ISSA Talk, Episode 10: What’s Next for the Fitness Industry

Edited for clarity.

Erin Mahoney:

Hi, everyone. Welcome to ISSA Talks' 10th episode. If you're a new viewer, ISSA Talk is our weekly web series, where we aim to help trainers through this time of social distancing.

I'm Erin Mahoney, your host, and the VP of product over here at ISSA. This week, and I always say I'm excited about our guest, but this week we have a very special guest and someone I'm very excited to introduce, even though he might not need any introduction if you're involved in the fitness world. Andrew Wyant, everybody. The CEO of ISSA. Andrew, welcome. We're so excited to have you here as our guest today.

Andrew Wyant:

Thank you so much. That's quite an introduction. I believe that I do need an introduction to most everyone who hasn't directly worked either in NASM, where I used to be the president, or at ISSA where I'm the president now.

Erin Mahoney:

Yeah. If you guys haven't heard of Andrew, he actually has over 25 years of experience in leading the innovation of business, with unparalleled proven success in the industry, specifically our fitness industry. Andrew, you just mentioned NASM and now you're over here at ISSA. Why we love you over here is because you've got this really strong passion for not only fitness, but also the business strategy involved in our industry. And you're so, so dedicated. So once again, thank you so much for joining us. Ready to get started?

Andrew Wyant:

Absolutely.

The Future of Fitness

Erin Mahoney:

All right. For these other webinars that we've been doing, we've been talking a little bit more about how people are moving into this virtual world of online training and coaching. Today we want to talk about your perspective on it all, because you always have such a great vision of where things are going. So, what I'm wanting to start out is, we think, we think we might be seeing a light at the end of the tunnel for the COVID-19 quarantine, and that gyms might be starting to open up a little bit. How do you see this new world of fitness, and do you think that the light at the end of the tunnel is opening up?

Andrew Wyant:

Well, it's a great question. I think I break it down into a couple of different pieces. When you look at the external environment, we are absolutely opening up gyms. We're getting back out of our houses. We're getting back to the business of fitness. I'm excited about that. I also know that we don't yet see the light at the end of the tunnel as far as COVID-19 is concerned, so I think that people's concerns are real and the virus is continuing to spread, and it's continuing to affect people and it has all of its negative implications, but what's happening right now is, is that people are starting to say, "I really need to get back to life. I need to get back to doing what I was doing." And it's modified, but I think what you're seeing is people say, "Hey, it's time to actually get back to living."

The Future of Personal Trainers

Erin Mahoney:

Yeah, I think so too. Knowing that we might not be the light at the end of the tunnel, and we know that people want to get back to living, how do you see that impacting our personal trainers? Where are they going? Are they going right back to the gyms with everybody else? Or are they staying distant? What's going on?

Andrew Wyant:

Well, it's a mixed bag all over the country. If I were a gym owner right now, I think I'd have an even higher level of concern about the business because, what I've seen in the limited examples that I've encountered, personal trainers who had to leave the gym needed to stay in contact with their clients. Their clients needed them and they needed an income, and so I think what you've seen is a lot of personal trainers who have built one-to-one relationships with their clients that they took outside of the gym, that they're continuing to enjoy outside of the gym. And so, once you unpack that and you see as a personal trainer that, I've got power. I've got the connection to my client. I've got the ability to build a client, to create programs for my client, work out with my client, I may not have the gym, but I do have the relationship.

And so, I think that personal trainers are seeing that and they're experiencing it and they may take the business that they are still enjoying and take it either to the client's homes, take it to different studios. There might be an entirely different approach, and so if you own a gym where personal training was a big part of your business, I'm not sure that those personal trainers are going to come back to work today, both with COVID-19 still present, as well as them having an income stream from their clients. So, if I owned a gym, I would be looking to recruit a new generation of trainers. I'd want to bring new people in, in order to fill up my gyms and to provide my customers with more service. If I was a personal trainer who left, I'd be looking for better tools and applications so that I could manage my own individual business. So, I think what you're going to see is, you're going to see more personal trainers, more personal training, done in more places than we've ever seen before.

