Dr. Heather McKee, PhD Behavioral Scientist, on Habit Formation and Fitness Motivation

I call it the now what problem with wearables. I had my aura ring for six months and then it now lives in my drawer because you know I would read the data uh in the morning, I'd be like, okay, I slept like shit. My HRV seems kind of low, now what? And then no one knows what to do.

A dashboard is a mirror. Um, it only becomes a coach when it helps someone understand what to do next. And I think that's where AI is quite exciting in terms of its interaction with wearables because it is helping us interpret things a little bit better. Because we, you know, we talk a lot at my zone about a motivation compass because people are drowning in data, but they don't know what direction to go in. And I think ultimately the future of wearables, it isn't about better measurement, it's about better interpretation, it's about better timing.

Hey friends, today's episode is proudly brought to you by EGIM. The fitness industry is entering into an exciting new era. One filled with smarter technology and clearer paths to wellness. We are finally seeing the potential for deeper connections and more effective, data-driven wellness results for everyone involved. That's operators, trainers, and members alike. EGM is at the heart of this shift, building the ecosystem for health. By connecting their smart strength equipment to the entire fitness floor, members stay motivated and engaged. And with AI-generated training plans, trainers are free to focus on what matters most: building relationships with their clients. EGM is turning fitness into a measurable, repeatable, and actionable science. Now, what really excites me about eGym is that they are democratizing fitness. They are making gyms accessible to everyone. EGM is listening to what the market wants. With their newest longevity training program, operators are primed to meet the evolving needs of the modern gym goers. Their mission is simple shift the healthcare landscape from repair to proactive prevention. It's time for progress that actually counts. See how they do it at egym.com. That is eg ym.com. All right, here we go. Dr. Heather McKee, welcome to the future of fitness.

Thanks for having me, Eric. Delighted to be here.

I want to wave. Yeah, hello.

People can hear me waving.

Yeah. So you've uh you've been a PhD behavioral scientist now for 15 years, right? Very unique skill set. So I'm gonna I'm just gonna open up with a banger question here. What comes first, Heather? Motivation or action?

Yeah, great question. Do you know what?

This is such a good question, because you want to say theoretically, motivation, but actually in the real world, it's action. Because we often wait for motivation as though, you know, it's the fuel required to begin, but action itself can then create that loop, you know, the confidence, the positive feedback, the identity that actually make the action happen. The thing is, like people think that motivation, they think of motivation like a personality trait, you know, that it's something like we either have or we haven't got. Um, and that's just not true. You know, motivation fluctuates with sleep, stress, time, life circumstances, depending on how caffeinated you are on a given day. And the thing is, like, let if we think about this from an operator point of view, you know, if an experience in a gym or on a platform or for a wearable only works when someone feels highly motivated, then it's badly designed. Because the fastest route to motivation is make that first action really small, make it easy enough to complete. And then when someone starts, they kind of get the evidence that they're capable, they feel better, they've got success to build on. So I think we should stop asking kind of people or trying to inspire people and spend more time asking, like, how can we lower the threshold for the useful first action?

That's a great way to start. Because, you know, I as I was telling you prior recording, I've been in this industry a long time. And being nine years in the trenches as a coach and gym owner, you know, thousands of people uh I had the opportunity to work with. And uh we always think we're in the business of selling memberships, right? That but we're not. We're not. We're in a much more difficult business than people think. We're in the the the business of behavior change. That's what we do. Like as soon as a member starts, you know, signs on the dot line and signs that contract, that's when we get the opportunity to start the actual real work, right? Yes, sales is important, right? Cash flow is the the blood of this industry, right? Just like any other business. So, you know, when you look at like how this industry has positioned itself and where we put our time and energy, and through your particular viewpoint and and purview of like science, what are most of us getting wrong? Like how have we been misguided so far in how we approach our roles in in our communities?

Yeah, great question. Oh gosh, this is uh These are two questions. I know, I love it. I think the thing is motivation isn't irrelevant. It's just too unreliable and it's not the only drawway to action. So I just think for too long we've been trying to pressure people and change, motivate people and change, rely on discipline, rely on commitment, rely on all of these pieces. And that's actually just if we're relying on that, we're only going to be able to serve members in January because that's the only time they're gonna feel motivated and committed and disciplined. And I think the problem is that we always design for a member's future self. I was only talking with an operator about this today, about how even the questionnaires that we ask in the onboarding process or the questions that we ask are so biased because that person is coming in with that perfect vision of their future self. You know, that they're never gonna be tempted, that they're never gonna have a tired day, that they're never gonna struggle with childcare or work or any of these things. And like my message for operators is we need to stop designing, you know, for the members' best day. We need to design a useful version for the ordinary Tuesday when you're up against it with work or other commitments and your time is limited. Um, and I think we need to be a little bit more real world in how we approach like motivation and engagement as an industry. I think, you know, the quickest way to help someone feel like they're successful is just to give them a small win, is to show them like an acknowledge the effort that they've put in, and that will start people on that kind of on that trajectory towards success. But I think we just have to be a little bit more realistic. I think we need to talk about failure more. I need to, I think we need to talk about real-world action more, like even from the start. And people think that's going to be really demotivating for a member. But actually, the key thing here is one of the number one reasons why people don't commit long term is when they have a wobble, they feel shame and they feel like they've let you down, they feel like they've let themselves down, they feel like even if it's a digital platform, people still feel shame. They feel like they've let you know the platform down. And actually, that's one of the slippiest factors in terms of long-term change, and it makes them less likely to show up time and time again. So if we start talking about like it is so normal to fail, like I mean, I even asked us at an operator conference recently. I was like, how many of us have ever set up a habit, you know, in the last couple of years and have gone directly from A to B with no wobbles, you know, no stumbles along the way, no blips, nothing. And not a single person put up their hand. And, you know, these are fitness professionals, these are health professionals, these are people who are, you know, longevity professionals, all these people that are embedded in this field. You know, if if we can't get it right, then we can't expect any other human to get it right. You know, I'm a habit expert, I make mistakes, I fail all the time. And so we need to stop thinking that people can just move in this straight line from A to B and actually start accommodating these wobbles and actually realize that when people come to us, that's not their real-world selves, that's their kind of idealized future self that they're they're thinking of. And we need to, yes, harness that motivation. We don't want to demotive motivate them, but we also want to be realistic about what they can achieve once that's worn off.

