Training The Older Adult - Robert Linkul

Our average client stays with us 38 months now, is our new updated uh time. It used to be 32. So now we're up to 38 months. Basically, you know, three and a half years. I've got 14 clients that have been with me 15 years or more now. I mean, we just you start to make a connection with people and you develop a way to challenge them and continue to achieve some goals and they see success, and that cycle cannot stop.

Hey fitness fans, welcome back to the Future of Fitness podcast and interview series. This is your host, Eric Balzone, and we are on episode number 96. I get to talk to Robert Linkel, awesome guy out of Sacramento, California. He owns the gym The Stronger Fitness, uh, which focuses on strength training for the older adult. So Robert's a great guy. Um he has built quite a business with a very specific market. Now, when we talk about the older adult, let's define this really quickly. People over the age of 50, essentially, is how he defines it, I believe. And I know a lot of gym owners, a lot of facility owners, a lot of trainers who are specifically focusing on this demographic. Uh, it is an awesome group of people to work with. Um, you know, really hassle-free. Uh, the rewards that they get from the training and proper coaching is tremendous. And you just feel really good uh working with this particular demographic, but it's different. You know, it's very different. You have to set it up, the whole experience from top to bottom to make sure that you're optimizing the experience for um this particular population, right? And uh I'm starting to realize like I'm not that far, right? I'm not far from 50 plus 42. Keep talking like these are much older people than me when they're not. Um, so anyway, that's my own realization. Yeah, you know, the the cool thing about it is he doesn't talk about lead generation, right? He talks about referral generation. And all that comes from having a great experience for your clientele. And Robert doesn't hold back on this. He gives us a lot of the secret sauce for what he does. He is, I believe, um starting a course on how to do this with modules um for facility owners and coaches all over the world. So you can find out more about that in the show. But this is a really, really high value. Uh, it's a great group of people to work with, like I said, highly lucrative and very rewarding in so many ways. So uh I hope a lot of people will listen to this and take action steps right away because there's a ton of them in here. And uh yeah, so before we get down to that, uh the fitness accelerator guys, it's my big thing right now. Um it's just growing and it's awesome, and the influence is tremendous. And if you are a mover and shaker uh in the industry, uh if you want to be in the same room with other movers and shakers in the industry, you gotta get on top of it. Uh, you know, we will grow this to um probably 115 capit, and that'll be it. Um and then we're just gonna do our thing. So if you're interested in being part of that community, uh if you want to be part of a place where uh networks are leveraged in a big way, I mean imagine what we did before we had social media, right? Uh what did people do? How did people grow their businesses? They collaborated. You know, sure. It'll be like Eric, we put out ads in a newspaper, they did radio. I know I sold radio, I sold ads uh all over the place, and I can tell you it's still nothing compares to investing in relationships and leveraging partnerships. Nothing, nothing compares to that type of growth, and the way you do it is so more, way more satisfying than any other way. So invest in relationships, go check out the fitness accelerator. You can find it at fitnessprofessionalonline.com forward slash fit accelerator. Uh, find the application there, and we do take those seriously. Uh, so fill it out in detail and we will let you know within 24 hours if you are accepted. Uh again, it is fitnessprofessional online.com forward slash fit accelerator. And without further ado, let's go on to the show with Robert Lincoln. Enjoy. All right, Robert Lincoln. Welcome to the show, man. How are you? I'm doing great. I'm doing uh a lot better now that I get to explore uh you know your your specialty here, uh, which is pretty pretty cool and um something that I'm thinking a lot of people are dying to to learn more about and maybe uh a little confused um due to their own biases on how to work with with this segment of population. And if you can, um, you know, before we get into a lot of the nitty-gritty, just give us your story, man. How did you get, you know, what's your story through fitness? How did you get starting to work with with the older segment and uh yeah, drop us some knowledge?

