The Mental Trainer - Alan Heary

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

Thanks, Eric. Appreciate being hostile. It's great.

Yeah, it is great. And uh, you know, one of the things I love about this gig and and being the the host of the show is I get to talk to people from literally all over the world. So you are give me an update. Where where are you right now, Alan?

I'm sitting in uh my office here in Dublin. So I'm coming to you from Dublin, a cold, very cold Dublin at the moment.

Uh yeah, we're recording this in late, late January, so I guess that makes sense. And I know a man, you know, looking at a bit of your bio in our previous couple conversations too, is uh, you know, you're a pretty well-traveled guy. I mean, you certainly know the fitness industry well. You've um gone through a couple iterations. So there's a lot to talk about here, and as well as what you're doing with uh mental training and and leveraging technology for that too. So let's let's start with this, Alan. And everybody loves a good story. Give us your background and uh how you got to where you are now.

Okay, well, yeah, the fitness industry, I've been involved in the fitness industry since 1989. Oh god, that's a long time ago. And I feel every day of it. That was correct. Uh actually, probably a little earlier than that in school. I was one of those small little kids in school who were getting beaten, uh hammered a lot of days. And so I started weight training as part of my athletics uh thing, and so I started to develop a little bit of muscle size, and it was one of those weird things where the guys who were kind of hitting you each day were coming up and going, Um, how are you getting bigger? So I started designing training plans for the guys who were actually bullying me in school. So that's kind of where it all kicked off. And fitness and sport is just something that I absolutely love, always been passionate about. I went on to study recreational leisure management and then fitness courses and working in different gyms and as a fitness trainer and teaching uh the different classes and watching the different classes coming through. So, how do I change them from just aerobics to step aerobics? And then took the plunge and actually opened up my own gym. So I had my own gym for about four and a half years. And as part of the gym, I was obviously training athletics as well, so I was coaching athletics, and then I went to a stage show in hypnosis one night. I've seen this guy being hypnotized. And I don't know if you've ever seen this thing where they have people running around looking for you know chickens and trying to chase chickens down and all of that. But actually, he hypnotized this guy, uh, told him that when he hears this piece of music, he'll think he's Rocky Balboa. And I I the Tiger came on. Now, Rocky is one of my favourite movies. So I the tiger comes on, the guy starts shadow boxing, everybody's laughing, and then he got down and started doing one arm press-ups and then started switching from one arm to the other. And I suddenly thought, oh my god, if I learn to do this stuff and I do it with my athletes, can I make them believe they are the Rocky Balboa's? And the the answer to it is yes, but I can take my granny and convince her she's Rocky Balboa, but if I put her in against Mike Tyson, there's still a good chance she's gonna lose. Uh sorry, I I I went on to study that and then studied other things again up the. And that's when I started to really work with athletes. I was very lucky uh in the late 90s, just around about that time, uh, to work with my first world champion, uh, which was a guy called Steve Collins out uh for the World Super Middleweight uh WBO championship at the time. And so to get to work with him for six weeks on his training camp twice a day, both with the the skills of looking at confidence and courage when into the ring, and then also recovery of views in relaxation training to help him to recover in between training sessions and then actually working with him in the ring on the night as well. It was a it was a great start. Then, as part of what I was doing for the mental skills training for sport, we were starting to look at it towards business. And I actually set up a software company based in Boston, so we were flying over and back to Boston, and the idea was we were looking to develop software. This was the time of the dot-com poll, and it was just amazing. We had some fantastic times, and we were looking at uh developing a system where your computer could tell how stressed you were by the way you were using the mouse. And so we were using things like galvanic stin response, looking at heart rate, and unfortunately at the time I think we were a bit early to market because we just couldn't get the tech built. Uh we were explaining to people what we really wanted, and it was hard to get the technology done. And now I'm sitting here and I've got my Garmin watch on that's reading everything I'm doing at the moment. So the tech came along a few years later, but I learned so much uh from that. And so we're starting to look at how we've uh developed more of the the physical training as well towards uh sports tech. Um so I always had an interest in it. And then I ended up set my gym and going back to college for four years, believe it or not, when I was 32. And uh best decision I ever made. Uh went back for four years, study full-time, and as part of that, then got the flight to Australia to work in Sunshine Coast University, which at the time was associate with the Australian Institute of Sport, working a lot with their athletes, and again learned a huge amount from math. So uh yeah, from that then started working with uh uh a lot of companies then looking to bring what we do for sport and the team development from sport across into business. So companies like Microsoft and mine again. My true passion is in cycling, that's that's my own thing. So I've done things like Risk Across America, so I've been at Risk Across America four times, competed there as part of an eight-person team, so all to prove that the systems that we're putting in place actually work really well. Taking leisure cyclists and getting them to be uh trained almost like co-athletes. Um and yeah, it's been fantastic. So that's a long-winded story, I guess, and where I've kind of come from. So it's I've kind of had a lot of things going on.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um it's quite a journey, man. Tell me, you you mentioned the cycling team and some of the things you you put into place with them and help them perform better. So what is it? Use that as a context to kind of explain it what it is that you do.