Yeah. Wow, yeah. It makes so much sense, right? And I when you were talking, I was thinking about I've never been through uh alcoholics uh anonymous, but I know a lot of people have, right? And one of the things, you know, I think when they start, um, so I it's you know, secondhand experience through other people is that like they just tell you like you, you're you're gonna relapse. No, that's just gonna happen, right? And that's just okay. So call someone, right? It's like it's that I feel like, and there's I I don't know, like the more I learn about AA and like their whole thing, I'm like, there's so much we can learn about life. Yeah. It's broke gramp. Like it should be for everybody. So yeah, it's it's really interesting you say that because I I do think, you know, one of the I look back on my career too, and one of the regrets I have, not a regret because I don't regret anything, but I I was a learning was these six-week challenges, right, were like that was it was like an it was it was so tempting as an operator because it was like instant cash flow. Like, right, you know you could sign people up for a six-week transformation, throw a bunch of discipline and hard work at them in six weeks.

Yeah.

But I knew like if I signed up 50 people and I have followed them, like, you know, six months later, I retained 4% of those people. And it in the long term, it really damaged the business. Like I had to recover from it. And then I think about other times when I had a client where I started so small. I'm like, hey, just walk into the gym. This guy had you know 200 pounds to lose. Just walk into the gym tomorrow and bring a gallon of water. That was it. What did we do? We just sat and talked, you got on the road for like five, 10 minutes, and the next day, okay, let's step up. So there's like these different things. And I'm just wondering, like, first of all, what is your take on challenges? Like, does that psychologically make any sense? Right.

Yeah.

And then we'll get into the other stuff.

Yeah, I think the challenges thing is really interesting because it's something that we uh took. I took, I spent a lot of time talking with the CTO of My Zone about these kind of things because challenges work really well for those that are already motivated or already quite competent. So they kind of know what they're doing. Um, and it's important that we match people's competency. So competency is your confidence and your ability to actually be able to execute or master a particular task. And it's really important in the fitness world from a psych psychological point of view, because it's what makes you feel successful. And that's what we want our clients to know our members to feel. We want them to feel successful. But the problem is that most of the people that are walking into a gym are are well, depending on your facility, but they're not going to be that highly competent. And so actually, you know, bringing them in and giving them a challenge straight away. Like the challenge, like you, you know, rightly pointed out, Eric, is actually getting to the gym. Like that's the big challenge. Um, I used to work with people with uh chronic conditions, and I remember the people with lung conditions talking about, you know, the journey to even just get to the session, to get to their uh rehab sessions, you know, that they had to go and get in the bus and they had to walk from the other end of car park. And these are people that their breathing is so compromised. So by the time they got to you, it was almost like a workout in itself, and they had to cognitively navigate all of these other things that were going on. And so an appreciation for the fact that people are starting at different levels, I think is really important. There is also an element in the science called affect, and so it's actually about enjoyment of exercise or your perception of the difficulty of exercise. And so, if we're starting people out with really high intensity and difficult exercise, often actually that can make them feel less competent, it can make them l feel less in control. Yes, we might think, oh, well, this is great because you know, this is kind of correlated with long-term weight loss, and that's what a lot of people come and they want to show up for. But actually, long term, that's not effective. And actually, it's the exercise that people enjoy and the exercise that people feel a sense of progress and a sense of mastery that actually they're going to engage with more and more. And so we need to be a little bit cognizant of the fact that we need to affect match. And there's um a brilliant researcher on this, and I won't spell his name, but his second name is called Eki Kakis. And he's written a lot of papers around this and how we actually need to stage match people based on their level of competence and actually that if they don't feel competent something, they won't enjoy it, therefore they won't continue to engage with it, therefore they won't come back. And so it's not a one size fits all model, unfortunately. But we need to be really aware of what baseline people are working from. And then, you know, a typical person comes into the gym, they have their induction, they scan the gym floor, they look for like the most punishing machine, you know, they look for the assault bike or the stairmaster because they think because it's the hardest thing to do, it's gonna give them the biggest gains. But actually, over time, because it's so hard, it just feels so out of their capability wheelhouse. Unless, say, you know, they're someone who actually just thrives on a really big challenge, which is a little bit more rare than it is common, and they're just not gonna enjoy it over time, and it's just not gonna lead to long-term change. And so we need to kind of strip things back and actually be really careful that we're actually stage matching people and intensity matching people when they come into a facility as well, because that's just gonna make the journey so much more enjoyable and so much more sticky for them.

