Episode 204: AI or Online Personal Fitness Coaching for Aging Well w/ Ryan Matt Reynolds (Barbell Logic)

In this episode of the Aging Web Podcast, Dr. Jeff Armstrong dives into the evolving landscape of fitness and personal training with guest Ryan Matt Reynolds, the founder of Barbell Logic. With over 25 years of experience in strength sports and coaching, Matt discusses his transition from running a top gym to creating a global online strength and nutrition coaching platform. They explore how online coaching offers flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and high-quality personalized training through advanced technology and AI. Learn about the benefits and potential drawbacks of online coaching, the role of AI in fitness programming, and how the personal relationship between coach and client remains irreplaceable. Whether you're a fitness professional or someone looking to age well through strength training, this episode is packed with valuable insights and practical advice.

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Transcript

0:05

Welcome to the Aging Web Podcast, I'm Dr. Jeff Armstrong. In this episode, we are diving into a topic that's reshaping the fitness and personal training industry, online coaching, and the role of AI. We're thrilled to be joined by Ryan Matt Reynolds, a leader in this space. Matt has an incredible story. He's founder of Barbell Logic and has over 25 years of experience in strength sports and coaching. After running one of the top strength gyms in the country, he saw the need to evolve the personal training model and in 2015 he transitioned to online coaching. He has since grown Barbell Logic into a global online strength and nutrition coaching powerhouse. Matt's mission is to help strength coaches and personal trainers move away from traditional, often restrictive, gym based models. To the more flexible world of online coaching. And today we're going to dive into why online coaching, when done correctly, is better for both the coach and the client, and how AI plays a role in programming exercise for aging well.

Dr. Jeff Armstrong: 1:05

Matt, welcome to the Aging Well podcast. I am so excited to have you here. I am a big fan of Barbell Logic. Let's start with your journey after founding Strong Gym. which became one of the top gyms in the country. You transitioned to online coaching. What made you realize that the traditional personal training model just wasn't sustainable?

Matt Reynolds: 1:29

Yeah, first off, thanks for having me on the show. I'm super excited to be on and talk about that journey. And so, I was a competitive power lifter and strongman when my pro card in strongman and like the world's strongest man in 2006, best ever got was 12th in the country. So I, I went from a very good amateur, the best amateur in the country to probably the worst pro in the world. and in 2008 started strong gym, which grew into the, what was really the largest privately owned strength gym in the country. very nice gym, but I started to see, and, and remember, we have to keep in mind the context of technology at this point, 2008, I think that's the year the iPhone came out, maybe Oh seven iPhone comes out. And so, before that we're all using blackberries and brick phones and whatnot. And so. very quickly technology was changing as I own strong Jim. strong Jim grew to about a thousand clients and our focus was really on normal professionals, executives, soccer moms, and dads, that middle age group, probably a lot of the types of people that listen to your podcast. so that went very well, but I recognize that there were some limitations that we could overcome that You never really had the opportunity to overcome before this and those limitations with personal training. for me, I'm in Springfield, Missouri in the Ozarks. I had gained enough notoriety that I'm a very expensive coach, but any personal trainer is very expensive. And so it's prohibitively expensive to get a personal trainer. You're locked into a schedule and a location. for both the coach and the client. one of the things I thought as cell phones cameras and internet broadband started to expand while I ran the gym, you know, I was there for 30 every morning and would coach all day and, and I started thinking there has to be a better way to do this where I couldn't go on vacation if a client went on vacation, they either paid for sessions they didn't use or they didn't pay at all. And then I wouldn't get paid. Or if I went on vacation, I wouldn't get paid. And so I started to realize that technology is making it so it's possible to do something better is a higher value for both the coach and the client, which is a tremendous win win. And so I sold the gym at the end of 2015. Of course, technology advanced tremendously from 08 to 15, especially with cell phones and cameras and things like that. And so I realized that What if I connected same, the same demographic and certainly we coach younger people and we coach people into their eighties and nineties, but primarily people in their like forties to say 70 I could connect them to the best coaches in the world, give them the education that they could get for free, we put up massive amounts of content for free and what they would do is we started to transition to this concept of we would connect you with a client or with a coach that's perfect for you. This that's specific to your demographic. So you're a 60 year old male or you're a postpartum female. We have coaches that specialize in or you have a hip replacement or a knee replacement. We have many scores of coaches that specialize in that very thing, and they are the best of the best. And we were talking even before they caught me, we're talking about surgeons, like highly educated people, professors in college and exercise science. P. T. S. Things like that. So, so we can connect clients with with coaches that are perfect for them. And then that coach will often do an onboarding call with the client. It's like a zoom call or something like what we're doing here. Talk about goals, talk about what access to equipment they have, whether it's home gym or or public gym. What their injuries are, what their goals are, and they'll start to program very personally for that, for that client and as they program personally, this is one of the things I think starts to separate marble logic from many of the other online coaching companies is that most of the online coaching companies are selling cookie cutter templates a cookie cutter template. fine if you're 19 and you're broke and you can afford 50 a month and that's it. But most of us live real lives where we get sick or we go on vacation or we take the cruise or and, and we don't always have the same equipment and we, and so if you have a 12 week program, that's a cookie cutter program and you fall behind a week, now you're behind and you don't know what to do. Do you, can you catch up? Do you just push everything back a week? It becomes very difficult to do that. And so coaches program for their clients very personally, like very specific to them. To their equipment. And then we've developed our own software, which is called turnkey coach, which is a proprietary software that we use. We've taken it into the market in the last year. the concept there is that the client then does their workout videos, themselves doing the lifts. Uploads the lifts to the app and their coach does a full screen recording breakdown of their technique, talking about future programming all within 24 hours. So if you did a workout, we're recording on a Saturday. If you, if you did a workout on a Friday, you upload it on Friday. Today, your coach would give you a full screen recording. You would see yourself squat or deadlift or do the major barbell lifts. You would see your coach picture in picture, they would talk to you, we can draw on the screen and say, Oh, your back angle is too high. Let's make it a little lower. Whatever needs are too far forward. And so we started to realize that we could basically provide all of the greatest pieces of in person personal training. In an online format that is asynchronous. So you're not training at the, your coach isn't watching you in real time. Your coach breaks down your videos within 24 hours. And what that does is that allows the price for the client to come down to about 25 percent or 30 percent of what personal training would cost. instead of me taking an hour as a coach to coach you, can actually work through probably 20 or so workouts in an hour. Every three to four minutes, I can do a screen recording video. so the client pays less. The coach makes more, the client gets all of the highlights of the personal training experience, the high touch, high relationship, high trust, personalized programming and technique breakdown, and they pay much, much less, the coach makes more, and both have freedom in the schedule and the location. you're in the Pacific Northwest. I'm in the Ozarks. could coach you were in a normal world. I couldn't because you're, you know, 1700 miles away. so I started to see that. And what that allowed us to do. And what that allowed me to do in the beginning was I wanted to travel with my family. I wanted to go to Mexico. We went to. Scotland and England. I can remember sitting out on, I don't, I don't know if you're a scotch drinker or anything, but there's a, there's a famous scotch called a called, Oh, we call it Oban. They call it Oban, O B A N. It's a little Bay area of Scotland. I'm sitting out on the Bay of Oban getting ready to get on a ferry to go to Isla where they make the best scotch in the world. it's like five 30 in the morning in Scotland. And I'm breaking down videos and doing online coaching. I'm getting paid. And thinking to myself, this is amazing. Nobody's done this. And so we did that from 2000, January 16 to about, just after COVID maybe 2021 as COVID was obviously COVID was got longer and longer. So, then we realized that as all the gyms shut down in 2020, we were sitting on top of the software that was, fantastic for coaches and clients outside of even the barbell logic ecosystem. we went from a purely business to consumer company, B to C, where we coach thousands of clients and have many, coaches licensing out that software and teaching other coaches outside of our ecosystem how to do this as well. I think that's the evolution of online coaching. Now, Probably half of our coaches coach purely online at this point. we've got tons of stories of guys that were professors or VPs of major banks and the big five banks in America that have quit their job, their normal day job to just online coach. Cause they're making two, three, 400 per hour. And again, the price is great for the client. They can sit at home or travel or do whatever and break that stuff down. we started there and then we realized Oh, this is something that the world needs because every gym in the world is shut down. how do we provide a bridge for professional coaches to interact with their clients and build trust and relationship in an online format that's far different than what typical people think of online coaching, which is just, I want to buy a program. program is not online coaching. It's just programming. And again, There's nothing wrong with that. But for most of your audience, they need a coach. They need somebody to break down their technique and make sure their form is excellent and the daily accountability of checking in with their coach. And so that's really how I transitioned into that. And what you end up with is, all the high points of white glove, concierge, personal training, but you get it in an online format and asynchronous. So you're not. Locked in to a schedule or a location for either the coach or the client.

