, oh my god, this is, this is really written. Like an instructor manual. This isn't, this isn't, this is a pro course. This is not, you know, like just a matter of, you know, lift a big battle comrade. I mean, this is like no shit, instructor quality course. And so I decided to actually look up Marcus and Aaron's bios. Because I mean, really, we did not know each other at all a couple of years ago. I look up his bio, I'm like, oh, well, it's because the guys are freaking CSCS and used to run the program on the street from where he is now. I'm like, well, no. Then I look up Aaron. It's like, oh, the guy's candidate master of sport. I see a mess in like every lift and like three federations. I'm like, all right. I was like, these guys have like no shit jobs, but then I start reading. Also, it's like, they also have academic chops to back it up. They're degreeed, certified, highly credentialed professionals who are just really into the sport and are really focused on making you a good coach. And then I take a look at their number one competitors, chief instructor. And it's a group exercise certificate and a degree in dance. I don't know, dude. I'm going to go out on a limb and say I would probably rather take my programming from the guy with the CSCS and the degree in exercise science and the CMS, then, you know, jazz or size. You know, they created their system. They didn't inherit it. They wrote this thing. They wrote it from white paper. There will be people that will go out there and say, oh, everybody just stole it. You know, you can say that about anything, right? But you really get down to it. People has been around since about 1700s. And GS has been around since, you know, like the 1940s. I'm going to go out on a limb and say, powell's not that old. You know, I mean, he looks great if he's 365 years old. But, you know, I'm going to go out on a limb and probably say he really didn't invent either. You know, stuff kind of predates everybody who's presently alive. So, you know, stole it. Did you? Did you really? And I've actually heard that come out of people before. Then, you know, I just ripped off Paul. I was like, I really don't think they did. You know, I'm just not I'm not buying it. Yeah, that's the ignorance of history kind of kind of thing. But it was, I had that same, that was my, that was my moment when I got into kettlebells back, you know, back in the back in the day where I was like, do I want to get the RKC? Or do I want to get something else? And I was fortunate fortunate enough that I did the, you know, a little bit of research before I signed I was close to putting out my money for the RKC, because I live here and I live here in the Twin Cities and they're, you know, right up the road for me. Yeah, they're local to you, man. You know, my, you know, lifetime was going to pick up a chunk of it, you know. So, I was like, okay, so that's not too bad. But I started looking into it and then I found the Larry Fedorenko. And it was kind of that same decision for me. I was like, wait, this guy is like a world record holder from Russia. He was a world champion in this sport that I didn't even know existed until I found the Larry Fedorenko. And I was like, oh, this is an actual, this is like an actual thing. And I like went down the YouTube rabbit hole, you know, and was like looking up all this, I was like, holy cow. This is awesome. This is insane. He's like, you know, so I see like the videos from like 1980s, 1987, St. Petersburg championship, you know, you know, all the, all the, all the old school Russian, you know, classic lifters. And I was like, these guys are fucking nuts. The guys the freaking would pass the high heel shoes and shit. And they're passing out on the platform at the end of their 10 minute set because they're just completely out of oxygen for their brain. And I was like, this is nuts. And I was like, yeah, that's what I want to do. Sign me up. I was, that was, that was my choice. And then I came to Bethesda, Maryland, actually, and got my first, my first certification with Catherine Ims from the world kettlebell club. She's, you know, she's the first female master of sport in the US. And it was, you know, fantastic. It was a great shirt. Yeah, and I mean, and that's kind of like the mental math that I was going through really was, you know, you know, I'm a trainer with a gazillion certs. Okay. If I'm going to lay out money for one, I want it to do two things. One, matter. And two, as a pro, I want it to matter to my clients. You know, so it's like, you know, sure, I can go ahead and get some old shit cert that I could probably gun deck my way through the, the, the test. Not really learn much of anything, but, you know, pad my resume. You know, but whatever I'm already top pay scale within my company. You know, I'm already pretty expensive. I'm not going to make any more money on my hourly rate doing this. Or can I get something that's going to actually just make me better equipped to help the clients that I have. And so, you know, I'll put together, you know, sort of separate the men from the boys kind of thing. So like if you'll look at, you know, sometimes I'll post like a trainer challenges. I'll post a scenario in a group. And you saw that one this week where you said, can I do it in spandex? I'm like, God bless you. Yes, you and big sexy. I'm, I'm, I'm prescribing Julian Michaels dive bomber swings to everybody. 10,000 dive bomber swings put, you know, insert insert cranium interactive swings. Yeah, so the one I always like to do is tell people every time you turn a swing into a squatty, God kills a kitten. You don't want to hurt the kiddies, do you? Do you hate, do you hate kittens? I'm a dog guy. So the, yeah, I'm like, yeah, yeah. Okay, I'm okay with a few fewer cats, honestly, but it's not to say I'm against cat death. But yeah, so like I'll post things and it's like these scenarios are like real people, right? These are people that I've trained or I've done, you know, like everybody when you come into a gym, you get the first free hour, right? Which is usually half-consult, half-sales pitch, right? You know, it's like every gym. It's like, hey, welcome to our gym. By the way, go meet with the trainer. He's going to try and sell you a PT, which is our higher profit areas. You know, it's like welcome to working in a commercial gym. Thank you for coming. They all pay their rent by membership dues, but they actually make their money on personal training, right? Yeah. You know, like most gyms, we make three times in PT what we make in dues every month, right? I mean, we're pretty, pretty standard, right? And so I'll post the things up there. And it's definitely a separate, the men from the boys or the girls from the women, kind of a trainer scenario of, here's Bob. Bob's a drywall hanger. Bob had a total near replacement two years ago. Bob can't bring his arms behind his back, but you'll actually put it in, you'll say, Bob has poor shoulder extension. Well, what the hell does that mean? Well, if you don't know what shoulder extension versus flexion mean, maybe you should read a book. You know, and it's always kind of fun to sort of watch the one the creativity of the really good trainers that are out there, because he's just some really amazing trainers. I was like, what would you program from Bob, right? You know, and then watch the chest thumpers. Well, what would you program smart