Nutrition, Training and Staying Healthy as a Busy Business Owner | AJ from Team Ecto

Cold Open

AJ: Like, uh, gross. Having an extra creatine for the brain function is very, very beneficial.

AJ: They're going to the gym 5 days a week and they're not seeing any results.

Kane: That probably closest we got to losing everything, like everything. Closest to losing the house.

Meet AJ: Why Nutrition Is Harder Than Exercise for Most People

Kane: Hey, I'm Kane Taylor Smith, the founder and CEO of Smart Fix and High Potential. This is Unlocking Business. We have real conversations around business, leadership, mindset, and personal growth. If you've been getting value from these conversations, please take a second to like, subscribe, and follow our channels. It helps us reach more people, bring on more guests, and share more stories. Now, let's get into this episode.

Today, we're joined by AJ from Team Ector. I've personally known you for around 5 years and we've worked together as you being my personal trainer on and off during that time. It's hard to stay consistent. You work a lot with busy people who try to improve their health and fitness routine, mindset, while balancing work and life. What's harder, nutrition or exercise?

AJ: Oh jeez, Kane, far out. So, we normally see, I guess, people depending on where they are in their stage of their fitness, right? So, I would personally reckon nutrition is hardest because it takes up way more time in the day than actual exercise. So, you can exercise anywhere. Recommended, like, 30 minutes a day if people can do it, even if it's just a 10-minute walk. But, for someone to eat consistently, or have healthier meals, per se, that is what's going to be harder because there's going to be an element of knowledge and understanding of what food you put into your mouth, what's going to be better for you. But then something that's really good for someone may be detrimental to someone else. And we see that, with so much information out there, which is why, yeah, I would personally reckon nutrition's definitely harder, and we do way more education for my clients and clients in the team around nutrition than it is training. So —

Kane: I'd just say cuz that's definitely harder for me.

AJ: Yeah, yeah.

Kane: Especially getting a bit older.

AJ: Yes.

Kane: It's a lot more preparation, hey?

AJ: Yeah, and we see people say they go to the gym 5 days a week and they're not seeing any results. Right, but you look at them and be like, "Oh, well, what are you having for food?" And then they start rambling off the amount of takeaway they're having, or Uber Eats — something that's so easy as a click of a button now they can just go and get. Whereas it takes time in order to learn foods, and if you haven't been around and you're just getting into like, "Oh, what should I be eating?" Well, then that's where you start to go, "Okay, small changes in someone's lifestyle for their nutrition is what's going to take the most time." Cuz anyone, like I said, anyone can train, right? The biggest issues people have when it comes to training is they might be injured or they don't know where to start. Whereas, like I said, with food it's like there's so much out there, so much information around — have this, not this, do this, not that, this is bad for you, this is good for you. But we see trends throughout the years, and I've been doing this for 12 years now, that 10 years ago people weren't even talking about some of the things they're talking now. Or they've scrapped it out. From the keto to the fasting to all these fad kind of diets that go in and go out. You got people, Instagram influencers, all these people now as well, they're just fluxing the internet with all this information. Don't even get started on AI, right? My gosh, man, ChatGPT or whatever you're going to be using — that's just so much information that goes into it. You're like, "Is this good for me?" Yes, no, maybe, who knows? So yeah, I mean, they say as well, abs are built in the kitchen, right? But like I said, back to the main thing is that if you train 5 days a week and not getting any results — so the nutrition is really what's going to make you feel better, for one, just from a nutritional standpoint, and two, get the results that you're kind of aiming for to look better as well, to provide more confidence as well, depending on the person.

What Does "Inflammation" Actually Mean?

Kane: So with the amount of information that is online, because there is obviously just overwhelming amounts of information — you mentioned obviously influencers and stuff. They will see used as like a buzzword or like a fad — like inflammation is the one that seems to be popping up at the moment. What does that even mean?

AJ: So inflammation, you've got so many variations of inflammation, so to speak, right? You can have, from an injury standpoint, you got inflammation to the side of injury. Let's say you cut your finger, all right? You see it probably in the trades a lot, people smash their finger or whatever it may be, or they cut themselves. You can have an acute inflammation response. A bit like exercise — you can have a positive inflammation response based off training and exercise, and you're flooding the muscles. You have micro damage in the muscles from when you train. And that's going to create this acute response of inflammation which is going to draw more blood flow to the area, and then that's going to cause the good nutrients to go there, get bigger muscles.

Kane: Is that the correct —

AJ: When we have a negative effect of inflammation, we tend to look at that more from a systemic response. So from the system itself, let's say you have something that goes into the body and your body doesn't react well with it, right? So let's talk about more of this gut inflammation. That's a big buzzword people talk about, like, "I got gut inflammation, I'm inflamed, I feel puffy," and all this stuff. So —

Kane: Is that —

AJ: Bloated, yeah. That's a GI kind of inflammation, so your gastrointestinal tract kind of thing. So that's, yeah, we can say stomach, as make it easy. Gluten's a big one. Gluten will can cause inflammation if your system is unhealthy, right? So then people go completely away from these factors because it's like, "I'm just going to cut all that stuff out to reduce this inflammation."

Kane: And that causes like the fad diets.

Gut Inflammation, FODMAP, and the Problem With Fad Elimination Diets

AJ: That's where the fad diets — FODMAP is massive.

Kane: What's that?

AJ: FODMAP. So it's a certain diet. I'm not going to really get into the acronym of it, cuz — again, everyone forgets things, I'm not the smartest kid on the block, like, I'm way off track, whatever. But, from a FODMAP, it's basically an elimination diet and you cut out certain food groups that have more of a potential to cause this bloating. What happens is people who go on these things, they're really good initially to reduce this inflammation because of this food that kind of creates this acute and then chronic inflammation which has been around for long periods of time. They cut all this out, they lose weight, they feel good, but they've completely neglected food groups. What people don't understand is that you have to have slow introduction back into all these foods once the system and your health is back on track. Otherwise, you're losing — I'm going to use a big word here — biodiversity. So, the amount of bacteria within your gut. You've got good and bad bacteria. You've got neutral bacteria, but the good and bad bacteria — if you clear out entire food groups, you're going to lose certain bacteria from these food groups that are really actually beneficial to your gut itself and overall health. So then people who cut out all these things, they may only have 10 foods that they eat day in day out, and everything that they have in from a social life aspect, from a work life balance, they feel bloated every time they eat these things outside of these 10 foods. So, again, chronic use of these fad diets and cutting out all this crap. Then they try to have these things that their body's not used to anymore because they haven't slowly introduced that. Right? So this again — from a massive inflammation perspective, they don't understand that thing. They just see this buzzword inflammation. "Okay, cool. I'm going to get this gut health protocol. I'm going to have this detox cleanse." Three-day detox. They do a juice cleanse.

Kane: Juice cleanse.

AJ: My gosh, yeah. Juice cleanse. It's like, "All right, so I'm having orange juice?" No, they do — it's juice cleanses and they feel really good. It's because they've cut out so much crap in that diet. But then they don't change their lifestyle components. So then let's slowly reintroduce some decent, good, healthy foods. Shameless plug in, but the Mediterranean diet is probably up there with one of the better diets for a lot of people to have, because it's got a lot of foods and food groups in there that help reduce inflammation based off the vegetable intake that is there, the fruits, the nuts that you're going to have, the meat — sorry to the vegans, vegetarians, but there's obviously alternatives to these — but it's basic, and there's so much diversity in that food group.

Kane: Right. So they talk about the rainbow colors and like purple and stuff.

AJ: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, like vegetables, having a plethora of different colors and vegetables.

Kane: Plethora. What is —

AJ: I know other big words. It's the coffee, man. It's coffee's got to be big. But you have a lot of these changes in the — you know, there's not just green vegetables. You've got different — like I could — right off, like, from root vegetables or bitter vegetables. There's different food groups in which vegetables can occur in, and they have different influences on the digestive tract which can help promote, again, reduce inflammation. There's a big thing called antioxidants, all right? And that's where these vegetables can kind of come in. So some examples are cruciferous vegetables — that's another one — they're high in vitamins in your antioxidants foods, and that's can be contradicted to people who are on low FODMAP diets, because broccoli is up there with one of those ones where it can cause some issues with the gut which causes inflammation, and then you're going to neglect it. But then they're neglecting some of the antioxidant properties that actually help with inflammation. So again, it's part of this circle that potentially can occur, and then that's where people start to freak out, like there's too much issues going on. "Nutrition, it's too overwhelming. Don't know what I'm doing and there's no guidance." Yeah, they don't do anything about it and then they just continue to train, and bloating's normal — "I'm going to have this after I eat." So —

Can You Get Tested to Find Out What Foods Suit Your Body?

Kane: So can people get properly tested to know what suits their body? Like how do you actually —

AJ: Yeah, so there are testings, like — I don't necessarily like them, and a lot of the educators that I learn from, they're useful in a nuanced perspective — not nuanced, man, in a way in which they're going to be dedicated and useful for that person — but there are ones where you can have those tested, like allergens. A big one is like the types of DNA that you might have mutations in certain genotypes or genes within your system that don't allow you to digest certain things, or hormones are out of whack, whatever that may be. But that's talking about the one percenters. The rest of the 99% is like your lifestyle components — what do you do on a daily basis to help your health and lifestyle. If you've done everything right, that's when you start to look down those tracks of — right, people think they're gluten sensitive or gluten intolerant, or then even celiac, where they actually have an autoimmune response to these glutens, and then they do the celiac testing. Whereas a lot of people who do the celiac testing, they come back — "Oh well, you're not actually celiac." "Oh why? I'm so afraid of gluten in that sense," and they bastardize it from a point of like a fearful thing, because it causes that bloat, right, and then they cause that inflammation. So that in itself, where people can go for these tests — yeah, there are tests out there to determine it, but it may not necessarily be that. So they don't look at the broader picture, if that makes sense.

Where to Start With Nutrition Without a Coach or Nutritionist

Kane: So how would the general person even start then if they're not going to go down the path of getting those tests, if they don't have a personal trainer or a nutritionist? How do they even —

AJ: Well, yeah, so it is going to start from a hierarchy, and we say like everyone just pushes the supplements. We won't go into the supplements too much, cuz that's again another big buzzword out there, I'm not going to get into it, it's not a fitness podcast. But from a period perspective, it's like, right down the bottom layer, it's an education perspective of things. So, educating yourself around food, but again, that's where it's the hardest because there's so much information out there. The next level up is more like the lifestyle and habits. So, what that means, and before you even start to do meal plans and meal prep, macro counting, calorie counting, whatever it may be, is focus on your lifestyle. Eating — even if you wanted to go off portion sizes, that's going to be a massive play. You can even go by different guides where it says a fistful of protein, palmful of carbohydrates, whatever it may be that you want to follow, or even off a dinner plate — just have a quarter of it protein, quarter of it carbs, the rest of it filled with vegetables that you want to enjoy and make them really colorful. So, they're things that you can just swap around, as opposed to jumping right into the deep end feeling overwhelmed by all these things, asking for help, seeking all the things, or AI writes you up a meal plan and perspective for that. It's like, all right, well, that's one way of doing it. Again, that might be a way in which a lot of people do it, and it's easy to do, but then if you want the education around why that's going to be better for you in the long-term success for it, that's where people start to need to invest in their health, invest in their coaching, invest in understanding and knowledge, so that becomes more of their lifestyle to be healthy and fitter. So, we're now living in a world where it's like super unhealthy, even though there's such a big health craze right now, there's still such a super unhealthy aspect of things as well. So, I guess, coming to the general population, working on lifestyle, and that doesn't have to be from food. It's like, can you just get up a little bit earlier, go for a 10-minute walk before you have food? Can you be exposed to sunlight? Not a lot of people understand sunlight and vitamin D and how that affects your entire system. So, just moving more is a big factor.

Morning Sunlight, Circadian Rhythm, and Vitamin D

Kane: What's that sunlight thing? It's supposed to be first thing in the morning?

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: Is, hey? Who talks about it quite a bit?

AJ: Yeah, so it's just from that early sunlight exposure. If you want to go down the whole environmental perspective, it's like, when do the birds start chirping and when do they finish chirping? Do you know? When the sun comes up.

Kane: When the sun comes up.

AJ: Yeah, so you got your circadian rhythm.

Kane: And that's —

AJ: Yeah, circadian rhythm. So, that's part of your body's internal clock. When you're waking up, your natural cortisol levels start to rise. You get a good vitamin D exposure. You get your sunlight. Now you're going away from this whole blue light perspective as well, but again, that's another topic. We mentioned blue light before with you. But from that in itself, can you actually see the sunlight? I think it's getting harder when it's winter because it's darker, and, you know, of where — mental cost, where there's people in England and they'll see the light for 4 hours a day. And I was like, that's very rough. So, then that's where that education, that coaching experience for these people to get onto things. They can start to look at supplements that build up these — I guess they're not inferior, the — what's the word I'm looking for? They might be less adapted to it. So, they're more vitamins and minerals. Yeah, the vitamins that they may be insufficient with. That's the word, insufficient. Into these certain macros or micros, more so. That's where the supplementation starts to come into it. But they're already trying really hard with their lifestyle factors.

