Jeff & Mikki Martin: BrandX Method - COVID's Impact On Our Youth

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over two years and running. It is 2021, and I am your host, Eric Malzone. I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Stop by futurefitness.co to subscribe and learn more. Insight Tracker was founded in 2009 by leading scientists in aging, genetics, and biometrics. Using their patented algorithm, Insight Tracker analyzes your body's data to provide you with a clear picture of what's going on inside you while offering highly personalized, science-backed recommendations for positive diet and lifestyle changes. Okay, time for straight talk. It's time that each single one of us takes responsibility for our own health. Personally, given the results of my Insight Tracker DNA and blood tests, I now have a clear and simple game plan to lower my cholesterol and stave off my family's genetic history of heart disease. The best part is that the plan doesn't include any kind of pharmaceuticals, just personalized nutrition and natural supplementation. Possibly my favorite feature of Insight Tracker is the inner age score, a singular metric that shows me how my biological age compares to my chronological age. They just gamify longevity. It's crazy cool. For a limited time, you can get 25% off the entire Insight Tracker store. Just go to InsightTracker.com forward slash future. But wait, there is more. If you're a coach, trainer, registered dietitian, or any other health and wellness practitioner, you can now leverage Insight Tracker services to help your clients perform better than they ever have. And you can offer them discounts while you earn revenue. InsightTracker Pro is your gateway to offering your clients Insight Tracker, a science-backed, ultra-personalized performance platform trusted by elite athletes and top coaches. Just go to insight tracker.com forward slash future to get more information and enjoy deep, deep discounts. That is insightracker.com forward slash future. This episode of the Future of Fitness is brought to you by our good friends at the Brand X Method. Kids deserve our best. Period. Full stop. Brand X has dedicated themselves to doing what is best for kids for over two decades. Here's the facts. All major pediatric organizations agree that youth strength and conditioning and fitness programs must be specifically designed for children and coached by those specifically educated and working with children. This seems like a no-brainer. Successful programs come from educated coaches who have all the tools to best serve youth. Brand X offers unequaled ongoing support through ever-growing relative content delivered monthly, plus the mountains of information leveraging their 20 plus years of experience. As the developer of the original Kids Functional Fitness Program and certification with over 100 state and national record holders and recognize the world's leaders in youth fitness, Brand X not only offers the fully digital, take-it-your-own pace, professional youth coaches certification, but has recently added to their suite of custom education products to best serve educators and parents as well. Because kids deserve our best. So whether you are a gym owner, coach, educator, parent, or simply anyone who cares for the future of our children, Brand X is offering a 20% discount on all digital education products for a limited time. Go visit thebrandxmethod.com forward slash future to get your code today. Again, that is the brandxmethod.com forward slash future and claim your code. Jeff and Mickey, welcome back to the future of fitness. It's uh it's a pleasure to have you guys back on the show.

Thanks for having us.

Yeah. Um, I just want to start off because I've known you guys for a while and uh we were just having a good laugh because um and to me, and it occurred to me that like, well, people really need to know your character, right? Because there's so much of it. But so many times you're talking about serious topics, which is kids and youth and you know, the state of affairs. But you know, how is it that how is it that like it must it it must be challenging for you because it always seems to come to a somber topic, right? So, you know, let's hear about you guys a little bit and how you're in action, how you keep things light.

And uh yeah, I mean, just hearing you laugh is really makes me so so that so the whole our mission, do what's best for kids, that's serious, that's heavy stuff, and everybody's heard us talk on that. Um, but we do see and realize and laugh about the fact that because we're doing what's best for kids and we're the kids' people, we can't we can't do the sexy stuff. We obviously can't put up pictures of kids that are anyway the kind of pictures that other people put up, right? We can't use certain language. Um, we're we have to be sort of like parental units all of the time, you know. So so it does impact our conversations and we visit because then when we get on to something sad, it seems super sad because there's there's no irony or sarcasm.

Way back in the um, way back in the olden days, uh we were and started judging for the 2000, I think it was 2011 uh regionals. And uh so I was doing a briefing with with some uh with the group of athletes before the event, and I got a question about one of the rules that was you know something that the HQ had had imposed that was arbitrary, and here's but here's the rule. And so I told them the rule, and then uh we went along and we got a and somebody asked the same question, and I said, here's the rule, and we went, and I think it happened four or five times, and I finally lost my temper and I just swore and I went like blind, blind, blind, blind. This is what the rule says. And all of a sudden I hear from the president, oh my god, the crossfake kids guy just swore. Which if you were in one of my kids' classes, I think it was, you know, we ran in kids' classes for 20 plus years, and I never swore in class because uh teaching kids. But if you know me, I swear like a sailor outside of that.

I mean, I just um you know when I'm talking to adults with adult audience only on adult podcasts. I gotta do it on podcasts.

You know, oh my god, because my kids died, just poor. So no longer cross my kids.