guys? I'll tell you all at the end of the weekend, right? That's a week in trainer challenge. I'll tell you, I know exactly what the x-ray should be for this guy. I was like, this is not a complicated scenario. Oh, well, okay, if it's not so complicated, why would you, you know, it's like Mr. Scientist. Yeah, point next year. Well, it's like, you know, so what's the answer to the scenario? Well, it's really pretty simple. Bob has a mobility problem. He's a drywall hanger. He's leaning into his left arm to hang the wall while he's using his right arm for his screw gun. Right. He's his classic muscle and balance, right? His left shoulder is jacked from banging into the wall. He got a total near replacement left side probably because that's how he's bumping the top. If you've ever watched a guy hang drywall. Like, yeah, I was like, no one normal people do in their normal life. If you actually understand these things, you can better help him as a coach, right? You can actually adapt their exercise to it. It was like, so what does Bob need? Well, the first thing Bob needs is a lacrosse ball on a wall. You're like, what do you mean it's good? Bob's pecs are freaking ridiculously tight. That's why he pulls DMRs behind him. I gave him the freaking goniometry numbers. What's a goniometer? I don't need that shit. I'm like, well, you kind of do. I was like, well, I also gave you the overhead assessment. So if you actually, you know, if you're a nasm brick bush kind of guy versus an ACSM and a CA kind of a guy, you know, I gave you a mouth. Like, what do you mean? I was like, this knee moves more than that knee. Okay. Well, what's that mean? Well, it means we should probably get his knees both equally flexible before we give him a bell to tell him to start swinging it. Don't load dysfunction. Yeah. He's heckling. And so I post these sorts of things out there and as a coach, I kind of laugh about it because people are just like, oh, you mean me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me. And then the real honest guy, the like the no shit trainer's out there. Like, dude, this is fun. You know, you know, you get the guy would be just like, well, if you pay me, I'll tell you what I would program this guy. I was like, dude, it's a brain game. I'm not paying you for this. I'm sitting here going, it's like, but you know, this group that you're in front of has 15,000 people in it. And getting past the fact that, you know, probably 2,000 of them are trainers and probably 20 of them are probably jumping you DMs every freaking 30 seconds. One that made me really laugh is when an RKC actually jumped into Chris Giles DMs the other day. Asked me if he needed help with his snatch action drop. That shit made me laugh, right? I was like, you have no idea who you just said that I was like, the dude's a CMS in like three federations and runs a kettle club in the UK. You're shitting me. Have you heard about the kettlebell sport hangout? Yeah, he runs it. I was like, him and Skinner. Yeah. They teach champions. Yeah. Help on his catch from an RKC. But yeah, it was funny. I mean, but like literally this dude was like, he like posted up a, he posted up a video in that group. And I know you saw it because you sort of snickered. And he posts up videos in the group all the time. It's like, hey, do you need help with this? And then immediately he's like, into the DMs, hey, can I say some online training? It's like, dude, dude, really? First off, you're in kettlebell King's group and you're not even associated with kettlebell King's trainers. You're not even certified by the, you are literally whoring in somebody else's house. Get the fuck out, man. They're very gracious as admins there, honestly, because like I'm like somebody just, somebody just posted a comment on one of my posts. They posted a thing like, like it was like a Vietnam foundry of how of how of how cast iron kettlebells are made. And I was like, I was like, yeah, no, I'm good. I don't need any, I don't need any bells. I'm good. I got, I got 24 and my wife is already complaining about running out of room. There's more coming. So I was, I was kind of laughing, right? I feel like me and I can't remember who it was. It was another one of the living fit instructors, right? And so, you know, because I've taken all of their classes at this point. I've actually been advocating with my company has got 60 gyms. And so I actually brought kettlebell kings into my company as a preferred provider for kettlebell education. And, you know, through that process, I've gotten to know Jay and Marcus and Aaron reasonably well, right? And, you know, so I've taken all of their classes. You know, it's like I have the gold pass, right? I've taken every single class they offer. And, and so it's like, I know their system. I'm a bit of a fanboy for their system. I just, I like the way that they do it. They have a bit of a hybrid style, right? So you see a lot of G.S. And the living fit stuff. Yeah. You see a lot of G.S. And they're right. And it's like, ooh, a rotational cross like its next drop in low tempo. I wonder where might be that lot. You came from, I mean, it's like, you know, and so it's a much more holistic kind of a system, right? It's that sort of fusion of hard style and G.S. And people will tell you you can't do both. And I was like, I will flat out tell you that's incorrect. You absolutely just pan. Just because people are incapable of synthesizing and integrating competing systems doesn't mean it can't be done. It's, you know, or and they're not even competing systems. It's just differential approaches to the same thing. But if you're a systems thinker, you can integrate principles from, from different systems like that. That's exactly it. You know, it's like, I have an Olympic lifter. This guy is like a new shit competitive USAW lifter that I train. And I use kettlebells to help him with his barbell work. I am a barbage Olympic lifter, right? It's like I, I will get through USAW's level one. I am a terrible Olympic lifter flat out mostly because of my shoulders, right? But off of a bell that will, you know, cripple you on pure technique alone. But being able to synthesize those two things together has improved his Olympics, right? So I will take combinations of things like some of the stuff that's more sort of on it or IKFF flavored. And hybridize that with some stuff that's really just raw GS. And some other stuff that is just straight up RKC, put those things together within the exact same program, right? Within the same workout, right? So you'll do all three of those in the same hour. And you'll be fine with it, right? So it's like, okay, well, what are we going to do from the Metcon? We're going to do this little thing called long cycle. Hold your breath. This is going to be fun, right? Don't hold your breath. I want at least three per round, right? You know, you found the rack, yeah, find your lungs. Good luck with that. Breathe from your soul. And if you can't do that, breathe the souls of young children. So, but yeah, I mean, it's like, you know, a lot of people in there, you know, and like one of my standard go-to corrective exercises, because you know, I get a lot of desk sitters, you know, I'm here in the DC metro area, right? You know the area. It's a professional, it's a white collar workforce around here, right? Most people sit at a desk all day. So they're all lower crossed, and two, three