Fitness for Bosses with Jason Harrison

Emily Thompson 0:05
Hello and welcome to being boss episode number 61. Brought to you by fresh books cloud accounting.

Kathleen Shannon 0:12
Right today we are talking to our friend Jason Harrison of present tense fitness. Jason is a personal trainer and lifestyle coach. And I've been following him on social media for a long time. And so glad to have him on the show. Emily, you're working with Jason right?

Emily Thompson 0:30
I am working with Jason. First Jason worked with me. So Jason, I met Jason whenever he joined go to my group coaching programs about a little over a year ago. And so I worked with him for six months, just helping him just with some business, visioning fun stuff. And then a couple months ago, I got in touch with him because then I wanted to hire him to help make me fantastic as well.

Kathleen Shannon 0:57
Get your business together, get yourself into what you do and see it through being bosses hard. Lending work, and life is messy. Making a dream job of your own isn't easy. But getting paid for it. becoming known for it. And finding purpose in it is so doable.

Unknown Speaker 1:16
If you do the work.

Kathleen Shannon 1:18
Being boss is a podcast for creative entrepreneurs. Brought to you by Emily Thompson and Kathleen Shannon. Check out our archives at love being boss calm. Okay, so today we're talking to Jason from present tense fitness. And the other day I was hanging out with my trainer, and I overheard him say that what you can't measure you can't improve. And I thought that that was so interesting. And in the today's episode, we're talking a lot about how fitness relates to creative entrepreneurship. And I like this idea of measuring and improving and my first year of business, I used fresh books to really measure my income and my expenses, I you can track your time with it. Now it is just such a great tool for measuring the metrics of your dollars in your business. freshbooks is the easy to use invoicing software designed exclusively for creative entrepreneurs. Try fresh books for free today by going to freshbooks.com slash being boss and enter being boss in the How did you hear about us section. Jason, thanks for joining us.

Jason Harrison 2:33
Thank you so much for having me. It's it's kind of cool to be talking to both of you. Because we I've been following both of you for a while and you've had a big impact on present tense fitness. So this is very cool.

Unknown Speaker 2:47
Glad to hear that.

Kathleen Shannon 2:49
So I'm kind of a fitness nerd. It's definitely my hobby, whenever it comes to the things I do outside of work and outside of being a creative entrepreneur. And I've been thinking a lot lately about the fitness and entrepreneur. Kind of not parallel, but the connection between the two. So I want to dive into that. But first, I want to hear all about your own. So here's the cool thing about this episode is that one, you're a creative entrepreneur yourself. So I want to hear your journey and being a creative entrepreneur in the fitness industry and what that looked like for you. But then I also want to talk about that link between fitness and health and being a better boss for it. So let's start with your journey. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are today.

Jason Harrison 3:41
Um, you know, with a question like this, it's always a question about where I start, you know, because you don't want to be the guy who says it all started when I was four. But it kind of were every okay. My first job out of college, I was a I was an analyst at the at the Central Intelligence Agency. And so I did political and leadership analysis on conflict areas, Northern Ireland, the Balkans, etc. And I got sort of tired of that. And it didn't it wasn't quite the right fit with my personality and interests and so left washington dc moved back to my hometown in Dayton, Ohio, and help start Okay, wait,

Unknown Speaker 4:28
I'm gonna stop. Okay. Yeah,

Emily Thompson 4:30
let's, let's do that really wants to talk about Yeah, can you tell people that you worked for the CIA? Like, do we need to cut that

Jason Harrison 4:37
out? No, you don't need to cut it out. I was an overt employee. And what I did wasn't sexy. I did a lot of reading and writing. And so yeah, I was I was less James Bond and more kind of like, like the nerds that you see in the background of CIA movies like that was that that I was one of those guys.

Emily Thompson 4:59
Nice.

Kathleen Shannon 5:00
But were you like the coolest looking nerd there? Because you look like you could be any vcl or like a James Bond.

Jason Harrison 5:07
Well, I appreciate that. of the cubicle dwellers. I was probably Uh, yeah, I was probably among the cooler cubicle dwellers. Oh, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 5:19
Okay, so then you move back to Dayton.

Jason Harrison 5:21
We're back to Dayton and helped start a along with my wife and some other people who were educators. We helped start a school here in Dayton called the Dayton early college Academy, which is still still up and running in a great resource for Dayton. But we weren't teachers. And we were kind of like, we were kind of so the thing you'll recognize starting here at this point, when I left the CIA is like this kind of like searching both geographically because we moved around a lot. And just like searching for like, who I am professionally, left teaching after a couple years and moved to New York, and we moved, we moved to New York without jobs, we just wanted to be in New York because it felt like us. And I started writing and distributing. And by distributing, I mean handing to people like bum rushing guys like Ed burns outside of movie theaters, and like handing in scripts. So I was trying to be a screenwriter. So I was in New York for four years, LA for a year writing screenplays that mostly had no chance of ever getting made. And that's when I started personal training was in New York. And so my journey into being a fitness entrepreneur started, you know, fitness was like a means to an end, it was always a means to another end. So at that time, it was screenwriting. And then we moved back to Washington DC at some point, and I thought, I'm gonna be a journalist. And so like, I managed to get something published in The Washington Post at some point. And but it wasn't really still wasn't really me. And so here's the searching, the searching, the searching, and all in and I continued my personal training career in Washington.

Kathleen Shannon 7:05
Wait, so were you working out this whole time? Like, were you working out while you're in the CIA? were you working out in college? Like, at what point? Were you personally doing fitness for yourself?

Jason Harrison 7:16
The whole time. I mean, I was a kid who did, I was a really skinny kid. And so I was doing like push ups and sit ups in my bedroom, like at night. Like, it's always been a part of me. But I never, I've always been so because I've always been a skinny kid. I never like lifted heavy weights or anything like that, or really, the gym was intimidating to me. Even though I was active and fit. You know, like, I would see the gym I would see the big strong guys like doing like deadlifts. And I was just like, I can't do that. So I'm just gonna do like, whatever it is that I'm doing over here. And that was me for many, many years. I mean, until relatively recently, I didn't do like the main barbell lifts back squats, front squats, deadlifts. And then in Washington, DC, that stuff started to creep in a little bit. And so the transition point for me was around 2014. I knew I wasn't going to be a journalist. And my wife, Susan, actually, we had a conversation I did like a year of teaching and DC public schools. And, you know, it was kind of like, trying to go back to like, well, this is a job that people respect and like, people know what a teacher is, and maybe I'll try that. But it was just disastrous, it wasn't me, especially now in public education. You know, I taught in a socio economically underprivileged neighborhood, and the whole thing around that these days is compliance. So like, literally, I worked in a school where we made these kids walk from class to class and straight lines, and just the optics of it drove me crazy. Like, I'm not yelling at a group of black kids for not standing in line. Like, we used to do that and another time, and it wasn't cool. Then he's, like, you know, so I left I knew I was gonna leave education and so that's, that's around the time that the idea for present tense fitness came about and I was at that time I was like, maybe I can learn like coding, maybe I can learn like Salesforce. Maybe I you know, I was just searching for something and Susan, my wife said, you know, why don't you just do like, what you do? Like, which is you, you know, fitness is a is your thing. You're, you've gotten really good at it. You're good at helping people you're good at coaching people. And so that that and and so I should, I should rewind a little bit to when we were living in Los Angeles. Susan found you Kathleen, and she was reading a lot of stuff like just about design and she was a huge fan of your the stuff that you put online and so that's when you and later emily kind of like came into our orbit and so when she started talking about like me just kind of fusing who i am with what i do professionally that was really kind of like an outgrowth of the reading she had done with both of you and so yeah that's the that's the truth and so that's when present tense fitness was born and it started off just kind of like as a blog and like personal training in a gym in dc but it wasn't until i mean that's relatively recently 2014 2015 where i really started taking this profession seriously

