John Welbourn - Power Athlete & The Need For Authenticity

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[00:02:01] creators that we are for you to go to podcast collective.io to learn more. That is podcast collective.io. Now onto the show. All right, we are live. Mr. John Wellborn, welcome to the future of fitness. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Yeah, it's a pleasure, man.

[00:02:24] I've been following you for a long time, long, long time. I've been looking forward to this and for people who don't know, I'm just going to get a quick synopsis of who you are and feel free to change up whatever I say here.

[00:02:38] You've been around the performance training environment for quite some time and you were an NFL player. Were you a left tackle? No, you were right. Anyway, it was about seven or eight years. You played for the Eagles, the Chiefs, the Pats. You stay on it.

[00:02:53] Yeah, no, I played 10. I did up, yeah. So I was a nine-year starter and then I went from my 10th through to the Patriots and got hurt in training camp and that was the end of it. Yeah, impressive. I mean, there's a lot.

[00:03:04] That's a whole two-hour episode right there, but the thing I really got to know you for was CrossFit football. So back when I started in the CrossFit world around 08, I saw a lot of kind of specialty

[00:03:17] certifications come across and I regret not doing yours because out of all the ones I did, it was one of the few I didn't, but I kept hearing from people. It was the most comprehensive, the best one, most adaptable, basically kind of any training

[00:03:32] modality that you want to do within your gym. So heard nothing but good things and then you guys have evolved into power athlete. So there's a lot going on there, but people maybe on this podcast who aren't familiar

[00:03:45] with you, John, give us a little bit of your overall background, how you describe it and then we'll take it from there. Way to start. I grew up in Southern California. I was younger, so three boys played a ton of sports.

[00:03:59] You know, got into martial arts pretty early, ended up being pretty decent at football and liking weights and got a ton of scholarship offers. Went to UC Berkeley to play football and scholarship. Graduated in four years with a degree in rhetoric.

[00:04:13] Did my master's work in my fifth year and then I was planning to go to law school. I got drafted and figured I'd play for a year or two and then go to law school and that turned into ten.

[00:04:21] And when I retired, I was sitting on the couch rehabbing and I got a phone call from Greg Glassman, CEO CrossFit at the time and asked me if I would come over and help them develop their technology on how to train athletes.

[00:04:32] So I had accurately assessed that CrossFit was not an athletic form of training based upon the model I have of athleticism. Bilateral hip hinging in a sagittal plane is not athleticism. If you're a gymnast who's displaying athletic movement, it fits within the paradigm

[00:04:46] but in terms of field sports, you know, there's no transverse plane, there's no front-hold, there's no rotation. I mean it was really lacking in how it was. And the problem was strength was just another element of fitness. So I show up and start programming multiple workouts

[00:05:01] and put Paradise Strength templates into CrossFit. So before us, one day you might come in and it's a 5x5 back squat and the next day you're going to do a 5K row.

[00:05:10] So for us, we came in and I was like, dude, if we want to make people strong, you're going to have to use a Paradise Strength conditioning template. So I entered that into the CrossFit space and just translated, you know,

[00:05:22] supersets and giant sets and clusters and all that stuff into conditioning Metcons. So all I did was I just took standard strength conditioning principles and just translated into CrossFit speak and then dumped it on it and people loved it even though they were thumbing their nose

[00:05:36] at conventional strength conditioning. So it was exactly what we were giving them. And, you know, I was at a meeting with Glassman and he was about a dozen drinks in right before he went face down in the soup.

[00:05:47] He screamed at me, you virally destroyed CrossFit by convincing everybody they needed to be strong. And I was like, sweet, thanks. That's a great thing to tell people they need to be stronger. You know, strength is an adaptation.

[00:05:59] I mean, you know, if you're going to live a long life, it helps to be a strong individual to live a long life. So we worked with CrossFit for a long time. I had a really tumultuous relationship because what I was teaching

[00:06:09] was juxtaposed from what they were teaching. So the fact that I had CrossFit football was very predatory on their brand and I was always surprised to let me do it. So at some point that kind of came to an end and I'd started Power Athlete years before

[00:06:22] because we were doing a lot of military contracting and different stuff and then we just kind of seamlessly stepped over into what we were doing. For those who maybe are indoctrinated, why was Puridia strength programming so against the grain

[00:06:35] for what CrossFit was at the time of the typical definition right of constantly varied functional movements performed at high intensity? Like what was the rub? If your goal is to get strong, constantly varied movements performed at high intensity, it's not how you get strong.

[00:06:52] I mean, think about Milo's bowl. Milo grew, he got bigger, the bowl got bigger, he kept picking the bowl up. It's not like one day he picked up sheep and the next day he picked up a bowl and then the next day he picked up a rock.

[00:07:01] So if you want to get strong, strength is an adaptation of, you know, to quote Shao Shanck Redemption, you know, time and pressure. It's like a study of geology. I mean, it's the same with strength. You have to do it with consistency and effort

[00:07:12] and, you know, do a little bit more today than you did yesterday and it's something that you have to do. You can't just randomly program strength into a template and hope you get strong. And I mean, this is one-on-one physiology.