quarters of them are all upper crossed, right? So the first thing I'll end up doing with almost every one of them, they go into an overhead squat and like, their heels are three and a half inches off, their knees are like almost kissing the turf. They're falling so far forward, right? And their arms are at tit level. You know, I was like, well, I think I know where we need to start with this, right? And so people like, well, what do you do? Or the upper, I'm going to start them off with something like a TRX road. Like, what, no kettlebell. Like, no, you don't be a one-trick pony, dude. That TRX is going to be the best thing for you right now to get that high road hiled in before I do any load other than what God gave you. Pillsbury, however you work, right? I've been there too. You know, and but God gave us Pillsbury, so you can be all religious about that if you really like to. So, you know, people, you know, it's like box jumps are earned. But why don't they immediately do box jumps like this? You're going to finally kiss the freaking wall. Fall on your face. You're going to play, hey, cool laid through my dry wall. And I don't really feel like watching it. Um, you know, and then I was like, and then we're going to go hard. So we're going to go into goblin squats. What about swings? They're not there yet. You're going to do some goblin squats with like a 12 kilo bell. But the guy is 300 pounds. Right. Hold my beer. Watch this. I'm starting to sweat. Rip. Five. He's turned a little. Yeah. Why are we maybe go ahead and just do some box squats first before we even put you under the load, right? You know, and but then we're then we'll finish out with like double eight kilo jerks with a really big dude. I was like, what are you wearing? One minute on one minute off. Nothing fancy. Gotta be like, really? Like, yeah, do it. And the first thing you're going to start sprinting it like a 17 pace or something. And I'm just like, okay, wait for it. 15. 16. 17. 20 seconds. 20 seconds. And here it is. You know, it's like, I feel that like date moving on. Yeah. He's done. Yeah. And I look at how long can he go over threshold though? We're about 90 seconds in now. We got about maybe 30, 40 more seconds here. Yeah. I will say, okay. So it's like, I got one of my dudes that I train, right? And so like, I will absolutely throw a GS into this program, right? And so I train this guy. He's a big guy. He's like 6. 6. About 350. I mean, he's a big dude like his man. And I have to swing him with little bells. Absolutely. Just watch this guy. I was like, what are you doing? He's like, look, I'm going to throw a little trick from my buddy Marcus here. As you guys said, we're going to go between pendulum swings and hardstyle swings arbitrarily for one minute. And he goes, what do you mean? I was like, all right. So I was like, all right. So like, you know, little T-Rex, you know, just like, I just break playing, just dancing with bells. And then when I say hard, bam, full tilt. And then I'm going to say soft. I'm just going to have to go down, do little T-Rexes, some little nice, soft, laid back pendulum swings to hand and even. Right? Well, you know, hard. You can go ape shit. And I'm doing that. I said, you're about to experience the longest minute of your life because we're completely screwing with them mentally. And because they can't concentrate on the movement because they don't know when I'm going to yell. It's like an SAQ drill with a kettlebell, right? There's a waiting for the stupid beep there. No idea what that says about. Go, right? And, you know, you'll absolutely destroy a really, really fit version with like a 12K. And that's where you find the puritanical system just can't keep up. They just can't do it, right? You would never see that drill. Either a straight G-Hass or a straight hardstyle kind of system. You just wouldn't see it. Yeah. But that's the Marcus thing, right? And so it's like, so yeah, I absolutely bought into the dude system. It's like shit works. Like this is what happens when an academic who actually knows fitness gets into it. Well, it's the ability to take things to first principles, right? That's really what it really what it comes down to, right? You have to understand that there are first principles that apply to any movement system. And it's, you know, like you're talking about the ability to translate Olympic lifting to kettlebell or vice versa, right? Well, what do you need connection to load? And then you need force transfer into load. What's the difference between a barbell jerk and a kettlebell jerk? Well, the hips go forward on a kettlebell jerk because you need to keep elbow connected to the load, right? Your elbow has to stay connected to your hips. So the hips have to come forward. That keeps your hips connected to load in the barbell jerk. The load is connected at the shoulder. So your hips can go back. So you let your hips go back because you can generate more power from a hip back squat position. And you transfer that force into the ground through the shoulder into the load, right? But it's the same principle under the underlying. The first principle is connection, ground force connection, and force transfer into loading, right? Those are the basic two first principles, right? And if you can, if you can reduce things to first principle, you can translate between different periodanical systems and integrate them. Yeah. And one of the funny things that you sort of run into when you start looking at this and you start looking at some of these systems that you would think are reasonably periodanical. What you discover is that most of them really aren't as periodanical as superficially they would come off, right? So you look at like USAPL, right? People are like, oh my god, powerlifting, it's going to be totally like powerlifting is a skill of art. Have you ever watched somebody set up for a bench pass? I've seen probably at least five or six sort of like three ways that people will just set up on the bench. All right, I'll see guys that will like slide up underneath the bar from the head, drop toes at the pivot, and then arch out to the point where like, you know, their freaking sternum's already on the bar before they've even break the Jacobs, right? And then you see other dudes that, you know, do like the two knees on the tips of the bench, screw it down, then sit down and God help you if those feet break floor, right? You know, when you see, you know, when you see powerlifter setting up on platform for, you know, for squat or for a deadlift, you know, you'll see guys that everything from ultra sumo where their toes are all the way out on the plates to I have to put, you know, second toe on spindle to both toes inside spindle to toes on first neural. And so it's like, you see all of these things, right? You see in GS, you see a lot of these sort of basic first principle terms of art, though, in the way that each athlete does their skill. You know, you'll see folks that when you look at them from the side and the GS, you're literally looks like a worm. You know, I call it doing the snake, right? You know, so it goes, you know, knee hip, L spine, T spine, roll, and you get that nice weavey little from the side. And it's just like an S curve just to throw the head, throw the head back as the toes go up and right. Yeah, it's like, oh my God, that's beautiful to watch. And then you watch people are just