Maybe explain that a little bit because like stage matching and what was it uh what was the other word you use matching? Competence matching, like what I those are new to me. Maybe explain what those mean, why they're relevant in this in this context.

Yeah, so competence is like I say, it's your confidence in your ability to actually engage with something. And the reason that it matters so much is because we need a sense of progress. Progress is like the fuel that keeps the behavior change fire lit. And so we need to feel, first of all, that we are at an adequate level of challenge that we're learning, but yet not too much that actually it's beyond our capabilities. And a lot of people will, in in terms of exercise, will have a previous history of kind of negative psychology of exercise. Maybe you know, they were pick lost in P class and sports and school, or they never really felt like they were good at ball sports, or all of these things. So a lot of people come in with these negative connotations already. So for those people, it's really important to give them simple tasks that they can feel really good at and they feel like they can master like almost immediately. The problem with challenges is it takes it brings people in at a level and then stretches them beyond that level. And whilst that works for people that actually can master things quickly, for the majority of people who don't, that doesn't necessarily work. And therefore they feel levels of shame, they feel disengagement, they feel like, oh, well, if I can't even get it right in the first six weeks, how am I going to actually be able to continue this? Or they think this is so far from my baseline that there's no way I'm gonna be able to consistently show up at this intensity over time. And they work at the time, these six weeks' challenges, because people's motivation is up here. But as we know from the literature, you know, motivation just starts to tank after six weeks. You know, by the time we get to 12, 14, 16 weeks, people's motivation have flatlined. And that is why we want to set people up with habits, because habit is low at the start because you haven't got that many repetitions, and it's repetitions that form habit. Um but by doing these simpler tasks, like you say, are just coming in, showing up, bringing your water bottle, let's have a look, let's see what you're enjoying, let's try a few things on, let's experiment. I love the word experiment because it allows people to fail easily. All of that is actually much more habit forming in the long run because it's taking a more long-term view. It's like, let's try out all of these things until you feel comfortable, what you feel competent at? What what's what are you willing to do right now? And the thing is, the more repetitions we can get people to do, and that's why we like to keep things really small, the more likely things are going to turn into a habit. And that's when habit takes over from motivation, and actually that's much more of a sustainable resource in terms of long-term change.

Yeah, excellent. Um, so you know, you're also, and you mentioned my zone. So you're the the motivation uh motivation science advisor, is that the correct term for my zone? Yeah. And I, you know, I interviewed Jay Worthy last year and I covered the legend. Yeah, he's he's fantastic. He's fantastic. It did like that. I mean, that episode performed so incredibly well. Like it blew my mind. Like I think it has like 70,000 views on on YouTube now, which uh which is very that's a big deal for me for the this guy. So obviously there's something to what he has says and and how he does it, but you know, and we we covered the the shift from you know what my zone was before to motivational technology and creating that category. And I think um, you know, technology is obviously pervasive in our lives now. So many people have wearables. Um you said something prior to recording that I wanted to touch on because I think it's really integral. It's like what role now does technology have in keeping people motivated? Like, how can it support what we're doing? Obviously, that's you're elbow deep in in working on that with with my zone. Because, you know, I think you said uh, you know, wearables haven't really solved the adherence problem, right? Like everyone gets a bunch of data. Like I have data from my garment, data from my uh my ring, I got data from my bed. You know, I get I get data everywhere, but it doesn't necessarily like make me more motivated. It just makes me feel good when I I got a good night's sleep or I got all my steps in, but it also makes me feel like shit when I got five hours of sleep, right? It makes it's like a compounding worsening effect. So uh yeah, talking about a technology, how can technology play now a role in in keeping our members and and just our community members more motivated and into the right habits?