Okay. So let's say you uh I so I work with a lot of professional cyclists, obviously, and guys who do want to do Risk Cross America. But let's just break it down and make it quite simple. Let's say you want to do your first uh 100 mile cycle. You haven't cycled a hundred miles before. The first thing you've got to work on is the courage to actually sign up for it. So having that courage to commit uh to being able to do it. So I help uh athletes in that way then uh look at the event coming up, uh looking at their goals and how they set the goals out and looking at their habits. So you need the courage first of all, and then the next thing is the process or the motivation to actually get to train and to follow the nutritional plan you want. So again, we look at the the goals so the professional cyclists would have goals for the year in terms of what races they want to win, or um they might be supporting the team leader. They all have their own goals within the team, but then we take that one side. So we we look at the outcome, we put it one side, and looking at the likes of good work that James Clear is doing, for example, and Atom Cavis, uh, we take the outcome, uh pop one side, and then look at the processing systems they have place. So, how can we keep you motivated uh to be able to get to where you need to be? Once we have that motivation, then we're actually coming up to the event. And when you're coming up to the event, the night before it'd be great if you sleep. So, how do you manage the anxiety coming into the event? So that's part of what we we need to do to make sure that by the time you get to the event on the day and you're on your start line, that you're feeling the confidence and that you need to be able to do it. And also then to be able to stay focused throughout the event, so you don't go off too hard at the start to your strategy, you know what your strategy is going to be. And so that's how it would be. So you've got basically four phases, if you like, for the cyclist. It's the same for anybody really doing any type of sport. You need that courage to step up and commitment, say I can then you need to be motivated to go along and do it and follow your habits and processes on a daily basis. You need to be able to manage that anxiety, and you need to have the confidence and the focus on the data in fact to pull it off and get the best out of your performance.

Yeah, interesting, man. I mean, there's so many points to touch on that. I mean, first of all, the courage to commit to anything, uh, you know, whether it be sport or, you know, business ventures or new relationships, anything like that, right? It's so universal in that first step. And I I'm curious how did you um how do you, how have you, incorporate hypnotism and some of the principles from that into into what you're doing?