like, well, still goes up and you still got the double nib and you still got your rep count, right? And you're not all sitting down there with your ass a foot and a half behind you and your chest who feet out in front of you and the head's rolling back and the shoulders are just arched. It's like, no, he just goes basically straight the hell up. Yeah. Okay. That's right. Right. Right. I'm a powerlifter. I'm a stupid fireman. I'm the weak straight up, right? There's no art to my jerk, right? But it's a rep count. And I'm throwing the bell. And you sort of see those exact same sort of things translated those systems. And so if you're going to really kind of do the best for your client with those systems, you have to have a system itself that is flexible enough to allow those mobility differences, those anatomical differences. The skill differences and just the fact that everybody built just a little different differences. It works, right? So humans adapt to the environment that they're working in. There is a traumatic amount of both elasticity and plasticity to the human body. Having a really, really doctrinally dictatorial kind of a system that doesn't adapt for that. And so well, that's a no rep because you know, you're when you win, milled your, you know, or when you win, she'll wiper to your foot on the Turkish get up, it doesn't count. You know, you didn't win, she'll wiper at exactly 90 degrees. You didn't have the perfect isosceles triangle between your palm, your knee and your toe. Okay, well, that's great. Does she busted her hip in a car crash? She can't do that. Yeah, well, then she can't be certified in our system. I was like, well, then your system is crap. Well, you know, you know, you know, who Chris stuff it is. I know the name. I don't know. She's from from Kabuki from Kabuki strength. He's a world record holding power lifter. He did. Oh, yeah, that's why I know that dead, dead lifted a thousand pounds three times squatted a thousand pounds three times. But he also at one point went to do the RKC certification. And part of that is the is the dead hang pull up requirement. Right. Well, he can't straighten his elbows because he's got some, he's got some bone spurs and stuff like he literally can't lock out his elbow. And he and so they're like, yeah, you can't get there. They're like, well, you have to be able to pass the pull up certification to make sure that you're strong enough. We have to make sure that you have enough lat strength is like the man can deadlift a thousand pounds. You don't think his lats are strong enough like to tell you what? If I can deadlift the entire cadre laying across a bar right now, do I pass? If I can do a pull up while holding my instructor between my knees. Yeah, but no elbows weren't straight elbows elbows weren't straight like I'd be I'd be fucked. I can't straighten my right elbow. You know, that's what happens. Yeah, hyper extended a bunch of times playing football, right? Like I just I can't straighten my right elbow completely. I don't know. Am I never be able to again? I don't know. Right. That's the thing is they want to get there. But they'll see my left shoulder doesn't go as straight as my right. Why? Well, because when I was a firefighter, I fell through a fucking roof. I grabbed a rafter, right? With CBA on my back fell about 12 feet caught my fall on my hands and landed on a bed that was on fire. Could not lift my arms, right? On the left side I tore my lat Terry's major Terry's minor, most of the rotator cuff itself. Part of the posterer's serratus. You know, and the rear delt on the right side I tore the lat the Terry's rotator cuff and then popped the arse. So please tell me again how I'm going to do these things. Oh, wait. Oh, thank you. You just got to man up. I mean, clearly I'm not Russian enough. You just got to man up. Exactly. I'm clearly not Russian enough. You look out that door right there. My sum of art from my grandmother that was carried over in a duffle bag on a ship is sitting on the ledge. But I'm not Russian enough. It's like, yeah. Bubby stuff is just on the other side of that door, dude, but clearly I'm a shit Russian. You know, but you know, so yeah, I mean, there's definitely a lot of that. And so the more doctrinal your system tends to be the less likely it is to really adapt, right? So like I really tend to enjoy watching stuff guys guys like John Rusen. I just I think the world of what he puts out there. So I like I like Drew Miller. He's fantastic as a DPT and also probably one of the strongest kettlebell lift for sure. African disease, hard style guy, but he's a freaking beast. You know, I'm a big fan of what Brooke Bush is doing. I know that's a reasonably controversial kind of a position in certain circles, right? Because he is definitely putting portions of the industry on their ear in the personal training side. So Brooke Bush Institute basically just said, yeah, we're not actually going to be an NCC, NCCA certified personal trainer because we think it's a scam. You know, it's like, what? But by the same token, if you take his human movement specialist, I guarantee you've damn near gotten a degree in kinesiology by the time you finish the 80 hours. Of primarily AMP skills. So, you know, it's like, yeah, go ahead, get that shirt. Tell me, tell me again that it's substandard. I'm like, dude, it's telling me it's like, so what exactly are the innervation points on the erector spine it? Shit, I don't remember all my innervations. I'm stating that stuff since the early 90s. Yeah, well, guess what? You know, Brent, once you learn it, it's like, you know, it's like, well, but his CPT is not an NCCCA credit. I'm like, yeah, but his continuing ed is accepted by the car practice, the physical therapist, the athletic trainer. There's the license massage therapist. I'm going to go on and say, guys, probably not. Oh, by the way, his courses are also serving as textbooks for four universities. And he'll like, well, how much does a trainer shirt cost? It's free. And I'll like, wait, what? Yeah, it's free. So you join Brookbush. You join Brookbush Institute's website. There's an annual fee to be a member of it, right? It's a continuing ed kind of website, sort of like idea or club connect or something like that. And you log into it and you take his video lessons and you read scholarly articles. He's huge on research reviews, right? So if he pulls out an art, you know, if he's got a course, there will probably be 150 sites in the bottom of it. Of first source sports science, right? Like no kidding. It's like, yes, you should program for, you know, four to 10 reps for this. Why footnote per N6? It's like, here's the study. Like, yes, thank you. So I mean, like, no shit. I mean, he's really in there, but it's about 20 bucks a month to be a member of Brookbush for unlimited continuing ed. And once you've completed the number of hours that are required in each of the modules, it's certain auto issues. Nice. That's awesome. He doesn't charge work. I wasn't familiar with that. I mean, I've, you know, I know the name and I was, I was familiar with the certification, you know, in, in theory, but I didn't know, I didn't know that it was free. But a continuing ed, you know, a subscription. That's, that's awesome. Yeah, you have to get 80 hours of continuing ed broken out in certain modules. And once you've achieved them, the cert poops itself out of the computer. He