Bodybuilding for beginners: sustainable habits with Kyle Hunt

And also I just think having some structure in place is good too. That's why I write books for beginners because I feel like a lot of beginners need structure. They need a training program to follow. They need basic nutrition principles to know to look out for. And then from there, once you master the beginner principles, it's surprising at how far that can take you alone. I think everyone wants to be in a race to be, quote, advanced, when most people never really even become advanced because they never master the basics to even allow themselves to go beyond that. You're listening to the Restoring Human Movement podcast. Thanks for joining the Movement Movement.

I'm Sebastian Gonzales, show curator and head clinician at Performance Play Sports Care in Southern California. This show is for active people, those who refuse to let pain and injury get in the way of their life and how they want to live it. Trails and trips, fields and courts, whatever moves you. Each episode features rotating host, expert guest, and real clinical conversations that help you move better and trust your body again. Here we go. We're going to have on a guest today, as you heard. This is Kyle Hunt from the Absolute Strength Podcast. And I've listened to his podcast for a little bit of time, in and out, just like most people do with podcasts and probably how you guys do with mine as well.

And I just like it. Good, good, good, good bass, good audio, good conversation, good information. Just a, just a, just a down guy. So I thought I'd have him on and I think it's a good conversation. So as always, let me share a little bit about myself via short story before we get into the podcast and the interview. And then we'll go right from there and see you on the other side. So recently we on, on a road trip and I took my dad with me and he is, I forgot, I forgot how he is like this. Cause he tends to, you forget things unless you do them once, every once in a while. But so I'm driving cause he drives slower than snail shit in the winter and we're driving down the road and there's nobody on the road.

And so he keeps peeking out the window a little bit and then he looks at the speedometer. He's like, I think you're, I think you're driving too fast. I think you should be in the other lane. And so I'm like, Hey man, I'm, I'm driving. Like, let me drive. Like this is, I can handle it. You know, I've got, I haven't gotten an accident ever. Let me handle it. And so, you know, about 10 minutes later, he's like, so, uh, I've seen some cops along the road here, like a lot of times. And, uh, yeah, so they, there, this is, I, there's a lot of cops around along this road and I'm like, okay. So trying to scare me out of driving fast.

Okay. I don't mind driving fast. I'm literally driving like 70, you know, in the speed limit 65. And then later on he says, uh, you know, I think you should be, I think you should be in the other lane. You know, all these different ways of trying to not get me to drive faster than 65. He used to have this saying where it was 65 stay alive. And so, uh, he's a 65 guy. Anyways, it's a little bit about my life and, uh, now into the show. Can you hear me? I do. I hear you good. Awesome. There's that famous, famous bookshelf back there. I was, I try to zoom in on all the things and I see profit first on there.

I couldn't see much of anything else, but I saw that one. I'm like, damn, you actually read the book. Cause if you did the audio book, like I did, you might not have finished it. Yeah, I didn't. Uh, I didn't do the, I love audio books, but I didn't do the audio book with that one. Actually, what's funny is. So I used to kind of like collect books. Like I'm a big reader, but I used to actually like physical copies, love the physical copies. And then I just ran out of room like this. I had the bookshelf filled, but then I have boxes in my closet in my office and it was just getting ridiculous. So over like the last two years, I've pretty much just switched a hundred percent to eBooks or audio books.

Yeah. How do you feel about the eBooks actually? Like, cause I have my own thoughts on eBooks, but, um, how do you feel about them? So I never used to like them just because I'm like an old school. I like to actually have the papers in my hand, but then I don't know, like I said, over the last like two years, I've just, I download them onto my iPad and just, uh, put it on, leave it on like night mode and just read them. Yeah. I went the other direction. I went from eBooks cause I was like, I don't want, I'm like, I want to be like a digital nomad, you know? And then I went into getting books and then I got a book recently called the alchemist.

And so the sides of the pages have like this unique ruffle to it. I'm like, God, I love this. Like, I just don't want to go back to it. Do you? You got that nice little ruffle on the side? No, it's a, no, this, this copy is a straight cut. Oh yeah. Yeah. It was kind of like it was torn from a, from a biblical book. I think like, uh, I think this one, 1776 is like that. I don't know if you can see, but that, yeah, that's what you're talking about. Oh yeah. That's the good feeling right there. Roughly. I know what you mean. Yeah. It builds calluses. You don't, uh, you don't see that cut much anymore.

I know, I know it's, I don't feel like you don't get really paper cuts with that type of cut. No, it's not as sharp. Okay. Um, is there anything you want to cover in particular today? I have obviously some questions I can ask you, but is there anything you want to cover in particular? I'm good with whatever, man. We can go in any direction you want. Okay. So, um, I'll let you introduce yourself a little bit since you're well-spoken and I'm sure you had some time to do it. So, uh, everybody, this is a Kyle hunt. He's going to introduce himself. Yeah. So I, uh, I guess my, my fitness journey started really early on.

Like I, uh, I wrestled varsity as an eighth grader, which in New York state where I'm from, you could join the varsity wrestling team while you were still in middle school, actually any, any sport you can join a varsity sport while you're in middle school. All you had to do is essentially pass like a physical fitness test. So I did that, wrestled my eighth grade year varsity did pretty good. But I was the smallest kid on the team. And so the coach was like, Hey, after the season, you need to come to the weight room and start putting on some muscle. Like I was like way below the weight class. The lightest weight class at the time was 96 pounds.

So tiny, but I only weighed like 85 pounds. So I would literally, while everyone else was cutting weight, I would literally have to take like a 32 ounce Gatorade, drink it like immediately step onto the scale, weigh in and then get off and, you know, go to the bathroom and lose like three pounds. But anyway, so I got in the weight room immediately after the season, my eighth grade year and just fell in love with it. Like absolutely became obsessed with it throughout my entire high school years, just became obsessed with, with training and nutrition, reading everything I possibly could. Started my business, my online business, my, my freshman year of college.

I went to college for exercise science. It was natural transition there. And at the time, so this was like 2009, 2010 online personal training was not anything like it is today. Like it was, I mean, everyone thought I was crazy. Like, what are you doing? You know, you're just wasting your time. Even my parents were like, what are you doing? Like, go get a real job. And, uh, you know, part of me was like, okay, they're probably, they probably have a point. Like, I don't really, there's not a ton of success stories that are going to lead to, you know, like, oh, if I follow this person, follow that path, like this is going to lead to this successful career.

But I don't know. I just knew that it was probably the right path for me because I did a little bit of in the gym personal training and it just, I was like, man, most of these people don't need me in the gym with them four or five days. It would be perfect if they could pay for four or five days a week with me in the gym with them, but they can't. So two days a week with me in the gym, they didn't really need that. They just need a program to follow and then have some quality programming and have it be adjusted over time based off how they progress. And I'm like, well, that's online training. I can do that through email.

So I did that all throughout college. And then my senior year of college, right when I was getting ready to graduate, you know, I'm sending out resumes and stuff. I'm like, cool, this online thing was fun, but now I'm going to go get a real job. And then it hit me. I'm like, oh, I have a real job. Let me just give this a shot. And that's pretty much what I've been doing ever since. Nice. I like it. Yeah. It's, um, I'm, I'm, I'm a believer kind of the same thing. Like I'll, like when people are dealing with a problem, at least like an injury, like it's, we got to tinker a little bit, but after, I mean, I had a girl I just had the other day, it was her second time in, her back feels much, much better.

