 Welcome to another thrilling and exciting off-the-scale episode of Hibachi Talk here with my good old buddy Andrew the security guy. Hey everybody. How are you doing? Nice to see you. I'm still in town and not traveling. Right on. You have a wonderful lovely guest today. Good to be here for the holidays. Debbie, Kim, Maury, Calla. We have a long history of working together. Welcome, Debbie. We're going to talk about the gym guys and so on. So grab a libation, pull up a chair, sit down, and remember when Hibachi Talks people listen. Oh. I like that new thing. Wow. You didn't pick that up. Yeah. That one may never go away. It may never, never go away. So I'm going to do a little quick cryptocurrency update because we do a little quick on that one. So today is hitting up against $14,000 for a big coin as of this conversation. It's insane. Yeah. It's a $367 billion market cap in cryptocurrency right now. Wow. It's going bonkers. I'm going to tell people to start watching up for something new. I'm going to start giving you some information on new ways of mining cryptocurrencies. So watch for that. I will be giving an update on that in a future episode. A future episode? That's the hook. You got to come back to get the info. You got to come back. You got to come back. And then the $12 that you gave me like a couple of months ago, remember the one that we did on the show? This morning I looked, it was $66, it was $66. Wow. And it was only a couple of months ago. He transferred it and I have like a big coin thing. So it's gone up almost 6X. 6X in that period of time. Just in eight weeks. Yeah. Don't you wish all your stocks performed that way? I know. Well, we're going to learn about masternodes in the near future. All right. Anyway, so Debbie, it's a great to have you on the show. Yeah, welcome. You and I were in the Hanuman administration together. Yes. And you've always been involved in community work and helping the community since the day I've known you, which is quite some time. But still our viewers don't know. So get a little background on yourself. Where did you go to school? Where did you grow up? Well, I grew up in Hawaii in Aina Jaina and I went to school college at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri where I got my degree in occupational therapy. And so that's where I started out. I actually started out as a therapist. I practiced for, I would say maybe five or six years in the field and then I transitioned to long-term care. And in that arena, I worked with seniors a lot in nursing facilities, assisted living, daycare programs, all the different areas that seniors are found is where I was working. So that's where I really developed all of the skills that I'm starting to apply now. It's kind of like I've gone back to my roots. In between, I did non-profit work. So I actually was the executive director at IHS, the Institute for Human Services, following pretty much Claude Dutille. After he left, I was the first executive director. Did that for four and a half years. So but then was that before or after the Henneman administration? That was way before. That was way before. That's when I first met Mufiak. She's through the Pacific Century Fellows Program. Oh, you were part of that program? Yes, I was in the inaugural class, the very first class with David Ige. Wow. With David Ige? Well, you brought the elbows with the elite, I don't know what to tell you. And you did, how many years, was it six or eight years in the Henneman administration? Well, see, he was there six, so. Yeah, I only stayed six. Okay, and so you did that six years ago, and you were the director of? Department of Community Services. Again, involved in the community, involved in taking care of people here in Hawaii. So you have a very nice, a warm feeling background and so on. So now you're going, this is quite the branch out now. Yeah, this is private. This is private, the Gym Guys, right? This is for a for-profit entity, and it's called the Gym Guys. So who and what are the Gym Guys? Well, Gym Guys is actually a national franchise. It's the first franchise of its kind that does in-home personal training. So we're mobile. We come to you many times in a van where we have all of the equipment. We have all, everything that you need to set up a workout in your own home, in your office, whatever space that you prefer. And the convenience factor is what makes us unique, and that most people today don't have enough time. You know, you're busy, you don't want to go to the gym, because you've got to get your S, you've got to get in your car. We bring it right to you, and the workout takes only an hour. And we use a really good formula. We do functional strength training, core conditioning, as well as putting it into an interval format. So we've all heard about high-intensity interval training. Right, right, right. It's one of the most efficient ways to get a workout where you're burning calories, you're getting cardiovascular conditioning, plus you're strengthening. So we do it in that format, and it's doable. You know, a lot of times, especially if you're not really a gym person, so the person who's going to go to the gym and, you know, really psych, they like getting up, getting out there, we strongly recommend that they go to the gym, continue to go to the gym. What we bring, though, is the expertise to the home for that person that says, you know what, I really don't want to go to the gym. Well, I don't have time to go to the gym. The other thing that we bring to the table, which I think is really critical, and that's what