 Boom! On alert! All you trainers watching this, I hope you're doing a good job because in today's episode we talk about the red flags that show people you're a bad trainer. There's nine of them. Now here's what we're going to give away in today's episode, Maps Prime Pro. Why? Because it's a valuable tool to correct muscle imbalances, get you to move better. And for trainers, this program will make you a great trainer. Here's how you can win free access to Maps Prime Pro. Leave a comment below in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode and tell us a story about a trainer, good or bad. So tell us a sign that you had a good trainer, or when you knew it was time to find someone else. Also subscribe to this channel, turn on notifications, and if we pick your comment you get free access to Maps Prime Pro. One more thing, two of our best strength building programs are on sale right now, so Maps Strong and Maps Power Lift, both 50% off. Go check those out. Head over to mapsfitnessproducts.com. Just don't forget to use the code August Special with no space for that discount. All right, here comes the show. You know, before we get into this, I do want to say this, being a trainer, especially if you're a trainer for a long time, it's a very commendable but also very challenging career and job. It's a lot harder than I think people realize because of the different personalities that you deal with, how challenging it is to get people to actually change their lifestyle to become healthy and fit long term. And it's also, it's also one of those jobs where, you know, if you train eight clients in a day, which most jobs, eight hours is a full day, you're on for all eight hours. I don't know almost any other job I can think of where for the whole time you're on, and you don't get any opportunities to be off where you're, you know, kind of dilly-dallying a little bit. I mean, when you're with a client that's in front of you, you're on the entire time. You see Justin, what he did there, he's preparing the shit sandwich right now. Oh yeah. That don't know. He just layered it right now. Yeah, so for all you trainers that are listening right now, you just got served your first loaf of your first slice of gig. It's true though, right? Wouldn't you guys agree though, what I'm saying is as far as it being true, I mean, it's one of those things. Now, the other part is this, all the stuff that we're going to go through, all of us will probably guilty of at one point or another, especially as early trainers. So probably more so Justin than Justin. Hey, man. Yeah. There were 50 for Justin. But here's the first one. And this one's an obvious one. And I can't believe how many times I would see trainers fail to do an assessment anytime they're going to work with a new client or a potential new client. This one's, does it make sense to me? You know, how can you possibly train someone without first assessing their movement and their body without first determining what exercises are safe for them? Which ones are not safe for them? You know, how to train them? I've seen trainers do this, right? Well, they'll get a new client and they go right into the workout without ever really, it's like without looking under the hood and not knowing what the problem is. Yeah. Oh, let's work out. No problem. Here's some exercises. Let's do it. You think it's lazy? I think it's lazy. You think it's lazy? I think it's lazy, yeah. Or do you think it's more like some of the other points that we're going to get to here in a minute where it's putting more emphasis on the workout and just getting to the, because sometimes I feel like I think they're not putting enough value on it personally. And so they think that they're going to win their client over with these elaborate workouts in the razzle dazzle side of training. That's, I feel like it's more of that, right? Because I feel like every, every trainer that I coached, once I taught them the value of the assessment and how to do it to a client, I think once they make that connection, I don't know too many that they get away from doing it. It becomes the staple or the foundation of your training program as it should. But it seemed to be more of these trainers that wanted to get right into the workout and let me show you how hard of a workout I can give you versus assessing you and kind of seeing where your starting point is and what we should or shouldn't be doing. Yeah, they should ask a lot of questions, especially when you first get started with them. They should do a movement assessment just to give them an idea of where to start and what direction to move. And by the way, assessments never stop. You know, is your training clients, you're constantly assessing them by watching their form and how they move and their energy. This is all, you know, super important stuff. I'll give you an example. This is a silly example, but this has happened to me more than once where I had this one lady who came to hire me and I had asked her before we got started. I said, you know, have you talked to any of the trainers or worked with anybody else before? And she said, yeah, actually I was at the local gym and I interviewed a trainer and I decided to not hire them. And I said, well, how come? Now, this woman I had known because I had actually asked questions. Her goal was to improve her bone density. She wanted to strengthen her bone. She had osteopenia, older woman. And her doctor said, listen, we need to figure something out because you're getting close to osteoporosis. Now, what the trainer didn't do is ask any of those questions. And at the end of their, you know, meeting, the trainer said something like, don't worry, at the end of the summer, I'll have you in a bikini in no time. Yeah. So she like said, I left right then and there. And then I came, you know, one of my friends recommended you and this is very different. So an assessment is integral. If a trainer doesn't do a good assessment, then they, they have