And so she's like, you want to see me led this week? I'm like, you kind of just got to do the work and just let the body, the body has to adapt. I'm not going to speed that up for you. You know, just, they just have to put the work in. Right. So, yeah, that's, that's kind of what, what happened. Cause I'd be sitting down with people, you know, you give them a consultation and you'd lay it out and you'd say, well, this is what you need. And I'm like in a perfect world. Like, yeah, it would be awesome for me to be here with you, hold you accountable. And, but the next best thing would be like, if you think you can actually, if you know how to do the exercises, how about we just do this?

I could come in, we could do a couple of sessions. I'll teach you how to do everything. And then, you know, you can just do it yourself. We're, we're most people pretty good at like, Hey, that sounds pretty good. Like I can self-motivate or Hey, you know, can you remind me every day? So it's actually an interesting story. So initially like from the gym, not a lot of people were familiar with it. They were like, Oh, I don't, I don't like this. I actually, I need you here with me. That's the only, you know, if I, if I'm paying for you to personal training me two days a week, like that's the two days a week I'm working out, like I'm not doing anything else.

So that actually, it wasn't like I was able to say for, say for clients from the gym. Now the online world, I started writing articles and putting out content that way. They were really receptive to it because what would happen is I would put out content. And this is like, like I said, 2010, I'd write an article on, you know, training or nutrition, and then I would get an email and ask me a bunch of questions. And then it would just naturally lead to, well, Hey, how about you just come up with a training program for me? Do you do that? And at first I was like, I don't know, I guess I could. I'll just give it to you for free.

Did that and kind of advertise. It's like, Hey, I'm doing free. If you read my blog or read my articles, I'll give you a free training program. That's exactly how it started. Got a bunch of people. And then I'm like, well, maybe I can charge for it. Charge like a really low price. A bunch of people still did it. And then it just kind of snowballed. Oh, nice. Did, um, I'm just curious. Cause I've had, I read a bunch of content for various things. And so a couple of times, cause like some of them are just massive articles, right? And I'm sure you spend a lot of time writing your articles. I know in one, I wrote, if you get to the bottom, email me and just title it.

I'm done. And most people don't get to the bottom. So did you, when you said the free training, did you put it at the top or at the bottom or in the, or just deep in the body? Probably, probably in the, at the bottom. Uh, but at the time I really, so two things that stood out from what you just said is one in like 2010, I feel like people, blogs were more popular 2009, 2010. Like now, if you're writing an article, like it, it probably wouldn't get nearly the amount of traction unless it was like amazing. But back then there wasn't as much, you know, I could just post something. I put it on Facebook and like all my friends would read it and post it and it would get in circulation.

And then I wasn't really writing a lot of in-depth articles. It was more just like hard hitting, like probably under a thousand words, just bullet point. Like, here's what you need to do type thing. So it wasn't like a, like now when I write articles, they tend to be very detailed and long and probably way longer than they should be. So that people most likely probably make it to the end. But back then I didn't even know I was doing it probably correctly, but I, I, did it like just hard hitting and short to the point. Yeah. There's probably, there's a format that, that, uh, you know, shape magazine and things like that.

They use that format for a reason. I'm sure, you know? Yeah. Well, actually I, when I was in high school, man, the, the magazines were where I got a lot of information, a lot of wrong information, or at least miss, misguided information. But thinking back, like, man, from a business standpoint, like they really had, they had that market, like figured out, like they knew how to sell it. They knew how to market it. They knew how to get you interested and to buy it. You're at like a grocery store and you see it on the shelf, like, Oh, I want to, I want to get that just based, like based off from the cover.

And you flip through the pages and see it and they had it, they had it figured out for sure. Yeah. They probably too. Like, I mean, I remember they used to have a bunch of the muscle rags in the, in the gym and then you flip through, like ad, ad article, ad, ad, ad, ad article, mostly ads. And actually the ads were really good too. Like, um, yeah, there was some good ad advertising that got me to buy way too many supplements. That's for sure. Yeah. We'll probably talk about it as we go through here, actually. And, uh, I guess, so we're a bit deep into it already, but I think, um, uh, we'll, we'll, we'll center the talk around maybe some, some good habits and sustainable habits.

For, for bodybuilding and lifting in general. Um, but feel free, we can tangent off, uh, like, I don't know if how many of my podcasts you've listened to, but the, I don't mind tangent off and the ones you do with Derek, actually, I enjoy those more than the other ones. Yeah. It's a lot of people say that. And, you know, what, what's interesting about that is I feel like people like those cause they're just a conversation and it's hard to get into a, a good rhythm though with people. Like, I think like Joe Rogan's really popular with podcasting, obviously like probably the most popular podcast.

And I think a lot of people listen to that. I'm like, Oh, I want to be like Joe Rogan. But what maybe goes a little bit under the radar is that's a skill and it's really hard. You got to have like, he's able to get really good chemistry with people, even with people he doesn't know. Now with people he knows really well, it's like instantly like, of course, you know what it's going to be, but he's able to do that or at least mimic that with a wide range of people where me, I don't think I'm that talented at the conversation piece. So like the podcast I do with Derek, I think it's just because we've done so many of them together that we can just start from right from the beginning, having, you know, a good rapport with each other.

So it can kind of just get into the flow of a conversation. Yeah, you know, I think too, with like, just from a listener standpoint, like the, like I have a serial co-host that comes on every once in a while, we've known each other for a long time. And, uh, it's just, uh, I think on the, on the listener, it's easier to, to drop in and hear a conversation back and forth between two people, different tone of voice, different reflections riffing off each other versus just like a lecture. You know, I think there's a reason why people try to duck out the first 30 minutes of church, you know? So it's, uh, I, I think the back and flow works with her, but you're right.

I think, I think Joe and a lot of good podcasters, they're just good at conversation, you know? Yep. Well, it's kind of the difference between a podcast and an audio book. Like sometimes, man, I love audio books, but like, for example, a lot of times when I'm warming up, when I walk into the gym, I'm warming up, I'll listen to a podcast and it's because I don't necessarily need to be 100% focused on the content. I can listen to the back and forth communication, understand who's talking, have probably a good background on the topic that they're talking about, probably listen to other podcasts they've done.

I know their voice inflection when they're about to say something that's important. Like, you know, but then when you listen to an audio book, like if you have an audio book on, like, if you're not paying attention to it, like you'll go through a whole chapter and you'll have no recollection of anything that just happened. So I think that's also part of why podcasts with another guest, they tend to be like easier on the ear, if that makes sense. Yeah. Well, I think people draw emotion out of each other. You know, it's like they'll get each other ramped up and so on. And, you know, it's not like every, probably only the one book series, audio book series that I've liked was the Grant Cardone series.

I don't know if you heard those. Yeah. Well, Grant Cardone, that's interesting. You said that because he reads his audio books almost like it's a podcast. Yeah. He's like super hyped up. Yeah. He's super hyped. Like, I almost wonder how much he does not go off of the true book because he's so hyped up and just ran around, you know, he's like an Adam Carolla. Absolutely. Yeah. I'm trying to think the last one, I think it was maybe like sell or be sold or something. And I was thinking, I'm like, man, I feel like he's going off the cusp. Like, I feel like most of this wasn't actually in the, in the damn book.

It probably was. Yeah. Just like the terminology he's using. Yeah. I'm sure a lot of it was, but yeah. If you, if you ever decide to read and listen to both, you tell me how much the percentages was actually, I don't think I'll do it again. I might have to do that now. Yeah. The, uh, so I thought the stuff we should cover it is against sustainable habits, you know, cause I think that I was thinking, I was thinking about this cause one of my, one of my old roommates was, um, I wouldn't say he's a bodybuilder per se, but he took some of the principles of like what I observed from, you know, like a, like just getting mass perspective of he would come home and he'd have a pizza, a tub of ice cream.