Coffee Timing, Blood Sugar Crashes, and the Nighttime Snacking Cycle

Kane: Coffee when you wake up — you're not supposed to have caffeine within 3 hours of waking or something.

AJ: Supposedly, but there's still like — I have it right now, I woke up. I mean, I was up quite early this morning before the sunrise and stuff like that, but it doesn't necessarily mean you can't. It just depends on the person. This is where it starts to become that all that information is now dependent on the individual. So, some people can have the coffee and they can feel good — that gets them perked, gets them going for the day, they don't have the crashes later because their system is really good. Whereas people who bang on the coffee, they don't eat breakfast, they get to lunchtime, they have it and then they're crashing in the afternoon. Blood sugar levels might be an issue there because they haven't eaten in the morning, they haven't had even a decent lunch meal perspective. And then all of a sudden it's like, "Oh, I wonder why I'm crashing at 2:00, 3:00." Then they have another coffee.

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: Right? That gets them going again. But now they're heading to dinner, they haven't really had enough calories throughout their entire day. Get to dinner and now it's like, "Cool, here's my healthy food." But I'm probably only ever eating like 1,000 calories a day. And then all of a sudden it's like 6:00, 7:00, 6:00, 7:00, 6:00, 7:00. And then what happens 7:00, 8:00, 9:00? They start craving the chocolate. Chocolate comes out. They've had a really stressful day. So they start looking for more of packet food or salty food. Some people crave salt, some people crave sugar, you know, all that stuff. And then all of a sudden they've had an extra 1,000 calories after dinner based off snacking and stuff. They're still high off the coffee that they had at 3:00. And now they're struggling to get to sleep.

Kane: But I was going to say, I have so many questions — like you're not supposed to have coffee after a certain time cuz of the caffeine. Then exactly what you just said is I fall into that habit a lot where I'll have a coffee like 2:00 or 3:00. Have dinner when I get home maybe like 6:00, 6:30. And then that's — that kills me is after we go and watch TV, then you pull out the popcorn, chocolate.

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: And you're eating till like maybe 9:00. But then, like, you're not supposed to eat 2 hours before you go to sleep.

The 10-3-2-1 Rule for Sleep

AJ: So, yeah, we — I think it was a guy called Dan Garner. I remember way back when he used the 10-3-2-1 rule. And it was like — 10 hours, I might butcher this, I might butcher this. 10 hours before bed, no coffee.

Kane: 10 hours?

AJ: Right? 3 hours before bed, don't eat.

Kane: Mhm.

AJ: Right? Because it needs time for the digestibility of it. Now, 10 hours before coffee, that's because of the caffeine half-life. And they say you have 100 mg of caffeine at 12:00, in 10 hours you're going to have 50 mg of that coffee in there. I think I might again butcher the actual numbers of that, but that's the rationale for it. So, to make sure there's less caffeine in your system before you go to bed, right? The 3 hours before bed, not eating cuz of the digestibility, allows your body to calm down. 2 hours might be —

Kane: No light?

AJ: Yeah, screen.

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: And then an hour is kind of like — this is where you start your protocol of like calming down, your bedtime routine, like maybe read a book, relaxation kind of drills and stuff like that. Again, I definitely would have butchered those last two.

Kane: They sound right. Definitely sound —

AJ: Right. And I — again, if this is like a Q&A thing, I can just pop it back in there. 10-3-2-1, there's actual specifics of what it is, but that's roughly the rule which I use for the clients as well. So, obviously their situation is just dependent. Like I've got a lot of fly-in clients who come through — 3 hours before bed, they're getting back to camp 6:30, 7:00, and they're going to bed at 8:00. So, how they expect to then have food 3 hours beforehand — it just really depends, again information that's out there doesn't really apply to them. But the easy digestibility of these foods before they go to bed, or you may go for a walk after they have these foods to help with the blood flow, help with digestion, help get that moving before they go down. And then they can start to do more of their chill out, the breathing exercises. They're actually very, very powerful, especially if you're a really stressed person — actually getting some — they call it sympathetic and parasympathetic, or stressed and unstressed. They're actually getting this parasympathetic state. The breathing really works well there.

Breathing Exercises vs Meditation

Kane: Is that breath work or meditation?

AJ: You could look at meditation as some breath work there as well, but meditation would be more like that kind of mindfulness, gratitude, that kind of thing, which again, if that's someone who really struggles with that mentally, they can really bring them back to like, "Okay, cool, I've had a really rough day, let me be grateful for certain things." It might be like a 10, 15, 20-minute meditation period where that's their zone — they zone down, they focus on breathing, they think about the day that they've had, think about the positives that have occurred from it, without letting that brain cycle. But then you got people who can't even sit still for 2 minutes, and you're trying to get them to do some breath work, they're like, "Man, I'm already gone, going." Right? There's a category of people there, but this isn't to diagnose or whatever like that. It may be for it, but those people can still start with maybe doing five or six deep breaths before they eat, just to help calm their system down before they inhale their food, which they shouldn't be inhaling their food. Cuz again, that's another digestibility issue. So yeah, back to like the eating before bed, that's another big thing, but then that can be applied to every time you do eat. Like slowing down when you eat. Workforce, terrible with it. You may get your 30-minute smoke-o, but I'm sure like a lot of your workers are probably at 10 minutes, 15 minutes, they just inhale their food, and then they're just chilling out for 15 minutes.

Kane: Eating while driving, man.

AJ: Yeah, I mean, eating while driving as well. You're stressed out about the road, you're inhaling food, and they're like, "Man, I didn't have time to sit down and digest it, understand that my food's going into my mouth." They're not chewing their food, which now you've got these larger particles of food that go into your system, and this may cause that bloating later on because your stomach's not designed to churn and digest large amounts of not necessarily food volume, but large portions of food. So like an example would be like you're eating a steak versus some beef mince. Beef mince you can already look at that as, like, kind of pre-chewed, so it's going to be easy to digest. Again, red meat versus white meat — if you were to rub, let's say a chicken breast versus chicken mince, or chicken breast versus white fish, the white fish is going to crumble a lot easier than the chicken breast. So, this is where the digestibility comes from in certain foods — if you are strict for time and you can't really sit down to eat your food, having foods that are easier to digest, and making the harder foods at first thing in the morning versus before bed. A lot of people have steak before bed. They wake up in the morning feeling kind of bloated still. One, they've bolted their food cuz they haven't cut it up fine enough. Mum hasn't cut it up for them, you know, so — that's a dig at my mum, used to cut it up until I was 20. That's the joke in my house. And then they just inhale the food. So, they might have a two, 300 g steak, it's gone in 10 minutes. It's like, "Mate, where did that go?" You just inhaled it. It's like, "Yeah." And then their body hasn't stimulated their stomach to actually relax down again. So, it's still open. 30 minutes later, it's like, "Man, I'm still hungry." It's like, "Bro, you just had a thousand calories worth of food here, potato, steak, and all these vegetables and stuff. How can you be 30 minutes later and you're still hungry?" It's cuz your stomach is just fully expanded, and you don't have — haven't had that mechanical response to where it's like, "Oh, now I'm actually getting full now." There's this physiological response in your system. Then they overindulge, now they're going to have more of the snacks afterwards, and then they're like, "Oh man, I feel gross now." Right? So, this other cycle.

Why Slowing Down Your Eating Helps With Bloating

Kane: I didn't know about steak, cuz I've always wanted that. Whenever I do have like a steak and veg, I am always hungry after.

AJ: Yeah. So, if you slow it down, it's not so much about the protein itself, but if you slow down your eating and allow your body to understand that it's actually eating its food, from chewing, even from the smell of food, your digestion starts. You start salivating. And the saliva actually helps with the breakdown of certain foods, or breakdown of food in your stomach. So, when you're eating, you need to be able to chew it to cause more of the saliva — let's call that saliva amylase, that helps you digest it. And then that promotes more digestion, enzymes to be released from the stomach, from other organs, to help break everything down in the stomach. So, if you're skipping the crucial part of actually chewing your food, that's going down, you're not only struggling to get a certain enzyme which is going to help you digest this food, but then you're expecting your stomach to do all these things that then it should take 3 or 4 to 6 hours for all of that to start to clear. And then you can have your next meal. But then you've got all this other food that's in your system still.

Kane: So, does it still do the job? It's just delayed?

AJ: More delayed, yeah. And it's working harder. And that's where people are getting that bloatedness, or they still feel full in the morning because their body has now gone to sleep sitting there with a freaking steak in their stomach that hasn't been properly broken down. Right? So, yeah, I think a big thing is that people just need to slow down with their eating.

Do People Enjoy Food Anymore, or Is Everyone Too Rushed?

Kane: I'm just going to ask you that question — do you think people enjoy food these days or is everyone too rushed?

AJ: Well, that's the thing, right? So, you can look at it two ways. So, some people like myself — I'll have mince and rice in the morning for breakfast. And people are like, "How do you do that?"

Kane: I've actually had that before.

AJ: Yeah, not necessarily from an enjoyment — like I do enjoy it, but also from a goal related. But, I also work in the industry, I've had 12 years experience of this. My perception of breakfast is different, right? It's going to set me up for the day depending on what I have. Sometimes it's just a protein fat meal, again depending on what I'm doing. Whereas, yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of people out there because of stresses and stuff, people generally go towards food for that dopamine kick. So, if something doesn't taste nice or the texture's off or anything like that, they're not going to have it. And generally speaking, what's going to taste nicer, or what's going to taste the same so that they don't have that crossover between — or the texture's yucky, or they can't be bothered doing the 30-minute cook time that it may be, or even just from a meal prep perspective. They're not going to do that because, yeah, 2 or 3 days later that food that I have to heat up in the microwave is not fresh. People go for takeout — it's going to be the same thing, it's going to taste way better than what it is going to be eating. So, then you've got these receptors in your brain that are going to be like, "Okay, cool, I know what I'm having, I'm going to enjoy it more." Even though they're going to wolf it down. But then that gets the brain going to having more and more of that certain food, or whatever it may be, much like chips, or sugar. You're going to constantly go for it because you know that's going to taste nice. You're stressed out of your brains because that's what happens with stress — you lower the dopamine areas of the brain. So, that's like — you're wanting that feel-good taste. And cuz it's so easily accessible. So easy. Right. Yeah, you just — like you got a chocolate and you're like, "Oh, so I feel really good." And it's like, "I actually feel really crap now."

Breaking the Takeaway Crash Cycle

Kane: Yeah, that's the thing. So, this happens with us quite often. Like if we get a takeaway, like we had Chinese last night. Obviously, it's so tasty, so easy. Two clicks of a button on Uber and it's at your door in like 20 minutes. Smash that down. But then like we always feel gross after.

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: Maybe half an hour, 20 minutes after, I actually go into bed. You feel gross. Your stomach's awful. It's a bad cycle.

AJ: Sort it out, mate. We can sort it out. And again, to break that cycle, it's like, all right, well, can you recreate that and actually the enjoyment from cooking? Find the enjoyment in the cooking. Make it a kind of game. I was like, "Oh, how quick can I — without cutting myself —"

Kane: [laughter]

AJ: "— how quick can I prep this up?" Right, between the vegetables, whatever it may be, the noodles that you have. Chicken chow mein kind of vibe, you know, noodles or you have the rice with it, you have the chicken, have what you've got to do with it, make a stir fry. It doesn't have to be steak, vegetables, and rice. Can you get like — make a stir fry out of it, you know? However you want to cook it, make it enjoyable.

Kane: [snorts]

AJ: Get your aromas going, the smell, all right? It is going to be a delayed dopamine fix, but that delay always feels better. All right? You can now look at people who are constantly on their phone, all right? They're constantly flickering through, and it's so bad in today's society with it, because it's so easy to look at your phone and be like, "Okay, cool," there — 30 minutes later, it's like, "Oh man, I haven't done anything." And now from a business perspective, that is the worst thing to do, because now your productivity has gone down the drain, you've lost 30 minutes, and now you feel worse cuz like, "Great, I need to work harder to get this 30 minutes done." Unless you're really efficient at what you do and you do scheduling breaks here for yourself. But maybe that 30 minutes can be like a walk. So then you get the blood flow, you get to go outside, again from the vitamin D exposure, fresh air, brain stimulation cuz you got blood flow that's going from you being stagnant all day to now your body's going. Digestion again helps there. But then blood flow to the brain, feeling better, stress goes down cuz you're outside enjoying the environment, right? But from a delayed gratification, that's where a lot of people struggle with, cuz then no one wants to do it. That's like, "Oh great, it's going to take a while." It's like, "I want it now." And that's society — "I want it now." You see the generations now, it's "I want it now, I'm not going to wait for it, I'm not going to work for it."

