(10) James FitzGerald - The Future of Competitive Fitness...and Life on Mars

Hey everybody, welcome back. It's Eric with the Future of Fitness Podcast and the Fitness Marketing Alliance. And this is episode number 10. 10. We're in double digits. We made it. So today we are conversing with James Fitzgerald from OPEX. So some background on James. First of all, he was a mentor of mine for several years. He was my coach and he's always been there to help me with business and life advice. And just an all-around great guy. He's also the very first CrossFit Games champion. So if you Google him, that's what you'll find. It's 2007, was when the CrossFit Games started. And that was in Aromas, California, right outside of Santa Cruz. He's the real deal. He went back to the games a few times and he's competed at the master's level, and he's always competing, and he's just embodies fitness. And in this discussion, we get into some rabbit holes. We we talk about the future as the podcast is aptly named. We talk about the future of competitive functional fitness, which right now absolutely could use some help and some organizations. So he threw some ideas of how he envisions that happening and his part that he is assuming responsibility to push that forward. And we also talk about the future of technology on health and what that's going to look like. And we also talk about the possibility of uh a million of us being on the planet Mars in 10 to 20 years. So tune in. This is a really great talk. It's very interesting. Every time I talk to GMs, I pull some nuggets away that uh I find insightful and mind-bending at the same time. So before we get into that, of course, we've got to talk about our sponsor because it is delicious. It is the busy bar. And it comes in double chocolate chip, peanut butter, cookie dough. Uh always a great snack to have on hand for us busy people who don't want to shove down some sugary treats uh just because it's convenient, because this one only has one gram of sugar. It's got the highest quality and pro quality protein available with grass-fed whey, and it's only six net carbs and nine grams of fiber. And if you go to busybar.co, b-us-y-b-ar-r.co, and you enter the promo code FMA10 as in Fitness Marketing Alliance10, you'll get 10% off every product, every order for the rest of time. And go to the website, check it out, try it out, and uh let me know what you think. So here we go. Episode number 10 with Jane Fitzgerald of OPEXFit.com. It's not every day that I get to interview a mentor of mine. So I'm sitting here at James Fitzgerald, also known as OPT. And uh James, I was just telling you, I I probably in preparation for this, I wrote out about 50 plus questions.

So we should quickly remind everyone we're not gonna do 50, just so that you don't lose people immediately.

So I did. I narrowed it down to about eight. I'm pretty proud of myself. But uh just a quick introduction on you, James, and because I think people should just Google you by now if they don't know who you are. But you are the inaugural 2007 CrossFit uh Games Champion. Um, you are the founder and director at OPEX, which is formerly known as OPT. You are a published researcher and contributor to many blogs and um other things, and and essentially I will call you a coach of coaches, if that's adequate. Yeah, for sure.

Cool.

Okay, good. Glad you'll take it. First question. Yeah describe OPEX. I walk around with OPEX t-shirts all the time. Yeah. People will ask me, and sometimes I stumble. So, how do you describe OPEX?

Yeah, for sure. Um, well, it's continuing to grow, so I I don't even think the answer to that is is uh really unpacked yet, to be completely honest. Um, but the answer to it is uh OPEX is a uh global fitness education company. Um and we provide as well um direct coaching online to people who are really serious about fitness. Awesome.

Nailed it. So I'm gonna ask you this in two different ways, but you you have a vast experience um in coaching. I mean, you um people will look at you and think, oh, he's pretty young, but he actually has a ton and you got started early, right? Over those years. Um how have you differentiated differentiated yourself as a coach?

Yeah, I didn't purposely think to. Um I just only recognized over time that I was slightly different, I guess, with others. Um, but I think the the one thing that I did all that time that caused the differentiation uh was my real sincere love for fitness and looking at it like as an athlete, as a person, their progression, the whole politics around it, the energy around it. It's all connected to my I think my love for personal improvement and uh and biology and physical education. I love all that, and I think that's why I just kind of stayed the route. And uh because I was consistent, I think I differentiated myself because I stayed on top of it and was in love with it the whole time.

Uh that brings me to actually a little bit of a tangent. So you you mentioned consistency. Is there anything that you do uh like that you've committed to on a day-to-day basis? You know, just maybe little habits or little things that you do daily that have made you successful?