Erin Mahoney:

Yeah. You kind of, I think already answered what I'm about ready to ask, which is, it's so cool to see trainers having this empowerment to be in charge of what their business is rather than relying on the clubs. But the clubs were pretty instrumental in getting people results too. So, what do you think, if you could fast forward, like a year from now, how do you see the trainers and the gyms being able to work back together to swing back to a really good balance of working with each other?

Andrew Wyant:

Yeah. I think, first of all, everyone's talked about this idea of the COVID-19 pounds and how it was difficult for a lot of people to stay fit and stay active in their shelter-in-place. And so, I think what you're going to see is, is that a whole new group of people are seeing the power of health and fitness, the need for better health.

I think that the gyms are really a logical and a great first step for people to take, so I think what you're going to see is you're going to see a new volume of people who are interested in getting fit. If you looked at the co-morbidities the causes of some of the deaths related to COVID-19, what you would see is you'd see a lot of folks who were suffering from obesity or type two diabetes, people with different types of heart disease. You see a lot of that, that would be controllable through diet and exercise.

That message hasn't gotten out clearly to the entire world, obviously. However, I think people have seen it at a much higher level. So, I think you're going to see a new generation of people go to the gyms. So, if you fast forward a year ahead, I'd like to believe that a year from now there'll be a vaccine for COVID-19. And then our day-to-day lives will be a new normal that is post-COVID-19. And I think what you'll see is you'll see a greater connection and a greater level of power of personal trainers with gyms who have a new generation of customers, a new generation of members, a new generation of personal trainers.

So, I think spreading and sharing wellness more broadly is where you see it a year from now. I think that eventually, as an individual person, as a personal trainer, it's hard to attract new clients. And so, as clients kind of wax and wane over time, I think you'll see some personal trainers go back to the gym largely because of the influx and flow of new clients, rather than the fact that they just want to go back to the gym because the gym is the place they want to work.

Erin Mahoney:

Yeah. Good point. I especially appreciate when you said in a year, a new, new, normal. It makes me wonder how many new normals we're going to go through. I think we've got a few of them on our hands.

You said something really cool too, is a lot of these conversations that we've been having with experts have been about technology and moving things online and how to connect with people virtually. But as you were talking about maybe some new clients and members that have more of these chronic diseases, what I'm starting to hear is the service offering that trainers provide might shift a little bit because the clientele might be shifting a little bit. So, if we go back to that conversation of what might be in a year, do you see the skills and requirements of personal trainers being any different than they are today to kind of manage potentially, that new clientele?

Andrew Wyant:

No question at all. I think that, if you think about the direction of the last 20 years, in terms of the scope of practice or the breadth of services that personal trainers provide and that they should be knowledgeable about, I think you see a couple of convening elements. When I think about massage therapy and I think about foam rolling and stretching, when I think about physical therapists and some forms of corrective exercise or exercise therapy, when I think about rehab, when I think about seniors, when I think about where each one of these domains begins and the next, or each one ends, the next one begins, you see that they're so much more closely related than ever. When you can find a service provider, in this case, a personal trainer who can provide you with a broader breadth of services, someone who is more knowledgeable about areas that are related.

I think about the relationship between nutrition and personal training and I think of them as inseparable. And when I think about recovery, even from your own workouts or whether it be specific to an element of recovery, I think that they're so closely related. So, having a single point where you can get more information, I think is beneficial for everyone. So, I think personal trainers need to continue to change, grow and develop. And it's not to say that their scope of practice puts them in the places where they're doing things they're not qualified for, I think what it does is it makes them more knowledgeable to know, when should I be sending someone to a dietician or to a nutritionist or to a physician or to a physical therapist, and when should I be able to help them in that middle ground? That knowledge is power and I think personal trainers will continue to get more power.

Erin Mahoney:

I love that too. As you were talking about this, and of course, I've had lots of conversations with you, but I haven't heard it conveyed quite like this and I got excited. Because, as you were talking about all these different professions, literally in my head, I was seeing this almost perfect storm of these professions that are becoming more closely intertwined. Then I think what you were saying is that the personal trainer kind of becomes the centerpiece of it that could explain like, "Yeah, your physical therapist gave you these recommendations, but let's talk about what you're really doing here. Let's make sure that you're doing it right. Your doctor said your blood lipid profiles aren't on point. What does that actually mean? Let's go through that." Am I got that right?