Why a Walk After Eating Helps Digestion

Kane: Mhm. You mentioned it before about going for a walk after eating. I have heard that a fair bit as well. What's the —

AJ: It's the term — postprandial walk. So basically the idea, after you finish eating, going for a walk, and that's just to help with the blood flow, trying to circulation. Again, even posture when you're eating — if someone's crouched over, they're compressing their stomach, they're compressing their software, all that stuff. More inclined to even get heartburn cuz you're rushing your food down. Going down, the whole food's there, everything's compressed there rather than sitting upright, allowing the digestibility to occur, fill your stomach up well, rather than being so compressed. So, getting you outside of that desk posture from eating, or sitting down, standing up, going for a walk — everything's now gravity is helping it pass down. It's not a fast walk by any means, but it's just enough to kind of get the body stimulated in order to pump the blood flow around, get blood to the system. And you're not training, right? Cuz in training, if someone eats 30 minutes before training, or even like 10 minutes before training, or especially going for a run, people may get that stitch — yeah, that issue they get, the stitch, yeah. Running or exercise in general, you don't want blood in your stomach. Yeah, so it's, again, a fight or flight response. You're not going to stand there and just be like, "Okay, cool, I'm not doing anything." Your body's going, so then everything outside of your organs is going to the muscles in order to work and then go. Whereas, rest and digest — we hear everyone rest, we eat our food, and then we go for a nice walk outside, or walk in wherever, even around the house if it's raining and stuff. Just try it. Just try it when you do it. But yeah, that's the concept of it, is just for that blood flow to allow the digestibility to occur a bit more, and just helps with the stagnation of, yeah, just in general. So, I mean, where blood flow is, also lymphatic drainage, and lymphatic drainage is probably super powerful. Not a lot of people know of it. But again, another big misleading information around lymphatic as well, but that basically helps clear up anything that gets stuck in your veins, in your arteries, that flow back to the organs in order to — it's a big detoxification process, like this lymphatic drainage, right? So, just the walking, you get this pump that's going, that's going to help lymphatics as well.

Kane: So, how soon after you eat can you walk?

AJ: Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, take it 5 minutes to like actually finish up your meal and relax, and then you're like, "Okay, cool, I'll go up and go for a little bit of a walk." You don't be like, "Ah, I smashed my food and I've got to go."

Kane: Yeah, yeah. Just to get time done.

AJ: So, again, it's situation dependent. If you've got 30 minutes to eat and you take 25 minutes because you're actually sitting there resting, digesting and stuff like that, you're 5 minutes before you get back to work — take your time to get back to work. Don't rush straight back into it, cuz all of a sudden that rush is going to cause that stress response where blood flow is going to go away from those organs. Again, much like exercise, it's a stress response — a good stress response, unless you do it a lot, right? So, then you got the overtraining side of things, which — you train 5 days a week, not eating enough, not doing enough, and you're overtraining, under-eating — that's a whole big concept as well.

Managing Family Dinner Time With Young Kids

Kane: What if you've got kids?

AJ: Kids is tough. Kids is tough. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kane: Yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah, but got two girls and a —

AJ: Dinner time now, I'm like —

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: No, not possible. And this — again, easy to digest foods, depending on the age of the kids as well. Like I know yours are quite young. I've got a 3 and a 1/2 year old and 8-month old. So, dinner time gets pretty chaotic. Mrs. does really well with it, especially, you know, I do quite a bit of the cooking anyway. So, in order to cook and then feed the kids and stuff afterwards, that's a bit — that's a rush, it feels like a rush job. Now, if you have meal prep, like I have my meal prep, she's getting on the train with that, getting some meal prep stuff. So, it does take that burden of, like, I've got my meal, she's got her meal, kids have their meal. But at the same time, if you can actually all coordinate together and actually sit down for the meal, especially with kids — one, you get some quality time there. As much as it feels like a burden because it's stressful and rushed, but that's only because we're making it stressful and rushed. We can understand as well from a mental perspective, that's some quality time that, you know, you're going to look 10 years down the line where the kids are growing up, they don't want to sit at the table anymore. There's going to be times where it's like, "Well, let's just enjoy this time with them." It may be stressful, "I don't want to eat this, I don't want to eat that," that's cool, you don't want to eat that, that's fine, throwing the bowl everywhere, eating it, dogs come clean it up. But again, it's human nature — we are going to have those times where it's going to be rushed and stressful. It's a good thing for us to actually focus on our own, I guess, resilience to that. And now, I mean, I pull my hand up right now — having two kids, going from one to two has been absolutely chaotic. And my girl is very much like, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, do this, do that, do that." And I like that. I got two little pinkies for both my girls to wrap their hands around and stuff. They've got me wrapped around my little pinkies so much, right? So, when I'm trying to have a break, and I'm getting frustrated because they're not doing what I say, I say, "Okay, well, they're only going to be kids once, right?" They're never going to be the same person they are today as they are tomorrow because they're going to grow up. Who knows when the last time they're going to be like, "Hey, Daddy, can you do this?" Right? So, back to the dinner time, embracing the chaos, but then, I think if you got partners as well, trying to be on the same page — it's going to be chaotic, don't try to get that one person to do both the jobs, right? If you can evenly split that job, and this is where that big push now is — you've probably seen the TikTok trends and stuff, you've got the baby boomers, the Gen Z, the Gen Y, and these are the dads now, these are the moms now, working full-time, trying to be present at home. It's a big list of stresses and burden, but I think we've created that big list of burdens based off social media and what that person's doing, what this person's doing. "Oh, my parents never did that, I wasn't raised like that." Be your own person, don't worry about what other people are stressing about. Enjoy the time that you have with the family at the dinner time because, like I said, you don't know when the last time is going to happen. All right.

Adjusting Family Routines to What's Actually Realistic

Kane: You mentioned something quite earlier on about — I think how you said it was like adjusting to your lifestyle, and I think everyone's is so different, like all these subjects we talked about so far, some of them are just not possible, but it's like as long as people sort of have an idea or understand what is the best practice, they can do it as close as possible. Like obviously going for a walk after dinner with kids isn't possible, but chasing them around the house, getting them to bed, it probably factors in — although it could be stressful, but you're not just sat there watching TV, you're still moving around.

AJ: Yeah, and that's so big, because as much as parents work full time, whatever may be in the chaos that you get at home, kids are running around — level up, man, go play with them for that pre-bedtime stuff. As much as it's like we try to routinize our kids — I mean, it's great, we need routine — we personally have routine at home, like dinner, bath, bed, or even bath, dinner, bedtime story, bedtime. But if they are in that chaotic energy vibe, get it out there. Enjoy it with them, play with them a little bit, but then understand that, okay, cool, we are going to slowly turn it down a little bit, but then that's going to add into someone's lifestyle. So us with kids may do that, whereas people who don't have kids, they've got more time to do so. So absolutely it's individualized. Some people, that doesn't work for them, they might just be absolutely drained. You see that rule as well, it's like you walk home, your partner's at 10% and you're — you're both at 10%.

Kane: Those memes where you walk in and your wife is like screaming.

AJ: Bro, I swear it's never 50/50, man. As much as, like, if that person's at 40%, you have to be at 60%. I'm like, nah, man, sometimes you're at 30/30 and you just got to deal with being at 30/30. So that might be like, all right, well, rather than running around chaotically, can we get some toys and stuff to play with them and maybe do something different? They're still going to expend this little bit of time with you, and that's where the chaotic energy, I guess, comes from as well. The kids just miss you. They just want to play with you, right? So, can we do maybe some story time? Get them to read a book while I'm not by them, but with you. Get them to read the book, play I spy — man, my —

Kane: That's right. That's what we're doing at the moment.

AJ: Yeah, that's right. My favorite one is who can stay quiet the longest.

Kane: Sleepy lions?

AJ: Sleepy lions, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or bears not asleep.

Kane: Stay quiet longest.

AJ: Yeah, try that one, see how long that lasts. No, that's good. But, yeah, like you say, definitely individualized, and that's where, again, there's misinformation that can be provided cuz what works with one person wouldn't necessarily work for the next person.

How Far to Deviate From a Kid's Bedtime Routine

Kane: So, how important is routine then in that scenario we just spoke about with bedtime, cuz yeah, it's a hard one for me cuz I am so routine-based. How far — it's a hard question, but how far do you go out of routine? Like, if they're overtired, overstimulated, home from school, after nap, they're just going wild, it's dinner time, you still got to bath them, you got to do dinner, you got to do book time. But then, like, you should — or you could take them outside and go on the trampoline, like how much, like, throwing out the routine is realistic?

AJ: Yeah. So, exactly, it's very, very hard, and again, every family's going to be different, every person's going to be different, and you can use that for every individual out there, and that's where individualization, whether it be a meal plan, exercise, routine, is going to be different. Now, this is the hard bit because we are humans, and we strive off routine. That's why everyone's diet goes out the window come the weekend cuz they're not working, they don't have that routine. So, what about if a kid comes home, like you say, overtired, stimulated? All right, cool, come home, they might just go bedtime straight away. Again, this is not a two-dad podcast here, but you know what I mean? So, taking that into consideration —

Kane: Yeah, right, I feel like that. No, no, it's good.

AJ: [laughter] It may be just like, "Cool, let's get them bedtime." That's generally going to calm their nervous system down. If they're over-stimmed from daycare, from school, whatever it may be, that might be a good shout to try to just get them to have a shower first. Man, I swear, my toddler is a nightmare sometimes because — from daycare, and Miss is like, "Just get her to have a shower." Bro, it takes her 30 minutes just to get her in there to have a shower. And then it might be like a 5-minute job. But then all of a sudden it's like she's cool again. "Cool, let's go have dinner now."

Kane: Mhm.

AJ: And then that might set her off, because again, she's so stimulated about things, she's like, "I'm not having that, I want this." And you're like, "All right, well, cool, this is what we're going to have."

Kane: That's true.

AJ: It just depends on that place. That's not having every single day.

Kane: Mhm.

AJ: That's the issue. That's what people don't understand with routine. It's like a baby sleep schedule — if you're following that schedule —

Kane: Schedule. As jog on, man. If that happens, it happens, man.

AJ: One sleep outside of the schedule is not going to ruin the 2 weeks of doing really well. Plus the amount of developmental that goes into it. So, that's another big thing that people don't understand — childhood development happens so rapidly that they're going to have these emotional fights with you, which just look like tantrums, but it's their way of trying to regulate their emotions because they just have no idea what they're doing, right?

Kane: You know, the regressions.

AJ: Yeah, the —

Kane: Progressions.

AJ: You know, you got to talk — yeah, talk about that kind of —

Kane: It's progressions, but —

AJ: Yes, that's regression, that's backwards.

Kane: No, no, but regression — it's just a way to change it, cuz regression, like, signifies, "Oh, that's a bad thing."

AJ: But it's for them to develop, right? So you call it progressions, but like you played sport, you don't do penalties, you might have to run a few more laps of the oval, but hey, the positive is that I'm going to build a better aerobic capacity.

Kane: No, it is mindset only.

AJ: Yeah, positive mindset —

Kane: Positive mindset only.

AJ: David Goggins over here, bro. That's what it is. That's tough, that was hectic. But yeah, when it comes to routine as a person, you're going to have a bad sleep, you're not going to be able to get up at 4:00, 5:00 a.m. in order to do your morning routine. All right, what can sacrifice out of that? What's the absolute priority non-negotiables that that person has for the day? That gets done first, and then you slowly chip away at, "Okay, cool, well, if this happens, a meeting goes over, you get 10 minutes into your lunch break, now I've only got 20 minutes here." All right, what do I do? Do I smash the food down? Or do I inhale it?

Kane: Do I have food?

AJ: Yeah, exactly. Right.

Discipline vs Motivation: The Four-Tire Analogy

Kane: For routine, though — like I think I'm addicted to trying to follow a routine.

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: Like if we bring it back to the gym, for example — I know we've spoken about this a shitload of times. If I don't go to the gym at, like, if I'm not in there at 5:30, then my whole day's cooked in my head. I don't know what to do. I should just go in there, start the extra 10 or 15 minutes later, and just push everything back, in theory. But for some reason, it's just such a mental hurdle that I struggle to get over. It's like, it's not the end of the world if I'm not bang on time.

AJ: Yeah. Yeah, and it's like when someone peer pressures — the more you say no to it, the easier it becomes. But everyone's got a rubber arm. So, when it's in that case, 5:30, "If I'm there at 5:35 — I mean, I'm not going to be able to get out of here by 6:30 — I'm not going to do it."

Kane: Mhm.

AJ: All right, here you go. If you have a car, right? A car — you puncture one tire. Do you puncture the rest of the tires, or do you fix that one tire?