[00:07:23] The problem is Glassman and the powers that be across of it had thumbed their nose at traditional strength conditioning. You know, I was in a talk where he said, you know, sports scientists and strength conditioning has contributed nothing to the field. I was like, what about VO2 Max?

[00:07:41] It was just, it was outlandish things. You think about Dr. Evil talking about his dad, how he invented the question mark, you know, thumb clots were lazy. I mean, it's just kind of insane. So, but Glassman did have an incredible effect on the world

[00:07:56] where he did more to put barbells in people's hands. What we did is we just focused it. And, you know, before us, it was just one workout a day. We came to start programming multiple workouts. You can't walk into a cross-through gym that doesn't have a strength

[00:08:08] and a conditioning template now. And that came from us. So we virally destroyed it as I was told. It's, you know, I look back and this is just one man's experience too on the early days of CrossFit too where I was hook, line and sinker, man.

[00:08:21] Like I was in, you know, I would get in loud verbal fights with people at a bar about, you know, my modality versus their personal training modality, you know, because I was gym owner. I was just constantly and everything was just a joke about this all the time.

[00:08:36] Like I was the point where I'm like, I'm pretty sure I could cure anything with CrossFit and Paleo like any disease, any, you know, humanitarian issue if you're just giving those two things like that's all I need. Right.

[00:08:47] And I think there was a lot of as people got into CrossFit there was a lot of novice level trainees, right? Who, yeah, you could throw them into a class having to constantly varied functional movements performed at high intensity with a little bit of strength here and there.

[00:09:01] And they're going to get stronger, but to a certain point. Right. Well, I mean, if you take people that are detrained and they do anything, they could play snare drum for three hours a week and they're going to get better.

[00:09:11] So just because something works doesn't mean it's optimal and where people getting in shape. Yeah. You know, you give them a Paleo diet which is a restrictive diet and you have monitor the calories so they're eating in caloric restriction and you're basically burning them to the ground

[00:09:23] every single day and you know, people got in shape. It just, I think if you want to move fast that novice effect do people need to be in shape? 100%. Do they need a base level fitness? Yeah. Do they need GPP? 100%.

[00:09:35] The problem was if Glassman had gone back and read some of this stuff about GPP and SPP and some of this training, he would have understood that you can't have a sport of GPP. GPP is general physical preparedness. It's the template that you use to get somebody

[00:09:49] in moderate shape to move on to more advanced training. Like it's like, so like I see this and I'm like, wow, this is crazy. But he was, he is an extremely polarizing individual. He's an incredible speaker and he found people that were looking for a change and looking

[00:10:04] for something different and the standard model was broken so I think it hit it right at the right time. One of the things I appreciated which I found to be novel about Glassman at the time especially was that he gave it all away for free

[00:10:18] like the CrossFit Journal, like everything. He just, he didn't put it behind a paywall, he just threw it out in the world. Have you seen that like, because you've been in this world of strength and fitness for a long time. Have you ever seen anything like that,

[00:10:34] like what he did either through your history or training or nowadays? Are people just giving it away like that? Well, if somebody gives you something for free, that's not the product, you're the product. If you think about like, I don't know, when Gmail started, they're giving away

[00:10:50] this Gmail thing. No, they're giving it away because you're the product. So I think he took the exact same approach and that the people endeared him. And I saw it too, we gave away free programming for years. The amount of goodwill that we created

[00:11:02] by giving away free program catapulted and has really supported our business still to this day just for that goodwill. And the other cool part was we gave away free programming so people did it. Then I traveled the world for the next nine years

[00:11:14] and met thousands of people that had done the program that all had a similar result. I mean, if you want to test the efficacy of something, give it away for free and then travel and meet all the people that are doing it

[00:11:24] and let them give you the results unsolicited. And we were very lucky in that. It allowed me to formulate my thoughts on strength conditioning and performance training and everything. It really allowed me to build the model I use at Power Athlete just for the fact

[00:11:38] that I had more data points than anybody else on the planet. The only other person that did that would have been like Kelly Starrat where Kelly had a program and he was putting people to meet all the people. So it really is extremely helpful. I just don't know

[00:11:50] how you would ever put the lightning back in the bottle or more importantly strike new lightning just because that time was such a different time than this today. And at the time people were like online training wasn't really a thing.

[00:12:00] So you could go to this website, give it for free and when we became more specialized I put everything behind the gate a paywall not because I was trying to make money but because I wanted the information I wanted the data I wanted the results

[00:12:12] and I couldn't get people to consistently give me results for free. So I had to charge them which seems counterintuitive. Hey, if I'm giving you a program just give me all the results. No, I had to charge them to get the results and that was a strange realization.