Andrew Wyant:

Oh, absolutely. I think, the purpose of this is not to push ISSA content and when you think about understanding your DNA and you think about a program like that, where it's giving a personal trainer a set of information that can help them develop programming for their clients that is matched specifically to their DNA. To me, that's just another step in this evolution. It's not saying to this person, "You should," or shouldn't, "take Liberator." What it's saying is, is that, "You may have a predisposition for fat burning. And so, then therefore, we're going to adjust your programming so that we can give you something that will work for your goals. And I'm going to align myself to what your goals are and in conjunction with an ecosystem," if you want to call it that, "of health care providers who each have their own expertise."

Strengthening Your Career with Continuing Education

Erin Mahoney:

Yeah. As you're talking about this one, I'm also thinking for the trainers is, I think historically trainers, instructors, fitness professionals get their CEUs just as, almost as an afterthought. Like, "Oh, I’ve got to renew my certification. I got to do this." It sounds like the trainers will need to be a little bit more strategic about that kind of holistic and really be picking continuing education that can serve that function as being able to connect all the dots.

Andrew Wyant:

I agree completely. To put it in other terms, everyone in personal training, if they really want to have a career, needs to think about a career path, and they need to think about what their passions are and what their clients' needs are. And so, if you want to focus on youth or seniors or cancer patients in recovery, there are set of things that you can do as a professional to continue to evolve and grow yourself. Some personal trainers make the mistake of thinking that it's about them. It's that, if I have a certain body, if I have a certain look, people will flock to me because they're going to want to know what secrets I have that deliver this from my body. That's a mistake because that's also not sustainable.

We all get older, our bodies all change. And so, then being able to understand what it is that's going to get results out of a 50-something business executive versus a 30-something service provider, it's a different set of expectations, a different set of skills, and it's a different set of training. I love to play sports even at my very advanced age. When I think about what helps me do better in a specific sport, then I started thinking about, "Okay, well, I'm going to turn to a personal trainer who has the strength and conditioning background, who understands I'm not going to be a professional athlete, but I want to perform at my best. And so, I want someone who's going to actually be able to tune and create programming that's going to work for me."

Erin Mahoney:

Yeah. Makes sense. As you were talking as a product person, of course, I was thinking about, when you were talking about youth and senior and stuff, we're not the only ones that have those programs out there. But there's this level of stickiness of, it's not just about what is different with a youth client versus a senior client. It's not just about, how does your body function differently? It's about also, what does the rest of their life look like? If you're a senior, are you as active as you used to be? Probably not. Who are your healthcare providers? If you're in youth, are you in different sports? Like you mentioned, does it help to have some kind of strength and conditioning? So, I'm hearing, at least I'm getting excited about being able to provide the stickiness that really, when you take these courses, you're not just learning the science. You're now learning how that translates into a broader service offering for clients and then also one that could potentially be more effective too.

Andrew Wyant:

Absolutely, very well said. I think that that stickiness is a really important part because everyone has ups and downs and habits. And so, being able to understand your client and their particular circumstance becomes more and more important and more and more powerful over time. I've heard from a lot of baby boomers and folks who were in their 70s and some even into their 80s who love fitness. They have been at it for decades, and they look at themselves today and say, "You know what? I'm in as good a shape as I've ever been in.

And so, I want to give that to others. I want others to experience the same thing." If you picture in your mind right now a 75-year-old man, well, I can picture in my mind three, four, five, 10 different 75-year-old men who range from folks who might be living in an assisted living place to people who are competitive athletes. And so, you can't put a label on anyone and say, "Oh, this is who this person is." I think that having that sensitivity to be able to understand, what do I offer to which person at what time, that's this alchemy of becoming a really great personal trainer.

Erin Mahoney:

I think that what you just said is probably the art of personal training. Right?

Andrew Wyant:

Right.

Erin Mahoney:

And how do we help trainers get to that mastery level of it is something I know that you're extremely passionate about. Going backwards from a few minutes ago when you were talking about, I know you've said it in other conversations I've had with you, but it's interesting to hear you talk, when you say different people with some of these chronic health conditions. We've got this new clientele coming in because they're in a world where we're surrounded by things that we can't control right now. One thing you can control is what you put in your body and the activity that you do every day. I love that. That gets me so excited. How do you think ... A lot of times trainers, they get into the business and they think that they're going to be working out with these 22-year-old elite athletes. What would be your advice to trainers on what they could start doing to prepare themselves for those types of people?

