Fitness over 40: coaching wisdom, longevity, and smarter training choices with No Easy Feet Gym

In this episode of Integrate Yourself, I sit down in person with Adam and Steven from No Easy Feet Gym. We dive into the confusing landscape of the fitness industry, the transformative impact of ATG (Athletic Truth Group) training, and what to look for in a great coach. 

We also talk about the value of mentorship, coaching, and keeping curiosity alive in your own training. This conversation is full of insights for anyone looking to feel stronger, prevent injuries and find the right personal trainer or coach  

We discussed:

• Our fitness formative years
• Benefits of ATG from a coaches perspective - Less myopic training vs. a more intrinsic minimalist approach
• Getting results from your workout after 50
• How to best navigate gym options and coaching when you're shopping around
• Working on the low hanging fruit first for better gains and lasting results
• The most underrated exercise you're probably not doing enough of
• The right kind of shoe wear and why it matters in your fitness routine
• As coaches we can only help our clients as much as we've helped ourselves
• The value of hiring a great coach even for other coaches
• The significance of the American garage gym experience
• What makes coaching rewarding for coaches who've been coaching for 10+ year
• What's required to be a great coach
• What to factor in when you're shopping for personal training

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https://www.pureenergypdx.com/

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Connect with Adam & Steven here:

https://noeasyfeet.com/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to Integrate Yourself, everybody. I'm your host, Alison Pillow, and you can find me at pureenergypdx.com. Today I'm here with some very special guests, Adam and Steven from No Easy Feet Gym. We both have our own in-home studios basically, so that's really cool. I got connected with Adam through the ATG coaching program and he's phenomenal. So is Steven. They're both phenomenal coaches and I'm very excited to introduce you to them and we're going to talk about some really, really amazing things today. All right. So you guys, we are here at all in person, which is what I don't normally do podcast in person. So this is actually a real treat for me today. So why don't you start, Adam, introduce yourself, tell everybody a little bit about yourself. Then we'll get into some topics we're going to talk about today.

SPEAKER_02: 1:07

Thank you. It's a treat for me to be here, too, because all I ever want to do, Allison, is nerd out about fitness. with other coaches, if possible. So thanks for allowing me to be here. I've been a coach in Portland full-time for 11 years, and I run a home gym called No Easy Feet Gym in Montevilla area, but it hasn't always been that way. I worked at a gym called Training Day before COVID, and when COVID happened, I started my own show. So I'm very honored to be doing what I'm doing, especially having discovered ATG because I've had some serious issues with my knee. I've had an ACL tear and repair, and I've also I had a bucket handle tear and repair, and this is midway through my coaching career. So discovering ATG has been a goldmine on a personal level and on a professional level. So being able to collaborate with you and nerd out about that, it's a dream come true.

SPEAKER_00: 1:58

Yeah. Oh, my God. I agree 100%. It's been so much fun nerding out together on the ATG stuff. It's a game changer for fitness. I know that's such an overused term, game changer, but it really is. It's changed my entire perspective. on fitness and the potential there so we're gonna we're gonna get into more of that today but first let's introduce steven

SPEAKER_01: 2:21

hello um i'm currently still working on my level one atg coaching certification i've been in the exercise program here for a little over a year but yeah i remember when adam first found atg and we were doing kind of our own like zoom training sessions with very minimal at home equipment like I've just I've seen what it's done for him and in the past I couldn't you know I had a very busy work life but lately in the last year I've been kind of devoting everything to this so it's been a cool journey

SPEAKER_02: 2:59

yeah I feel like I'm still on my way to Mordor in a positive way

SPEAKER_00: 3:04

oh yes for sure for sure yeah it's uh it's interesting you guys and I've noticed you guys bring such a different energy into fitness it's fun in a way where you're you're actually meeting your goals you're getting the things done you really want to get done but you're also exploring that right it's like an a really fun exploration and you help people dive into their curiosity around what their potential is there so um kudos to you guys i'm so happy that we connected i mean it's been amazing so

SPEAKER_02: 3:38

i'm nodding my head vigorously over here nodding my head vigorously the whole time

SPEAKER_00: 3:42

let's talk about uh some of the Some of the things we're going to talk about today, which is first one is navigating the fitness industry. Talked about how confusing it is for people to figure out what's ideal for them. We're going to go over the benefits, coaching styles and all that. So how do you want to start that one off,