[00:12:26] So now I mean now that's allowed us to you know hyper jump the programs that we put out are just they're really good for their intended usage. I think it's because we just have more data points. I think what most people do with programs

[00:12:38] hey I did this program this is my body building routine so I'm going to post it up so everybody should get better when I don't buy into that. Just because it works for you and you can be an outlier I think so you have to be able to

[00:12:50] have a ton of data points be able to give it and what I end up doing is creating different principles associated with power athlete that we're based more on you know primal patterns movement step squat lunge I mean all the things that we do

[00:13:02] all the tenants for our program all the pillars and all that came from just giving way free programming and then going and meeting all the people and then really just evolution. So it wasn't like kicked in the door and was like we're giving away free

[00:13:12] we're charging people for programming now we gave it away for years and it really allowed me to do and create really an interesting system. What a nice segue like give me give us an idea of as a business what is power athlete nowadays you know in Q2

[00:13:28] of 2024 like what are the legs that stands on and yeah give us some insights um you know we do direct to consumer programming so we work with people um and then we work with groups so I mean I was on a call earlier today for a you know

[00:13:42] group in Canada fire department that's trying to hire power athlete to come and do their education provide programming and really just mentorship for their guys when we do that you know at development group so we work with naval special warfare development group do the exact same

[00:13:54] thing for them so we do individuals we do large groups we do education and then I have a couple projects that I do personally right now I have three clients I have a 72 year old billionaire that I'm trying to put some muscle on I have um the top

[00:14:08] Brazilian jiu-jitsu players in the world that I'm getting ready for ADCC and then I got the guys at development group so I have a really interesting private catalog of clients yeah yeah it seems like uh and then there's thousands of people that are checking daily programs

[00:14:22] that we interact with so and then the education piece and we have um certified coaches will do a big event every year that should be coming up here in September yeah and you get a podcast I mean it seems to me like you're having a pretty good time

[00:14:34] yeah yeah yeah it's uh it's going well um so no it's it's been fun it's been impactful and you know as this you know as the market continues to pivot I mean you know I was just reading some marketing

[00:14:48] stuff today and it's like you know this marketing stuff in terms of how to like direct to consumer internet social media I mean this stuff is changing by the minute with AI and so you know somebody left a question the other day you know what happens

[00:15:00] when AI replaces Johnny and uh I will figure that piece out but I mean people are trying to do these things I just think the issue with the AI is all it has is what's available it just basically curates what's on the internet already

[00:15:16] if stuff doesn't exist on the internet it can't make it up not to say it can't but it would have to go in and I would have to give it all of the parameters to design what we do so

[00:15:24] I'm curious to see where this whole thing takes us get me too I mean it's something I talk about once a day probably and I don't even know I don't know shit about AI you know as a from a technical standpoint

[00:15:36] but I talk to a lot of people who do um you know a lot of uh strong technical minds within the industry and you know everybody's kind of up in the air still and I think the only answer you can say is like where is this going is

[00:15:48] I don't know and if anyone says that they do know then they're kind of full of it right full of shit yeah yeah I want to touch on kind of a meaty topic because it can go a lot of directions but uh I was talking

[00:16:00] about from your team in preparation for this and you know something about the future of performance right I mean we just touched on a little bit on technology we talked about business models ever shifting in our industry we talked about consumers um you know market expanding

[00:16:14] shrinking like who's actually participating in health and fitness um you know it's it's it's dynamic I guess uh and any and more dynamic than anytime I am I 17 career your 17 year career being in this industry so when you look at the future performance maybe

[00:16:30] paint us a picture um I'm going to give it like a five year time horizon like where do you think the business of performance the science of performance all this is going uh which what's your vision um I think we're stuck in analysis by paralysis I think there's

[00:16:46] too much information and I think what's going to happen as we get farther and farther down this road the people that can deliver something simply and easily are going to be the most successful ones when I look at um you know performance

[00:16:58] and strength conditioning and all the stuff that people are putting out there's so much nuance to it but I always go back to what can people execute you know let's say I got 5000 dudes that are in their garage you know 6 a.m wife and

[00:17:10] kids all these things that they have to do get to a job what can they execute easily well and have a you know high degree of proficiency so that's where I see this thing going I think that for all our advancements in you know convenience

[00:17:26] why is it that nobody has any time to do anything like I got a an iPhone that does everything and I have fucking no time to do anything so I think what it comes down to is people have very very small windows because we're so busy so being

[00:17:38] able to provide a really good service that's concise and not full of a lot of bullshit and a lot of fluff and getting people in and out getting the results and then managing them answering their questions and hopefully creating community along the way

[00:17:50] so that's pretty much been my mission for the last 12 years to just try to deliver high-end quality stuff you know without a ton of nonsense and fluff and just get people moving in the right direction and then give them workers for improvement

[00:18:04] John from like the I'm just writing notes and questions I ask here but the technology aspect of training I mean at the end of the day you got to lift the weight right no technology is going to make you help you do that but is there anything in

[00:18:18] technology in this industry trends come and go so quickly I mean you know three four years ago we were talking about connected home fitness like it was it was it like that's it that was the end of the industry gyms are dead right that's not true

[00:18:32] so when you look at like maybe technology that you guys are starting to adopt you know I think of stuff like you know from a equipment basis like you know electromagnetic resistance you know things that are more convenient in a smaller room you know wearables of course

[00:18:48] you know there's so many of them you know things like velocity based training force plates like stuff like that like what do you guys see as useful and what do you see as fluff I think for force plates are incredible