Dr. Jeff Armstrong: 10:56

So you were basically doing the online training before online training was, was cool, right? I mean, most, my experience with online has come from COVID, you know, most trainers felt they got to work. So they evolved it into just zoom. Connections

Matt Reynolds: 11:14

it

Dr. Jeff Armstrong: 11:14

You've seemed to have created a model that addresses all those major pain points when it comes to personal training, traditional personal training, the high cost, limited flexibility, inconsistent quality of trainers. just that access to the trainers at all times, you know, and can you. Kind of giving us any points as to the downside of online training versus in person training.

Matt Reynolds: 11:40

Certainly I can speak to that. about half of our coaches go fully online, as I mentioned, and the other half are probably in a hybrid model. they may be a gym owner where they were stuck in the gym 40 hours a week, 50 hours a week, 60 hours a week, and they've moved their gym to a 24 hour, key card kind of model and maybe they coach in person one time a week and they online coach three times a week for specific clients at a much cheaper price for the client. So again, advantage there. The disadvantage is online coaching is that if I taught a novice or not a novice, but let's say I taught you how to squat and deadlift, I can fix form errors in your squat or deadlift or any major lift by set in a specific session right then in real time. The one major downside of online coaching is that it slows down the progress curve for technique in that if you video your squats and you send me your squat videos, I can fix it session to session. not set to set. And so I'll focus on as I get clients, they have a, you know, maybe they have four or five errors in their squat. Why I can't really fix all four to five errors. There's too much for them to think about in the next session. So what I'll do is I'll, I'll focus on the biggest one, you're on your toes, your knees are forward or whatever the thing is. We'll fix that one first. We'll get it fixed and then we'll move to the next one. Now, what we found is that the progression of weight increase and the linear progression. is essentially the same between online coaching and in person coaching. The difference is just that the technique change over time is going to be a little slower curve. so that's really the thing. But you know, you talk about the, the asynchronous model. We have clients all over the world. We have clients in Australia and Singapore and South Korea, and I can't coach clients in Singapore or if I'm in person or if I'm on the zoom model where I'm watching them lift, synchronously at the same time, because that's two in the morning, right? And so instead the clients that are on the other side of the world, there are 12 hours or 10 hours or whatever a different time zone than us. They can still do their workout on their own time. They also, even, even if you're in the zoom model, which is live, or what I would call the Peloton model. And I'm not really knocking it. Cause I think there's, there are times that that's valuable there has to be a coach available at that time. if you're in Central Standard Time U. S. or Pacific like you and you have someone in Singapore or Japan or whatever, then it's very difficult. Somebody has to either train at a really strange time of day or night or the coach, you have to have a coach available at the same time. Now we do have coaches all over the world, probably 90 percent of our coaches are U. S. based, the other ones are just everywhere. and so we do have coaches that can do that, but we've just found that it's better. even if you have to do online coaching in a synchronous at the same time, and like set, you know, you and I had to schedule this call for this podcast at this particular time on a Saturday morning, we both had to be there. There's no way to do a podcast any other way. It has to be synchronous but with online coaching, it can be asynchronous. if there was a way, and maybe AI will do this at some point, where You can ask all the questions at any time you want and then I can answer the questions at any time I want then your producer can do the post production within two or three days of your questions and my answers So imagine that world where you didn't actually have to sync up with the podcast guests where you could just ask the questions and let them answer. It gets blended together. That's a much more difficult hurdle to overcome. Then online coaching with online coaching. We can send the programming through the app. They pull the app up on their phone. they see what they're supposed to do. They do the lift. They video the lift. They upload the video directly from their phone. Again, phone cameras are amazing. I mean, at this point you don't hardly need a DSLR. Super diced camera that your, your iPhone camera or high level Android will do the same thing. And then the coach can fully break that down within 24 hours. And so then by the time you wake up the next morning, for most, for most of our clients, like for me, I get up and do online coaching first thing in the morning, they have a video sitting in their inbox waiting for me. And it's, again, it's three to four minutes, which we found is kind of the sweet spot. So at eight or 10 every day or four times a week, it gets to be. I. My clients don't really, especially if they're business executives and they're busy, they don't want to watch 10 minute videos, but they also don't want no feedback or 30 seconds of feedback because it's not enough. that three to four minutes will, when you extrapolate that out at three minutes per client, you work in a very focused, I get up every morning super early before my family wakes up make a cup of coffee. I've got an espresso machine and make an Americano and sit in my recliner. I'm sitting at home, no commute, no put on the purple polo, no put on the name tag that says trainer. And I break down videos and in 40 minutes or an hour, can break down 20 workouts in an hour. And so that's the advantage to both the coach and the client. And again, because of that efficiency for the coach, we can charge less for the client. the coach makes more per hour. so that's the win win. And then we take a tiny, tiny cut, especially of the licensee coaches that we use.