He's just like, I just need mass mass makes mass. And I'm like, but you're, you're eating shit food. Like what, what is the thing about, like, is there a real responsible way or just gut lining, not matter, you know, in bodybuilding type of thing, you know, absorb absorption, all that matters is absorption, you know? Yeah. Well, what's interesting is I feel like that was really popular back in the day of just like, Hey, we're going to go on this big bulk, try to gain as much size as possible, get yourself in a big caloric surplus and kind of go from there. But what's interesting is when you look at the research, there's not a huge difference in muscle building from a small to moderate size surplus.

So three to 500 calories surplus above maintenance, the amount of calories that you would need to maintain your body weight. You don't really gain much muscle going from that to, you know, a crate, you know, eating the pizzas and everything, just like going crazy and just trying to get in as many calories as possible. Now you can get, gain a little bit more muscle, but of course with a huge surplus, you're also gaining a ton more fat. So it's not, I mean, what you're going to need a touch more muscle, but you're going to gain considerably more fat. So for the most part, when you're just trying to gain, when you're trying to gain muscle, I think a lot of people would be surprised that you don't need to be on a huge caloric surplus.

And plus think about it this way as a natural athlete, a natural lifter, like you're not going to gain a crazy amount of muscle. Like, you know, unfortunately I wish you could. I mean, I wish it was, you know, the ability to just gain 10, 20, 30 pounds of muscle naturally a year. Like that'd be awesome. But it's just beyond the beginner stage. It's the, the muscle gains are very slow to come by. So if you think about it that way, if there's a limit to how much muscle per year you're actually going to gain, it makes sense that a huge caloric surplus wouldn't really provide that much benefit. Like you would really want to temper how much caloric surplus we're gaining just because we know that the amount of muscle we're gaining is not going to be that much.

So anything extra would just be fat. It does make sense. Actually, you think about for pregnancy, I think it's 500 extra calories a day, right? I mean, they get, they can get pretty big, you know, and, uh, I guess you're building another body inside you. So why not just add 500 calories a day for building muscle? Now the key with that is just making sure that it's accurate because sometimes, you know, one of the things with, with coaching a lot of people, you recognize some, a lot of things that trip people up, common things that trip people up. And one of them is when people don't have a really good idea of what they're consuming, they'll say, oh man, dude, I'm, I'm eating everything and I just can't gain any weight.

And you're like, okay, well, how about we just take a look at a food log? Let's have you take, you don't have to weigh and measure anything. Just literally write down what you're eating for a few days and then send it back to me. And what you'll find typically, if someone's having a lot of trouble gaining size, gaining weight, it's that they're not eating nearly what they thought they were. And specifically protein, like their protein intake will be very low. So if, yeah, when we say like small caloric surplus works great, you actually need to be in a caloric surplus though. What is, uh, what are maybe some of the things that they're eating that, that they just don't realize that there's a surplus, that there's a lack of surplus?

Yeah. Well, for you, I'll have, I've had clients before like, yes, like, so tell me what you're eating. And I'll be like, you know, a bowl of cereal for breakfast. And then maybe like a sandwich for lunch. And then at dinner, like, I don't know, uh, like just a, like a fast food meal or something. Dude, I'm eating a lot. I'm like, well, for one, that's not a lot of protein. And for two, it's really not a lot of calories either. I mean, we're talking, if you're only eating three meals a day and they're small meals, you're probably eating under 2000 calories. So for a 180, 200 pound guy who's looking to build muscle, that's just not enough calories.

Okay. Yeah. You know, I, I, it's fine. I don't really go too much into nutrition with people that much. So this is a, uh, more of an unventured, unfamiliar territory, but I've gotten some education on it. Um, do people still skip breakfast? Is that still a thing? Yeah. Well, other than the keto people, I was, well, I was gonna say there's a couple of different levels of skipping breakfast. When you have the intermittent fasting crowd who, you know, there was, there was a time when that got really popular and there was a time when it's funny, like everything cycles around. It'll get popular. Like I think initially probably the warrior diet was like the first, cause that was a book that came out and that was, um, I forget what the guy's name was, Ori Hoffmeister, maybe can't remember, but warrior diet was essentially just eat one meal per day.

And it was like, you eat one big dinner and that's, Hey, that's all you do for the day. And then Martin Burkhan popularized the 16, eight intermittent fasting. And that worked really well for a lot of people in the fitness world who would, from a macronutrient standpoint, at the end of the day, they were still getting hitting the protein targets, hitting their calorie targets. It was just distributed later in the day. And if you're busy in the morning, you can skip breakfast and then just shift your calories later. It worked. But of course to promote it, a lot of the people who were following that protocol would say it was better.

And then when new research came out, it was pretty much shown that it wasn't necessarily better. It was better for some people if it fit your lifestyle, but universally it was not better. So you have those people who can be successful skipping breakfast. Although for most people, like I don't tend to recommend that. And then you have to just people who just skip breakfast and they just, you know, and then most of the time when people skip breakfast, it's not really like planned. It's not programmed skipping breakfast. It's just, we skip breakfast and then you end up eating more later because you're hungry.

Do you just do like a three square meal, five square meal type of thing? Typically for me, from a, from a consistency standpoint, I think it works good to just not buck the system too much. Just have a regular breakfast, lunch, dinner, and then usually I'll throw in a protein shake throughout the day just to hit some, you know, 25 to 50 grams of convenient protein. Oh, I forgot. You do like that protein meal, huh? The, uh, or the protein shake, but there was a protein shake that they, I've not taken one in a while, but the, uh, the, the, I always re probably every high school kid has a story where like football coach puts them on like a, like a whey protein and they shit, the shit their brains out.

Oh yeah. Yep. Yeah. You want to have a high quality one. Yeah. That's, I don't, I don't think they were distributing that at the high school. No. Yeah. There was a man when I was in high school, uh, I spent way too much money on, on supplements. You know, it was, it was the classic case of, you know, you wanted to take, have every advantage possible. And then I was reading the magazines, like I said, so I was getting marketed too heavily. So I was like, all right, well I'll buy the protein. I'll get all the amino acids, get any new product that comes out. And then of course, once you learn more about it, okay, well maybe there was some other things I should have done way before worrying about supplements.

Like for one, make sure I'm eating enough protein just in general throughout the day, make sure I have an idea of rest, recovery, things like that way before, you know, buying glutamine. Yeah. That's, um, so in, in the book that, in the, uh, bodybuilding for it was 12 weeks for beginners. Um, what are some, what are some things that may be laid out in there just as, I mean, I'd say most of us are probably going to be intermediates or beginners, probably in the gym. Uh, what are some easy wins maybe that people can do, um, just as they, as they're getting back in, I'm sure everybody's getting back into the gym at this point in time.

Yeah. From a, from a training perspective. Yeah. Well, training or eating, I'm sure that you included both in there, but, um, I, I, I believe in the easy wins. So give me the easiest wins in the book. Let's, we don't have to overcomplicate anything just yet. Yeah. No, I love the, I love the easy wins too. I just, you know, I'm big on consistency and habits and being able to stack those wins. So like easy wins for one, like when we're starting back into the gym, I think a lot of people who have taken a lot of time off, they're going to be raring to go probably from a, in a good place. Like mentally, like, Hey, I want to get after the gym talking about people who've, you know, maybe you've not done much besides some pushups and air squats the last few months.

You want to be careful jumping back into the gym and just going crazy. You don't need to do that. You actually, you're kind of re-synthesized to get some newbie gains again. I think the easiest win is just, Hey, let's start easy. Let's just plan to make it to the gym three to four days a week. Let's start there three to four days a week. Let's just do that for a month. That's an easy win. And then from, I mean, you can go a hundred different directions on and what you want to do once you like are in there. But I think just getting to the gym three to four days a week, something they already could be doing.