Andrew Wyant:

I love that question because, what I started thinking about what matters is the idea of others. If you can remove yourself from the equation, and if what you do is you can listen with empathy, if you can put yourself in a place of curiosity. So, when you have curiosity and empathy, and you're listening to your client, you won't dismiss their weight problem or their lack of fitness, their de-condition. You won't see someone as a body that shows up that doesn't look like the kind of body that you want to work out with, that you want to train. What you'll see is you'll see a person.

And so, the more that you see that that's the person, and the more that you can try to understand, and if you begin with that curiosity and empathy and understanding, then what you're going to do is you're going to be able to develop that connection to the person, because they're going to understand that you care. And it won't matter if you are a 19-year-old personal trainer or a 69-year-old personal trainer. It won't matter who your client is. What they'll understand is that it starts with that connection that you care, that your intake process really is an intake, "I'm bringing you in so that I can help you and I can support you."

Erin Mahoney:

Andrew, sometimes when I hear you talk about how excited you are and how passionate you are about this stuff, I think, "I wonder if when Andrew retires that he's going to become a personal trainer."

Andrew Wyant:

I could very well. But I think that I should leave personal training to the personal trainers, but that that sense of others and the sense of giving, I think of personal trainers as extraordinary people. I see personal trainers as the frontline in this fitness world. The soldiers who are out there, they're the ones who continue to bring people in, so when the person shows up in the parking lot, when that man or woman pulls into the lot and can't get out of the car to go into the gym, because they're afraid, they're intimidated, they see all these bodies going in and they see these people who look incredibly fit and they don't see themselves as a part of that community. When personal trainers can make that bridge and help bring those people out of that car and into the gym and start working with them, we start changing lives.

And when you change the life of that person, that person then goes home and shares that with their friends, their family, their loved ones, and that healthiness continues to move on and it spreads. And so, this is the positive side of the idea of a virus. We want to spread wellness. We want to share wellness to all. That's why personal trainers have magic, because you don't have the fear. It's not like a doctor who's giving you orders and judging you. Your personal trainer is your support system. It is your connection. And so, I don't worry about things like Peloton because I think Peloton is a fantastic device and it's a wonderful way to get a one form of exercise and to get one form of delivery. What matters ultimately, for long-lasting results is that the person on the other side develops that habit, that they make that change. And so, I think that personal trainers are uniquely able to do that with most anyone who's willing to give it a chance.

Erin Mahoney:

So inspiring to listen to you talk. I wish I was still actively training more people. It sounds like you're saying that trainers have the power of positive contagion, if I'm hearing you right.

Andrew Wyant:

I love it. That should be the title of some blog, the power of positive contagion. It is, how is it that we spread and share wellness with others?

Dealing with Stress and Covid-19

Erin Mahoney:

Let me write that down. Andrew, let's shift gears a little bit. I'm sure as we're talking people are appreciating what you're saying and realizing how great it is, cool it is to listen to you talk. It is, at least for me and also the other people that work at ISSA. We always get excited when Andrew addresses the company, which is on a regular basis. Because he really is inspiring and allows us to realize what we have, what we're able to do. Andrew, for you, with the COVID pounds, what has been your favorite comfort food?

Andrew Wyant:

Ooh, that's a great question. I love pasta more than most anything else, and pasta bolognese. I could talk Italian food and pasta all day long, so if you were to look back, let's see, over the last week, I probably had some form of Italian four nights out of seven.

Erin Mahoney:

Oh my gosh, you do love pasta. You also work out all the time. How has COVID-19 changed your life personally?

Andrew Wyant:

Well, the shelter-in-place represented the closing of the three different gyms that I go to. So, what I did is what a lot of people did. I went to my personal trainer and then arranged my personal trainer to come and work out here at the house. Not everybody has the capacity to be able to do that, so I consider myself really blessed and really lucky. So, throughout the shelter-in-place, I kept a daily routine of, four days a week of personal training and then two days a week of external activity, like swimming, and then one day of rest.