no idea what they're doing. It's essential, man. To me, honestly, this is where we get a bad rap. Like this is what categorizes us into like, we, when you tell somebody that you're a personal trainer, okay, okay. Like it's like some kind of in between job. It's not a real profession. It's because there's a lot of trainers that don't take it seriously. They don't do these things that are quintessential in really evaluating the needs of the client and how to properly basically like create an entire program around what's going to get them to their goal of the most effective way. Right. And along those lines, the next one is zero focus on correctional exercise. Correctional exercise looks very different than exercises designed to just build a lot of muscle or make you burn a lot of calories. They tend to be slower, very deliberate. They're very specific to you as an individual. It's like what you might see a physical therapist do, for example, with people. And this should be, especially in the beginning parts of your training with a trainer, there should be a lot of the focus of your training. In fact, when clients would hire me, especially when they're new, almost the entire workouts were focused around correctional exercise. Yeah. I think part of this has to do with just the lack of education. So I think it was my third or fourth national cert was the corrective exercise specialist. And I do remember of all the certifications that I went through in my career as a trainer, that one probably impacted the way I train clients, maybe more than any other certification that I did. Maybe that and maybe the very first one I did just giving me my foundation, foundational training principles, learning how to assess somebody and look and find an imbalance and then know how to correct that applies to all levels of fitness. And every, and you find out once you go through a certification like that and you learn to assess everybody, you start to see like, oh, wow, I don't care if they're 20 years old and young and fit or they're 70 advanced age and aches and chronic pain, everybody has imbalances and everybody has correctional exercise that should be included in their routine. And so once I piece that together, I then began to kind of build everything around them. But up into that point, I probably fell in the category of being relatively poor trainer as far as putting a lot of emphasis just on the how much I could make a client sweat or how creative I can make a workout versus actually trying to fix imbalances in their body. Totally. And you know what the irony of it is is that correctional exercise done properly as a trainer will actually make you so valuable to your clients. Yeah. In fact, everything that we're talking, we're going to talk about today, if you do the opposite of them or do the positive of them, it'll make you much more successful as a trainer, not just with your clients getting goals, but a successful business-wise. And I think sometimes trainers think correctional exercise is boring or, well, my client just wants to burn calories and lose weight. Why would I waste time doing prone cobra? Why would I waste time doing handcuffs with rotation? Why would I waste time doing combat stretch? We need to be doing jump boxes and you know, going through circuits. Like let me tell you something, correctional exercise is a tremendous selling point because when you do them on people, they feel great immediately. And there's almost nothing that'll do that like correctional exercise. Yeah. To that point, I mean, what I found in my career as I was going through were addressing clients' pain and being able to do corrective exercises really helped to help them feel better and keep them coming back and be more consistent. So you have a more consistent, more dedicated client. And that just keeps paying the bills. And you find out later that really what the client wants is what they don't understand they need. And that's something that that's where your real value lies. And so to be able to address pain and foresee problems in the future and how to address them ahead of time is, you know, sets you apart from everybody else. That's the real point, Justin, because I remember clients not realizing that it was something they needed to address. In other words, like I'd get a client and many times the chronic pain that they were going through, they had just accepted. So they would sit down with me and they would give me the surface goals like, oh, I want to lose 30 pounds at them or I want to get stronger or here's a look I want to achieve. And most people come in with somewhat of an aesthetic goal for the most part, except for exceptions to the rule like the one you talked about. But many times they didn't realize that, oh, that chronic knee pain or elbow pain or low back pain was something that we could actually fix. They just assume that, oh, because they're 50 something years old and they've been dealing with low back pain for 20 of those 50 years that they are just going to have it forever. So it's not even on their list of goals a lot of times. And it's not until I did an assessment, see a major imbalance, which was probably alluding to their chronic pain and then could tell them that, hey, this is something that we can work on and maybe even get rid of completely for you. And then when you show them that, that you talk about building the value for business for you. I mean, even when that's not their main goal, a lot of times it's just because they didn't realize that it was can be done. And then you become like this miracle worker because they just thought they're going to be riddled with this chronic pain for the rest of their life. Oh, you take away someone's chronic pain and that you are so valuable to them. It's more than almost anything else that I can think about. 