Kane: Fix it.

AJ: You fix it. So, what's the difference between, again, from a routine — if you have one off-plan meal, or something that doesn't go towards your routine, do you throw out the entirety of that day based off that one tire that's been punctured?

Kane: Sometimes.

AJ: So, right, that's the thing. But then you relate it to it as like, "Well, okay, I'm going to fix the tire." So, it's not the end of the world, that can get fixed. But let's say four tires, four meals — one meal that goes off, the other three can still be really good. Right. So, now we're starting to understand that. It's like, "Well, it's okay, that's okay for that." You don't make it to the gym one day — stuff happens. Are you going to then throw off the entire week because you haven't made that one day? And then all of a sudden, "Oh, my three-day routine turns into two days, I'm not going to do it." It's like, "Well, why not? You can still go the other days." Worst case or best case, you can go another day, that's okay. But it's okay also to rest. When people get sick, "Oh, I haven't trained," I'm like, "You probably need a rest. It's okay to rest." "Oh, yeah, but what about progress? I'm doing so well." It's like, "Yeah, but you've also probably been pushing yourself, then you've neglected some perspectives of things, and now all of a sudden you're sick. So, it's okay, it's okay to relax." "I've got kids, I've got gastro, diarrhea, whatever it may be." "Oh, I can't have bread, I'm going to ruin my meal plan." It's like, "Bro, you got to do what you got to do to get better."

Kane: Yeah, just survive for a week.

AJ: It will be okay.

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: All right? So, and I think — what's one day out of 365 days? There's going to be lots of different days where things are going to be worse, but in the grand scheme of things, I like to use the 90/10 rule. 90% of the time you're going to be really good, 10% of the time you're going to have some things that aren't going to fit the routine. General pop, I like them to be more so 80/20, cuz that gives them more of the social environment, social aspect. Again, you can apply that to —

Kane: What's that?

AJ: So, the 80/20 rule. Let's say general population — unless they're very goal-specific, and this is where, you know, we talked about like comp prep people, the people who get really good results, they're on the board, they're tracking everything they're doing —

Kane: To 1%.

AJ: Literally, if that. Like the 1% might be, "I didn't sleep an extra 30 minutes to get my recovery." Deep sleep, that kind of thing, right? But the difference is those guys get absolutely peeled, they look fantastic, and they're the ones who's really, really good, right? As a gen pop person — I seen this the other day as well — you can go 100% for 12 weeks, and then you do sweat off all for the rest of the 40. Fad diet, fad January.

Kane: Right, exactly, yeah. 75 hard, right?

AJ: Meant to build really good habits, and it's a little bit extreme. I like to hear people call it the 75 medium rare, right? So then you're doing it, but instead of doing two sessions every day, maybe you do a gym session, and then an outdoor session, a gym session, outdoor session. So now you start to build these habits, and it's a good habit builder as a 75 hard. Drinking more water is one of them, training well is another one, and just making that routine, okay? But if you're doing that for 75 days, and then what's the rest of the year look like? If you haven't implemented those habits and lifestyle behaviors of what that's supposed to do, you're not going anywhere. So back to the 12 weeks at 100%, and then you half-ass it the rest of the year, that's not going to make it work. But could you be 80% for the entire year? Absolutely. It doesn't look that hard, but you slowly break it down. Like if that's a year plan, it's like, well, man, all right, maybe for 10 months I'm going to be really good, and then 2 months I'm not. That's all right, but can you break that down to even weekly, daily?

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: Yeah. So if — now back to the tires.

Kane: It's not just — it's not just December that you have off.

AJ: Yeah, it's not just December.

Kane: It's literally daily you have one issue.

AJ: Best thing I've used for clients as well is everyone worries about what they eat between Christmas and New Years. No one really talks about between New Years and Christmas. So, ooh. But again, that's 1 week out of 52. All right? The math there is like 2%, right? But that's unrealistic, okay? So then if you look at the four tire analogy, one tire goes, you've got three there. That's 75%, that's pretty damn close to the 80% there. But then you're not 80% every single day, you might have a 100% day. If your next day is 80%, your accumulation is like 90% there. That's really good. So if you do more days that you're doing really well, come the weekend, it doesn't mean you just fully neglect the weekend cuz you can offset a lot of things that you've done for the week. And then you got the weekend warriors — Monday to Friday may be really good routine, and all of a sudden they come the weekend and everything's dog crap, they start again Monday. It's like, all right, but —

Kane: But even like 80/20 on the weekend — like if you are going out for a meal and a few drinks, that could be 20, 30% of the day, don't ruin your whole week for it. It's going to happen, but then the next day try and get back on track.

AJ: And exactly that, and that's perfect coming from you as well because you need to do that.

Kane: [laughter]

AJ: But in general, that's the way people go wrong — the routine goes out of whack. They may have breakfast out, and then all of a sudden it was like they pop the rest of their tires.

Kane: Just have Sunday off.

AJ: Yeah, I'll have Sunday off now. They have a big weekend, Friday they've gone drinking, Saturday gone drinking. They don't even get any meals in from the Sunday cuz they feel like crap. But then they come Monday and say, "Oh, I weigh so less." And it's like, "Yeah, because you didn't eat Sunday." And they're like, relax, man, you're dehydrated because you had a two-day bender, you haven't eaten for two days.

Kane: For a good reason.

AJ: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that, again, it's all situation dependent. 80/20 — if you follow that, it always breaks back down.

Intermittent Fasting and Time-Restricted Eating: Does It Actually Work?

Kane: I want to quickly ask — let me quickly — intermittent fasting, time restricted eating. What's your opinion on that?

AJ: Again, depends on the person. Yeah, it is a fad for people who do it all the time, but again it can be really good. So people get really good results off it off the bat, because if you say you have — let's say you have three meals a day, and let's say you have 800 calories per meal, 2500 calories in a day, all right? You drop one meal, yeah, you're 800 calorie down, you're still having 1600 calories — you've had 800 calorie deficit now by dropping that one meal. So, people are going to lose weight based off calories in and calories out. The downside is if you have a bad system. And that system includes what's your blood sugar levels like, what's your energy levels like, are you brain foggy, have you got good energy output, have you got a good system in place, are you eating well? People who do that 16:8 — 16-hour fast and have an eight-hour window to eat — yeah, they may have a reduced inflammation based off there, their stomach is dropped down a lot there, their food processing and stuff feels good and they maintain that because they feel good not eating. But in those eight hours they're eating like crap — they haven't got a decent food schedule, they may have too much processed food, they may have too much sugar, they're having their alcohol in there. Trying to fit it in, which is good — you can still have 2,400 calories in that eight hours if it's decent food. So, you can still maintain that maintenance and still get the benefits of that fast for it. The downside is, bro, if someone's highly stressed out — I don't want to put any sexes here, but some females more so shouldn't really be doing that based off their physiology and the way in which their cortisol spikes and how that occurs as well. So, they're doing this intermittent fasting, struggling, brain fog, all these other factors that may go into it, lack of energy. But then they're having two or three black coffees because that's — I know it's not going to raise their blood sugar levels, but then they're going off caffeine to get that energy.

Kane: Yeah, true.

AJ: Whereas the fast is meant to give you that energy, because you're supposed to use different stores in order to get that energy going. So, I personally — the coach that I've been doing recently with is my rest days have been a fast day, where I'll eat between that 12 — a maybe six or eight-hour fast window, but the backstory to that has gotten me into a system where I can do that. It's hard, especially come the weekend where it's like the kids want me. So, changing it up individually for that is like, "Okay, cool, well, maybe I don't do a fast on one of those days where I'm home, not working." Maybe do a fast like today, other than an almond coffee, but I'm feeling really good, and the energy — I went in till maybe like 12:00, 1:00. But, to reduce all that inflammation, I can't cuz I got the energy stores in order to do so. Right? So, again, as a fad —

Kane: Is the main purpose it cleans out your system? Cuz that's from the research I did, the main thing was —

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: It cleans out your system.

AJ: Yeah, so like I said before, it could take up to 4 to 6 hours in order for the stomach to fully process and get rid of whatever's in there, right? Obviously, inflammation would delay that response, okay? So, if you got a bad system, it's going to delay the response, you're going to have more of this systemic inflammation that may occur from there. Digestion slows down, but then the process of the 16 hours where people feel really good is, yeah, it does cleanse it, it does clear it out in order for you to feel better, but there are downsides to it if you haven't cleaned up your diet. So, again, this is where habits and lifestyle come to it. Some so many people go straight to it, and they haven't cleaned up what they fast with. And you will see a lot of people lose their weight, and they'll continuously go on intermittent fasting, they may get a year into it, and now you start to see some of their hormones start to take hits. So, this is what happens with chronic dieting, chronic fad diets — they all have this response where these things start to shut off. And then people don't realize that. Things that you do in your 20s catch up to you in your 30s, and now people are like, "Oh, I used to do this in my 20s." It's like, "Yeah, but you abused your body." Obviously, there was not enough education there, but then there's the things that the 20-year-olds and stuff are doing now, they have that education there, they just don't like to choose it.

Kane: I think at that age it is hard to listen and follow instructions. Like I think most people probably do have the information, but it's just whether they actually follow it cuz you can get away with it. And then you start to get a little — in your 30s and you're like, "Okay, this is actually starting to affect me now," or, "I can't just have that cheat meal cuz it makes me feel horrific for like 12 hours after."

AJ: And this is the thing as well, people can change that, they choose it's too hard. And now one of the things there as well is like we are — so people, you got to be disciplined. But being disciplined, you need some form of motivation first. I heard that from a guy — I forget who it — I can see these things and I'm terrible when it comes to like —

Kane: Chris Williamson?

AJ: No, it was one of the coaches that I know and stuff. He was saying like everyone bangs on about discipline — "like you need discipline, you're not disciplined enough, you know, your discipline needs to be there in order to get progress." He's like, "But for someone just starting out, they may need that motivation in order to create better lifestyle and patterns in order to have that discipline," which discipline is basically a habit — "I'm not going to have that dessert afterwards," that's discipline, right? Discipline is not like — you could say I'm disciplined to get up at 5:00 a.m. in order to do my training and then I'm going to work — that's discipline. That doesn't happen overnight, that takes constant motivation. You say, "Cool, all right, well, here's your 4-week goal, even 1 week, 1 week motivation, can you do all these things? Here's your cheat meal." How do you use the cheat meal? Let's have a refeed, right? Cuz a cheat meal indicates they're going to have the whole day worth of cheating. Let's have an off-plan meal that day. If you can do that, that's your motivation.

Kane: That's a reward.

AJ: Yeah, reward. Yeah. But then people were too accustomed to having rewards that they're never going to get there. So, okay, that's a good way of doing it. But then, "Well, can you be motivated now? External goal, here's a date. I'm going away in 4 weeks time to Bali." To Bali — it's classic Bali stitch-up there. Let's clean it all up, feeling really good, come to Bali, go out of Bali. The only thing is they haven't implemented long enough these habits — they go to Bali for a week, come back, and they've just shut the bed. They've gone backwards, they feel crap, they're trying to get back into it, "I don't have the motivation."

Kane: Till the next holiday.

AJ: Exactly, right? So, having frequent goals is a good way in which you can do those things, but each time you do need some form of discipline, which comes from saying no to things or just getting up and doing it. Cuz that is what creates the habits. You can't just be motivated to do it all the time. People will think, "Oh, I don't have the motivation to train today." It's like, "Bro, it doesn't matter whether you have the motivation, just rock up, and the more time you rock up, the better it's going to be." You can ask some of the top guys in the training industry as well, "How often do you feel motivated to train?" I was like, "Oh man, maybe like once a week I might feel really good, I might be keen to train." It's different —

Kane: Sometimes some of the best sessions are when you didn't want to go in the first place.

AJ: Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You may do a little bit more of a warm-up, you're feeling really good, and it's like, "Okay, cool, I'm ready to do it."

Kane: Mhm.

AJ: So, I've even forgot the first question for that, but —

Kane: We were talking about fasting.

Black Coffee While Fasting: Does It Break a Fast?

AJ: Far out, yeah.

Kane: Remind me — there's a question that I was going to ask earlier about the coffee in the mornings, because my interpretation of what I researched was, whether you're fasting or not, if you wake up, don't have a coffee — but then I assumed from other information that black coffee is an antioxidant and also a pre-workout if you don't want to have a pre-workout, because if you are fasting, so if you wake up in the morning at like 5:00, have a black coffee, is there any benefits to that, or is that a bit —

AJ: Well, again, if you're going to — you're training fasted already, so there are downsides to that because you don't have any fuel stores in it, but then the further education was, "Your dinner would have enough carbohydrates, good nutritional components in there to help you train the next morning." You may have, like, maybe a creatine or whatever may be in that morning in order to help you train, the coffee — the black coffee can help just stimulate that energy to get you going. And then your blood flow circulates the system, get capping going, you're ready to go. It's not going to have a — basically a true — pardon me — a true fast isn't going to spike your insulin or your glucose levels in your body by having a black coffee. That's where people go wrong as well, but —

Kane: What do you mean by that? Say that again.