That's an easy one that I talk about with my clients a lot. And I talked about in the book is just tracking your daily steps. Like that's something we all can do. That's something that we can control no matter what's going on, whether we have access to a gym or not, we can all track our daily steps and try to be more active. One of the things I found with people, even myself, because I work online is if I don't track my steps and be like actually aiming to be more active, the amount of steps I get in a day is actually like embarrassing. It'll be like a couple thousand, two or three thousand. You know what I mean?

So then I started tracking and be, okay, I got to make sure if I'm not, if I'm not doing cardio, which I'm not even really talking about cardio. I'm just talking about going for walks, playing with your kids, taking your dog for an extra walk throughout the day. I think that's another easy win that we can get. If you're tracking your steps, which you can get an app on your phone. If you have an iPhone, it already has the health app downloaded. Six to eight thousand would be very easy. I know some people who live active lifestyles are like, oh, that's nothing. I do that by 9 a.m. Okay. I'm not really talking to you.

I'm talking about people who are, you know, get a thousand to two thousand steps a day. If you track that and just try to get six to eight thousand, that's a huge, that's a huge win right there. Now for a quick pause before we keep going. Hey everybody, it's Sebastian. If what we've been describing in the show so far sounds very familiar and you've been dealing with some ache, pain, or stiffness that keeps coming back no matter what you do and no matter what you try, we're offering a free discovery call today where we brainstorm with you what has been working for you, what hasn't been working.

And we also try to unravel what is a critical part of the puzzle that you've actually been missing that's keeping you from full recovery and getting back to full activity. The link's in the description. It only takes a few minutes to fill out the form. Okay. Back to the show. It's funny. I think I feel like most people that I talk to about, like the people that I know, it's like, you know, what are you doing at the gym? Like, what have you been doing? They're like, ah, you know, they're always, I'm just getting back, you know, and I feel like it's just big ebb and flow of like, you do too much.

I don't want to say you do too much, but it's like enough that's not sustainable to them and they get burnt out and they just, they're always off and they go back again, you know? So I do, I think three to four, I kind of think four days is easier than going once, you know, like you've created a habit. Yeah. I think four days a week is a hundred percent. Yeah. I think it's easier than just going one day. You know, cause some people be like, oh, let's start easy. Let's just try to make it to the gym one day. Well, then you also have, you have six days off. So what's going to happen in those six days?

Like, I'm not worried about, you know, really what I'm worried about is that in that six day period, it turns into a 12 day period, you know? Um, well it's, it's really, what you just said was perfect. A perfect analogy is look at January 1st every year. What do people do? They're literally coming from the couch. They've done probably, they're probably haven't been training throughout the holidays. The nutrition's probably been garbage throughout the holidays, but then January 1st comes and they're looking to go from zero to a hundred. It's like, okay, I've done nothing at all. So let me find some really intense training program, six days a week, two hours each day, follow the super restrictive diet.

And there we go. That's going to be my plan for the next six months. And then they're surprised that it lasts, doesn't even last six days. Like you have to, I'm big on consistency because that's the most important thing. Like if you could just, if you could make a goal just to make it to the gym three to four days a week for like the next year and just we're, we're sticking to that. Like you were not even to the gym, like three to four days of working out some type of fitness every week for the next year. Yeah. It seems easy. I thought you're going to say at least make it to the parking lot in the gym.

Yeah. Well, that too. Cause if you get to the parking lot, you'll most likely go in. You're right. Yeah. Although I will say, I will say this. I can think of maybe like two times ever when I actually was doing personal training where I had clients that would actually like drive to the gym and then have something come up. Oh, I just can't make an excuse somewhere in the parking lot. Yeah. Oh shit. There's no parking spots. All right. I got to go home. Yeah. Well, when people eventually come to, come to you to, to do training, um, what, what past history with training do they usually have? Have they tried, have they tried like that whole sprint at the beginning of the year?

Have they tried a bunch of hits? They've tried, um, what's their, what's their typical journey, um, into getting into something where that's a little bit more, uh, lifting based. Let's say lifting based. Yeah. Well, where I'm at, I'm in a lucky spot where actually most of the clients that, that I get now have been in the gym. Like they're, they're usually, you know, more like probably like solid intermediates. So they're pretty consistent. They're really looking to go from, you know, not seeing a ton of progress with what they're currently doing. Usually it's someone who's, who's pretty consistent in the gym, but they're, they're not seeing a ton of progress.

They're probably not following good programming. They're probably don't have any type of like periodization or built in progressions built into their training. They're probably following some program that they've always done for the last three years using the same weights they've been using for the last three years for the same set, same reps. And then their nutrition's usually pretty bad. So then when they come to me, they're like, Hey, I've tried everything. What can you do? And I'm like, well, you, in my head, I'm like, I think this is going to be fun because you haven't really tried much. Like, this is going to be good.

We get them on a solid training program, get the nutrition dialed in. And then like the first, you know, 12 weeks is like, it seems like I'm doing magic, but it's really just putting them on a quality program. And the accountability factor is huge. So when I say consistently training, a lot of times people are, are consistently training, but maybe not from a day-to-day or week-to-week standpoint. It's more so they do something each week. Like they go to the gym each week, but maybe some weeks it's two, sometimes it's five. And, you know, then I put them on a program where, Hey, we're going to do four days every single week.

You're going to check in with me every Friday. We're going to analyze your technique. We're going to analyze your training. We're going to analyze the numbers. We're going to analyze your body weight. We're going to analyze what you look like and make adjustments as needed. And just that alone, like all of a sudden it's like, Oh, now we're making a lot of progress. Yeah. I was actually good. I was, I was going to ask how long until they can see a result and you're already answered 12 weeks. So yeah, usually that's, that's usually when you start to see some form of progress, but that's normally just the start.

You know, I think that's another thing is it's tough because, you know, we all want to see progress fast and that leads if when, and when you're chasing progress fast, that often leads to doing stuff in the short term that will affect your longterm. Progress. So like dieting is a perfect example. It's like, Hey, I can get you to lose weight fast, but do you want to lose weight fast? And sometimes just asking that question presents a good conversation because you'll say, do you want to gain or do you want to lose weight fast? And initially people's response is, Oh yeah, I want to do, I want to get results as quick as possible.

I'm like, okay, cool. But do you want to maintain it? Cause that's what's, I mean, that's, what's most important. Like, yeah, we can get you anything, you know, within reason in the short term, like, yeah, we can put you on a super extreme diet and we can push you really, really hard in the gym. But is that sustainable? Probably not. How about we do something that will probably actually end up delivering the same results over time. It's just going to take a little bit longer, but at that point we'll be able to maintain it because it's sustainable. Yeah. Do they ever say, do they ever say, yeah, I want both.

I just want it quick and I want it, I want it to stay there. Well, what's interesting is most of the time, I think the answer that they want to give is they want it both. They want it quick, sustainable. Oh, and goals. Oh, I want to build muscle. I want to lose fat. And I also want to be super strong. So that's, that's the true answer for everybody. But as a coach, you have to, okay, say, all right, of course that's what we all want, but what's most important. And a lot of times it's just asking the right questions and trying to see like, you know, it's cliche to say, oh, what's their why, but trying to figure out like what's, because sometimes it's really like the, the, the question I get a lot is people will come to me and they'll say, well, I don't know if I should gain muscle or lose fat.