But right, yeah, not associated. Not associated, yeah, not associated.

But it's an historical story that I want to do, that I want to, you know, kind of tell you. Yeah, and it really does come down to it. What's what's kind of funny is you know, our our personalities, we've been you know married over 30 years, and we kid each other and we laugh, and our family has fun, and this is this is kind of who we are. And then we get on a podcast and it's like, oh, doom and gloom, and this is what we don't see it that way. We see it, we see ourselves as having the opportunity to change these problems that you know that we've been talking about for 10 years, and now like and now the news is catching up, and so you see it in the news, but we have the opportunity to be the people who are helping other people change that direction. So we we we really are positive people, even if we're talking about these things in a in a uh that are serious and are affecting our children better.

Yeah, it's part of the education process too. I mean, the the situation is we have to sort of shake people and go, hey, I know you didn't know about this, but take a look. And and so that it's serious stuff. And we want to we want to educate people, but we also love to focus on the outcomes of doing these great things and learning more all the time and finding what we can do to make things better and better so that our kids are, you know, turn out to be the healthiest, most amazing humans.

Yeah. Well, it's it's one of those things, and and not to make like, I guess I'm gonna do it indirectly anyway, but like when I'm all my friends who are first responders, right? They deal with very serious stuff all the time, but they have the best senses of humor because you have to wrap humor into these types of things to live through data. Not not, I mean, yeah, I guess I don't want to like say that someone with a broken leg, you know, and a motorcycle accident is similar to what you guys are working with, or decapitation in like a fire scene, right? Something like that, because it's not. But there is things like you have to have humor when you're working with serious stuff. And uh, you know, I married. And that's you know, one of the reasons I like to get you guys onto this podcast, you know, every, you know, so often is that it does give us an update, like, well, and then a reminder of, you know, because the fitness industry is so right now, it's so tech heavy. It really is. Like everybody's, you know, it's investors are coming in and tech is taking over, and you know, all these people are calling it, you know, the the virtual revolution or the um omnichannel and all these buzzwords where it's being thrown around. But um we have to come back to the roots of what we're doing here and the future of the whole species, which is our kids, and how are they being affected by all this? So it's it's good to come and have you guys come on. We can laugh as much as we want during this episode. And if you want to swear, swear. Um, it's my show. So do what you want to do. Um, I was yeah, I was I was pretty, I was pretty proud. We I have my first uh explicit ranking on my podcast for one of my episodes.

Oh no.

Uh to people listening, you won't be shocked. It was Stuart Brouwer of WTF Gym Talk. And uh I was like, whoa, I was looking through that. I was like, where is that? Why did I get an E next to this? I was like, I did it finally. Um I don't know if that's an accomplishment, but that's kind of how my mind works. Anyway, um, let's get to kind of the stuff that you guys are experts in, which is youth fitness. And I think um, you know, as we're talking previously, like we've talked about this COVID thing, ad nauseum, right? And how it's affected um, you know, mental health of people and the remote work and travel restrictions, and um, you know, how parents are dealing with their kids not being at school and having a full-time job. But I don't think, I mean, at least in my world, maybe because I don't have kids, is that I haven't heard a whole lot yet about how this has affected the youth. And um I'd like to get a check-in with you guys. So over the last 18 months, what has been your takeaways? What have you seen, um, good or bad, uh, in in the world of youth, health, and fitness?

Who started this one?

We always go through this.

Which one? Yeah. Who's on first? I I think there's a lot a lot to talk about and a lot of rabbit holes we can go down to, but like globally, some of the things that I think are are are um interesting, interesting. Let's start with interesting and then go to concern. You know, interesting is you're talking about tech and you're talking about wanting to have tech. Well, what we're hearing and what we're experiencing, and what we're hearing from um you know counties that have contacted us who have like 30 plus districts in the county who are talking to us, they're telling us kids are exhausted from tech. Like don't give us, don't give us workouts where they go to the go to the thing and they see somebody working out and they work out with them, the kids don't want that anymore. They don't want to be on their phone, they don't want to be on a tablet, they just they're they're just completely exhausted by that. And that's the exact opposite of what we're seeing kind of in the trending industry with with adults, where you know, give me the mirror, I can ride my bike on the mirror with the with the with the with the coach, and the kids are are tuning out uh PE classes, they're tuning out um you know extracurricular uh fitness classes where it's where the requirement is to be in front of a uh a um uh camera. That's fascinating, giving all the complaints about children and tech and and screen time that we were kind of going into this pandemic with. You know, it almost one of those things where you uh overfeed somebody, like somebody who's like, I would just want to eat donuts. Here's three dozen donuts. I never want to see another donut again. So we have kids who wanted to want to be on their phones, they wanted tech, now do Zoom classes, now do now go to school on Zoom. Um, I don't want to see, I don't want to see another screen ever again. I don't want to be outside and go to say so you know our mission with our with our kids and with our parents and other parents is to provide workouts and movements and challenges and games that kids can play outside without tech and go do this. Or in their living room, you know, either or kind of going down to concerning things. Um it starts with mental health, what we're seeing and what we're hearing about it, and I think you can probably talk to this uh more globally and more uh better than I can. But the mental health of kids have suffered um you know in a way that adults uh don't bend with adults. I mean we've all been concerned, we've all been concerned about and had people who pass away or gotten sick with the virus, but kids um feel they've lost a majority of their life. And so the mental health was suffering. And when the mental health suffers, what happens when we depressed? We move less. And and in all of those things that come from that, there's been a large weight gain. Um, I think it was 15 to 20 pounds. Um I said that we could speak to one study that we saw recently.