AJ: So, when you eat, right, your glucose or your insulin spikes in order to get glucose into your cells, right? That's called your blood sugar. When someone's doing an intermittent fast, what breaks a fast is basically someone who eats, which causes insulin response. Having the black coffee doesn't have the calories in it to elicit that. But then people are like, "Oh, what about a Monster and stuff?" Again, depends. I'm in tune with my physiology and my nutrition and stuff, I haven't personally looked that far ahead into, "Well, what about a Monster? What about anything of those?" Like —

Kane: What is that word?

AJ: A Monster, like a Monster drink, energy drink.

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: Yeah, having energy drinks versus just having a black coffee, other than all the other crap that's in there. However, there's also ways in which, like, coffee, depending on the bean, depending on how it's made and all those things, can elicit a different response between an espresso, between a long black. If you want a short caffeine per mil, you're going to have an acute — just a shot of coffee, as opposed to a long black, that's only like 150, 200 mil, and it's a double shot espresso, but in a long black — the diluted process of the caffeine in that is not necessarily going to be like a shot of energy. It's going to take time — you're having the water, you're digesting that, you're absorbing that caffeine in it for your system. So, I would say, rather than having a black coffee, just have a shot of coffee, go do your session, you're going to have energy anyway to like post session, but when you're fasted, you don't want to train hard cuz you don't have the energy in order to train that hard. So, then there's going to be a change up with your training or whatever you may be doing.

Kane: Most people don't train — that's very generic, but not a lot of people train fasted in the mornings, most people usually eat before.

AJ: And then again, situation dependent. I do know quite a few people who train fasted.

Kane: I've never eaten before training.

AJ: Yeah, but that's a lifestyle. I cannot train first thing in the morning. I used to, when I was doing volleyball, used to go like early morning beach sessions, and you'd be like, man, I might just have a banana or whatever it may be — and that was like 5:30 in the morning. So, if someone on site, we get a lot of FIFO clients and stuff — if someone on site, they're not going to wake up at 2:00 a.m. to get their pre-workout meal in to then train at 2:30 or 3:00 o'clock in order to get their session in. So, they might just go straight to the gym, crack their pre-workout, and get on with their session. So, it becomes maybe an intra-workout carbohydrate intake — so having some form of Powerade, or I personally use — it's called a highly branched cyclic dextrin, and that's basically like a sugar which is easy to digest. But again, that's nuance-y, right? So, if you're just having some Powerade, that's very nuance-y. So, if you're having just some Powerade and stuff to get you through the session, sweet. Some people go lollies — again, that's not going to really fill you up, but if you have like rice cakes, honey, whatever it may be first thing in the morning, that might help cuz it's not going to be a big meal and it gives you a little bit of energy.

Kane: Even cuz then you can't really eat a big meal and then obviously train away.

AJ: Yeah, even though — and this is why the meal the night before is so important, because that is going to help you get your stores ready to then go train, especially from a glycogen or the glucose component there. The glycogen is what goes in the muscles which helps you produce that energy, that's from the carbohydrate response. There's also the way in which fat can be used as an energy store as well, and that's where a lot of people go with this intermittent fasting or keto — they're trying to get these fat stores to be running better for the energy, a more sustainable energy source, because they don't have that spike in insulin where they have that crash later on. And that's where that goes with it. But for the question itself, do people train intermittent fasted or do they train fasted? A lot of people do. A lot of people don't have the time to finish work and then go, or they have the luxury, for myself who works in the gym — I train best between 12:00 and 2:00, right? So I've already had two meals before then. I'm ready to go 12:00 to 2:00. So I'll personally block out some clients between those times.

Kane: Mhm.

AJ: In order to get that training in, right? So yeah, you can train intermittent fasting, there's ways in which you can do it, there's better ways to do it based off understanding what your body needs and the energy that you need. But yeah, give it a shot, have your shot of coffee. I think we've gone through it as well — make sure you have dinner beforehand.

Kane: Mhm. Yeah, I definitely had zero shot of coffee for a fair while. Sometimes. At the moment I'm in the habit of just having the pre-workout.

AJ: Yeah, it gets you through, but then that's based off you're eating crap the night before, and then you're feeling like trash in the morning, you haven't had a good sleep, a bit sluggish and stuff. You're going to have this pre-workout to try to get your energy fired up, and then —

Kane: 200 milligrams of caffeine.

AJ: Yeah. And then you have this crash, like 9:00, 10:00, you have your second coffee, or you have your first coffee for the day, but you've already had 200 milligrams in your pre-workout. Then you're going to offset that with another coffee in the afternoon. Now you've got this cycle going on. Have more crappy food in the evening. It's like, where do you break that cycle? And it's always hard trying to do it first thing because I'm feeling the worst. So it's like maybe you just need to go cold turkey for a little bit — not have that pre-workout, have a shot of coffee instead, and then get your workout in. But then just as important as a pre-workout meal, the night before — so, even if that meal the night before is 3 hours before you go to bed with an 8-hour sleep —

Kane: Like 11 hours as well.

AJ: Yeah. So, enough time for your body to actually digest, get the carbs, get the fats, get all the energy stores out of your stomach and your small intestine absorbed and stuff, in order to get to your muscles to use the energy the next day.

Kane: So, that meal needs to be like a carb-based meal then?

AJ: Not necessarily. No, not necessarily. I think people stigmatize the amount of carbs that you need for workouts, especially like endurance or anything like that. Again, it just depends on the person. I personally have a high carb day, I got moderate days, I got low carb days, but I've been doing it for 12 years — I don't expect someone to understand that from the gym pop side of things. Just have some carbs at night time with your protein, with whatever you're having. So, it doesn't have to be a high carb meal there. Ideally, a little bit higher carbs if you're going to train first thing in the morning, just for that carbohydrate energy stores. But, again, it depends on the training and the intensity of which you're going to be driving it as well the next day.

The "Information Jigsaw" — Why a Coach Helps You Make Sense of Fitness Advice

AJ: But, again, there's a lot of information, and just to get all that information — I like to think of AI or the information out there like you've got all these different puzzle pieces, right? Plenty of puzzle pieces out there. You're trying to get all these things, and you're just stuck with so many different pieces that you haven't even puzzled — you don't even know the picture. That's AI, that's information out there — there's overwhelming information, Instagram, whatever it may be, whatever you're searching up. You haven't even got the four corners of this puzzle piece yet, you don't even know the picture. Right? So, that's where I guess like a coach is who can kind of paint this picture for you. Start with the corners. If you've ever done a puzzle, a jigsaw puzzle, you start with the corners, then you find the edges, you put those together, and then you start painting the picture on the inside. So you can look at the corners as your foundation, understanding and education, lifestyle habits. Sides — cool, can we eat well, can we train well and stuff like that? Okay, cool, the picture now starts developing what you want to achieve from your training, from nutrition, from your lifestyle. Rather than having to do some mess going over there, it's like, "Oh, I can't find this piece." You got a thousand pieces here, and you're trying to find these pieces, and you don't even know what you're doing. That's my little rant on —

Kane: That's a good way to put it. Information jigsaw, yeah.

AJ: Information jigsaw. I know, I'm sorry, I rant on, but again, it's cuz of the passion, I guess, around there, and just trying to help out from a health and fitness — and again, we know we haven't even touched on the busiest of people who need some form of routine when it comes to health and life, from even from a stress perspective, right? If you don't do anything for yourself, you're burning the candle at both ends. That's where burnout occurs. I'm sure you would have hit that place as a successful business owner as you are.

Making Time for Downtime as a Busy Parent and Business Owner

Kane: And that's why it's interesting to talk about the kids and bedtime and stuff and routine, because someone like me, for example — we spoke earlier about gaming as a — for old times' sake, I used to do a lot of computer gaming, so now I don't even have the time cuz, yes, once the kids are eventually in bed, then it's like, "Cool, I've got an hour or two max to ourselves just to watch TV." That's super important to me. So then if the whole bedtime routine blows out, I'm like, "F—, now I've got no time, and we've got no time together." That's where it's super hard for someone like me that is pretty busy.

AJ: Yep. And for your downtime, right? Like I fully respect that, because, yeah, I used to maybe do an hour of game time. But then I'm contradicting myself there, telling the clients to get off your screens an hour beforehand — might as well be doing work before bed. So I flipped the switch now — I was like, do work in the morning where it's quiet, no one else is awake. It's hard though, because the other night the little one was up three times, and I was attending to her cuz she only wanted daddy. And then, out of routine, I didn't do the hour of when I was going to get up earlier because I was like, man, I can't, I just can't do that today. And I get in a situation dependent for that. But for the evening, I think if you — from a mindset area, is change the way in which your downtime looks. So yeah, from old time's sake, we'd love to get on a game, I would game on the weekend cuz I know Sunday I'm doing F1. All right, my missus knows that I may be groggy because I've spent 3 hours gaming, something I want to sit down and enjoy. If that doesn't happen, it doesn't happen, right? But the times that it does happen, and the kids go to bed, missus knows I could go have a gaming session. She gets to go to bed early, we haven't been pestering her about whatever it may be, she has a good night's sleep, and then I come to bed and wake her up like 11:00, 12:00, you know, it's one of those. But that's my downtime there. At the end of the night, switch that mindset to, "Okay, cool, all right, I may be home for the 3 hours when I get home from work now, that's where I can be present with the kids, be present with the wife," going through the chaos together. And then, as much as the kids drain you and you're trying to kind of discipline them at the same time — don't do this, don't do that, do this — we're getting frustrated. We get more frustrated when those routines aren't met. So having lesser expectations, so that if someone has a high expectation that they never get met, they're always going to be stressed out about it. So lowering the expectations from the kids especially, because they are kids and not adults here. We have expectations of our kids like an adult, like they should be listening. We're so — man, they're kids. Remember when we were kids, we didn't listen half the time. So then we would look back at our inner child. That's one of those things. So we are so busy, but we have these expectations of, "I'm going to do this after." And then we're always in the back of our head, like, "I need to do this after the kids." We're not present enjoying the time that we have with them.

Kane: You could almost then start rushing for that thing.

AJ: Start rushing. That better — I'm freaking guilty of it. I used to try — my little one, she would want to cuddle first and hold my hands, sit at the edge of the bed. That would take like 20 minutes, and I'd get super frustrated because I was like, I'm going now, and she'd freak out and I'd stay back in there. Now she knows as well, because over time it's actually quality now, I'm not trying to rush the process. It may take 5 minutes, and that's a really nice time for me to spend with her when I put her to bed. And the other one, like putting the baby to bed every now and then as well, it's like when I'm home I like to do it, because some nights I don't get to cuz I'll be working those hours. By the time I get home they're both in bed, it's like, I go, the time to do that. So for you, mate, it's going to be one of those ones — if your expectations are so high, you've got the hour or two that you're going to spend with the missus post bedtime and stuff, that's going to come. If it's 30 minutes that you guys get to spend at the end of the day together, that's better than not. If sometimes it doesn't happen, that's fine, those other days are going to be there, but just aligning that up with her to know that, "Hey, why don't we watch a movie, why don't we watch a show after when the kids go to bed?" Why don't we do this after, or I'm going to go do this, are you okay with it, you go do that, but then this night scheduling in certain nights.

Kane: Yeah, the scheduling part's important, we definitely started doing that more, like, for sure. Same goes for routine though, so if you locked in the hour to do something that's super important and then that pushed that bedtime — one of my questions was about sleep. I know obviously I can go pretty deep into sleep, but yeah, obviously again it's situation dependent on people, but like 8 hours, 9 hours, like some people operate off —

Sleep Quality vs Sleep Quantity: How Many Hours Do You Actually Need?

AJ: Funny, there was — there was, yeah, that is really good — there was a guy, there was a study, this guy did an analysis over multiple studies, and he found the best times wasn't actually your 7 or 8 hours, right, it's roughly around that, again quality sleep matters though. It's around like 6 and a half, 7 and a half hours sleep, right? The quality matters the most there. Like if you're not waking up refreshed, you haven't really done a good sleep there. But then there's also physiological aspects that can occur. People who are generally the over-sleepers, sleep more, are more likely going to have the anxiety, depression, no drive, no will to do that, because they're staying in bed more, they're more tired, they don't have the motivation, they don't want to get it, they don't want to do part of their lifestyle. Whereas the under-sleepers are the ones who are going to generally more so have the metabolic issues. So that's where their digestion starts to go down, the recoverability, they're going to get sick more and stuff like that. As much as the over-sleepers are going to do that cuz they're not doing much. The under-sleeping, that's where your metabolic syndromes occur. So that's your blood sugar levels, your digestibility, just your system in general starts to get shot because you're not actually driving those repair factors from restorative sleep. And when you look at fat loss or muscle gain, super important that your recoverability is there, and that's based on the sleep. Now, the 80/20 rule can still be applied to sleep — you may have a shocking 3 or 4 hours sleep one night, and freaking who hasn't, when they've had kids, even business owners, they're driving off 3 or 4 hours of sleep day in day out, they're going to hit burnout. And it's not uncommon for successful business owners to have ever hit that burnout, right? As much as the education that may be around them — you're going to have your startup year or two where it's just dog eat dog, where you're just balls to the wall kind of smashing that out.