[00:19:00] we have them but I only use them with our high level athletes I mean does a mom need to come in and jump on force plates she could do I think that she needs to probably not so I use it really comes down to who is the athlete

[00:19:12] and what are they trying to accomplish you know my guys ready for ADCC 2024 the biggest grappling tournament in the world and their margin of error is so small that we pull out all the stops you do lactate testing you know there I monitor how much zone to recovery

[00:19:26] they're getting I monitor their sessions how much food they're eating all of their PRs and all the stuff that they do in the gym and it's because those individuals have to be ready to perform on a given day at their highest level

[00:19:38] a mom who just wants to be strong enough to be able to carry multiple bags of groceries you know 47 year old dad who doesn't want to have a dad bod does he need force plates and does he need velocity based training and all that no he doesn't

[00:19:50] and I think what happens is when you create that level of complexity there's a stickiness that trainers use to force the client and the athlete to be sticky to them because well if I do all this

[00:20:00] specialized stuff nobody does this where are you going to find somebody else that has me so it really just comes down to survivability where now they are trying to you know keep their clients close to them like I was out at

[00:20:15] Sornix this weekend and one of the guys that got up and presented was you know trains athletes and he has like a million different of these movements and I was like man like our movement catalog is very very small in the grand scheme of things

[00:20:28] I mean some people have thousands of movements like it's all based off of X Y and Z axis axis of rotation for the hips what they can do in their upper body there's really seven things that our body can do you know and then when you start incorporating

[00:20:39] transverse frontal and saginal planes now you have an infinite amount of things to do how you challenge those individuals is going to be really based on you your creativity and what your athletes can do well and that's the biggest issue is

[00:20:50] I need people to move well under load if you can't move well under load I will find a way for you to move well under load so I'll just give you an example you have a back injury and any form of axle loading shuts you down

[00:21:00] and you can't back squat but all I can do is back squat you for your legs because it's all I have then I'm kind of screwed you know we have a belt squat I have a pretty cool leg press so I mean just being able to have

[00:21:10] some different modalities and different pieces of equipment available to you because every athlete is slightly different and it's called the principle of specificity where I just need you to move well whatever that load is is going to be determined on you and what you have going on

[00:21:24] so being able to kind of deliver a customized program more so not one that's so rigid well this is what we do and this is what we all do if you don't have this then you know you can't train with us

[00:21:34] so I think it just comes down to malleability can you adjust the program to fit the individual do you understand the tenets of physiology where you know you're going to bring in a dad he's been lifting three weeks and you're like great one RMs 10 by 1 one RM

[00:21:50] no it's fucking I see that stuff and it's like dude it's ridiculous you have to get people up to a certain strength level you have to progress them and you have to be smart because and then look at them as not clients

[00:22:01] for the month but you know we've had people that have followed our training programs for 10 12 years and they periodize through different programs they move I mean when I look at the names like I'm just guys been with us for a decade and I get on the phone

[00:22:10] and we'll do consultations and this guy's like yep you're 10 year 12 and I think that longevity that stickiness isn't because we're using a ton of technology it's because the programming works and it's good so I do like force plates we do lactate testing

[00:22:23] but it really based all of that stuff is really just the tip of the spear where now I have you know these high level athletes and I have to try to get them ready for the average person I just

[00:22:34] they just need to be able to do the basics and do them uncommonly well John you guys still do coaching and trainer education is that still part of your business oh yeah we have a methodology and then after they finish the methodology

[00:22:47] they come here to Austin and actually test for their certification in person so yeah it's good you know for the people that do it and the people that make it through they are excellent and we fail decent amount of people I'm always blown away

[00:23:00] when people show up and because I don't want to fail anybody I mean they've spent money they show up they do all this and not see them put their best foot forward and fail is usually pretty hard but I'm never

[00:23:10] surprised that people just fuck it I'll show it up it was like the CrossFit level one if I just show up and I have a you know a pulse I'm going to get a certificate and we tell people that's not the case

[00:23:19] have you seen this is something that's come up on this the show and in conversations over the past I would say two to three years but what do you think about the state of the coaching and training industry like

[00:23:30] my I've seen it's kind of undeniable like the trend you see a lot of trainers especially young ones coming into the industry they're multiple like they have their Instagram channel right so they're trying to kind of make a presence maybe

[00:23:45] make some money on that side of thing but they're also training in person but they don't seem to really have not too many of them seem to have a real interest in staying in the industry for a long time

[00:23:55] like my fear is that it's slipping into the gig economy you know where people take a major certification will stick around for a while they'll go do something else like when you look at the state of the coaching and trainer industry like what what's your take are you

[00:24:10] hopeful positive do you think it's shrinking with what your which would take I think there's always going to be good coaches and there's always going to be people that are just really average so I did a talk this weekend at a Sornex and part of my

[00:24:22] talk was on authenticity and part of that authenticity is really interesting in that most of what people say and do and believe are not the opinions and thoughts or not their opinions and thoughts so what people do and I really think when people don't know what to do