Yeah, great reflections. I love that. So like I think wearables can support behavior, but a device is primarily a measurement tool. Adherence comes from like, you know, the whole system that kind of comes around the device. So, you know, if the information is timely, if it's understandable, if it's relatable, if it's meaningful, if it's connected to a feasible next step. When you're talking there, it makes me think of you know, my mom was having sleep troubles recently, and she was showing me like the dashboard of her wearable. And you know, she was she was just like, I just want to know what I need to do today to sleep better tomorrow, you know, and it was so overwhelming. You know, there were so many different metrics there. Um and you know, it's not like any of us, well, maybe some of us in our this community, but outside of this community, you know, the majority of our members of our clients of our users, they don't wake up thinking I want a more complex interpretation of my physiological readiness. They just want to know, like, listen, Eric, what am I gonna do today to feel good, to feel well? How am I gonna do 1% better than yesterday? You know, we need to be a little bit more nuanced when it comes to data because to be honest, like you'd almost need a statistics degree to back to be actually able to interpret some of these wearables data. I think it's really, really important that we actually start breaking things down. And at my zone, we've kind of got three steps where when it comes to data and how we think about things. So, where data is important is is where it makes it invisible visible. So it brings things to you, maybe that you wouldn't have previously appreciated or seen or been able to set up in a way at that time. Um, that interrupts your autopilot because after a while, when we keep getting numbers time and time again, there's a concept of psychological habituation, we just get used to them. It's like, you know, when you stick a post-it on your fridge and just say, you know, don't eat the cake or whatever's in there. Over time, just your ability to ignore it increases. And so what we want to do is make that invisible and the relevant visible because that interrupts our autopilot. And then we want to point clearly to the next step that the person wants to do. And so I think, like, you know, that's why I was really attracted to MySen in the first place, because it's an effort-based real-time approach. So you get that immediate data, but it's all completely relevant to you in that moment. It's not sending you anything else that you don't need to know, but it's just giving you real-time feedback that is exactly what you need. Um, and I think more generally, the way kind of I would think about wearables is like a dashboard is a mirror. Um, it only becomes a coach when it helps someone understand what to do next. And I think that's where AI is quite exciting in terms of its interaction with wearables, because it is helping us interpret things a little bit better. Because we, you know, we talk a lot at my zone about a motivation compass because people are drowning in data, but they don't know what direction to go in. You know, they've got all of this information, but it doesn't translate into implementation because it leads to cognitive overload, it leads to decision fatigue. And I think ultimately the future of wearables, it isn't about better measurement, it's about better interpretation, it's about better timing, and it's about better support and translation.

Hey friends, artificial intelligence is moving faster than most of us could keep up with. That's no secret. We can all feel it. The pressure to keep up is very, very real. And no, I'll get to that next week is not a strategy. So I am proud to say that our presenting sponsor is Perfect Gym. The people building tomorrow's infrastructure for gym and health club operators. I have sat down to talk to thousands of leaders across the fitness industry, and one theme keeps coming up the right tech can make or break your business. Perfect Gym isn't just another management system, they are part of the Sports Alliance Group that is Europe's leading fitness software company. It's now all in on the US market. So in the age of AI, Being data ready isn't just a buzzword. It is critical for survival. This, my friends, is the disruption we have been waiting for. Member management, billing, scheduling, reporting. One platform, zero duct tape. Single studio or multi-location franchise skills with you, zero growing pains, and their open API connects to over 50 technology and payment partners. No closed ecosystem, no getting boxed in, just better data, better decisions. PerfectGM is trusted by international fitness chains because they focus on what actually matters. That's operations, retention, and growth. The European market has spoken. Now it's America's turn. Check it out at us.perfectgim.com. Yes. I've uh I've been talking, I I call it the now what problem with wearables and just a lot of data that we feed consumers. Like for me, you know, I hope I'm educated enough where I realize what my data means, right? I work with Joel Jameson at Morpheus. I know like what HRV cycling means and what it means my recovery. And also know it's only a snapshot, right? But I think uh for most people to get all this data fed to them, and you hear this all the time. It's like, yeah, I had my aura ring for six months and then it now it lives in my drawer because you know, I would read the data uh in the morning, I'd be like, okay, I slept like shit, my HRV seems kind of low, now what?

Yeah.

And then no one knows what to do. And it's getting better, right? It's getting better, but that like that's still fundamentally the issue with it. And when you like, so maybe give an example.

It's just a like a heavy lift on on the individual, right? Because it means that you have to would interpret it to be motivated enough to start asking the right questions about it, or like you, you know, go off, get more information, learn from the experts, and then still realize actually this is, you know, only a snackshot in time kind of uh metric, and it's not actually giving me the full picture. And so there's too much of a lift on the individual. And so we need the technology to make our lives easier rather than more complex. And therefore, that's why when we give people data and metrics alone, it's not motivating, you know, it's not as engaging because it's putting too much onus on the individual. It's too much of a lift for them.

Yeah. You know, and I I hear this from um people have been in this industry for a long time, like founders of franchises, right, who were coaches and trainers and built the models from the ground up. They're like, Yeah, I have my aura for, you know, not picking on aura, I'm just saying like that you can insert any wearable.

Yeah. And by the way, I love wearables. I find them fascinating. Well, I think also equally frustrating at the same time as well. I'm like, because we could do so much more.

Yeah. I mean, like for you know, for me example, I'll give this and then I want I want to get some examples from you of how this MoTec works out in real life. But uh I've had, you know, be tracking wearables for like three years, and I know now that come November, uh, I live in northwest Montana, we don't get a lot of sunshine, the days get short, like it becomes a four or five month stress test on my body. Like no matter what I do, I'm never gonna get enough vitamin D.

Yeah.