I think sets us apart in many ways, is that we don't think of what we do as just exercise. You know, a lot of times you think getting fit, working out, it's all about exercise, building muscle, building strength. For us, it's really about feeling better and functioning better. Because what happens when you're working, as you get older, you just, I'm looking at your screens right here. What do we do? We work at our school. Yeah, I agree. What do we do when we're looking at our smartphones? Our heads are down. When we eat, we're eating over the table. When we're driving, even, if you notice, people drive like this. Everything is rounded forward. And when that happens, your chest muscles tighten up, your shoulders round forward, your head starts to go forward, and you can start to develop permanent changes in your spine. Your head is pretty heavy. So as your head starts to come forward, it's now pulling everything down. All of those back muscles are being overstretched, and your brain's saying, come back, come back. So at the end of the day, you're sore, right? Your muscles are starting to spasm. So what we do with our exercises is we make sure that everything is in alignment. So it's not just about the workout. It's your ears over your shoulders, over your hips. Are you pulling in your stomach, activating your core, making sure that whatever you're doing, you're staying in that correct posture and alignment. And when you're doing the exercises, not only does the form look good, but are you feeling the right muscle groups being activated? Well, I was told once I suggested how I could lose 40 pounds of ugly fat. And I said, cut off my head. Nice. Wow. That was something that someone said to me one day. So who's your target market? Like, you know, is it the millennials? Is it seniors? Is it children? I mean, how is that? We can really serve anyone, and we've had the range from a high school student and all the way up to we have a 98-year-old. But actually, the people that I'm really trying to focus on who I think can benefit the most from our services are the seniors. Because many times, and we're thinking of people like our parents' age, or even some of our friends, some of my friends are in their 70s and 80s, what happens is, as you get older, you lose 1% muscle mass. After you hit the age of 50, every year, if you don't do anything other than your normal activities, you're gonna lose 1% of muscle mass every year. There's one study I looked at that said in 10 years, you lose 15%, which is even more. So you're losing it if you don't use it. And when something happens to you, I mean, you know when you've been out with the flu, 24 hours in bed, you get up and you're tired. Your body takes more to just walk around. And you're stiff and just, yeah. Well, if you're in bed as a senior, your muscles get very, very weak quickly, and getting up out of that bed gets more difficult. And typically, you think, oh, there's nothing they can do. That's just part of aging. So do you rehab, like PT? So if I went to, like I've had knee surgeries and so on, and then I have to go do my PTs afterwards and all that stuff. So are you guys certified to provide those services? So rehab and what we do in personal training is very different. Or I shouldn't say very different. It is different in that the way I look at physical therapy is, you do have a skilled, trained, many times a doctorate degree. And you're specifically looking at progressing them through different functional levels. So insurance, they're guided by insurance, that holds the doctor's prescription. So pretty much, you have to be making progress for the insurance company to continue paying you. Makes sense. So once you start to plateau, meaning, okay, your progress is much slower, you're still not back to where you used to be before the injury, but you don't qualify for therapy anymore because insurance is saying, hey, you're not going to progress. So we're cutting off, you plateau, we're cutting off your insurance for therapy. Then there's no place for people. And this is where you could, you could, your organization can be inserted in and continue on with that program and take it to the. Because we don't care whether or not you take two weeks, four weeks before you get to the next level. For us, it's all about making sure that you're functional. And the other thing that we focus on a lot is what we refer to as more functional fitness. We're not so much concerned about how many weights can you lift, how many pounds, how many repetitions for how long. What we're concerned about is, okay, can you reach down and pick up something off the ground? Can you reach up into your cabinets? Are you able to get up out of a chair? Those are the kinds of things that, as you get older, are really important in maintaining your independence. And many times we lose the strength in our lower lakes. And what was fascinating to me is I've been working with Palolo Chinese Home, going in there, looking at their daycare programs, talking to them about what they're doing in their skill nursing facility or their intermediate care facility area. And I was evaluating this one woman who they said she loves to walk. And sure enough, she pops right up and she walks around with her walker. But when I asked her, when I was just standing with her, can you lift up one leg? She couldn't. And then she asked me, can I use my walker? So I said, sure, I gave her the walker and boom, her leg came right up. I said, okay, what's going on here? And what was happening was, she was using all of her upper body to propel