SPEAKER_02: 4:05

Adam? Yeah, it is. If you

SPEAKER_00: 4:26

think about our fitness history, we've been through so many different phases, right? I know I have. And even as a fitness professional for over 20 years, there's still so much to learn. I mean, I feel so humbled by this entire experience, quite honestly. And it's really brought about an a childlike wonder to me from both me and my clients. I think that there are so many, it's marketing really. There's so many fitness methods out there and corporations, you know, you've got Orange Theory, you've got CrossFit, I don't know. Big box gyms. Big box gyms, exactly. They're all saying, okay, this is the exact way you should exercise. And this is going to get you to your goals. It's going to get you fit. I think the biggest thing on people's mind is losing weight, right? You know, there's this thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is body recomposition. And I think it's something that's really misunderstood. And I've even misunderstood it in the past. But I think people just think that they need to burn everything off. But I think part of understanding, like part of what we're talking about here, why it gets so confusing is because people don't understand what they really need, right? They don't understand how to identify that.

SPEAKER_02: 5:46

Yeah, I think it's like maybe what you think you need versus kind of what you know you need. And I think that for a lot of people, they have to kind of find it out experientially. And I know for me personally, I definitely had to find out experientially through lots of kind of dead ends. And I think for me, one of my first forays into fitness was doing a lot of running and almost no cross training. Kind of my college years, I was doing a ton of I would go to the gym and I would spend a And I would also do a lot of running and kind of wonder why my body composition wasn't where I wanted it to be. My strength and ability kind of wasn't where I wanted it to be. But I've had a crazy formative experience being a gym member at big box gyms, boutique gyms, doing like HIIT CrossFit style gyms. I've done all of them. And I think that it took kind of going through all those stages to learn more about what you were talking about, which is. your body comp matters so much because your body composition ultimately is your destiny. It's your metabolism. It's your energy. It's your vitality, your ability to gain and maintain lean muscle mass and connective tissue health. All those different things are so important. So ATG, you know, is such a wonderful conglomeration of so many of these benefits of, again, people want to have a healthy body composition. And so much of ATG is about maintaining And of course, like throughout all that. Getting into positions that are difficult and challenging and having those things start to become easier and easier and really seeing this like this ability benefit that comes alongside the body composition benefit, which is, I think, kind of a rare proposition is like I'm feeling better. I have more vitality. My body composition is closer to where I want it to be. And as a side effect of a lot of this stuff, my abilities have grown and progressed. And I think it's it's been this wonderful journey for me. Coming back to the style of lifting that is very intrinsic and very almost like pretty minimalistic after having, you know, done lots of machines and lots of kind of more myopic styles of fitness that only focus or home in on just one aspect of fitness. I feel like this is just a wonderful place to have arrived to.

SPEAKER_00: 8:11

Yeah. And it's like all these different fitness regimens and options or they're not bad. I mean, there's always there's something good from all of them that you can take away. Right. And to be fair, like ATG is very new and this information wasn't out when we were starting our journey in fitness. And I've been through a lot of different phases in fitness myself. I went through a phase where I was in back pain a lot. I was afraid to lift weights at one point. Had to hire a trainer myself so he could help me work up the confidence and figure it out, figure out why I was having so much back pain. So he taught me a lot of like CrossFit stuff and a lot of barbell work and that kind of thing it really kind of set up a good structure for me but what I didn't know at the time and I know now is that my back would be unstable when I was on a flat surface doing squats because my knee wouldn't bend as much and my ankle wouldn't bend as much on the left because that had been injured a lot too so the standard system isn't set up for you to discover those things about yourself and so you can't go really any further than that so that's what I found out and of course I went through phases of you know Pilates and the Soma stuff and Feldenkrais and I went through the Czech Institute and all of that and I went through all of that which has really shaped how I coach now and it's been all very beneficial but sometimes I also think that we make it way too complicated and I think it's wonderful that we have so many options but I think that the best thing to do I would say going back to the Right. Totally. Totally. that that's just not the case. Like it can improve even after your fifties. Right. So I was sure too.

SPEAKER_02: 10:27

I was sure as well. I was like, Oh, I think this is, this is as far as I can take it, but I was, I was dead wrong. And a lot of that happened well after 35 years old.

