Focus on Quality in The New Digital Age - Fabio Zonin

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, where we talk with entrepreneurs, researchers, and practitioners in fitness, wellness, and the health sciences. I'd like to give a big thanks to our sponsors, Level 5 Mentors, helping entrepreneurs achieve the highest levels of freedom in time, money, relationships, health, and purpose. Also, Certified Course Creation, helping entrepreneurs create accredited online certifications that are not only lucrative but highly scalable. Go to level5mentors.com or certifiedcoursecreation.com and learn more. I am your host, Eric Malzone. And once again, welcome to the future of fitness. All right, and we're live. Fabio, welcome back. Hey. Hi.

It was great being here again for the second time.

Yeah. Yeah. I was uh God, I think it's been almost two years now since I've had you on the podcast. And uh, you know, it was probably about over those two years, I'm guessing it was kind of like a year and a half of kind of, you know, just continuing on the path. And then boom, COVID, right? Everything's changed really fast. So you've been involved in Strong First and in that community for a very long time. And I said it on the last podcast, I really admire the sense of purpose that that community has and and the professional and the discipline, you know, everything that goes into the strong first community, I think is really awesome. And I guess my my first question for you, Fabio, is you're in Italy, man. How how are things been over the last 90 days for you?

Here, thanks, God, things are getting way better every week. We know we were pretty much the first country who was hit really hard by COVID. And so the first one, we we alarmed the world. After Korea, it was Italy. And we got the world record of infections for like two months in a row, and of deaths also. Good thing is that, you know, so we didn't have experience in how to deal with infection. So basically, um good thing is that we went over it. We all pretty much complained about how our government, you know, set up some very strict rules with mass social distancing, lockdown, and so on. But right now I can say, well, thankful because that did work. It has been a necessary pain for everyone. I mean, I was not able to put my nose out of my home except for you know, grocery and um pharmacy and essential shopping for almost three months. And so that was not easy. And I'm lucky because I do have a quite big house with a yard and so on, but some people were stuck in their apartments, you know, had a heart event. But that paid off. I mean, right now we're country's open again. Of course, we do have social distancing, is everyone. We do have all the rules, the masks, and so on and so forth. But restaurants are open, gyms are open, facilities are open. You can have pretty much a regular life, just need to be more careful. And the infection ratio is really low right now. And so we're right now we're lucky compared to the rest of the world. So I just hope that whatever we did helped other countries in setting some, you know, some guidelines on how to deal with it. And I'm looking forward to see the rest of the world getting rid of the pandemic. We still don't know what's gonna happen in the future. The next few months, is it gonna come back in fall? Are we gonna get rid of it completely? We don't know. We have no idea. But for now, it's just be careful, follow the rules, and that's it.

Yeah, deal with it. Yeah, yeah, that's it. That is it, and just adapt as we go. And today's recording date uh for people listening is July 22nd because uh it's so critical to mark these dates because you know, three days from now we could have a completely new news cycle, right? Yeah. Within the organization of Strong First, you've been evolving and shifting as well. Give us give us some insights into some updates on that. How are you working at Strong First now?