100%. Yeah. Here's another one. And this one is a, it's a great gauge. And I think a lot of people don't realize that you should not feel worse after your workout than you went into. I think a lot of people think you're supposed to feel worse. You should not, after you're done with your training session with your trainer, you should not feel like you survived. I think a lot of people think that that's a good feeling. Like, oh man. And you'll hear them talk like this to their friends. Like, oh, my trainer Monday kicked my ass. And I barely made it out. Like I got to the car. My legs were shaking. I had to lay on the couch for a couple hours. Wow. That was really good. Like not realizing that's a bad sign. You should feel, you should, after your workout, you should feel better than you did when you first went in. Now, is there a time and a place for the kind of workouts that you have to survive? Yeah. Sometimes rarely, I think really to kind of train your, maybe your tolerance, maybe train the mental aspect, but when it comes to your physical body, when it comes to burning body fat, building muscle, especially when you're thinking longterm. No, that's not true at all. And I used to, I used to tell my trainers this, if your clients call you to cancel because they're feeling a little stiff and sore or their energy is a little low, you know, you're not doing a good job. You're, I used to have clients. This is when, when I, when I really started to turn a corner as a trainer, I would have clients that would call me and they'd say things like, Hey, Sal, I know today I don't have a session with you, but my back's a little tight. Do you have any time today? I'd love to train with you because they felt better after working out with me. I mean, that is so tremendously valid. You should not feel worse after your workout. You should feel much better. Do you think though, that's, there's like a psychological phenomenon that's happening there that there's this subconscious pursuit of punishing yourself? Totally. I mean, I think that's where this comes from, right? This idea, I've been bad. I've been eating bad. I'm a bad person. I don't exercise. I eat like a slob when nobody's paying attention. Absolutely. And then now I have this trainer who's going to punish, help me punish myself with me in the shape. Yeah. And to that point with their friends, where they're all commiserating about their experiences together, like, like you said, like there have been surviving, you know, this torture. Yeah. And it's so good for them. But they, and it's sad though, because they don't really know the difference. So they don't know that they can feel great and energized and come back with more strength and really, you know, the joints feel, you know, most mobile and everything's working and great instead of feeling like you've just been trashed. So you don't have to get to that level. Well, that's, and this is where I fault the trainer here. So as the client, I don't think they know better. I think they, again, there's this psychological phenomenon that's happening where they think they need to punish themselves. Then this is the sign of a bad trainer because the bad trainer reinforces that. The bad trainer feeds into that and is like, I'm going to kick your ass today. And I'm guilty of this, by the way, too, of telling clients like I'm going to get you today and talking shit to them, right? Because they, they, because it is fun. It's fun to talk trash and, and, you know, get after it. But you always have to ask yourself, are you progressing or are you just surviving? Well, and a good trainer sees this and then knows how to communicate to the client that this is not what we're looking for. We're not, we don't want to get into this cycle of punishing yourself for not, for not doing well. And there's a much better process. But yeah, so there's your, there's another step that you know you're, you've got a trainer that, probably a green trainer, right? I think this happens a lot to trainers when they first start is because the client, you're in a service business, the client tells you they want that, you think you're giving them what they're supposed to, you think that's part of your job because they're paying you, but part of your job is to get them to overcome, overcome. No, this was a big one. I used to teach my trainers because it is part of educating clients as well. By the way, when a client experiences feeling better and good and energized at the end of a workout, they'll love you more. Trust me, at the end of that workout, they're gonna be like, Oh my God, I came in here, my energy was kind of low. You know, I felt a little stiff in my hips and my God, I'm moving so good. I feel so good. I'm so energized. That's it. Like once they experience that, never again are they gonna want to feel beat up. It takes a little bit of that, you know, that education, that punishment that, you know, that, that some people think they, and I've actually seen this in gyms. I've seen clients say, Oh, that trainer, I want that trainer. How come? Well, I see their clients just like sweating and they can't move afterwards. I bet they're super effective. America's toughest trainer. Yeah. And in fact, I mean, look at like popular media trainers, like on the biggest loser, they perpetuate this myth that you got to be this person that beats the crap out of someone. And that's the only way to get in shape. It's actually the wrong way to get in shape. It's a terrible long-term way of doing it. And I promise you hire a trainer that makes you feel like this after your workouts, you're not going to stay very long. I promise you won't last very long doing it that way. Well, you know, if a trainer is stuck in this mindset too, is if that's how they're gauging the success of a workout is the ask, they're asking questions like that, you know, how, how sore were you? Yeah. Did your legs get sore? And then the client says, Oh, no, I wasn't really sore. So we gotta ramp it up. Gotta do more than you gotta do more next time. So you know that, I mean, these go hand in hand. So if you have a trainer who is gauging the success of the