Right. Even if I supplement, right? And I know that's gonna affect a lot of different things. So I have to do, I still, but to this day, I just know it's coming. I don't know what to do about it. I just know that, like, okay, this is you know, I'm gonna feel a little depressed going into December, right? Um, that's normal. Um, I'm gonna have to take extra vitamin D. I got myself a sunlamp, and then as soon as I can get some sun, go get it, right? The sun shines out for like 10 minutes during the day. I'm like outside, I'm like, oh, give me, give me, give me. So that's like even through that, it's like, okay, well, it's great. Now I'm just more now I'm anxious going into that period of time because I know that uh it's gonna stress my body. So I guess I could just move, but I don't want to do that either.

Yeah.

So I guess walk me through how you know, maybe even just like stories or anecdotes about how what you guys are doing with motivational technology is actually changing someone's behavior and creating better habits for them, moving into better health and fitness.

Yeah, good question.

And and yeah, uh besides moving back to California.

Yeah.

It's it's it's a tough one. And this is where actually like, you know, there's a kind of a bit of a backlash then with uh measurement because if it adds a layer of anxiety on to actually how we're operating day to day, if you know, self-awareness is power until it becomes disempowering and actually knowing too much inform uh having too much information can sometimes then become quite strangling for a lot of people are quite suffocating and they can't, you know, like for example, I was listening to a podcast with a couple of uh Irish rugby players the last day and they were talking about how you know drinking and going out with their friends has such a massive impact on their HRV scores. And yet you could argue that actually being relaxed and being in a friendly environment, and yes, of course, we all know that alcohol does have a massive impact on your physiology, but does the social elements outweigh that? And you know, are we starting to construct ourselves in these kind of isolated lab-based lives where you know we're not allowing anything that's going to actually negatively affect us in? And actually, long term that's really bad in terms of resilience, yes, and actually doesn't develop resilience or stress resilience or physiological resilience. And actually, you need a little bit of stress and a little bit of, you know, for example, you know, studies that show that people who are alcohol-free, when they have alcohol, they find it really hard to process. Again, I'm not promoting alcohol because it has, you know, a hugely negative effects on our physiology, but because they're alcohol-free, they don't have that resilience that potentially other people that drink in moderation do. Um, and it's the same with a whole host of physiological variables. And I think that's where we have to be a little bit careful. And I would include myself in that, in that group of people, like, you know, that we don't let actually, oh, I'm gonna miss my, you know, my sleep window tonight because I'm staying up and chatting with a friend, because actually that is well-being too. You know, being socially connected is actually probably one of the most important things for our entire well-being. And being less anxious about those smaller bits is also, you know, one of the thing, key metrics that actually lead to, you know, long-term well-being and wellness. And so, you know, I think that's one of the kind of dark sides of the technology is actually like that it can actually negatively affect us in that way. And we become, you know, I suppose overanalyzers or over-anxious about these various things. Uh sorry, that was a side note and a rant, but uh No, no, it's it's great.

And I mean, and to to your point, I've I've always been very cautious about this no, it's not about alcohol, right? Um it's about uh I've always been very cognizant or or aware that this no alcohol thing, there is a lot of value to me. Like going out and having a couple beers with friends or meeting new people. Like it's it's this reduction of this, you know, it if you're especially if you're hanging out with new people, like a couple drinks smooths things out, allows you to open up. Like it's just it's it's a lubricant, right, for a lot of different things. And I worry about people who just, well, now we're just too focused on health. I don't drink. I my HRV is improving. It's like it feels like it's too hard to maintain all that in a social setting because you miss out on things.