Absolutely. Yeah, long story short, I get I get rambling a little bit, so I'll try to keep everything on on short terms. But um I started back in the industry in 1999, like right out of high school. I had a opportunity to start working with some track athletes. I was a hammer thrower, discus thrower, and um Title IX with Nevada uh ended up canceling the men's track program at UNR at University of Nevada. So I came here to Sacramento and uh I had a little stint in Arizona. I was there for my first year at Mesa Community College, trying to transfer to ASU and uh just really didn't like it in Arizona, so I came to Sacramento. But while I was in Arizona, we had a YMCA right across the street from our house. And I thought, you know, I like to lift, I may as well go over there and get a job. I could check people in at the, you know, at the at the gym, give them a towel, let them go. And I went over there, I applied for the job, and uh they say, Well, you know, you're pretty fit, you're pretty muscular. Why don't why not you be one of our trainers? And I said, Well, I'm not certified, I don't really know what I'm doing. I'm like, you don't need that, we'll hire you right now. You look great. So I was a trainer. So I had no idea what I was doing. And I'm like, all right, well, I do box jumps and snatches and cleans, and you know, so I had all my clients start doing that, and uh we were terri I was terrible. They we uh wasn't hurting people, but we I just wasn't any good. And uh they're like, this isn't really what you know what we asked for, and I said, I I get it. Um I went to my boss and I said, How do I do this job? Like, how do you want me to get better at this? He goes, I don't care, just make me money. And uh that moment was very defeating for me. I thought, is this is this how this industry is? Um I you know, fast forward nine months, I get here to Sacramento and start working at uh as an independent trainer at a you know, like a gold gym, a worlds gym that we had here. And working as an independent, still I'm just like I don't really know how I'm doing this or what to do. I'm going to school for kinesiology. Um, strength and get strength and conditioning was my focus. And I was thinking I'd be a strength coach. As I continue to try to work with athletes through schooling, you know, we get to work with different teams and work with the rowers and football and all that. I really found that I wasn't all that great at training these individuals and progressions, but I was really good at working with the ones that were injured. And uh to make money on the side, I ended up getting a job at a country club the same way, went into apply for a desk job and to check people in, and they're like, we need a trainer. Again, I was the same thing. They're like, no, no, you look great, let's just hire you. So they hired me and uh eventually got certified, started working with clients. Next thing I knew, majority of my clients were over 50. Almost all of them had physical limitations. And uh as I continued through my career, I started having a lot of physical limitations. I um totally blew up my back, just blew it apart one day, uh getting ready to back squat. I was a 550 back squatter at about 230 pounds body weight and not super strong but decent from my size and my sport, and I had 225 on the bar warming up and felt my L5S1 just blow apart laterally in my back. And I was on in a brand new gym using brand new weights, and I I was down in a squat, deep bucket squat, and I just thought I can't dump these weights on the ground. They're brand new. So I forced myself out of the squat and laid on the floor for 90 minutes until somebody found me and uh went home three days later, emergency surgery to have a disectomy on my back to fix me. And um I had clients over the next nine months that all had back injuries that had come to me because they heard about my experience. And then um I was working with a client one day and coughed and I had blood all over my hands, and went into the doctor and found uh an x-ray of a tumor in my lungs. So I had lung cancer and uh had my left lung removed and um follow-up x-rays with that, a huge surgery, you know, removing my ribs and cutting through my lat, my serratus, and intercostals, and just a massive surgery to go through that and going through these different x-rays to check up on my lung. I had many, many uh punctured lungs that just kept rebreaking and they had to keep refixing it. Uh, they noticed a tumor in my thyroid and it continued to grow bigger through these x-rays. So I had uh a tumor removed from there. And then I had two or three years where things were pretty good, like 2010 to 13, nothing was really going on. And I started experiencing a lot of hip injuries, a lot of hip pain, and went in and found that both of my labrums were completely torn. I had you know uh arthritis so badly in the joints and there from massive amounts of rotation in one dominant direction, just unilateral dominance on this one leg over and over again and just worn through both labrums and my my hips. And I was completely bone-on-bone, I had bone spurts built up and was literally just breaking into the head of my femur, and that's to have them in my hip. So they said, Hey, you need hip replacements. And I'm sitting there going, I'm I'm 32 years old. What do you mean I need hip replacements? So they did they did arthroscopies on me, um, you know, remove the head out, and they do the microfiber drilling in there, and all this ooze kind of comes out and it creates like a false labrum for about a year. Mine lasted about eight months, and then eventually I did have uh a total right hip replacement. Uh, and then uh six months later I had a left total hip replacement, and the left one um just didn't feel right from day one, eventually dislocated on day two. Probably the most painful experience I've ever had was going through that and uh 911 call, all that whole thing, 24 hours waiting for another hip replacement surgery. So I had that experience. I had two ligaments and a um uh cyst in my wrist that kind of came apart from throwing shot put for so many years. So I've had wrist surgeries, I had a hernia repair, you know, I've had all kinds of different surgeries that if you take those and you put them on paper and you show them to somebody, they say, that's an old man, right? That's a 70-year-old guy that's that's got fake hips and all this. So I I stole this line from Tony Robbins. I love this line where he says, Life doesn't happen to you, it happens for you. And I heard that from him maybe three or four years ago, and I thought that is exactly the way I want to think about these things. Is you know, it's not a what was me moment. I don't I don't tell you all that, Alan Cosgrove line. And I'm not telling you this to impress you, I'm telling it to you to impress upon you, right? A way of thinking about this. I love that line. And and really the mindset is I've had this experience, this opportunity to experience all these things to connect specifically to this demographic. I was so athletic driven, I was so focused on I'm gonna work with these athletes, and all these things happen. And a lot of young trainers, or I should say, entry-level trainers, they miss these opportunities sometimes. They're not consciously aware of an opportunity or an expertise that comes to them, and they keep thinking I'm supposed to be doing this, that's where my heart is. Where sometimes working with older pops, working with youth, working with a specialty uh demographic, it it's presented to you on purpose. And so I really embrace that. I dove into it 100%. And when clients come in here and they're like, I'm worried, and they, you know, our our weight room has zero machines. We use free weight, it looks like a strength and conditioning center. You'd come in and we have free racks and kettlebells and hex bars and squat racks, and it looks like you'd find at any university in this country. People come in and they go, How do you train old folks here? And I say, Well, let me tell you my story and about my experience. And once you kind of go through and empathize with them a bit, you they go, You've had hip replacements and you have back surgery, and you've gone through cancer, you know, uh surgeries. And I say, Yeah, I've you know, I've been there. There's this ease that comes over them right away. There's a connection to us that, you know, they they find um common ground with me, even though I'm 30, almost 38, uh, to be able to come in and say, I trust you and I'm 75 to not hurt me. That's like the biggest fear that trainers have working with older pops. They don't want to work with them because they're afraid of hurting them. And when you've gone through the experiences yourself, either personally or training people for it, it's a different ballgame when you have that experience and you're ready to connect with people. So very, very long story, hopefully not too long of an explanation, but kind of gives you an idea of where I came through. You know, that whole time I got my kinesiology degree, master's degree in personal training in sports science from the United States Sports Academy. I'm a fellow with the NSCA. I've been with them for 15 years, and you know, I teach exam preps for them. I was the the um chairman for the personal trainer special interest group for six years. I wrote for their personal trainer quarterly for five years, I mean all kinds of stuff with them. So that's that's me in a nutshell, a very long nutshell, but that's that's about everything.