Erin Mahoney:

Nice. All right. We talked a little bit about how the world is changing for trainers, how it's training for Andrew Wyant personally. How are you approaching things at ISSA and how has it changed how ISSA addresses the industry and even just as we think about reopening our own walls?

Andrew Wyant:

Yeah. It's such a great question. The first thing is, is that we're not reopening the ISSA offices fully until it's completely safe to do so. We'll have people back in the office, but with social distancing in place, everything from sneeze guards to a greater distance, creating patterns, closing the kitchen so there's not kind of points where you have higher degrees or risks of transmission. So, we're following all the CDC guidelines and things that most businesses are doing as they look at the reopening.

As it relates to the products at ISSA and the direction of the business, I think that I never thought of our role as a company as being the way to try to help enable the personal trainer to have the applications to run their business. I saw that really as something that, after you get your certification, you're out in the world, you do this, and I think what COVID-19 really reemphasized to us as a company is that we want to be there every step of a personal trainer's career and throughout the lifespan.

So, we want to be there side-by-side with personal trainers through whatever they're facing. So, if it's a question of, what a website should I use to promote myself, or how do I market myself, or how do I get new clients, or how do I build a platform to bill my customers and manage my time? So, all of those things are things that I think there's a role for us to play that makes me think about the world differently.

Now, there are lots of different players in the world and almost half of the people who earn ISSA certifications go to work in what you might deem big box gyms. Places like LA Fitness or 24 Hour Fitness or Life Time or Equinox and on. Those large gyms employ a lot of ISSA personal trainers. We don't want to act in a way that we're directing or diverting, we want personal trainers to have a career. We want them to be successful, so we want to just be the party that they can always turn back to and say, "Gosh, I'm thinking about changing careers. How do I get information about starting my own business?" Or opening my own gym. Or getting insurance? I want us to be able to do all of that for folks, so that's what COVID-19 really brought home, is the need for us to do more.

Erin Mahoney:

It's pretty cool. I mean, for me personally, and being with ISSA, it's been neat to watch and be a part of transforming from looking at what we do as educating trainers to being part of their life. Well, also, what's really neat, and I'm not sure if you've taken a moment and given yourself kind of a pat on the back is, we didn't really freak out about sales or what we can do, or how do we push harder here? We looked at, "Oh my gosh, how do we help our trainers? How do we help the gyms? What do we do?" It's been, for me, I'm very grateful to be surrounded with people like you and the other leadership group over at ISSA. Because, to have that kind of really compassionate perspective on things that's not just about money. And so, thank you for that.

Andrew Wyant:

Well, I appreciate you saying that. I think I might just say one thing about that, which is, yes, this is a business. But part of what we're really trying to do is, we're trying to connect people to healthier living. So, when you think about what our mission is, is that, our mission is that we believe that healthier living improves lives. And so, if you believe that healthier living improves lives, and that's what drives your business, that's what drives your thinking, then what we're trying to do is help people have healthier living and that's going to make the world a better place. It doesn't cure all the ails and it certainly, in times of crisis like this, it reminds you of how complicated and how big the problems are in the world. But if you start with you and you start with your choices about what you put into your body and what you do with your body, how you move, if you start with that, then your ability to serve others and to lift others up grows exponentially.

Erin Mahoney:

You always make it sound so easy and so simple. Not easy, simple. Simple. But it's important to bring it back to basics because that is what we do. Well, this has been really fantastic to have you on, and I'm hoping we can have you on again. I have a couple more questions for you.

Andrew Wyant:

Great.

Erin Mahoney:

One is, you're a very social individual, and so typically, our trainers. We live in a physical world and we thrive on these relationships. So, knowing that you're probably very similar to a lot of our trainers out there, what's some advice that you think you could give to them for dealing with this?

Andrew Wyant:

Well, I think, everybody's responded differently. One of the things that we've done in my extended family is, we've created weekly family Zoom sessions. It's fun. We've wound up having wide-ranging conversations and I've connected with cousins that I probably would not communicate with at any time. It's funny because you'll get 12, 14, 16 people on a Zoom call at once, and it's as crazy as you could expect it would be with a family that's spread out all over the country.