doesn't charge and it's good for two years. And it auto renews as long as you are continuing to take, continuing it through his system, it will continue. Whatever the date of your last course is, plus two years is when your shirt's good through. And he, he largely views himself sort of as the Elon Musk of PT education. And he goes, he actually ultimately wants to get to the point where you can actually get a physical therapy degree through his program and just go into do your clinicals. Because the whole education system is a scam. And I'm just tired of it. I mean, like, well, what does he know is I do the guys got more consonants after his name and a small alphabet. You know, he's, he's a DPT, a CSCS. He was the lead Nazim field instructor. He was teaching for Mike. As, you know, all those field clinics and stuff like that. But yeah, the guys just like, you know what? Yeah, that's fine. I'm completely comfortable certifying people. If you can get through this shit, I am completely comfortable saying you are a certified trainer. Nice. And it was 10 times harder than anything crap I've done since, man. It's brutal. But yeah, it's very cool. It's a great model. But, you know, it tends to, to sort of kind of go that direction. You know, and so I'm kind of hoping that the industry starts to shift a little bit away from the, the, the, the, the angry meathead testosterone poisoned kind of a model. You know, starts to be a little bit hoping for years that it was actually going to become a, a licensed profession recognized and regulated in a way that, you know, in the same way that, that, you know, PTAs and nurses and, you know, in that same, because you're a practitioner of your practitioner of health information, right? In that same function, obviously in a different silo. But, you know, you're, you're using exercise and prescribing exercise to, to address health issues and to your earlier point, right? If, if you can't recognize contraindications of movement prescription, if you can't appropriately prescribe a loading pattern. Don't, you know, don't. Well, you shouldn't, you shouldn't, but there should be regulations in place to prevent people that don't have the capability or training to do that. Yeah, and, and, and so in other countries, they've started to do that, right? So the UK and Australia and a couple of countries within the EU have taken that kind of a model. And so a good friend of mine, McKenna Smett. And so, she's another trainer that I work with. She's a Towson state conhesiologist and, you know, so I'll, I'll let her slide still in the state of Maryland, but she's not a term. I'll let her slide for being Towson, but, you know, I, I love me some McKenna, but she, um, she and I have actually worked a little bit within our state legislature. Obviously, to go absolutely nowhere, just because you know, I don't have the lobbying money that, you know, the, the, the, the, the Ersa folks in the health, health, health club industry lobby would have. But one of the things that we were trying to do is identify a means by which there could be an expanded practice, expanded scope of practice, personal trainer versus a regular trainer. And so if you're a regular CPT, right, it's up to your gym to go ahead and determine what's the appropriate level of cert that's going to meet their company's insurance, right? Because that's really what it comes down to, right? You want an NCCA? Right, exactly. What do you want an NCCA accredited syrup? Because somebody said the search not crap. Well, is the accreditation itself worth anything? Not really, but it's somebody to diffuse the risk over to us. It puts some modicum of rigor against it. But, um, by the same token, we sort of view ourselves and, and Dr. Mazafari, Bobby Mazafari is a good buddy of mine. He's actually a hardstyle certified instructor as well as a doctor of chiropractic. He's a chiropractor, hating chiropractor. So he thinks he thinks two-thirds of the guys in chiro are kind of quacks and clowns. He is a no-shit primary spine certain, you know, like Penn State certified primary spine for practitioners, a Logan graduate. Um, and the reality of the matter is the guy's got one of the most rational approaches I've ever seen, right? And so even, you know, even within DCP, there's, there's huge philosophical differences between like Logan and Palmer, like phenomenally different. But Bobby's a very evident driven kind of a practitioner. I've seen him put guys back together, you know, my, you know, my clients back together and it's like, oh my god, this guy literally works miracles for my people. So he's got my loyalty, but there, you know, there's a handful of us. What we started willing to do is my gym does a lot of sort of very hands-on with our clients assisted stretching. And that's, you know, and PNF facilitation and things along those lines. And that started getting more and more expanded as we're going. And so when you start getting things like hyperfolds, getting introduced, and start getting things where we were actually doing facilitated trigger pointing, um, releases and various things that were really probably well beyond the legal authority or scope of what a personal trainer should be doing. But those of us that kind of came up either through an ATC kind of a program or who have worked in a PT clinic, we were very competent knowing how to do it, but it's probably not appropriate for a personal trainer in general to do these things. So what we were sort of looking at is, would there be kind of a middle ground a way that you could retain CPT as a deregulated profession, right? You know, pay your money to whoever take your weekend crash course and, you know, go out and get your training card, hang your shingle last four months. And I'll see in a couple of years when you're like, you know, doing construction or some shit because the reality is the vast majority of trainers wash out in the first six months and the clowns. Um, you know, and we're running Joe's like, right, if you've been a trainer more than two years, you're kind of an OG at this point. Um, it's true. I mean, how many trainers are really last more than a couple of years? And the reality is not very many, right? I mean, the cost of entry to become a personal trainer is pretty low, both financially and intellectually, it's not that tough. And so there's, there's a huge difference between, you know, a certified personal trainer and a qualified personal trainer. Um, you know, they're, they're, they're not necessarily independent variables. Um, and so what we had started looking at is, um, what would it take? And this largely came because I was actually realizing I was getting a lot of help from my clients by helping them get their mobility enhanced. And that required me touching them. Okay, that that required me, you know, moving them around, um, assisting them into positions, assisting them with stretches. Um, going, oh, look, this, this is clearly a trigger point. Um, let me take this ball or let me take this point device and release the shit. Um, you know, and as long as you were sort of, and I started reading the Maryland law and I actually thought about getting my LMT, just to make sure I was completely copacetic with the state of Maryland. And I started reading what the Maryland state code was and it was crap. Uh, and the way that the law and Maryland had been written it effectively had outlawed yoga