No, that's that's uh that's huge. I mean, knowing the background on you makes a lot of sense, you know, and I the reason we got put in touch is because I asked somebody in our closed Facebook group in the Modern Fitness Pro, um, you know, hey, I'm looking to interview somebody who's who is an expert with working with the 50 plus demographic, and I think I had three people say Robert Lincoln. And uh so obviously your name's getting out there in in some in some way or fashion. And uh yeah, it's it's interesting because so much of my experience is very brief and you know limited with working with uh you know 50, 55 plus uh age group is the ability to empathize, right, and understand, you know. Um how you know if I'm listening and I'm I'm putting myself in Eric 2015, right? Uh owning a facility and wanting to work with those people, um how how does one, if you come from a traditional like I'm an athlete, I haven't had a lot of injuries, right? Uh I was an athlete my whole life, how how do I better relate and empathize with the older generation? I mean, if I just don't, I don't have, you know, um, I'm not gonna say the benefit of everything that's happened to you, because that's that's just an odd thing to say because it was like surgery after surgery. But in in many ways, I'm sure you uh as it seems like your attitude uh reflects that you see the benefits of having all that experience. Um but if one if someone doesn't have that, how do they how do they empathize or or get hurt next? Yeah, no.

No, uh I I I do think yeah, people are I I could take it back to like the most simple, like almost everybody's thrown their back out at one point, almost everybody's sprained an ankle or strained a hamstring or something, and you you really want to kind of put your mindset in in that moment, you know, um nothing for me, I feel like, is more humbling than when you throw your back out. And it's like you can't stand up straight, you can't lay down, you can't sit down, like you just can't find comfort. There are people that we work with that are like that permanently, like all the time. So if you can kind of put yourself in that mindset, even though it might have been years ago, of just where like the most basic human movements that we perform on a daily basis, we take for granted so much. If you put yourself in the mindset of like this these things are challenging, picking things up and down off the floor, getting up and down stairs, sitting to standing, you know, uh I call it manipulation strength, like trying to get yourself from the center of the bed to the edge of the bed, you know, uh getting out of the booth that you just ate at. It's not a straight squat, you gotta kind of shimmy and move yourself to the edge and rotate, like those types of things, if you could find and envision those being challenging, then I think you can kind of put yourself into their mindset a little bit. So you don't really need to go get hurt, but you just need to kind of bring a level of awareness to um the simplicity of movement that we do on a daily basis and how that could be very challenging and really disheartening if taken away from you. You know, uh part of my presentations, I have videos of me, you know, learning how to get up and down out of a chair using a walker. I'm here at work in a wheelchair, you know, training my clients. You know, try talking to a brand new client coming through the door for their first you know consultation, and I roll up. Hey, nice to meet you. And they're like, I had one lady that goes, Is this a joke? And I was like, No. What do you what do you mean? And she goes, They told me you were a hamper thrower and all this. And I'm like, well, yeah, I just had a surgery, you know, and then so a lot of times the expectations, yeah, I was like coming in California, I'm like, whoa, did you just say that to me? Um, okay. But uh, you know, you gotta put yourself in that mindset of um what if things were so, you know, were so restricted and my my general movements were taken away? Um, how would I want to rebuild this and how would I want somebody to empathize with me? And and unfortunately, um, you know, our parents and our grandparents all experience this at some point. So a lot of times the 20 to 30 year olds, they might experience some of this by hanging with their grandparents. And and so you you get experiences through your personal opportunities, but also professional by working with more clients that way. So you can you can reflect on some personal experiences, either being injured yourself or some of the struggles you've had working with family members who have been injured, especially the older ones that go through that, uh, or go out and find individuals that are doing it. You know, I I haven't seen a lot of um expert level Nick Tuminello's and Brad Schoenfeld's and names that you know they're experts in working with the older pops. There's not a whole lot of names that like pop out like that, but there's a ton of trainers who that is their expertise. They're just not known on an international level. So you can find people out there that are basically doing what you do and go and learn from them and observe from them. And that's the whole reason I do my webinar series and all of our online teaching and everything that we do here in the gym, and we do events here and clinics here, all that is to teach you know other professionals how how to get the experiences I've had and and to to you know kind of merge that on to you to let you share that experience and bring that back to your clients. So some opportunities can be presented to you, some you gotta go out and seek out. I think those are a couple of the ways you know, the the entry-level trainer or the one looking to make this their their demographic expertise can try to get some uh experience and some ability empathizing with it.