[00:24:37] let's say they get in the strength conditioning world we use that as an example they don't know what they believe because they haven't done the work to get there so what they do is they listen and then they this like armor of thought let's say and then that's

[00:24:48] where they start speaking from that armor of thought is that a good thing or a bad thing well it can be a good thing because then they get to try on it's like going to test driving cars they get to like test drive

[00:24:57] different ideas they get to you know say this and you know does this work you know when I put this out to the world what's the response so they get to try on a lot of things problem is it's not them

[00:25:06] but it's core it's just not so the reason that things are authentic or inauthentic is because people don't really say or believe what they're talking about not because they don't believe it just because they have no foundation and no background to be able to say it

[00:25:20] I was very fortunate in that I played in the NFL for a decade so I played at the highest level I trained with world-class coaches I tapped out when I got injured and when Glassman hit me up about working with them I didn't really know what I believed

[00:25:34] I knew what the people I trained with believed and I had the different systems and things that I had found within my own training that I thought were real real real important pieces and I had the opportunity to put out programming

[00:25:46] test all my thoughts then travel the world and meet the people that were doing the programs and get the results and there was a lot of things that sucked there were a lot of things that were good and really helped me hone

[00:25:55] who I am because I just had more opportunity to do it so I mean today I know exactly who I am I know exactly what I believe and I know how this program works so that feeling of being authentic build strength and people are attracted to strength

[00:26:11] I think people are repelled from weakness and we see you know in today's present culture I mean bring it out a little bit more when things sound really whiny and insane and you hear people making these just preposterous claims and this and it's like for non-crazy people

[00:26:27] you just kind of move back away from it and you're like these people are crazy like this is inauthentic this is weakness and then when you hear somebody who's authentic and strong people are drawn to him and the analogy I gave is I went to go

[00:26:38] to hear Jordan Peterson speak last month or two months ago and he got up and you know Tuesday night 7000 people at the Moody Center Jordan Peterson gets up and instead of spending a few minutes and being like hey I'm the most enlightened thinker

[00:26:54] of the 21st century as anointed by Joe Rogan I'm just going to drop you right in the middle and let you see my thought process so buckle up and hang on he didn't do that he just got out there and just started speaking

[00:27:05] and it was 45-50 minutes of verbal masturbation and then at the end everybody stood up and cheered with a standing ovation and I was looking around and I was like I you know I got a pretty high IQ I went to Berkeley, Red Rook major

[00:27:20] I read, I teach, I do this stuff I'm a modern rhetorician like I've read all the stuff that he you know and I'm a huge fan of his and I was like this was some fucking nonsense but why were people cheering?

[00:27:32] Why were people so excited for this moment because of the authenticity of Jordan Peterson the fact that he was a bright shining light in the face of all of this nonsense he, she, pronouns and this I mean if you have a question about something

[00:27:45] happening in the world there's probably a talk that you can listen to at Jordan Peterson that at least makes sense for an un-crazy being I've read his books but he got up there and all he had to do was preface it

[00:27:54] with like hey I'm going to show you how my mind works and take you through my thought process he didn't and then the moderator who I wish I'd been the moderator because I would have been like I don't even know what you just said

[00:28:02] can you help us decipher some connectivity some form of like you know partition this to be able to give people when they asked him tomorrow you heard Jordan speak what did he speak about and he didn't the moderator was like oh my god

[00:28:16] this was the most amazing thing like fangirl and I was like looking around and I was like shit like this is, it was kind of a little bit of an Emperor's New Clothes moment in such a way and I felt that people were there

[00:28:26] because they wanted to say that they heard Jordan Peterson speak in person it was like a cultural thing more than anything so he's a huge fan of his he's extremely authentic and that's why people were cheering not for what he said that night

[00:28:37] but what he's done over the past X amount of years I mean you know his every time I've heard him on Joe Rogan he answers a question that I'm like man that's a really good that's excellent I had a question about that

[00:28:49] and he kind of couched it in a certain way that made sense but for him speaking in person it was this verbal masturbation and people cheered so that kind of got me really kind of noodling on this authenticity piece and if you go back and

[00:29:06] let me see what it's called I can't remember the name shit it's called self-determination theory is kind of where I pulled that piece but the idea that people are authentic when the actions reflect their true and core self but it's when they are autonomous and self-determining

[00:29:26] so that's kind of where I pulled from that but the idea that authenticity and truth are so paramount and I think what you're seeing in this present fitness climate is a lack of inauthenticity or sorry that's a double name is inauthenticity or lack of authenticity where people

[00:29:45] you know I can I'm just going to take a bunch of booty short ass pictures and post a link for my program you know a glute booty builder summer program and hoping that guys are going to pay 20 bucks to buy my program or $13 from my only fans

[00:30:01] I mean that's really where we're kind of at in this deal where they're not necessarily selling knowledge they're not necessarily selling betterment they're just selling access and you know some weird soft core porn who knows but there's very few people that are experts and the good ones

[00:30:18] I know I mean I was with Caldeeds this weekend who's an absolute monster in this thing and answered questions for me that plagued me for 20 years and it's really great to be around those type of individuals that are intelligent that train athletes that are solving problems