So so what I would what I would add to that conversation is that our whole template is based on developmental pathway. So we've got young kids, we've got you know, preteens, we've got older teenagers in there. So it's all it's gonna be different for all of them. But the but the big thing to think about, we think about adults and how it's affected adults, and it's there's a massive social emotional damage and sort of gaps that people are trying to figure out how to fill and pardon me, recover from. But with kids, we have to realize they're not finished yet. So they're on this developmental path. Their little brains are, you know, not in the same place as ours are socially and emotionally. They're developing. So when this thing hits, they're not hitting it in the same way we are. So those kids say, take a nine-year-old who spent a tenth of their life from nine to ten through this COVID nightmare, right? Or now nine to ten and a half. So more than a tenth of their life, and in a developmental phase with their brains pruning and growing, and what do I keep? What do I um, what is going to be retained because it's been repeated and what isn't? All that stuff is going on, plus the social emotional side of um a lack of interaction with other little humans who understand them. Um, and then a lack of play and experimentation and exploration and all the beautiful things that does for social development and emotional well-being. So um, yeah, I mean, yeah, that's that's a devastating consequence of this thing. And so people hopefully are listening. Get your kids outside, get them to play more, get them to interact as much as they can, given you know, safety concerns. Um, and understand how confusing it must be for a brain that's still developing to look at it logically, you know, or here, look, let me tell you, it's gonna be fine in this amount of time, you know, that to them that's it's just a different space they're in to understand it.

In our course, especially the youth coach course and in the educators course, we talk about pruning and we talk about it specifically in movement. And so that the kid, you know, it's they prune out movements and and uh patterns and things that we don't use a lot and emphasize the things that we do. But if you think about that, and Nikki just kind of touched on that, um, if we think about that with pruning happening with experiences, what these kids have gotten about is you know, from from zero to to nine, everything was great, and had all this, and and now for the last year and a half, all this pruning is going on, it's just all this um stay inside be safe, all these concerning things, and the the the normalcy stuff starts to get pruned out, and the stuff that was uh that it was all about the pandemic and the worry and the be safe and all these things um becomes more important in their heads. And I think that um we don't see that as as adults. We don't we kind of go back and 60 years old, so this was a year because a year I had to get through this a lot. A kid looks at it, like a 10-year-old looks at it quite differently. You know, an eight-year-old even more is even more um concerned.

We we're hearing the mental health professionals, and I'm sure you've heard this, are saying, Man, there's a crash coming.

Our um our we lived in Southern California for for um for years, raised our kids in Southern California. We were in a small town up in the mountains, very um aware of fire danger, and and when our youngest, I think he was uh three years old, we had a fire, and the whole town we were in had to evacuate. For two years after that, uh maybe even longer, our our youngest, every time we left the house, would pack his favorite things in a bag and go, where do we go to the store? We'd have his little backpack. And he'd put the backpack on me, what are you doing? I got my this, I got my that, I got my and off we go. They just process things differently than we do. And they take things from small events, something that's a small event might be a huge event to them, and and uh they build uh defensiveness or defensive systems around themselves.

Those neural pathways that get myelinated, right? Reinforced because of repetition. What are those now during this time? That's kind of what where we're going, right? Yeah what are the things that now are going to be retained better by youth who went through this? And are there may be some really super positive things in there? I don't want to be miss totally negative serious. So so there could be yeah, damn it. So um, so there could be some really positive stuff. There are kids who got family time and attention from their parents in a way that that they were missing because everybody's so darn busy, right? Darn. See, I I default to darn not being busy.

What's this crash? Mickey, you're talking about a crash coming. I the first time I've heard of that. Can you maybe uh expand on that a little bit?

So uh we have a daughter-in-law who's a has a master's in social work focusing on children, and she has mentioned that many times. I've also read articles on it. Um, that the results of what we're just what we're talking about, what's being retained because they're developing and repeated because of this tragedy of COVID and the pandemic, how will that play out in 10 years? There's there's uh theory on how it will play out, but mostly the theory is people are less than excited about the possible ramifications of that. You know, um, we do know that less social interaction and actual play and development of that will um may or often does lead to anxiety and uh problems with new situations in any context. So if we sort of extrapolate, we can see that that's very likely that we're gonna see more of that, and was already something that people in our world and the youth health and fitness world were very concerned about.