Business Owner Burnout: Sacrificing Sleep in the Startup Years

AJ: I know my boss, the guy I work with, I call my boss, he hates me calling that, but he is — the stories from him when he started up Team Mac was he would sleep in his car to source stuff out. And, like, I'd seen him, he'd be there first thing in the morning and he'd be there last person at night. And he's created the team that which he is now. We've gone through a lot, I've been with him for over 7 years now, and seeing the changes of what he's been so in depth for his business to where he is now, it's paying off, it's paid off, right? So, he's been doing it 14 years, I've been doing it 12 years now, and seeing where he is compared to what I have, different values, different things there as well. I'm very family driven, that's why I wouldn't go as far as working the hours as opposed to someone who's starting up their company, and this is their baby, this is what they're pouring their — doing that. So, yeah, when it comes to routine and when it comes to your sleep, there's going to be areas where it's going to be neglected. But then there's also things that you can kind of do to mitigate and manage that.

Kane: Mhm.

AJ: And that's where the education comes into it, right? That's where having a coach for it maybe beneficial, or just knowing what to look for.

Should You Push Through a Bad Night's Sleep or Rest?

Kane: So, it's going to be situational, I guess, cuz it was an actual question — if you do have that day when you have the bad sleep, do you get up to commit through your routine, or do you sleep in to try and get that recovery?

AJ: It's always going to be situational. Sometimes you might — I'm going to get up and go to the gym —

Kane: Yep.

AJ: Just to do the thing, but then sometimes you're like — you feel that cooked, you just don't get up.

Kane: Yeah, well, like I was saying, it was like the little one ate up three times a night, fully neglected my sleep. There was only like about 4 hours max, and that was broken throughout that because you're getting up, you're going back, you're going up, going back. Didn't get up an hour earlier. I still trained the next day, but it was very tailored back, just to get the body movement, so you're not trying to push a PB as much as, like, I need to make this work. It's like, no, no, no, no, understand and be respectful of your body that you need to actually know when it's going to rest.

AJ: Habit, but drop the workout for the suit.

Kane: Yes.

AJ: Yes, absolutely, that's big. Sometimes people are going to just fully drop that workout, and that's okay, that's okay because if you've had multiple nights there — yes, is to be a big implementation, your body's just not going to be — that greater risk of injury, greater risk of illness going on from there. So, you need to be able to respect your body in order to do that. And again, laborers are the worst because they're intensive all day and they still want to go and train. Like, that's wild. So, their work output and stuff, they're going to need that sleep. So, if they have a crappy sleep, they're going to work the next day, working a 10-hour shift there, or 12-hour, whatever they're doing, flogging their ass because that's intensive labor.

Kane: Potential risk of injury at work as well.

AJ: At work as well, yeah. Again, from a cognitive function, from someone who's behind a desk — as much as you can't out-supplement or out-nutrition poor sleep, you can definitely still help with that. Creatine's a massive one. Creatine's super easy.

Kane: Yeah, yeah.

Creatine for Cognitive Function After a Bad Night's Sleep

AJ: Massive — I mean, it's been around for years. We've always known that it's been like a cognitive function there, but everyone's been using it from our 5 to 10 g per day kind of thing for muscle. But you can go 10, 20, 30 g off poor sleep. And that's acute sleep. So, people who are just 3 or 4 hours every single day and they're popping 20, 30 g of creatine, it's going to have — there's a ceiling effect for it, right? If you're constantly going 3 or 4 hours and you're just trying to pop all the pills, you're —

Kane: Drinking all the —

AJ: You're drinking all the coffee, drinking all the creatine and stuff. That's not going to help you for that 3 or 4 hours. Right? That's where you okay, maybe you need to reassess what's going on here. Why aren't you sleeping longer? Are you getting constantly interrupted, or is it a choice? Are you going to bed at 12 and getting up at 4? Because that's a choice. Or are you interrupted, things going on, mind's going a million miles an hour, you can't actually fall asleep, or you're struggling to get up. Right? So, again, that's another topic in itself, but yeah, creatine's great. I had an acute sleep loss, like when I had three wake-ups there, I had 20 g that day.

Kane: I've never heard this before. So, what's creatine got to do with the sleep?

AJ: So, it can offset that negative factor from the sleep that it has on cognitive impairment. So, if you feel like brain foggy and stuff, you're sleepy trying to wake up and you just got the memory kind of gross, having extra creatine for the brain function is very, very beneficial. But like I said, acute responses, so it's not smashing 20, 30 g every single day based off having crap sleep — that's a habit that you need to break out of, or that's a lifestyle thing that we need to sort out. Is that 3 to 4 hours of sleep a night? But yeah, from acute responses, when you do have a crappy sleep, that can help offset —

Kane: Really?

AJ: Yeah, give it a shot.

Kane: Never heard that.

AJ: There you go. Yeah, yeah.

Kane: I will give it a shot.

AJ: Yeah. People get worried about it because —

Kane: Mix it with pre-workout.

AJ: Oh dear. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, people get worried about it because it's like, "Oh, I was going to make me all bloated." It's like, you need to be drinking 2 to 3 L of water a day minimum, right? But then people have 0 to 1 L, as we see it on a console form — "Is it 1 L per day of water?" And you're like, "That's something you're going to have to fix first."

Hydration, Electrolytes, and Whether Water Alone Is Enough

Kane: Yeah, okay.

AJ: Cuz if you're not hydrated, everything that we've just said is neglected, negated. So, again, that's from the habits.

Kane: Something I've been hearing recently, I don't know whether it's more of a sales ploy over salts and hydrolytes, is like water's not the best for hydration. Is that —

AJ: If you're an endurance athlete and you're not replenishing your electrolyte balance, absolutely, water's not going to cover it. But for someone who's day-to-day, doesn't sweat as much, they may go to the gym and stuff, they're going to get their electrolytes in anyway from their foods.

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: If you really wanted to go down the tracks, there's a massive thing about coconut water — you get good potassium in there. You can have salt in your food anyway, so you've got this potassium sodium balance, and that helps with — it's called an action potential, that's how your muscle is activated, right? But, yes, absolutely —

Kane: Buy the pink Himalayan salt.

AJ: I mean, it's just — yeah, you create —

Kane: Hydrolite stuff for —

AJ: Give yourself a few cracks of that on your food and you're sweet, right? Unless — not saying you go against medical advice or medical issues, but doctors are going to be doctors, and if you're craving too much salt, they'll tell you to reduce the salt, it might be a thing. But then there's also country evidence around salt, and actually having more salt is actually better for you, kind of thing. But, again, depending on your blood pressure, depending on your stress level, whatever it may be. So, take it — take it from a grain of salt.

Kane: Yeah, he's right, that was perfect, good segue.

AJ: That's one of those things, right? So, electrolytes absolutely can help with your kidneys, get your hydration up as well. Definitely if someone's sweating balls deep and stuff. So, the physical laborers absolutely need to replenish — they need to replenish their electrolytes for it. So, having a little bit more salt for their food, actually having some electrolyte powder in their system would be really beneficial for those days. Or for them, they could get away with having that liter of coconut water while they're sweating, and then making sure that their water is up there. But, a lot of people they're peeing frequently, there's an imbalance going on — your body's flushing out something, right? So, you're not storing it. Unless they're having 8 liters up on site and they're sweating it all out — "man, I haven't peed all day," it's like, you have 8 liters of water, you probably need to replenish your electrolytes.

Kane: Yeah, okay.

Sauna, Ice Bath, and Contrast Therapy: What Actually Works

Kane: So, what about the sauna then? Is it the same kind of concept?

AJ: Yeah, well, they always say sauna, minimum 500 mil to a liter of water when you're in the sauna, kind of thing, right?

Kane: Half an hour.

AJ: Yeah, half an hour, yeah. Much like exercise, 2 or 3 liters a day doesn't cover the 500 mil you should be having during exercise. Again, depending on the sweat situation — hot environment, absolutely. But then your electrolytes from that, if you're doing that 2 or 3 times a week and you're an inactive person, you're probably sweating more of the toxin side of things out than natural electrolyte imbalances cuz you're not utilizing those muscles. So, again, it depends. If you take it and you feel better, freaking oath. If you take it and don't really notice much, you're taking it anyway.

Kane: Do you sauna?

AJ: I don't personally. It's not really in my routine and stuff. I have used it in the past for recoverability. Much like the contrast therapy, the hot cold therapy, that's contrast, yeah.

Kane: That question was ice bath.

AJ: Oh, ice bath. Yeah, again, it depends on what you're doing it for. So, sauna from a detoxification pathway can be very beneficial from there, and also recoverability because it's going to cue that acute inflammation, which can help replenish blood flow and all that stuff. It's going to promote more of a muscle hypertrophy, so building muscle would be really good, whereas ice bath — look at it more as a recoverability, to reduce inflammation. Not the greatest for building hypertrophy, but really good for recovery for the joints and inflammation from that side of things.

Kane: Like sports.

AJ: Sports, absolutely. They've used it with volleyball athletes — if I've got a few people that I tell to do, if they've got a game back-to-back on the weekend, doing the ice bath — let's say they got a game Saturday night, doing an ice bath afterwards or in the morning before their game, come mid-Sunday, that's going to help reduce inflammation, it's going to help drive a little bit more of that recoverability for them doing it.

Kane: Isn't inflammation there for a reason, though? Is that not —

AJ: So, yes, and that's where the acute inflammation is good for hypertrophy, because that's where you want to stimulate the muscle growth. From a performance metric, you need to be better to perform, so if you got inflammation, you got DOMS and you're sore, your performance is going to be reduced. So, this is the catch-22. Are we doing performance-driving factor for it? It's good for strength, because you're not going to feel as sore and your strength is going to go up because it's a different process, but from a hypertrophy and building muscle, you need that swelling, you need that damage, you need that blood flow to the muscles for the nutrients in order to repair, build, and grow from training. If you're sore, you can't sprint as efficiently the next day, or you can't jump as efficiently the next day. So, that's where the recoverability and reducing inflammation to help repair, it's still going to be beneficial for it.

Kane: So, if you're a bodybuilder or general population person that is just trying to build muscle in the gym and not playing a sport, does this mean the ice bath isn't really beneficial to them whatsoever?

AJ: Caveat to that is the ice bath can be really, really good for the parasympathetic nervous system — that's your fight or flight, or rest and digest. If you are a very stressed individual, the ice bath can actually help, because you have to get your breathing under control. So, this is where that hot cold can actually be very beneficial, more so from a nervous system response as opposed to anything from a physical demanding perspective. Does that make sense? So, let's say for yourself, if you were to do a sauna, ice bath, sauna, ice bath, or whatever it may be, that could help you because you have to be calm, you have to get that response going there, which will help drop your nervous system, help drop your stress response, help your cortisol drop, be more relaxed, may promote better sleep, and you're not highly strung for the rest of it.

Kane: So, why do you go from hot to cold though? If let's say the sauna's going to cook this — the sauna's for the inflammation side, bringing that, but then you go straight into an ice bath to then have the adverse effect. Why would you do both?

AJ: Yeah, again, I personally haven't done hot to cold — I don't love hot cold stuff. Put an ice pack or something on the back of your neck, you're going to get the same response as 3 minutes of the ice bath, from a vagus, which is the parasympathetic nerve in your system. That's going to help you — a cold pack at the back of your neck to calm, get the breathing going to calm you down, that would be good, but then the hot cold — I haven't really fully looked into the hot cold thing, other than people feeling really good and feeling better, so getting more of a psychological benefit can be seen from it. I just know from the information, the sauna towards the decrease in inflammation, from the bath, put the two together, you just got a good round, little —

Kane: Do it like this — this is my hour to myself with the 20 minutes there, 5-minute bath, you know, contrast therapy —

AJ: We went to —

Kane: Like a bathhouse that had obviously saunas and magnesium pools and all sorts. I couldn't go in the ice bath.

AJ: And some people can't, because they can't get the breathing under control, and that's — someone who's very high strung or anxious, you wouldn't chuck them in there, they'll have more of a threat response and they're just going to get in and feel worse afterwards cuz they're under this sympathetic stress driver goes, and they're like, "Oh man, that was crap." But you can get them into the sauna, and that's where the heat, they'll probably feel more comfortable in heat.