[00:30:33] that are looking for different pieces to solve this and there's not a lot of those people out in the world because there can only be so many experts everybody's an expert nobody would be an expert I think for me I tend to associate and look for the people

[00:30:44] that are the best in the world at what they're doing I couldn't tell you what 99.9% of the rest of the fitness world is doing because I just don't care and I want to see if you notice this too but in this ocean of inauthenticity

[00:30:57] isn't it a tough word? yeah man it's brutal I don't know if it's just Monday morning or not but in this kind of sea that we're seeing you know it's this rise of general narcissism and things like that right

[00:31:08] do you feel like those who are looking for authenticity are almost more like more powerfully pulled to the people who are the real deal like it's almost like that attraction is there's less of them but they're stronger would you say that's something that you've seen?

[00:31:22] I think we've never been in a time in history at least in my life where people are searching for intelligent people to listen to and to lead them I mean it's like let's give you a fair example right like during COVID

[00:31:37] so I had this conversation with somebody about this I'm a fan of history especially US history and you know my dad who since passed away was really smart like real smart like 140 plus IQ smart and he read a ton of presidential autobiographies and he just read a ton

[00:31:58] and he knew Richard Nixon so when he was a young lobbyist in Sacramento he had the opportunity to meet Richard Nixon and he told me he's like probably the most intelligent person he never met so Richard Nixon being the most popular president we'd ever elected

[00:32:12] one of the smartest people and that also that hubris kind of got him a little bit so he gets elected to office he starts asking questions because he wants to know who assassinated Kennedy the guy two before him got killed and nobody ever, the Warren commission all that

[00:32:26] I mean he started investigating that next thing you know two of his guys get popped in that Watergate thing for stealing something that they didn't need they're already going to win the election and unbeknownst to him they come to him you've got to cover this up

[00:32:38] so they give him bad advice Bob Woodward who had been a naval officer of intelligence officer goes over to the Washington Post his first assignment is you know this conspiracy with the president deep throat and the whole deal I mean and my dad's contention was

[00:32:56] they got Richard Nixon out of there and they basically crumpled that guy because he asked the wrong questions and there was such a deep state associated with it they got rid of Agnew on tax evasion shit and they basically brought in a president who had never been elected

[00:33:09] so I mean like that type of stuff you've got to give me an example right so you've got a Kennedy assassination they get rid of Nixon I mean this has happened over the last 50 years so we even lied to with the Iran Contra stuff I mean

[00:33:20] weapons of mass destruction you know why if Osama bin Laden bombs us to go into Iraq I mean it's all of these questions right and if you ask him oh you're being un-American we have to fight the war on terror that is the most open

[00:33:34] and checkbook I've ever seen and really wars of occupation about transferual wealth so we have like 50 years the failed Bay of Higgs I mean you look at this thing over the cascade of history and then all of a sudden COVID hits and the very people that we know

[00:33:49] have been clandestine in this whole deal now all of a sudden they're going to be truthful for us and so when people ask me about the COVID thing I'm like I'm not saying it doesn't exist but the people that are preaching this at the loudest soapbox

[00:34:00] I can go back I mean if you read the CIA's legacy ashes I mean I can go back and show you an account of this thing I mean the CIA pretty much came out and audited acl and they were like yeah well we sit on Iver Mekton

[00:34:19] and we made that bad because if there was anything on the books that could treat it then they couldn't get their emergency exemption for the for the vaccine so they had to do a disinformation campaign and I saw chris cummel being like they just didn't tell me no

[00:34:31] he was a propaganda and I mean so I think the problem is not to say that COVID doesn't exist that COVID doesn't exist and it's not this, but I think the problem and the message from these people

[00:34:43] were the most disingenuous, most untrusting people, the Rachel Maddow of the world who anything that comes out of her mouth, I'll just do the opposite. The most disingenuous people on the planet are over there, like the view and this. It's almost like not a single person

[00:35:00] that I would ever spend a minute of my life with or the people that are beating this at the loudest drum. So it's just, I'm not conspiracy theorists by any means, but I'm also not a fool and I think the issue, and I'll go back to IQ again,

[00:35:15] big population, big part of the population has an IQ less than 85 and somewhere 10% or some has less than 75, which means that pretty much they're intelligent enough to watch paint dry. And I think when you're dealing with a lot of people that just aren't very intelligent,

[00:35:29] it's easier to cold them. It's easier to use fear to manipulate and push than it is to actually provide the right information. And then I look at it and I'm like, man, this seems like bullshit.

[00:35:38] So I think in the fitness world, even more, the more glitz and glamour and the more nonsense it is, the more I'm like, ah, who are these people? You know, all of a sudden somebody you've never

[00:35:46] heard of you're like, man, that guy's got 250,000 followers on Instagram and I've heard of this person. And then you look and you're like, what athletes do they train? Who do they work with? I don't work with them. I've never even heard of these people

[00:35:54] and I've been doing this a long time. So I think it just comes down to like we had Vince from V shred on the podcast, awesome dude. He had three buddies that were marketing guys.

