Fitness for Former Athletes -Dan Elwood
Guest: Dan Elwood
Release Date: 5/9/2022
Welcome to Trulyfit the online fitness marketplace connecting pros and clients through unique fitness business software.
Steven Washuta: Welcome to the Trulyfit podcast where we interview experts in fitness and health to expand our wisdom and wealth. I am your host, Steve Washuta, co-founder of Trulyfit and author of Fitness Business 101. On today’s podcast, I have the pleasure of speaking with Dan Elwood, Dan, and I speak about athletes getting back into fitness, or why athletes may stop exercising. Dan is a former collegiate football player who has a very good perspective of this, he works with a lot of former athletes, both from a psychological perspective.
From a physiological perspective, Dan goes over why some people stop exercising who used to be former athletes, maybe it’s a burnout issue, maybe it’s almost a punishment Esque issue where you were so used to exercise being a punishment in your sports-related fields, that it’s no longer cathartic to you, it doesn’t do what the average general population person says, you know, I go to the gym, I jump rope, I lift weights, I feel great.
Or maybe it is that you need to expand your horizons as far as the types of exercise that you do, right? If you’re a former athlete, and you were so used to, let’s say, just running and lifting heavy weights, well, maybe you should do something a little bit different.
Maybe for you, it’s yoga, that’s going to be better suited for you because you don’t have those sort of negative things built into your brain about this being a punishment when you are an athlete having to do these sorts of training to get better at what used to do.
But anyway, it’s a great conversation, you could find everything that Dan does at momentum, strength, and wellness, on Instagram, links to his podcast, and the services. He and his girlfriend provide just about every service you can think of that’s interconnected with the health and wellness-related fields.
With no further ado, here’s Dan and I. Yeah, Dan, it’s been a little bit. Thanks for coming back to the podcast. Let’s catch up a little bit before anything else. Remind the listeners who you are, and what it is that you do in health and fitness. And then tell me a little bit about your business ventures and what you’ve been up to.
Dan Elwood: Okay, yeah, well, first of all, thank you for having me back. I’m definitely excited about the conversation. So my name is Danielle wood. I’m a personal trainer and holistic lifestyle coach and co-founder of my business momentum, strength and wellness was actually my girlfriend and I run the business together.
She’s a nutritionist, I’m a coach, and we kind of we work with clients together to kind of get a little bit of everything, working on, you know, lifestyle interventions, training, diet. Yeah, mindset, basically, all the coaching things, we kind of usually take a kind of more holistic approach.
And then we also recently launched a podcast as well, the deep life podcast, which is, you know, we’ve got about, I think, by the time this comes out with 20 Something episodes Oh, and that can be found anywhere. Which has been a lot of fun.
Steven Washuta: Yeah, it’s quite, it’s quite the journey, starting a podcast, as far as I know, actually just did a podcast with somebody. That I mean, it’ll be out in a month. And he runs something called average Joe’s fitness media. And it’s funny, he sort of does what I do, where he interviews people in the fitness and health realm, about their businesses and about what they’re doing and trends and fads and stuff.
But we had a whole podcast, just about like what it takes to start a podcast, especially like a fitness and health podcast, because there’s a lot to it. And it’s like, Is it is it worth it for everybody, both from like a financial investment or like a time investment and like, we’re all like, sort of the tricks of the trade and like things to know, going into it.
So it’s, I think that’s fun for people because, you know, it’s I think people are somewhat nervous to start it because it is a little bit nerve-racking. But it doesn’t really take that was money. Certainly not. And time Yeah, everything takes time investment and just depends on how, how much of like a, like how big of a percentage of the pie you want that to be in your day and in your business model.
Dan Elwood: Yeah, for sure. And I think like the nerve-wracking part is kind of what makes it exciting. Like I’m, I’m enjoying it more than I thought I would just kind of getting thrown into the fire a little bit and having to develop new skills and learn how to interview people learn how to talk, and not sound like an idiot. So it’s a lot of fun.
Steven Washuta: And it is a lot of fun. And I think people that if I had to name like one or two, let’s let’s just name three, three things that people think about a podcast and they’re totally wrong. Number one, it’s very easy to get popular guests or big guests, right? I mean, granted, they’re probably not going to pitch you meaning like they’re there for themselves if that makes sense.
So like if you’re so if you get somebody on your podcast, let’s say they have 70,000 Instagram followers and there’s some like famous like fitness celebrity, they’re not going to maybe promote the podcast even on their socials because they don’t want to give you light and shine. But it still looks good on your end for getting them towards your podcast.
I think people don’t know that. Number two, it doesn’t cost a lot. You can get a mic and have zoom sessions and go that route. And number three, again, the from a time perspective, it’s only as much time as you want you can do one every two weeks and Don’t spend a lot of time on it. Or you can spend, you know, four or five hours a day building your podcasts.
It’s just how quickly you want to build a business like anything else. Yeah, absolutely. So we talked, you know, via email, obviously, we always catch up on things. And I’ll catch you up on whatever’s going on with Trulyfit at some point in this conversation, I’m sure.
But you know, there’s a lot of things trending in the fitness and health world, but I thought it would be really good, something you pitched was talking about, sort of athletes, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, like you and me more than you that made you a collegiate athlete, but people who’ve played sports their whole life and dedicated themselves to being physical, sometimes they fall off the wagon for lack of a better term.