So, I think being in relationship with others is sort of a fundamental thing. In fact, I see this, we're in relationship with others. We build them. And so, part of what we're trying to do is figure out how to do that in COVID-19.

That's one. Two is another simple online thing, which is, we've been playing online games. We've been doing something called Quiplash. One person has it on their computer and they load it up and we can do Zoom, and then we're actually playing a game where everybody enters into their own handheld device, answers to questions and then you vote on it.

It's a fun game that you might play if you're all sitting around drinking a beer at a table one night with your friends, and those kinds of games have connected myself to others and in a really powerful way. And then, it's a little bit of a one-way vehicle, but I've been recording videos for the folks within ISSA. And so, I'll record one or two videos a week and I'll send them out, and they could be about random things or they could be about the business or just ideas about better communication. What I find is, is that I get a lot of emails back and I get a lot of responses from people inside the company and it's really gratifying because when I get those, they're going beyond what I was saying or beyond what I was thinking and to see how thoughtful people are, it's amazing.

Then one last thing is a weekly mastermind. If you're not familiar with masterminds, it's worth googling it to look at what it is. But it's really about the power of groups of people affirming others and in their intentions to serve others. And so, in a business like ours, where we're trying to serve others, the more that people can gather together in something like a mastermind to put that positivity out there, to see and hear from others and then affirm them in their goals and then lift them up, it's been tremendous.

Erin Mahoney:

That's so cool. As you're talking and I'm remembering all the weeks that we've had at home and the challenges that we've had in a positive way, like the wall set and hole challenge. We got a handstand challenge, and then hearing you talk about relationships. Sometimes that makes me smile a little bit because, similar for myself, it's forced me to hit the pause button and connect with people that I wouldn't have connected with physically before. So, it's kind of interesting how that's all happened and it's been as good as it possibly can be here over at ISSA.

If you could tell yourself some wisdom going backwards, let's say before this all hit ... Before this all hit, Andrew Wyant sat in my office and he said, "Buckle up, it's to be a bumpy ride." I didn't realize it was going to be quite that bumpy, but if you could have given yourself any words of wisdom besides, "Buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride," back then, we'll say in February, what would you have told yourself?

Andrew Wyant:

I think what I probably would have told myself is that, that this is a marathon. It's not a sprint. There were times over the last 11 weeks of this work-from-home and shelter-in-place where I felt like everything had to be done right now. There's a great quote that's been attributed to lots of folks, but one of the quotes is, is that, we wildly underestimate or overestimate what we can do this weekend, we wildly overestimate it. And we wildly underestimate what we can do in a year or two or five.

And so, I think when you start to think about your goals and you start to think about your actions and you set your goals to be, of course, smart. But when you think about smart goals and you think about what the steps are to lead you from here, where you are today, to over here where you want to be, if you think about the steps along that journey, and you start saying, "Hey, I'm going to think about what I need to do this week and then to next week, and then to next week," as opposed to going from here to here. Because when you set the goal up here, that distance and that time across that, it winds up, setting yourself up for failure rather than success.

And so, my own experience across this time is, we have done so much more in the last 10 weeks than I think in any 10-week period I've ever known professionally. I think that that is astonishing how much people were able to rise up, how well people were able to go and work remotely. All of that is just, I'm unbelievably grateful to this team and unbelievably blessed that this could happen. And I probably along the way, cost myself a lot more angst and anxiety through this period.

Then the last thing is, I wouldn't have watched the news. If I could have told myself one thing, the news has so much spin in it, and I don't care what your political persuasion is, what kind of news that you have. Very rarely is the news actually news, it's entertainment programming that is designed to keep your attention and have you watch advertising. I think I ingested far too much poison during this period of time that affected my own psyche and left me not sleeping as well as I would have. So, I think what I would have said is, is that, "We're all going to be okay. We're going to follow the protocols. We're going to do what we need to do, and we're going to get down to business." That's what I would have told myself.

Erin Mahoney:

Thank you. Thank you so much, Andrew. What a great way to wrap it up. I appreciated having you on today, so thank you so much. For our viewers, if you guys have any questions or if you want to see Andrew again, sure. Let us know in the comments section. Otherwise, take care out there. See you next time.

Andrew Wyant:

Thanks, everybody. I appreciate it.

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