[00:36:03] They wanted to market a abs routine to make a little extra drinking money on the weekends and knew nothing strength conditioning. I built the juggernaut program because they were just better at marketing. You know, he's gone back and since had to learn all this stuff,

[00:36:14] but he was like, when I started, I didn't know any of this stuff. So it just goes to show you that if you are good at marketing, you can get pretty far. I almost tell people if they want

[00:36:23] to get in the strength conditioning world, figure out the marketing piece. You don't need to teach anybody anything. You can just batch yourself with others ideas. The problem though, if you go too far,

[00:36:30] you're going to get into some bullshit and then you're going to be called out by people because when you start propagating ideas that aren't your own, then all of a sudden now it

[00:36:36] looks like it just looks bad. It's funny. I keep getting hit with YouTube ads for V shred constantly and dude, you're the demographics dude. They pour so much money into retargeting ads in this and V shred. I mean, they run 90 ads a month. I mean, they are constantly,

[00:36:53] I mean, like I got on the call with them fucking wizards with, you know, direct to consumer marketing and selling programs. I mean, their demographics midwest, 35 year old women who were looking to get in shape. So we have a completely different demographic,

[00:37:05] but it was fascinating being like, fuck, I wasted my time being a professional athlete and training people. I should have just learned marketing. Yeah, it is true. I mean, I think of our industry specifically like people want the quick fix,

[00:37:21] they want the pill, they want, you know, they don't want the long journey. At least that's what they don't, what they think they want. Right? So the marketing is so critical. Like I remember like four years ago looking at whenever V shred came out and we were looking

[00:37:34] at the campaign and like what Noom did in their campaigning, it was just marketing genius really in so many ways. And yeah, it's a fundamental piece if you want to have a successful

[00:37:45] business is really invest in marketing. It's critical. You know what I know we only have a few more minutes here. So I'll pull up that Bob Woodward thing because I ironically went

[00:37:58] I went to school with his daughter. So I met him. She came and spoke, but he was a Navy Intelligence officer got out of the military, got admitted to Harvard Law School never went,

[00:38:08] went to get a job at the Washington Post. They let him go because he didn't have any experience, went to go work for the Montgomery Sentinel for a little bit and then came back with Woodward

[00:38:16] and Bernstein were both assigned to report on the June 17 1972, burglary of the headquarters of the DNC in Washington. So literally his first real assignment was probably one of the the biggest thing I mean, like, you know, and then like, I forgot who a deep throat was.

[00:38:35] He was a, you know, he has access to deep throat who was a student and given to the secret informant who provided information in 1972 to Bob Woods were what that was a

[00:38:45] Bob Woodward. And it was it was identified as former top FBI official Mark Felt. I mean, so his informer, you know, he was a naval special officer and the top guy in the FBI was her

[00:38:56] informant. I mean, come on, dude, like Nixon got fucking railroaded. And my dad said it. He told me he's like, dude, he's the most popular president. And I mean, this is just the power.

[00:39:05] So when what I am not to say, like I said, not to say COVID, I'm not a COVID denier in any way. But like, when the people giving me the information, I have 50 60 years of just nothing but

[00:39:16] bullshit. You're like, Oh, yeah. So, you know, and now you think it's such a different world where information is being manipulated to us, whether it be in fitness or health. I mean, you know, Rob Wolf probably one of the most impactful people in terms of health and fitness.

[00:39:32] Shit that do pups his head up. He probably gets deplatformed just because he's like, eat meat, lift some weights, be in shape. Don't be a fat ass. I mean, like, like they went after Rob, you know, so bad and like he was like enemy number one. Why? Because

[00:39:46] he was, you know, it's it's interesting to say the least. I mean, we are in interesting times where, you know, there, you know, we're in such an interesting nanny state where most of these people are pushing a lot of their ideas and fitness on, you know, Facebook and

[00:40:00] Instagram. And those are private entities that are controlled. And you know, if you're not telling me Zuckerberg doesn't have a direct line, I mean, we saw during the election that the White House was calling in basically deep platform. This person they got deplatformed. I mean, like,

[00:40:11] so now you have this mixing. It's, it's a wild world we live in. And I remember I did a speaking engagement years ago in Denver, I was doing a, we picked up a client, we're doing

[00:40:22] some corporate wellness for a guy named Bill Bradley. So I went to go give a talk for his his C-suite and all those people. And I talked a little bit about statins and cholesterol. And

[00:40:33] more importantly, you know, Ansel Keys, nine of seven countries study, you know, 1959, they come out and they vilify saturated fat for, you know, heart disease. Six months later, they disprove it, but nobody told the medical industry or told doctors. So and you would have thought that

[00:40:48] I had told this lady that Elvis was still alive. What do you mean that there's no correlation between heart disease and saturated fat? Like my doctor, you know, it's just, it's like,

[00:40:58] I don't know what to tell you. So, you know, where this thing is headed, I think you're always going to have noise. You're always going to have people entering this thing in and out.