Yeah. Yeah, it's it's um trying to say this politically correct, but not script. It's not the sexiest demographic to work with, right? Everybody wants to work with the athletes, everybody wants to work with you know the athletes, right? That's most people again, they think they're gonna work with pro-athletes or um you know people who are are um you know very uh care about their looks, right? Right. Um so what tell me about the content you're putting out. You you mentioned webinars, you mentioned um other pieces of content and instruction. Are you educating coaches now on how to do this?

Oh yeah, that's I've been doing that for a while. But just to touch on that last thing that you just said there, when when you take somebody and you increase their bench press from 275 to 280, and you get up and you high-five them and they go about their day, that's awesome, right? That's a great feeling as a coach. But when you teach someone how to get up and down off the floor for the first time under their own power and they start crying, you know what I mean? When when you get somebody that they can now clothe themselves, they can put their arms over their head, like those kinds of experiences, when I say which one's having more of a lifetime effect on people, there's no more rewarding demographic to work with. So maybe not the sexiest, but man, can you have an effect on their life? I mean, a massive effect on their life. I I had a guy that's a Marine that's in here, he was in Vietnam, and he's the guy that every day, like I get a handshake and a nod from and after, and I post about him on Facebook all the time, his name's Jerry. Um, after his hip replacement, the guy was just in massive amounts of pain and just really uncomfortable all the time. I I basically and his wife had to kind of talk him into the idea at 75 to have a hip replacement. He didn't want to have surgery. He did it, rehabilitated great. We did a huge pre-surgery program, like eight months of getting him ready for this, and just glute-bridged him to death, basically, just got his butt really strong. And he bounced back, his rehab was four or five months ahead of where somebody his age would be. And he's in here just crushing it now. And two weeks ago, I'm sitting on the bench, we're getting done, and then we're doing the cooldown. And he comes over and he sits next to me, and I said, Great job today, Jerry. And he goes, uh, thank you. And I said, No, it's my pleasure. And he goes, No, no, thank you. And he puts his head like on my shoulder. You know what I mean? And I'm looking at him like this guy's this is his feeling of affection, like just a small little bromance moment of like, thanks, man. And it was this guy's like the guy that doesn't hug his kid. He does, but he's like, he's that guy, right?

He's like he's old school. Yeah.

Yeah. In that moment, I'm like, oh my god, this is what he's talking about. And he goes, I've never felt so good. I can go walks, you know, take my dog on walks and walk with my wife. And I'm just that moment, I'm like, this is why I do it, you know? Awesome. So though not sexy, so rewarding, man. And when you help someone do that, you're like, I want to do this again. Like it's a whole different feel. So anyway, as soon as you hit that, I'm like, I got a story. Um, yeah, our so I do a year-long webinar series. Um, it's it's one a month, and it's uh we're already coming up into year two, so we have all of 2019 already scheduled out. And this whole year was kind of focused on the business of training older adults. And I put it that way, not that it's all about financials and business plans, but this is the business of like my whole business is built on working with people 15 over. It's a different philosophy, a different you know, marketing campaigns, it's different everything based on that demographic. So I have six pillars of strength that we kind of focus on, six different movements in our our training program that we do on a single daily basis. Every single workout has at least those six components. So I break down two hours on each one of those six components, one every month. Uh we have our split stance one coming up in two weeks, and then the other six are on, you know. We have community events and referral generations. And how we want referral generations, not lead generations. I want people that are looking to invest into their health, not buy me based on a bottom dollar versus another gym. I could care less if I'm double their price, but if they come here and see my value, that's what I want. I want investors. So there's a whole day on that. There's a day on philosophy design. There's a day on, you know, so we have different components that we go through. And then we did a couple, I call them learn by demos, since it's via video or webinar. Um they can't really do them with me necessarily. So they're watching me do them, and then I do video analysis of my clients. Every presentation I do has like 30, 40 clients' videos of them, and we break it down, we talk about angles, cues, and coaching progressions, and they're, in my opinion, great, great tools. So people can get, I've got 43 webinars on our YouTube channel. It's just just Google my name or YouTube my name, and you'll see them all there, and it's very similar to that. The whole series. We do mini webinars, uh, which there are two a month, uh, where they're they're short, a little 30 minutes, and we talk about one little specific thing, rack poles, and how do we do that with older pops? All the progressions. We have another one coming up on our Gloot Bridge series just on that. So we do a lot of education there. Uh I have um internship programs, two or three-day internships. We've had people from all over the country. I had a guy from Scotland, I had a guy from Iceland come in, and they spend a Thursday, Friday, Saturday here with us, and they're just 10 hours a day. We go through everything, teach them the whole, basically everything you learn in that webinar, plus the experience of being here live. So we teach all that in there, and I give away a ton of content on YouTube, on Facebook. We do client spotlights constantly. I'm a fan of putting up a video of a client doing something and explaining why we do it and how we did it and what the purpose was, not just like watch Jerry do this glue bridge. Isn't that great? Good job, Jerry. You know, I want to provide an education of what we're doing with that. So everything's geared back towards you know, trying to get that moment of success, the head on the shoulder for all of us. There's so many people that need us, we just need educated and and you know, trainers that have the confidence to do it. So everything I can do to help that develop is is my goal.