One of the things we saw going into the pandemic, and we saw maybe from uh 2014 to uh 2020, and running the gym and working with kids in the gym, is um the self talk with kids had become more negative over time. They were less resilient on kids. So uh we're gonna climb the road. Oh, I can't do it. Um and we put a fairly big piece in the uh professional youth coach course on changing the language, how you you know how you reframe what a child is thinking to start to develop this idea of resiliency. So I uh so I can't climb the rope, or I can't climb the rope yet, are very, very different things. And so what we wanted coming out of our gyms was this idea of resilient children who saw um you know who framed challenges and framed setbacks in ways that didn't show defeatism, that showed resilience and moving on. And uh, you know, we can use this pandemic as an example of that. Like we know kids come out of this either more resilient or more concerned and fearful. So um we want to help parents uh frame you know kids as they move forward, helping them frame the experiences they have in a way that uh see they see as challenges, things to accomplish, things to move forward and be more resilient.

Um Yeah. It's um and you guys have had an interesting year as well, right? I mean, since the COVID, there's been a lot of changes, I mean, for you personally. And maybe you can kind of tap into that. I mean, changes in your business, uh, gym, um, moving, like more digital, like everything has shifted. You guys have had to adjust at a lightning pace as well. Maybe give us some insights into how it's been for you personally.

Man, it's you know, I I here's the thing. I look at it and go, we're just really lucky because somehow we're okay through all this. Like, I mean, it's not obviously, but it hasn't been the best year. But but we're really, really lucky because we didn't lose our home. We didn't lose our jobs, you know, and there's so many people suffering that it's really hard for me to, you know, say, hey, it was, you know, wasn't easy to have a lot of gyms closing and have people um scared about what's going to happen, have everybody shut down. That obviously puts a pause on our business. And so, yes, we had to make adjustments quickly.

We started down the path of digital training in um 2015, you know, and really put up our basic course there, then our um advanced course in 2019. We launched the professional youth coach certification, which was all of our um everything we've learned up for the 20 years of implementation and implementing in the gym and training coaches, and a huge expansion of information on developing children children and developing uh the systems, the anatomy, and why we're why we're going about these things this way. Um, and we we launched this in 2019. Um so um we were able to take that and pivot while gyms are shutting down and coaches are going, like, I'm gonna lose my job and I'm gonna not be able to move forward. We were able to take that that that I mean all that um experience all that we already had on building um uh a really robust um training system online and pivot that to work for education and for parents in general.

Because at the same time, as you know, that gyms were freaking out, suffering, closing. I mean, all the things that happened. Obviously, there were also some who found a way that made things better for them. But um, as that was happening, schools were like, what are we gonna do?

Yeah.

So so that provided us the opportunity really to say, you know, we've been talking about this for so long to do this specific course, we got to get it out. So, you know, we we did that, but we also at the very beginning that took a little bit of time, obviously, because these are robust 35-hour courses with additional support. That's another 30 hours. So um that was taking time to put together, but we we got it done. But in the meantime, the the immediacy of people's needs um made us do some other things. We created uh at-home programming for parents and anybody that reached out to us, we sent them, and I think we came out with like three months of that. Um, and then we just say, just reuse that three months and reuse it four times, and got a year's worth there. Um, then we also did uh people were asking for social distancing games. So I'm still running something, but they have to be social distance, they can't touch the same equipment. How am I going to do that? So we came out with that. Here's how you can do that. Um, and then we had to have a little lot of testing there. So it was awesome. We still all of our labs were still operating at least one out of our three international labs was still operating at any given time. So we could go to them and say, Hey, can you test this? And so they would, as we do with new ideas, can you test this? Does it work? What are the tweaks? All that. Um, and then we also thought parents at home need something ongoing because who knows how long this will go on, who knows how many people will just say, I'm gonna stick with this format, I'm gonna homeschool and all those things. We wanted to serve them as well. So by early 2021, we had a subscription parent product out there. Um, I also ran classes for a while online just to the community. Just do you need your kids to do something? Um, and I found that workable for the first few months. I think I did 10 weeks of it. And by the end, I started to see that drop off. And so we went back and interviewed parents, what's going on? Why didn't they want to come back? You know, um, thinking it could be tweaks I need to make, or it could be that the kids are tapped. And and all, and I'm I'm sure I'm imperfect and I can make tweaks that would make it better, no doubt. However, the input we got back was the kids are tapped, they don't want to be online anymore. They they're doing so much online with school, they they don't want to do it. So um, we did have one of our uh awesome uh brand X. Trying to think of what the word, what do we call this? The um just ambassadors, who is also a teacher at a private school, um, tell us, hey, what I figured out was they get so tapped out with this constant Zoom that what I do is I give them all their workouts for the week, and we only have one online meeting about it. So it's like a recap. And then everybody checks in, and then they didn't find that to be too much. So, but the the weekly or the I mean the the daily or three times a week was tap out. So we're he was able to come up with this is workable and this kept them consistent. So, you know, staying in touch with the community, what's going on, what are people trying, what's workable? We've told everybody that because that was the workable solution within the youth, you know, world. Um, I feel like I've now blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, it's it's it's I mean, so there's a couple things I want to point out within that is that um, you know, you guys have traditionally, and I want to give you guys some credit because I know you won't give it to yourselves because you're nice like that, but you're we're quote unquote lucky because you spent two decades preparing a business that is more resilient, to use your terms. So give yourselves a little bit of credit. Uh, that's why you built a community, you had international, you know, um locations. So it's it's uh sure there was some luck there, there always is, but it was mostly due to a couple of decades of consistent work and and processes. So that being yeah, the credit to you guys. Um, but you know, the big thing I want to point out is that you know, traditionally you guys have worked with fitness coaches, right, and gym owners, but now you've really started to hone in and maybe because you have more time um on the teaching community, the parent community. So explain to me how that evolution has taken place and how you're slightly you know taking more responsibility and educating different groups.