Dr. Jeff Armstrong: 17:12

Oh, that makes sense. And from a financial standpoint too, as a gym owner, quote unquote, gym owner. Um, and the listeners probably didn't see my air quotes there, but,

Matt Reynolds: 17:20

Yeah,

Dr. Jeff Armstrong: 17:20

one of the biggest things I remember being a personal trainer is the huge cut that the gym owner always took.

Matt Reynolds: 17:25

course.

Dr. Jeff Armstrong: 17:26

And now, you can take a much, much smaller cut and still be making a boatload of money because.

Matt Reynolds: 17:31

work.

Dr. Jeff Armstrong: 17:32

is great.

Matt Reynolds: 17:33

right. No work, no square footage. You know, you think about the square footage space, the footprint. a lot of clients workouts, especially if they do something that's kind of similar to CrossFit which I'm not going to, I mean, there are lots of things about

Dr. Jeff Armstrong: 17:47

we don't need to go down that path.

Matt Reynolds: 17:48

yeah, it's fine. Yeah, right. There's a lot of things. I'm like, that's, you know, cause lots of injuries, but on another, on another side, to be honest, CrossFit is exposed millions of people to barbell based training. They often get hurt. Right? Allegedly. I'll say allegedly. So then they decide Oh, I don't really need to do crossfit. I just need to get strong and age. Well, that's the point. And so when they do that, then they're in a position where they can do that at any time of the day. And so for a gym owner, if you can take away a massive piece of that footprint, client still has a gym membership. You're still drawing from the gym membership and then you can still take a cut of the online coaching, but it doesn't have to be 50 percent or 40%. It can be 10 or 20%. The gym owner can still make tremendous money from their other coaches, knowing that the clients aren't often there in the high traffic times. using a massive footprint. And on top of that, most gym owners are coaches. And so most gym owners can also, you know, when I was a gym owner, I would open the gym and I would leave at one or 1 30 in the afternoon. And then I had two other owners. we would overlap each other. the middle of the day guy would come in two hours or so before I left, we would talk and work through things. then we had the night guy. so the three owners did that. Now, So I'm the morning guy, I can still coach people who want to train at 6 p. m. or 8 p. m. or 1130 at night or 2 a. m. that work a weird third shift or something. And so I can do that as a gym owner and I can still get up at, 4 in the morning, 5 in the morning, 6 in the morning and break down those videos and coach my clients who were there at 6 or 7 p. m. the night before. So by the time they wake up, they still have technique breakdown from me, the gym owner, or another trainer in my gym. And it's, it's just, yeah, it just works incredibly well. And it's been very smooth. So logic, the business has been around for almost 10 years, and we would never have taken this to market, to the B2B market, to the business of business, or where we would license this out to coaches. If we hadn't felt like we had essentially perfected that, our own model. It's like, it would be like if McDonald's had never ran McDonald's and they started a franchise and they, but they didn't, they didn't have all the kinks worked out. we're never going to be totally happy with the service we provide. We're always going to try to provide better and better service. And one of the things that my, my COO. And my product manager has done same guy. comes from lean manufacturing. He's applied lean manufacturing techniques to online coaching. Nobody's ever done this. And the interesting thing about that is that is that we look at constantly, we have coaches literally take their cell phone video over their shoulder at their keystrokes and how much they're moving their hands and how much they're talking. How much time is elapsing between workout breakdowns and we, we cut waste, but we never cut service. we cut the waste because the, the, what is the client paying for? The client's paying for interaction with their coach. So for us, turnkey coach, the software a bridge that should really feel almost transparent and behind the scenes. That just creates the bridge so that the coach and the client can interact with each other. So the coach can interact with the client, do what they do best, which is coach. And the client gets to interact with their coach and build relationship and trust. The more you're doing keystrokes and downloading videos and uploading videos to YouTube and all that sort of stuff. We don't do any of that. So everything's in the app at this point. so all that waste management piece is just what we've watched our dollar per hour for coaches go from again, 50 an hour, We have coaches making over 400 an hour and that sounds like almost like a multi level marketing scheme, which it's not. It's just when coaches really focus on efficiency, if they have fast internet, if they a little money on fiber internet, if they have a fast computer, if they don't get distracted and doom scroll on their phone, you know, if they sit down and knock out the work, they'll make 300 to 450 an hour. And the client then again, pays 25 percent of what online or what personal training costs. So that's why it's, I think it's exploded the way it has the last few years.

Dr. Jeff Armstrong: 22:07

I love this model. as a faculty member teaching future exercise science students, you can guarantee that this podcast episode is going to be shared with my students throughout the year. one thing that I think a lot of our viewers and listeners might be wondering about is how is AI Now impacting the coaching world. You have said that AI will destroy coaches who are just selling templates. can you explain that a little bit and why?