Well, you know, Strong First as a um company that is based pretty much on live events, of course, had a hard time at the beginning because our events were first rescheduled and then rescheduled again, and then many were canceled. And so it was hard times at the very beginning. So we did have to struggle with that. As HQ, we were used to work from home, and uh because we're based, the HQ members are based pretty much all across the US and also out of the US. I'm one example. And so managing the company was just as before, but you know, managing the events that was not easy. So what we did, we um tried to increase our online presence with our you know online courses, and we shoot some new videos and some new online courses. We pushed those, and uh, we uh worked a lot on releasing new content, new articles, so to help giving our community tools and instruments and ideas on how to you know being able to stay strong at home and train home. And then, of course, we were able to um release our own branded kettlebells, especially in the US. It was in a time in which kettles were really hard to find, we were able to release some kettlebells, of course. Our first container arrived and was sold out within a couple of weeks because there was so much request. And so now we're waiting for a new order coming in. And also, what we did, we turned some of our in-person events into online events. Of course, that's a challenge for us because if we have some special events which are based on lectures, such as you know, Plant Strong, which I'm usually teaching, or uh Strong Endurance Second Will by Powell, this is something that is easily doable online. Uh for live events, our certifications, that's not an option. And so, however, you know, infection has been moving. So we were able to uh last month to have some live events again happening in um in Korea first. We had some live events in France. And so we're, you know, in the U in the US, we were able to have uh an event happening in Denver. We have one next week in Chicago. So we're we're of course with all the needed, you know, um all the needed actions for safety, so social distancing, wearing the masks, disinfections, and so on. So following all the rules, and of course, less people per event to in order to be able to ensure social distancing. But in some countries, we're able to run live events again. So that's what we hope we'll be able to do again. Of course, for the future, we will be diving deeper into uh online presence, uh, up to the point in which that is possible. Because uh, you know, for there are some things that work very well online, but there are some things such as you know, teaching and coaching people through a movement and teaching them how to teach and assessing the movement, unless until we have some 3D cameras that allow to project a hologram, a 3D hologram, it's not easy to uh to coach people with in-depth online. So we're going to increase our online presence, but our certifications, I think, will never become fully online events. What will probably happen is that we will turn them into smaller events with less people, so to be able to ensure social distancing. And it could be that we might have a master online leading them with some you know team leaders and seniors in person. But yeah, we'd need to uh while we explore online, we need to keep our live presence. You know, our live events are, in my opinion, a unique experience. I don't think any other company was was able to run in-person certifications the way we structure them. And that's our, you know, this is our gold standard. So we'd really love to be able to keep it. So hopefully we'll work around it.

We'll we'll find a way. Yeah, you guys will adapt. I mean, you are adapting. Uh Fabi, do you guys remind me about your organization or about the the strong first brand? You guys are are mostly purely educational. You don't have like strong first branded gyms or studios, or do you do you have that? We do have that.

We just started it, actually. It's a new project, and before we're able to develop that really well, we had the COVID. So, but it's something we're taking back in our hands, providing some new tools. So we do have the strongfer accredited gyms, which uh do need to have some specific requirements. So, of course, you need to have a certain number of strongfer-certified instructors there who run the business. Uh, you need to be focusing mostly on our system as far as for what you do in the gym. You need to have certain prerequisites, and um, you're listed on our websites and you have some promotion, you know, you have some, and pretty much is a way where is a manner to allow to help people finding our instructors and our gyms and being able to train according to a system. Of course, we reached uh a little more than 50 gyms, and then we got the lockdown. So uh right now, it's not easy to accredit new gyms at the moment, depending on the country in which uh you know gyms are based. Some gyms are having a hard time reopening, some of them due to the um limitations, they cannot have as many students in as they used to. Uh, some of them had a real hard time, and some are even you know considering closing down. So probably it'll take a few months before we'll be able to start promoting them and accrediting new gyms again through across the world. But in any case, if you go on a website and you take a look on under the uh find gym button, you'll see we have quite a few gyms worldwide. Of course, it's an expansion, but it's something, it's a new project. We're working on it.

You know, I'm curious to get some numbers on Strong First, too. Are you like how many certified coaches do you guys have out there? What what are what are some of the numbers you guys have as far as your community?

This is also interesting because things have changed quite a bit during COVID. We have about 4,000 plus instructors worldwide, and we are in over 50 countries right now.

Okay.