So uh first I just want to say we don't have more time. I don't know where you got that.

Yeah, I don't know. I just mean that none of us have more time. I just felt good.

Just uh make that up. Um I I we will both have different takes on this. So let's uh go ahead and talk about start? Go. You go. No, you go. Okay, so I go, you go. Um hit on it, and I'll just kind of emphasize a point. We've been working with um teachers for over a decade and you know, implementing it big in school districts and and in in having teachers take our courses and helping them implement in schools for a long time. What we hadn't done um way back when in the original course we we said we need a educators' course that kind of got shot down um for years. But so when when we saw this happen, we already had on our you know mapped out exactly what we need to do to help teachers. And we went to um we've got a K through six product up right now, and we have a seven tutorial coming out. What we did was this is what what they need to know about our method, this is what they need to know about our science behind what we're doing. Um, and then we have our youth coach pro, which is um all about implementation. So we have over 150 videos on on teaching kids movement, 100 videos on physical literacy, infographics to explain to parents why you're doing what you're doing, that kind of thing. And and logistics stuff. So, what we did was we went to teachers who have implemented the brand X method for years, and we said to them, What we want you to do is just you know, from A to Z, the new teacher comes to you and says, I want to implement this, what do they need to know? And they just log out this is these are the things they need to know, this is how the logistics of a class, this is how you do what you this is how you do the brand X in the class, and they create videos that we um we're able to put into this product, along with the stuff that we already stuff that we already have. Um you just said the brand X. The brand X. That's because that's how people say it. Like, how do I do the brand X in the class? But um we know what we're experts at. We go to the teachers because they're experts at taking what we do and putting it in their class and get them to be the experts on that end. Well, and it came out really uh just it's just phenomenal. Um with parents, there's kind of a twofold thing. Um, and this Mickey will have a different spin on this, but from my perspective, uh number one, parents needed something in the pandemic to just look at look, I need to get my kids moving. Here, here's 12 different things you can do. Here's the videos on how to do it, see if you could see what they should be looking like, and I had to go outside how to do this. And here's a daily structure of like little things you can do. So that's important. But more importantly, I was kind of thinking past the pandemic, you know, we can't fix the movement problem we see with kids today in you know, three times the gym or two twice a week in PE. Kids aren't moving enough. So this is auxiliary stuff that a parent who understands that my kid isn't moving enough, um, and we can supplement going to the gym and we can supplement uh PE with this product that we have for parents over this these workouts. Um and that was really important to me, was not really focusing necessarily on the pandemic, but focusing on providing something to parents who you know come home from a hard day of work or got their kids at home and just feel like I want my kid to move for half an hour. What what do I do? Here's what we do. Boom. Just this is it, this is it. Take this piece of paper, pull it outside, do these things, come back in to me out of that.

So give me an example of that. Like, what is like what have you seen, like maybe a particular um movement sequence or a game or something that parents have been able to use? I think that's really cool. I think that's a big thing because most parents don't have a certain level of physical literacy that maybe some people like you know, I've done sports my whole life, I know how to be active, I have that. So does most of my siblings, and but a lot of people just never came from that world.