workout based on the feedback that you give them on how sore you are, then you know that you got one of these trainers that are stuck in this place. Yeah, I actually change. So this is funny. Again, a lot of these I did when I was an early trainer and when I was an early trainer, I did use soreness as a gauge and I would ice clients how sore they were. And if they said, Oh, I was a little sore, I'd ramp up intensity and ramp up volume to get them even more sore in this next workout. Later on, when I really started to get good, I would ask the same question, but it would use it differently. Yeah, how sore did you get after your last workout? Oh, I didn't really get that sore. Perfect. Right. That's great. Or, oh man, I got really sore. Okay, we need to scale it down a little bit. We did too much. So it's okay to use soreness as a gauge, but not in the way that a lot of trainers do. Really, it's you should either not get sore or you should get maybe a little bit sore post workout. You should not have the kind of soreness that where it hurts to touch the muscle or you can't do another workout for a couple of days because you're so damn sore. That means you went too hard or too long or both, right? Yeah, using it as a gauge is fine, but the measuring it as success is where it's wrong. So thinking that soreness is a sign of a successful workout is the opposite of the truth. In fact, when we're that sore, it's actually a sign of overreaching that you need to scale back, not the other direction. And as a trainer early on, I was using it the opposite way. I was using it as, oh, okay, we're not sore enough. So let me ramp it up versus going like, oh, perfect. We hit that sweet spot. You're not that sore. I know that I programmed well, and I know you're doing enough volume for your body to see change. And the fact that you work crippling sore afterwards is actually a beautiful sign. Yeah. Now the next one is a big used to be a huge pet peeve for me when I managed gyms in very, very short period of time. My trainers learned that if they showed up late for clients, that was no longer their client. I used to do this. Like I have a client. I'd see that. I said, I hate this. I'd have a person show up to the gym. I see them standing at the desk or on cardio, just doing cardio by themselves. And I'm like, wait a minute, aren't they supposed to meet with John? And it was, you know, five past 10 past no problem. Go find another trainer, walk over to them. Hey, listen, this person is going to train you right now, and we're not going to charge you. This is going to be a free workout. Don't worry about it. And then I would make, and then that trainer, hopefully would impress them. And then boom, other trainer lost the client. If a trainer shows up late to your workouts, if it happens once ever, that's okay. Anything over that, that's a big deal. I mean, you got to, you got to keep a mind, you know, creating a fit and healthy lifestyle where you're actually changing fundamental behaviors to be fit and healthy. That's really hard. The person guiding you needs to show up. They need to be there, and they need to be there early. I used to not, you know, I made it a point to not show up, not even on time. I wanted to be there when my client walked it. As soon as they walked in the door, there I am ready to do this. I feel like this is universal. I think this transcends all professions, doesn't it? The all industry. Yeah. I don't really think this one's unique to a personal training. I think this, this falls more in line with like one of my favorite quotes, and that's how you do anything is how you do everything. And you show up late to a job. You're, you're probably doing a half-ass job at whatever it is you're doing. And so just, it, and it's unprofessional. So I think that this has a little, a little less to do with the, the training profession and more to do with character. And if you are, if you're not giving that person who's paying for that time, that respect to show up on time or early before it starts, the likelihood that you're giving them the respect of giving them their all and everything that you should be doing as a trainer, I think is less likely. You know why I put this one up there though? Because this was quite common where it became a behavior among trainers with their clients that they've had. They take for granted. Like, oh, I've had this client now for a year. Next thing you know, the trainer shows up 10 minutes late. Oh, I know John. I've been training him for a year or whatever. You, I wouldn't see this with my sales people. Like they had an appointment show up to try and, you know, get a tour of the gym, maybe buy a membership sales guy was there right on time, ready to sell them. You know, same thing with an assessment for a trainer. Oh, I might get a new client going to be there on time. This used to happen when they would have a client and they kind of took for granted that the client was theirs and it maybe resigned a couple of times. Next thing you know, they'd get kind of lax with it. I mean, I agree. I think it's a, it's a common behavior that you see, but I also think that it falls right in line with the statistics around the success of a trainer. 