and so and once that happened that's you know i've it's the success that i've had you know both professionally and with my clients more importantly has skyrocketed and it was it was basically when i decided like this is who i am and i'm going to take it seriously and i'm going to break down the walls between kind of like who i am as a person and my interest as a person and what i do professionally and so you know i do like i'm active on social media and i write like a weekly column for a local dayton ohio website and the stuff when they approached me to write for that site i'm sure they were they're thinking like five tips for sexy abs or you know that kind of thing and like i write about like loving your body and you know just kind of like you know listening to good music and if you're going to drink drinking well it's like it's totally it's totally me and and people have really gravitated toward that message and so i feel like as long as i keep the eyes on that prize of just of just living authenticity and kind of like breathing that into the business then then i do well and obviously the other part of that is i said i've said from the beginning that i want present tense fitness to be about results for my clients because strangely enough the fitness industry is not predicated on that idea i mean people you know there's you see diff different statistics but 30% of people i've read who have a gym membership ever stepped foot in the gym so that business model is not based on people actually changing their bodies right and so i've the the low hanging fruit for me is just saying like i'm not going to be involved in anything that doesn't actually help people change and so you know there's no and begin by doing that i can i can sleep well at night knowing that i'm not just taking money from people and i don't have to do the things that i used to hate like working for other people like i used to work in this gym in la and every i had a like a monthly meeting with my manager and every month we would have the same conversation we'd sit down and he would go through like how many sessions i did and then he would get to like the supplements we were supposed to sell supplements of dubious you know efficacy and he would say so it looks like you've sold oh it looks like $0 in supplements this month because i just refused like i just feel like my when somebody comes to you and they say help me and they trust you with their body that's like a pretty sacred is not the right word but it's a pretty it's a pretty big deal and so i'm not gonna mess with that by selling people stuff that they don't need or that i don't know works so that is a very long answer to your question

Kathleen Shannon 13:37
well i want to start geeking out on supplements but first let's talk a little bit about your business model now so like what do you do and talk a little bit more about kind of that success that skyrocketing and literally like what were you doing

Unknown Speaker 13:56
um

Jason Harrison 13:58
there's a very there's a specific client that kind of turned the light bulb on for me and she was a personal training client that i had in dc state department officer and she came to me and i thought for the first four months that i worked with her that she hated me i was just like i remember telling susan like i had this person like i don't have it's not clicking like i don't think they liked me but they showed up like every single time they never they never miss sessions they were like a monday wednesday friday 6am and what she hated was not me but she hated the gym and she started to see results started to get stronger started to kind of like that that kind of facade of stoicism started to break down and i started to see more and more of her personality and so i just started asking questions like why basically why do you keep coming and she said look What, you know, when I first started coming, my hatred of the gym was at a 10. And she said, that was like for the first like three months. And you just kept showing up. And you were so positive and encouraging. And so that hatred moved from like a 10 to like a six. And it kind of settled into like a four or five, like, she's not, she's not somebody who loves the gym now. And I'm still in touch with her. But, but just showing up and being professional, and actually like, showing, displaying authentic empathy, that, that and so that, those are the things that helped her succeed. And that turned the light bulb on for me that, you know, early in my personal training career, if somebody wasn't changing, I thought, well, you must lift more or work harder or run faster, or jump onto this higher box, and you must be eating terribly. And so follow this meal plan. And what working with that client showed me was like, No, people just want, they just want to work with somebody who's not going to judge them, and who's going to show up for them every time and who's going to be who's going to have empathy for them. And so, from then on, I started mindfully kind of infusing that into my personal training business. And then later, I actually separated the personal training from the actual coaching part. So my business model now is I work with people, one on one as a personal trainer. But then they also have the option of doing what I call Lifestyle coaching. So they let's say, they train with me two days a week. And it's just like, basic barbell dumbbell kettlebell training. And then one day a week we meet and just talk about, like, what's going on, and I in that part of the business is like, is the troubleshooting part. So it's like, you know, the great example is often people say, like, I want to eat better. And so, you know, though, like, I went through the drive thru on Thursday and ate McDonald's or something like that. And I'll say, Okay, well, what, you know what went wrong, and they're just, they, I just, I'm just lazy. And you know, they beat themselves up, and I like, let's back up a little bit. And what I helped them realize is that the drive thru run didn't happen, you know, after work on Thursday, it happened when they skip their grocery store run on Tuesday. And so I just help people troubleshoot stuff like that. And it's, it's not rocket science. It's not like super complicated or sophisticated. But, you know, and having worked with both therapists before and coaches before, sometimes it just takes talking to a an objective person. And like it, often what happens is I'm talking to a client, and I'll ask them a question. And as they're answering my question, they realize something themselves like, oh, oh, yeah, I didn't go to the grocery store on Tuesday, I don't even have to, like point it out. They just talking through it. You know, and that's, those are conversations, I used to try to fit in between sets. So like people would do like a set of back squats. And then they'd be like, Alright, so what did you eat yesterday, and it's rushed, and it's not focused. And so separating that coaching part of the business away from the Personal Training, and just having a space, whether you know, over the phone, or Skype or whatever, where we can just, like, settle into talking and thinking and troubleshooting. So that's the business model is personal training, and then the Lifestyle coaching.

Emily Thompson 18:35
Well, okay, so I want to talk about your next big move there. Because you've been, you've been doing your personal training, like at other gyms and things, and you've just sort of come to a head at that. So talk about that, because that's like a big move that I know about. And I want you to say it out loud.

Unknown Speaker 18:52
Yes,

Kathleen Shannon 18:53
I saw this on Instagram.

Jason Harrison 18:55
Yeah. So the next big move is opening a brick and mortar present tense fitness personal training studio, in downtown Dayton. And, you know, I'm at the point where I went to, I went to a conference last year and listen to a guy talk about like, the business of personal training. And like many conferences, there's a lot of like, there's a lot of fluff, but then there's like those two or three nuggets that you take with you. And the one nugget that I took with me Is he said, you know, you shouldn't start your own gym until not having your own gym is costing you money. And that's exactly where I am now. You know, I have good deals with local places that let me train my people for a very nice hourly rate. But even at that, that great deal, that hourly rate, I'm paying more for those out hourly rates, and I wouldn't be in a lease in my own space, number one, number two. These other spaces aren't present tense fitness. And so you know, there is a there's an aesthetic there is a there's a feeling that I want my space to have, like I the like, kind of the social media presence in my writing presence, I think they send a certain message and I want the physical space where people come and work with me to, to line up with that message. And so it just, it's at the point now where it's, it's necessary. And it's, it's like, now that that we've put this into motion, it's killing me every single day not to have it yet. We're going through the bureaucracy of opening a space in the city, and like architects, and, you know, building permits and all that stuff. So it's taking a while, but um,

Kathleen Shannon 20:42
and I want to, I want to paint a picture here real quick, because I follow you on Instagram at present tense fitness, and you posted a photo a day ago actually have a old building, it looks historical, it's all boarded up. So maybe a little even dilapidated, or like it hasn't had anything in it for a while. But I loved your description, and I'm going to go ahead and read it for our listeners. Um, you said the most annoying question I have to answer about our plans for a downtown training studio is why downtown. There are some implicit biases Nestle in a question like that for which I have little patience, I want diversity, I want texture, I want to be a part of something interesting, and vital. I want to support the other small business owners who believe in the city called Dayton, why downtown because we wouldn't we couldn't have it any other way. Everyone is welcome in the present tense fitness, galaxy, inclusive inclusivity diversity and cultural texture. That's what we've always stood for. And that's why downtown. So I loved how you wrote that I love how much love you have for the place where you live. This is something I think about a lot being from Oklahoma City, I think it surprises people all the time. But for me, that's where there's not a lot of diversity, I'll have to be honest, that's what's lacking here. But there is a certain texture that I get here in a certain amount of like support from other small businesses. So I want to talk a little bit about that, because going from you know, leasing out other spaces, having your own space to realizing that that space is a part of your brand. And that diversity and inclusivity is a part of your brand is huge. So I'd love to hear more about that too.