Yeah, um I'm not sure that the habits have made me successful, but I think the consistency or rhythm does. And I think it just it becomes uh automatic, you know, and things that become automatic, then as you know, you can you can place more challenging things on an automatic system, right? So, you know, I have good rhythm and good consistency. Uh I propose people think about that as well for their day-to-day and all their practices. Um, but to get to the granular aspect of it, I have a lot of those habits, um, day-to-day practices. I'll be really quick and dirty with them. I have a habit when I wake up, I have uh rituals when I wake up, I have rituals of coming into work, I have a ritual before my workout, I have a morning workout ritual, I have a daily practices, business and coaching ritual, I have a going home ritual, I have a evening time family ritual, we have an evening time supper ritual, we have rituals before we go to bed, um, I have a sleeping ritual, and then just rinse and repeat over and over. It's awesome. So there's a lot of rituals. And I mean it's really not much more than that, man. Like it basically there's a lot in the business, like day-to-day stuff, but it's uh not that not much more to it.

Cool. Uh and and in the same lines, how have you differentiated yourself as a fitness entrepreneur on the business side?

On the business side, I didn't actually uh act upon trying to differentiate myself as that, to be honest. I fell into it with my, I just called it my love for fitness and just pushing. Um, but I did not, and that's what I teach everyone today is like I don't want a lot of people making the mistakes that I did, which is just like throwing all these things together and trying to do all this stuff and being like, eh, this worked really well, and this is why, and that's why we chose to just like stick to CCP and and remote coaching. Um and uh so I think I I think I fell into it. It wasn't uh wasn't a proposed differentiation for for fitness entrepreneurs. If you want me to add something to that um for people, if that's what you're trying to, is that what you're trying to drum from us so people can learn about like differentiation for fitness entrepreneurs?

Yeah, I think so. I think it's you know, the industry is you and I both know it's it's it's relatively young, right? And people are looking for ways to stand out from the crowd, whether it's a personal trainer, you know, working with kettlebells, or if it's a CrossFit affiliate owner, um, you know, a UFC gym or something like that. They're all looking for ways to differentiate. Um I'm always curious when I talk to people of your elk of how they've done it, or if they've you know consciously done it, or if it just kind of happened due to the path they found themselves on.

Yeah, and I think it might be the same answer that I didn't consciously do it, but I think what has created success in it is really knowing fitness. Like you gotta know why you're doing what you're doing. And I know that sounds cliche, but honestly, in the end, those are successful. Success meaning measured by decades, not by months, or Instagram likes, or just cash in bank and burnt out. Um, you know, uh, I think you really got to know the culture, you gotta know it, you gotta love it, and you gotta know why you're doing what you're doing. And I think that's what I always like was keen, very keen and sensitive to in my fitness entrepreneur life.

Yeah. I um one thing that's it's a curious topic for me personally is uh you know, we talk about fitness um and all these different things. Well, it just came out too ESPN came out with their fittest top 50 males and top 50, yeah. And I'm like, well, what definition of fitness are we going off of, obviously?

Right?

Um, there's a lot of different famous definitions of fitness. Uh yours, I have plastered on the back of one of my t-shirt somewhere. What what what is that one? And how did you how long did it take you to get there?

Uh to get to the definition? Yeah. Oh man, it's still not, it's still not done. Um, it'll probably get you know down down over time when I'm 75 will be like four words, right? Just like finally I got it, and then I'm out. I think when I get that definition, it's over, right? Um, which is kind of funny, but it's probably gonna be true. Uh so mine right now is really um it's a journey uh for people to understand understand and discover a lot about themselves for their reach for maximum potential.

I like that. So I'm totally off my my list of questions now. Now I'm just I'm I'm going at it because I was having a conversation with my business partner, Doug Holt, and he was asking me, uh, you know, who who are some of your mentors? And I mentioned you, and he said, Well, what's the biggest lesson that you think James taught you over those years? And for people listening, James was my coach for a better part of three years went through all those training courses. And that the answer I had was a deeper understanding of values and how that plays out into not only how I work with my clients, but my relationships and my relationship with myself, really, right? Being honest with myself and not judging myself. Can you maybe give us like it's a huge topic? No, it's a a snippet of of you educate people on that.