herself. So basically very little leg strength to, so she didn't have that. So she really needed to strengthen her lower extremities. And if she doesn't do it soon, she can start to decrease. We've seen people like that. We know, I have friends that have, I've watched them to chariot over this past couple of years as a matter of fact. But they've never been gym rats or they've never been the type to go running or exercising, whatever. And I'm just watching them just, they're now walkers, they now have canes. And they've just kind of made up their mind that that's what it's going to be. And I keep saying to them, I don't think you have to be like that. I think you can, there are ways to get yourself re-strengthened. I think one of them is going to get a hip replacement in a couple of weeks. And I said, so after this hip replacement, are you going to start to get exercise and do things like this? I don't think he will. I think he's just going to continue to just sit, lounge around. Well, you know, you get physical therapy and then once you plateau, then the therapist says, okay, these are your home exercises. Well, we know, even for myself, I don't always do those home exercises. And then are you doing it correctly? And remember I started out by saying one of the unique things about us is we don't just look at form. We ask and get feedback as to what muscle groups are you using? And the perfect example for that is a squat. You've all heard of squat. That's probably one of the best core exercises that you can do, but most people aren't doing it properly. Right, that's a tough. Their form can look perfect. In fact, when I started doing it because I didn't know about exercise until I started doing this, OTs tend to work more with upper extremities. So the trainer said, do a squat. And they explained what I needed to do. You need to weight on your heels, now go down. So I did it. And two people, two trainers actually said, you do a really great squat. You've got perfect form. And then I watched a YouTube video and they told me, okay, the best way to tell someone to do a squat is not bend your knees, is start pushing your butt backwards towards the wall. And then, and this is what I do. I tell them, and now, as you go down, now you can lower your knees. Takes all the strain off of your knees. As you get older, you hear of a lot of people say it all, but that hurts my knees. Well, if you're doing it properly, it's not gonna affect your knees. Well, as you get older, it gets even, and I can tell you, I'm on your work, do I share it? As you get closer to the ground, it's not that easy anymore. It's hard. We have a tendency to not bend over correctly. How many people I've known, including myself, that's throwing your back out, just picking up a pencil because you've bent the wrong way. Yeah, just all of those kinds of things. And you put on a few pounds, which I've done. And so you're carrying those around as well. So there's a whole number of different things that we could just do in our daily lives. Exactly. And you're hitting on a point that I started on where we are trying to teach you how to move correctly all the time. So when I talk to you about posture, everybody kind of starts to straighten out. Yeah, they go, oh. But that means that, okay, you weren't in good posture, but you didn't even notice it, right? So what we do with our exercises is we're constantly queuing people to open up your shoulders, chin tucked back, make sure you have that slight arch, not overextended or rounded, but you want that neutral spine. And in that position, you do your exercises. So you're constantly reinforcing the postural muscles to hold you straight. So that when you do go to sneeze or you get up suddenly without thinking about it, your body automatically moves the way it's supposed to. And that's the thing that doesn't happen to us in everyday life. When you have to go to lift something heavy, people say, oh, I always lift with my legs, put the weight close to my body, and you do it correctly. See them bending over. Okay, hold on one sec. So I told you this goes fast. So we got another, we got, take a one minute break. Angus has some gadget he wants to show. Something to do with fitness. So he keeps it thematic. So we're going to take a one minute break. This is Think Tech Hawaii, Bachi Tak. Gorda Taksar, Debbie Kim Morigawa. Jim Geiss, talk soon. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Sounds like scuba diving. We say, forget the moan. Dive heart can help children, adults, and veterans of all abilities escape gravity right here on our searchdiveheart.org and imagine the possibilities in your life. Match day is no ordinary day. Pitch, hallowed ground for players and supporters alike. Excitement builds. Game plans are made with responsibility in mind. Celebrations are underway. Ready for kickoff. MLS clubs and our supporters rise to the challenge. We make responsible decisions while we cheer on our heroes and toast their success. Elevate your match day experience. If you drink, never drive. Hey everybody, welcome back to Think Tech Hawaii. This is a Bachi talk. We got Debbie with the Jim guys, but first we got Angus with the gadget. Angus, what's up buddy? How you doing there, Rob? Good to see you, man. Hey Debbie, you're looking really good there, Lassie. Hey Angus, nice to meet you. It's nice to meet you too. High five. High five, awesome. I like it when they interact with you there. Sometimes they get a little bit scared. I don't blame them. Hey, you know, I go to the gym all the time. Can you talk about my