So we've got uh videos. Okay. So the parents can go through, check out all these videos. So you just look, okay, it looks like at least for the littles, um, today we're gonna do block squats, we're gonna do a hillbilly prowler push, we're gonna do single-leg hops, and then we're gonna need a soft style ball of some kind, right? They can look those up. That's what that looks like. Okay. And we're not giving them, for instance, overhead squats at home. So we're we're not uh putting the kids into complex, compound, loaded movement with somebody who has no idea how to teach that or coach it or guide it. Definitely not that. It's it is basic movement experience, and like Jeff says, supplemental in many cases, or can be supplemental, um, not training for source, it is movement experience and movement throughout the day. And that's what we're providing. So um an example for the littles would be maybe they're gonna do first of all, we do things like say every day do three of certain movement, increase by three until you can't do it anymore. And then this is just an example of a type of thing that we might have in there. Challenge someone in your family to a max uh airplane balance contest. So nobody has to have movement experience to do that. You watch the video, okay. You're both gonna do that, see who can do it the longest. Each day or each week, depending on the child and the schedule, come up with some kind of challenge that everybody can participate in. Side-to-side single-leg hops over a chalk line or a broomstick, right? Everybody can do that, and it gets people moving together. Um, and it's very simple. And like I said, it's not high-end things that need coaching and need um repetition in a very certain way to embed those matter motor patterns.

With the older kids, it might be more um game to games, you might be more challenges with moments, so it might be something like for five minutes, take a soccer ball, throw the ball soccer style as far as you can, sprint to the ball, um, get up and down off the ground five times. So that's all that's not hard. It's something interesting to do. Um, you might say like a challenge, like might be uh take a tennis ball and uh for five minutes um throw the ball into the ground, bounce it off of the off the uh the garage wall, and catch it in your dominant hand. Um, see how many times you can do that in a row. Now switch, do it with your non-dominant hand so that they're playing, you know, so they're playing um and they're challenging themselves to do something like that. We can we had a challenge of uh this month, uh I think it's uh run run 50 yards as fast as you can. So three three uh 50 yards, run as fast as you can, time it, um, the last five minutes between each attempt, and then uh uh we'll come back at the you know, maybe two or three months later, we'll do an MCA call to see how to do. But the idea is that was something that we would do as kids who go outside with your with your friends, okay. We're all gonna run 50 yards to see who could do it fast do it the fastest. Trying to emulate things that we did 50 years ago.

How does it feel to say that? Yeah.

Can I curse now? Yeah, yeah, we can't. Can I use really dirty words?

You know, and and one thing I found to work with the kids, but the the preteens and teens for the 20 years I did was that that they loved the challenges. Like if I said to them, like, okay, for five minutes, the only times you can climb the road. Well, that's just a silly challenge. And but but the kids were like, can we do when do I get to do the road climb challenge again? You know, and I want to beat my time, my beat my score. Um, so giving them those kind of things that they can do, um may seem uh uh um not uh like why are you doing this? Well, it it challenges something in the kids just at their age age is something that they they need and they want. Um and um so we try to come up with things like that, like easy movements they can play with, um challenges they can do.

And there is a there is also in there what we call my brand X, which is just a form, so that if you want, and this is totally the choice of the parent, they print out this form or not, right? Um, which will allow them to keep some kind of record. And we we not only because of the pandemic, we not only included kind of record what you did, but how do you feel about it? How do you feel today? That kind of thing. What was your best one of the use? What was your best, what did you feel, what did you do best today? So they came out with a positive, even if it's I was really great at counting my bad reps.

Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, yeah.

It's still something they can come out with. So um that's another angle to it. But it but it's it does take parent involvement in in knowing, okay, that's what a grasshopper is. I'm gonna show them the video, or I'm gonna show them how to do it. It depends on the parent, you know, how they how they play that out. But I think we over-answered your give me an example. I think it's great.

I think it's really cool. I mean, that's that that's such it's so useful, right? Because I do think, I mean, even as an adult, sometimes I, you know, I've been doing the fitness thing for a long time, but I'll go to the gym sometimes. I'm like, what am I gonna do today? Right. And I can't imagine a parent who's like knows that their child uh needs to get some movement today because they've been in front of a computer, just haven't been able to give them attention because you're on a computer and you know, this weird world that we've been in. Um, just to have something, an idea or a concept, that's all it takes, right? That's what's that's the catalyst to get the whole thing going.

I think it's kind of like you know, the frustration of a parent who's had to deal with all the things that we've had to deal with the last year and a half.

Yeah.

You know now they're coming home, they're tired from from the day, but they know they want to help their kid and and go outside and play is the best they can do. Go go kick the ball around, go do this, something like that. Go do go do these these three things that are on this list. Come back in and tell me about it, is way um easier and probably uh just helpful for parents.

It also takes their, you know, whatever relationship they have with their child, especially in the teen years where the teenager like, uh, whatever you do, I don't want to do it, right? So, dad, you golf, uh, you want me to golf, I don't want to golf, right? So it's somebody else giving the here. You know, it kind of gives them a little distance, social emotional distance from the parenting thing that can happen in their inter, you know, personal relationships within a family. And it doesn't happen everywhere, but for those kids that you know are contrary, maybe um, it does it does give them sort of a let's do it this way, these people said to. Yeah, yeah, it's it's the the brand X.

The brand X, the Brand X did it. Uh that's funny. We'll blame me for everything. Um, one of the things I want to cover, because I know it's it's a topic that you wanted to, you know, put out there, um, Mickey, was like, um, where to start with kids? And you know, maybe we have a few more minutes before uh I run out of your time, but maybe if you can kind of get some ideas on what that concept is and a couple takeaways that people can have with that.