And a lot of times I'll shift them to initially they're like, wow, I don't know if I want to gain, gain muscle or lose fat, but I'm leaning towards, you know, losing fat and I'll, and they'll be surprised. I'm actually saying, I'll say initially that I think we should focus on building muscle because a lot of times they don't really have a lot of muscle to begin with. And I'm, I'll try to explain that. I'm like the idea that you have in your head of your physique that you ultimately want, it seems like you need to lose fat for it. But if we lost fat, you wouldn't have the physique that's in your head because you don't have the muscle to have that physique.

We can get you lean, but then you would, you'd feel like you needed muscle. So oftentimes it's better to just initially say, Hey, let's focus on gaining muscle, get you in a caloric surplus, build some consistency, invest in your long-term physique. And then once we do that for an extended period of time, then we can do a dedicated fat loss phase. Nice. It's a, I'm always interested in people's initial conversation with a, with a client. And, uh, we, we have the same thing with people in pain, but it's, it's, it's, is cliche to say, you know, their why. And, you know, do you want, it's always, do you want to play with your kids?

You know? And so, yeah, yeah. But it's, it's, uh, it's a little bit more nuanced. I think when you get into the conversation with it, you know, but yeah, interesting. I guess never thought of it that way. And I think, I think, uh, we should probably get on the route then of, of why not just a lot of muscle and strong then is that, is that not something doable for me? Well, for most people, initially you can gain muscle in, in strength at the same time. And the, the term power building gets thrown around a lot. And it's, it's something that I actually like to talk about because a lot of times when people think that, Oh, I'm going to start lifting weights, what do they say?

They're going to gain strength and, and size, which again, the two things go hand in hand, but not entirely hand in hand. And the training that we do to optimize muscle building is a little bit different than the training that we do to optimize strength and strength really has two main ways. You have two main ways to get stronger. One, you build more muscle. That's more potential strength. So getting bigger allows you the potential to get stronger, but strength is very specific. It's a specific skill. So in order to, and with training, we're talking like maximal strength. So, I mean, there's, there's other ways to define strength, but to make it a lot of to make it easy, maximal strength.

So in terms of lifting weights, how much you can lift for one rep, the more specific our training is to that, meaning the closer we train to doing heavy one rep, the better we're going to get. So for training for strength, a lot of times you want to be in those lower rep ranges and the lower rep ranges, meaning higher intensities, higher intensities, meaning closer to your one rep max. That's what training for, for strength is now for bodybuilding or hypertrophy training for building muscle. We just have, we have way more options because we can build muscle at relatively lower reps, five or six reps, all the way up to 30, 40 reps even.

And of course, probably the, the accumulate the most volume, you probably want to be somewhere in that like six to 12 range, but there's a wide range of possibilities for strength. It's pretty much like, Hey, if you want to get stronger, like maximally stronger, you got to train pretty close to your top end range strength. Yeah. The, there's, there's a couple of times where I kind of narrowed down the questioning to people with, uh, uh, cause we will ask them what their goals are too. And, you know, and, uh, when they say strong, um, I say, do you really want to lift something heavy? And then, no, I just, I just want to feel able, like basically physically capable.

Um, and I'm like, how much do you want to lift? I don't know, a hundred pounds, you know, nothing bit, nothing really big. And so I think sometimes the, the word strength goes synonymous with able or capable or being able to not fall apart, you know? So I think it can go various different ways. We, we find it a lot of times when we're trying to work with people with back issues, we're trying to work on core endurance and we keep saying endurance sometimes. And it's like easy cause they keep saying, they keep saying strength. We keep saying endurance is like, you know what, who cares? Like we're just, just do the things we're saying, you know?

So I think the word we've thrown around quite a bit. I didn't say strength, endurance, cause that's a, that's another term too. Just say strength, endurance. You're right. But do I want to educate them more? That might be a long article, long article for that. Yeah, it definitely could be a long article. Well, look, I mean, when you say strength, it's a very, it's a vague term and we can go in a bunch of different directions when we talk about strength, because you can just, you can get stronger in any exercise, in any rep range. I mean, that is strength. I mean, so going, if you take a client and they say to you, Hey, I just want to feel strong and able, and I want to be able to go into the gym and be able to do a hundred pounds on the bar for my working sets.

And right now you do 70 pounds. It's like, okay, well, if you want to be able to do a hundred pounds for eight reps or something, let's just work on getting you stronger to be able to use that amount of weight for a rep. That's getting stronger too. So, yeah, like you said, there's a lot of different, a lot of ways to attack it. Yeah. I'm just personally curious with what kind of mic do you have? Because your mic sounds pretty good. It is a Yeti blue mic. Oh, you got the Yeti. Okay, good. Uh, I started with, I actually have a bunch of the other mics that, um, I actually have nicer mics in this one, but I just love this one cause it's super convenient and it's just the USB cord.

So I ended up using this one for 90% of my stuff. Although I have other mics. Yeah. I just like this one. It's super convenient. I started with a Yeti, uh, snowball and, uh, it didn't work well for max for some reason. And, um, I ended up going to, um, an XLR mic, which worked, it sounds much better, at least for what I came from. But every time I see somebody in one of these, like I said, there's one guy that, that, uh, he has a headset and little, I'm like, holy shit, you could do it laying down. Like your shit sound good. Like, I think I screwed up here. There's like an audio technica. I think that is the brand of, it's a pretty good headset.

I've been thinking about getting that one just because it's all in one and it'd probably be, cause I, I used to do the, the podcast standing up, but, um, I just kind of a pain in the ass getting my mic set up. So I think if I had a headset, I could do it standing up again. Is that a USB too? I don't think so. Yeah. That's the trouble getting the, the, the, the XLR is you got to get a mixer board or something like that. So, but yeah, your setup sounds better. You can do it out of a motor home actually, just like how you are. Yeah. So super easy. Yeah. You could do it anywhere. Totally could. Um, so I'm curious with, with your population set that, that you see with, um, what type of injuries do you guys encounter?

Because I think a lot of the listeners of this podcast are like, we have, we have strength coaches. We have a lot of, um, chiropractic students, PT students and so on. And, um, it's always interesting to see from a training point of view, what happens on, kind of like the, uh, I'd say the weight room floor, what kind of things are people talking about? Cause we only see them when they're actually very motivated to come in, uh, and when they want some more help. But every time I talk to a trainer or a coach or whatever, it's like, holy shit, like you've been talking to that person for six months and they, they haven't gotten, what was the pivot point?

You know, so I'm curious what, what injuries you talk to people about and what you hear a lot about. Yeah. Well, it kind of going from the head down, it's like shoulders are a big one, hips, knees, lower back. I'd say that we're probably the, the big ones and shoulders more in the power lifting world. Well, it's actually been bodybuilding to any, anyone who's pressing heavy weights. I mean, it's going to beat your shoulders up, lower back, pretty much everybody, anybody lifting weights, uh, hips and knees more, that's probably more in the, in the power lifting world, just because it's the amount of volume on, I mean, it's three power lifting is three lifts, squat bench and deadlift.

So once you start competing in power lifting, you just, the amount of volume you end up doing on squats and deadlifts gets pretty high. So your, your lower body ends up taking a beating with that, with the one thing with, with injuries and the benefit to, from a bodybuilding perspective is for building muscle, like almost like, almost like how I said, all rep ranges are available. All exercises are available to like, in terms of building muscle, like there's no one exercise you have to do. Like, you don't, you don't have to do a back squat. You don't have to do a deadlift. You don't have to do a bench press.

Like we can do, we can attack those muscles with a variety of exercises. So there's just more room to find movements that are safer for the individual from a, from a powerlifting standpoint. It's like, Hey, if you want to be a powerlifter, like you have to do some variation of the squat bench and deadlift. Like, yeah, we can play around with it a little bit, but I think that's what lends itself to a little bit more injury rate just because, Hey, at some point we have to squat, we have to bench, we have to deadlift. So, you know, we were kind of up against it if you're hurt. Yeah, that is a good point.