80% of them suck. 20% of them are really good. Sure. Yeah. Part of the 80% that suck, this, this is one of the characteristics of them is that as soon as they build somewhat of a relationship with the client, they right away think it's okay for them to show up late or tell the client, Hey, when you first get to your training session, just go get on the warmup equipment, go, go warm up for 10 minutes and then I'll come get you. That's, that's what I want to do address. Okay. The warmup thing. So something I did, because I didn't notice that was a pattern with a lot of trainers. I mean, even fell into that myself in terms of, you know, the client kind of warming up on the cardio machine and then it just got into this sort of rapport and then like after you know, you're wasting like 20, 30 minutes of valuable workout time. So I just cut that out and then we just focused on priming right on the dot. And then we just moved into the workout. But I see that all the time is, you know, sort of taking advantage of the fact that they're already there, they're on the cardio equipment. So it feels like they're already doing some kind of exercising, but really they're paying you for specificity and to be able to, you know, take control, you know, of their programming. And so to kind of eliminate, I think is a good move. Yeah. I think this, this same trainer, back to what I was saying, this is a characteristic. I think this, this same trainer is the same one who's not paying attention when this client is being trained also. I think this is the trainer who's leaning on the machine, sipping on their Starbucks coffee or nowadays because cell phone on their phone, Instagramming. Yeah. Doing stuff like that while their client is training. So I feel like these, this, this trait goes hand in hand. You're, you, you don't see it as the, to be professional to show up on time. You're also the same trainer who is either dress floppy or drinking your coffee and on your phone at the same time you're training. Yeah. While you're working out, because one of the most valuable things that your trainer will provide you, there's a lot of things that a good trainer will provide you. But one of the most valuable things is that they can see movement patterns. They can see intricacies and changes in how you move when you're doing an exercise. They should be able to really help you perfect your technique in form or change directions or change exercises. And this has to be something that they're paying attention to the entire time because I could have a client do a bench press and the first five reps could be totally perfect, but it could be the sixth or seventh one where I see a change in elbow position or I notice that your shoulders hiking a little bit or we're losing stability at the bottom of the, of the lift. So let's try these other exercises. If the trainer's not watching your form, like what I would look for in my trainers was when a client was doing an exercise that the trainer would walk around the client constantly as the client was doing the exercise. Checking from the front, from the side, from the back, never standing still. I used to tell trainers this too that, you know, when you, when you're training a client, you're, you're kind of on stage for other potential clients. Oh, totally. Because they say the average client shops a trainer for three months before they make a purchase. And so when I'm over in the weight room floor and I'm watching Suzy do a dumbbell lunge and she's my client, I'm, I'm also aware that the 30 people that are on the treadmills are watching what I'm doing. And so even if I can assess pretty well from one position, I'm aware of the other people that are paying attention to me and I want them to know what I'm doing. I'm not just, you know, kind of assessing, I'm assessing this person. And so I'm constantly moving and kneeling and looking from all different angles, not just for my client who's in front of me, but also because I'm aware that I'm probably being shot by somebody who potentially might want to hire me. And I want them to know that I'm paying attention. And it's clear you're giving them your undivided attention by always being active with them and moving with them. And, you know, I think that's a vital part of it. It's like, you need to consider that this is also a critique I have with group training and partner training, which I was very hesitant to do. I did have to do that at one point, you know, because there's ways that, you know, you have to kind of scale your business to try and, you know, you'll find other sources of income. But this was always a very hard thing to be able to keep the purity and the integrity of what, you know, the client's actually paying you for. And that's your attention. And to be able to point out all those little nuances that's going out their body, you know, to stay on top of it. So, you know, that's a tough thing. But, you know, some trainers can pull it off. But, you know, you're going to compromise that on some level every time once you add more people into the mix. Yeah, when I work out in gyms, this one's what I'm really, this is one that I pay attention to a lot. If I see other trainers training their clients, are they watching them the entire time and monitoring their technique and their form and their tempo? Are they making changes to the exercises? I mean, oftentimes when I train a client, I would have an idea of the exercises that we're going to do. But then I would have to take a left turn because I'm noticing Susie is moving in a particular way. And I said, Oh, you know what? Let's stop this. I used to do this all the time. I would stop a set halfway. Let's stop right now. Well, I got five more. No, no, let's stop for a second. I'm going to work on your left ankle. What do you mean? I could see that your left ankle was moving in a way that or what I explained to the client that we would do some mobility and get back into position. This is one of the most valuable things that a trainer can provide. Now it's even with the worst thing is when a trainer leaves you to do the exercise on your own. I have seen this many times where the trainer will literally be like, Okay, you got to do 12 reps. I'm going to go to the bathroom. What do you do? And the client's doing the exercise by themselves. Like why would you hire a trainer in the first place? You know, does it make any sense to me? It's crazy. I've seen that multiple times. They just leave them high and dry to go get a copy or, you know, go check somebody else in at the front desk and I'm like, what are you doing? You got to manage your time wisely. Well, it makes a world of a difference when you are trying to do a technical exercise, say like a squat, which is loaded