SPEAKER_00: 10:34

Yeah. So

SPEAKER_02: 10:35

that's very cool.

SPEAKER_00: 10:36

Yeah, I agree. It's, it's very cool stuff. So, um, so I would say, what, what would your, I guess, what would your, uh, opinion be on how someone could navigate that

SPEAKER_02: 10:46

as a customer? I think one of the coolest things that you can do when you're navigating all I've got all these gyms I can go to. I've got all these trainers and coaching services that I can choose from is find one that will truly and honestly emphasize your weak links alongside all of the meat and potatoes, things that you need in a good training session. And I think you'll know that you found a great one. You won't even need to ask. You'll just know right away, this coach, this trainer pinpointed maybe in just an hour or two pinpointed just about all of my major weak links and maybe gave me a little bit of coaching about how we can improve all those things and in a simple, uh, in a, in a structured routine kind of a way.

SPEAKER_00: 13:26

Yeah, definitely. And in the scope of practice of strength training, right. That was, that's important. Yeah. Cause we're not doctors. We're not physical therapists. We're trainers. Weak links

SPEAKER_02: 13:36

for, for weightlifting and movement.

SPEAKER_00: 13:38

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Cause it will, I say that because it just seems like the two have meshed a little Yeah, not to

SPEAKER_02: 13:48

say that taking wonderful care of your strength and your mobility and your athleticism won't have mental benefits and won't have spiritual benefits. But you know, scope of practice, definitely focusing on the physical focusing on the ability based.

SPEAKER_01: 14:00

I kind of agree with everything you said. But I just wanted to say like, I've also kind of jumped around with like the styles that I've been I've trained, like, I guess I started out kind of like what you said, like, just like a structural balance, like typical big box gym. Adam was actually... Not the first trainer I had, but pretty early on is when I met him. But then eventually I shifted into like powerlifting, played with kettlebells a lot for a while, started having shoulder issues. And that's what kind of got me more interested in the ATG stuff when after Adam found it and used it to basically fix his knee problems. You just got to find what works for you.

SPEAKER_00: 14:45

Let's move into the next topic, how ATG has helped. That's a It's a

SPEAKER_02: 14:53

big one, right? pretty much without skipping a beat train long, rewarding days at the gym on crutches for a long time. But yeah, I did not feel that physical therapy and traditional weightlifting got me to a place where I was functional. I was kind of like living dysfunctionally on the sly without ever really telling people how much that was affecting me negatively. And when I finally started to feel a little more normal, I got a bucket handle tear on the same knee. So I think just having to go through that process twice of kind of suffering and silence and not really ever feeling like I came back 100% was really challenging to me as a coach. So That's my, that's my why on, on ATG was I think maybe just finding Ben on Instagram and starting to follow Ben Patrick, the creator of knees over toes, ATG, AKA knees over toes guy on Instagram, found him and noticed that he had a pretty similar story, had some serious knee problems and was able to essentially fix and rehab his knees doing loaded range of motion work and very controlled tempo work and basically buying back his body's own trust by slowly and patiently regaining range through things like lunges, getting really strong ankles and getting really strong hips. And I think that that's one low hanging fruit for so many people that are either a maybe kind of suffering from old injuries or be maybe a little bit unfulfilled in their current training regimen. That's what they need to know is that really leveraging, you know, work on your joints and work on range of motion will insane benefits for your vitality, for your strength, for just being able to get up and down off the floor like you are an energetic 12-year-old. Even though I'm 40, I'm getting up and down off the floor so quickly. I can't put a price on that. It's been completely life-changing for me on a personal level, but for my coaching business, it's been earth-shattering because I've been able to reflect on this crazy journey that I've been on, but luckily for me, my clients have witnessed it. They've seen me go from Adam limping to work to Adam being like a very fast marathon runner and a very accomplished weightlifter and having knees that can do things that are frankly scary to watch. And I'm totally fine. So I couldn't give more credit to ATG and Ben Patrick and Franz and Ben from Canada and Keegan, all these people that have just had my back for five years. Can't say enough good things.