Jason Harrison 22:28
Yeah, I mean, for, for your listeners, I am a I am a black man. And I grew up in a sort of post industrial, Midwestern city that is still in a lot of ways deeply segregated. But I have you know, in my own family background, I have I have met you know, my grant, my maternal grandmother, was a German woman who survived World War Two, you know, stole horses as they fled, the Russians fell in love with a black gi who was occupying, you know, defeated Germany moved here. So kind of like diversity and texture and, and kind of, like understanding other points of view has has, that's just been a part of who I am from the beginning. And, you know, I grew up in Ohio, I felt like an alien, like, I really felt like, and you know, a lot of people feel that way growing up, like you feel like nobody understands you or whatever. But it wasn't until I moved away and lived in a few different cities and traveled internationally that I realized, like, I am not, I am not a weirdo, my people are out there. And so when we moved back to Dayton, in April, and you know, we started thinking about having our own space, like, I know, there are others like me in this city. And there's a there's a local coffee shop where I'm a regular, I'm there every day, sometimes multiple times a day. And those people are there, you know. And so, here's a small business that's planted its flag in downtown Dayton. And there are other small businesses who have done the same and I want to be a part of that movement to say like, you know, diversity is good, and not just, you know, ethnic and racial diversity, but people have different you know, sexual orientations, people who have different tastes, people who, you know, people have different shapes and sizes, and that kind of inclusivity is what you know, present tense fitness. That's what it's always stood for, to me my first blog posts when we announced present tense fitness, it was a picture of me in the band, The Black Crowes because they were my favorite band growing up, they're still my favorite band. And it was one of those things where it was like a meet and greet before a concert before the band broke up. Sadly and I showed my mom the picture. It's you have to picture like, these guys look like kind of 6070s rockers with big beards and long hair and like, and when I showed my mom the picture, she said, You look like you fit right in with those guys. And it was the biggest compliment my mom, I think it ever paid to me and that kind of like, you know, the phrasing I use in that Instagram post present tense fitness galaxy is just kind of how I think about it. It's just like, you know, any anybody anybody's welcome, you never never been inside a gym before, come on in, got picked on in middle school because you are chubby or whatever. Come on, in. You know, that's, that's what present tense fitness is. And that is, I think what is lacking in a lot of ways in the fitness industry, one of the spaces I wanted to help fill, if you look at Fitness stuff online, and like a lot of the blogs out there and like social media, it's fitness people talking to each other. So and that that is, you know, if you're like a college strength and conditioning coach, you know, reading about, you know, velocity and vectors, and like the physics and mechanics of a clean and jerk mat, like you should know those things. But if you're like a mother of two, and you have a commute, and like a mortgage, you probably just kind of want to know some basic stuff that you can do, you can get done. And so that's those are the people I try to communicate to and it's like, it's honestly, like, less, it's less sexy to talk to new people, like, you know, people who've never it's, it's cool to like, you know, put on your Instagram, like, this is my client, like Brandon, and he's got 6% body fat. And I don't know why, like, what I just slip into that voice. That's my like, that's my, like,

Emily Thompson 26:51
I noticed that I was gonna

Jason Harrison 26:54
I don't know, that's my like trainer guy voice. But it's like, I get turned on by like helping, you know, like a dad who's a lawyer, and he's got like, 45 minute commute. And he, you know, he's just trying to figure it out. And so I just tried to show people like that basic things that they can do to feel better and look better and move better. And I don't know that I you asked a question about downtown, and I ended up like,

Kathleen Shannon 27:23
Well, what I want to jump in and say, because it's still I'm still seeing so many parallels between getting in shape, and then starting a business even. And whenever you said it's not sexy, there's a lot about starting a business that isn't sexy either. And it's about putting one foot in front of the other end, I think that there is this trend out there where everyone is trying to take every single ecourse they can and they're they're all about the I went from bankrupt to six figures in a year and people are searching for the same thing. whenever it comes to fitness like these quick fixes. The Sure thing, and really, it's about putting one foot in front of the other literally, or tying up your laces and getting out the door.

Emily Thompson 28:08
Well, and I think another huge parallel want to draw here because this is one of my favorite things about Jason is is how he works in this troubleshooting into everything that he does. So I've been doing the Lifestyle coaching, which has literally been everything from like, getting my ass in the gym to like sitting right in my computer chair that

Unknown Speaker 28:28
I'm sitting right now by the leg is down.

Emily Thompson 28:31
I thought about that about 10 minutes ago, because I was sitting with both legs in and I put it down because I know I'm supposed to have it down. So this idea of troubleshooting and that, like, if something's not working, you talk it out, and you figure out why it's not working and what you can do to make it work. And I think that I mean, it's it's a quality and Jason that I've really enjoyed, like learning from because it has it's helped me like, I filled up my my water thing yesterday and drink a shit ton of water. So high five,

Unknown Speaker 29:03
there you go high five.

Emily Thompson 29:05
So like I mean, just fun things like that. But it also is a clear parallel to just sort of running a business and, and just making things work because none of us come into this. Like, Jason, you are a great example of this. Like you worked in the CIA and thought you were going to be a screenwriter and like all of these things like you don't have an MBA. I don't Kathleen doesn't we go into this with this idea of troubleshooting. And I think that's, that's such an important quality to have if you want to be successful in anything, because you're not going to get it right out the gate. You have to try things and if they don't work, you troubleshoot it and you try something else until you get it to work. And that's either going to give you like some killer guns or it's going to give you a social media marketing strategy that works. I think it's just I think that's such an important thing to instill in people. And that's definitely one of the things that I've taken from you. And now i just in terms of business because i think i'd kind of gotten that down pat but knowing that you can take that same the same ideas and apply them to every other part of your life is super huge

Jason Harrison 30:12
yeah i mean i first of all i'm glad that you've appreciated that i mean that that troubleshooting that analysis is like you said you apply it to every part of your life and the conversations i have with clients often veer into you know weird areas that have nothing to do with with a barbell because it's all so connected and that's again something i the seeds of that i think were planted with kind of like reading both of your work and you know if if so in a fitness context if somebody is not sleeping well then then it's harder for them to make good decisions around nutrition and then it's harder for them to work out well in the gym and then they feel bad about themselves which sometimes can make it harder for them to sleep it's all connected you know by by a rope and so you know that the the analysis then needs to fit you know that you figure out where the where the point is that we need to fix and we get in there and we fix it and there's no shame around how i mean that's one of the things both i think in terms of you know being somewhat of a creative person myself and working with a lot of creative people i like there's a lot of shame a lot of times around what the trouble point is and so we're like oh that it couldn't be that like it's no that's silly that's a stupid idea and the the example emily knows this that i that i think about a lot is my own consumption of water i had this water bottle that i loved for many years and i drank it i would fill it in the morning and drink it all day and then at some point it broke i think during our move to ohio and then once it broke i had trouble consuming enough water and i was always dehydrated and feeling you know my workouts weren't great and i knew it was because i didn't have this water bottle but i thought it was so stupid i thought like well surely you're i'm a grown ass man i've almost 40 years i can figure out how to drink water without like that water bottle and then it was after actually a coaching session with emily where we talked about emily's water consumption then i was like you know dammit just order another water bottle and so i did and then and lo and behold i'm drinking enough water again and so you know just not having shame around what the reasons are for stuff and the more people i talked to the more i realized and that that's one great thing about this job is is i talked to so many people and i hear so many of their issues and it's really kind of like it's really helped me see you know even as somebody who loves and craves diversity as much as i do just how many unifying factors there are in the human existence and how man yeah i mean how many of us are dealing with the same things and so often if you feel like something is silly or stupid you can throw a rock and hit another person who's dealing with the same exact thing but we spend we waste this energy feeling shame about it so yeah i mean so the connection between kind of fitness and creative entrepreneurship i think especially for creating you know create sensitive creatives