Um we did have the situation in which, as you know, our instructors are to recertify their skills every two years, and um, except for the elite. Elite instructors need to do it every three years. And to do so, you have uh a couple of options because we test your skill and your performance also. So you have the snatch test, you have the strength test, and so on. So you need to train for it. So the ways you can recertify is by assisting, being an assistant at one live event and get recertified there, or you can apply for a oh, if you wish, you can retake the search for a much lower price. Or you can apply for an uh online research, which pretty much you upload your the videos of your skills and one master will review your skills, provide feedback, and so on. Problem is that during lockdown, many people could not train. So, you know, if you need to pass your strength test for your SMG level two, let's say, and you need to press overhead with one hand a kettlebell, which is 50% of your body weight, uh, you need to train for that. And if you don't have access to a gym and all you have home is a pair of bands and a 16k kettlebell, it's a hard, it's that's hard to do. So we had to uh, you know, we gave extended deadlines for recitations. So we did have a little drop down in our instructors. We had no new, we didn't have any new certs, and we didn't have many could not recertify. So it's we're catching up back right now with people, you know, allowed, they're allowed to train again and are recertified and so on and so forth. So number is still average of 4,000 plus people across the world. Also, you need to understand that getting certified with us is not a walk in the park. You know that our standards requirements are pretty strict. And so, of course, it's you know, to get certified, you need to be committed. We're pretty happy with our numbers. Of course, we can and we will increase the numbers, but we will not go for quantity over quality. Our goal is always quality over quantity. So what we care about is that our instructors are great instructors, possibly the best instructors on the market, and that's our main goal. Then number comes after that.

My business partner, an old friend at the gym back in Santa Barbara was uh Traver Bohm. He was going through the certification and the snatch test man, he trained so hard. I think you get what, three attempts, is that right?

No, snatch test you got one. You got one at the cert. Uh right now it's the last day you do that. So you're pretty tired, but you know, but you have time to enhance your skills. And if you don't pass it on site, you have three months time to train for it, shoot a video of you doing it and send it to your team leader, which will assess and you can pass.

Yeah, he trained so hard for that man. I think he did he did eventually pass. Yeah, I just saw him. I've never I hadn't seen him so focused on one thing in a very long time. And uh yeah, it's not easy. It is not easy.