Kane: So that's going to help them relax a bit more, and that, okay —

AJ: Brings me back to the apprentice days of being in a 50 degree roof space.

Kane: That's it, yeah, that's it, that's why you do what you do now, you get other people to do that.

AJ: Yeah, I just go to sauna instead, I watch a podcast or something.

Kane: Yeah, yeah.

AJ: I love sauna, got one at home, got it for every second or third night, just go in there half an hour.

Kane: Does it help you sleep?

AJ: Does it? I don't know, way — I don't know, I'm not sure, just more of a habit, and that's your —

Kane: Time to yourself, yeah.

AJ: Yeah, it's more of that for sure, and I do think that this — the sweating out of the bad toxins makes me think, yeah, I'm doing something good.

Kane: Yeah, yeah.

AJ: But you just like lock myself in the box.

Kane: Sweating out the bad toxins because your lifestyle needs fixing, mate, that's what it is.

AJ: Oh yeah, and then I might have better sleep.

Kane: And then you might notice a change in that.

AJ: Yeah, I've got people as well that they can't do it because now it's more of a psychological thing — it's like, if I don't have a sauna, I'm going to have a bad sleep. So, you have that flip side of things, right? They do it so often, whereas we tell people, "Do it two or three times a week, 20 or 30 minutes in the infrared." Anything more, you may develop more of this stress response by the heat stress. So, then you've got this double-edged sword where you're pushing from almost like a bell curve — you go, you're good, you're good, you're good, you're good. Oh, you're kind of going too much now.

Kane: You could be literally cooked.

AJ: Yeah. Yeah, so you got your sweet spot, where you find your sweet spot for you. It may be fortnightly and you feel really good, but some people who do it every night wonder why they might have a big detox factor the next day — they feel groggy, they feel yak, they feel sluggish. It can be a massive detox factor, or they can have that heat stress. Yeah. So, yeah, difference — I get all this information and people just go, "You should go to sauna every single day." And it's like, "Yeah, but I mean, I hate saying it, but it all depends. It all depends on the person what's going to work best for them."

Is There Such a Thing as the "Perfect Lifestyle"?

Kane: What's the perfect lifestyle though?

AJ: Oh, dude. Perfect lifestyle — don't work, man. That's what it is. If you had all the money, you'd do whatever you want. Like that thing, what's his name?

Kane: Brian Johnson.

AJ: I wouldn't have a clue who that is. He does what he does?

Kane: Yeah, he's that "don't die" guy, the guy that does all the supplements. His whole life is to have reverse aging and longevity and that kind of stuff.

AJ: Yeah, okay.

Kane: Red light therapy.

AJ: Yeah. I know one dude, Alex Karkour. He's an absolute freak. You go on his Insta page if you don't have any knowledge around stuff, you're just like, "What is he talking about?" But knowing the understanding of what he does, he's big on that. He's like, "There's a cure for everything," and he shows it and he proves it, and he's phenomenal for that as well. We got another guy on the team, he does some of his stuff — very educational, very knowledgeable and stuff from it.

Kane: What's the weirdest stuff?

AJ: Oh, dude. He would atom charge his supplements. I was like, "Bro, what do you — what? How do you even do that?" He has this atomizer or whatever, and he puts his pills on there, rests them for so long, whatever it may be. Yeah, dude, it's pretty wild, I don't know the full effect of whatever it does, but yeah, there's that. But then there's also the hydrogen therapy — so getting better breathing, your oxygen levels, and stuff like that, like actual masks.

Kane: Actual masks, yeah.

AJ: So hot, almost like a hyperbaric chamber kind of vibe, where he puts it on, gets a red light therapy going as well, all has functions associated with the benefits of what it's doing. Right? So, there's that. One of the biggest hacks is making sure you got home filtration.

Why Whole-Home Water Filtration Might Be the Biggest Health Hack

Kane: Freaking oath.

AJ: It's a plug — get your water filtered. Massive.

Kane: How much so? Like soft — water filtration, softened, cuz obviously you can go pretty deep, like reverse osmosis, like —

AJ: Yeah, so we've got reverse osmosis just for the drinking.

Kane: Drinking, yeah.

AJ: But you do then start to lose out some of the chemicals, or some of the good things that your body needs, right? So, that's why that might be more so for when I take my supplements, using that. I might use just a normal tap water, which has been filtered, as drinking water.

Kane: Mhm.

AJ: Right? It's cutting out all the other crap, the lead, whatever it may be, the stuff that gets processed or whatever. Right? All the stuff that you drop the pill in when they do that little testing for you, and you're like, "Okay, this actually works." Right? Big thing we did do when we got that — our little one, we thought it was all baby rash at newborn stage. There was that baby rash and stuff, cuz we were bathing it in non-filtered water.

Kane: Bathing it — baby —

AJ: Yeah, terrible. But then we got that instant result, like 2 days later, when we were bathing, it started decreasing the amount of, yeah —

Kane: The eczema or no? Was it just —

AJ: No, the typical response of like, "Oh, that's just baby acne."

Kane: Yeah, okay.

AJ: I was like, how is that a normal response? If the skin is showing some form of flare, it's either what it's exposed to, or what's happening in the digestive tract, what's happening in the stomach. And because your skin's one of the largest organs, anything that gets exposed to it is getting absorbed into the stomach or into your system. So that can be a segue into another multitude of things, but just from having the home filtration in there we noticed that change. And that can just be one of the biggest hacks that people — you know, they're drinking tap water feeling like crap, or feeling bloated when they have tap water. But compared to, worst case, you're having bottled water — again, that's another thing in itself, but —

Kane: Microplastics.

AJ: Yeah, look, again, you can go down the rabbit hole, you can go as deep as you want. Again, it's the 1% — if you do the 99, 1% is, "All right, you're getting there," but you could just do 90% and then you're going to see better things. But again, that's just one of those things, where you get a whole house filtration, your shower's going to feel better, your baths, your drinking, all that stuff is just going to feel naturally better.

Kane: We might have to cut this for a Smart Faucet.

AJ: I got you, man. Yeah, Smart Faucet. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I got you man. Yeah, that helps, right? Just from a health benefit alone.

Kane: Feel it — like when we've got a filtration with a softener, if I forget to put salt in, which happens often —

AJ: Mhm.

Kane: I know when I'm in the shower, I know straight away that it's run out of salt cuz you can feel it. It's like a dry, weird sensation.

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: Hair goes all weird.

AJ: It's more of a silky kind of —

Kane: Like yeah, it's like a dry —

AJ: Yeah, yeah.

Kane: Rough, chlorine-y, kind of getting out of the pool.

AJ: Oh, yeah, yuck. Yeah, yeah. Especially, and it depends on where you are in Australia, or like we're in Perth more so — like, yeah, when we looked up where we actually were, and the amount of chemicals, and also from the desalination plant as well, you're like, "Oh, man, we've actually got a lot in our water." It's pretty crazy. But yeah, so — Smart Fix.

Kane: Congratulations.

AJ: [laughter]

Journaling and Nighttime Routines to Calm an Overactive Mind

Kane: That's good. Oh, we've covered so much. Motivation, routine, sleep, recovery, stress management. We could probably go deep into that, but all that stuff, sleep and recovery — like I do find meditation really hard. When we first started doing meditation, we don't do it often, but it was when I think Lauren was pregnant with the first baby.

AJ: Mhm.

Kane: And we went through — I can't remember what it was, it was a pregnancy thing where it was like —

AJ: Hypnobirthing?

Kane: Yes, that's the one, hypnobirthing. And I got into it pretty hard with the pregnancy audio thing. It's quite funny cuz — obviously trying to like deep in business at that point, Lauren was like, "This is working better for you than it is me." I was like, then we started listening to it at night to try and switch off a little bit, and I do — yeah, go through phases where sometimes we're really good and I can actually listen, but most of the time I can't.

AJ: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kane: Still like trying to process thoughts, and I've got that in the background with our lavender diffuser going, I've got lavender sleep spray, blackout blinds. Obviously try and not use the phones at night, but yeah, try — I think it's all you can do is try.

AJ: It is, and that's like you got all these things going on to it. And as wanky as it is, but if you wrote down the things that you have to do for tomorrow, and then, so that's now in a physical form outside your mind, and especially overthinkers, they'll just go down this rabbit hole, right? Write it all down. You may have some clarity for 5 minutes after that. That's when you go, "Okay, cool, I'm going to put the tunes on, put whatever it is that is going to turn to the meditation, get your breathing going."

Kane: I think I sort of do that. It's not on paper, it is in the phone, which is again like — how do you win — but I do have a note, like a to-do section on my phone, so I do always try and put it in cuz my memory's bad. If I say it's bad, I'll put it in there. Yeah, that doesn't really help.

AJ: Exactly, and that's the thing, because as much as you're writing it down, it's not physical, right? Physically writing it down on paper, the effort that's required for you to then — writing your condition to be able to do that rather than just using your thumbs for it, looking at a screen, which in the evening can be quite sympathetic. So, then you're looking at the screen that's not even the size of your computer — you see a notification there, "What's that?"

Kane: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

AJ: Exactly right, and then, you know, don't put on do not disturb, as soon as you have one of your phone —

Kane: Oh, it's —

AJ: Notification, notification, email. Yeah, right, and then all of a sudden you've gone through 10 minutes worth of different apps and you're like, "What am I doing again?"

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: Terrible. So, yeah, just like what it pops up to your mind, and once you start writing it'll come to you, "Okay, this hasn't been done, this hasn't been done." Worst case, you can then just take a photo of that.

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: Hey, AI —

Kane: AI put this —

AJ: Yeah, put this into your thing, and it is really good like that now, right? Yeah, there might be things that you might be spelling errors or whatever it may be, but at least —

Kane: You know what you needed to do.

AJ: Right? So, that's something that a lot of people, they don't know how to calm themselves down before they even get the breathing. But then at the same time, don't dedicate 20 minutes, cuz already you're going to go, "Oh man, I got to do this for 20 minutes."

Kane: Yeah.

A Simple Breathing Exercise to Calm the Nervous System Before Bed

AJ: Start, like I said, start with five or six deep breaths, anything from 2 seconds in, 3 to 4 seconds out. If you can do six of those, right? Or even just put a timer on, put a timer on for 1 or 2 minutes.

Kane: Mhm.

AJ: Do that, see how long you — cuz obviously you got to 1, 2, and then 3 or 4, so you actually have to focus on breathing and that. Just do that until the timer. If you actually then stop thinking about the breathing in and stuff, that's a good response. Then move the timer further and further away. Now you're doing 5, 10 minutes, like 3 weeks down the line, that's going to say you're better. Your breathing's going to slow down more cuz you can go from a sympathetic to a parasympathetic state really quickly, cuz you can breathe in for 2 or 3 seconds, even 4, up to you, but ideally we want to really slow down the breaths to like 6 to 8 per minute. Right? So that's like a 10-breath cycle, that may be 2 or 3 seconds in, 6 to 7 breaths out.

Kane: Mhm.

AJ: You try to do that off the bat when you're highly strung, you're going to want to try to — you'll probably feel like you're passing out when you take 4 seconds out, "I need to breathe again," because you're in the state of sympathetics. So yeah, over time, again, it's not going to happen overnight. So don't expect you to be like, "I can't shut off 20 minutes." It's like, can I do 2, 3 minutes? Set the timer, focus on the small breaths first. Yeah? Then timer goes off. If you get to the point where you're like, "Ah, this is not working," and it's only been a minute, you look at the clock and stuff, "2 or 3 minutes, oh crap, I forgot 2 more, just done."

Kane: Mhm.

AJ: You're going to think about that more than you are just doing the breathing.

Kane: Yeah. Yeah.

AJ: So again, there's a lot there, but you can literally just program how to breathe.

Kane: Mhm. It's weird how there's a lot about breathing these days.

AJ: Yeah. Yeah. And that always stems back to the way in which society is now about the — sympathetic or stressful and all the go — no one actually has time to relax.

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: Time to breathe.

Kane: Time to — time to breathe. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's good, man.

AJ: Mhm.

Turning the Tables

Kane: Return the table.

AJ: Let's do it.

Kane: So you, buddy, like I've known you since you had — I don't know, you would have had maybe like six or eight team members from there, and you've built up to where you are now, obviously going through your highs and lows. I remember you come back to me previously, I think it was the end of last year or so, and you told me about how much issues you had just with the previous year, how you had to cut a lot of people going through — I don't want to say cut, but you had to downsize quite a lot. At the start of your business, would you have found yourself in the position you are now? And how did you kind of come to fruition? Does that make sense?

AJ: So what, as in —

Kane: So you started off as like six or eight people, however you started off, you know, I know you did your apprenticeship with one on one person and you got the trade of everything going from there. How quickly you developed into where you are now, right? Would you have done things differently if you knew about health and fitness from the right at the get-go, and you invested in someone early on to help you through the juggle of life while also looking after your health and fitness?