Matt Reynolds: 22:33

you added that last part. Yeah. Well, I mean, okay. So we've used AI since the very, chat GPT, the very first beta version came out, we were using it. And so there are lots of stories in other industries. I often will cite like the steel industry, the seventies, the eighties. And the steel belt where they were like, it's going to come back. And then it didn't come back and it died. And so we have to recognize that if you're doing a thing that a computer can do, you are going to be replaced programming. If you know how to prompt. And again, we're, we're recording this or six weeks before it's even going to be released, right? The world is going to change in the next six weeks at like, after this interview, world will be a different place in six weeks with AI, the things that you can do on a weekly basis changes. And so if you know how to prompt AI, how to write programming for you, how to give you programming specific, you could say, this is my equipment. This is my age. These are my limitations. This is my, these are my injuries. These are my goals, right? Programming for me. And you can even say right programming for me based on barbell logic, minimum effective dose principles from Matt Reynolds. I've looked at it pretty good. it's 95 percent as good as what I would write. And within a year, it's going to be just as good as anything I could write. And so programming is going to be replaced by AI. What cannot be replaced by AI is the personal relationship, especially with an audience like yours, an audience like ours, who's not 19, 20, 25, 28, they're going to resist that for a while, or maybe forever. And they're going to want this personal relationship with a coach. I have a Gen Z daughter and a Gen Alpha daughter. The Gen Z daughter is like fully embraced AI and all the things, and the Gen Alpha daughter wants real relationships. she still wants the cool stuff that AI gets her, but also wants to put the phone away and hang out with friends. And so this kind of young millennial and Gen Z version, there is a version of, I don't know, I'm paying with a broad brush here obviously, but that generation tends to just be like, I'm just fine sitting at home with my phone in front of my face and scrolling on Tik reels or whatever. with AI, one of the things that we've done and we've been very blessed or lucky. in that we have started to, as we started to license out the software, realized that there are, there are 220, 000 American soldiers that are injured and non combat ready overuse injuries only at any given time, like right now there's 220, 000, that's a whole bunch of soldiers, that the American taxpayer is paying for them, but they are not combat ready. And so we also recognize that the military is not going to pay 225, 250, 300 a month per soldier to get them up to speed, get them rehabbed and get them combat ready. But the American taxpayer, we're paying billions of dollars every year. In order to try to rehab these soldiers who, again, it's overuse injuries, it's shin splints and knee pain and low back pain from rucking with 60 pound rucks on their back for 20 miles or whatever. And so we have received several contracts from, from the U. S. government, through the Air Force primarily, that we are, we are developing and we've really mostly developed at this point, automated, Programming and automated nutrition for the soldier that is specific to them. So same sort of thing. Where are you located? What equipment do you have? What is your injury? is your major challenge, the injury, is it passing the physical fitness test, the PFT or the PFA and it helps write the programming for you. And then as you complete the programming, it updates that. Okay, are we going up five pounds the next workout, two and a half pounds, do we need to back off, it's doing those things. So if you're a coach that just writes programming, you're dead in the next couple of years. And this is a place where I'm really grateful. that we were intentional about spending most of our time as coaches building relationship with the clients. So when you come back to that lean manufacturing model, the more things that we can automate for the coach, the more efficient the coach gets and the better price the client can pay. right? The better value the client gets. we really want to continue to focus on the thing that AI will never be able to replace. At least I think in my lifetime or work lifetime, which is some sort of personal relationship, the personal relationship and trust between you and your coach. And so an example, I coach a guy, his name is Brett McKay. You may know him from art of manliness. He's got a big website. He was, uh, that website came out in 2008, great guy. And I've coached him since I think 20. 12, maybe 2013. doesn't need my coaching. His form is perfect on everything. The guy weighs 208 pounds is lean is all get out and deadlift six 15 with absolutely perfect form. And he's, I don't know, he's 40 early forties at this point. And so. Why does he stay? Well, he stays because of the relationship. Because of the trust. Because of the accountability. Because when you turn your camera on, and you say, A real human is gonna watch this. And I can't sandbag this set of squats or deadlifts. I'm going to send it to my coach to coach and coach is going to give me feedback on this thing. That's what AI can't replace now at some point. AI will replace the programming first. We are also working on just to be honest, we're working on some of the technique feedback. that coaches give. So, you know, you've already seen bar path type software. We've developed the same thing, your bar path. It can look at anthropometry, the length of your shin versus the ratio of say your shin to your femur, to your torso with a barbell back squat or a deadlift or where your shoulders are positioned. We can look at the weight on the bar. it can measure range of motion and it can measure velocity, max velocity, fall off velocity, average velocity, work, right? So you have force over distance. it can do that. And so, you know, obviously not all people are created equal. You've got people who are six foot seven. If they bench press three 15 for 10, which is amazing, super strong. Or you've got another guy who's, five foot four and he bench presses three 15 for 10. So they do the same weight, the same reps who did more work. Well, the guy with the real long arms did. And what AI is going to be able to do, I can look at that with my eye after breaking down millions of videos over the years and say, like, that's a, that's a huge range of motion. That's great. But I can't say exactly what the work is, AI can. so to me, we look at those as tools for the coach, for the client. started the software because there was no software on the, in the entire market that automated metrics. And so we automate all PRS, not just. Squat and deadlift, not one rep maxes, five rep maxes, three by five, three by 10 curls for three by 10 chin ups at a certain body weight, like no matter what the lift is, it automates the metric, it automates the PRS. if one of my clients, maybe they didn't have a great day on the bench press and the press, but they said a chin up and a barbell curl PR, I would have never known that as a coach, but because of the software, the software says, congratulations. You hit a PR and then I can, when I break down that video, I can congratulate my client for still like, Hey, I know it didn't feel like it was a great day on the press and the bench press or whatever, but these accessory lifts, you still hit PR, you're still getting stronger. we're still doing progressive overload and getting stronger and aging well, that's the concept. the more tools we can give to the coaches and the clients. The more value they get, the less time they spend on administrative work. If I had to go back in the notebook, which is what I did in the early strong gym days, everybody had the composition notebook, I would go back and look at their PRs and be like, Oh, that was a PR congrats. You know, it takes time. Now it just automatically hits that. And so the more tools we can give to the coach and the client, the more time they have to spend interacting and building relationship and trust with each other, which I think ultimately is the thing that drives. It's the accountability. this is yet to be seen will accountability to a computer matter at some point. how much will it matter? So if the accountability is to the A. I. But there's no real relationship there because it's not a human. I think we're a ways out from that and maybe never, right? Like maybe there's a pendulum swing back the other way. And so to me, let's use all these AI tools as much as we can to develop programming, automate the programming, automatically add five pounds, their squat and deadlift automatically out two and a half pounds to their bench, press and press. You know, whatever linear progression sort of thing you're doing or wave type loading they're doing. Let's automate metrics. Let's automate bar path. Let's automate velocity and work. And those are just, you're just handing a coach more tools in their toolbox so they can better invest in the relationship with the client. That's the point.