This is interesting. This is the reason for the snatch test. I always I've been asked so often, you know, what do you do the snatch test for? Is for strength endurance, to test people's conditioning, to see if they can keep good technique throughout five minutes of hard work. And the real answer is the reason for the snatch test and for the strength tests we have is prevent people we don't want from showing up at the search. Let me explain. It doesn't sound good the way I said it, but the idea is this we want to ensure the highest possible quality of instruction. So one thing that happens, at least here in Italy, I don't know about the rest of the world, but let me see if I can keep a comparison. Now, if you want to become a swimming instructor, so attend a course to become a swimming instructor, you need to be able to swim, correct? Right. But in and pro possibly you have been a swimmer for a long time now before you even think about becoming an instructor. In the fitness industry, there are people who never really trained or are not into fitness, and they just go to attend a course or an online event or an online certification and they want to become personal trainers or certified. This is what happens here in Italy. Again, I don't know about the US situation, the rest of the world situation, but you do get people who are not ready yet for themselves, they're not definitely not ready to teach others. So the idea for us, if you show up at the kettlebell certification or a barber certification, or body weight certification, you need to be already able to train with those tools and you need to be good at it. Good enough. So what you come to the certification for is basically two reasons. You're good, you want to become even better. And the second reason for that, you want to learn how to effectively and safely teach others those skills. So we don't want a new buy to show up at certification. We do have other, we have other products for them. We have the what the one-day courses, we have the online resources. This is where you you start. When you show up at the CERP, you need to be ready to become an instructor to teach others. So putting those, you know, little obstacles like the Snatch test, make sure that you are committed. You start training at least six months before, and when you show up at the CERP, you are physically, mentally, and as far as for the skills, you're ready. You're ready to take it, and so you can enjoy it and get the best out of it. If you know how to do things, you can improve and you can focus on how to teach things to others. You know, one of the things that we say, but is something I enforce really hard at the very beginning of the CERP, I explain, this is an instructor course. So we expect you to become great instructors. And I say, I always ask, what is the most important quality of a very good instructor? You know, and everybody comes up with a take, with an idea, and so on, great ideas. And usually what I say is, you know, to be a great instructor, you need to care. You need to care about others, you need to make sure your goal is not you, your goal is your student, which means that you focus on sharing all the information with the student, but also making sure that the student gets it. So, what we do at the very beginning, usually at the CERT, when we create the teams, we assign to everyone a training partner. And one of the things I say at the beginning is, okay, now you have your training partner. Now, when we teach you some new skills or some new drills, you'll be working, you'll be the student, and you will be trying those new drills and try to improve your skills, but then your partner will be doing the same. So when you're not the student, you are the trainer and you should focus and take care of your partner because your partner is your student. So you keep switching roles, you know, between being the instructor, the coach, and being the student. And one of the things I like to say at the beginning, say, now imagine this. Imagine that at the end of last day, when we test, imagine that you pass all the skills and your partner does not pass all the skills, fails. Guess what? You may have passed your skill test, but you failed your teaching test. Right. Right? So, because probably you could have helped him passing the skills. So this is the main idea, right? So we want people who are pre-if you're prepared, you can focus on not only yourself, but on becoming a better instructor. If you're not ready for that, you probably need to focus too much on yourself. You miss so many important things. There is an interesting story when I did my first RKC, you know, we come from the RKC, I tore my bicep, uh my left bicep a few days before showing up at the CERC. And at the time, at the time, back in 2009, the very first thing that was done at the RKC was the snatch test. So we showed up, we did a warm-up, and everybody was ready to do the snatch test. Pavel came to me and said, You know what? You're not doing the test. I was so upset, I wanted to go home. Because, you know, everybody was doing the snatch test, everybody was, you know, so charged, so excited, you know, and I was just watching and I was so frustrated. And Pavel came to me and he said, You know what? He said, Listen, you're an athlete, and as an athlete, you're you you for sure you did a good number of stupid things in your life. I'm not going to allow you to do another one. He said, if you try the snack test now and you get injured even worse, you will not enjoy the course, you will not get any good out of it, you'll be in pain, you will not learn what you could learn if you're feeling fine. So he said, Here's what we're gonna do. You're gonna enjoy your course, forget about the snack test until Sunday. Sunday morning at 6 a.m. before breakfast, you'll do your snatch test. But at least, whether you can make it or not, you could enjoy the course without feeling in pain, and you can get the best out of it. And I thought, you know, that was the best thing that Pavel could do for me that day. Yeah.

It makes a lot of sense, man. And you know, speaking of Pavel, I have a question for you. He he was on the Joe Rogan podcast at some point this year, right? Yes. How did uh I'm a huge Joe Rogan fan. Um, he's one of my one of the really the reason I started podcasts in the first place. But how did that affect the community? Was there did you see any traction, any kind of yeah, how what was what was the results of that?

Uh a lot of traction, actually, from people. We got a lot of people who didn't know who we were before who showed up. We got a lot of interest because if someone is within the community and knows Pavel, that show that is Pavel. You watch Joe Rogan's show, this is what you can expect from Pavel. That that is him, 100%. That's Pavel. Uh I recall I had a fun moment when Joe Rogan was coming up with another question, and Pavel said, Oh, yes, in a minute, let me sip some more tea first. It's one of the few times in which I saw Joe Rogan so silent. You know, Pavel was really leading the event. That's Pavel. He's a natural-born leader. So, those who know Pavel and are part of the community, no big surprises. Great podcast because so many people just couldn't wait to see Pavel live somewhere again on video. And, you know, the only way to see Pavel basically is at his live uh seminars. So that was great for our community, but it was so great because so many people got aware of us, and um, so we got a lot of interest from outsiders who then got engaged with us. So that was a great, that was a great thing that Pavel did participating for that podcast.