full of all kinds of different cues. And there's all kinds of potential breakdowns in the movement. And you've got a coach and you, and you're, and he's telling you, you know, chest up, shoulders back, slower on your way down, keep your, force your knees out. And he's given all these random cues and then also letting them know when they hit it, right? Like how many times have you been with somebody and you, and you have like this, the client is a perfect form. And you know, that's, they hit the perfect. Do that again. That was perfect. Perfect. Just like that. You know, so they, they felt it. They were working on those things. They hit it and you're letting them know that they hit it so they can try and emulate that again. And so you're that, that consistent mirror that's given them that feedback when they, when they don't know exactly what they're looking for or what they should feel. And then when they hit it just right, being able to tell them that, hey, that was perfect right there. Let's do that again. Yeah. Now this next one is a tough one because the clients love this at first. So telling them that, that this particular trait is a trait of a bad trainer. Oftentimes it's hard for them to understand. And that's this, that everything is about motivation. This is the super inspirational boot camp, yell at you, get you hyped, excited all the time, 24 hours a day, we can do this trainer. Now, why is this a bad, why is this a trait of a bad trainer? Because the, the benefit of this is it's impossible to last forever. And if you get sold on this, if this becomes how you stay consistent is by relying on this extreme motivation and excitement, you will eventually stop. You will eventually lose that motivation because it's a state of mind. It's not with you all the time. It's impossible. And if you didn't build any of the other skills like the skill of discipline to carry you when eventually your body gets tired or broken down or you have a week where you're not feeling it, that motivational trainer, you're like, I don't want to go see John. I know he's going to hype me and whatever, but I'm just not feeling it right now. This is a, this is a hard one to address. And mainly because of the point that you brought up that people like it. Of course. And I know anytime I ever talk about this to, to people that are potentially hiring a trainer or talking about somebody they see on social media who's so inspiring is they, they always point out the motivational part. Oh, they're so inspiring. They're so motivational. And, and trying to tell that person that, oh, that's not a good trait of a good trainer is really hard to combat because it's like, it feels good. It feels good. And they would tell you that, well, I want somebody to motivate me. I want somebody to get me hyped up. So I don't think that the motivation part is necessarily bad. It's only bad if the trainer leans heavily on that. This is them. This is all they do. Right. This is, this is what I do well is I motivate, I inspire people really well. And if they lean heavily on that and not their education, their knowledge, their ability to coach you up and their, their, their shining, you know, attribute as a trainer is that they're just so inspiring and they're so motivational. That's where this becomes a red flag because I don't think it's necessarily, it's okay for you to say that your trainer inspires you. It's okay to say that your trainer is very motivational. Like it's not a bad thing necessarily, but if they lean on that as their main thing to keep you going inside the gym, that's fleeting. And so even if it's working right now for you, eventually that will wear out. Yeah, totally. It's this is every mainstream media trainer is this. Especially right now. Yeah. When you think of the trainers that, that everybody knows, right? Or the trainers that sell the workout programs, the P90Xs and the Insanities and the, you know, the trainer on TV that's on the, you know, the biggest loser or whatever. This is what they are. It's all hype, motivation, inspiration, yelling. You can, I remember there's this one trainer at one of the gyms that I used to work out at and I'll, I'll never forget. You could hear him across the gym training his clients. You'd hear him yell two more, three more, you could do it. And I'm like, and I would, and I worked out at this gym for I think over two years. And I, and I would go at the same time because I used to go in the mornings, right? Right before we would do in our podcast. And I noticed this turnover. I would see these clients would last approximately three months. They'd come in consistently for three months and then they're gone. And this is exactly the pattern that I would see with these kinds of trainer. I had a trainer once in my facility when I had my studio who is very much like this. And I actually took her aside and I say, Hey, look, if, if you're, if you're ever interested in really figuring out how to maintain your client base and not have such a high turnover, let me know because I think I have some ideas for you. And she said, Oh yeah, I'm very interested. I said, okay, I said you're the inspiration, motivation thing. It's fun. It's great. But that's, that's what you're leaning so heavily on. And the reason why people aren't sticking with you is because at some point their state of mind is going to change, which is normal. And then they're not going to want to come see you. You're not going to want to get, go to your bootcamp trainer who's going to yell at you to get you all hyped when you're not feeling it. You're like, Oh man, I don't want to see so and so. I just, I can't, I just, I'm just going to ghost them rather than being like, you know what, I'm not feeling it, but I know that when I go see Justin, he's going to, he's going to modify my workout and then I'm going to feel good afterwards. There's no other gear, you know, like it's, that's the thing. It, it ebb and flows. And you need a trainer that can also