SPEAKER_00: 17:46

The coaching community is incredible and there's so much support there. It's really great. I have a similar story i've had a you know i think most of us have probably had some kind of knee issue who are in the coaching community right that's what drew us to the atg group from the start mine started when i was in high school i was a gymnast and i blew my knee out in my junior high school year and i was trying to get a college scholarship and so i got this knee reconstructive surgery ended up doing a rehab for a year and then got a got the scholarship the crazy thing is i was able to do gymnastics for another two years but my knee never bent the same so it As you can imagine, it led to a lot of overcompensation and discrepancies in my alignment and all that. Not to mention, I had this ankle that had broken three times and had three surgeries on it.

SPEAKER_02: 18:34

Same side as the knee?

SPEAKER_00: 18:36

It was on the opposite side. So anyway, 30 years later, I find, and after much back instability and pain after having two children, in the beginning, I'd never had a back spasm before. And I was like, what the heck is this? I was like, oh my God, am I going to walk again? You know, it was pretty scary. But over time, you know, I've, I kind of put the pieces together. And then finally when I hired a trainer and one day he put me in this, this knees over toes split squat. And I was like, what the heck is this? And I, and I couldn't bend my, I couldn't, I could barely do it on my right side. I was like, oh, I'm intrigued now because like, this is something I want to do. Like, I want to be able to, can I do this? And then I listened to Ben's story and Ben Patrick and I and he had worse knee surgery than me like I don't know how many surgeries like four or something and I was like well if he could do that then I certainly can try you know so I actually got excited about the potential there of being able to bend my knee fully again I was like oh my god is this possible right I'm like 50 I was 51 at the time and I said oh my god you know can this because you know sometimes you think as you get older you're like oh I'm just and Even trainers think we're going to go

SPEAKER_02: 19:54

older than 51

SPEAKER_00: 19:54

now. feel really much stronger than I did in my youth. And so just because I want to point on point out something you mentioned, too, is I don't think we actually know what being strong feels like and actually means because I did. And even and even this is this is coming from a personal trader. Right. And it's it's interesting because and I would say the majority of people could go and fit into this category because you've learned just to work on the legs, but we haven't really learned to work on the lower legs. We haven't learned that that kind of a foundation, really building up the lower legs is really going to prevent injury. It's going to help you actually stabilize your knees so much better, your hips. It's going to help with your core. It's basically your foundation, your foot and your lower leg. But yet you see people in the gym, they hardly ever pay any to that area, right? It's an

SPEAKER_02: 21:23

afterthought.

SPEAKER_00: 21:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_02: 21:24

If that, for most people's regimen, is like, maybe you'll get one set of calves per week or something. And for us, it's like the inverse. It's like, we're bipedals. We're not quadrupeds. We really need these two things real bad.

SPEAKER_00: 21:37

Exactly. This is like taking my vitamins every day. I basically do some kind of variation of ankle raise and tib raise just basically almost every day, really.

SPEAKER_02: 21:48

And by volume, maybe sports injuries-wise, I know rotator cuffs are really high up there, but ankle sprains have got to be towards top one to three sports injuries that we see by volume. And it's like, why aren't we addressing that preventatively and after the fact as part of our training volume? Why aren't we emphasizing that?

SPEAKER_00: 22:08

That's what I'm– I think because it's not a sexy exercise. I disagree.

SPEAKER_02: 22:13

I think ATGers have this mindset of like chicks dig guys with big tibs and vice versa.

SPEAKER_00: 22:20

I've heard that joke before. Yeah. That's a good one. So yeah, but I think, yeah, I think it's just not, it's not like, oh, look at these, you know, calves. It's more like people want to show their biceps. They want to show their chest. They want to show their legs, you know, their butt. Like those are the things that get attention. But like the lower legs, if those aren't strong enough, like you really don't have a solid foundation. It's made so much of a difference for me and my clients. Like some of my clients who were getting a lot of knee pain, hiking downhill and stuff. They don't get that anymore because we've been working on their lower legs. And it's just so, and it's so obvious, you know, and you think about also the, I was, you know, my family's a big fan of NBA basketball and they're Celtics fans. And we just watched like three of the top players tear their ACL. I mean, not, not ACL, I'm sorry, Achilles tendons. And I was like, wow, what would, what would it be like if they had had atg in their life i don't know i couldn't stop i could not think about that when i saw those injuries because basketball players yeah they run constantly they put a lot of stress in that area in the ankle and so you would think oh yeah that's that's going to be injured at some point but i don't know that that has to be if they've worked it enough you know i don't know that's a question maybe that you can answer oh my