So all thanks for that softball. Um so all of the things that are happening in the world uh that we've just gone over, reduced movement, mean that kids start in a different place than they did three years ago, five years ago, eight years ago, 12 years ago when we started noticing the change. Um so that means that I can't train them the same way. I mean, a lot of people do, but that's not optimal. So if if we walk it back, we and we go, okay, they're coming in, let's uh let's all do, let's teach them the air squat. I mean, everybody thinks that's fine. Um, but really, many kids now, that's just gonna, you're gonna have the crashiest, horrible looking air squats, even if you're a fantastic instructor, because they don't have basic motor patterns you're assuming they have. They, they, they don't necessarily have any idea how to stabilize their midline or engage their core or whatever you want to call that ability to brace, right? So we have to we have to start where they're at and recognize that that's not what we assume and that it's consistently changing, and it's not, it's like we have movement tiers one through three. We had to go back and make zero. Now we have zero movement tier, which is movement skills that create the fear. So um, for instance, we were laughing about earlier the overhead squat and how we used to say, please don't do this, and people would send us pictures next week. Hey, look at all my kids overhead squatting. It was the worst thing. You've ever seen. So we start the squat with something called a block squat, which is the feet together squeeze, and then we move those hips back, and the knees, naturally, because of this position, won't slide forward in the way that they do with 90% of kids when you do an air squat. Also, keeping the feet together and flat to the floor changes a whole lot about that movement and creates a movement pattern that then when you teach the air squat, they already know that the feet should stay relatively straight. They should be flat to the floor. And they've been practicing moving the hips back and not letting the knees slide. So all of a sudden, we've corrected just by creating this pattern all the things that would happen if we hadn't done it. So that's one example of many.

We have a principle in the in the uh PYCC on the UICC. We call base skill boost. Base, that's our philosophy on how to treat how to teach movement. So base, um kind of quickly going over base would be like learning to control your body in space, learning the movement patterns. Um build would be applying that, um applying uh it to an external object. So I learn, I know how to hinge, I know how to brace, I know how to keep my feet out of the ground, now I can kind of back back up. Ghost would be now I can weight lift, now I can deadlift, I can add weight, I can I can really kind of explode. Um we can apply this to almost anything. So you see a somebody wants to train their or have their four-year-old learn how to bat. So the first thing they do is take that to uh take them to a um batting cage, give them a bat give them a bat and say, okay, go in the batting cage, and they turn it on to to uh you know a professional level and say the ball comes at them at 90 miles an hour, and they say, hey, bat, you know, that's not the way we want to do it. You know, in our world, that's the the person who says I've got maybe all the channel they're moving way down the road here. What you would need to teach the kid how to how to um uh how to how to how to bat would be how do you stand and approach the plate? Where do your feet go? What does your body need to be like? Okay, now that we know how we're gonna stand and approach the plate and how our body is gonna be, and we've maybe with uh you know taken our hands and learned how to swing that swing without abating them, now we're gonna learn to hold the bat. We've trained you how to move correctly, now you can actually have a bat. Now we can hit a t-ball. Now that once we've done that, we can go to boost, we start throwing the ball at you, and you can hit the ball. And we're gonna be way more successful doing any doing that than if we just kind of do what Mickey says, like, hey, look, we learned to squat today, good enough, but it's good way overhead, we're gonna go over to squat. Right. Yeah.

Yeah, it's the progression.

It it all it also is interesting in communicating to parents because most people don't see, because they're not in the field like we are, they don't see that the last 12 years or so have been catastrophic in the sort of we're a movement, where kids are on that path and where they're starting, no matter their age, when they enter a gym environment or an athletic environment is so different. And so they think in their minds, well, this is so simplistic, you're treating them all like two-year-olds. Sadly, that's where we're at, you know, and and so um we we're trying to meet them where they are in the best possible way to give them all that. And if we skip steps, we have a great infographic about skipping steps. If we skip steps and we go right from, I've been doing nothing to sports specialization, we miss like developmental opportunity that we not we can't necessarily get back. And so, like, we we had amazing athletes in our little town when we were running our gym for 20 years, and they would we had amazing athletes come in who could not bra jump, who could not skip, but they were throwing 90 mile an hour fastballs. Okay, 85. I exaggerate. You get the idea, yeah. Um so there's there's way more of that, and that parent doesn't get it because like that wasn't happening when they were younger. All the kids had so much movement experience that they did it differently back then. We just have to rethink it. It's it's not the same. I mean, we can see it, things aren't the same in so many ways, but for some reason, there's this difficulty in understanding that this has changed, monumentally changed.

So, what she's talking, what she's talking about, I think it's really important, is that because the way society has changed, culture has changed, kids are not acquiring the um common human movements that that most parents think, oh yeah, of course my 12-year-old can skip. No, they can't.