Emily Thompson 33:48
is that we are sensitive or

Jason Harrison 33:50
oh for sure yeah for sure i mean it's it's that shame factor and just getting getting rid of that when i was in new york i had this great acting coach who talked about like just the finite nature of energy and he talked about it in the context of like going to an audition and he was just like look you have an audition at hbo or something and by the way i never had an audition at hbo but that was that was the example he always gave because that's like the pinnacle of like great you know acting and writing and stuff but he was like if you if your audition is at two and you're rushing to catch the a train at 145 and but and your clothes aren't ready like you're wasting all this energy that you should be infusing into this character that you're going to do for these producers and so that you know that kind of like that idea of finite energy is something that's always stuck with me and i think that's a point like i think anybody listening who's interested in fitness or being their own boss you know take Learn from everything that you've ever done. You know, fitness has nothing to do with acting extensively. But I've always taken that lesson from from that acting coach about just the finite nature of energy and I, and I use that with my clients. And the connection here is with shame. Shame is just wasted energy. It just, it's just getting in the way of helping us figure out what the problem is and why you didn't go to the grocery store on Tuesday as as planned. So

Kathleen Shannon 35:31
hey, bosses, did you have a case of FOMO

Emily Thompson 35:33
that stands for the fear of missing out

Kathleen Shannon 35:36
when you saw all the being boss magic go down for our being boss vacation in New Orleans,

Emily Thompson 35:41
if you're not friends, because we are planning another boss vacation this spring in Miami.

Kathleen Shannon 35:50
So it was really hard to figure out what location to go to. But we've never been to Miami. And the reason why we do these boss vacations is to cultivate our creative pack. see different parts of the world. Get some face time with each other, connect with each other and live the boss life. So to learn more details about this boss vacation, just go to love being boss, calm slash Miami.

Emily Thompson 36:14
We hope to see you there.

Kathleen Shannon 36:21
I want to I want to start talking about fitness a little bit.

Emily Thompson 36:25
Do it go for it. So okay, so I do have to say though real quick, one of my very favorite things about Jason I know that like hiring a personal trainer or someone who's like in a lifestyle coach like this can be such an intimidating thing. I mean, just google Jason and look at him. Never get the first time David saw your photo. It was hysterical because most of the guys that we work with like, yeah, just sort of these like scrawny white dudes who want to be creative entrepreneurs. And then Jason's photo popped up on Skype once. And David was like, there was a moment of hysterical shock. It was

Kathleen Shannon 37:00
great. He's like, talking to who?

Emily Thompson 37:03
Exactly, he compared you to some guy on on some sci fi movie I have to Google insanity because it's hysterical. But um, one of my favorite things about Jason, though, is that he's so not a meathead. Like, he's like the least intimidating meathead on the planet. I love it. That's one of my favorite things about you, like you, obviously, super smart, very well spoken, like someone who can talk about things, which I think is such a huge differentiating factor in the business that you're in. So

Kathleen Shannon 37:36
now, it's kind of like finding a web developer that can have a conversation.

Emily Thompson 37:42
Right? Right. I totally agree.

Kathleen Shannon 37:45
Now we're gonna get in trouble. But I actually a lot of the personal trainers that I've worked with are all super smart, and thoughtful, and spend a lot of time thinking about, like, really just connection more than anything, because you are in the business of working with people and working with individuals. Now don't get me wrong, I've seen some pretty terrible personal trainers who are like really just selling pot in the corner. But

Unknown Speaker 38:17
true story.

Emily Thompson 38:18
What's so funny is there as you said that a couple popped into my head as well. I've seen those two,

Kathleen Shannon 38:24
like I don't even know if that's the thing and the fitness industry. But, um, so I'm going to talk a little bit about whenever we were interviewing roommates at a few episodes back, one of the things he talked about was, he would listen to interviews with CEOs of companies. And he was always wanting to know like, what are they doing? How are they so successful, but always ignoring the part where they start their day by working out. And then he started listening to that, and it's like, okay, maybe there's something to this and started working out, and has seen more success since. And this is something for me, fitness is a non negotiable in my day. It is the meeting that I make with myself, and that I keep with myself. And I recently posted a photo on Instagram of my abs, and I was like, I'm not joking around here, people. But that's an Oracle, like, whoa, wait, whoa, you really are doing this fitness thing. So that's one thing is like, I feel like it's the sexy stuff that gets the attention. But there is so much to be said for getting up and doing the work and the parallels between that and being a creative entrepreneur. But whenever it comes to like actual fitness and being successful in fitness and being successful in life, like I have you notice any patterns there that you can touch on being a personal trainer, because I feel like it's only 4% of my day that I'm seeing for myself. I don't get to see it as like broad spectrum as you do.

Jason Harrison 39:55
Yeah, it sense No, it does. For sure. There is a I mean at a very basic level, the short answer to your question is people feel better when they're active. And when you feel better, you think better, and you work better, and you're nicer to your colleagues and you're more able to brainstorm and come up with creative ideas. I know that so one of the, one of the most difficult things that I, I try to overcome in this industry. And it's, it's always hard for me to explain this, but it's hard to get people to, to understand that they don't feel as good as they could feel. But that's like a counterfactual, right? Like, it's like, if I if I show you a if I if you drive, like a, you know, a nice conservative coupe. And I show you a Lamborghini, it's pretty obvious, like what the benefits of that Lamborghini are like, it looks hot, it's fast. It's like, you know, well tuned Italian engineering. But if I tell you that if you do two to three days a week of strength training with progressive overload and smart programming, that you will feel better, people don't really know what that means. Because they're, they're used to dealing with like that nagging back pain, they just think that's a part of life. And the people that do sign on and do work, you know, as you do work out and take fitness seriously, the difference, it's just palpable, they're there. I've seen people change before my eyes, like where like the client I talked about in DC, was a different person. I mean, a year after I was working with her, and that's, and I'm not taking credit for that. It's, she's the one who showed up every day and put the work in and put the work in outside of the gym. And she revealed, like a different personality. And I can only imagine I've had people just the feedback I get is as people get stronger, and they feel that sense of self efficacy. It has a force multiplier effect across their entire lives. They're better lovers, they're better partners, they're better co workers. And that all starts with the pursuit of strength. So I, I, I totally, I'm with you on that. Like, I think anybody who wants to I mean, if you think about the things that we pay the most attention to, and where we prioritize our time and energy. We are, you know, the typical person that I see, they the way they schedule their time is they have all the professional responsibilities or like work responsibilities. And then and then oh, yeah, I should grab something for dinner. And yeah, I guess well, let me let me scroll through Facebook for a while. And then like, maybe they fall into bed. And what that should look like is if you're, if you think of a calendar is blocking off seven to eight hours of sleep every night. So those hours are gone, that's non negotiable, then you block off like, Okay, how am I going to feed myself? Like, how will I take dish food and put it into my face? And that's that that time should be non negotiable, actually preparing the food for you and your family. And then how will I move well, and then with the time that remains, that's when you work, that's when you do the other stuff, but we do the exact opposite of that. And it's hard. We're also insecure about time, the only fight, I just had more time I can't I don't have time to cook or I don't have time to go to the gym, I you know, I am busy at work, I can't, I can only get five hours of sleep. And it's it's a fiction that we tell ourselves, when in actuality, if we slept well, and ate well, and moved, well, we would do all the other stuff in our lives so much better. And I've seen it time and time and time again.