muscles? Look at that. So we're at the gym, but let me show you what Gorda did to me. He put all this stuff on my waist and I got a picture of it. This is what he did. This is how he motivates me to do my gym. So this is what I have to do. This is what I, when I move around to the gym, I got these strong weights. Very weak, also weak, still weak, not strong. Not strong, no. Still not strong as police. That's how he motivates me to get my exercises done. So I tell you, I do a lot better job than that. Oh, we'll do a fantastic job. Just come give me a call and we'll get you top shape. Awesome. We can do my legs there because they didn't have legs. It was still cheap to buy them for me. Anyway, this is Angus with the gadget. You can say it every segment, but your wing ain't free where you be. Hello? Huh. Nice. There's Angus with some less than motivational motivation for your gym stack. I don't think we want to say weak, weaker, weakest, but it's good stuff anyway. He's always got a good gadget. Thanks a lot. So Gorda, what's up, man? So anyway, so Debbie, so you've talked about core strength and all the things that you do, but let's talk a little bit about gym guys. Like how long has this been around? I mean, you're a relatively new startup, right? Yours has been a year, six months? I just started taking clients in June of this year. The franchise started in 2014, and the owner of the franchise actually started his, the whole concept in 2008. And so the concept has been around, but he first started franchise. It's a very young franchise. So it says gym guys, Urban Honolulu. So you go to your website, you'll see that there. So what's the range of services? Do you go all over the island? Well, Urban Honolulu really covers just the urban core for me. However, because of the requests and wanting to be able to meet people's needs, we do go out to Hawaii Kai. We have gone as far as Pearl City, and we have started going into Kani Ohe. Good deal. So it's gonna be dependent on my trainer's availability. Yeah, on the schedule, right? So is the schedule, you can do it right off the internet, or right off your website, you can request an appointment. We haven't done that yet, just because right now I'm still building up, but there is that capacity down the road. Okay, so how many trainers do you have right now? Right now I have two trainers. Two trainers, wow, that's awesome. And so two trainers, are you seven days a week? Yes, we are, and the hours are a little... Squirrely. Well, so we technically started four in the morning and go until 11 at night. Wow. Yeah, all the way through Friday, and then Saturdays and Sundays, we're open from six a.m. till six p.m. Now, it's gonna also be subject to the trainer's availability, whether or not they also work on holidays, and that's all up to the trainer. So what's a typical session? Would it be like three days a week, four days a week? You know, how does it... We usually recommend starting out with at least two to three sessions a week, especially just starting out, and they're hour-long sessions, and they really get you going. So, and like I said, with the high-intensity interval training, you get actually metabolic activation for 24 to 48 hours after the workout. After the workout, so that's pretty impressive. So then how does someone go about signing up, or booking an appointment, or any of those kinds of things? So they just give me a call, and I can schedule them for their free initial assessment. Ooh, free initial assessment. That's what I like. The initial assessment consists of body composition, so we take your body fat, your muscle mass, your visceral fat, which is the fat that is around your stomach. Around your organs, yeah. Around your organs, yeah. Quite a bit in my case. Yeah, so that's a number that we try to watch because that's an indicator that you're at risk for metabolic disease like diabetes, cardiovascular disease. High blood pressure. So we do the body composition. We do a health screening just to make sure that you're safe to exercise. And then we do like a mini fitness assessment. So we take you through a warm-up, a stretch warm-up and a little routine so that, again, we can see what your fitness level is. And you also get a sense of what our workouts are like, and then you can decide whether or not you wanna join us. So then that gives you a baseline, though. That the good thing, as I'm thinking here, is that once you've done that, you've said, okay, now here's your baseline. And then as we progress over the months, we'll be able to measure your progress based on where you were with the baseline. Right. And we see people feeling a difference. Within just a couple of weeks, with your younger, if you're older, sometimes just even one session makes a difference. Well, you'll sleep better. Well, then your metabolism starts to run again. People get sluggish, right? Because if you can't train for whatever reason, you'll start to feel bad. If you're used to training, you know how that feels. And if you're not used to it, you don't even know how bad you feel as part of the problem. So once you get them going, they're like, wow, I feel so much more. They think they'll be tired from the workout and actually have more energy. And that's one of those things that people don't understand. Yeah, so you end up sleeping better, you wake up more stress-free. There's just a constant help. I mean, I think I'd be a lot worse if I didn't go to the gym three times a week. But you know, and you're doing it seven days a week, you're constantly at it. I mean, the focus on wellness