Awesome, man. Awesome. So I have so many questions for you. If how does how does the client experience differ with your gym and your training versus like you know, a normal 18 to 45 type atrium, like from you know, the moment they find you to um any kind of assessment or onboarding, how does that whole thing unfold?

Yeah, it's um it's very different. I'm not not saying that everything I'm gonna go through right now is better than what other gyms do. I'm not saying that. It's just really different. And and so I haven't found um other facilities or a lot of other trainers that really do things the way that we do it. Um I have something called common practice, and I always do the error quotes when I do that. Common practice is like it's what everybody else does in this industry because that's what everyone else has done. So a great example is you know, one session is $70, but if you buy four, there's sixty-five, and if you buy eight, there's sixty. And we do that discount of like, what if I want a thousand sessions? Is it five bucks a session? Like, you know, everybody does that, and but we don't really even know why we started doing that. It's just been common practice and everyone does it. Yeah. And so I look at it and I'm like, well, I know my value of a half hour session, and I know my value of an hour, and that's just the price. If it's 30 bucks and you want to come in eight times this month, it's two forty. If you want to come in ten times, it's three hundred. Like, I know my price. I'm not gonna discount and punish myself if they buy more and undersell, but I'm not gonna punish you, the client, if uh you know, if you're not ready to commit yet because you haven't tried my products, right? So that's one of those things. And so our industry is full of these common practices, especially with the older pops, that we have to break out of that. So when I say other gems don't do this, I'm not uh saying that we're elite. We're just I've I feel like I've thought out of the box that our employees, my other uh employee here, John, we definitely think outside the box when it comes to working with this demographic, how we program, how we talk with them, what the community is like in here, our environment, uh, the way that we coach and progress, and I'd say the first thing that comes to mind is expectation. When you expect older people to not be able to lift weights, to have to do everything sitting down, to not put their arms over their head, to not do anything explosive, and not be able to do anything on their own, those are the kind of the five things that is common practice for older people. Yeah. When you put that expectation out, they will lower themselves to that expectation. Right? Rather than you coming in saying, we're gonna teach you how to lift weights and in some cases heavyweights. I'm gonna teach you how to move quickly. It's gonna take years for us to build the strength and the coordination, the confidence to do that, but we're gonna do it. Our average client stays with us 38 months now, is our new updated time. It used to be 32, so now we're up to 38 months. Basically, you know, three and a half years. I've got 14 clients that have been with me 15 years or more now. I mean, we just you start to make a connection with people and you develop a way to challenge them and continue to achieve some goals and they see success, and that cycle cannot stop. As soon as you get complacent with people where you're not learning anymore, you're not paying attention, you're not challenging them, you're not assessing, you're not reassessing, if we're not doing those things, they will leave. There's there's no better indicator of the value of your product than how long people stay and keep working with you. And if you're constantly having to group on and get new people in and cycle all the time, there's a problem with your product. You're not overpriced, okay? There's a problem with the product. So we look at those common practices and say, we're doing things different, and we know that they work, and so part of my education is wanting to teach those things to everybody else. But um, to answer your question, sorry about the ramps, to answer your question, uh, we will get a new client in, and our our first day, um, we call it a movement observation and a strategy session. Uh, another title that I stole from the Cosrose. I'm big fans of them. We we differ on some business stuff and some training styles and whatnot, but the basics of what they put together, I love it. Um, so the strategy session, it's a private sit-down, we go through all their health history. We it's very uh interview, like a newspaper style. I'm writing an article and I want to collect all this data from them. So I ask all these different questions. You know, what what injuries have you had? Does anything hurt on your body? Are there any movements that you do on a daily basis that hurt? Getting in and out of your car, you know, getting up and down off the toilet, rolling out of the bed to the right versus the left, like that kind of stuff. I want to collect all that. Surgeries, medications, um, you know, any kind of treatments you're going through, um, therapies that you're going through, be it, you know, uh going to a counselor, going to nutritionist, going to, you know, a psychotherapist, like whatever it might be, any anything that I can collect data from them, we collect all that. And then our movement observation is um more or less a assessment, but without them knowing they're being assessed. Uh so um you're you're a California guy right now, and any distance runners or anyone you might know this name. There's a business called Fleet Feet, and Fleet Feed sells shoes. And when you go in there, you don't go in and say, I want the new ASICs, you know, 3.0 or whatever it is. You come in and they say, I want to watch you run, and then we'll tell you what, you know, $180 pair of shoes that you're gonna need. And it's never the $79 shoes that are on sale.

It's always new ones, they're perfect for you.