Oh, right, yeah. I I I basically take anything that'll improve performance. I love uh anything that if I think it can give you one or two percent, I'd go and trace it from biomechanics all the way down to uh you know what equipment you're using and and the food that you take in. With hypnosis, it's just one tool that we can introduce as part of um the training, the mental skills training. Excuse me, the mental skills training. So if you take uh what most people would call visualization or mental rehearsal or mental imagery, hypnosis really just a guided version of that. I just think it's uh it's a nice little powerful tool. And and quite often with the clients that I work with, we use the term um or the words uh mental rehearsal or mental imagery, even though really it's just uh a hypnosis. What I love about it, and the reason why it works so well, you know, all the research has shown us now that the nervous system cannot tell the difference between something that is vividly imagined and reality. So when we vividly imagine something as if it's really happening, our body responds to it. So the easiest way to describe this is if you wake up at three o'clock in the morning and you hear someone breaking into your car outside, what happens to your body? Heart rate increases, breathing rate becomes rapid, muscles tense up, eyes dilate, and you reach for the baseball bat. Even if it's only a cat or a dog outside making the noise, it makes no difference. If you create the worst case scenario in your head, your body responds. So, in a sense, when we talk about worry, that's what worry is. It's negative visualization or negative imagery. Take that into a sports context. Uh, how many times have you got clients who are uh competing in an event where as they're driving there, they're thinking about the past competition and how it didn't go so well, or they're thinking about the year before on this particular event, uh, you know, how bad it was, or if it's rain, they have this belief that they always perform badly in the rain. And so they create these images of what could possibly go wrong uh before they even get there, and that's what can increase the anxiety. So we do things um coming into the event, like focused on what you want uh to happen, uh the process that you're going to go through within the event. And that's how I would tend to use the hypnosis. Hypnosis is a brilliant way of being able to give a suggestion while somebody is relaxed and focused in the chair. So that's really how it works.

Fascinating. You know, I um I know you you've developed a course, right? And we'll we'll talk about that and kind of plug it at the end of the show. And you've put quite an I mean, I think the numbers you told me is a lot of people have gone through the course already. Yeah, and taken the mental training, you know, course and and teachings that that you've provided and adopted it. You know, when I think about mental training and I think about all the different types of training out there, I would imagine that there's certain challenges for you of positioning or communicating the value of mental training, right? And you have especially like you know, you look at the fitness and we'll just talk about the fitness industry because that's what we're in. You know, everybody wants to talk about, you know, XYZ periodization or the you know, the the hearing model of, you know, strength training or endurance training or you know, all of these things where it's like, you know, it it's people people gr can really sink their teeth into the actual training models. But when it comes to mental training, it's more it's it's harder to place down, right? So what what are the challenges you've faced in communicating the value of mental training to people on top of their current training?

Yeah, I think there's a couple of um parts to it. The first part is that uh a lot of trainers and coaches and actors will say um it's all in the mind, you know, it's uh it's a huge part of the of your performance is is mental. It's your your mental game. But they do very little about it. In other words, if I was to say to you that you know part of your huge part of your sport is about how much training you're actually doing and physical training, but you didn't really put any huge amount of physical training at all, then you wouldn't expect to do that. Skills training, I think people have there's two issues that I've faced. First is that people may have this perception you need to have an issue before you go to see someone like me or to do