Yeah, um, I also agree that like everything in moderation, including moderation and and like all of the behavior change and the habit studies show that as well. If you're so fearful about kind of, you know, maybe overeating sugar or yeah, like having a drink or two, it becomes another anxiety in your life. We're not getting the perfect sleep score or any of those things. And it all negatively affects your health. And so, you know, we we can look if we if we've got that mindset and that's just how we're programmed, we can look at these things as resilience tests. You know, can I bounce back from this well? What are the things I can do the next day that will make me feel good again? You know, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. And I think that's where people tend to go wrong with this. And they're trying to over-index and trying to overly control each of the individual variables. And actually, all of the habit research says that having a certain level of flexibility in your habits is actually going to lead to long-term better well-being, better success, better adherence, because you you're not living within a rigid regime that you've created for yourself, you actually feel quite free in your habits, and when you feel that level of freedom, that can really then lead to that long-term change. But back to your original question on MoTech. And I'll just I'll explain slightly what we mean by MoTec. So for anyone who hasn't heard that episode with Jay, so it's the kind of shift from using technology mainly to record behavior towards designing technology that helps people choose, feel capable, and stay connected when through the behavior that they wish to pursue. And a lot of what we do at MyZone is incorporate a theory called um self-determination theory. And stay with me because this is the science part, but it's actually quite important. Um, self-determination theory is one of the most studied theories in exercise, health psychology, management psychology, organizational psychology, motivation. Um it's got over 40 years of research. And basically it's built on this premise that if you are self-determined, if you create this kind of level of intrinsic motivation, it's what I call sticky motivation, it's motivation that comes from you. You're much more likely to engage with something and consistently engage with that, repeatedly engage with that. So you're much more likely to develop long-term habits. And if anyone wants to know what intrinsic motivation is, intrinsic motivation is your, like Simon Sinnoh says it, it's your why. It's, you know, the why behind what you do, what why you do what you do. So, you know, my ideal question in an onboarding process for someone at the gym is what will come in here contribute to your life? So it takes away goals being a snapshot in time, it takes away those extrinsic motivators like weight on the scales, like, you know, how much everything costs, all of the metrics, all of the external numbers, you know, time and erase, amount lifted, all of those things. And it brings it back to what will this contribute to your life? Because once you can internalize something and actually see the benefit that you can get as an individual, there's a bit of an identity shift there. And when that identity shift happens, that's the real stickiness. So the key question is beyond that question alone, how do we promote it? And there's three elements that help you promote it. So they're called the basic needs. And every human needs these to feel motivated in whatever they do, whether it's, you know, motivated in a relationship, motivated in your workplace, motivated to move, whatever it happens to be. So they need to feel autonomous. So they need to feel like they have choice, they have ownership. So they're not being told what to do. They feel like it can come from them. Um they need to feel competent, like we talked about competency earlier. So they need to feel capable, they need to feel a sense of progress, a sense of mastery. Even top elite uh-level athletes need to feel this level of competence, this level of challenge that matches where they're at right now. And then the final piece is relatedness. So do they feel supported? Do they feel seen? Do they feel part of something bigger than themselves? And those factors combined are what lead to kind of long-term change. When we can nourish those needs, um, we're much more likely to actually have someone stick around. And so, you know, that's kind of part of what we're doing and what we're designing, definitely in the back end, in particular in you know, my zone, which is like, you know, does this feature help a user make a more personally relevant choice? Does it prep or does it pressure them towards what we want them to do? Does it make progress kind of achievable, especially for a beginner or maybe someone who's turning returning after laps? So, for example, you know, our streaks or our streak freezes, we're building in forgiveness into the program so that people, you know, can actually have real life happen and yet still return to their regular routine. And what's really important, especially actually in a gym context, is does that person feel seen supported or do they feel compared and ranked? And that's where I have a little bit of a problem with overly focusing on challenges and overly focusing on leaderboards because they only serve the highly motivated, they don't serve the average person and then those maybe that actually are struggling a little bit. So I'd say like MoTech, it's not just gamification, it's technology designed around the conditions that make people more willing and able to return. I'll give you a quick story. I actually, I don't know why I told this, and I'm telling it again now here, but at a conference recently, I'm gonna tell you there was an instructor when I was doing my PhD, there was this amazing instructor in the local leisure center that I used to go to, and it was a spin instructor, named Barry, and everyone was obsessed with them. Like they just actually loved his class. Like you would like, it's like waiting for Beyonce tickets when you were trying to sign up for his class, like just to get in. And there was always a few kind of bikes left for um because they did research studies with the university for people that were in like exercise schemes or were doing various research studies. And I remember one day there was a man there, it was a senior, he was a senior man, and he'd come in like flacks and a shirt because that was his, you know, his exercise gear. That was like all he had to wear. You know, everyone else is in their lycra and all of their bits, and he was just in, you know, he didn't have movement, like, you know, he didn't have athletes or he didn't have any of those things because it wasn't even on his radar. And I remember being so spending the whole class being so stressed about this man because he was like this color bee tree the entire time, like so red, panting, sweating, like just I was feeling like he must be chafing what he was wearing. And I remember at the end, you know, him struggling off the bike as well. And then he's you know, can remember the first time getting on their spin-off and on and off a spin bike. It's not a graceful process. And at the end, he kind of comes up to Barry and he says, Listen, mate, I don't think this is for me. And Barry turns to him and he doesn't say, like, just keep going, or you know, like just do it, or any of those things. He says, You didn't quit a single interval today. No matter what I threw at you, you just kept going. And that man was still there. Like six months later, when I was still there, a year later, he was now he was in lycra, thank God, by the end of it, not his slacks anymore. But it was because he had felt seen, he'd felt acknowledged, and the effort that he was engaging with, you know, that effort was rewarded. And I think that's where we see that identity shift in people when we use relatedness in the right way, when we help them see he's feel seen, feel acknowledged, feel like they've shown up. And I think that's a huge part of what MoTech is about. It's really kind of recognizing that effort in the moment for the individual.

Yeah, it's reframing, right? Yeah in many ways. Like he completely reframed that for that that man. And that that's really impressive. And it's like uh there's a book, Fat Loss Happens on Mondays. Do you know this one? It's co-authored by Dan John and Josh Hillis. It's excellent. You know, I I don't know if it's it came out years ago. I attended a seminar um probably like 12, 13 years ago. And a lot of it was like how, you know, like a lot of what you're talking about, but it's very human-centric, it's very coach one-on-one, like, you know, building this relationship. And instead of telling people what to do, be give them an option. It's like, hey, here's four things that we can work on for the next two weeks. Which one do you like? Right. And then they're opting in. They're like, I want that one. It's their decision, it's it's more intrinsic, right? And then like when you revisit these things, you look at like, okay, well, let's talk about like what went well here. Like, how did you progress? And, you know, even if they're like, well, nothing went well, I'm like, well, great, well, you're still here, right? So it's like you kind of reframe them, helping them do it. And I guess the question I have with with all this technology, like everything you're talking about is very human.