Kathleen Shannon 44:06
I want to talk a little bit about time because I think it is an interesting dimension to play with. Or an interest like because you can truly stretch it and shorten it and bend it. I mean, if you start thinking about time, right now, think about how fast some hours fly by. And how slowly some minutes creep by like it's not, is it I mean, it's time even a real thing. I feel like I've been smoking. So we're going

Emily Thompson 44:33
in a very different direction now guys,

Kathleen Shannon 44:36
but what I'm trying to say is with blocking all of those things out Don't even think about. You're putting yourself in debt with time, you know, because I think that whenever you approach it that way, really what you're doing is investing. So it's really like an investing mindset versus going into debt mindset. You're not going into debt by putting money into 401k you are investing it. And I think that that's the same thing with sleep food and working out, which are definitely my priorities in life.

Jason Harrison 45:11
Yeah, and I think that's a perfect analogy, because, you know, saving for retirement or putting or putting money away. That also, it tends to be this kind of thing that is often to the future. And it's almost like you have to play, you have to run a counterfactual in your head to Okay, I'm 65. Do I want to be, you know, what do I want that to look like? And it's just, it's so far off. And it can feel like it's an exam, it's a great point, like, it can feel like a deficit like, well, if I, if I take this money and put it into my savings, or put it into my 401k, then I don't have money to, you know, pay like a $250 cable bill. And yeah, I mean, that's just a mindset thing.

Kathleen Shannon 45:57
It's, so let's talk about your name, actually, for a minute, because it's present tense fitness. And I've found that there's, and I've seen a study on it, where you always think that your future self is going to be able to eat better and make time to work out. And all of these things more so than yourself today. And I found the same to be true for creative entrepreneurs saying someday I want to start a business or I will get to that tomorrow. Because somehow tomorrow I will be more disciplined. And I do it myself. Like, I think that we all do this. So I wonder how your name fits into that idea. And just kind of the idea of just getting started today and what that means for you.

Jason Harrison 46:41
Yeah, I mean, present tense fitness is my brother and I have this joke where we like will, like, I'll send them a text. And I'll say, like, Yeah, what are you doing today, and he'll list off like, like, half a dozen things, you know, that he's done between 6am and 7am. Like, I volunteered, I worked out, I meditated, like, all these digs that, you know, and it's just a joke on the idea that, you know, we always think that there's some like, perfect version of yourself out there that can that can do all these things. And really, it's just about doing what you can in and digestible chunks today. And not like that perfect version of yourself who, you know, reads to elderly people, and then like, builds homes, and then but works like a 15 hour day, and then works out like. So my my process basically is to discover what people's vision is for what the healthy version of their self would look like. And we talk about that in the present tense. So, you know, I am a fit, handsome man who wears the hell out of a nice suit, and eats well, and works out, you know, three to four days a week, like that would be a wellness vision. And then we take that wellness vision and break that into sort of like medium term goals. And then we take those medium term goals, and then we talk about like, Alright, so what are some goals over the next seven days that we can we can address to get you there? And the eyes always on the vision on the big the very big picture, but it's like, what can I do today. And that what I can do today, depending on where somebody is, I've coached people where I've said, Just Just put your gym clothes together by your gym bag and set it by the door. The goal isn't I mean, obviously, the goal eventually is to get that person to go to the gym. But we're just this is the small this is a digestible chunk. And what that does is it gives them a chance for victory. And it makes it kind of like doable. Because when people people spend a lot of time looking at, you know, other fit people and they think like, Oh my god, I could never do that. But like, okay, but you know, let's not talk about them. Let's just talk Can you put your gym clothes together? By your shoes by the door? Can you do that? Yeah, I think I can do that. Then they do that? And it's like, Okay, well, next week, can you can you put the gym clothes on, you know, it can be like very small steps like that. And so it's in this process, like I said earlier, like it's not super sophisticated. It's just taking big ideas and breaking them into into digestible chunks. Now that you can, you can be too easy on yourself too. So like that person. You know, they can just like set their gym clothes out for the next year, but you have to hold yourself accountable for actually making progress. And there's an analogy between the process of you know, change and getting stronger. So, a lot of times what you'll see in the gym is people go into the gym and you know Almost like a ritual, they put the same weight on the bar every single time. And they do the same exact thing every single time. But your body's not going to change your, your body adapts to stimuli. So you have to add some weight to the bar, you know, not a lot of weight. But if you're lifting five more pounds next week than you were this week, and so on and so on, then your body's response to that is like holy shit. Like we need more muscle tissue, we need denser bone, like we need to make changes in order to adapt to the this new stimulus. And so that, you know, the same is true of making change like you. Yes, you have to make those those those goals digestible. But you also have to hold yourself accountable or find somebody else to help you hold help hold you accountable for making that incremental progress. I don't even remember what the question is, like you just said, you're just gonna have to cut me off. Just give me like,

Kathleen Shannon 50:59
this is the world that we live in, just start talking. And sometimes that makes no sense. No, but that does make a lot of sense. And I also think that it's really interesting, that muscle is not growing during your workout, right? Like your muscle is being broken down, your muscle is growing in the rest. And I think that that's really important for creative entrepreneurs, because so often, we feel like if we just push, push, push, we can work harder, and we can be more successful. But then you never give yourself a chance to rest and rebuild and recover. And you end up like overtraining yourself, right? So it's the same in fitness. And in working, you've got to take that downtime to do things that are going to, you know, help you change in the recovery.

Jason Harrison 51:52
So, you know, you joked about the space time earlier, and it makes it reminded me that I

Unknown Speaker 51:57
really wasn't joking, though.

Unknown Speaker 51:59
She was not. Well, we

Jason Harrison 52:00
share an obsession with space. And I mean, I am, I'm obsessed with outer space. But you probably saw in the news in the last seven days, scientists heard for the first time to black holes colliding. And it proved like one of Einstein's theories, which is just wild that somebody that long ago, just so that my point in getting getting to this is Einstein, we think of him as a genius, not because he did math better than other people. But because he like all of these things that we remember him for were essentially thought experiments. Like, like space time, these were thought experiments. What if I were riding on a beam of light as it shot from like one place to another that was that wasn't math. That was a thought experiment. And so you need time to, to sit and think and you're exactly right about about, about working out. I mean, I went to a lecture at Ball State a few months back and this guy was talking about he does he does research like at the cellular level of muscles. And they looked at swimmers I think it was swimmers and runners and they were they were specifically looking at the muscles that get taxed the most for for swimmers, it was a lot of like shoulder girdle stuff. And then for the runners, it was one of the muscle tissues in their legs. And what they found is that on the rest days, the these are college students, the swimmers actually were able to recover better than the runners. Can you guess why?