course. In other words, there's a there's an issue out there with confidence or whatever before you actually to do um to talk to me. Uh the second issue is that it's seen as uh being separate to training. So, okay, if we take it in the fitness industry and how we have seen the fitness industry change change over the years. When I had my gym back in the the mid 90s, we worked a lot in the training, but we also gave some of the nutrition and other things. Uh a lot of it moved online. But if you look at even the fitness training 15 years ago, online you just had a lot of information. You didn't have as many coaches and trainers uh being able to coach you online. Now we do. Now we have uh the set plans. We've got Monday do this, Tuesday do this, Wednesday do this, and so you've got this plan coming, and it's been fantastic. The next phase of that was you had the nutrition part. So trainers were saying nutrition is really important. We're given some advice, but they didn't necessarily have a plan um of attack of advice along with the training plan. And then we had the nutrition um started open, the likes of the fitness panel where they're able to record how many calories you're taking in, what food you have, but then there was the link between that and your training. Now we have two things that were separate, are now working together very, very closely. So you've got your training plan and the nutrition plan that sits on top of it. And so the the psychological plan, so the mental skills training, I feel is still uh seen on the outside. And so my job, in a sense, is to help people understand that we're going to simplify it and integrate it. And I think um training, we have names for everything now. So you have your HIIT systems and you have your you know your endurance and your stabilization, so you you have a very strong language for it. Um, but that's only because it's been out there for quite a while. Now I'm seeing things like uh, you know, we've talked about nutrition, intermittent fasting. I've just heard in the last week someone talking about intermittent recovery. Um so it's intermittent, yeah, okay, I know. Intermittent recovery is when you get tired in work and you should really take a bit of a rest. Uh that's what's how you do that in intermittent recovery. But but putting labels on it is actually not a bad thing to do. And I think with the mental skills uh is teaching people that this is a training system. So uh a number of years ago I would have been getting calls, or still do, I guess, with calls with a a team who are going into a championship final. So they're playing a championship final on Sunday. Team manager will call me up and never met the team before in my life, and he says, Can you come in on Friday night and talk to them and motivate them for the game on Sunday? And I go, God, if they're not motivated by now, um, you know, with a championship final on on Sunday, there's not a whole lot more I can do about it. But what happens is that we tend to see it as this instant fix, something that we can do instantly. In actual fact, train your fitness components, you have the five S's strength, speed, supplements, stamina, skill. Well, in mental skills training, we have confidence, courage, commitment, control, and concentration. And in the same way that you will take your uh physical training and you test each of the components, well, it's my job to show you that we can actually test the psychological and the mental skills components as well. Then you design your training plan for physical training and you say, okay, we realize that you need to develop the strength, so we're going to put you on X-mount of repetitions, X amount of sets, you're going to do this two or three days a week. But with the mental skills, that's actually what I'm applying. We're looking at it and saying, uh, you need to develop your confidence or your concentration a little bit. These are the exercises I need you to do, and these are the days you want to do it. And this is how you're going to be able to take these exercises and not only simplify it, but also integrate it into your training. So it becomes part of your training plan. That's actually the the the biggest thing from the life found is how we can make it that people understand it is a training system like any other training system. It is something that yeah, you're not born with, it's a skill that you can develop. And I think for us we have to be able to find ways to simplify it and integrate it. And that's not fun to be able to develop after you.