Yeah, no, well, I I felt it and I lived it, you know. So I I went through sport and pain and experience, and uh, I think you learn a lot through that. Like, you know, that's what the thing some we love, we loved about CrossFit, right? It's like whatever the medium was, it just allowed us to really test ourselves. So it allowed us to get uncomfortable and vulnerable. And at that, we had major life aha moments of like, so this is what you're really made of, and this is how you deal with stress, right? And this is how you deal with getting to a brick wall. You know, what are you gonna do? You're gonna create strategies to get better and eventually get over it? Are you patient? Like so much learning that's involved in that in that practice. And I just use a physical performance practice as an example, but I did it in business, it carried over to life, and so um really it came down to understanding, which is OPEX's you know guiding light today. We recognize that people can get inspired through fitness, and what happens is they get a real awakening or a consciousness that is increased through movement or practice of movement or discomfort in movement or whatever the case may be. You went through it and we propose to teach coaches and clients about that too. To sum it down into you know a couple of things that really back to your point on differentiating ourselves and why, although it's a broad topic, it's fairly simple. We create aha moments for people, and then we just allow them to fall and and nourish as needed after those aha moments, right? We just we just want to wake people up, you know, like just wake up, get get conscious, get present, become aware, and then you know, to be to make it simple, fitness is not that difficult, right? It's behaviors and rhythms and understanding and education, all those things is difficult. Um, and putting that into a business practice is even much more challenging. Um so um yeah, stream of consciousness to answer back to the big big broad question there.

Yeah, that's a big rabbit hole too. And uh I would say you actually that's I'm glad you brought that up because I think the aha moments are a big differentiator between I've done a lot of certifications, man. I've done a lot of weekend educational pieces in the world of fitness, but I think uh you guys may be, you know, not the only, but the ones who do it most significantly and really push it, you know.

Yeah, because we we f we really like we will believe, we mean it was it's our language, right? Get comfortable with uncomfortable. It sounds fairly simple, but you know, we want to, we don't just want to pat people on the back, right? We want it's my nature, so I want that to be enveloped in our business practice too, right? We do want to push people to critically think. If that pisses you off, you're better for it, I'm better for it, and and fitness is better for it. Why? Because it at least made you like step up and go, no, you're wrong. Okay, we'll present a proposing argument that's different to that. So now at least we've created some passion around debate of what we think is right, which is which is the whole that that's how you're gonna grow. You have you cannot grow by being stable and patted on the back. So, what are we gonna do when you come into life coaching like you did? We're not gonna be like, yeah, just think positive thoughts. No, it's gonna be like, you know what your issue is in not making changing lives in people? It's your fault. Your filters, your upbringing, the way that you notice things, the way you can't control your own consistencies, what you don't like about yourself as a coach. So that's very uncomfortable. Well, we don't skirt around that. Why? Because you're not gonna get growth in the end if you don't, if you don't hit that head on. So it's proposed that we, like you said, it's proposed that we push that, and we don't actually try to, but we just invoke those aha moments, and then you know, you're just a person that fell from the tree and knew how to like scramble and work his way out of it, you know. But a lot, a lot have some trouble with that.

Yeah. Yeah, that's that's interesting. And I, you know, for people who don't know you, um, you have no problem challenging people. And that's that's what I like. You know, and I appreciate you get a dialogue. If you don't that's it. That's it, right?

Right, yeah, because it's not about the challenge. That's what people need to see. It's not about the challenge, it's create. Let's really critically think together here now. Let's really critically think. So at the end of the conversation, I'm not like, uh-huh, see, you know, like I told you, at most times it's like, wasn't that awesome? Yeah, that was awesome. You know, we just raised our thinking up like what is our decision's gonna be made? How are we gonna decide upon that? What's the actions we're gonna take in order to make that happen? I think that's I think that's good. Awesome.

Uh so I want to talk about competitive functional fitness for a little bit because it's obviously been a huge part. I own the gym for nine years, and uh, you know, I saw it change a lot, you've seen it change even more. How do you think um I mean there's obviously some major shifts going on there, right? Yeah. What do you think is happening in the last few years? And what do you think? Do you have any projections of of what may take place in the next three to five?

Yeah, well, I have a little bit of an input on um a push towards govern governance and legitimization of the sport. So I will say that the goal is long-term for it to be a well-accepted, you know, um, connected to uh well-connect, well connected sport. And when people will look at it, they'll go, yeah, I know that as a sport. This is what they do in it, these are the skills you need to do, this is the long-term athlete development, this is how coaches make a life off it. These are the best coaches to see. This is where you do the sport, this is the Olympic program, da da da da da. And right now, none of that. Absolutely none of it. It's chaos because it's largely been based upon commercial interests for entertainment. Everyone has forgotten about the coach and athlete who actually participates in it. So everyone's just scrambling to get people in a gym for three days to get sponsors to sell cheap supplements, which sounds like a reverse psychology. What happened with bodybuilding, you know. So we we don't want it to go that way. We want it to go to a level of sport. The other future is what it's gonna look like. There'll be a clear delineation between what is sport and what is fitness. A very clear delineation. You're either in and you care about winning points, not reproducing, not getting healthy, you know, true sport participation, or you're over here going, fitness is a medium to help me live long and prosper. I want to lose some weight, I want my back pain to go away, right? So that will be the future, um, what it's gonna look like 2024. It'll be Olympic Games, you'll see an Olympic male and female champion, you'll see an Olympic uh team champions, um, and you'll see full development from NCAA, so you can see local NCAA programs of teams competing in functional fitness. You'll see worldwide world championships, you'll see national championships, you'll see sanctioning events, you'll see national and international centers where people can go and are fully funded in order to participate in the sport. You'll see a coaching education program as to how to coach people in the sport of fitness. That's where the future is going to go. Awesome.