[00:41:06] They get in, they make a little bit of money and then they go get a job as a mortgage broker. They get out of that. Next thing you know, they get into this. I mean, there's always

[00:41:12] going to be these transient people that jump in and out of this industry. I think it's the people that can really live for a good boutique experience. That's intelligent, easy to execute. That's not fraught with nonsense and bullshit. I think those people will be the ones that

[00:41:26] survive for a long time. And that's the question when I asked you, John, and I don't disagree with anything you said. I mean, you know, over the years of COVID years, it was a dangerous

[00:41:36] time. I mean, I've lost some of the closest relationships I have. You know, there's always a chance that they'll come back, right? But you know, just because I didn't understand, I'm like,

[00:41:46] I don't understand if I get invited into your house. Why do I have to wear a mask when I'm over here 10 feet away? But then I get to take it off at the dinner table.

[00:41:58] It's crazy. I weld and I fab, I build trucks and we wear, I wear like an N95 mask to you know, when I grind, I got a respirator. And the reason I got a respirator was N95 masks

[00:42:10] do not work. You get done grinding and I have so much metal and dirt in my nose. So I mean, like the fact that a, you know, COVID molecule, which is like 100 or 1000 times smaller,

[00:42:21] whatever it is, then the smallest piece of something that you can recognize. And somehow this is going to get me like, I don't know. It was such a weird time and so polarizing. You know, my favorite was always like, Oh, you have to trust the science. I'm going

[00:42:34] to read science. No, no, no, you don't have the ability to understand the science. You just have to trust it. And there was a comedian made a funny, funny comment. He'd be like, that would be like, if you go to buy a car, I'm going to research it,

[00:42:45] don't do it, just trust the salesman. The salesman will show you wrong. Don't do any research on the cards. Trust the salesman. He's the expert. You don't know shit about it. Just buy the car. Let's do it. So nobody does that shit. So it just was a really

[00:42:56] interesting time and one Jordan Peterson had a great point where he goes, you know, I think in Nazi Germany, everybody had this idea that they would be Schindler and he goes, what COVID taught us? Like that's not the case. Most people are racing to turn in

[00:43:10] their neighbors. Most of the people were happy to fall on the line and there's just a very, very small percentage of the population that looks up and is like, this is bullshit. I'm not

[00:43:18] doing this. And I was, I was depressed that so many people were so easily cold through fear and weren't willing to look at it intelligently. And yeah, it's a, it's an interesting thing.

[00:43:31] And, and just more and more information keeps coming out on it. So I mean, I think we saw pre COVID, at least I did, you said it earlier, we saw this kind of like abandoning of like the

[00:43:40] Globo gym and people were putting weights in their garage and then all of a sudden COVID hits and the gyms close and people are building these, you know, garages, COVID restricts and everybody

[00:43:49] was selling all their stuff on marketplace. And I was like, I'll never not have a garage gym. Like we have a, you know, it's so, and now, you know, people explode. We were in,

[00:43:59] like I said, South Carolina this weekend on Friday, we got up early and went over and trained at this place. Dude, the place was packed Friday morning at like eight o'clock. I mean, you know,

[00:44:07] it's big kind of it been a former golds gym, but the place was packed. And I was like, shit, there's this many people that aren't working on a Friday morning. So yeah, awesome, man.

[00:44:15] John, this has been a lot of fun dude. I've been looking for this conversation for a long time. And yeah, definitely, definitely made my week. It's only Monday and I'm already feels, I feel like I've had a successful week. If this is the last question I always generally

[00:44:31] asked, but as an industry, people are listening, like what's a challenge you're facing that we can help you with right now? People are going to reach out to you. What would you like to hear

[00:44:39] from them about? What's a challenge that people are having? I think people have to be able to navigate, you know, if they're if they're kind of looking for a, I want to follow this

[00:44:49] training program or I'm looking for this, I think one of the hallmarks of a quality program is really community. If you can follow a program and they have some community aspect,

[00:44:58] whether it be like we do a discord or a Facebook or something where you can kind of get into it, I think that's what's paramount. I think you have to really look for that. I think

[00:45:06] just the days of selling a program and sending them a PDF and tell them to go fuck themselves, I think that's over. And I think that's shitty business. And I wouldn't want to be

[00:45:14] associated with that. I like the ability to kind of lead people on this journey and like see how they do and religious, you know, watch them, you know, come into maturity. Hopefully, you know, people stay longer than, you know, six weeks. And, you know, like we said, we

[00:45:26] have people for years. And like I said, I was at Sorinix this weekend and ran into a ton of people that follow the program and came over and said hi. And I said on the discord, hey, you know,

[00:45:35] come say hi, I'm happy to talk to everybody. I think I shook too many hands and that's why I'm feeling a little down and out. But it was worth it. Awesome, man. And if there's a place

[00:45:44] you want people to go online, reach out to you, whatever it may be, where would you like them to go? Yeah, just powerathletehq.com where you can find me at social at John Wellborn or powerathlete income social right on, man. John, thank you for joining me one day

[00:45:56] morning and yeah, man, hopefully, although the handshake knows it gets you down. But for the absolute pleasure, ladies and gentlemen, John Wellborn. Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host Eric Malzone. And I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Feminist.

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