Yeah, I'm wondering I I hear um there's a a word that you said that's kind of a buzzword numerous times, and that's anxiety. I mean, I think there's a lot of people, maybe you and I have even talked about it in previous conversations, but you know, I find that whenever the topic of anxiety, burnout, pr like stuff like that starts to come up in in any podcast that I'm involved in that that people really resonate with that. And I I wonder because, you know, if if positioning, you know, what you do because obviously I see a ton of value. I've been athlete, you know, my most of my life, and I've seen myself, you know, suffer with performance anxiety, right? When it comes to, you know, kind of the the bigger athletic events or competitions in my life. And I know my brother certainly suffered when he was a very high-level swimmer. And um, a lot of people, you know, may look stoic on the outside, but on the inside, they're freaking out, right? They're just freaking out. And the anxiety is it's not healthy, you don't sleep well, you know, you get your your central nervous system gets fried. And I feel like that's a strong position for something like this is you know, helping people really take the anxiety out of their training. And because if you can do that, what happens? You you recover faster, right? Yeah, you're more in tune with your training. You know, you you just you're you're seeing us performing at a higher level every day.

Yeah, let me give you a story. Um I I was working with a professional boxer and uh he came to me and said, Look, I have a younger sister, she's in school, and he has been taken out of school at the moment because she's fainting due to anxiety. So he asked me if there was anything I could do to help. And I said, I'll tell you what we'll do. Rather than me saying, Come on, you know, let's get you back into school, let's get you relieved of the anxiety, let's work on a box. And she enjoyed the boxing, she was going to the gym, but she was having painting sessions, even in the gym. And so the whole goal with that was how can we get her to manage the anxiety? The very first part of that is actually teaching her what anxiety is. Nobody had ever sat down before and said, Look, this is why your body is reacting in this way. Once we create a thought in our mind and you know, we latch on to it, uh we get this response. So heart rate increases, breathing rate becomes rapid, most intense up. And the body is very, very clever. And so, what it's trying to do is it's trying to give you a little bit of recovery by making you lie down and get the oxygen back to the brain. It's once we get the blood back up to the brain rather than the legs. And she said, Nobody's ever explained it to me like that before. I said, Well, look, let's just take what we can control. So from now on, we'll only ever talk about controlling the controllables. And so, what can we control with the physiological physiological part and what we can control breathing? So you teach her how to breathe properly. You teach her how to recognize when the anxiety is actually coming on, so uh we teach her how to control uh muscle tension. So uh what happens sometimes is people say to you, oh relax, you'll be fine, but they you don't know how relaxed the body is, so what we tend to teach is the opposite, you know, create tension and then uh relaxation, so they progressive relaxation techniques. Okay, whenever you feel yourself getting anxious, instead of trying to relax, do the opposite, tense up, and then let it go. And so we gave her a lot more control. So she went from uh stopping fainting. Now, it again it it took a couple of months to do this because it's trained. She reduced the fainting almost you know down to uh one or two fainting sessions a week, and that still sounds like a lot, but when you consider this girl was getting two to a day, um that's actually an improvement. So uh it took a couple of months, um, but after that, and you start getting messages coming through going, yeah, haven't painted this week, feeling good, back in the gym, everything's going well. And she's actually now a professional fighter. So she went into professional boxing. And so a lot of time it's uh when somebody recognizes you know that there is anxiety there, it's okay to have the anxiety. That's fine if we know how to use it. So performance increases with anxiety. So we have an arousal scale where as your arousal level goes up, your performance also increases. The problem is that if the arousal goes too high, performance drops off on the other side. It's almost like a bell shape. So your performance will increase, and right atop that bell, that's what we call the zone. That's where you feel challenged, you know what your goals are, you're focused on what you have to do, you trust yourself, you're confident about what you do, that's the zone. But go too high and it falls off the other side. So my job, in a sense, is to teach somebody how to use that scale. So if you find that the anxiety is going too high, what can we do to pull it back? But equally, there are people who go into events and they don't perform well because they're too relaxed for them. So we need to give those uh people challenges, and so uh we we design uh goals, uh harder goals for them to complete within that. So if you know that you're going in to compete against a component that's uh should you should do really well and you should win, it's how we increase that arousal level and anxiety level so you can use it. So it's all the time that scale. Um anxiety is definitely something within the business. You're 100% right. It's one of those things that um if we can get that right, it can definitely improve performance because it has a direct impact on your energy. You want to use up the energy in in the best way possible. And if you're using up a lot of energy with worrying about things just before you even get to the event, then there can be issues. So that's what we're looking to do all the time.

Yeah, it's interesting as you speak. I'm reflecting on like um, you know, like my my college swimming days when I was, you know, competitively swimming there and I remember there'd be certain and I could never figure it out, right? And it was I couldn't I and not I wasn't back then, I wasn't nearly a aware as I am now about you know how to manage like arousal levels and anxiety and all those things. But there would be certain races where I would feel strong, you know, this nice mixture of relaxed yet, you know, in the moment. And then there's other times where I was so nervous, I felt almost overly relaxed. So that actually when I when the the starting gun went off or the beep, that I felt weak, right? Like literally jumping off the blocks, I felt weak. As soon as I hit the water, I felt slow. And then it took me like you know half a lot, you know, like 25 meters to kind of figure out where I was and what was going on. But by then I was already behind the race. And that's exactly what was going on, right?

Yeah, 100%.

And I could see this being incorporated, especially at the collegiate level, for many teams and and athletes on on how to cope with this because no one, I mean, let's be honest, most coaches don't even really know what's going on, right?