Dr. Jeff Armstrong: 32:36

I think the first trainers that are going to die off are the ones that were genetically blessed and look great and have their clients do just what they've always done and don't really kind of regulate what that person needs and so this creates an opportunity for the more intellectual trainer who has some personality if you have just the intellect on there and we see that in exercise science that, you know, you have these scientists that have never lifted a barbell in their life that are telling you not to do full squats and doing all that kind of stuff. But you have that person that can bridge the gap between the knowledge and the application and be able to take that data and interpret it for the individual because that's where I think the limitation is going to be with AI is that from an AI standpoint, the computer can generate all this information and far more information than most people are going to even want. And they're like, What do I do with this? Well, let's help. Let's sit down. Let's interpret this a little bit more.

Matt Reynolds: 33:35

Yeah. I totally agree. AI, if we understand at the rate of growth that it has, it's going to really probably be able to replace the intellect part and that's don't get me wrong. That's kind of scary to me on some level, but it can't replace the relational part. And to be a great coach, you have to have both be a great coach. You have to be able to have the intellect. And the ability to coach program, give technique feedback, all of those, like, do you have the ability and does the client believe you have the ability to get them to their goal, then you have the integrity piece. will you do what you say you're going to do to build integrity and trust with the client? now we're getting into this gray area with AI, like, will AI do this? Well, right now, AI is. I don't know, 80 percent accurate. Well, 80 percent accurate for a personal coach is too low. So you lose integrity points. So you lose trust. the last piece is the piece that can't be replaced, is the benevolence piece, which the client would interpret as do they actually care? We know AI doesn't care. is just a computer. So like, can they ability they integrity and do they care? And so while AI may replace some of the, can they. And a little bit of the will they, it will never replace the do they care part because it can never care. And so to me, you're exactly right. So when we've hired coaches at Barbellogic, I have had some hard conversations over the last 10 years of coaches who were absolutely phenomenal technique coaches, programming coaches, but they just didn't have the personality to coach. the personality to coach online is even harder than in person. Because you're trying to create connections in a three or four or five minute video. That you could create over an hour long session in person. Again, you know, any, anybody who even has some kind of social awkwardness can ask like, well, how was the weekend? And how was your daughter's softball game? And you know, whatever, doing that online is actually much more difficult. It's gotta be much more efficient and you still gotta, it still has to be authentic. It can't just be. Here's my list of questions. I'm a robot thing. And so you have to be able to do that well. And then I've also had coaches I've had to turn down that had incredible personalities, infectious personalities, people who were like, you just wanted to be around. Like if it was like, Hey, let's go out and get dinner together. I want to go get a coffee or something. Like I want to be with that person, but they didn't have the intellectual skill or the experience needed to be a professional coach, a professional coach. Has to be both. And I think that's the other thing we're trying to change is the, the, the general public's concept coaching is, even for me as somebody who's trying to change the general conception of this is I often think of like the 18, 19-year-old kid at the big box gym with the purple polo with the name tag that says Trainer. That's not a professional. That's a kid. How much experience can that kid have? A kid was in puberty three years ago, two years ago. Right? So, I want to pair with coaches who have tremendous experience, in coaching and under the barbell themselves. They've actually lifted, they've actually gotten strong, but also have a very relational personality. And that changes based on the client, what they're looking for. Some clients want somebody who's a little more of a, I'll be careful the way I say this, but a little more of say like a drill sergeant. and that motivates them. And then other clients want someone who's much more encouraging throughout the whole process. They're terrified of the whole thing. we have a program we use for mostly females, but we certainly have guys on it as well that we call before barbells. Which is it often the most popular demographic that is with is with with wives or daughters or moms of male clients have been male clients for us for a while and and they've been clients long enough that their female counterparts, let's say their wife has seen their life and their body changed dramatically, their confidence or, you know, social ability, all those things have changed because they've Done the work of voluntary hardship and gotten strong and their wife is like, I want to do that, but I'm terrified of squatting under a barbell. Like we got a program for you. have a coach for you. do that. We can start with little dumbbells and dog food bags and body weight exercises in your living room, you know, because they'll be like, I'm scared to go to a gym. I'm scared. I'm scared to put on the workout clothes and walk into that public place because gyms are awful. They're meat markets of depravity. And so, and I'm not, listen, if a gym is all you have to go to, go to it. But we're, we're very pro home gym. our, in our company. And we're not, not so much so that it's, you know, like we force it down people's throats. But the reality is if like I trained my wife and she's not as strong as me, but she's pretty strong. it's, it's a great time that we can spend together, you know, an hour, three, four times a week, training together 45 minutes, maybe three, four times a week, training together and, and doing something hard together. And it builds relationship. If instead I go to the gym and I'm surrounded by, People who are looking for dates for the weekend and scantily clad men and women, you know, across the, I'm just like, this is not what I'm coming here for. I'm coming to get work done. And there's the commute and there's the cost and there's that. So, so I think those are all the things that the, this, this concept of strength training, online coaching can bring to the table. That's just far superior to what the, the traditional antiquated. personal training model brings or has, has brought for the past 40, 50 years.

Dr. Jeff Armstrong: 39:15

I don't think I have stepped into a public gym other than to give a presentation or visit somebody in well over 20 years. I got a home gym in the garage and it's less than ideal, but it does It's work and I love it.

Matt Reynolds: 39:31

Probably better than the box gym,

Dr. Jeff Armstrong: 39:33

And I don't like being around people when I'm working out. it's weird because having been a personal trainer in the past and the field that I'm in, I see people in the gym and I want to correct their form and it takes away from my working out. So it's like, I got to go