And then what it takes for them to get back into fitness may be from both a psychological perspective and a physiological perspective. I’m sure you work with some of these people. So you can sort of like start this introduction any way you want.
Dan Elwood: Yeah, so just exactly like you just said, I think that for so many of us that grew up playing sports, it was just a no brainer, it was a given that you were going to, you’re going to train every day you were going to, you’re going to eat the foods you needed to eat, you’re going to prioritize getting sleep, taking care of yourself.
Then kind of, unfortunately, I think along the way, a lot of people by the time their athletic career ends, they’re pretty burnt out. Athletics tends to lean toward, you know, a lack of balance anyway because it’s extreme.
You’re, you’re going for extreme performance, not necessarily longevity. So it makes sense that a lot of people would burn out at the end of their careers. But then, unfortunately, they just stop cold turkey. And I’ve seen so many guys, like so many guys I played football with, for example, like great college athletes, who were in unbelievable shape and looked amazing.
And then the day their career ended, they stopped training. But they kept eating the same way they kept kind of honestly living the same lifestyle without the same performance output and the same training.
Steven Washuta: Why is that? What’s your analysis of why?
Dan Elwood: I think a lot of it is I said, burnout. I think that there’s this desire there like the desire goes away when you push too hard. For too long on something that may be like you’re, you stop caring, as much as you did when you were younger, especially as you get older until like college and even professional sports, a lot of times the passion goes away before you’re done playing.
So I think when it’s like you have the opportunity to say I’m done, I’m never going back into a weight room again. Even if you’re, you know, eventually you’re going to want to get back in the gym. But at that point, you’re so far behind the eight ball.
And then another thing that I think is huge psychologically, is when we’ll say like for 18 years of your life, you have a plan, there’s somebody telling you, you know, you know, there’s gonna be the next season, you know, what your Offseason training is going to be, you basically show up, and there’s, there’s a workout for you, or you know, where you’re going to be at what time when that plan gets taken away, and sort of abruptly, you can feel really lost.
So then there are still guys who maybe will keep working out, you know, women as well will keep training, which is not the same way, they don’t really have the progression to their training anymore. They don’t have the drive that they had.
So they’re just sort of in the gym, going through the motions, and then you kind of end up on, you know, whatever path it is where if you’re just you know, I’ll just spend some time on the treadmill, or I’ll just feel benchpress every day, because I want to do what’s fun, rather than training your whole body in the same way and thinking about it.
Steven Washuta: And that’s a great analysis, and you obviously being an athlete, no, because it’s intrinsically in you, you know, and then also all of your surroundings reflect you said, between your friends and your buddies who play in them. And I’ll add two more points to this, which you can agree or disagree with.
You know, I think a there’s a relationship one has with whatever food you have with a, you know, exercise and I think as an athlete because you’ve been told you have to be in the weight room at 6 am You have to perform this way you have to write these things down.
A lot of times high-level athletes have a I would call sort of negative relationship with exercise, right? Whereas in if you’re, let’s say, a 22-year-old girl who’s only maybe played, you know, softball in high school, and then you get into like, CrossFit or weightlifting, and you’re like you’re doing it on your own sort of like, an autonomous decision like I want to go do this right, then you have a good relationship with exercise, but if you’re forced to do it, you have a bad relationship.
And I’ll add one more thing to that is that I trained an ex-tight end for the University of Georgia, and he was just so beat up that’s why you have to take years off, right? He had four knee surgeries and he had arthritis everywhere and his fingers were all messed up. So it’s like you know, that’s a part of it is just like you said, your body takes also like the physical burnout toll, not just the psychological.
Dan Elwood: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that’s something that’s Don’t say like, just like with your sale out with like investing was like the best time to invest your money was 10 years ago, the next best time is right now. I think I was lucky.
Because personally, I made a decision like my last year playing college football, I decided when this is over because I love training, I’m going to keep training like an athlete. That I can, but it’s going to be on my own terms.
I can take all this energy and put it into training exactly the way I want to train. I was able to kind of benefit from this, this compounding interest, essentially, of all the years that I put in, and I just changed it as I ate less I work, you know, did more like circuit type training for a little while I lost a bunch of weight. Because I didn’t need to be as big as possible anymore.
I was a college fullback I got up to about 235 pounds, and I don’t really have the frame for that we’re now I walk around at 195. And I’m, I feel so much healthier. So I had this sort of progression from that from being like 230 to 195 that I did intentionally where I lost weight on purpose I trained.
But I think if I didn’t have that mindset, whereas like I’m just gonna stop, then you lose a lot of the, the momentum you had built a lot of the gains you had made. And it can go really quickly in the other direction. But yeah, you can always get it back, which is awesome. And you can always get back into training. Like you used to do, if you can find that passion again. And you can find that that drives.
Steven Washuta: I like what you said earlier about you know when sports training is so hyper-focused almost too much sell right, you’re so especially you played what I would consider a collision sport right there impact sports, like basketball and soccer. Football is a collision sport, it’s another level.
And there’s so much emphasis on training, overtraining, maybe in certain ways. And again, you’re training for the sport, as opposed to just like enjoying your workout. Like for somebody to just walk into a gym and not have a plan and go.
Today, I feel like playing two hours of basketball, or like, Hey, I feel like just doing some sort of like, pull up push up workout and then leaving, right just having no plan and enjoying the fitness rather than like being so structured.