SPEAKER_02: 23:46

goodness well i think about the achilles is like the spring of life yeah and it's like um I've heard that in a lot of cases, tearing one sounds like a gunshot going off. I've had a client who got a tear while playing frisbee football. It's devastating. I don't know if this is true, but it could be one of the, if not the hardest sports injuries to repair. It just takes a very long time to kind of build that trust back and to actually like repair that rupture and that tear. It's at the center of our ability to jump. It's at the center of our ability to land, absorb forces, decelerate All these wonderful things. And also have a healthy gait pattern. It's just like at the core and the center of so much of this stuff. So... We wanna make Achilles sexy again as much as humanly possible. I think that's like my mission. Foot, lower leg, Achilles, all this stuff is wonderful. I don't know if that answered the question at all.

SPEAKER_00: 24:39

Yeah, that answered the question. I think that we can't, obviously we can't make any promises, but I just had a dream like, oh my God, like, I think this could help those guys, you know? Like, I think this could help everybody if we did enough of that, if we focused enough on the areas that that are taking the most force you know

SPEAKER_02: 25:02

and

SPEAKER_01: 25:03

yeah i just wanted to touch like just because you brought up basketball it reminded me um there's two or three guys in like the program that i'm in at school right now that actively play basketball like a lot and like are trying to get a scholarship eventually and all that kind of stuff and there was one day when we were doing like various in my opinion random like fitness assessment stuff and there was a vertical jump test and I got way higher than I don't play I don't play basketball I don't run very often I get most of my cardio from riding a bicycle but like just all of the different calf and like you know ankle lower leg exercises that we do all the time they were like mad they're like how are you jump like how'd you jump that high and I was just like they kind of know the stuff I do like you know I rep the no easy feet hoodie at school and like stuff like that but it was just funny watching like good basketball players just get really upset that I can jump higher than them when I don't play basketball at all.

SPEAKER_02: 26:09

What a testament to ATG is being like, I love this term. I actually got called a sleeper build recently, like a sleeper build or like a sleeper ability where it's like not something you can see readily, but it's like, like you start getting these like hidden skills of like, oh my God, this person's very unsuspecting looking, but they have like this insane ability that just comes flying Right out so much of this to just a very small side note so much of this lower leg care so much of this Achilles health Achilles wellness comes down to our choices of footwear and I know in the NBA I'm sure there's a lot of free shoes being handed out by major corporations and I'm not here to disparage those major corporations everyone has a mortgage to pay I totally understand that but I just simply wanted to state that my life changed incredibly because of ATG but it would not have changed fully were it not me making the switch over to more of a minimalist or barefoot shoe and just going unshod without shoes for so much if not all of my days every day for people who are just starting out and for me it was a little bit of a graduate graduation process slowly building up to tolerate all of those funky stabilizers and muscles and tissues that are turning on and coming online after a lifetime pretty much of wearing shoes like converse all-stars nikes that drive your toes to a point Nike's that elevate your heel and put you in these positions where your body is kind of off center, a little bit unstable, but not to be on this topic too long, but I just wanted to say how crucial it was for me personally to embrace minimal slash barefoot shoes as a part of this whole game.

SPEAKER_00: 27:47

When your feet are squeezed in a shoe, obviously they're not going to be able to move over the ground. You're stepping over very well. You're not going to be able to balance very well. So all that compression goes up the leg all the way up to the hip. It all goes up the chain, right? So if we can let our feet spread with a wide toe shoe at least and let the feet feel the ground you're walking on, you have a sensory mechanism in your feet that tells you what you're stepping over and it has an electromagnetic conduction that goes all the way up the body and communicates to the rest of your body. So that's what the idea of grounding comes from, right? You're touching, you're as close to the ground as you can be And then your feet and the muscles in the feet and the bones in your feet can spread out and you can balance so much better. And then you don't have to hold all the tension in everything above it because it's taking all of that in the feet. It's able, it's strong enough. That's why, again, the lower legs, because the lower legs are right above the feet. And that's part of what has to stabilize the load that's above it. So the shoes are so important because if we're walking around these little shoes, squeezing our toes, it's like we're walking on of tightrope right all day long it's going to reflect in the rest of your body so thank you for bringing that up that's really good point

SPEAKER_02: 29:05

and maybe one more quick one too on that same regard indispensable is just thinking about fascia understanding a little bit about fascia on how okay there's the underside of our foot and that underside is our fascia and that connects up into our Achilles tendon and that wraps up our calf up our hamstring into our back all the way up to our head so we're thinking just like you said piggy backing on your point, there's these electric signals, there's these nerve signals, but there's also this fascial, which is also all part of the same process. Under-discussed, under-utilized, but in terms of resiliency and quote-unquote bulletproofing your body, this is bullseye center of the whole game right here.