address other things going on with your body at the time too, and be able to, you know, take time out to kind of do more restorative type of a workout and not just hype you up as much as you can, regardless of what signs and signals your body is telling you. Totally. Now this next one I was super guilty of, especially as an early trainer. And that's if your trainer's workouts are always full of new and creative and weird exercises. I know it sounds funny. There's nothing necessarily wrong with how a trainer's guilty of this right? Oh yeah. There's nothing necessarily wrong with creative exercises. Let's just calm the entertainment trainer. Totally. And I did this. I did this when I first started. I thought that in order to be a good trainer, I had to razzle and dazzle my clients every time they came into the gym. So, oh, we already did that exercise. Let's try a different one. Oh, we've already done all those leg exercises. Here's another one. Go backwards on the hack squat. Here's another one, a sissy leg press. Here's another one. I know we've done a back step lunge, but we haven't done a back step lunge with an overhead press. And you need to start with your eyes closed. Yeah. And you just, just every time you work out, it's like a different exercise. And you're not practicing the basics often. This is a big one. Now, here's the thing. With exercise, and this is a problem, when it comes to working out, we don't view working out like a bunch of skills, right? We don't look at exercises like skills to learn, like you do with the sport, right? You go to learn how to play basketball. You're not going to do a bunch of weird shit every single time you go practice. Your coach is going to have you do a lot of free throws, a lot of dribbling, a lot of layup. Like you're going to practice the basics over and over to get good at basketball. You're not going to show up and do something different every single time. This is the same thing with strength training or resistance training or with exercise, is you want to practice the most valuable exercises often. These are called the basics, right? Your presses and your rows and your squats and your rotation exercises. And why do you want to practice them often? Because the better you get at them, which takes years, the better they work for you. The better you get at squats, the better the results get from squats. You can't get good at squats if I squat once a month because every other workout is some weird other exercise. I think this has to do with insecurity as a trainer. Like when you don't feel confident in your knowledge and your ability to get somebody great results and your experience, you lean heavily on just being able to teach them something they don't know. And so what do most trainers have a plethora of? And that is exercise. They've seen enough unique exercises in their time as a trainer or their time inside the gym that, okay, I know I can at least show them something they've never seen before. At least when I think back to why did I do that, I think it was to impress the client. It was to impress- And you've never seen this before? Yeah, you've never seen this exercise before. I can teach it to you. Therefore, I'm bringing some sort of value to you versus I have enough knowledge to get you to your goal and then educate you on why you may or may not have been able to do it yourself. I'm going to lean heavily on showing you creative exercises every time you come in here, so you think that that's where their value is. And they may just not be confident enough to really drill out these compound exercises that are skills in themselves. So to be able to point out every nuance that's happening in their technique, in their form, how to improve that and how to supplement that with other exercises that will help to get them better at these more skillful type exercises that will get them even more progress. That's something that I think a lot of trainers avoid because it's difficult. You have to really educate yourself to be able to get at that level. That's a really good point, Justin. Actually, the more I think about that, not you say that, it's probably a lot of why I stayed away from it too because I wasn't very proficient in the squat or the deadlift and all the nuances and all the break, the common breakdown and then how to fix them and address them. So instead of getting hung up on trying to teach that and all the things there are to teach around that, I would just go, oh, I could teach you this easier to leg press. Yeah, stability ball, skull crushers, you know, are doing something like that. That is pretty basic that I could teach, right? So you're probably right. A lot of that was probably fear around being able to really break down these compound lifts that are highly technical. And because I wasn't skilled and proficient in it, I probably avoided it and stuck with just teaching creative exercises, which is probably what's happening with a lot of trainers that you see doing the same thing. Yeah, you know, what's funny is if you look at, if you were to break up my career, you know, between like a first half of my career and the second half of my career and the second half, I was far more successful in terms of long term success for my clients, also monetarily, as a business, I was far more successful towards the back half, right? So compare the two. And here's a funny thing. If I were to list the exercise repertoire that I used for my workouts, the first half, the list would have been five times longer than the list of exercises I used in the back half. I mean, Doug, I met Doug as a client. And when Doug hired me, I mean, we must have done the same exercises a million different times. And we got really good at them. We got really good at squats. We got really good at bench presses and rows and deadlifts. And he got the best results of his life. And he had a lot of experience working out before I remember him saying it was mind blowing. Believe me, clients are, they