So I'm in there with my wife, and and the guy goes, Go ahead and run. And this guy can't be in his second year of kinesiology school because he's using big terms, but he's using them wrong. And so he runs away and he's watching her, and he turns around, she turns around, she runs back, and as I'm watching her, I'm like, she doesn't run like that. That's not how she normally runs, right? But because someone's watching her, someone's assessing her, she's thinking, I have to be as perfect as I can be, and her posture changed, everything changed. And then he goes, You're a pronator, and in my head, I'm like, she's a supernatur. You know, and so I'm going through we're going through this whole thing, and I'm like, not only is he assessing her totally wrong, but she's not giving him the true account of it, right? So people are the same way. When you come in and you say, We're doing the FMS, I want you to stand with us when I'm gonna judge and assess you and see how you do, they will move and do things differently than what they would normally do. So our movement observation is um let's grab this mat over here, put it on the floor, and then go ahead and hop down there for me. I want to take you through some things. And they'll get down there and I'll say, Oh, you know what, we're gonna need a couple of bands. Can you get back up and come over and grab those two blue bands? And they'll get up and go over and get the bands and they'll come back down and I'll say, Oh, I forgot the foam roller. Can you go get the foam roller? So now I've seen them get up and down three times. And now my movement observation is watching how they get up and down. Okay? And then I'll go over and say, Okay, our first movement that we're gonna do, uh, I just want to watch you do some step ups. Are you are you comfortable attempting a step-up? And they go, yeah. And I said, I got a six-inch and a 12-inch and an 18-inch box. You know, go ahead and do two or three on each leg. And while they do that, I'm watching, are they are they doing a butt up, are their hips going first, are they rounding over, are they toe dominant, right? I'll have them um show me a hinge, pick up something off the ground every turn. It could be a pencil, it could be a five-pound dumbbell, whatever it is. And so I'll take them through like a little mock workout, a little something, but really it's my observation to see how they do some of these basic movements. Okay, and for more info on that, look them on our YouTube page. There's a whole one on there. It's it's all about our movement observation. It takes you through step by step. So we we do that, we collect that data, we have all their information that I've collected from the basically the interview process, and then we ask, uh, you know, do you have any questions about us? We go through all that, we go mature the gym. Uh, they say, This is great, I'm ready to do it, and I say, Awesome. Um, let's let's set up your first official workout. And they go, Well, can't we do that today? And I say no. And the reason no is I haven't had time to take all that data, interpret what I want to do yet, and build them a program that's appropriate. And and this is where most business coaches say that's not right. They're ready to buy now, so you need to act in the moment. That's why I'm talking about the difference between investing clients and bargain bottom buyers. I want someone who is going to invest in that product, and they're gonna understand that I need to build their product first. So now I've collected all the information, give me the chance to build a good product for you, a good workout. And then when you come back tomorrow or on Thursday or wherever it is, and we meet, we'll do that program that's specifically built for you. Then we do that and they say, I love it, I want to keep going, then I'll collect their payment information and we get that going. But nothing prior to that. Okay? And I know that really differs with a lot of business coaches. I see them shaking their head when I do my talks, and they're like, that's not right. It's a different philosophy. And it works. It does work. It's just a different demographic, a different focus, a different group of people that I work with. So this is um uh many ways to skin a cat, more or less in our fitness industry. We've seen from bodybuilders to crossfitters to you know your traditional strength and conditioning, everybody gets in shape. It's just a different way of going about it. So that's that's more or less the introduction to this whole thing. And then when they get in here, they train in an environment uh of like-minded or training purpose-based clients. I don't want to use the word goal because goals usually mean there's a start and a stop. So our training purpose is to improve our lower back, reduce my back pain, to get my hip strong. Or it might be a culminating event, like I have a uh a hike and I'm gonna climb Mount Rainier in a year or whatever it might be. And so we'll we'll look at that and say, this is a group of people that are gonna be similar to what you're doing, and we'll put them together. We don't necessarily ask them what time is best for you. I want to put them in the group that best fits their needs, and I'll try to adjust that to their time schedules, but that's the right product. You need to kind of come then. And so we put them into the group, they start to train, start teaching them those six pillars every day. We start to work with the basics and work up. We have a whole continuum of movements, basically the most simple hinge, the most simple row, the most simple split stance. And as they get more successful, we start progressing them across that continuum. Where clients that have been here for five, six, or ten years, they're all the way up at this end already. But everybody works out together, everybody has this camaraderie and the community and the social facilitation, the aspect of working hard with other people present is there for them. And with the older demographics, uh, you get individuals that have lost their significant other, they've lost friends and family. And so this becomes that environment for them. You know, it becomes their their family and their energy. So that's you know, again, a long-winded answer, but that's kind of the idea of how we kind of introduce them into this, how I collect my information and then where we put them to. And that progression from there on out lasts years, decades, and some of our clients. We're just always challenging them and re-observing and reobsessing what they can do and finding in some cases new goals and challenges for them, you know, as we go along.

Yeah, awesome, man. I mean, it's I I do like what you do on the onboarding process of telling them, you know, not yet, let me build out your plan. You know, I think um we always want to get people, traditional business will say, get people to buy when emotions are high, right? But I like the cooling off period because it gives people time to digest, and then then you know if you're really gonna have a long-term client, right? If they sit and they're they reflect on it and they say, you know what, uh, this guy really knows what he's talking about. This is where I want to invest my time and money. And ultimately for them, it's such a big scary thing, right? Uh that's that's a big part of it as well. Is you know, this is a huge commitment. For many of us who are athletes or what you know who have been in the gym for a long time, walking into a gym isn't a big deal. But we always forget, you know, especially for any client who's who's not particularly athletic or gym oriented, what a big step. But then you add on to top of this is maybe some of these people haven't been in the gym in a long, long time. Decade, right? Um, and you have to ask them to do that. So um man, you touched on something both before recording and in this recording about your referral base versus lead generation, your referral generation versus lead generation. What walk us down that path, man? What is that? What's the difference? Give us some uh strategies, tactics, things that we can use.