instructors, a lot of these coaches, uh, the person training, anybody who was in it, because it literally said that anybody who assists somebody who's, uh, was stretching is practicing massage therapy. I'm like, really, I've reached board of massage therapy. And so the massage therapy board in Maryland is actually a subordinate board to the chiropractic board. There's like the ATC board and Maryland is underneath the medical board, right? So the doctor supervised the ATC is the chiropractor supervise the LMT's in Maryland. So I called, you know, Bobby, my, my, everybody, I'm like, hey, uh, hey, dude, um, I heard on the board said, well, I called the boards administrator and she basically told me to pound sand. Uh, when I said, hey, look, can I get a really clear definition because it looks here like you've effectively outlawed health clubs, uh, or claimed purview over health clubs and you've effectively criminalized the entire fitness industry by a really poorly written scope of practice in the state law. And, uh, she basically blew me off told me, you know, the code is the code piss off. And eventually I managed to work my way up the food chain and even talked to one of my state senators and got to the point where they were basically saying, yeah, we would never actually enforce that. I said, okay, so then pull it out. If you're not going to enforce it, pull it out. We have this law, but it's not one we're actually going to do anything. So delete it, please, right? Okay, it's just, you know, it's like, you know, we're making criminals out of people that really aren't doing anything. Uh, and so what I then did is I said, okay, well, let's now like expand this conversational, but she goes, I said, so health and fitness is an allied health function. She goes, okay, I said, so if we take a look at all of the allied health professions, right, so dieticians, um, you know, um, you know, the massage therapist, sort of everything that doesn't say MD are in her PA, right? Like not all the first and second tier, you know, scalpel or blood pressure cuff kind of things, right? And this is as a, as a retired paramedic, right? So it's like, I know allied health is supposed to work on public health guy for God's sakes, right? If you look at health systems within that health system, gyms very clearly fall in the preventive health category, right? They can also fall a little bit towards the rehabilitative category, right? So if somebody gets hurt, and the orthopedic screws them back together, and the PT rehabs them back, okay? Well, when you get discharged from physical therapy, you're really not done, right? You've still got a long way ahead of you in most cases. So where do you end up? Do you end up in a gym? Corrective exercise specialist, or... Right, and so you end up with effectively a CES if you want to go ahead and you take the Nazism speech, or something similar in ACSM. I mean, there's an ACE has one now, too, right? But it's basically the person that knows how to like, you know, eyeball and fix structurally based things, right? Children don't move right, hands fall forward, right? The MASS, you know, that's another one that's out there, great system as well, supple leopard, you know, Kelly's system is phenomenal, right? It's like, you know, required reading. I recommend it to most of my clients, you know, say, it's 30 bucks on Amazon, dude, it's totally worth it. Just go buy it, find where it hurts. Take a look across, Paul, do what Kelly says. You know, I swear to you, you'll feel a little bit better. I know it's okay, but just do it, will you? You can't move, Bill. And so, you know, and so I said, you know, what would it take to legally expand the scope of practice for a personal trainer who has these CES kind of skills, right? These sort of halfway between like an LMT and a CES or an ATC sort of like this. They sort of like kind of an advanced personal trainer skill set that would legally allow them to like touch people to sort of do almost more of a medical exercise kind of an approach. And they go, well, what'd you have in mind? I said, well, I can see a couple of ways of doing it. They go, okay, I said, well, LMT is 600 hours. They go, right? I said, I talked to the school massage. They go, right? I said, I sent my copy in my degree, all my Brooke Bush crap and all my personal training stuff. And they said, I only need to do about 200 hours to actually get my LMT board eligibility. It means that I have two thirds of the way they're already as just a dumb trainer. They go, right? I said, I know a lot of people that are other dumb trainers like me with similar pieces of paper on their walls. They go, right? I said, so if I'm already two thirds of the way to a licensed profession, but I don't want to regulate the personal training industry that bridge too far. I don't want to go down that. And it also makes all my libertarian hackles fire up anyways and just say let's regulate anything anyway. So that being the case, they're sort of a middle ground, right? Where we could basically have something like the Aussies have where you have like tier one is basically a trainer who can go in do basic personal training. They can work from established X racks. They can work within established protocols of whoever their certifier is, be it nasmopt stuff, or guidelines for access to testing from ACSM or NSCA model, whichever model. Okay, whoever your certifier is, you sort of stay within their model. You don't go off script or a level two trainer is you got a degree. Yeah, got some other stuff. And now just like an athletic trainer, you file a care plan with a supervising physician or chiropractor, or some sort of license somebody with the word doctor, a DPT, I don't really care which. That now sort of has cognizance over you, but in return for the ass pain of doing that, the way that the athletic trainers do, you can touch people. You can go off book and get certain modalities you're now allowed to use, right? So if I want to go ahead and hit somebody with a hypervolta hydrocolator, God speed, man rocket. Okay, do which right for your client. You've already filed this plan and you're under some modicum of medical supervision to do so. And they go, wow, it's a fantastic idea. I said, cool, I got these four chiro's and two DPT's that are also endorsed from the idea they say it's amazing. Yeah, but we're not. So it's like, we did try. Okay, we kind of got shot down, but what I've actually started to do. So anytime I have one of my clients who's either medically complex or has gotten themselves hurt somehow, I mean, people get hurt, I mean, welcome to the real world. The first thing that I do is I say, okay, I'm going to refer you to one of these four or five medical chiropractor, you know, chiropractor, your DPT's that I work with. When you get there, I said, I'm going to call them and tell them I'm referring you. I am going to give them my assessment of you and why I am referring you, right? A proper medical handoff, right? It turned over report. It's crazy. And in return, what I'm going to have you do is sign a HIPAA with your medical provider. It enables them to discuss you candidly with me and we're going to tag team. And so like, I'll do this with Dr. Maas. This is why I brought up Bobby or Dr. Josh Funk as a DPT, Dr. Anthony Irino, Dr. Tim Bafolko. These are guys that I work with around here that I'll have a doctor in front of their name