don't care. I know that you think they care, and they might even think they care. But believe me, when they're practicing these basic compound movements, these fundamental movements, and they're finding that, wow, I'm getting better at this exercise. And oh my God, I'm getting stronger and I feel better. And you're paying attention and you're walking around the client and your brace your core, pull your shoulders back. Okay, it looks like your shoulders are rounding. Let's stop the set. Let's do some prone cobras to get your shoulders go back a little bit. Let's try this set of squats again. I mean, you really blow people away. So I know there's that belief that I need to razzle and dazzle them. But the reality is they just want to get better. They want to get better. They want to get stronger. And they want to feel better. And one of the best ways to do that is to practice the best exercises often. And then you sprinkle in some of those other movements. And you know where you should get creative is with your correctional exercise, because that's when it starts to get very, very specific with the individual. But otherwise, it's those basics that are the most important ones. All right, this last one, I know it's going to probably annoy a lot of gym owners that are going to hear this episode, because I know a lot of gym owners are telling their trainers that this is what they need to do. But this is definitely a red flag. And that is if your trainer oversells supplements. Here's a hallmark of that, right? Your trainer gives you a meal plan, which by the way, that probably belongs up here too. Your trainer gives you meal plans. But here's a hallmark, right? All right, John, here's your meal plan. And then in your meal plan is included five different supplements. You know what I mean? All right, so AM, you take four pills of fat shredders, 4,000. Then you eat your breakfast. And then make sure 30 minutes after your breakfast, you take this special product right here. This is good for inflammation. Oh, and then here's your pre-workout. Make sure you take that in the workout. You have your intro workout shake. And then here's your post-work. And they end up selling you $500 a month worth of supplements. Don't forget your multivitamins. Yes, I was guilty of this totally. I mean, when I first became a trainer. Oh, they geared our pay this way. Oh, yeah. I mean, that was, I'm just as guilty too. I mean, they coached us. In fact, our first certification that we went through, when you went through the, if you were, if you've been in 24 as far back as we were, when they had the APEC certification, part of the certification process was teaching, teaching you how to recommend supplements. And that's exactly how you would do it is, it would actually be part of the diet, which is the complete opposite of how I talk to people. Now, our goal is not to have to take any supplements. I mean, do supplements have some value? Of course they do. If you're lacking in a nutrient that you're not getting in your diet on a regular basis, supplementing for that nutrient has some value to it 100%, especially something like protein that is so essential to building muscle. But that's not the goal. The goal is to not, the goal is to not have to take any of that stuff and to try and get it through whole foods. And if and only if we can't do that, do we lean on something like supplementation? And so I think how the trainer presents it to you is what's really important. It's not so much that supplements are bad or because your trainer recommended a supplement that maybe they're a bad trainer, but how they recommend it is everything. And if they're telling you that, hey, our goal is to get it through whole foods, but if you're still having a hard time, here try this, or we can do this. And they have you a supplement versus, like you said, sell building it into the nutrition plan. That's when you know they're overselling it. Yeah, you know, it's funny about this is that because I know some trainers listening are like, man, but how do I, I have, I have a quota. I have to hit my, my supplement sales target and all that stuff. I'm going to tell you something right now. The supplements will sell themselves. Clients love taking supplements and they're going to ask you, what can I take to help with this? Or what can I take to help with that? And then always be honest, always be honest. I used to always, I would tell my clients, like, here's the deal. Supplements are going to give you maybe a little bit, maybe not much at all. It's better if you get it from food. But if you have trouble hitting your protein targets, here's a good product. I like this one the best because, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, for whatever reason, it's natural, doesn't have artificial sweeteners. It's got a good amino acid blend or hey, Sal, what can I take before my workout to give me energy? Well, the best thing you could do is get a good night's sleep. So if you have to rely on something to give you energy, then there's probably something else going on. Now that being said, if you like to have fun with stimulants before you work out like I do, you could try coffee or here's this other product that's got a couple of other things you can give this as well. And the supplements will actually sell themselves. But it's the trainer that oversells the supplements. This is going to make you big. This is going to make you lean. Here's your supplement stack and they give you 15 different things to take. That's a, that's kind of a big red flag that you need to pay attention to. Look, with that, if you found our information valuable, then you got to head over to mindpumpfree.com. We have tons of guides there that can help you build muscle, burn body fat, improve your performance, even become a better personal trainer. Mindpumpfree.com. You can also find all of us on Instagram. So you can find Justin at Mindpump, Justin, me at Mindpump Salon, Adam at Mindpump, Adam