Unknown Speaker 53:42
No,

Jason Harrison 53:44
because the swimmers didn't have to use their shoulders walking from class to class, but the runners still had to walk. So the point he was making is is about rest. And the difference between really high level athletes and the rest of us is that a really high level athlete, when they're not working out or practicing or you know, doing a game, they are straight up chilling, they are resting, rested, like to the point where you at the cellular level, you can see the difference between somebody who has to use their competitive body parts to still walk around from class, they're not going to be as rested as the as the as the swimmer because they don't have to swim to class. And so that point about rest and recovery is is absolutely applicable to kind of the creative process. But also the process within the gym. I mean I I have to make it a point to kind of just like go to the coffee shop and sit and just like sip on a coffee and just like let stuff come to me. There's a reason I think that you hear so many people talk about They get their best ideas in the shower. It's because you're naked and warm and comfortable. And your body is just kind of like, your mind finds those things that are deep in there that that that come out. But we're so we're also afraid. And we're also insecure that it's like I have to push through, like, I have to grind it out. Sometimes the idea that the real recipe is just rest, the strongest people I know. They talk so much more about rest and recovery than like, then like the bros you see at the gym, like the, there's this guy, there's this guy who runs this, this guy, Chad Wesley Smith, who's like a, like a 900 pound deadlift, or like, he and I don't even occupy the same universe, like he is at a level of like, strength and performance that I like, I'm not even, but he, he talks about, like, what he eats. And he talks about rest. And he talks about, like, you know, he's a competitive power lifter, and he says, you know, people waste their, their time in the gym, always going for personal records. He's like, I don't set personal records. Uh, you know, and during practice, I set those on the, you know, when it's go time. And, you know, I think I think there's a lesson to be learned there, like, you're not gonna, it's about consistency and smart work. It's about hard work, too. But if you're not resting, and you're not, you know, to bring it back to a creative entrepreneur, if you're not thinking deeply, then you're just kind of like bopping around with the rest. I mean, I assume that most creatives are doing what they do, because they want to, they want to make a unique contribution to the world. And those unique contributions don't come from the grind, they come from, like inspiration and sitting and just like, you know, letting their mind do the great work that it can do.

Kathleen Shannon 57:01
But on the flip side, sometimes I do think that, well, this is something I was going to talk about earlier, one of my own personal struggles, whenever it comes to fitness is knowing when to when to give myself grace, and probably really even being a creative entrepreneur, when to give myself grace and when to recognize that I'm using that as an excuse to be lazy. And for me, it's a really fine line to balance truly. And so sometimes it really is I admitted to Emily the other day that I was having a really hard time just getting my shit together. And she was like, dude, you just need to write down three things on a post it note, get out of Asana and just do it. I was like, oh, it makes it so much more manageable. Right. So there is like the sustainability factor. And sometimes there's a the just putting on your shoes, and going through the motions. So yesterday morning, I did not feel like working out at all, but I was accountable because it was in my calendar. And because I work out with enough people now that they would notice if I was gone. And I went to the gym Anyway, it was the best workout of my life. No, but it was one little step at a time. And I did give parts of it my all. So I think that there is a little bit of this, like hustle and then rest and then hustle and, and recognizing when you're being kind to yourself. And whenever you're kind of making excuses.

Jason Harrison 58:30
I think that's a good point. And I think that's in the fitness context. That's where having a plan comes in. And so you know that, you know, to go back to the like the elite power lifter example. They don't, they don't go into the gym and just like pick up weight and start moving it they have a plan. So today, I'm at 85% of my one rep max on the deadlift, and I'm doing it this many times. And that time on the calendar comes whether you like it or not, you know. And so I think I think having a plan and having benchmarks, you know, can help avoid some of that, like, I'm just being kind to myself, when really it's kind of just like a lazy time. But that's where planning and that's why I go through with clients like that, that vision, the wellness vision, the three to six months, and then the weekly goals is you know, people start slipping a little bit then we can like, Alright, okay, so you told me like, here's, here's your wellness vision. How does you know, skipping the gym all week this week help you get to that, you know, sometimes you do need to be held accountable. But in the fitness context, that's where actually planned rest intervals can be helpful, you know, depending on what your level of fitness is. I mean, I have people who I am thrilled and they are thrilled if they're doing like strength training two days a week, and that's enough because they're so deconditioned to have a significant change. In their body, and the rest of the week, I tell them just go on walks. Now that the more fit you get, you know, you know, two days a week isn't going to cut it at the elite level or the even like inner intermediate to elite level, you know, people at those levels do planned kind of what are called D load weeks where you you back off, like, if you were doing like 85% of your one rep max, you do a week, where you back off to like 45 50%. And it's a plan time to let your joints recover, to let your central nervous system recover, because that's an aspect of working out that, you know, most people don't think about is there is a central nervous response to working out and you can fry that if you just go like 90% of one rep max all the time. And so that's where those like plan D load weeks matter now and for the for the business person or the the entrepreneur, the I think the analogy there would be planned vacation time, or planned. Like during, you know, if you want to go day by day, that's the plan time where you get up out of your chair and you go for a walk outside. So yeah, I agree with you, you can you know, under the guise of being kind to oneself, we can kind of like, you know, watch a bunch of like law and order reruns when we should be doing something. Not that that's something I would do.

Emily Thompson 1:01:34
Emily here coming at you to talk about managing your schedule. One of the hardest things about being boss is how many people can be vying for your attention from clients and customers to online buddies real life friends and family and more. Scheduling time to focus on your work or yourself gets more and more important, the more boss you get. Our friends at acuity scheduling are here to help you take back your calendar, giving you the functionality you need to easily block out times for focus, and leaving time open for checking in with clients and friends with an easy to use interface that matches your actual schedule with available appointment times making it impossible for your schedule to get hijacked by another meeting. Schedule clients without sacrificing your soul. Sign up for your free 60 day trial of scheduling sanity at acuity scheduling.com slash being boss. Now, let's get back at it.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:36
Emily,

Kathleen Shannon 1:02:38
say some say something before we get an email. Kathleen's talking to Mike Kathleen talks

Emily Thompson 1:02:44
too much I just like listening. That's true story. No, I think I mean, I think that your message about strength and the troubleshooting and just all that you put into what it is that you do is what makes you so good at getting results from your clients, but also just sort of being a good business person. And I think that there are so many parallels that we can draw between, you know, being physically fit and having a healthy business. Or being being a productive and healthy entrepreneur. It's all about hustle, but also pairing that with some really hardcore rest. And if you don't know if you just do what you love and, and take care of yourself and invest in yourself as well as your business. I mean, just success is there and I don't know, spiral into platitudes.

Kathleen Shannon 1:03:41
But let's go into some like practical fitness things that creatives can start doing right now. If they know they need to be taking care of themselves. One thing you guys were talking about earlier was water. And I've been slacking there. And it's so funny because it is one of those things where like, why am I crying today? Why am I so moody? Oh, I'm dehydrated. And it seems so dumb that that could be the reason but so that's my my advice is everyone should be drinking more water. But Jason, what is some of your advice on how people can you get started today with working out or just getting healthier?

Jason Harrison 1:04:18
So the I think the first thing I would say is is to focus on sleep. And that is probably the single most important thing somebody can do. So you asked about working out

Kathleen Shannon 1:04:31
whatever if you have a baby that wakes up six to eight times a night.

Emily Thompson 1:04:35
Yeah, and that's you need to get a new baby.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:39
Get rid of the baby.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:42
The baby

Jason Harrison 1:04:44
and honestly that's that is. So you have to deal with the reality of your actual situation and mothers know in a way that nobody else does. That sometimes you're just not going to get enough sleep. But it's you know, taking the situation that you do have And then maximizing the amount of sleep that you can get. So making sure that you're sleeping in a cool dark room. So yes, your baby's gonna wake up, it's gonna be hungry, you're gonna have to go, you know,

Emily Thompson 1:05:12
deal

Jason Harrison 1:05:13
feed the baby or deal or

Unknown Speaker 1:05:14
whatever it is that you do with baby.

Jason Harrison 1:05:17
Yes, right. Just throw me into the room and

Kathleen Shannon 1:05:22
throw a pile of bacon at that. Right?