for a damn good reason. And my clients also had a HIPAA with them. And we coordinate that patient care. They're my client, they're your patient, but they are usually a person we have an interest in. And we use this to do right by people. And that sort of a model isn't real common in fitness, unfortunately. But when you see, like, especially with COVID, all the health marketing that's going on, it's like, gyms are important for health because of public health. We need to open the gyms. I was like, okay, now you just want to start building your members again. I got it. And I post up on Instagram last week and really pissed a handful of people off. It's pretty funny. You want to be treated like allied health, start acting like a clinician. You know, I hope you're like, what? Like, your gym is part of the public health system. It absolutely is. There is mountains and mountains of science that people that go to the gym don't get sick and don't get as hurt. Hell yeah, more gym please, right? This is older research. This has been like reinforced for like decades, right? Then why do your trainers still act like apes? Mongo niff butter bill. Okay, well, she'll out there, Mongo. Maybe Mongo chip blood pressure. Yeah, you know, and like people coming to my gym, right? We're pretty high on gym, right? And like, we'll do an in-body scan on somebody. And but half of the trainers that are there have no fucking idea what the numbers on that machine actually mean. Actually, so a trainer one time, this guy was a rookie. And we sort of like quietly correct him. But when it tells you basement of molecularity goes, dude, this is how much you need to be eating every day. Like, oh, that's how much you need to eat to not die. And they're like, well, what do you think it was like, dude? BMR is not how much you should eat. If he was in a coma, right? This is his burn rate. That's one medlein and a bad dude. And so even just dumb shit like that, right? So like an in-body scan, right? Which after the gym's out there, I've just turned into, you know, it's like, you know, the DEXA truck will show up at the golds. And then like, you know, you walk in your chair and say, look, dude, I get a DEXA. And the chair has no what the fuck that means. But he's going to sure as hell try to sell you some shakes. I guarantee you something in a bottle that has some sort of, you know, freaking proprietary mix is going to be sold to you from the health bar, right? You're going to get us in an enhanced smoothie from the lifetime guy. You know, I was like, they have absolutely no relevance, right? I mean, Americans have some of the most expensive urine on the planet to begin with, right? You know, it's like, you know, if you're pissing highlighter yellow, you don't need that much B6, dude. You know, it's like, why am I being highlighter yellow? It's called Thyman. And you have more than enough thanks. You can probably stop now. You know, no, you probably don't need to supplement mag. You're good. You know, you're, how are you pregnant? No, I'm a dude. Okay. Well, then he clamps he is probably not a high risk factor for you. You know, so I mean, it's like, you know, shit that a trainer should know before making record. It don't. And so we had proposed the state of Maryland, creating advanced practice version that knows these things. And unfortunately, we got Stonewalled, but yeah, I mean, you know, I'm generally not a fan of regulating what shouldn't be regulated. But I'd rather do is permissive licensing rather than restrict regulation. So it's like, you know, we're not going to say you can't do what you're doing now. But if you do a little bit better, we're going to give you more. We're going to let you get into somebody else's swim lane a little bit, which means, oh yeah, that's right. You'll make more money. Wait, what? So wait, he's a state certified advanced practice trainer. So now instead of 120 an hour, he's 150 an hour. Yes, I will go get that. Thank you very much. You know, the nice, the other, the other piece of that in, in this, in this medical model is if, if there is that you can start getting into. Hey, perhaps insurance will reimburse half of the world. Let's not go deep in there. Man, paramedics aren't even allowed to break in the damn hospitals because the nurses lobbied Jacob. I'm saying things as they should be not as they are. Yeah. How crazy. How crazy would it be if, if, if personal training actually was considered preventative care and we, we tried to actually prevent people from getting sick and obese and, you know, those types of things. But so back in the old days. Exactly. Back in the old days, also known as 1993. Back when I was just a young ATC at the University of Maryland. Go Terrapins. Go Terrap. Sure. I don't fear the turtle. I actually was both a plaintiff and a defendant in a lawsuit between the Maryland Athletic Trainers Association and the Maryland Physical Therapy Association. Because the physical therapists were suing the personal, the athletic trainers for practicing physical therapy without a license. The athletic trainers subsequently counter sued them for restraint of trade. Fun. Well, ultimately the thing was. PTs kept exponentially increasing their cost, right. It ultimately came down to a matter of the PTs could bill insurance. And so they kept increasing their educational outcomes. They see the stupid athletic trainers. They don't have master's degrees. No, they're all bachelor's programs back then. So then all the athletic trainers targeting, you know, master's degrees. Well, see, now we're DPT. So they're still shitty master's degrees. So now they're all DATCs. Well, let's go ahead and take a look at it as a public health system thing. What do you think that does to the cost of those people? Through the roof. Let's start whining about our college loans now, right. You artificially inflated the shit. 90% of the stuff that people are getting these degrees in don't need them. ATC does not need to be a doctorate. It genuinely does not need to be a doctorate. If that is your major and you spend two solid years doing nothing but your 2,500 clinical hours living in the damn sideline, a training room, taping an ankle in eight minutes or less with a three-sterile matter, with a three-sterile ATC model on it, right. Throwing mold skin like people throw $1 bills at strippers. You know, the reality of the matter is bachelor's is probably totally fine. But you can't build with the bachelor's and therefore you don't make as much money. And so we have actually inflated the cost of our health care system by stupid bullshit like that. And so that's why I'm very hesitant to go to a licensure based model rather than just making it a permissive based enhanced practice model where you opt in rather than be required to. So the reason for the supervising doc is that my care, so an ATC doesn't directly build blue cross. The ATC submits the care through the MD who builds blue cross. They're supervising physician, right. Now they don't have to be the same room, right. A chiropractic assistant is, I think, 250, 300-hour certain in the state of Maryland, right. The chiropractic assistant is a licensed professional in the state of Maryland. They have a piece of paper for this state of Maryland on it. They're not billing blue cross. The DCP is their medical oversight. They don't have to be in the same room. And so we even went down the hole of could some