Yeah. It was great. I mean, there's a couple things and I haven't listened to in a while. I remember I was I was actually driving, it was actually at the end of uh of 2019 because I remember where I was, I was driving in California. Number one, he only eats one meal a day, and it's a huge meal, which I found fascinating, and which makes a lot of sense for intermittent fasting and what's going on with that trend. And how even someone like Joe Rogan has a you know strong history of training, there is a lot of dispelling of myths, right, within training and how important recovery is. And that was something that I found was was was really beneficial for the mass population that, hey, recovery is extremely important. And especially here in the United States, everyone just wants to train more and more and more and more and more, right? Yeah. So that I thought he did a great service for people on that. It was really good.

Yeah, I I think it did not, you know, he did nail a couple of very important principles which people are missing nowadays, especially in the fitness industry, which is you know, the minimum effective dose.

Yes.

Which is you need train to train just as much as necessary to get your results. More is not always better. The right amount is better. It's like, you know, I get an aspirin or ibrofen and I get rid of headache. Why should I take three of those? Um makes no sense, right?

Yeah. And especially, I mean, I'm 43 now. And uh the way I train, I have to be very, I have to be precise, you know, and I'm my time is valuable. I'm a busy guy. And uh, you know, also my body doesn't recover like it did in um in my twenties. And and that's minimal effective dose is something that I live by in just about everything that I do in my in my business, my life, and my training. And it's just a really great principle, I think, for every it's universal, right? I mean it's a pretty universal principle.

It is, and you know, and you have 43, I'm 51. So I know that. I I realize that the older you get, let's say the less young you get, or the more mileage you accumulate, which sounds better than older, the less mistakes you're allowed to make. You said one thing I love. You said, I need to be more precise. Yes, you need your dose of training must be very precise. It's like, now I recall that when I was in my 20s, I could get drunk at night and stay out until 3 a.m. and then at 6 a.m. go to train. If I get drunk now, I'm off for three days. So, you know, your recovery ability goes out. And as far as what you know, the right dose of training, uh, one example I like to give is a glass of water. You know, there's no way you can make more water fit into a glass. When a glass is full, it spills. No, you you can't pour more water in a full glass. But here's the other interesting part. If you want to carry for a distance that glass, you can't spill it up to the top because you're still gonna spill something. So the idea of training and keeping always a little bit of reserve just in case, that's as simple as it is. As simple as whenever you're gonna put some water or any other liquid in a glass, you never go over the top. You never want to spill, and you never go to the very top because you want to be able to keep it in your hands without spilling all over your shirt or the table, right? So that applies to training just as well.

Yeah. It's interesting to me too, as I look at my own evolution of training. Like when I started doing CrossFit in 2007, eight, it was you looked at like the CrossFit.com website and it was very it was like, okay, Monday, five by five back squat, right? Tuesday, maybe three rounds of whatever. And then as CrossFit evolved, and it's like we felt compelled to jam all this work into a 60-minute period. And now as I've kind of walked back from that, like now all I do, I go in on Mondays and I back squat, but I back squat really well. And uh, and that's all I need for you know my lower bodder training for that week because I'm 43. It's so funny to me, too, because I look back uh, you know, back in my 20s, I used to be able to go out, right? Stay out till one or two in the morning, get up at seven, drive somewhere, play three water polo games at a tournament, uh, come home, take a nap, and then do it all over again. And uh now that would literally kill me, Fabio. I think that would that would kill me. 100% agree with you.

Yeah.

Uh oh man. Only if I knew then what I knew now. But I'm curious now, as the fitness industry evolves, and you know, who knows what, like you said, who knows? If the fall comes, we see resurgences of COVID, you know, a lot of things here in the United States are shutting down a second time. It's it's hard. Um, gym owners, um, fitness professionals, you know, some of the hardest hit out there, really, as far as businesses go. Um, a lot of people are trying to figure out like, well, what do we do next? What if things don't go back to normal or whatever that looks like? And a lot of people are turning towards technology, a lot of you know, home-based equipment, you know, apps and streaming solutions, things like that. Is there any particular technology that you guys are looking at right now to kind of step into the next evolution of what this industry may look like?