Dan Elwood: Yeah, yeah, so Exactly. Like I was saying,, it was really, really hard for me to gain weight. And to carry that weight and hold it. So I needed to be obsessive about eating tons of food, getting tons of training, volume, and putting on weight, putting on weight, putting on weight, which is out of alignment with my health and longevity and the sustainability of training.
I had probably like, beat up joints just from the training. And then on top of that, how beat up you are just from playing football for so long. That it was really hard to have the desire to lift heavy for a while. And like I said, so i i personally and like kind of naturally transitioned toward a lot of lighter weight stuff for a little while that my body could handle and was able to like sort of maintaining and build back.
But it maintains that my strength but build back joint health and movement quality, and all those things that can they can go really, really bad really quick if you if you finish a athletic career and you’ve got maybe like your knee is bothering you. And you don’t address it because you’re like I just I can’t deal with it. I don’t want to be in the weight room anymore. I don’t want to take care of my body. So you don’t take care of that knee.
And eventually, it turns into you then you have a bad knee and a bad back because you’re walking poorly and you’re reinforcing bad movement patterns. So that physical toll that the sport took on you just keeps getting worse and worse and worse because it’s not addressed. And you’re just adding to the dysfunction.
Steven Washuta: Yeah, there’s you know, I’ve talked about this in a lot of podcasts. But there’s a cost to everything you do, especially in fitness and there can be a metabolic cost. Let’s say I go run 10 miles, I burn a lot of calories.
So that’s a positive metabolic cost. But what’s the structural cost? Right from all the pounding on the pavement of my knees and my ankles and my hips? Is there a structural cost and that’s, you know, especially for someone like you if you’re trying to gain weight, and you’re lifting heavy in the sort of Arnold Schwarzenegger esque like 468 repetition range doing Olympic lifts.
There is a structural cost. We know this, right? We’ve seen bodybuilders. We’ve seen football players at their 50s in their 40s and 50s and 60s, they’re dealing with spinal fusions and nonstop surgeries and there’s a problem because they’re not moving in all planes of motion worried about their health.
And I think, you know, this might be a sidebar and I want to get your view on this because I’ve talked about this a lot on this podcast, and either I’ve even been a guest on two separate podcasts talking about this one conversation, Dan, and a lot of this not for athletes as much but for the general population who deal with the same problem as these athletes is vanity because vanity supersedes health.
Right, so they’re willing to do anything in the lifting realm to Make sure that they look good. Even if it hurts their sort of overall health component. Do you see that with like some of your clients and people you work with?
Dan Elwood: I do for sure. And yeah, and just like all across the general population, too, because people, the aesthetics, always bring you in the door. Like, I think that’s why there are very few people who begin training. And it’s not because they want to look better. Yeah. So I think, yeah, absolutely.
And I think people are willing to do a lot, whether it’s just like, just the monotony of like hours on a treadmill because they think that’s what’s going to do it or, you know, all the supplements and whatever, they’re taking a diet, you know, eating, maybe eating nowhere near enough, or eating, just not the right foods, because they saw God some crazy diet that got a movie star jacked for a role, whatever it is, yeah, people will go to the extremes to look a certain way.
But not a lot of people, at least out the gate, want to go to the extremes to like, feel better and express health through their body to be healthier to be, you know, just well from for the, for a lifetime?
Steven Washuta: And totally. And I think part of that, Dan, and what you don’t know, you don’t know. So some people don’t know, their baseline. They don’t think they feel great now, but they have no idea, right? They’re not sleeping properly.
They don’t obviously have the right micro and macronutrients sort of combination in their body and the stress levels and the exercise and all that. So they don’t even know that’s a possibility that they can feel light years better. So that’s where they claim the vanity and you said it perfectly. And I always say that very similar thing, where vanity is the gateway into fitness, right? It’s like, oh, hey, I, you know, I want to lose a little belly fat, or, Hey, I want to get big PAC so I can get the girl next door.
Eventually, you learn whether it’s through injuries like maybe someone like you did, right? In football, or or through, it’s just old age that no, I need to sort of transform my exercise regimen and prescription into overall health and wellness and then make vanity just like a secondary effect that happens.
Dan Elwood: Yes, yeah. And it exactly it is that if you can step back and look at the big picture, the aesthetics will always come. When you are taking care of your body. When you’re doing the right things because it is looking good is an expression of health. It is a reflection of you knowing what you are. So a lot of times you can get sort of you can look good in the short term.
But you’re really robbing yourself of health and aesthetics in the future, and creating your metabolic dysfunction, or just burnout and wear and tear on your joints. Where I love taking steps taking weight, stepping way back, taking the big picture approach, and trying to figure out, do you want to lose 20 pounds? Or do you want to lose 20 pounds and keep it off for the rest of your life? Do you want to? Do you want to look, look the part? Or do you want to be the part because when you are the partner, you’re going to look the part as well?
But it’s a little bit probably a slower process. But it’s a long-lasting process. That’s why we named our company momentum. It’s if you can make one good choice today, then tomorrow, the next good choice is going to be a little bit easier.
And the next good choice can be a little easier. And then you realize that the choices you’re making a bigger and the impact you’re making is bigger and all of a sudden year. You’re who you want to be you’re living the life you want to live life and looking the way you want to look.