Yeah, my uh my dad is a marketing director. He's worked at you know, three different hospitals and Caesars Palace and Six Flags, and he's all about, you know, you gotta get in front of them six different ways, and it's phone and it's TV and newspaper and flyers, and he goes, especially the older demographics, they all check their mail and they, you know, they read the newspaper. And and for me and our personal experiences, we've tried some of those things in the past, which those are all lead generations, almost like cold calls where you're trying to get brand new clients to come in. And in such a personal environment, such a personal field of personal training, I feel like the referral generations are better opportunities and better long-term investments for us to be able to provide opportunities for our clients to bring more people to us has really been the most uh beneficial thing. So we don't really want lead generation, we want referral generation. So we do community events, a ton of community events. I think we do five or six a year, we do one with food links, where we've got bags of dry food goods in my gym in my office right now. Everybody brings in a bag of uh dry food to donate to Food Links, the homeless shelter here that they feed out, and they get to bring a guest with them for free, and they get the workout included if they bring it back. And so they'll bring in their significant other, a neighbor, a friend, a coworker, someone, and they come in and we do a big group workout, and we got music, and I'm you know loud and yellow with everybody, and then they get done, we give out you know, flyers to everybody and a free workout for them to come back, and you know, we give them a chance to see our personalities and our style, and even though it's not, you know, there's 20 people in the room, it's not what we normally do, which is you know, four to eight people every hour that's a little more personalized. They still get to experience things and they get to see how fun it is to be in there, you know, with their friend or their spouse or brother or whatever it is. And so we give we give our clients that opportunity. They're always we put open invitations to our clients all the time. They're constantly welcome to bring a guest to work out with them. They just need to let us know a little bit ahead of time. And as long as we have time, we'll make that happen. Um, we do um one for the SBCA where we people bring in dog foods and cat foods and blankets and they get a workout. So a lot of opportunities that way where we'll kind of put something in with charity uh to have them come in and experience, and we do big photos of the group at the end. We have fun ones like um strengthen your relationship workout we do on Valentine's Day, and so it's a give and go workout with your your significant other or just a partner that you want to come in with. And a lot of our clients we train the wife or the husband, but not the other one. Right now, we just did a new update. It's 60% or 63% of our of our current business. We train them the wife and the and the husband. And so we give those other you know, 40% or so the opportunity to to bring in their other um their other half and and kind of see they'll hear the stories and you know, oh it doesn't sound all that bad, and then the husbands come in and they just get totally blown away by a workout, and they have a lot more respect for the wife and what she does, and the next thing I know they're in our mentor, you know. So it's yeah, it's really fun that way to where you and it starts to put things together when we do our rack polls and we're testing this week. Well, how much is my husband doing? And so the ladies are ramping it up, you know. There's a good competitive environment. It's really fun. So we give them opportunities that way. You know, we do education. I did a fall prevention class, we do an ergonomics class for their car, for their desks, where they're working at. Um, we've done uh John, um, our other employee does a um military prep program for eight weeks at a time to get you know high school kids and college kids ready to go into the military, whatever services they're gonna do, and he gears everything towards uh their their tests they need to qualify to get into that branch. And so we do a lot of events that are he works with our youth and with our our sports performance and our military, he's military as well. And so he's kind of got that demographic, like the 40 and under, and then I'm everybody up, you know. And so we we tailor those events and opportunities where our clients have chances to bring more people like that. Because typically we hang around with people that are like-minded or similar attitudes or personalities. Rarely we find just this awesome client who brings in a total asshole they want to you know work out with. Like usually they're bringing in people that are pretty cool like them, and they don't want to bring in somebody that's gonna you know stink up the place or have a bad attitude, or they're you know, they're gonna throw a wrench in. This is their place, this is their their home, their their studio, their gym. So they want to bring in people that are gonna add to that value. And we just see it over and over again, and we thank our clients. We we don't have a referral program where they're getting points and t-shirts or anything, but we'll have clients that will bring people in. I'll just call them up and be like, let's go to lunch on Friday. And I'll give them a note that just you know, a hand note that says thank you, or you know, I might give them a free workout one time and just say, Hey, you know, you've had three new clients that have come in, you've filled our our fall prevention webinar class with four of your buddies. Like, you know, we just we're so thankful that you're here doing this and uh that you you think that much of us to bring your loved ones to us. When someone brings that someone in their circle of trust, their their love circle to you, um, that's a huge compliment. Like they're trusting you as their parent or their grandparent. You you don't screw that up, you know. That's a great vote of confidence that they're giving you. So I just, you know, there's no greater compliment as a trainer than to have a client tell grandma to come in here. That's huge for them, you know. So we really give them a lot of opportunities to do that. And I I'm it takes time, that's the hard part. You know, you could get 10 new people on Groupon, where with us it might take three, four months to get 10 new people, but I think those people stay. That's the big argument, the big difference.