Matt Reynolds: 39:45

You've got to

Dr. Jeff Armstrong: 39:46

do what I

Matt Reynolds: 39:46

down and not I've, yeah. travel so much for business that when I travel, I'll still train at those types of gyms. I train at home otherwise. And I've just had to learn to just not look. I mean, I just kind of keep my head down and there's just crazy stuff going on everywhere. And I just do my workout, get in, get out and get the job done. And that's how you do it. again, the nice thing about online coaching for executives, for people that take vacation, and typically the people who could afford personal training is that you can get that online coaching in your home gym, but you can also get it when you travel at the big box gym or in the resort gym. Or you're on the cruise in the cruise gym, you can still get coaching. this is the crazy thing is that our, you know, our, our consistency rating for our clients is just under 90%. It's like 89 percent consistency. And that's not 89 percent consistency per workout. That's for every exercise, every set and rep, every weight of every workout. Well, when I, when I personally trained clients and they were paying me 600, 700, 800 a month, would probably average 70 percent because the types of people that can pay that kind of money travel for business and travel for vacation. And then when they travel for business or vacation, they couldn't get training from their in person, in town, synchronous personal trainer coach, which was me. And so this model, you can get coaching anywhere you want. I mean, we do this all the time, even with people who are like, I'm in a hotel room and need a 15 minute body weight workout. I don't have any weights. I'm just standing here. I've got a little space in front of the bed in the hotel room where I can do air squats and pushups and sit ups and what, and like, okay, we can work with That that's what the cookie cutter template can never give you because what you were scheduled to do that day was. the big list and the accessories, but you're stuck in a hotel room or you're, you know, you, whatever. So I think that's what I love is it's, it's that it takes people and coaches from this incredible amount of bondage to the antiquated model. And it gives them freedom to do it anywhere they want, anytime they want with the equipment they have from anywhere in the world, pretty incredible.

Dr. Jeff Armstrong: 42:02

think. Something I'd like to really underscore with our viewers and our listeners is they're hopefully listening to this and engaging in this conversation. Is understand that when we look at AI, AI is only as good as the intellect that is training it. Right. And so understanding who is developing and how the, you know, what's going into that AI is going to be a very important factor going forward. And, you know, an organization like barbell logic that understands that more complexity of the trainer to client. Relationship and how that interacts with the training and the biomechanics and the physiology of training and everything is very important because anybody can develop an AI that you just say, you know, put in this information and we'll spit out a workout. I've done that with chat GPT. You can get some reasonably good workouts with chat GPT. It's getting better. but again, it's how you ask those questions. But more importantly, it's how are you training that AI to answer the questions that you are asking

Matt Reynolds: 43:08

Yeah, I totally agree. And I think that'll get better. I mean, my hope is that gets better, right? Like we've seen this without diving down too deep into the political rabbit hole It's clear that the worldview of the of the developers the worldview of the AI Now, if we get to an AI that's closer to AGI, and I don't know, and it terrifies me, and I hope I'm retired by then. The, you know, what will be interesting at some point is that these competing AIs, when they start to fact check each other, and eventually learn what the actual facts are. I still think we're not that far away. I mean, we're pretty close. It's not in the next six months, but the next two to five years, I think that let, let's use, again, I'll stay within the political spectrum, but I'll be like, really a political in general. Cause one of the things we try to do at Barbara logic was we, we, I certainly have very strong opinions about politics and religion. Like most people do. I try to, I just want to get everybody strong. care what your religion is or what your politics, what, right, left, doesn't matter. But I envision a world, a time, not that far away, probably one presidential election away, so probably four years from now, when there is a presidential debate, than the Um, the, what's it called? The administrators who, the,

Dr. Jeff Armstrong: 44:33

moderators?

Matt Reynolds: 44:34

Thank you, the moderators. Rather than the moderators fact checking, is overlaid on your screen and it's fact checking. And it's not fact checking right now, the fact check from any AI is going to skew towards the political worldview of the developers that wrote it. the day will come when it won't. It'll be like, this is the actual fact, here's the thing. And so as they say a thing, it'll just pop up on your screen and say, that's false. It's like community notes on Twitter, which I love, right? And so, like, what a great feature that, you know, people post an AI generated image and within an hour it says, this is an AI generated image. This is not real. Or they say this, they attribute it to a war here, a war there. Like, that's not from that war. That's from a war 10 years ago. great. Like, let's move more that direction because otherwise it's just that we're in the scariest part of AI right now, which is where everything looks believable, but you can't believe anything. So, you know, you can, you can doctor any sort of video, you can doctor you can like, you can say anything you want and it sounds and looks real. I've been very careful to, I've actually almost completely stopped retweeting anything because I just don't know if it's real. And so, but the day I think will come where that intellect will get there, but that alone doesn't have to be terrifying. It's a little bit scary. Don't get me wrong. What it can't replace, it cannot replace. What AI cannot replace. So last night my family, so I, we still eat dinner together as a family, two daughters, wife been married 25 years, 19 year old, 14 year old. I made this amazing, I make this amazing beef stroganoff, man. It's

Dr. Jeff Armstrong: 46:17

I love

Matt Reynolds: 46:17

and

Dr. Jeff Armstrong: 46:18

beefster.

Matt Reynolds: 46:18

And I make it with like new Fitchell cheese. So it's, you know, it's like less fat. My mom made this terrible stroganoff with mom. Please don't listen to this. If you're listening to this, I'm sorry. But she made this, with ground beef and stuff. I make it with a really good cut of steak, slice of steak, thin, you know, it's Worcestershire and new for chow cheese and homemade egg noodles. And it's delicious. And AI, even robotics 10 years from now might be able to make that recipe. But what it can't do is sit down and have the converse, have the conversation I had with my family last night. That is a thing that can never be replaced. And it's the same for coaching. Ultimately, what we found is that success in coaching and training comes down to the relationship between the coach and the client. And AI can't replace that. So for us, we want to be on the cutting edge of AI because we want to be able to give the tools to the coach and the client to do the things that would have just been an administrative task in the past. Let's delegate that. That, that is a, an urgent and important task or an urgent and even unimportant task. Let's focus on the stuff that's less urgent and more important, which is the building of the relationship and the trust between the client and the coach. Because it builds the accountability, because it builds longevity, because it's, that's, that's what allows this, you know, your whole podcast is aging well. Which means it's not, it's, want your clients to go on a strength training journey for the next six months. Thanks. then transfer over to hot yoga. I don't have anything against hot yoga. It's fine. But the reality is, is strength training is a, is the experiencing strength improves your quality of life for life. This is why my 89, almost 90 year old lady that I trained, Ms. Sybil, who's awesome. She'll come over Monday morning and she'll train because this is, and I've trained her for 10 years. This is a lifelong endeavor. And the relationship that we've built is a relationship. She can never build with. computer with the AI. No,

Dr. Jeff Armstrong: 48:22

So I take it you don't believe in these videos and things that we see on YouTube and elsewhere where Suddenly our programming changes as we hit 40 as we hit 50 as we hit 60 things You should not be doing or should be doing over these 20 years Specific ages.