Or land with two feet simultaneously.

Or they can't side shuffle. And now you take that kid and he goes into into college footballer or into high school football or or she plays you know soccer, and she can't reach back in when something um you know pops up in the game, she can't reach back in and go like this is how I safely move to address this. And so we have you know injuries skyrocketing. Well, we can see why, because kids don't move, you know, don't have standard movement patterns that are correct, and they don't have this library of human movement. Um on a different level, then we see kids who are uh unable to produce the power that they should be able to produce because they move backwards. So, you know, think about it because somebody who's squatting badly and they've got you know um there's just a point where they can't squat anymore because they're squatting badly, they've got to go back and retrain themselves. And that so you've got this two-fold problem that we see in in the youth force because of what he's talking about is that number one, the injuries, and number two, um you know, a child who who has a genetic potential to be way up here is only able to go here because they don't have that library human movement and the movement that they have is is generally poor.

And that opportunity for those neural pathways to be embedded because they were repeated is back there now. I mean, we still have that neuroplasticity later in life, but it's not the same as getting it and repeating it during these growth phases.

So, so we used to we used to teach the air squad with you know 10 years ago. That's what we started with. Now we now we go down to what we call movement skills, tier zero on our uh on our care system, and we're teaching parts and pieces of movements, solidifying those things, then building those things together to produce a move a movement for the child. So the child needs to these are the things a child needs to know before they can actually squat well. Um that sounds really egg-headed, but it's it's where we are. Yeah, we we had to go back and be like, I need to teach a child how to bear crawl. I need to teach the child how to jump, leave the ground with two feet at the same time, and land. So we we started building that into our training of this is what you need to do first with the child.

Jumping jacks 10 years ago and jumping jacks now.

Totally different.

Yeah, I mean, you you get tons of kids no idea what that is.

Yeah.

Uh and do it oddly because they haven't really jumped in a pattern ever.

Yeah.

Well, it's um there yeah, there's a lot of work to be done. Um, it's it's always you know sobering to get an update from you guys. As fun as you are.

Sorry, sorry.

As fun as you are.

There we go again. So many kids can jump in, Jack.

Yeah, yeah.

Yay!

I mean, it's it's as a species, we tend to procrastinate and put things off until it's right in our face, right? And um, the more that we can make people aware of like, hey, this is the situation, this is what we're facing right now, today, um, as of this minute, this is the state of things and it needs to change. And um, you guys are out there giving the education. So I think that's you know, for people who want to get part of this and want to get engaged or at least just check out and learn a couple things about how they can, you know, help with their kids or their nieces and nephews or their grandkids or you know, their students, or their athletes, or whatever it may be, where where do you guys send people online?

I think the first thing just kind of take a take a look at what we're doing at the you know, our Instagram camp, which is just at the brand X method. Go check that out because there's lots of just look, these are kids moving well. This there's good examples and some descriptions about what we're trying to accomplish. Um, and then we also have um you know our our our uh brand X method to get I think you have a a special link. Special link what we call our youth trainer's toolkit on there, and it really just kind of gives an outline, an overview of what's going on in the PYCC, but it also gives some real um concrete things a trainer or coach or parent or teacher can do to help a child learn how to hinge track because one of the things that we saw um starting around 2012-2014 was that kid stopped coming in and being able to hinge at the hip, they bent the SI track. And so, and then you're trying to train them. How do you train them to actually uh replace that pattern of getting order to grab something with you know bending and bending it with the back instead of hinging at the hip to fix something up? And so we have some concrete steps on how to do that.

And and the short hand is Eric, even though maybe we sound like a downer sometimes, this stuff motivates us to fix, right? We're motivated to work on it, we love working on it, we're nerds about it, we love talking to people about it. So reaching out to us, Jeff and Mickey at the brandxmethod.com, DMing us, LinkedIn message us. What else are we on mostly? Facebook, not as much, but you can get to us that way as well. Um, and off of the website, there's there's just there's a thousand ways to get a hold of us, and we're always available. We love to talk about it.

So we still answer all of them.

Yeah, we still answer. So that's why we have no old school.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh and for people wondering, you can get all the stuff to talk about, all the educational products. You can go to the brandnexmethod.com forward slash future, and you will get a nice little kink there. Nice little discount. So, Jeff and Mickey, thank you so much. It's um always a pleasure connecting with you guys and appreciate the updates. And hey, I think you're fun people. So yeah, you got it.

He's gonna put his thing down and go.

There we go. That's the one F word that you can use that still makes it PG 13. Did you know that? You can always have one.

Oh no. Yeah, what about the cat? That's the kid's F word.

I love you guys. Ladies and gentlemen, Jeff and McKinney.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This was your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minutes. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it. iTunes, Spotify, Castbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it. We want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more or get in touch with me, simply go to the future of fitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the future of fitness. Have a great day.