SPEAKER_00: 29:48

Absolutely. People don't have a lot of time or they don't have a lot of strength in the beginning. Usually start them from the ground up feet lower legs and then up the chain so that is part of our our approach right there so next topic being a customer of coaching services even as a coach

SPEAKER_02: 30:12

yeah i think um i think one thing that's been indispensable for me in the journey of Becoming a better coach and even more so becoming a better practitioner has been having a second pair of eyes. I think maybe a lot of therapists could say the same thing. I think a lot of people in a lot of industries in the medical profession could say the same thing as having a mentor, having a coach, having an invaluable resource like that. Should at no point in your life become dispensable, I think that there should always be an eye towards How can I find ways to refine my practice? How can I continue to ensure that my practice doesn't get stagnant? Obviously, there are ways to probably do it without hiring a coach per se, but I think for me, throughout all these years, mentorship has been indispensable. And it takes a lot of hubris, in my opinion, to get to a point in your career where it's like, I've got it all figured out. This is the end of me learning. And it's like, well, I think for learning, I think books are great. I think podcasts are great. I think talking to people is great. But I think having a formal relationship is, for me personally, my opinion, ideal. Because it's formal. There's accountability. There's feedback. And I think for me personally, having feedback, especially at this stage in my career, detailed feedback and very granular feedback is indispensable. I love serving my clients. And I serve my clients best when I feel like I'm on my cutting edge. Yeah. with many other parts of my game, including my original handstand goal, which I used to get my third ATG certification. Getting a handstand was also a crazy journey for me because I've had shoulder issues and back issues. So just wanted to speak to the importance of, I guess, regardless of your profession, but for me as a coach, continuing to have a coach. As a consumer or as a customer of fitness, even someone who's not a coach, having a coach is indispensable. It's just a great part of the human experience, in my opinion. Allison?

SPEAKER_00: 32:50

I've had many coaches in my career, and I really thrive on mentorship as well. I don't think I'd be where I am today if I hadn't hired coaches myself because, like you said, I want to be the most– I guess, nuanced version of myself that I can be for my clients so that I can help them. I can only help them as much as I've helped myself. And I think it's just invaluable, especially in this day and age where we have all this technology to actually have a person that you can have a relationship with and that you can also, someone who can see what you're doing and maybe give you feedback on things maybe you can't see about yourself, right? Some things you haven't noticed before. And And so that opens up the whole exploration curiosity thing is like, wow, maybe I can get better at this, right? And I didn't think about it like that before. So not only does the coach give feedback, accountability, but it also a good coach really shows you your potential or gives you like an entrance into it, right? And guide you there. I think you're going to get so much more out of your fitness experience if you do in my personal opinion, because so many people, I mean, I guess you could say they waste a lot of time, they get injured trying to research themselves and figure it out or look on YouTube, you know, and I mean, you can do that. That's fine. You can do it yourself. But also, if you just even have a coach for a small amount of time, and you just get some kind of direction on what you need to be doing, that's going to save you a whole lot of time and energy right there, too.