Uh no, they don't. One of the things we were told, because I I was a hundred and two hundred meter sprinter, and one of the things my coach said to me was you want to get to the line and you want to get Angry as possible, get into the line. So when you get there, you look at everybody around, and you I can beat you all, and you get this anger going. The problem when you're angry is like if you look at Hussein Bolt running 100 meters, there's no anger in that man whatsoever. He's just loving it. It's the complete opposite of that. So rather than getting angry coming into events, it's how you throw how you feel. And so even with the boxing, as I said, I work with all pro fighters. And people think, well, what you're doing there is you're trying to get them as angry as possible with the opponent. I mean, that's going to be great, right? You're going to have more energy. No, that's going to throw the focus way off. And it's going to affect your energy or can affect your energy in a negative way. So instead of the anger with the opponent, what we do is we create the love of the sport. I can't believe I'm actually here getting uh having an ability to show people what I can do. And so what can happen sometimes as well with opponents is uh people look around at opposition as opposition, but that's never what sport was used to do. Sport was designed that your opposition, the people, your competitors around you, you want them to come, be prepared, to be the best they can possibly be, to make sure that you get the best out of you. So one of the things I I hear sometimes is the guys who are coming into a cycling race, for example, and they go, Well, I don't really have a strong team around me, you know, and so many competitors are just really strong. You say, Well, they are your team. Like they're you those your competitors that can actually become your team. And it's how we perceive the situation can make a massive difference uh to what we're actually doing. So it's your perception of the situation um rather than the situation itself. And so all I do is I teach people how to change their perception of different events and coming into it, and that's why uh from a competitive point of view, not just looking at your opposition as there to, you know, to to beat you. They're not there to beat you, they're there to make you better than you've ever been before. Yeah. When you look at it in that way, that's different. And it's the same if you're in business, it's no different. You have competitors within business. People are afraid of the life of their competitors sometimes. Oh, don't be afraid of your competitors. Your competitors are there to make you better. You look at what they're doing and you think, how can I improve upon myself to to to raise my standards? That's how that works.

Yeah, yeah, I love that. So, Alan, you know, obviously the show is called the Future of Fitness, right? Um where do you see this all going? I know you're looking for ways to leverage technology, AI, platforms, wearables, things like that. You're kind of looking for solutions right now to take this to the whole next level. But where do you see the future of mental training going? What's your what's your vision for all of this?

Okay, so at the moment we have a program that's on the uh on the platform, but I think the future of it is going to be more along the lines of the AI or uh turning up for an event. So I don't know, is uh one of my athletes might go uh say they're competing in an Iron Man in Barcelona in Spain, and on the Friday night they might call me up because they suddenly go, Oh my god, there's no wetsuit tomorrow. I thought it was going to be a wetsuit, what am I gonna do? And I have to talk them off the ledge. And I think what with the technology we've got is that you'll have that pocket coach that actually helps you prepare, it'll remind you to do the simple thing. Sport is very simple, it's up to us as sports scientists to complicate life out of it, but actually it's quite simple. And I think with technology, uh both with the wearable, uh, where we're looking at uh the wearable devices is that uh our system will know when you're training and will make recommendations from a mental skills point of view. Like now is a good time to practice self-talk, or now is a good time to practice visualization, so it'll remind you to do that. So that's where we're developing it along the lines of BAI. So you like you you have a pocket coach for your fitness when you walk into the gym and you can take out your app and you can see what your training program is, uh, it will be along the same lines as that. And what we're looking to do is integrate the wearable tech into that as well. So, as I say, the wearable tech will know uh what you're doing at the moment. If you go back to again, uh I mentioned the company we had uh back in the late 90s, with the the idea was that the computer could tell how stressed you were. But that's a wearable tech. Uh that's just computer picking up on heart rate. And we know that if you do relaxation, so if I put you sitting in the chair and I do a relaxation session with you, I know that the heart rate's dropping. And so that's where our tech uh becomes really important. Um so we can feed it back to you.

Awesome. What's what's the um what's the um what's the name of the the umbrella company? Is it going is it going in the zone or what what's the actual brand?

Yeah, it's going in the zone is the the program that we're running. So uh yeah, um it's on Alan Heary Courses at the moment, so it's it's Alan Heroy Courses.com. But the going in the zone is the brand at the moment. Uh we're uh we're actually we're in the middle of expansion, so we're looking at the development for the the next part and the next platform and we're building that. And so uh we'd be looking at branding and changing that as well. It's like but at the moment it is going in the zone, is the big one. So uh yeah.

So it looks like you're starting off in like the the sports performance sector, right? I mean, or or are you like what what other segments? I mean, we mentioned you know, entrepreneurship and business, what other segments of I guess life do you think that this would be valuable?