I guess I never thought of it that way with, uh, you'd have more, you have more variations, more modifications available. So then if you had someone just as a general population came in, they just said, I just want to, I just want to get in better shape. Where would you rather them lie kind of in like, would you rather them do, uh, the compound movements like your, like your powerlifting world, would you rather than do bodybuilding a little bit of, uh, um, you know, general fitness, like where would you kind of stick them in there? Yeah. Well, when someone comes kind of just a general population client looking to, to look in normally look better also means feel better too.

I mean, I'm, I'm always a fan of doing compound exercises just because they're the biggest bang for the buck and if you're healthy, if I have someone who's healthy and knows how to do the exercises and we'll definitely include them, but I'm also not dogmatic in the sense that, Oh, because I compete in powerlifting that every one of my clients has to squat bench and deadlifts go kind of going on what I just said. It's like, look, if your only goal is only goal is probably the wrong term. Cause I think everybody wants some form of performance too. Like, even if you're purely aesthetic base deep down, you want to also be able to perform a little bit.

Like you don't want to just look good and then not be able to lift any amount of weight. So, uh, but if someone's primary goal is to, to look good, then, you know, when we're doing a chest exercise, for example, if a bench press bothers your shoulder, then we won't do it. You know, we won't, we won't bench press. We'll use dumbbells, we'll use cables, we'll use machines, we'll do different angles. You know, with powerlifting, you can't necessarily do that. Yeah. Okay. Um, what would you like to talk about at this point? Cause we're, we're getting towards the tail end here. Yeah. What is, what is, uh, what's something I need?

I need to ask you. What, what is something that you need to ask me? Yeah. What's something that like, so for this, for this topic of, uh, sustainable habits, at least with, with lifters, I know, I know I'm grouping multiple different types of lifters together, but I think it's probably gonna be easiest for at least for the listenership. Cause we, we end up having people who are just like, I just want to do this. And they think they, they mean general fitness, but they kind of default to bodybuilding just because of the whole Arnold era. But, um, what is maybe a sustainable habit that, that we need to address that I have not thought about yet?

You're a good podcast host. You can riff on this. Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. Well, I always go back to consistency. It's like my thing because, and again, it's, it's not anything new. It's not like it's, you know, because I, I post on Instagram about consistency that I like came up with the concept. I mean, any good coach will tell you that, Hey, consistency is probably, if not most important right up there. So really it's like reverse engineering. Like how can we become more consistent with our training and with our diet? And a lot of times it's, you know, kind of going to actually back to the last question you asked me, if someone comes to me, a general population client, one of the things I should probably figure out is what they enjoy doing, you know?

So if they're, even if they tell you like, Oh, I'm, I'm, my only goal is really just to look better. But then after you work with them for a little bit, you recognize that, Hey, they're, they're kind of caught up on their numbers. Like they're enjoying pushing themselves to try to get stronger. Then from a coaching standpoint, you should recognize that and say, okay, well, this person likes training heavy. Like they are enjoying, like you can tell that they're getting like amped up for their heavy, you know, let's say you have a training week earlier in the week, the heavy part of the week. They're like more excited for that part than at the end of the week when it's maybe lighter and higher reps.

So you play into that. Like, okay, if you're enjoying the strength side of things, well, let's, let's do a little bit more strength work. Let's try to chase some numbers. Let's put a date on the calendar to maybe do a little testing to see where you're at, give you something to work towards. I think it's finding ways to be consistent, finding ways for people to enjoy the training and then nutrition is, I think, I mean, you've talked to, talk to 10 people, you'll probably get at least eight different answers of what proper nutrition is. You know, uh, I think the, the, the big, the big principles are what's more important than the individual methods.

When you talk about principles and methods, a lot of diets are, are just methods, you know, their names, their names, you go to a bookstore and look around, it's, you know, this name diet, that name's diet. And usually why they end up failing is kind of what we talked about earlier is they're just, they're hard to be consistent with for the longterm. Like people can lose some weight in the short term, follow it for 30 days or something. But then what happens after the 30 days, they go completely back to what they were before. I tend to be someone who promotes a more flexible approach to nutrition, but even a flexible approach, meaning I'm not so strict on food selection for the most part, as long as within reason we're hitting our calorie and macronutrient goals, but even that isn't very flexible to someone who's never done anything with their nutrition before.

So for somebody who's really never had any type of nutrition intervention before, it might be, Hey, let's make sure you're having protein three times a day, three, four times a day. You're going to have, have to consume protein. Like that's, that's goal one. You do that, do that for a couple of weeks and then we can look to go beyond. And then also, I just think having some structure in place is good too. That's why I write books for beginners because I feel like a lot of beginners need structure. They need a training program to follow. They need basic nutrient nutrition principles to know, to look out for.

And then from there, once you, and once you master the beginner principles, like it's surprising at how far that can take you alone. I think everyone wants to be in a race to be quote advanced when most people never really even become advanced because they never mastered the basics to even allow themselves to go beyond that. Yeah. So did you make up the titles for the books or did, were you proposed by the publisher? So, so yeah, that was, it was, um, probably like a collaborative effort, but the, the, the exact names was definitely from the, the, the publisher, but I wanted to make beginner books and that's how we came about.

So that's actually, that was, that was, that was, that was actual, that was the actual question actually. Um, mainly did you want to write it for beginners or intermediate because, because you train a lot of intermediate as, as online, but why, why the beginners, why do you want to start there? Yeah. Cause I actually don't really work with any beginners, like actual coaching clients. I don't really work with any beginners. Um, I mean that might have to do with that. I work online, like maybe beginners. And I think a lot of beginners probably maybe just don't are a hundred percent aware of what online training is.

Uh, so I recognize like, Hey, I've worked with mostly intermediate. There's a whole group of people that I don't, I don't work with. So that's why I wanted to go to the beginner route. Like, Hey, this is like the gateway to them finding me. But then also, Hey, I have a lot of good information that a group of people aren't getting because they don't know who I am. Did you put it on the bottom shelf to teach them to squat deep or to catch them when they're four? No, that was, I had a, I wanted to contact someone with target cause that was ridiculous. You know, I'm all excited. And I'm like, man, target just put my book in, in, um, like almost every single target location in the country.

That's as awesome. I gotta go find it. And then I walk over to the book section of target. I'm like, well, where the hell is it? Oh, it's at the bottom. Like all the way at the bottom. Like, come on. Can we like move that up a couple or something? You should have just, you should have just grabbed them and physically moved them up. Just make a mission to go get your 10,000 steps over at each target. Get each target. I could have done that. Yeah. I actually should have done that. That should be a call to action to all clients. I want you to go to the local target and I want you to walk around, find the book and move it to the top shelf.

Yeah. Well, you know what? I think they just, they underestimated me. They're like, Hey, you know, this is a, that was my first book. Like that's his first book. We don't know who this guy is. We're going to give him a chance, but we're not going to put them in the prime real estate. We've got to put them at the bottom and we'll, we'll see if he can, if he can sell, if he can move some books from the bottom shelf, then, you know, maybe the next book will move them up one or something. Yeah. It was, it was actually on the end, it was on the end cap. So they did that for me. That's good. Do you get a, do you get like a, um, do you get a report of how many sell weekly?