Right?

It takes a good coach, it takes a good trainer, it takes someone to help someone see this. So, how does technology come into play and help it scale, try to create more of those moments? Or like, or is there certain things that you think, you know, technology can go all the way without a human touch point, you know, in certain cases? Like, how how do those two things work together? I guess is what I'm asking.

Yeah, no, and good question. Um like, well, I think that ideally, like if I was gonna be, you know, have my cake and eat it, it like the digital tech works in line with a larger ecosystem of sport. So I I went to one of our uh gyms here in Ireland recently, it's called West Park Fitness, and shout out to Kevin Doyle, who's the operator there, and he's just the most incredible man. And they have just really adherent members, like really, really adherent members. And I'm I was curious about kind of getting under the hood of it and understanding a little bit more about why. And it's because the tech sits in this larger ecosystem. So not only is you know the tech becoming and will be over the next few months and yours more aligned, and by the tech, I mean my zone specifically is what they use at this facility, it's gonna become more embedded with that behavioral science, like I said, in terms of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. They then have the staff supporting. So they they have and they have trained everyone from the hygiene staff that are on four-hour contracts all the way up to like the most senior operators in in the gym. They all know about my zone, they all know what it does, but they also know how to support someone in terms of creating exercise habits. And it's just fascinating because smallest things, like there's prompts, there's nudges as you come in the door, there's like kind of community competitions, and it's not the person that receives the highest score, it's the person that's actually most consistent in in regards to their baseline. They have classes where people help where the coat, like the coaches, the trainers help people interpret questions like, oh, well, why is my it's harder for me to actually get more points from higher heart rates now, and you know, it's because they're getting fitter, but they actually get that explanation in real life. The staff always kind of take a photo at the end of each class and share it back and and and comment on, you know, who really put in a great effort that day. And so it's not just the technology, but it's all the things that happen afterwards. And you know, I was talking to one of the members and she said, Oh, yeah, every Thursday we go for coffee afterwards. We all compare our MEPs. And if for anyone, there's no MFs or MyZone effort points. So it's just like the points that you got based on your heart rate effort during that class or during that um movement session. Um, and it becomes a social thing. She's like, we could just talk about my zone the entire time, you know, like, and then that fills the conversation, but they show up time and time again because they feel part of something, but it's not just the tech alone. Yes, the tech can be really sticky, but it's reinforced by the coaches, it's reinforced by the cleaners, it's reinforced by the prompts in the environment, it's reinforced by the other members. Like it's a whole ecosystem. And I think that's where tech needs to look at like how do we move beyond just being tech in isolation and how do we create more community, more relatedness, all of those pieces around what we do.

Yeah. No, it's it's a very worthwhile venture. And I, you know, it's one of the reasons uh other than I'm so bullish on our industry, specifically the gym and health club industry, moving into this whole age of AI. Like uh I was listening to some other podcast and you know, talking about where and I'm I'm somewhere in the middle between doomsday and uh utopia when it comes to AI. Like I think there's gonna be it's the speed of it that worries me. You know, it's the speed, like you know, if if jobs start, we've people start losing jobs, and you know, how fast can we keep up with that pace of change? Like we're not very good at keeping up with pace of change as a species. But but anyway, like we're talking about like, you know, digital, uh digitally created AI created music, which is really good. Like some of it's really good. But what is that gonna do? It's probably gonna drive people to go want to see live music done by an artist more often, right? And I'm starting, I think with our industry specifically, it's like people are really gonna want that in-person experience, you know, collectively, the community, the talking to a coach and a trainer. Like it's it, I think we're insulated in a very special way.

Yeah.

Which makes me super excited about it.

I sorry, I I'm to interrupt because I got really excited, but you said that. So I was at an operator conference um a few months ago. And I asked them, like, I was like, for you, for any of you in the audience who things are working well, like what is it that is getting people to come into your facility? And they were saying, like, oh, we used to have like, you know, person-free desks and like no receptionists, everything else. And they were like, that didn't work. We had to bring people back in. We needed to bring the human back in the loop. And many of them said actually setting up a co-working space in our gym facility brought people in, it created more of a community. It felt like a, you know, a excuse the pumper third space that people could go and actually connect with others, it felt more of a community. And actually, they were kind of almost like re-engineering what they had designed out of the processes before to actually bring back in that social element because the more our lives get dominated digitally, and we almost saw this in in COVID, the more we crave that real human connection and we need it actually. And again, it's such a massive pillar of our well being. And so, yeah, exactly right. Like, you know, that although like there might be kind of like a hard period while we kind of navigate the technology and understand where that fits. In the wider ecosystem of the gym operator culture. I think coming out the other side, those that focus on people, focus on the human connection, those are the people that are going to have the strongest retention, adherence, and the happiest memories.