Would you say there's a sport that's out there right now that hasn't uh some kind of organizational factor that you you would say, okay, this type of model will work for functional fitness?

Uh yes, there's actually a lot of them. You could you could pull a lot. Um we could use, especially I'll choose an uncomfortable one because um just to show you also some of the challenges that are going to be proposed to create that governance. So parkour had a storied history in terms of its uh, let's call it being a sport. They actually have competitions and they have you know organizations worldwide. And so with the popularity of that and being growing, and also the Olympic movement and all the issues that are proposed, as you know, with the Olympic movement and the Olympic championships and money loss and all the bad stuff that's you know, which is really 10%, but there is some bad shit that's involved in that, and red tape and politics and whatnot, you know, uh gymnastics saw this as an opportunity to look at parkour and say, hey, this is a well-developed, organized sport. We're gonna grab you and put you underneath our corner and involve you in our leg of the Olympic organization as part of the sport. Whereas parkour is like, no, we are a self-organized entity of a sport, and we don't want to be under your shoulder. So, what does uh gymnastics do? They get the biggest name in parkour, and you know, with good meal tickets and some good sponsorship, pulls them over and says that parkour is now part of underneath gymnastics, and there's a big, nasty legal battle going on as to who owns that. But I'll say back to your question, parkour had a really eloquent, well-structured, well-organized, legitimate way of increasing its governance and recognition as a sport. And so we would look at those as a parallel, not just because it was unsuccessful, but to see what is to come with some of the challenges proposed to create that governance. Uh, there's other ones you can look at, you know, I always tell the story. I used to train 13, 14-year-old young kids in Calgary, Alberta. They were just snowboarders and pot smokers, and you know, I've just making fun, but honestly, they were. They're just up on a hill, you know, missing school all week, and we were like, what are you doing with your life? And then four years later, they have a quarter million dollar contract to switch their board around three times a year after a competition. So the growth of the sport went through entertainment with the X games and then creating governance as to what is involved. It went under the right leg in terms of um, you know, winter sports, let's say, and now it's flourishing. Great development program, coaching program, yada yada yada. So it can happen fairly quick. Um, and we would look at, you know, that's just two. There's a number of other examples I've studied to kind of see exactly what are the mistakes and what are the positives to build it.

That's really interesting. I look forward to seeing how this whole thing unrolls too.

Yeah. Likewise.

What uh okay, here's a question that probably could last a half hour. How do you see technology taking a place in fitness and changing the fitness industry? And and if you are talking to Joe Fit Pro, right? Who's you know, a personal trainer or or something like that, where would you tell them to focus?

Yeah, well, uh to get to get real, I guess, because time, you know, to get really quick and dirty with it, um, I think the coach is probably gonna lose their job in the future. Um, I think that it's gonna be a self-imposed uh way of measuring and recognizing and doing and participating in fitness as to what it means, because although it this is a big mind shift, living for 80 years in 30 years is gonna be completely different. Your mindset on living for 80 years in 30 years will be completely different. Different. Okay. So let's let's just say a 2030, as an example, just to kind of make people really hold on here. We could have a million people leave this planet to go try to live somewhere else. Now, some people may you may lose people on this call right away, or you may see people that are actually looked at predictions and models of speed of technology and what the future holds and recognize holy shit, in 13 to 15 years, that actually may happen. No doubt. So, what's going to happen in fitness measurement? It's going to be very easy for you to. There'll be no phones in the future. You're just going to be able to say, hey, I want to talk to someone, because there'll be it embedded in the back of your head and your hand. Something will come up to say, listen, I want to measure my A1C morning cortisol levels, resting heart rate, how my sleep went, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There'll be so much scaled technology built into self-measurement, which is the way it's going today, obviously. The little Fitbit or whatever people wear will be like will be looked at the 1984 Mac, you know, for example, people will laugh at it. That's gonna happen in 10 years. We're gonna laugh like that. Not 30, 10 years. So in 2027, you're gonna be able to wake up and go, what's my A1C? What should I train today? How's my HRV? What should I eat? What's my recovery? An AI will tell you, oh, based upon your heart rate and all the predictive models we've seen from all the exercises that have been done from all these programs for all these years, because all it is is data mining by a computer, right? It'll just go bleep, this is what you should do today, you know? And then if you go off track, ironically, just to make humor of it, if you're like, ah, F that, I'm gonna do five rounds for time across the workout, you know, that little hologram's gonna come up. You've just lost two years of your life, young man, you know? It's gonna be a really, a really interesting play of you know, measurement, right? Because we're gonna be able to measure ourselves very fast. Um, and I won't even get into the discomfort of you know man and human and and the combination of where that sits, but we're going to have to mesh together on that. And I think it's gonna happen because there's massive infrastructure and capital right now being put into biotechnology. If you want to look at where the biggest investments are being placed right now, for the past 10 years has been biotech being one of the biggest ones, is because human measurement means cash for medicine and pharmaceutical. That's heavy. But you said you said we couldn't do 30 minutes, so I had to hit the hard stuff.