AJ: Nah, it's — nah, it's hard, it's a hard one. So, I never knew how big the business was going to grow, so I couldn't have ever thought about it, but I'm trying to think — I don't even know how to start that, such a big question.

Kane: It's a big question, so let's break it down.

AJ: Are you asking me using a PT specifically through that period?

Kane: Well, if you could change a few things about your health and fitness back in the day, right? Did you have positions where you just fully neglected it?

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: Would you have tried to implement some of these things to help you grow as a person, and then also for your own health and stress management, which we find a lot of people don't do as CEOs and stuff?

AJ: It's like, for some reason, it's the easiest thing to just neglect. Especially diet — I think my diet's pretty bad at the moment, being so busy, which again is just an excuse because it impacts everything. So —

Kane: Like, I do think I've always been pretty good with not health, but fitness. Like with going to the gym, my routine, I have got the habits there from doing that. Sometimes I go through phases where I don't do it.

AJ: Mhm.

Kane: Yeah, diet for me has always been the hardest thing by far. That's why my first question to you was diet or exercise.

AJ: I'm so glad you said diet, cuz I think a lot of it is preparation, like —

Nutrition Tips for Time-Poor Business Owners

AJ: And now you obviously don't have much time to do your food and stuff. What are some tips that even we've gone through when we've been coaching together that I've said to you about the diet that actually helped out more, which would help people in the future that are time poor or don't like to cook?

Kane: I think when we first started with you guys, cuz obviously I think what Lauren — one of your trainers trained Lauren as well.

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: So, I think the thing that you guys have done, which was amazing, is the diets that you give aren't just stupidly unrealistic, like broccoli and chicken, that's it, and brown rice. I think it was, like, the XO crunch, that you can still have cereal with a protein shake, because then you're getting the extra protein in there and you're actually allowed to have cereal. So, it's not like Fruit Loops, but you can have cereal. Yeah, just the diets — I can't remember what else it was, but the shake, for example, for me, that was amazing for such a long time. It's like 800 calories in the shake, and probably like how much protein's in there, with the almonds — 30 g of protein, and you got the almonds, and you got the banana, you got the berries.

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: So, I was —

AJ: It was roughly 40 to 45 g of protein in that one shake, kind of thing.

Kane: I think it would be more, like 50, 60, with the banana and everything. So, I think it was like 30, 40 —

AJ: Maybe with the milk, with the almond milk as well included there. Yeah, oh yeah, that's true, the amount of almonds — again, it depends. Yeah, to get your calories in.

Kane: It's like my soy shake, not a man shake — you have the cane sugar here, you got that.

AJ: Yeah, again, that worked out really well for you, because it was quick, convenient, and there. So, would you say as well then for someone who's time poor, quick and easy fixes are going to be beneficial, which, you know, it's just about quick and grab-and-go options.

Kane: Yeah. For me, that's been — I'm not saying that I do it perfectly now, cuz I still don't be at it. The shake was amazing, and obviously the pre-cooked meals — I've been through probably every frozen type of cooked meal, but the ones that you put me onto, the Espresso Diesel Espresso Bar, they're the best ones I've ever had for sure. So, for me that's so easy — I don't know how much protein's in them, but I get the extra large ones. So, what, 50, 60 g?

AJ: Yeah, they're between 40 and 60 depending on the which ones you go for.

Kane: So, I almost don't really have to do much prep.

AJ: Yeah, especially —

Kane: It'd make a bit of a difference, but —

AJ: Yeah, but from how busy you are — and then we don't expect the partner to be doing all the cooking and prep for your own health goals, but finding something that's going to be very easy for you to just grab and go, or click on selected recipes that align towards what your goals are, especially just to make sure you're eating better and decently, that were like $15 a meal or so.

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: Yeah, as opposed to spending 25, 30 dollars every click that you're getting from Uber or Uber Eats and stuff. Like you can generally get two really healthy meals that were quite filling when you got the extra large ones.

Kane: I got the extra large ones.

AJ: You got to fill you up and stuff. So, yeah.

Men's Mental Health, Business Failure, and Nearly Losing the House

AJ: What about from a mental health perspective from you, man? Did you — there's such a big topic, and a lot of people talk about it, especially as men's mental health side of things. Did you — getting quite personal here for you, but going from CEO and then managing that, getting married, having kids — any real big lapses and stuff like that during the course of Smart Fix, or even in the past couple of years, cuz I know there's been some big changes that you've done.

Kane: Yeah. Yeah, last year — it's actually men's mental health month, if you didn't know.

AJ: Wow, there you go.

Kane: Yeah, freaking there you go.

AJ: Yeah, there you go, what's meant to be then, isn't it?

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: Uh yeah, definitely last year, we hit a big speed bump and had to downsize the company by like 2/3.

AJ: Yeah, well. Yeah.

Kane: So, that's huge — that was probably the closest we got to losing everything, like everything. Close to losing the house. I got to sell two offices, and obviously I've told the story publicly.

AJ: Yeah, I did see that in previous ones. Yeah.

Kane: Yeah, that was probably the most stressful time, just from a financial — I think I got used — I've got used to stress over time, like going from me by myself in my Clarkson house to like, yeah, 140 staff.

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: 130 staff and a lot of revenue. You just get used to those bigger numbers over time. Yeah, when the house was on the line, that was like pretty much stressful as probably ever been.

AJ: And you would have found that affected mentally, quite a big burden on you then, cuz obviously providing for your kids there, the house is on the line — what are some things that you did to get yourself out of that then?

Kane: Um, so for me I've always tried to not dwell on the negatives. So, I try and stay kind of positive.

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: Like I was sort of — not with the letting the staff go was hard, but as I have mentioned before, we did manage to help most of them find new jobs because there's such a trade shortage in WA. So, that was my sort of saving grace that didn't crush me completely, but yeah, I just try to stay positive, and I had to sell — I sold heaps of my nice cars and I sold two offices. Yeah. At the end of the day, it was probably the best learning curve I've ever had, and we're in such a good position now because I've been through that. There's so many things that are unteachable lessons — things that people told me that I shouldn't have done, and probably couldn't have, but I think it sort of relates to your first question — I don't think there's any way that I would be where I am now if I didn't have those failures or have those lessons.

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: Yeah, people told me not to do things and I'm like, it sounds like it makes sense, but I'm going to do it anyway.

AJ: Yeah, and I can attest to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can attest to you — you're a very, very positive guy. Like even from training you as well, there was never like, "Oh, this isn't working," or "this is blah blah." It's like, "Oh, this is — we're getting somewhere with this." But you are very big to own up to your own mistakes, and that's just from the training and nutrition — a lot of people, they would blame the coach for not doing it, whereas you could see that in your business, and the care that you have, and what you've done to this facility, and obviously seeing it change. It's the first time I'm seeing this stuff, and you gave me the grand tour — I could even live out of this place kind of thing, how well you've done it, and no doubt you've got some loyal and really good staff underneath you because of the way you've treated them.

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: And you don't just sit back, relax and let them do the work. You still put your foot forward, and if there's an issue you're making sure that's getting done — very proactive, not just reactive though. And I think that's where you said, now you're in such a good position as a business at Smartfix. So I think anyone who sees these podcasts for you, they've got a lot to learn, or even understand what they can adhere to is what you've done over the years, of which you've been in the trade, and understanding what you've gone through. So yeah.

Kane: We're trying to — no, we're trying to share the stories cuz a lot of people don't really talk about their stories, and I never have until sharing with the — then I went over east and I've been doing networking, meeting other people. That's why we started High Potential, which is a private network for tradies, and there's business coaching for tradies, cuz there isn't — there's like none in WA at all, which to me is mental. So we're trying to share our story for free via the podcast and free information on the website. And then obviously there's obviously paid memberships and stuff for people that want to, but we're trying to give out a lot of free information, and the podcast is that in a way, like —

AJ: We talked before about it, there's so much information out there, and I myself have probably consumed tens of thousands of hours of content, back in the day, gym stuff, watching all the bodybuilders and business, oh, so much content.

Kane: Like what we were talking about, there's so much information out there, but then to have that direction, you've got this puzzle box, like you said before.

AJ: Little puzzle box? Yeah, yeah.

Kane: Jeez, so now trying to, okay, let's try and put things together, even for my own story — like I've only started going on social media recently, and me trying to explain my story, I'm like, it's so hard. I feel — the first podcast I went on, the Tracy Fryer podcast, have you seen that? Was that the one you watched?

AJ: Uh, no, not that one.

Kane: That was the first one so I went on. And, like, it's just different for me just telling my story, and I listened back, and I'm like, I forgot about that, or did a lot of things — yeah, I've done a lot of things, made a lot of mistakes, and it's good to rewatch them and rethink about it to then bring it back to the forefront of —

AJ: Your mindset that you can make slight changes to make improvements.

Kane: Like we're making like 1% change every day within Smart Fix, like for the better. Like even like we talked about the studio this morning — we've moved it forward like a meter to try and get a better camera angle, just those little things that we can do, so —

AJ: And then you even said it's like if the boys aren't busy, you're getting them to do more improvements, and stuff where they can, and I think that's massive as well, rather than just be like, "Oh, you're on the hour but you're not — you're getting paid not to work." You're proactive with that, cuz again, they may not necessarily see it as, "Oh man, I've got other things to do, but my boss is making me do that," but in the long run, they'll be grateful for the knowledge, experience, even just to be around you or the environment to learn more things.

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: Rather than, "I've got nothing to do, I'm bored." Like I don't really want to be bored at work.

Keeping Staff Employed Through the Seasonal Slow Season

Kane: I know, but it's all — I don't know how to say it in a nice way, but it all saves their job as well. Like with our business it's so seasonal that through summer it's insanely busy with air con, then it drops off, like April, May is our slowest time of year every single time without fail. So, instead of us going, "We got to get rid of half our electrical team," we will not — that doesn't make any sense doing it because we've got such a good team. So, we'll make sure they're busy, whether it is coming here, making the lighting adjustments, installing extra data cables, going to my house doing those jobs — I think they do appreciate that because we keep them busy. And we've been in it for so long now, we know it's slow, we tell them, "This is a slow time of year, we're good."

AJ: Yeah, yeah.

Kane: We're not losing too much money anymore, we're good, we'll lose a little bit of money, which is fine, cuz we can forecast now — we've got that much data we can forecast, "We're going to lose X amount of money," we know we're going to make it back then, then the rest of the year's winter and summer, and it's just —

AJ: Like, again, straight from the proactivity of that as well, and I think that all CEOs or business people, leaders and stuff like that, will always make sure their team is fed first, and I think that's what my boy Dan does as well. He said there's always enough food on the table for every member of our team, if he needs to starve, he will starve. And I remember just going through the whole COVID situation as well, like he made sure that we were good getting through that time, because the investment that he gave into our team — again, not a lot of people would know that about him, and he's probably going to be like, "What the heck is he even talking about here," but again, it's just from appreciation of someone who does really good for them. As much as people may not see that at the time, like I said, I've been with him for over seven years, I know how he works inside and out, his communication and everything, to where I know I'm good with him.

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: You know, so —

Kane: Loyalty is important cuz then that helps for staff retention.

AJ: Loyalty, absolutely.

Kane: With him for like seven years, I've had people with us for eight years, seven years, five years — that's a long time to stay with an employer.

AJ: Yeah. I didn't realize that, but, yeah, I've been in the industry for 12 years, my first 4 years were with one person, and then I haven't been without Dan since. So, I've only been with two people in the gym, other than the little side hustles in the gym and stuff that I've been doing, but yeah, which is good, cuz obviously he's happy with you doing that, which I think is important as well, that we have guys that do jobs on the weekend and stuff — like it's life, you can't stop people doing that, it's just ridiculous. So, I'm very realistic.

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: Yeah, I think — and I think that's another thing, is that if I stayed at the one gym the entire time, without working at another gym in the world, or like Iron Fit, that's where I would work out of as a little side hustle on the side, been a flat, but having that change of culture and the different people there as well keeps you entertained.

Kane: And you learn different things.

AJ: Yeah, I don't know how people like gym-wise just do day in day out, same clients over and over, they don't have distribution around places. So, yeah, very, very good there, and good for you for letting your client or letting your contractors, or letting your employees do like cashies or whatever they need to do, rather than being like, "Hey, man, you've signed a contract."

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: Yeah, so I think that's huge and really important, especially for the — the lower end of the enjoyment.

Kane: Cool.

AJ: All right.

Closing

Kane: Anything else? Thanks for coming on. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Unlocking Business. If you've enjoyed this conversation, please take a second to like, subscribe, and follow our channels. It really helps us to bring on more guests and have great conversations. If you'd like to connect with today's guest, their details are in the description below. I'm Kane Taylor Smith. I'll see you on the next one.