SPEAKER_01: 34:39

earlier adam was my trainer years ago and then like a few years later like when we like reconnected and started doing all this like he's definitely helped me like he's you know had a keen eye during like my uh atg career i guess so you could say and like uh progress franz has helped me um trying to like get my hamstrings unlocked a lot lately so there's certain things i wouldn't be able to do now if I didn't have coaches helping me along the way. Cause you know, any, anyone can really like find a program and follow it, but you could be doing it wrong the whole time and making things worse without someone there to kind of point those things out. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 35:27

Steven and I actually had this exact same conversation earlier today when we were doing our Franz, my Franz homework. I pointed to the whiteboard because we have all of our clients' programs written with good penmanship on the whiteboard. And I said, I think I said this to Steven, I said, coaching isn't the marker. Coaching is the white space between the marker. And I think that that's what so many customers, consumers, clients are maybe missing out when they're shopping. Not anyone. Writing a program requires a ton of understanding of the individual and a lot of nuance, even if it doesn't Mm-hmm. so many things in our culture are kind of sending us down a road of disassociation because there's so much overstimulation out there. What a wonderful time. What a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with yourself by feeling yourself. And I think if you're kind of like, I think it happens to me too, like be kind of working out kind of on your phone, kind of thinking about what's going to happen later in the day, kind of reflecting upon what happened earlier in the day. And you're like, your mind is all over the place. And it's like, when you're with your coach, like you can kind of like create this space where it's like, Oh, pause. Oh, pause right there. Do you feel that? And it's like, maybe they didn't before, but they do now. That white space.

SPEAKER_00: 37:04

I love that, Adam. That was really, really well said and resonated with that so much. Yes, it is a chance to connect with yourself, right? That's really what it comes down to. And it's giving, you're allowing yourself space. You're making yourself important enough to spend time with yourself. And that's what the coach provides. It provides, the coach provides that space that contains basically for you to do that right and I think that like you said it's so valuable these days because we're trying to fly through everything right and we're not really taking time you know we just talked about this sense of urgency we've been feeling from people lately and the energy of that and all that and it is a sense of urgency I feel like there's like a low grade anxiety because we aren't really spending time with ourselves right we're not actually taking the time to sit with ourselves and really just be with our bodies right that's what embodiment is is you're bringing all your energy back into you into your body and feeling like you said and so this is the practice of feeling it's a practice of being able to be in the moment which is so important like that's a spiritual practice right there that you can do in the gym

SPEAKER_02: 38:18

I feel like the American garage is like such a character in our zeitgeist yeah Microsoft was started in the garage um like cliff bars and I want to say now so many of the biggest podcasts in the world like Marc Maron I'm a huge fan of Tim Heidecker they're in their garages in many cases so it's like there's this wonderful sort of cultural experience around a garage I think people kind of like the American kitchen the garage is kind of a weird magnet for energy I think that we love garages and Allison you have an amazing garage gym and I'm going to toot my own horn I also have an amazing garage gym there is some thing that is really magical about talking about containers and also talking about garages within the realm of containers. I didn't intend to have a garage gym per se. COVID sort of created this magical place partially and my own intention created it partially. But I just wanted to say like, there's something really special about having a boutique space. There's something really special about having a container that is a little bit unique and a little bit, what's the word I would say? Not quite sentimental, but it's very personal. So Yeah, what a great time to kind of work on creating the perfect container. I think a huge part of coaching is doing that in this way.

SPEAKER_00: 39:38

That was really well said. All right. And the last part here, I'm going to get you to take the reins on this one.

SPEAKER_02: 39:47

What makes coaching rewarding to someone who's been in an industry for 10 plus years? And I think this happens regardless of your industry. If you've been painting cars for 10 years, if you've been doing agriculture for 10 years, or maybe 20 years, or maybe 30 years, when the decades start accumulating, I think that each individual person in their own way has to make sure that the practice is invigorated. There's probably a spectrum of burnout for each industry. Like every industry kind of has like their own sort of propensity to burn out. I think training is really high up on that list. I think statistically speaking, I think only because the future can be uncertain economically for a lot of coaches. It's kind of, it can be bumpy in that regard in certain ways. And I think also you're dealing with a lot of energies, you know, cause you're doing customer service. You're also doing really deep work with people and the amount of focus and memory that's required in this job is, um, I think a lot of customers and, and, um, um and clients maybe don't fully understand how much hard drive space spiritual hard drive space and mental hard drive space is required to be a great coach because i think this little area between my eyebrows gets so much work because i'm always focusing and squinting and um just watching all these these wonderful nuanced things throughout the day and and memorizing them you have these these clients that you've had for years in certain cases in my case i've had clients for 10 years and it's like you know them so well so i guess what i mean to say for is I am continually soul-searching and trying to intellectualize ways that I can keep this practice exciting for myself, keep it as exciting as possible for my wonderful clients, and also to continue to make sure that I'm forging into new areas. And I think this is such an important thing to do as an individual practitioner. So I just kind of wanted to speak to that a little bit. And maybe one small example of how I'm doing that right now is working with Franz. Yeah, absolutely. what my potential is and I've continued to find that that well goes a lot deeper than I ever thought that it did whatever we can do to make sure that's still happening for us because it benefits us which is wonderful but it benefits our practice which is more important and it benefits our community which is even more important than that