Jason Harrison 1:05:27
I sounded like such a dude, there. You just, you feed it? Yeah, okay, um, first of all, it's not an it, it's a. Okay, so, but you maximize the amount of sleep that you can get. taking it away from, you know, somebody who has a disruptive sleep pattern mothers, firefighters, shift workers, you know, just make sleep a priority. So you know, and you've, um, I know, you both have heard all the things about turning electronics off an hour before bed. One of the things I coach I've coached clients through is coming up with some sort of evening ritual to kind of like, set the the mind to Okay, now, it's like wine downtime. So I had a client, who was a hard charging corporate lawyer. And I worked with her to come up with a tea ritual that she did with her with her daughter. And so every evening, they would make tea. And that was the signal to both of them that it was time to wind the night down. And so if there are things like that, that you can incorporate to help you get more sleep, that's where I would start. And so connected to that, then you do your bedtime ritual, you go to bed before you go into your bedroom, fill a big glass of water and put it on your bedside stand when you wake up in the morning, drink it down. Just like you know, it's just a way of kind of like building hydration into into your, into your daily habits. And then when it comes to working out, I mean, it's, there are different answers for different people. If I were the king of the universe, I would say that everybody would be doing some type of strength training workout three days a week. But there are some people who genuinely do not like the gym, or, or for whom it's genuinely difficult to get to the gym, just by geography, like the closest one is like 25 minutes away, then I would think, okay, if not strength training, some sort of weight bearing exercise, and that that looks different for different people. Some people love yoga, some for some people, it's Pilates, but some sort of progressively overloaded weight bearing exercise.

Kathleen Shannon 1:07:51
That means progressively overloaded,

Jason Harrison 1:07:53
progressively overloaded, just goes back to the point that I was making earlier about lifting more next week than you did this week. And so that progressive overload is what prompts the your body to actually change and grow more tissue.

Kathleen Shannon 1:08:08
And if you don't have access to like a gym, or you're scared of that it might be doing, like more pushups next week than you are this week. That's right. progressive overload. Okay,

Jason Harrison 1:08:21
yeah. And that so that would in that case, you're you would be changing what in like fitness circles, we would call like the volume. So you would that would be the that would be the that would be the thing that you would switch to make it more difficult on you is like, you know, this week was 10 push ups next week, it's 15 push ups, now, eventually, you're going to run out of like numbers of push ups that you can do, and then you're going to need, you're gonna have to decide like, you know, whether it's time to invest in some weights, and that can be I mean, honestly, there's, you can get these adjustable dumbbells for like, I think less than $300, where it's like two and a half pounds up to 52 and a half pounds. And if you don't want to go to the gym, you get a pair of those. And that will last a lot of people a very long time. You know, you can do with something called a goblet squat, where you're holding the dumbbell and you can do squats with like the 50 pound dumbbell. I think the most important thing I would say is if you so you hate the gym, maybe you don't have exercise equipment at home. The one thing I would say is everybody and that means everybody needs to learn how to squat. Doesn't have to be a barbell squat doesn't have to be like a gym type thing, but you need to learn how to squat and that's a test that everybody listening to this can do is can you do like a full range of motion squat where your hips drop, lower than your knees. If you can't then you know you have some mobility issues and you need to work on those Um, you know, there's, there's some debate like in fitness circles, like, you know, some people say like, a squat isn't a squat unless you go like astagraf unless your butt drops all the way down and some people are like, now that's stupid, like you don't have to. So within your own anatomy and and, you know, mobility in your own range of motion, you, everybody needs to learn how to do a squat properly. And there's like a ton of videos out there on YouTube, we'll

Kathleen Shannon 1:10:27
be sure to link to one in our show notes.

Jason Harrison 1:10:29
Yeah, that would be that'd be cool. Where you can where you can learn how to how to squat that that's the most important thing you can do. Because it's, it's something that every single person does every single day. And it's kind of like the foundation of all athletic, and, you know, just kind of like functional movement. So, learn how to squat, and then

Kathleen Shannon 1:10:52
100 of those a day and like Beyonce, I,

Emily Thompson 1:10:56
I kind of out of this habit, now that you bring it up, I should probably do it again, squat while you brush your teeth.

Kathleen Shannon 1:11:03
I'm not that talented, Emily.

Emily Thompson 1:11:06
Well, if you can go out while you brush your date, you know,

Kathleen Shannon 1:11:10
so it used to be all over my back, squat and brush my teeth at the same time.

Jason Harrison 1:11:16
The one thing I would say I'm not actually a huge fan of that because I think there is something to be said for actually carving out intentional space to treat your body well. And be you know, kind of like be with your body

Kathleen Shannon 1:11:31
and copy with my body.

Emily Thompson 1:11:35
Always go

Jason Harrison 1:11:38
listen, sorry, relaxation techniques before bed. It's, you know, it's I

Kathleen Shannon 1:11:44
mean, bedtime ritual. I'm there. You, nevermind, keep keep going. Jason I'm sorry.

Jason Harrison 1:11:54
That's, that's okay.

I don't even know where I was now.

Kathleen Shannon 1:12:03
Okay, so we were talking about squatting and carving out intentional time and space to be with your body.

Jason Harrison 1:12:08
Yeah. Okay, so let's, let's say that. So we kind of dealt with people who can't go to the gym or don't want to go to the gym or that, let's say you do, you are interested in the gym. And turret like a lot of it's intimidating, people don't know what to do in the gym. And so the basic framework that I use with brand new people is, is do five to six movement patterns. And those are number one squat. And so let's say you're doing two to three full body workouts a week, these are the movements that you should do in every in every workout. Number one is squat and do that first, because it's the most physically taxing. The next four would be pushing and pulling horizontally, a horizontal push would be a chest press, either with dumbbells or a barbell or a push up. And then the horizontal row is just pulling in the exact opposite direction, you can do that with cables, you can do it with a dumbbell with like a bent row, and then pushing and pulling vertically, which would be like an overhead press with dumbbells or a barbell. And then pulling vertically would be like a pull up or a lat pull down or a cable pull down. If you're doing those five movements, then you are getting a full body workout, every major muscle group of your body will have been touched. And if you do that, again, progressively overloaded, you will get stronger. The sixth movement that you can add in there that can be more advanced for people with limited mobility is a Hinge Movement. And a hinge just means kind of flexing, flexing and extending at the hips. And that would be something like a deadlift doesn't have to be a huge heavy. You know, Chad Wesley Smith deadlift, it could be just like picking up a dumbbell from the ground and then putting it back down on the ground. That looks are actually really important too. But it's, they can be they can be hard for people to learn. But again, like if you're interested in investing the time to go back to the word you use Kathleen, YouTube is it's all there. There's like really great coaches out there who put really great content out. And you can YouTube is a great is a great learning factory. And the other thing you can do good.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:27
I was just gonna ask about cardio.

Jason Harrison 1:14:30
cardio. It's a great, great question. Let's talk about card let's cardio just it's a word.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:37
It's a word.

Jason Harrison 1:14:39
Apples is a word.