Steven Washuta: Yes, that’s That’s exactly right. That’s well said. And that’s going to lead into my sort of my next question here is that I preach the same thing you just said, where going zero to 60 is a bad idea.
Someone goes, Hey, I have never run before in my life. I’m gonna run a marathon next month. Bad idea, right? If someone says, Hey, I’ve actually never been on any sort of like strict, regimented diet, I’m 100 pounds overweight, I have no self-control, I’m going to instantly go on keto, bad idea, right.
So like you have to take these small steps. But this is my question to you is that someone like you to get to a level of being a college athlete, you kind of have to be a little bit above and beyond some people would say crazy, very alpha be ready to go all out? And do you think it’s a problem to kind of slow these athletes down? And when they reintegrate just be like, hey, this, this isn’t about like you focusing hyper on these goals. It’s about just getting slowly back into health.
Dan Elwood: I think that is that’s exactly what it is. It’s the taking, taking that sort of the discipline and passion that you had for sports performance, and like steering that discipline toward health and longevity. So it’s like, Let’s slow way down. Let’s fix your movement quality.
Because they say you’re you’re going to be out of balance like weather, no matter what it is. If you if you were a track athlete, and you run the 400 you’re always running one direction on the track, your body’s gonna have imbalances because you’re just making left turns.
So as little things like that, you could be in great shape, but eventually, that’s going to catch up with you, your knees or your hips or your back is going to start to hurt. So we can pull way back, we can take the same disciplined approach.
But let’s work on getting your feet as healthy as possible. Everything starts from the ground up, and let’s get your joints stacked and moving properly. So you can carry your body weight without causing injury. And then, you know, just kind of slowly building back up in a way that is sustainable, and can last forever.
Steven Washuta: Yeah, totally. YAnd you know, that my brain is going here. I also think because we talked about that weird relationship with exercise, right, so like, let’s go ahead and say I was a college fullback like you were, I imagine, like my, my sort of exercise prescription was like, Alright, you got to bench, you have to squat, you have to deadlift, you have to do split jerks.
This is what you’re doing here. Everything’s very powerful and this oriented. All exercises, good exercise provided, like you said that you’re working on accessory muscles and that you’re not overdoing things. And you’re understanding sort of the full-body perspective. I think these athletes just have to find something that they like, yeah, they don’t, they don’t have to go back into the heavy lifting, right, they can find like yoga and basketball, or like, you know, body weight and Tai Chi like you can find something that you enjoy so that you have a healthier relationship with it.
Dan Elwood: Yeah,I think that’s it exactly, I think you find, find what you want to do, whether it’s just training a little differently, or like you said, it can be a complete change from squats and deadlifts to yoga and basketball. If you get excited and want to do it, it’s going to help you.
Then if there’s like, there’s something really, really special that happens when you start to tap back into that, like the joy you had for training as a child, or like as a young lady, or even as like a high school athlete. It’s like, you were just completely obsessed with moving your body. That kind of sort of like expressing yourself physically and showing off what you can do.
When you can get back into that, because I think a lot of times too, as you start to get older, we we push that stuff to the side, and they almost like that’s it that’s for kids, like training, it doesn’t need to be fun. Like we need to focus on work and making a living and going to the gym, I’m gonna punish myself for for the beers I drank on Saturday night or for the pizza we ate was like no, like, it doesn’t have to be a punishing yourself.
Even if that’s even if you have some of that in your subconscious because you had coaches yelling at you. And a lot of training maybe was a punishment. It’s like, don’t, you don’t need to punish yourself, you don’t need to beat yourself up. You need to find ways to release that joy and get excited. Because then you’re going to be consistent, then you’re going to train every day. And it doesn’t have to be two hours a day, it can be 2030 minutes a day, that adds up really, really fast when you have the frequency and consistency for a few years.
Steven Washuta: Totally. And you know, I always wonder, you know, you have to walk a fine line in fitness and health and nutrition all these areas between subjective and objective. What I mean by that is, some things are measurable and some things aren’t. And you need to you know, you need to look inward and be like, how do I feel? How does this close fit? How do I wake up in the morning, but there also needs to be some measurable things, right.
And I know it’s athletes, sometimes. Everything was measurable. It’s like, you know, it’s like, okay, you know, I benched 350 I squatted this, I ran a four, six, I was able to, you know, lateral do this. And it’s like, you got to maybe sort of get rid of that mindset a little bit. And it should just be okay. I can go to the gym, I don’t have to have a structured regimen plan. I don’t have to beat myself up for not maintaining certain goals. And I should just be able to check in with myself and be like, I feel good. That’s fine.
Dan Elwood: Yeah, I had a conversation on on one of our podcasts with one of my former teammates who’s also coaching. Yeah, shout out to Cory Thomas and vitality, human performance. But we’re having a discussion that like, as football players, but as a football player specifically. But most athletes, it’s the same thing.
You almost need to like train yourself to not feel in the same way because you need to be able to be miserable, and still show up and put in the work. There’s not like from the day that you report to camp in football in the summer, till the day the season ends a day doesn’t go by that you’re not sore, and beat up and in pain. Every guy in the football field has some sort of injury. And you just you know, put your head down and go
Steven Washuta: because you don’t have a choice because the next day we have a conditioning regimen and then we have done we’re hitting we’re doing lineman one on one drills and like this is just laid out for you. So you have to suck it up. Right but we don’t have to now that’s what you’re saying.