Yeah.

Do you find that this the older demographics um I feel like we should come up with a better name than older demographics, but do you feel that they're more likely to refer thanks to our uh we use the term older adult, so that's our I don't like seniors, I don't like elder, there's like the frail elders and that kind of thing. So just older adults, and everybody kind of defines that different. 50, 55, 65. I just kind of say 50 and up, older adults. Um, but yes, I definitely think when they find something they believe in and they they truly, you know, they truly love it, they refer like crazy. Like they really have a connection to us. Like when I've been in the hospital, you know, my last my last stint in there was for my hernia, and it was in and out that day. But I had, I don't know, three, four, five visitors just in like the couple of hours I was in the hospital, let alone when I got home. People came to visit and they sent me stuff and they brought us food. And like when you're making that kind of connection, people value you that much, you're doing things right. And so you know, I think a lot of them look at me like extended family or you know, a really good friend of theirs. They tell me personal things, like that means we have a new connection. So they will refer that experience uh to other people in their circle, and I don't take that for granted or take that lightly at all. Like that's definitely um a compliment to me. I have a very close circuit of friends, but a huge community of people that I work with and that you know are in my kind of my bigger circle. But those tight ones that are really close to me, I truly value that, that love and affection. You get anywhere near that with these clients where they trust you not only with their body but other people that they they value like that, you're doing things right. I I just I can't say that enough. More than any numbers or anything that say that that's telling you your product is really good. And if they're referring over like that, keep keep kicking ass and keep doing that. But yeah, I definitely feel like they have a value if you're reducing pain or helping them achieve more mobility and and and ability to go out and be active, those are the two things they tell everybody about.

Yeah.

On the other side, if you screw up and you hurt them, they tell everybody about that too. Yeah, it's uh and it's always a harassing way. Like, you know, yeah. Remember when you tore my rotator cuff and I'm like, it was already torn. I just we heard it one day. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, so you hear about

that uh kind of thing on and on so yeah we never progress people slow but yeah yeah well Robert this is uh you know I I I can't agree with you more even in you know the small when I own my facility just the last six to nine months I started working with um you know what we call our legends class and the it was actually for a while the only class that I coached I took myself off the schedule completely because I want it was so rewarding um you know just like having we had a toe touch test right and when people finally got to that point they could tie tie their own shoe right but you don't you take this shit for granted and then you start to see like wow what a difference like imagine if you couldn't tie your shoe just imagine because it'll happen to you eventually right it's it's bound to happen when you if you can reverse that that in time and get that back to something like that so something we take for granted but so critical of an everyday to get that the the satisfaction and the the reward is is ten times better than you know a 400 pound back squat that you get a a young client to get and nothing wrong with that but I'm just saying I'm trying to urge people to really get into this and and really uh experience it because it's awesome. Um where do people find out all find all of your educational stuff? Where are you sending them?

Um training the olderadult.com so we have a website that's all geared towards that you'll see all the links for YouTube all listed on there I have some articles up on there and then uh under the events you click on there we do some live clinics here uh like a two-day live clinic here at the gym in Sacramento we do that once or twice a year and then uh the online stuff is all listed there and then anywhere on Facebook um I'm on um link or um Instagram a little bit uh more of a Facebooker uh just because that's where most of my clients and the older demographics are I put a ton of stuff on Facebook I probably put four or five posts up a day and just highlight our clients and experiences and education and I put all of everything on there about our webinar series and up and coming events all that so you find find it all on there feel free to friend me you know I'm happy to connect and share whatever information I can uh I do um I call them career development calls too basically I have a half hour commute from the gym to home so I'll schedule calls with folks do them for free and just whatever you want to chat about or ask questions about while we're I'm heading home feel free I'm happy to do them okay yeah yeah awesome man well Robert thank you so much I um yeah I'm so glad we got connected and uh you know it's just it it's awesome to me that all I had to do is do one post and then I had three people say Robert Lincoln's the guy.

So obviously you're doing the right things and um you're working with a great population and um you know I wish my parents were just an hour closer uh because they're in truckie uh I would have them at your gym in a heartbeat so um cool yeah man just thanks for coming on it's it's been really great pleasure thank you I really appreciate it yeah all right my man take care hey fitness fans don't leave yet it's your host Eric Malzone and I have a quick favor to ask actually three favors so number one if you're a fan of our show I ask you to do something it takes under three minutes. Go to iTunes please and subscribe to our show please please please it means so much to us it's so important and then give us a favorable review we would really really appreciate it and uh I can't tell you how much it means and helps us out. So I know it takes two minutes of your day and uh it means a lot to us. So please do that. Number two, go to our YouTube channel or fitness marketing alliance and uh please subscribe to our YouTube channel there. Number three, if you like this episode or any of the episodes that we've released share it on social. That's huge. That's a big deal for us and when we put a lot of work into these episodes uh trying to give you great actionable content uh for the fitness industry so that would mean a lot and that's it so we have some big plans coming up for this show I'll be talking about that in the next couple episodes but thank you so much for listening it means so much and uh if you have any questions please reach out to me. I'd love to hear from everybody. Eric E R I C at fitnessmarketingalliance calm