So we're looking at the the sports sector is where it's currently used. So it's for people who are uh performing in sport. But equally, as I say, we know the likes of the companies that I'm working with, we're using the same skill base and teaching it to the companies from a business point of view, whether it's an entrepreneur or or major corporations. And so we're looking at developing the skills within that into the companies. So for us, uh the going in the zone, you have the going in the zone for sport, you also have the gun in the zone for business. Um so it will uh transfer uh directly across to that. But then a lot of the skills that we use as well uh can be down to students. Anywhere there's a performance based to it. So exams are performance-based, whether we we look at it like that or not. It is so anything where you consider performance is really where we're going, right down to the actors I work with, uh actors, directors of movies. So again, it's that performance-based thing is what we're doing. At the moment, our aim is the sport, we get that right, so it's in fitness. Uh so whether you're uh competing or whether you're just aiming to get yourself fitter or to take on a challenge, you challenge for yourself. That's what we're doing, is and from that then it'll move into other sectors, anything in relation, as I say, to performance. So yeah, it's all good.

Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Man, I imagine public speaking is gonna be number one too. I mean, who doesn't freak out about public speaking? Yeah.

But it sorry, can I just say that's really interesting from a sports point of view, because I've worked with a client who is a professional golfer who had a speech impediment. And the problem was that you have you're now walking down the fairway on the 18th, you're one shot up, and the only thing you have in your mind is what happens if I win this thing and I have to speak. I've got to, you know, thank everybody. Part of it. Um, public speaking is something that I yeah, I work with a lot of people to prepare them for that. And even from a sports point of view, um, when you see the press conferences, the same techniques we use for the sport we're we're now using in the press conference, so these guys can feel more relaxed and more confident, uh, getting up to speak in front of a crowd, because remember, all they want to do is get into the ring and fight or get onto the course and play a game and get on the bike and ride. So that that is actually a big part of it. But yeah, you know, we'll be looking at uh the performance from a speaking.

Yeah. Who Alan, who are some of the other like I guess in this particular I don't know, let's call it a niche or a field. Who who are some of the other, you know, people who are really pushing forward in this field?

We have um if you look at the likes of meditation, for example, just look and see what headspace is on. It's incredible. You know, just they again going back to us in the late 90s, that's what we were looking at was how meditation can affect your performance and also in work but also your life. And it was a lot of research. And what Headspace done uh has been fantastic. They have taken uh meditation where it was probably seen in some respects where right or wrongly, it was seen to people who are involved in yoga wisdom, or you know, had you know, for want of a better word, a hippie type of effect with it. But they've taken that and shown it from a scientific point of view of what it does. Um so for me, they would be the guys I'm looking at saying, you know, we really want to do the same in sport as they've done for the general population in terms of uh something like meditation. So I think they're leading the way on that. That's definitely uh one side of it. And then you have from a fitness point of view, you've got the likes of the training peaks guys, they're doing really well. But then a big part of it we're actually looking at at the moment is esports. So I'm working with uh motor racing, I've done a lot of work with motor racing guys. Somebody who's driving a Formula One car in Miami in a couple weeks, so that's kind of exciting. But um there's virtual racing now, it has become really popular, and there's a lot of money for people to actually do well in virtual, um, virtual racing and virtual sports, esports. So we're looking at uh how we're we've we've improved the performance even in that sector. So yeah, there are there are some good guys coming through. It's how we uh integrate the technologies. That's what I'm interested in. Yeah. We take what we're doing and how we integrate it with your uh with your wearables and how we integrate it with other uh applications. So I'm really interested in what I'm doing and integrating it with what other guys are doing in terms of coaching or their fitness, and we can integrate it within that. That's that's really what I'm looking at.

Yeah, it's really interesting, you know, with the esports field too, is I had, you know, my friend and and colleague Taylor Johnson was on this show and I would urge you to go back and you know, we talked about esports and and cognitive periodization within that because he's he's forging a whole new path there and it's it's a fantastically wondrous world of esports and where that's going and and there's a lot to it. And you know, when you when you start to follow the money, right, and where it's going and it's all getting dumped into esports, you know, it's only the stakes are only gonna get higher and higher. And, you know, it's it that's a place where you can definitely get a lot of traction. And you know, one of the the hallmarks of what I believe the show is all about is looking at trajectories and you know, kind of looking years ahead and seeing where things are going. And I think mental training, cognitive training, not only for the traditional sports and public speaking, all the obvious things that we spoke of, but stuff like esports is gonna be crazy big because uh hey, a lot of these, a lot of these, you know, esport athletes, um, because that's what they're called, they all cry called esport athletes. That's only gonna get crazier and crazier as VR um and AR become, you know, more to the forefront and more accessible to people. And uh, you know, some of these, just by nature what they do, they're not the fittest, they're not the healthiest. And, you know, probably mental training is is something they haven't even considered to this point.