SPEAKER_00: 42:27

you know of course a lot of coaches we take on probably more clients than we need to in the very beginning we burn ourselves out and then we have no time for ourselves at the end of the day we have no time for our own training and so that's how you get burnt out so you have to work in time for yourself. So you can experiment also with moves. I do that all the time. The gym is like my playground. I go there to play and to experiment with different exercises and to see how they work, how they feel, how it changes my body and all of these things. So I can actually take that then into my practice and help my clients with that. But if I hadn't experienced it first, I don't know if I would be able to honestly give them something that I hadn't experienced myself. You know, so I feel like this is very important for each coach to take care of themselves and to be able to take care of their own needs, especially as it relates to their fitness, right? You're a fitness coach. You want to be able to attend to your own fitness. That's a top priority. You have to be what you want your clients to be, right? If you want your clients to show you certain things that you want them to show up and be consistent and get stronger. You have to be that first. You really do. And that's a practice I've been implementing a lot lately is just, okay, if I'm, you know, not seeing something that I want to see outside of me, I'm going to be that. And so that's a practice in itself. But that means basically that you have to just start doing it yourself, right? You have to have the love for it, the joy for it. Keep getting, being curious about it and, and, and keep exploring, you know, like that is what also will, will bring people to you because they're going to feel that in you. They're going to feel that energy from you. So I think that's a, I know I got burned out. I've gotten burned out many, many times, many phases in my career. And now I'm, I give myself enough space in my week. I don't overschedule myself and I give myself enough space for myself so that i can show up fully present for my clients absolutely allison

SPEAKER_02: 44:47

yeah it's really important to know um as a customer because i am a customer of services too that um it's really important to factor a lot of these things in when you're shopping because there can be i think even for me too it can be a little bit of sticker shock about oh it maybe seems kind of expensive but when you start to reel it back and zoom that camera ones back you're like oh this is this is my well-being and in certain cases uh can mean the difference between maybe like assisted living versus independent living so it's it's these ramifications are huge um but just wanted to say um Yeah. Yeah. your time and money as a human so much of the human experience is just being in your body and and being able to feel feel yourself working as well as you can

SPEAKER_00: 46:00

thank you so much for coming on this has been an incredible conversation I knew it was was gonna be really good can you guys leave the audience with you know your information where they can find you so

SPEAKER_01: 46:12

yeah both of us are we're working at no easy feet no easy feet calm there's a lot more information about us there as well. Um, the Instagram page is also just at no easy feet. Um, there's a, we've got a monthly newsletter as well. Sorry. The Instagram is no easy feet gym. Um, but both of us are featured on there. There's a lot of good information. Adam's got a lot of good, um, reels, um, talking about stuff almost every day. So yeah. And yeah, like Adam mentioned earlier, we're located in a, like kind of the Montevilla neighborhood of Portland. in Portland. Even if you're not in Portland, there's, you know, opportunities for like virtual coaching as well. So, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 47:01

And how do we find you, Allison?

SPEAKER_00: 47:02

Thank you. Thank you. Well, I am in Southeast Portland in the Brooklyn neighborhood. I also have a really beautiful garage gym and Adam has really inspired me to upgrade my space. I mean, oh my God, I got so excited when I saw his space. I was like, I want to do this, this and this. And it's also got the ATG equipment as well. And you can find me at Of course, pureenergypdx.com. I do mostly in person. The online coaching I do is through my Finally Thriving community. It's a group coaching community, and it's a monthly membership. So if you want to do online, that's how I do online coaching, and I give everybody monthly workouts there, and we go through nutrition as well. But if you want to see me in Portland, you can set up a consultation with me through pureenergypdx.com. So thank you guys so much for coming on. This has been a pleasure and an honor to have you here.

SPEAKER_02: 48:00

Yeah, thank you. It's been really great. Pleasure and an honor. Thank you, Allison.