Matt Reynolds: 48:40

no, not at all. I mean, I want to be clear. There are biological differences between men and women. There are biological differences between 20 year olds and 80 year olds or hormonal milieu that are different. Like, although we just have to recognize the biological differences there, but the way you approach it is the same. We're all humans. We all, our bodies respond to progressive overload the same. So with a 20 year old guy, I might add 10 pounds to his workout every workout. But with the 89 year old female, add one pound. It's still progressive overload. It's a linear progression. It still follows the minimum effective dose principles. as simple as we can, right? When we as efficient as we can, and we, and we want to look at time economy, that efficiency over excess. And so, so many people I think get caught up in complexity. simplicity over complexity, seductive, and for, and again, back to the coach who just sells the program, you can't sell a simple program because your clients will figure it out within two weeks and they'll cancel their membership. And so you have to sell a complex program, but what you really need is a simple program. It's not complicated to get strong. the four basic lifts and some body weight movements. That's it. It's squat, deadlift, bench press, press, and some basic, chin ups or pull ups or lat pull downs or something like that. It's push ups, it's sit ups, it's basic, basic, basic stuff. so, we don't make our money on programming because programming is always going to be simplicity over complexity. everybody's busy. I just wrote a book that's going to come out in the next couple months for Forbes called Undoing Urgency. 30 years ago, us, our dads, whatever, if somebody asked them, like, you know, how's it going? Which is a common question that you just like, how, how you doing? How's it going? This thing that we've asked for years, the answer 30 years ago was just the, the nonchalant, like good good. when you ask somebody, how's it going? They just say, Everybody's busy. And so we want economy over excess. Like if the workout doesn't need to take an hour or two hours and it doesn't need to be 14 exercises, it can be three exercises in 25 minutes. It should be three exercises in 25 minutes, not sexy and it's not seductive and it's not appealing. And if all you sell is programming, they're going to figure out and you're dead. And already, if that's the type of programming that you would write, AI can definitely replace that. So the right now, the quote unquote money is made or the value to your dollar is as a client is that AI is not ready to handle the technique breakdown, the biomechanics, the physics, those things. The day will come when it will, and we just have to be honest about it. And then the last part is it will never be able to replace the relationship. we're going to continue to use AI to help us with programming, to augment that. We're working luckily uncle Sam's dollar to pay for this with government contracts, which then of course we take to the private sector to help with the technique breakdown and some of those things, which will still take, we're years away from, until our, I've got my cell phone here for those of you guys watching, you know, I've got three, there's three cameras on this. Right. The day is coming when really depth of perception, depth of field on your camera is going to be super, like it's going to be 3d camera stuff once it's 3d camera. I mean, all bets are off on technique because it's going to be able to see exactly. What your position is, is your balance on a, on a squad or a deadlift or a press on midfoot? Or is it on your toes or on your heels? Are your segment links, are they in the right spot? Are the angles correct? Like all that kind of stuff. That's going to go. We're several years away. I mean, we're two, three, five years away from that. I can't envision a world in my lifetime where we're replacing relationships with computers. And again, I think that right now everybody's very excited about AI and computers. And I think there's a part that's super exciting and a part that's super scary, but I still think there will be a pendulum shift back where, you know, we are, we've lived in this world for 10 years where everybody walks around with their face down, looking at their phone. at some point, you know, we do this at dinner and I would suggest everybody does when it's dinnertime, the phones get turned off or put on, do not disturb face down in the kitchen and we're eating in the dining room. Like we're not texting on our phone, having real conversations, excuse me, with real people, with our, you know, with our family that's the thing the computer can never do. so we're just trying to walk that fine line. I think that if we, if we focus entirely on the human element, there will be parts of what we do that AI will be able to replace. we stay on the cutting edge of AI, but understand the human element, the relationship element, then we continue to delegate and automate as best we can to the AI. Okay. So that we can open up as much time as possible for the relationship between the client and the coach.

Dr. Jeff Armstrong: 53:38

All right. we've had a pretty extensive, really great conversation. I think we could keep going on. Um, because I'm really enjoying this. I mean, I geek out on this kind of stuff because that's my field of study, right? So how can the viewers and the listeners connect with you? Learn more about barbell logic. Obviously, there's a website and you're on social media.

Matt Reynolds: 53:58

Yeah. So you can google us on barbell logic anywhere. we're on youtube. We put again. We are a service company So we just being transparent we make our money on service. We don't make our money on content. And so content is free We put out massive amounts of content and I know you're familiar with our content. So we've got a big YouTube channel. You can search how to anything in the lifting world and the fitness world, nutrition world, logic, or even just how to squat and even not type marble logic. And we're going to be at the top of the chain there on YouTube. So I always tell people, start with the content. We have a tremendous amount of written content, eBooks. My editor in chief is an attorney. He's, a mate. He's the best copy editor I've ever dealt with in my life. We have a podcast that's, I don't know, 600 or 650 episodes at this point for Barbell logic. I tell people, start with the content. I'm not trying to make a sale here. That's the way you start the process of building trust with our company is by, is by viewing the content, see what we're about. if our worldview and our general outlook on strength training to improve quality of life by experiencing, you know, strength is something that you would relate to. So I would start there. if you want to join and get a coach, we would love that. And so you can go to barbellogic. com slash aging well, which is easy. So simple URL, you can get 50 percent off your first month. There's no contracts ever. So that's very cheap for your first month. You can test it out for 30 days. It's our job to keep you. you can cancel in 30 days. There's no six month contract or your contractor. What's the catch? There is no catch. Our, our churn rate is under 2 percent per month thousands of clients. Why do they not leave? Because the value is there. So for us, it's, if we can get people in by viewing the content or reading the content or listening to the content first. Some percentage of those clients are going to become some percentage of those content consumers are going to become clients and those clients, then it's our job to keep that's on us. That's not on you. barbell logic. com slash aging. Well, there's all sorts of great information there. you can get freemium eBooks like a life of strength that furthers this, like what is a life of strength actually look like where I'm pursuing strength, but it's not a burden. I don't want to be a bodybuilder. I don't want to be a competitive power lifter. I just want to be. mom, dad, grandpa, grandma, whatever. That's a great place to go. Now all that stuff is a hundred percent free. And if you want to join the coaching and you get 50 percent off, which is something we don't typically offer, barbell logic. com slash aging. Well, great place to go.