Dan Elwood: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Or somebody’s gonna take your job or you’re gonna lose the game. But now there is there’s no one coming for you. But not in the same way. There’s no one’s gonna take your job because you took a day off or we’re a little bit slower. You’re not going to lose the game because you slow down. So the goal needs to shift from, from the immediate to like today.
So like, the long term, how can I how can I sustain this forever and a lot of it is getting back in touch with your feelings and understanding that like, yeah, I went my, I got my squat from, you know, 350 to 405. My back hurts, then that wasn’t a probably wasn’t a good thing. But just if you’re measuring it by the amount of weight, you squatted, it was a win.
If you’re moving worse, and you’re not able to train for the next two weeks, because your back hurts, that wasn’t a good day. So like you said, it’s, it’s a balance of the qualitative and the quantitative. Because you should, is also an improvement. If you squat the same amount of weight, it feels better. If your joints are better like you wake up the next day, and Oh, my back doesn’t hurt. My knees don’t hurt. That might be a bigger win, then. Oh, I squatted 25 more pounds. Yeah, but totally, or pain or anything.
Steven Washuta: Exactly. And you know, just to add to that I had a sports medicine doctor. His name is Dr. Amato Galloway. He’s our showroom rheumatologist and a sports medicine doctor. That’s a lot of schooling to do both. Yeah. And he’s on the podcast. I think it’s coming out next week. And we talked about rheumatology and different sports medicine things. But he had mentioned in the podcast, which I thought was a great point. I’ve never stated it this way. It’s sort of along the lines of what you were just saying, Dan, we shouldn’t be better lifters.
As we’re older, better, right? Our form should be better. Everything should be cleaner, like you might not lift as much, but you should be way better. Not only because you’re in tune with your body, but just because you have 1000s more repetitions than you were before. And I think that’s not always like a focus for people. But it should be and it’s different from me and you your work trainers, right? So like, part of what we do.
My clients used to call them the money moves, they would say, you know, I started working out with you, Steve, I said why? I said like my reputation, word of mouth. Sometimes it was yes. But usually it was like, Oh, we saw you doing something in a gym and like you were just so smooth, right? Like, we couldn’t believe you can do that. It’s like, I don’t even notice. And you don’t even notice because we’ve done these things. 20,000 times, right? How many times if you’ve done just like a reverse lunge with your knee into the air, right? Like, you’re not thinking that it’s even difficult.
I think, as you know, as these athletes transition back in, they should think of it in an athletic way where it’s like, I need to be awesome at this. It doesn’t need to be the weight doesn’t need to be high, it should look smooth, it should feel good. I should look good from afar. And I think that would help sort of like the alphas who want to be good at stuff.
Dan Elwood: Yeah, it’s yeah, it’s just changing the goalposts and moving the goalposts but you’re still progressing towards a goal, you’re still getting better at something, you’re still expressing yourself, your body and your expertise, and your capabilities. It’s really interesting.
You just kind of reminded me of this, but I think like, even if you don’t know anything about training, or like kinesiology or movements, biomechanics, when you see it, you know, and it’s ingrained in us just as humans, when we see like, good human movement, it’s like, wow, that’s, that’s impressive.
That’s beautiful. Even if you can’t explain why your lunge looks better than you know, some, some other guy in the gym who has never done a lunge before and just kind of making it up as he goes and his feet are collapsing and his back is rounded. When you see it done, right, is that okay? That’s what it is. So it’s good to have that standard in mind. And you can do that for other people so that they see beautiful movement because then everybody wants to move better.
Steven Washuta: Totally. Yeah, great point it’s in and I hope I hope everyone wants to move better that should be the ultimate goal right not just the way moving better and I also found you need to work you being a personal trainer all of us we need to work with our client’s personalities.
Not everyone’s the same, right? You can you might work like now we’re talking about athletes and athletes have a lot of same tendencies but but but they’re not all the same, right? There are different types of athletes and I think for those athletes who have a maybe a bad relationship with the weight room, they’re sick of it right, they’re all they spent all their time in the weight room.
As a trainer, it’s it’s it’s up to you and if you don’t have the skill set to pass them on to someone else to find another modality for them. So I have a boxing and kickboxing background. So right now for instance, I’m working with someone who was a high-level soccer player and just hates the weight room because they had a lot of leg stuff.
He was doing the weight room, but we’ll just do 45 minutes of boxing, right and you know, he’s in his 40s now so he’s not looking for anything like exceptional he’s just looking for overall health and wellness and heart health and moving around and, and he loves to just box for 45 minutes and that’s okay, right. You can box for 45 minutes for the rest of your life and be in good shape three or four days a week and I think finding these different modalities to challenge your body it, there’s something for you out there to do.
Dan Elwood: Yes, there is. Yeah, yeah. For anybody who thinks that they don’t like training, that you have a body, there’s some, there’s a way that you can move it, it’s gonna bring you joy and get you excited about doing it more like boxing is an unbelievable workout. Yeah, party, oh, like just movement. And it’s, and that’s what it is, like, as you get good if you can work at, it’s like skill, acquisition, movement quality.
And when you see somebody who really knows what they’re doing boxing, it’s a beautiful thing. It’s, it’s, there’s so much carryover to whatever that thing is that you can find that can get you excited to train again. Do it, I think that’s what’s sort of the best, the best advice they give anybody who’s like, burned out and doesn’t want to get back into the gym.