Yes, we are. Um, I'm not sure I'm allowed to disclose everything, but we are looking in both into a training app, actually looking that almost ready. And also we're looking into a streaming system for online training to provide a window to our instructors to be seen and to be able to train people worldwide, and at the same time to help all our fans and people who are around us, which are you know many, many, many more than our 4,000 instructors, yeah, to be able to find an instructor online. And one interesting thing of being online, no, I I'm an old-fashioned guy, so I still like to read paperback books, I still take my notes on paper block notes, you know, no notebook and so on. And uh I like to train people in person, and I use a paper training diary because I love that, but I do appreciate you know the benefits of technology. And one great thing about that is that it makes the world so smaller. So imagine I I'd really love, love, you know, to uh have a train session with one of my mentors with Jeff Newport. And uh online, I don't need to go up to see him in um Colorado Springs. I can schedule that online and have a session with him, which is awesome. So being able to be go online and be on streaming allows so many people to see, to be coached by people of different, you know, uh different countries, different cultures, and so on. But I'm also thinking, as a as far as for business, of time zones. Now, for instance, here in Italy, uh gyms are packed at lunch break are packed in the evenings after people finish work. So the opposite as the US. Most people go to the gym either lunch break or after work. In the US, gyms are packed in the early morning, and then people go to work. Gyms work pretty well at lunch break and some in the evening, but there are so many hours in which you're not working that much, right? Because people are at work or something like that. And what I was hearing from many is that if you live in New York, finding a personal, a good personal trainer at 6 a.m., it's a challenge. It's a challenge because they're all busy. And on the other side, on the personal training side, personal trainer side that lives in New York is packed, he has a waiting list at 6 a.m., but then he is just, you know, has nothing to do with 11 a.m. because at that time everybody's working. So if but if we can, you know, use different time zones, and I live in New York and I can find a very good online trainer from Los Angeles, that changes things because I can find a free, very good personal trainer that is free at 6 a.m. Because it's a different time for him, and vice versa. And if I'm a personal trainer and I'm so busy at certain times in the day, I can work in slightly different time zones with other people when I usually have no work.

So that's interesting on that side, you know. That's really interesting. That's a really good point. And that's actually the first time I I think about, you know, I started this podcast, The Future of Fitness, because I was really interested in where, you know, to use the the hockey analogy, where the where the puck was going, right? And how to how to be skating in that direction. And, you know, technology online, you know, biometrics, all these things are stuff that I've been interviewing people for almost three years now and trying to figure out where this whole thing's going. And then this this pandemic hit, it seems like everything's been accelerated uh very fast. And it's it's put me in a situation where, hey, I get to have, you know, I can go back to a lot of people I've talked to, see how they're doing, and try to figure out what's next. When, you know, I no one has a magic ball, Fabia.

No, no one has it.

But if you could if you can make some some educated guesses on when when the dust does settle, right, and and we get you know um some kind of uh vaccine or or this thing runs its course and and people naturally adapt to it, how do you think the fitness industry is going to be fundamentally different?