Yep. Yes. We have a, we have a set up with the publishers pretty much every, especially during like the initial launches. So whether initial launch on Amazon or online, cause when it launches on Amazon launches everywhere online and then, um, like the retail side. So I get like every week, like a, like a email with all the numbers, all the data. Yeah. How'd you get together with a, it's a, you didn't self-publish you, you real publish, right? Publisher. Yep. That takes a lot of effort, I'm sure. Or a lot of contact. Yeah, it's, it's definitely, um, from like being completely transparent, like from a financial standpoint, like it probably, most people would probably be better off just doing self-publishing for the most part.

But I had, I had done that in the past. I had done eBooks and stuff, which I enjoyed, but I really wanted to, I really, actually, I really wanted to get a book mainstream. Like I wanted to get a book in Target. I wanted to get a book in Barnes and Noble. And I just, I mean, you can do that self-publishing, but it's incredibly hard. Like you have to crush it. Like it has to be like unbelievably successful. If you do a self-published book to get a, uh, a retailer to pick it up. Like, you know, so to me, I was like, okay, if I can get in with a publisher that already has those connections with, with retail, that's my best option.

Again, cause I was writing beginner books. That was kind of my idea. Like I wanted to write beginner books to reach people who aren't necessarily familiar with, with my content. If I wanted to write books for, for my audience and I wouldn't write. Beginner books. Like the beginner books probably wouldn't be the, the self-published book for me to get. If I went the self-published route with my books, the bodybuilding for beginners or strength training for beginners, it probably wouldn't have been successful enough with my audience to actually get into a store. So that's all right. So reach, reaching a new audience with the, uh, did, um, so are you, you're not obligated to then publish all of your material with that publisher.

Or you, you can still one off there if you wanted to, they don't own you. Um, they don't own me, but I think they have right of first refusal. Oh, really? Yeah. If any of within a year, uh, I think that's in the contract, I think within the next year. So when I published the book, so I actually just recently published strength training for beginners, which is my third book that just went for presale. Well, now I think I have the next year. So if I wanted to publish a book with a different publisher, I think they would have, uh, right of first refusal. Now that doesn't, that that's more of the traditional publishing route.

So I could still do a self-published book. Oh, okay. I don't own that. Okay. Yeah. Well, that may, that makes sense. Yeah. I was curious. Cause if, let's just say if, if they started flying off the shelf at, at target, you know, and they built, they built your name is kind of like, well, we built your name. So we own your material for a little bit, you know, just like five years. If you do a book, then we're going to have to publish it type of thing. Yeah. So I think that's kind of their, their, their safe way. There is that one year of everything. If I, I, if I had to, if I wanted to publish a book with a different publisher within the next year, they would have to, or they'd have the opportunity to buy it from me.

Yeah. But I think there's ways, there has to be ways around that though. I mean, cause I mean, I don't know, I'm not a lawyer, but it just seems like there would be ways around it. I'm sure there is. I know that, uh, yeah, it's, I think you did the right thing with like, if you were trying to reach a new market, just go to, you know, go to the place where they're at. Like, I don't think probably many people pick up a, pick up a intermediate or advanced book at target for that type of principle. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, another thing is, and this really hit home when it actually got it at target and was on the shelf because it was almost like it hit me.

I was like, okay, well, this is, this is what I wanted because when you look around, it was like right next to like a keto book and like, I don't know, some other book that probably didn't help anybody. I'm like, okay, this isn't what I wanted. Like I wanted to get a book out there that would actually help people, you know, like actually they had good information, like evidence-based information, but boiled down to easy to understand concepts. And it comes with a program. So it's like you get the book, you pay whatever it is, 15 bucks and you get a lot of boiled down information, 15 years of experience and you get a program at the end of it.

So you have some structure, you can follow it and follow it for 12 weeks and you actually see something, actually get something tangible out of it at the end. Yeah. Well, I'm sure the hardest thing as a, as a content creator is creating good content and then nobody sees it like rather just somebody see it at pennies on the dollar and then let it ride, you know, cause at least, at least then you're helping people versus just writing stuff for your own, you know, creativity. Yeah, well, absolutely. I mean, at the end of the day, it really comes down to like, if, if you're, you could be putting out the best content in the world and you could be the best coach in the world, but if no one knows about it, then for one, it's the same with fitness.

If, if someone's not seeing any results, then a lot of times their motivation, just even if they're the most motivated person in the world, but if they're not seeing any results, eventually that motivation is going to subside. Same thing with, with trainers or coaches. If you can be the best coach in the world, be super motivated. If you're not getting any clients or not getting any traction and no one's seeing your stuff, like eventually that motivation will, will lower at least like it's not going to stay elevated forever if you're not seeing any type of results. So to me, when I put out the books mainstream, it was really cool to see people who I could just tell were, would never consume, wouldn't be listening to my podcast.

Don't follow me on Instagram, but they sent me an email. They said, Hey, I found your book at target. It was awesome. I loved it. You know, now I'm following you on social media and you know, it's just, it's cool to see that. I was like, okay, well that's, that's what I wanted. Yeah. Nice. Congrats on those. Those are another, another hard to do. Um, I think your next book title should be, um, should be suns out buns out. That'd be great. I think that's probably the, a better title. Yeah. Or the tries for the guys. Yeah, that would work too. Those are the cosmetic muscles used to those ones. Well, cool.

Um, so I'm guessing everyone can find that at target, but Amazon too. Is that on Amazon? I'm sure they can go online. Oh yeah. Amazon. I mean, actually most books are sold on Amazon. Like it's, man, I, so I, I mentioned like I grew up loving reading books and reading everything I possibly could on, on training and nutrition. I used to go to Barnes and Nobles and like Walden books when they were at the mall and all those bookstores. I used to love going in and looking at the books, looking at the shelves and stuff. And it's just wild that, I mean, I have a big Barnes and Nobles near me, but you look around, there's just bookstores are, are few and far between like, especially like small or smaller bookstores are really hit hard.

And I can't even imagine now with whatever, everything going on with, with COVID that the small bookstores are probably hurting even, even more. I saw the data, but I think it's like 75% of books are bought on Amazon. So that's, that's the other thing too. I mean, you can self-publish with Amazon. They make it pretty easy, but you know, if you're trying to, trying to sell a book, two things. One, if you're trying to sell a book on Amazon and you are going self-published, you have to have some type of, of strategy. It's very hard to just pop a book on Amazon and say, here you go, like buy it. Like it just, there's so much competition.

You gotta have some type of strategy. And then two, if you're selling books on your own website, you also got to recognize that, yeah, you can sell self-published books on your own website. But again, most people buy books on Amazon. So you want to try to get your book on Amazon and then you also want to have a strategy to sell it on Amazon. Like that's probably the best way to ultimately sell a book, whether it's published or self-published. Yeah. And that's, and that's a whole different, that's a whole different podcast about how to, how to search engine optimization, Amazon, holy shit, ads on Amazon.

Yeah. It's, it's, yeah, it's, it's wild how, um, how well that works. Yeah. So how can everybody reach you? Yeah. So you guys can, if you listen to this podcast and you enjoy listening to podcasts, I have one called the absolute strength podcast. You can find that anywhere podcasts are found. You can find me on Instagram at hunt fitness, my website's kylehuntfitness.com. And we mentioned the books. I, like I said, I just have a new book coming out called strength training for beginners and that's available on Amazon. You can search strength training for beginners or search my name, Kyle Hunt fitness, and it'll come up.

I'll, I'll put some links in the end of the show notes too. Um, I don't know who actually, who actually looks at show notes by the way. I don't know. I always talk about show notes and so I actually don't look at the analytics on the show notes from the actual like podcast app. So like iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify and stuff like that. Like I haven't ever looked at the analytics, but I do, I mean, when I put them on my website, like I do get some clicks from that, but I don't know about the actual podcast analytics. Yeah, I, I, I used to transcribe all of them and, uh, it took a, it took a pretty penny to do it.