It has to look crazy. And for people who you know don't think like that is complete bullshit, right? Go go read some like Ray Kurzweil stuff, go read some of these authors that it's happening, it's happening right now. Pick up an iPhone.

What do you need to do? Like, this thing can tell me what to do for the rest of the day, you know. So give it 10 years, right? This is gone. It's embedded in your neck. You're like, I want to call Malzome. Hey buddy, what's up? I don't have the time. Okay, great, later. Yeah, call a grand.

So uh I have a question here because I think this is a big one. How um for you personally and for OPEX, and I always you know I always give you shit because I want to I want you to write a book, right? What legacy do you want to leave for yourself and for OPEX upon the fitness industry?

Uh yeah, for myself, I just thought about that this morning actually. I don't know what pinged it. Maybe it was a podcast I did yesterday. Um, but I think about those things all the time, uh, to be honest. Let's bring it down to a uh a very stoic philosophical root here now, after that previous manifestation of the future. Um that uh I I kind of have lost the feeling of leaving something. And now I have this feeling of like uh long-term just stepping away and not even being recognized that I've stepped away. If that if that gives any instigation of what legacy or what it me feels to me. Um, I think it's just I'm 43 and I'm still growing old and I can't speak like an 80-year-old, so I don't I don't propose to know what I'm gonna be thinking when I'm 80. Um, but I think I may just want to look back and just have a nice smirk of like, yeah, you know what, as OPEX is a name, we had a real good impact on fitness um as to how people define it, how it's delivered, and uh, you know, it made a big, big uh push on one of the one of the groups that were involved in in the name of fitness. That's what I'd like to see.

Awesome. Well, you're well on your way, James. What uh how do you think To dying? Yes, I am. Yeah, I'm well we are statistically halfway there.

Uh how do people get a hold of you? I get another 43, bro. I'll be happy. Um James at opexfit.com. You can email me, honestly. I don't mind. Um JFitsOPEX on Instagram. I'm on Facebook as well. And uh and uh OPEXFit.com. That's our website where we have you probably won't hit me unless you go through a bunch of different routes to go there, but um, that's where we have our uh options to be uh a coach um and get educated or to be a client with OPEX. And we can uh we got lots of free shit so that we can share information and get you in the funnel. And if you enjoy it, that's great. If not, unsubscribe and we'll see you on the other side.

Cool. Thanks, James. And I can personally test some people out there listening if you want to up your coaching game, go find OPEX. And uh, James, thank you for your time. Really appreciate it. I'm sure I'll be talking to you soon, man.

Yeah, of course.

Thanks, Eric. I'm good. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Future of Fitness podcast and webinar series. Uh, we're working really hard here to keep great content coming out, and we like to express our gratitude by offering you a free seven-day marketing crash course. So here's how you can claim it. If you go to fitnessmarketingalliance.com forward slash free gift f R E E G I F T, and you enter the promo code FITMARK F-I-T-M-A-R-K, you can claim it that way. The other way is you can text us. So you can text the phone number 805-619-5550, and you text the word Fitmark F-I-T-M-A-R-K. So thank you. Keep listening, go claim that offer. It's a ton of value. And if you ever want to get a hold of me, or if you have suggestions for guests, topics, or anything else, or if you just want to ask me questions, uh, I always respond. You can reach me at Eric E R I C at Fitness MarketingAlliance.com and keep listening. We have a lot more coming down the pipe, and uh we'll make sure that we're keeping the value great for you guys. And farewell till next time.