is the thing. Because it's diet, it's things you mentioned, resting, right? And exercise is I think a big component of that. And an hour a day is awesome. People can get an hour a day every other day, something like that, and keep that burn. Because you do get the benefit over time, like once you activate that, especially with the high-intensity cardiovascular. So you're gonna go up and your body's gonna keep burning at a little higher level for 24, 48 hours, depending on, everybody's a little different, right? But if you keep doing that every other day, it just stays higher. So then you start burning more calories. So you actually got a metabolic burn going after a while. It can take a while to get it activated again. But that's the state you wanna be in. And the other thing that happens is when you do exercises on your own, many times you go through the same routines and you stay with them. That's me, I cheat all the time. And what happens is that your muscles start to adapt. So it takes more to get the same benefit. With the gym guys routine, basically we're constantly changing the workout routine for the younger adults, because you don't want those muscles to adapt. You constantly wanna challenge the body and constantly getting that improvement. Yeah, adaptation is sort of the enemy, right? Like you need the, the point is to adapt, but once you've adapted, you've gotta change quick. The same routine, the same routine and you're starting, wait, I'm not getting any progress here. Yeah, like she talked about plateauing and it happens pretty quick, four to six weeks, if you're just doing the same thing typically, you know, you're gonna- Now that's different for our seniors. For our seniors, we do try to keep it more similar over time and do gradual changes because they have a longer ways to go sometimes to get to where they're going to plateau. But so- Define senior. So, okay, so that's a good question. That's how you feel. That's a really good reaction. Because for us, seniors start at maybe 70, 75, yeah. I still got time. And then I have 80 year olds that, you know, need a lot of work and then 80 year olds that are playing singles tennis. Oh yeah. Pickleball, we see them playing pickleball. Pickleball, that's a big one now. Yeah, it's all relative. And the whole reason you're doing this is so that as you get older, you can maintain your bone density and muscle strength so that it's not so hard to build it back. Because you are gonna, I mean, physiologically, you're gonna lose it every year. And it's all the things you need to do in a weight bar. And I don't know if you've seen a lot of these senior programs. People are able to walk, but all of the exercises are being done in a chair. Yeah. And if you're sitting in a chair, not only are you shortening your hip flexors and probably straining your low back, but you're not strengthening your legs. So you're going to get weaker and weaker. It's inevitable. And that's what's usually the first thing that you see with the seniors, you mentioned it earlier, is your ability to reach the cabinet. You like your flexibility. And then also your strength in your legs, getting down on the floor and then getting up. Right. Yeah, well, it's the first thing you do. You sell the house with the stairs, right? So you get a ranch and now you're on flat. And you, you know, the climbing the stairs is good for you. Sorry, you need to do that. You know, it's just, it's one of those things. I know, but it's the thing. You live in a condo, if you live in a condo, you're not walking upstairs. Right. And you're, Oh, it's all like elevators. And you're getting on the elevator. So there's that balance. Yeah, so take the stairs. You want people to keep walking. Walking is good for the heart, but sometimes people think, I walk. Walking isn't enough for an older person to maintain their strength and to keep their bones. It does help a little bit with osteoporosis for women, but not enough because most times as you get older, you're walking gets less. Now, some people, they say, oh, I walk a couple of miles a day. That's different. But there are other people, oh, I walk around the block. But a mile a day is not that much, you think about it. They do the 10,000 steps, which is what, about five miles? I think a lot of people try to monitor the steps. I know that 10,000 steps and that should be four or five miles, but. Ready? All right. Where is it? So, our. WWW.jimguys.com. So our main website is WWW.jimguys.com. And then if you just, where it says location, type in a Hawaii zip code. You'll get us. Then you'll get us, and everything is right there. And then Debbie will come over and give you an assessment. Dead, you'll come over, set over the page. Find out what you got. I'm thinking I'm going to ask for this for Christmas presents. So then we can do a quarterly update on see how. See how GORO progresses. See how I progress. I do, I am starting to go down the hill. So I got to get that fixed. Anyway, we don't, no gas goes unrewarded. You get an autographed solo cup. Number 141 in the series. Wow. I tell you, there's, and these are, Bitcoin going on in value. Where do you see these things go? Ain't going to happen much. Anyway, so thank you Debbie. It's a great, great scene again. And I would like to have you come back and see how, you know, an entrepreneur. You can give us an update on GORO. We'll see what kind of. Yeah, I mean, give me the tank top. Anyway, thank you for watching. You're watching here on Think Tech. And like we say it in every end of every show. One, two, three. How you do.