Yeah. Well you think about it, right? So part of the the the mental training. If I sit down with somebody who's uh an esports athlete and you say they're not really fit, but you look at sports over the years like darts, uh, take darts, traditionally um the dark players tended to be on the large side. Like they they were seen as not being really fit. That's changed now. So they realize that the fit you are, uh the better chance you have of improving your concentration and confidence going into events. And I think the esports, you know, people say, well, these guys are playing video games all the time, that's what they do. But actually, I think as the mental skills train starts to come in more and more, and the performance side starts to come in more and more, you'll suddenly start to realize that these guys are actually training to be able to sit down at the computer and to be able to concentrate for longer. I think that's going to be uh uh interesting and uh watch.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Alan, I mean this is it's been kind of a a a really interesting walk through your past and and all make sense of why you're doing what you're doing now. And um, the future, obviously, there's a ton of opportunity where where you are. And I think it's great for everybody who, you know, as mental training, mental skills training and the ability to, you know, relieve anxiety and get into that peak performance state of arousal, people are gonna really, really want more of that. Yeah, because once you feel it, once you've actually been able to control it, right? Yeah, and what it's done for your performance, all it's like this this world gets unlocked to you. And now you have this huge advantage over you know the previous thing.

I get that a lot. Sorry, I get that a lot. People are coming back and surprised, like shocked at uh what what they're able to accomplish and how quickly you can accomplish it as well. Although it is training. It's like anything. If you take somebody into the gym who's never been in the gym before in their life, uh after two weeks, they're looking at you and going, I I can't believe I can walk forward or I can run forward than I was in such a short period of time. And so mental skills training can be very much like that, where uh somebody's never really used visualization for to have an impact on the performance, and you come back in the system and go, I I just can't believe it. I don't know what happened. Uh I had an outer body experience while she was driving her rally car uh at you know a hundred miles an hour. So it was almost like she was watching herself driving, she just couldn't understand that. That's that's mental skill training. That's really when you start to go in the zone.

Yeah, awesome. Well, Alan, where do where do people find you? Where do people get more information kind of follow what you're doing?

Well, you can follow me directly on AlanHeary.com. Uh so it's uh Alan Heary H D A R Y uh. Or uh if you go on to Alan Heary courses, um you see the going in the zone course there. And uh yeah, have a look at it. And I'd love the feedback on it. As I say, we're uh in development and moving it towards uh other that's where they can find me. And also never be afraid to uh to message me either. You'll see my email and my contact information up on that, and yeah, I'm always there to help people out. So never be afraid to send me over an email if any questions or anything either.

Do you have a social media platform that you uh you prefer?

Uh Facebook we use quite a bit. Then we're gonna be using a lot more. I I tend to use LinkedIn for my business side, is another word, like uh uh working with companies and the corporate side. Um Instagram, I'm getting more and more into um so for me it's LinkedIn and obviously I have Twitter as well. So I'm on all of the platforms.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, Alan, thank you for spending some time with me today. And is uh I'm looking forward to following the progress on this on this field and what you're doing there.

I really appreciate it, Eric. Thank you so much for inviting me on. I really appreciate it.

Yeah, you got it. Ladies and gentlemen, Alan here. Hey, it's your host, Eric Malzone. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of Future of Fitness. If you enjoyed it, please do me a huge favor by going to the website and signing up for our newsletter. Website is futureoffitness.co. Again, that's future of fitness.co. We've got some big, big announcements coming down the pipe, and we want you to make sure that you are on top of it. Thank you again. Signing off.