Steven Washuta: Yeah, and anybody who has injuries, like, that’s just not a good excuse, because those, like, you’re just going to fall further down this rabbit hole of not being able to do anything. And it’s, you know, I feel bad for anybody who has injuries. I’m one of these people, it’s like, you know, it’s like the word of the court like the guy flying.
Like, if I have like, three beers, I can’t like to walk for the next two days, like, my body’s just like, doesn’t like I don’t do any sort of sickness hangover, or like, or the actual flu. Or if I’m injured, I’m like, I’m like, depressed, literally depressed, I can only imagine what it’s like for someone who has like, a really big surgery. And they’ve just, they’ve just like, fallen off the wagon, so to speak, and they can’t, and they’re just so worried about it.
But it’s only going to get worse, right. And then we know that you become deconditioned. And then it’s even harder to get back into shape. So eventually, like you said, Dan, with the finances, it’s like, when was the best time to invest 10 years ago, when’s the second-best time right now you have to just say, I’ll start slow. But I have to start today.
Dan Elwood: Yeah. And that’s it, start really slow. You don’t need to overdo it, it could literally just be like a light yoga session where you’re moving your body, you’re getting the blood flowing, you’re getting the lips flowing because that’s going to help everything else recover. And that’s going to help your body to become more of itself again.
Because there’s really not like, very few, if any injuries that actually get better from rest in the long term. Like maybe after a traumatic injury, you might need to wait a few days. But as long as like, the sooner you can get something moving again, the more life you’re going to bring back to it, the more resources you’re going to bring into those muscles and bones and joints. And allow your body to heal itself.
So just do it just get your body moving in some way. And then start small. And then like I said before, I always say like build momentum, that it’s just progressive training next week is going to be a little bit more than this week was in the following weeks is going to be more in two months from now. It’s going to be hard to remember, back when you were just sitting on the couch, wishing you could train again. But if you don’t do anything, you’re going to be in even worse shape in two months.
Steven Washuta: Yeah. And it’s, you know, I had a conversation and I was going to tell you about this off-camera, but I’ll just tell you about it on camera cuz I don’t care. But there’s an app, I think you’ll really like cold wisdom. Basically, someone like you who has, you know, expertise in fitness and health and mindset.
All of these areas can go on it’s sort of clubhouse ask, I don’t know if you know about it, but you know, you’ll go, yeah, you’ll go on. You could just start a topic, type in a few tags, and then just start talking. People hop in and they ask you questions, and they hop out and they do the sorts of things but and you’d be great on it. You know, both of you, obviously.
Dan Elwood: Yeah, we actually recently have been using Go-Go on? Yeah, so
Steven Washuta: So I was just talking to someone on wisdom. And we were talking about how important injury prevention is. But how unfortunate it is that it doesn’t matter. It seems like what you tell people, even someone like you, who’s like been through the grind.
Like if you were to make this speech, I feel like two let’s say an incoming freshman in college, you go back to your college, and you’re speaking and like you can speak about whatever you want, then, and you go, I want to tell you guys about how important injury prevention is, like maybe 10% of those kids would take it seriously, but like until you actually get injured.
And until you’re dealing with all of these things, you just don’t have the foresight to think about it. And it’s so important for the general population, to not train like Arnold Schwarzenegger and to focus on their movement patterns, and to focus on overall health and wellness and make vanity secondary because I and even if you reach we reach one person support and when you get injured and when you have to take those steps backward, it is a horrible snowball effect, right?
Especially if you’re older, if you’re 60 years old, and you get injured, and now you’re in a wheelchair and before you know it, you’re deconditioned and now you have type two diabetes and now you have COPD and then you’re dead. So, injury prevention, there’s nothing more important than that.
Dan Elwood: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the best. The best ability is availability yourself that you’re able to keep moving in Doing things and you’re going to, you’re going to benefit so much just from the accumulation of all the years of training, even if it’s not, you know, crazy going hard than you would if you worked really, really hard, and then hurt yourself.
And, you know, take one step forward, two steps back, and then try really, really hard to prove yourself and miss, yeah, two weeks, three weeks a month. And it’s like, every time you try to come back, it gets harder and harder.
Steven Washuta: Do you want to transition into working specifically with more former athletes? Is that something you’re already doing? If it happens, it happens.
Dan Elwood: It’s something that kinda seems to be happening on its own. I’ve been working with a lot of athletes lately. And a lot of people sort of in the same situation where they may be like, stopped training when they’re when their sports ended, or they just sort of maybe transitioned more toward business, and we’re gonna like, I’m going to focus, I’m gonna take this same passion and drive, but I’m gonna put it into my business.
Yeah. And then all of a sudden, you notice that, you know, as, as the business got better, the training dropped off. Yeah, now, and now they’re successful, and everything’s going well, except they’re 20 pounds overweight, and their back hurts. Yeah, that’s okay, let’s you have you have this background, you have this understanding of movement like that, that is not going to go away, you’re going to be able to find that you have this understanding of discipline, you know, what it takes to be successful.
So let’s take that. So sort of, like I said earlier, like, it doesn’t have to be two hours a day. But if you can take that discipline to show up and do 30 minutes, every day, you can slowly get yourself back on track. And it’s it’s so exciting to watch people who kind of thought that you were just done with training or like, yeah, that’s what I did as a kid and watch them sort of come back to life a little bit and watch the pain go away.