You know, of course we were already going towards online, and this, as you said, things have been accelerating. But you know, there are upsides of this and downsides. What concerns me a little bit is going too fast uh may harm quality. Now, here's what I've what I've seen. I mean, I have been teaching my first full online seminar, two-day seminar in May. While I was teaching those seminars, which are based on lectures, this is Plans Rong, in person for many years. And it was not an easy transition, not at all. I was not 100% satisfied of my first event. I did much better in the second one, uh, a month apart, because I had to learn quite a few lessons. So, for instance, uh I've been basing my uh my teaching style and the speed of teaching a lot on the feedback I got from facial expressions and body language of the students. But also I used to have a projector, but also a chalkboard to write some notes and something. And first time I got in front of a screen teaching tour, I had 80 plus people listen to me. Uh in from Korea to Brazil to US, so all across the world, right? And I was teaching there, and I realized that I was completely blind. All what I could all I could see was the screen with my presentation in front of me, right? And I had this chat on the right where I could get some questions, but there was no way I could see the faces of the people who were listening to me. Very hard to get some feedback, very hard to realize if I was going too fast, too slow, if I missed something along the way, you know. I had to rely on the chat quite a bit. So that was really hard. And also present on the screen, it's hard to be able to edit stuff and write stuff. So it wasn't easy at all. Now, bringing this experience on the other side, when the COVID started, pretty much, you know, everyone became an online trainer and an online presenter. And it's not a painless and fruitless process. You need to learn how to be an online coach. Yes. You need to learn how to how you're how to position your camera, how the background and light should be, how you should be dressed. I give you just one example. If I need to show the squad to someone and I'm wearing a black t-shirt and black pants, and I'm going down, the person on the other side is not going to be able to see when I break part of what my lower back is doing because I'm all in black, right? So the right background, right? There's so many things to take care of and the right angle. If the camera is too high, if the camera is too low, you get a different perspective. So you need to learn how to present yourself in front of the camera. You need to be able to teach your students how they should present themselves in front of the camera so you can really see and assess them. There are so many lessons to learn, both technically, on a technology standpoint, but also on the uh way you teach. You can hands you cannot have hands-on. I know in the US you basically don't touch the student that much as we do here in Europe, but still, you know, being able to walk and turn around, walk around the student, see the student from different perspectives. I mean, if I have to assess a squat, there's things I can see from the back view, things I see from the side view, see I see from the front view, see I things I see if I just kneel and watch the person from a certain angle rather than standing. And all that is missed. So you need to learn so many lessons, coaching lessons. And the the problem was that people didn't have time to learn how to do online, they just went online.

Right.

And so that's that that's the risk of moving in that direction too fast, because I think it's a learning process for both who take care of the technology, but also those who really teach. It's a different experience completely. You don't see online what you see live. And then uh also another thing that I've seen, which by the way, pushed me to uh to write a couple of articles, is that everyone was going on social media and giving away the workout of the day, you know, workouts. And uh it my impression was that so many, so many geeks awesome stuff, but so many on the other side uh gave stuff just to be online, just to show they were giving away something, and the whatever they gave away was not well structured, and so on. And here's the problem the student, if he doesn't have knowledge, has no way to understand what is good and what is bad. You know, downside of technology is that if someone is good on camera, uh it might be going to structure or not, and if you have no idea of um no knowledge in you know, in some principles, you don't know what quality you're getting. And so that's that's the downside of it.

Yeah, I mean it's and that's the challenge, right? I think that's the challenge. Yeah, I mean, especially for an organization and trainers like Strong First, where how do you add that that extra layer of of experience and interaction where you can get some of the the demands of you know the precision that you guys have, right? That that's the challenge. And I think everybody's because you know, everybody and their mother and their brother went online and they started streaming free workouts on Facebook Live or in Zoom. But like you said, like I've had I have clients who have been coaching online for a very long time, and they're they're looking at this like, well, you know, it's so critical. You have to even tell the client, hey, this is where you position the camera so I can see your feet during this movement. Like little things and nuances that go into online training that are completely different and almost take you for granted in an in-person setting. And yeah, there's a lot of challenges, but I think you know, the fitness industry has no choice. And that's that's the thing, is we have to adapt and we have to adapt fairly quickly. And um, you know, it's not gonna be without a little bit of pain as as we do it. So yeah, I I commend you know what you guys are doing. I and the the thing about it is that if you have a strong community, you'll survive this. You know, you'll probably thrive on the other end. And that's that's what's critical about what you guys do is you do have such a strong community that's not going anywhere. So, you know, you guys are set up well to deal with the challenges that everybody else has to deal with as well.