Kathleen Shannon 1:14:41
So cardio,

Jason Harrison 1:14:42
cardio. cardio can take many different forms. The best form of cardio that anyone can do is to go on a walk preferably outside, preferably with somebody they love, or they're trying to love or something like that. Just getting out sight and walking now people people listening may think like well what about like don't have to run or don't have to do the elliptical like i said the best form of cardio you can do is to take a walk outside if you're trying to work on your conditioning so you're trying to work on basically the strength and efficiency of your heart you can accomplish a lot of that through strength training so doing things like super sets like do your set of squats to go back to that framework that i gave you do you did 10 squats right at right after that you're going to do 10 overhead presses if you do that your heart rate is going to go up your conditioning level will go up and there's no need to spend like an hour on the treadmill now that's not to say that running is you know that there's this is one of those debates in the fitness world like you know running is bad runnings not bad like you know if you want to run big you know run you know find out how to do it well if you want to sign up for a 5k or a 10k then do it but don't confuse you'll see this a lot like if you read about fitness and kind of like mainstream news sites they conflate exercise with running running is a form of exercise but it's by no means the only way that one can exercise like i know that kathleen i know you are into boxing when you tell me your heart rate doesn't get up and boxing and i would say that you're lying right

Kathleen Shannon 1:16:28
well and that's we're actually so selfishly kind of getting to talk to you about this i started boxing five days a week and i lost my ass so then i was like i need to get back in the gym and lift some weights and i used to be kind of anti cardio because the deal is is that your heart is an important muscle but it's just one muscle it's not the only one that you should be working out and so strength training is what you know it's what makes you look good make it honestly the boxing for me helped me shed well i was gonna say shed some fat but i don't know that that's the case it's what helped get my muscles exposed so anyway that's a whole different thing and boxing is kind of a high intensity interval training kind of cardio and so it's kind of like it feels like sprint's is what it feels like so anyway it's intense and then i started feeling bad that i wasn't lifting as much as and i'm kind of confused because i'm boxing three days a week on lifting two days a week i'm like oh am i doing it right i don't know

Jason Harrison 1:17:34
there's no i mean if you're boxing and you're lifting i mean do you like what you're doing

Kathleen Shannon 1:17:42
yeah i mean i guess for me i have some aesthetic goals and i have some performance goals i'm worried that my boxing is counteracting like that i'm burning off the muscle that i'm trying to build you know what i mean like so i'm trying to be really efficient but i am also enjoying what i'm doing and i feel like i look good and it's all good it's all good i just started to kind of nerd out on it a little bit

Jason Harrison 1:18:05
i mean i think it all starts with what the goal is so let's say if your goal was

Unknown Speaker 1:18:09
pack

Jason Harrison 1:18:10
six pack okay well i mean six pack you can achieve that through boxing and a combination of lifting but if you want an ass then yeah like you know then lifting is kind of your thing but like you know you can this goes back to the idea of like shaming and like you know if you're doing what you like to do and and you're happy with the results then there's no right or wrong when it comes to that you know like people people say like i really love yoga and it's like well then do yoga like there's no right or wrong as long as you're doing weight bearing exercise and as long as you're doing something that helps you stay in good condition and you're happy with your body and you're happy with the results and you're eating well then then that's it like there's no right or wrong when it comes to that and i mean i should say like i am not dogmatic at all when it comes to fitness so like you know i know pilates people i know yoga people i know crossfit people i know powerlifting people like there is something to be learned from all of these different types of fitness and the beautiful thing about it is is there is usually something for everyone and that's not to say that somebody who says well i just like i just like to get on the elliptical and it's like well okay you're a woman in your 60s you know osteoporosis is a concern like you really need to be doing some sort of weight bearing exercise so you but aside from that like there's just there's a lot of different ways of approaching fitness and there's no in general there's no like right or wrong way of approaching it as long as you're happy with the results

Kathleen Shannon 1:19:56
amen and i think that that's like i know i keep looping it back To the creative entrepreneur mindset, but again, it's something I've been thinking about a lot. And it's something that Emily and I have really discovered doing this podcast and getting to talk to so many experts. There's so many different ways of going about business. And there's no right or wrong way to run your business. You just got to try different things. And I'm constantly trying different things whenever it comes to fitness. And it's whenever I start reading, the stuff that is like, real dogmatic, and it's working for those people, and it's worked for them. And I'm glad that they're writing the stuff that's out there. And they're speaking from a point of view and from like, a place of confidence that makes me feel like that is the right way to be doing things. But But there isn't a right or wrong way. And I think it's whenever I kind of fall down that trap of trying to figure out the sure answer, yet I start to wonder if I'm doing the right or wrong thing.

Jason Harrison 1:20:56
The two most important questions I think one can ask in fitness are how do I feel? And why am I doing that? How do I feel tells me like if there's a problem, like if I if I if I'm feeling lethargic or tired or achy, then I need to address that. Why am I doing that gets gets you back to like setting a framework. So if someone's goal is to pack on a bunch of muscle, but they're doing like an hour of cardio five days a week, then they are working against themselves. If someone's goal is to be shredded, but they are, you know, lifting in a way that doesn't help get them to shred it like then they're working against themselves. And so the question, why am I doing this can always help keep the eyes on the prize, like what you're actually trying to accomplish. And it kind of eliminates going back to this idea of shame and eliminates all that other noise like Okay, why am I doing this? Okay, this is my goal, well, then this is what I need to do. And I fall into that myself, like I, I am, I'm still kind of like working through the idea that like if you go on YouTube now, you can find like a bunch of like 600 pound dead lifters and I am not a 600 pound deadlift, er, and I feel like those people you know, it's the it's the whole like imposter syndrome that, you know, people have been talking about, and I feel like, Well, why would anybody listen to me? I'm not that strong. Like, I'm not, you know, I don't look like that. Or I'm not, you know, I don't look like the rock or whatever. But I don't even know why sort of talking.

Kathleen Shannon 1:22:36
Do you want to look like the rock?

Jason Harrison 1:22:38
No, I know. Not really. Although the rock does look pretty damn good. I don't know that I would want to eat the way I would need to eat to look like that. Like I imagine like he has to put in some like serious calories. And to be that big. You have to eat like it's your job. And I mean, you're essentially

Kathleen Shannon 1:23:00
like a horse at that time. Just like you just eating all day and working.

Jason Harrison 1:23:06
Yeah, yeah. I don't. And sleeping. Yeah, I don't have that in me. I like Manhattan's too much and apple pie. Yeah, I keep forgetting what the question is. I get down these rabbit holes, these like Jason rabbit holes. And

Kathleen Shannon 1:23:30
I don't want to take up too much more of your time. where can our listeners find more about you and find your blog and all of that? Where are you online? Alright, fine, I suppose for our for our date and listeners.

Jason Harrison 1:23:43
Yeah. So if you're local to Dayton, you can see me and I mean, you know, it's on the web. So it's you don't have to be local to Dayton but I write a weekly column in and what website called Dayton most Metro so you can find me there. You can go to present tense fitness comm you can find me there. I'm on Twitter at present tense fit Instagram at present tense fitness. And I love to hear from people like I I love to answer questions. I mean, the idea of kind of like giving away knowledge for free is something that I've totally stolen from the two of you. And I do that I do that all the time.

Emily Thompson 1:24:30
You have a really great newsletter on your website that you share some really great content on.

Jason Harrison 1:24:36
Yeah, that so the newsletter you can sign up for that there at present tense, fitness calm. So there's lots of lots of ways to find me.

Kathleen Shannon 1:24:47
Alright, awesome. Thank you so much for joining us. It's been really cool getting to talk to you about this. And it's a topic that I've been thinking about a lot and you know that Emily has loved working with you. So thanks for joining

Jason Harrison 1:25:00
Thank you so much for having me. And if I could wax both of your cars briefly and just say that, like you really, you really both have had outsized impacts on the way present tense fitness has evolved. And I really I mean, I, Susan, my wife is the person who kind of like, discovered you, and then shared your wisdom with me. So, thank you for you know, everything you've done and continue to do. It's been and this has been like a real like almost like a weird kind of thing like where you know, people online and then you're talking to them, you know? So it's been really cool. Thanks for having me.

Kathleen Shannon 1:25:45
Thank you for listening to being boss. Find Show Notes for this episode at love being boss calm. Listen to past episodes and subscribe to new episodes on our website on iTunes, SoundCloud,

Emily Thompson 1:25:57
or Stitcher. Did you like this episode? Head on over to our Facebook group by searching being boss on facebook and join in on the conversation with other bosses or share it with their friends. Do the work be boss and we'll see you next week.

Kathleen Shannon 1:26:31
For all speechless

Emily Thompson 1:26:34
I know Kathleen has her infatuated face on I see it.

Unknown Speaker 1:26:39
So I want to