Dr. Jeff Armstrong: 56:29

All right. Now for the question, I ask all my guess. What are you doing personally to age well?

Matt Reynolds: 56:35

So for me, I have to break up my day. So as a CEO of a, now an eight figure business, which is weird to hear it, I promise it's hard. It's weirder to say. Um, I The work is never done for a founder and CEO of a company. This side size got tons of employees, got a board of directors, have investors, all those sorts of things. If I'm not careful, I can just be consumed by the work. And so what I do in my life is I try to focus on, I wake up super early in the morning, not on purpose. We were talking about this before the call. I wake up like 3 30 in the morning. I wish it wasn't 3 30. I wish it was five. Then I wake up at 3 30 and I knock out my urgent work first, which means I do all my online coaching. Yeah. All my emails on my base camp notifications, which are our project management stuff. And then I stop and I turn off urgent and I go into health mode. I've got a sauna, a cold plunge, a hot tub and a great gym. And so what I do is I'll make a pre workout shake. I often take a shower just because I, which is probably weird. I like taking a shower before I work out because I feel greasy and gross. Otherwise, I'll take a shower, let my food digest a little bit, and then I'd get my training in with my wife. I usually go out to the sauna for a bit. And then, you know, and that's, that takes an hour, hour and 15 minutes. And that's if I do the sauna and stuff as well. And then come back in and then I turn in to CEO mode and I do the important work that's less urgent. But what that does is that gives me this break at about 7 a. m. in the morning. where I get to focus on me and focus on health. I walk every morning with my wife around our neighborhood and we walk at least a mile, often two. And so those are the things that I have to do. And I think you just have to be extremely and about doing those things. Like anybody can make the excuse and I often joke with people like, if you saw my schedule, you could not make that excuse. I mean, there are many weeks where I work 105 hours, 110 hours a week. And yet you still make time to eat right, to train. And sometimes that eating right is literally something as simple as sending my 19 year old up to the grocery store to buy rotisserie chicken and some steamable rice and come back and like, that's lunch. And so it doesn't have to be complicated. I focus on simple. I focus on efficient. My workouts at this point, after being a professional strongman and powerlifter, my workouts are typically 30 35 minutes. I just hit it really hard and really fast, get my heart rate up, some conditioning, do some cardio. usually set my accessory work up in a circuit style so I get the accessory work and my heart rate's to like 165 when I'm doing it. And then go out and relax, sit in the sauna. Come in, take a shower. All right. Time to be CEO, Matt. So you go from urgent Matt important Matt. And so that's, that's what I'm doing. And you know, there's focuses that's going to, that's the way, you've seen this with all the big, with all the big owners and founders, right? You see this with and with Bezos and these guys who were like nerdy and skinny fat billionaires. And then at some point they realized my health matters and I'm going to die at 60 if I don't do this. And so now you start to look at these founders and. You, I don't know if you've seen the scale. There's a, there's a great, um, there's a great data graph point of founders who deadlift based on their deadlift, like how their business performs against the S and P 500. It's amazing. It's like three X. And so what I found is when I train and when I'm healthy and when I feel good about myself, It's not just that I feel better, that family goes better, that my life goes better, my work goes better, my business goes better. that's why I think it's important to age well and not just focus on the work. The work is the work and I love my job, but ultimately what it's doing is bringing about a lifestyle that I get to do the things that I really love, which is spend time with my family, my spiritual disciplines, church, health. I live a very blessed life for sure.

Dr. Jeff Armstrong: 1:00:23

Sounds like you were definitely aging. Well,

Matt Reynolds: 1:00:25

Trying so I mean, and I'll just be honest. I just go through seasons like everybody else does where I absolutely crush it. And then I go through seasons where I'm like, wow, I just door dashed. times this week, you know, so, so I, I don't want to come across as holier than thou any of that sort of like, I have to have hard conversations with myself and hold myself to that standard and go, the whole, what are we doing here? work is important, but it's not so important that it comes at the expense of my health. And so the aid to me, the aging well is probably the most important thing that you can do in your entire life.

Dr. Jeff Armstrong: 1:00:59

aging. Well, is that trajectory you're on? I mean, it's never a perfect line. It's always going to have some ebbs and flows in it. And it's the key is where are you targeting your life toward? sounds like you're doing it right? I've loved it.

Matt Reynolds: 1:01:13

thanks for having me on the show, man. It's been a great conversation.

Dr. Jeff Armstrong: 1:01:16

Is there any final advice you'd like to give to somebody thinking of transitioning from in person to online coaching other than online coaching? Get your website and,

Matt Reynolds: 1:01:25

first off, I'll speak to two different audiences. If you're a fitness professional, turnkey coaches, the brand for the professional. turnkey. coach is a great place to go and there's tons of free content there. Your first month is always free. For online coaching software. We have an entire education system that teaches people how to transition from totally in person to online or in person to a hybrid model of in person and online. So it's a great place to go for fitness professionals and for clients. I would just say, think about. much stress the schedule and the location? Do you love your trainer? Is your trainer just good enough for the town that you're currently in? Like whatever that is, can get set up with one of the best coaches in the entire planet. They don't have to live in your town. You have total freedom to train when you want, where you want, anytime you want at a fraction of the cost of personal training. that's what Barbara logic does. And that's what our coaches at turnkey coach do. And we haven't, we didn't even talk about this, but we have extremely high standards for who the coaches are there. it's a great place to explore where to go and how to make that transition. So it's not that hard. once people do it, we've had, many hundreds of people who have transitioned from in person to online and then they never leave online because they love it. The price is great and the freedom is great.

Dr. Jeff Armstrong: 1:02:40

Matt, thank you for sharing your insights today, I've learned a ton and I'm going to share this with My students, as I get back into teaching next week and looking forward to learning more about barbell logic, continuing to kind of follow what you guys do, cause I do, it's one of my key go to links for specific knowledge in the training area, we've learned a lot today about online coaching and how it can be a powerful tool for both the coach and the client. this field of personal training is evolving. And, you know, I, I really credit you for leading that way. so we appreciate you being on the episode today. just keep doing what you're doing and keep aging. Well,

Matt Reynolds: 1:03:22

Thanks man. Appreciate it.

1:03:24

Thank you for listening. I hope you benefited from today's podcast. Until next time, keep aging well.