Yeah. You know, um, and here's here's where I'm I'm in one particular area of what we do, I'm really excited about. I I think the coaches and trainers who really start to dive deep into this as a career path, start understanding the technologies available, you know, uh MoTech or, you know, like a lot of these member experience layers where we're tracking like what how people are doing, their nutrition. It's not, you know, some people are looking at as like uh, well, these are AI personal trainers. I'm like, no, every personal trainer should be using an AI personal trainer for their clients because that's going to take a lot of load off as far as like menial tasks like programming for for clients, or okay, you know, are are we integrating the wearable uh data for sleep? Um can we, you know, have them give a little bit of surveys or things like that that are kind of with them the other 23 hours.

Some people are more likely to disclose to an AI than a real human because they feel less shame and self-uh consciousness, self-awareness about it. So, you know, it can be useful in that way.

Yeah. Well, here's my message to anybody who's developing an AI personal training app, right? Anybody who's in this industry, let's reframe it. Don't say that. Like, stop saying that we're replacing AI personal training. Start like focus on member experience. Like we are providing a layer of member experience that now can be leveraged by real people to improve the quality of what we we provide. Like that, that's like fundamentally, if people are listening, please like listen to that again. I think that's really critical because we don't want to replace, no one wants to replace personal training. People are like, well, there's not enough personal trainers out there in the world, we don't have enough. Fair. But now the ones that are still around, right, can now start to make a really solid living because they can start working with not just a dozen, but a hundred, right? In a really quality way. And they can have real careers, right? They can do a lot of different things. And um, so anyway.

And it's almost like Eric When you're speaking to as well. That's like your trainer can only be there, you know, in that hourly session you have a week or that twice-weekly session or whatever. And this gives you the capability of having access to the trainer beyond that in the times when you're struggling, in the times when real life is happening, in the times when you're demotivated. And as long as we set things up in an intentional way where we're not just feeding people information, we're actually working with the individual. It's a two-way exchange, we're learning from them and we're again keeping their entire ecosystem in mind. So let's say there's someone who's on GLP1s, or there's someone who's going through a menopause, or there's someone who's trying to make a partner at the law firm, like we keep all of that in mind through the AI and make it personal in that way, you know, that is so supportive because in behavioral science, we're always looking for multiple touch points, you know, and the more touch points we can have, the more check-ins we can have, the more accountability that we can create, the more we can support that individual to create that long-term change. And if we can actually turn that, you know, one, two, three hours a week that you'd have at a trainer into 30 hours a week, you know, where you can actually tap into this information. I think that can be really exciting. As long as it's got those nuances around personalization and actually, you know, onboards the individual in the right way. I think that can be really exciting.

Yeah, and and not just that, like, you know, I think personal training is excellent, like being with someone, counting the reps, having that time with them. But maybe this can be more accessible, right? Because very few people can afford personal training. So maybe it's like all this member experience, um, you know, technology can lead into a 30-minute consultation that you have with one person every month, right? It's that human accountability. And then when you see them around the gym, like, you know, fist bump and like, hey, good to see you. And then, oh, I got to get back to you on that, right? It turns into like more of like a um a relationship-based thing versus like a transactional, you know, like I said, like meeting for a couple hours every week and you have a program, you count their reps, give them a pat on the back, good job, see you Thursday. Yeah. Like I think there's more we can do better. Um I think that's one of the promising parts of of where we're at with uh with technology now. But I don't know. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see how it rolls out.

It's exciting.

It is, it is. We'll see how it goes, right? We'll see how it goes. Um, I'm all in. So um Heather, last question I always ask people on the show is what do you uh what do you need help with right now? Like people in the industry are listening, you know, um, where can we assist you in your efforts and and your your role here?

Great question. I love that. I'm always pretty cheeky, you know, when there's like a QA at the end of a webinar, and I do a lot of webinars, I always ask some questions first so I can find out things. This is like my perfect question. I would want to know what's working well for people and why they think it is, because I think there's so many examples of what's not working, and we so tend to overly focus on that. And I'd like to know what is working and can we look at that? And how do we kind of 10x that and how do we understand the motivations behind that? And how do we understand, you know, what we're tapping into when that's happening? Because that's what I find fascinating. And we spend far too long kind of bashing the industry around, you know, lack of endurance and lack of motivation or whatever you want to call it. But, you know, I think the more case studies, the more examples that we have of what's going well, we can learn from that. And I think if we're open to sharing that, I think we can go a long way to improving the industry as a whole.

Awesome. Uh, where would you like people to connect with you?

Uh I'm LinkedIn all the way. I'm a big LinkedIn fan. So it's just Heather McKee, so M-C-K-E-E on LinkedIn.

Great. Well, we'll include all that. And yeah, you know, this is one of those ones I feel like I could just keep asking you questions for at least an hour or two more. Um, there's so much to uncover here. So thank you for the work you do. It's super interesting. I think um, you know, having a guiding voice in the space of behavioral science is really critical for industry. Cause like I said, at front, is like that that's really what we do. It's really the core of what we do. You know, we're not selling access to equipment, we're not selling, you know, uh training. We're we're selling behavior change and and and it's really important. So love the work. Thank you for joining me. It's been an absolute pleasure. Uh ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Heather McKee.

Thanks, sir.