Yeah, for instance, you know, we're we're working on a streaming platform, and our idea, which we already tested by the way, is when we will onboard instructor, instructors there, we're gonna test them first. We're gonna test them. We want to see their how they move, but how they teach, how they present themselves on camera. So they'll be tested by teaching an online session with one of our members of leadership or HQ, so we can assess them before we put them on a platform. Because here's the point now. If you've been doing online for a long time and you charge a certain amount of money, and then uh one day your client comes to you and tells you, Oh, you know what, I can get this for free, or there is this trainer that just sells the online course five people at a time with for five dollars, and you know, you've been working so hard to provide high levels of quality, and you get beat up by someone who just you know improvises, and that's a huge problem. So being able to provide this perception of quality, so for instance, a couple of things that we experimented in Korea, um, they reopened the country, but there was no way we could travel there. But we do have some members of the leadership, we have a senior and free team leaders in Korea, so we were able to run uh a few certs there with uh live, of course, with a limited number of people, with social distancing, with all following all the rules. But we had the team leaders leading the teams there in person with the restrictor group and uh uh Master John Angum and myself for different events, we were online. So we were in a giant screen, we had cameras, positions in different parts of the gym so we could see everybody. For instance, we had I I taught the SFL, the barbel cert, and I had three cameras, one place uh where every power rack was, and so I would lead the cert online, but I would have some people in person who were coaching in person with the students, which was a great hybrid solution, worked really well because we ensured high quality, but at the same time, you know, we overcome the problem of not being able to travel. So that was a good hybrid solution. Another thing I've been, you know, that I did, I published a couple of articles on Strongfurt's website, one, two, a series of two, one was, you know, simple strength for difficult times. And I came up with plans, two-month plans, rather than just workouts. So the idea was you do a test before you start the plan. You're gonna make sure that your reps are perfect, you've got to select your exercise variations, you might do a body weight with cannabis or with barbers according to what you have available at home. So I gave me variations. You test yourself before, you follow an eight-week plan, which leads to a peak at width six, a taper, and then another test at the end of the plan. And so giving something that provides results and has a progression, in my opinion, help people training with more quality, staying consistence, staying away from random acts of variety, staying away from random workouts or from doing not enough or too much. So, you know, keeping them consistent on one side, because when you have a progressive plan where you do week two and you know there's something else is gonna happen on week three, you've got to add some volume or some sets or whatever, it keeps you committed because you want to challenge yourself. But then at the end, when you test yourself and you have measurable results, then you want another plan like that. So I try to educate as many people as I could towards a structured training rather than random, you know, practice or workout. And so this is how you show that you are for quality. So big challenge right now is showing that you're not one of the bunch because everybody's going online and you need to make sure that uh you make the difference.

Yeah, well said, Fabio. Man, I could talk to you all day, but uh, I know uh we've got a hard stop at the top of the hour here. Fabio, where where do where do people get a hold of you if they want to reach you and they want to talk shop or just get your insights?

Oh well, they can go on Strongfirth website, look at find an instructor, find me and contact me through there. They can reach out to me at uh contact at fabiozoning.com. And uh pretty much the same, because I'm on Facebook, I have a Facebook page, I'm on Instagram, but seriously, I have someone who manages those, and I don't really see the messages. So emails best way. My website, I'm about to take it down to restructure it. And so um I'm not giving that one. Well, it's tabiozoni.com.com, but you might find a banner that's saying, hey, under reconstruction, so for a month or so it'll be down. So strong first website or um email, contact the Fabio Zonin that's Fabio Zonin.com. Very easy to remember.

Awesome. Well, Fabio, thank you so much for coming back on. Uh, uh it's always a pleasure.

I hope is that it happens again, uh, hopefully before next two years. And we would be interesting to discuss what happened after this, since we don't have a crystal ball right now. It would be interesting to see how things evolved. I am curious, I'm waiting. I'm optimistic, uh, but that's my personality. So we adapt and overcome usually. That's what a human being does.

So yeah, I agree. Well, thank you again. And ladies and gentlemen, Fabio Zone and Strong First, check it out. Hey, it's your host, Eric Malzone. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of Future of Fitness. If you enjoyed it, please do me a huge favor by going to the website and signing up for our newsletter. The website is futureoffitness.co. Again, that's futureoffitness.co. We've got some big, big announcements coming down the pipe, and we want you to make sure that you are on top of it. Thank you again. Signing off.