All of a sudden, they’ll show up. This is like, My back doesn’t matter. Yeah, hands like this. Is that so much more exciting to me than watching them lift heavy weights? Totally. Yeah. But then it’s also exciting to see someone like, you know, deadlift 315, and I haven’t done that in 10 years. As like, that’s that’s also like, that’s so exciting.
So yeah, it’s, I’m not intentionally looking for athletes, but they seem to be finding me and I really enjoy working with them. Yeah, I think it’s just, it’s good to like people that I can relate to. Yeah, totally. I love. I love training anybody. But yeah, it can be exciting.
Steven Washuta: I don’t think this is personal trainers. I know a lot of us, I hate it. I’m sure you do. I hate being salesy. It just doesn’t come natural. For me. I don’t I don’t like any of the salesmanship-type stuff. But if we’re if we’re actually trying to help our clients, you do have to find their pain points, whatever that is to to drive them to fitness.
Maybe it is that, you know, they have four kids and they love their kids. And you have to say, Hey, listen, Bob, you know, your back is screwed up, you’ve gained 60 pounds. And now you now you’re pre-diabetic about to be you know, type two diabetes, like, if you if you want to see your kids, you know, play lacrosse in college and go visit them across the country. You know, the clock’s ticking, you have to start to get back in shape, right? Find your clients pain points and what they are. So what I see a lot of athletes do it’s funny you say the business thing.
The second that’s the first most thing you see, right? They transfer that into business. The second thing is golf. They get addicted to golf, right. Yeah. So so when I tried to do some of those people say you want to be better at golf? Well, guess what? You got to be better at fitness and health, right? Have to be more flexible.
You have to be able to rotate better, you have to be able to round through your legs and engage your glutes and smaller accessory muscles in your legs, right? Also need stamina because swinging a club 90 100 times right? If your warm up swinging, maybe you have 150 swings on the on the 18th hole is much harder than it is on the first hole.
Do you think you’re good? You’re getting that club up to the same area but you’re not because your your lats are tired and your traps are tired and your rhomboids lifting that up. So we have to get you back in shape and it’s going to help your golf whatever it is sometimes you just have to be salesy to help people.
Dan Elwood: Yeah. But yeah, you can tap into that sort of innate competitiveness. And you have golf, golf is great. But you also don’t want to go out and lose. You want to be the worst guy in every in your foursome every weekend. Yeah. So you if you can be better down the back nine, you’re going to be a better golfer, and that’s going to come from ease of movement.
So you’re not fighting yourself, you can actually transition force through your body naturally, and kind of move with your body move with your joints. I think that’s a really good example.
Steven Washuta: Yeah, and obviously, as trainers, we know enough where we can demonstrate exercises that would, you know, sort of be ideal for that movement. Right and nothing has to be I look at personal training as an art. I’m an artist. I’m not a scientist, right? So like when I look at the like the floor is my easel.
And you know, all of the machines are sort of like my colors and I just it’s an art right Like, sometimes, of course, there’s science behind it, right? There’s kinesiology, the body, but sometimes just to go, Oh, there’s the golf swing, I can pick up some sort of ball and replicate that swing and do a slam, like sort of like a throw slam against the wall, right.
And I’m focused on my client’s hip rotation, and how they release the ball and where their feet are, and how they feel in the motion. Right you can, you can be creative with your clients and think of exercises, you don’t have to just have a golfer background necessarily, in order to help your client.
Dan Elwood: Yeah, you don’t need to go go search for this study that tells how you generate more force on your golf swing, you can see it and you can see, like, exactly, you said, like, if you can’t rotate your hips, you’re not gonna be able to generate enough power.
So you’re not going to have that long drive that you want. But then also if that hips not rotating, something’s gonna have to rotate. So that’s, that’s, that’s the incoming to your back. So all of a sudden, not only are you a worse golfer, now your back pain. And we can fix both of those with kind of opening up some hip mobility and that internal rotation on
Steven Washuta: exactly right. So and you’re using the science, you’re using a reason where, where they can help themselves out from a pain standpoint, and a reason they can help themselves out on the course. Right? So, I mean, and and we just sometimes have to do that. And again, it’s it shouldn’t feel sales money, because you’re actually helping them right.
So you’re not, it’s not like you’re selling them some like lemon car, and you’re like, you’re you’re selling you’re upselling them something that’s going to give them value that they would have never done on their own.
And this is actually a conversation I had with Dr. Mark, who’s coming. I think his episode comes out the last week in March. He’s the equivalent to like a registered dietician, but in Canada. So I think they call it something different.
But really, his focus is on like helping coaches especially like nutrition-based coaches. Like, really pitch themselves and like how they do things. And I can tell you that again. I just told you that I’m bad at like being a salesman, he just said, sometimes you have to do it, right. And part of what you have to do is someone like you, you can educate your clients.
But is that the best way to get the clients. A lot of times you want to sort of inspiring on the front end. You could educate afterward, right? So it is imperative that we get the clients inspired, find their pain points, and get them active. And then if we trust in our ability. Then we can educate and actually help them once we sort of capture them with that inspiration.