of our trainers get certified as chiropractic assistants and work remotely without having the doc on video while I do it. But I'm still under his medical supervision insurance and billing. So we were going down all kinds of things as far as what a potential enhanced practice for a personal trainer could be. But the upswing of the whole thing for the system of systems, if you will, is that it effectively weeds the idiots out. Because when people go to a high end gym and around here, people make pretty good money. I mean, you've been to Bethesda. I mean, this is not a low rent district. It's an expensive place. I think the median salary here is about 85,000. So people make pretty good bucks around here. I'd say half to two thirds of the trainers in my gym make six figures. I mean, it's a no bullshit environment around here. It is expensive. It's not New York City expensive, but it is mighty close. Well, if I can go ahead and market to these highly educated professionals that actually have the money to afford an enhanced practice person. I can say, I'm a Maryland state certified advanced practice personal trainer here. All the things I can provide for you. Okay. I did over there to get course over a weekend from it's a trainer for about an hour. And he still bartends on the weekends. Mostly just for the pigeons. You know, it's like, what do you think? And there'd be just like, well, I got the money screwed. I'm hiring the good guy, right? And so we do this in the office now, right? So we have three tiers of trainers even within our gym, right? We have certified elite and master certified trainer is we won't hire a trainer that has less than two years experience in general to begin with, right? We're not your first training job. We're here second or third training job. So we let the rest of the industry weed you out. But they then have to audition, right? And when you go to elite level, after audition for that again, they have to have a bunch of points. And you can basically any combination of certs can get you to the points points, plus six search plus experience, plus billable hours, things like that, all add up to a score. Once you've broken threshold on the score, you're now allowed to audition for the next level to get promoted. But in each of those auditions, you get a different guinea pig and the guinea pig gets a lot harder. And so when you go from master, they're going to throw you an absolute basket case. You throw you just the most awful shit. And so people like, well, that's going to take me like five hours to write that. That shit on the fly that I was like master ing trainer. That's what I get paid to do. And lifetime does something very similar, right? You mentioned you did work there. Life turns very similar, right? They expect you to think on the fly. Five years. Yeah. Right. And that's the exact same kind of a model, right? So as a matter of you're going through and you're doing that audition to move up the food chain. And they give you a basket case and they'll have the guys like, yeah, go valgus on your overhead. The guy goes valgus and you don't spot it, you fail. The guy goes, valgus, you stop and go, hey, let me a second here. Let me grab this hit band and see if we can't work right and boom, correct it right there. That's not a, I need an hour to think about it. That's that you should just know this shit. You know, and so the better gyms do that and that's that's kind of where we live in the spectrum. You know, I've watched all sorts of stupid kettlebell shit from some of our rookie trainers that have no training, right? You know, if the guys that start with swing starting from the top air swings. Yeah, let's start, we'll start from right here and just start wildly vacillating their hips and it's like, oh my god, that hurts my back just watching you. You know, so you know, maybe she dumps shit like that, you know, and so you take him aside between clients to go, hey, brother. Why are you starting the guy in the air? Because I was like, you're because some asshole on YouTube did. Yeah, you want me to help you with that? Or you old man. That's like, yeah, cool. Point next year, get out of here with your science. I'm a scientist. Mr. Science man, you know, and they'll look over at me right and it's like, I'm an ugly dude, right? And I just tell people I was like, look, when I'm staring at 50, not 20. And they're like, he's like, well, you know, I can't see your abs. I'm like, dude, I can't breathe long enough to do the cardio to get them. And they're like, yeah, I was like, yeah. And they're like, well, and you don't have the biggest biceps. Nope, they're not telling me shit about programming. Not pretty sure they don't hold knowledge. Well, you know, and so. Is that where the muscle memory comes from? Yes, the muscle memory is that my biceps tell me what to write for my client. I go to the middle Delta for doing sport. Okay, because the middle Delta whispers better than the bicep does for sport moves. And I use traps for Olympic lifting. What do you guys think? Really? Really? More pull? Yeah, more pull? Got it. We'll do. You know, it's like, you know, the TFL, that little bastard tells me wrong all the time. Nasty little fucker. You don't relax for shit. Yeah, why are you following your IT band? Because some guy said so. Does that feel good? No, it hurts like shit. And don't do that, man. You understand it's functionally tight. You actually can't loosen that. You're just going to go to the chiropractor if you keep the shit on. You're just going to end up with bruises all over. Yeah, if you really do it like a champion, you're probably going to ultimately just give yourself an inflammation. You're just going to hate yourself. I will mock you because I'm a dick. And it will make me laugh. But hey, man, you do you boo boo. At least one of us will have a good time. At least one of us is doing you foam rolling your IT band. Face is you're making look like bad porn with midgets. Oh, man. All right, Mike. Well, I've got to let you go because I got to put my kids to bed speaking of midgets. I've actually got to put my two my two young children to bed, but I really appreciate the time. And this was a lot of fun. I'm actually going to I'm probably going to break this into two episodes because it's two hours long at this point. I'll cut out some stuff, but this is a lot of fun. And I really honestly, my face hurts from smiling and laughing so hard. You're definitely my kind of people. So thank you for making me an honorary member of the tribe. And it's been. It's been. It's been. It's been. It's been a lot of fun, man. I really, really enjoyed. I'm definitely going to touch base with you more. Absolutely. If you ever need a room for more bitterness, just get me going on Instagram at some point. All right, dude. I will zip this thing up for you. And I'll like throw it in like a drop box or a Google Drive. All right, sounds good. Man, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. We'll talk soon. Thanks for listening to this episode of the platform podcast. I'm Jordan Kunde-Wright, right? If you have a question, please email me at Twin Cities Kettlebell Club at gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Twin Cities Kettlebell Club on Twitter at tckbclub. Online at Twin Cities Kettlebell Club.com. And please help us grow our reach and give us a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time.