And then I, there was only one instant where, uh, I met somebody and then I said, oh yeah, I, I, um, I read that in your part. I'm like, you, you read, excuse me. Yeah. And he's like, yeah, I just, I just, I can read the transcription faster than you can speak. And, uh, I'm like, you're the only person who ever reads them. I'm going to apologize in advance because I'm not going to transcribe anymore. It's just not worth the money. You should have said, well, dude, you can, you can put the podcast on one. One and a half speed. Yeah. If you're that fast of a reader, just put it on one and a half speed.

Then you'll hear something like chipmunks. Yeah, you're right. We'll go done. We'll go deeper voice just in case people are going to start doing that. People. So, uh, I'm, I'm podcasting. Like one of the, it's funny. Uh, like I definitely don't have a radio voice. Like if you listen to people on a radio, like some, some like radio hosts, like they're like made for, for radio. But when I first put out my podcast, it was interesting to hear people say like, they hated my voice. Did they really? I never really thought about that before, but you're right. Like my voice, isn't that great. I don't know.

I, when I, when I, when I first heard yours, I, uh, your podcast, I, I thought that the audio was good and like, there's a deepness there's, there's both. Like, I believe that like, so I just recently got a used boat and I installed a subwoofer on it and my girlfriend's like, you don't need that. I'm like, yes, I do. You're only hearing half the music. And so, um, I remember at one time I listened to this podcast that it was, I wanted every last bit of information on this podcast. It was about coffee roasting and I listened to it on a plane. Their audio was absolute crap. There was so much trouble.

I shut it up. I couldn't hear it over the hum of the engine. So your audio is good. The voice is okay, but I didn't mind it. I can, I can hear, I can hear it. Derek, Derek really blends with you. So you're, you're okay there. Yeah. Well, I think quality is, is important because I, I mean, I, I've been in the same boat where it's like you're, you want to listen to a podcast. Like you really do. It's good information and you know, it's good information. You want to soak it all in, but you get 10 minutes in. And you're like, I just can't do it. Like I can't, it just sounds like you're, I don't know.

You're like recording it with like a 2001 iPhone or something. Yeah. I felt that way about Gilmore Girls. Gilmore Girls. Are you a Gilmore Girls fan? No, I'm just, I'm just fucking with you. I was, I had heard, I heard that one and I was going to, I had to ask you, did you watch, did you, uh, did you watch that in big bulk or did you go six sets of 10? Um, I just watched a lot. I don't know. Yeah. I did two sets of it though. Cause I watched it twice. Oh God. Thank God. The, uh, there is, there is a God in this world. I walked in and I saw, uh, Mike, Mike, uh, one of my buddies was watching, um, what was it called?

It's called new girl. And so, uh, I walk in, he's always watching new girl at one era lunchtime. I'm like, what the hell you want? He's like new girl. You didn't watch a new girl. He's like, you should watch it. You should watch it. You should love, you'll love it. I'm like, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna do it. What's that on? Uh, it was on, it's recorded. So it's on a, probably a Netflix or something like that. I'm not telling you to watch it. I've never seen it other than just in passing, but it reminded me of the Gilmore Girls. So I had to bring it up. Gilmore Girls was good. And everyone who tells you different, they're wrong.

Yeah. There was, what was that country one that was, uh, Nashville. Do you watch Nashville too? No. No, I'm sure. I actually, what's funny is I actually don't really watch much TV, but I did watch Gilmore Girls when I was younger and had to watch it again in my adulthood. I think we had a very different upbringing. I watched Mary with Children a lot. I've watched that too. Actually, my dad used to watch it and I would just catch it a little bit. Yeah. It's a, you couldn't do half that stuff anymore, but it's a, it was okay back then. Yeah. That was pretty funny. I only remember that he used to, he scored four touchdowns in one game in high school.

You know, um, it's funny that, and, uh, there was a couple of different references of, you know, like you just, when you, you're not only talking about like marketing to say, like make a part, like a character that's like personal. And so I, I, I don't like sharing a lot on like Instagram and Facebook. Like you won't see me doing much on there. Like I'll, but I thought of like, I should make it like identifiable character. Like everyone loves Kramer. They know when Kramer walks in the door, he's going to slide in and just get all crazy and shit. And you're going to, everyone knows Al Bundy for touchdowns at a single game, poke high, you know, um, just make, I was just going to make a character just only drinking whiskey, white fedora, you know, feather in it.

Very abrasive. Um, but yeah, you develop a character. People like that stuff. Al Bundy, everyone remembers him. Well, it actually, it's a good marketing strategy. I mean, especially when, so when I first started creating content, I did the articles, like I said, but then I also made a lot of YouTube videos back in the day. And, you know, since like I almost like created a persona, it was just, it was, it wasn't like it was different than me. It was just maybe like a heightened version of me. And then like, I would always do like little things, um, that people like would connect with, like they would remember, like, I don't know.

I'd always do like a thumbs up and that was like all we, I was just like stupid stuff like that. And people would like recognize it. And like the intro was, uh, like it was a graphic and then, uh, it wasn't even my voice, but someone who whispered hunt fitness, like as the intro was going on, seriously, that's exactly what it was. And I would be at like fitness events or like the Arnold classic or the Olympia and people would be like, I'm fitness. And they'd walk up behind you and whispered in your whisper. It was like weird. Uh, but yeah, so it's like little things like that. Cause people don't really, people remember little things, you know, they remember little things and they remember big things, but all the like mundane stuff they don't remember.

So if you do like the same shit all the time and it's just very, probably the same way with podcasts too, if you just are very, I don't know, it's just like everything is normal. Like, unless you have amazing content, people will probably forget it. But if you have like some type of thing that makes you different, people are probably more likely to remember it. Yeah. I totally agree. Like if you had, you know, three toes and a foot, you always showed that, you know, people would always remember you as that person. The three toed guy. Yeah. Um, on a recent YouTube video, I was like, I have a habit of just kind of like, if I don't have shoes on, I'll play with my toes a little bit.

And so the guy that there already had two comments that are new videos where they're like, stop playing with your toes. Just bother me. Probably sell those, those videos. I heard people like pictures and videos. I'll have to zoom in a little deeper. Zoom in, sell them, put it on your OnlyFans. OnlyFans. You know, you're the second person that brought that up this week. I didn't know what that meant. That's a, is that a, that's an account that is only, you have to pay to be part of it. Yep. I think so. I didn't know it existed. Yeah. Um, thank you. Exclusive content. Yeah. Just toe, toe touching.

Um, thanks for being on. Uh, this is fun. Yeah. Thanks for having me, man. Yeah. Thank you. Kyle. Thanks so much for being on. It was a pleasure being with you and speaking with you, getting to know you. I, everyone, I do listen to his podcast. It's one of the, I don't listen to a ton of podcasts, but his is one of the ones that I do, uh, jump in and out of. And, uh, it's, uh, always good conversation, good information, a good flow. And, uh, yeah, uh, Kyle, I forgot to tell you that actually you could, uh, I've heard you read some of the, uh, articles, uh, reading when you're actually on the podcast, you can totally, totally make a second job, go to the library and just read children's books.

You'll be fine in case that online training doesn't work out, you know, if anything in today's episode resonated with you, visit the link in your podcast player. There you'll find any free resource that we mentioned in the show, any guest links and a link for a free discovery call with us. We're licensed to work with our outdoor active people via telehealth across many states in the U S at this point. In fact, we cover almost half of the population in the U S and we add more states every year. Thanks for listening. Subscribe to the show and we'll see you in the next one.