Dan Elwood: Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly what you’re saying before. But like, aesthetics, and people. People want to look a certain way, and they’re willing to do anything to look a certain way. Yeah, so it’s gonna be, you know, it’s not gonna be the best sales call. If you’ll if they’re like, I want to, I want to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
And you’re like, Yeah, well, actually, you need internal hip rotation. Yeah, like, they’re not going to be excited to work with you. So you There is definitely that, like, let’s, let’s meet them where they’re at. And I always say, like, aesthetics opens the door.
They’re like, Yeah, I can get you jacked, I know it. I know what it takes, I know how to get jacked. Come to the gym, like, I’ll get you jacked. And then you slowly, slowly work on Oh, you know, you could, you could squat more weight. If we fix your feet. If we fix you know that hip rotation. Or if we loosen up your hamstrings a little bit. You work on mobility,
Steven Washuta: Totally, especially because the things you’re saying, demonstrate that you care. And once they know that you’ve built that personal side of personal training. And that you care, of course. They’re going to say, Yeah, you’re like, This person is helping me out. They are regardless are spending this hour with me. They can do anything if they’re taking the time to stop and notice this and say that I need this. They’re the expert. And they’re being helpful. So I know that this is going in the right direction, so to speak.
Dan Elwood: Yeah. Then, you know, when they do see results, it’s amazing. Then you get referrals and like business gets better because you’re the guy that gets results. That’s you don’t need to be salesy. At that point, you’re gonna get results. Yeah.
Steven Washuta: Yeah, that’s, that’s what it’s all about. Ultimately, we do a good job, word of mouth gets around. And obviously, it’s good to inspire on the front end. But those referrals will never happen. If you don’t follow through from inspiration to education. To sort of fixing whatever is going on.
Dan Elwood: Yeah, nobody, nobody who doesn’t get results is gonna go tell all their friends. They should be working with you.
Steven Washuta: Yeah. But it’s funny for a while, I thought I would just name myself like, a glute ologists. Because everyone was like, oh, I’m looking for a glute ologists and then when they would come in. I would just log in. I’m like, actually, I’m here for like full-body health and wellness, and not for your glutes. But you’re already here. So let’s let’s just start the session. You’ll trust me afterward. But that’s
Dan Elwood: whenever it takes a little Trojan horse getting in the door.
Steven Washuta: So tell us a little bit more about the podcast. Give me the next episode coming up or the last episode. Tell me a little bit about it and let my listeners know where they can find Uh,
Dan Elwood: yeah, so um, so it’s my girlfriend and I we co-host. It’s called the deep life. And you can find it anywhere, anywhere, there’s podcasts, the, especially today, the day we’re recording, this is less. So it’s my friend Cory and his wife, Megan, who owned vitality, human performance. So he’s an excellent trainer, because he was a college football player, a lot of similar background. He’s also a Korea’s full-time police officer, and, you know, just opened a gym.
And so he’s a, he’s the head trainer, his wife is pregnant, they got married, I think a year ago. And she’s also a coach at the gym. So they have so much going on. Really impressive, that they’re able to sort of juggle all these balls at the same time do all these things.
And we had a really, really good talk about, you know, a lot of similar ideas. That we had we talked about today where it’s, you know, training is important. But it’s the other 23 hours in the day, and how are you taking care of yourself? Are you sleeping? Like what are you eating? How good is your sleep quality? How are you breathing? You know, what is your day look like? How stressed are you and how all these little things happen? And you kind of hinted earlier before, but how to like, people don’t even realize that they don’t feel good. Until they do feel good.
Then they realized they were just their normal wasn’t. You know, what should what could be? Yeah, so we had so we talked about that a lot. But we’ve had, you know, a lot of different love different political episodes. Sorry, where we have, we’ve interviewed a bunch of really good guests. We also do, probably about two-thirds of the episodes are just my girlfriend, Elise and I just having conversations. Which was sort of the catalyst for starting the show.
Anyway, if you’d like to have really deep discussions and kind of figure out life. Whether it’s health, spirituality, mindset, and kind of get to the bottom. And ask questions, ask difficult questions and question our own beliefs.
So we’re kind of all over the place. We talk about spirituality, we talked about, you know, mindset and mental growth, we talked about nutrition, chocolate training. So yeah, if anybody you know, check it out. You can find it anywhere where you listen to podcasts, it’s called the deep life. And then our company is momentum, strength, and wellness.
And that’s mentioned before what we’re doing. We kind of work together with training. Where it’s sort of a whole lifestyle thing where it’s, you know, the same idea. It’s not, it’s not just the hour, you’re spending training. It’s power, all these other little things you’re doing in the day. You know, we’re always talking about creating a lifestyle that supports your goals.
You know, it’s the things, eliminating the things that you do throughout the day that are holding you back. And then also improving the things that you’re doing every day anyway. So it’s, you know, you’re breathing, obviously, all day. So we want to focus on good breathing quality. Make sure you’re breathing deeply, and through your nose. You’re walking every day.
It’s walked with good, good form, and let’s get outside and take advantage of that. You know, having a meditation practice and eating. Eating good quality food, staying hydrated, so all the little things. But then also, you know, training programs. And, you know, customized training and customized nutrition, whatever people need
Steven Washuta: the podcast, your IG handle, and the website will be listed in the description. Dan, thanks so much for joining the tools.
Dan Elwood: Awesome. Thank you for having me on. There’s a lot of fun.
Steve Washuta: Thanks for joining us on the Trulyfit podcast. Please subscribe, rate, and review on your listening platform. Feel free to email us as we’d love to hear from you.
Thanks again!
