Interview with Will Levy
Note from Matt: This interview was recorded from a skype call and then written down by me. Some sections may be edited slightly to make for an easier read. If you’d like to replicate the experience of chatting with Will just read the rest of his answers in an Australian accent.
Matt: Thanks for doing this interview Will. I'd love to hear a little bit about your background. What led you to becoming a personal trainer?
Will: I was a kid who was just a mediocre athlete, but I enjoyed P.E. classes in school. When I was almost finished with school I took a “I don’t want to get a real job yet” course which included the Australian qualification for personal trainers. It wasn’t even a full qualification at the time, but it was thrown into the course for free and was just a small part of what was being taught. I got distracted in a career doing advertising sales for a bit and eventually realized that it absolutely sucked. While there I started doing membership consulting for a gym which started to blend my interests. I realized that I sucked at sales and wanted to be with all the trainers that were there, so I pretty much quit on the spot and started as a personal trainer the next week.
Matt: What was your learning process like as a fitness professional? What helped you become the trainer you are today?
Will: Yeah, so I started off at a commercial gym and I’m thankful to the manager of the place helping me get started by teaching me the basics of what it took to run the place. I had put all of my eggs in one basket so I knew I had to make this work. I pretty much made myself available for anything that the gym needed. I put my hand up and said that I’d work any hours they needed. I was getting there first thing in the morning and hanging around til late at night. I was working split shifts, hanging around cleaning between sessions, talking to membership and front desk people. I just did everything it took to get clients. Within a few weeks the managers there realized that I was “that guy” and pretty much gave me all the gym floor hours. If you’ve worked at a corporate gym before you know what this meant. Basically doing all the things that were needed and getting paid peanuts. I recognized it was all about building up your reputation at the gym and being seen about the place. I got my first PT session and it led to more and more. Management received feedback from my clients that they enjoyed working with me and it quickly led to be becoming the main trainer there. One, by just being present. Two, by being seen to work hard. I kind of put on a show and looking back I realized that what I was doing back then absolutely sucked. In fact, the first 2-3 years of my career are pretty much a write-off. It’s embarrassing to think about now (laughing). I worked towards getting a full schedule of clients, started working in a trainer management role, and just continued to grow from there. Diving in and getting as much hands-on experience as I could paid off for me.
Matt: So now do you have your own gym or are you still in a management role?
Will: After the management role ran it’s course I switched over to being self-employed and have worked at a studio for the last few years. I’m currently looking for a location to open my own gym. Everything’s pretty much ready to go once the right spot is found.
Matt – What’s your vision for this gym? What will make it stand out?
Will: Yeah, it’s a bit tough to say because it hasn’t been started yet. I’ve spent so much time getting the business model together and have probably over-educated myself on that end. It actually might be hard to find a suitable premises. We’re in a pretty suburban area and I’m looking for a warehouse-type facility for our gym.
We’re going to build a private strength and conditioning facility, which is definitely more familiar to you over in America. It’s less common here in Australia, but is starting to grow. It’s going to have lots of open floor space, free weights, squat racks, cables, and bands. A space ideal for a hybrid of large group training and personal training. The focus will be on having multiple coaches working with these groups and working off of progressive program design. Rather than being mistaken for a bootcamp or Crossfit gym the fact is that we will be running off of programs. That’s something that I’ll be in charge of. Daily Undulating periodization and stuff like that. We will have an introduction program to get new members ready for higher levels and still offer a 1-on-1 option for people who need that type of care. Personally, I work with a lot of people who deal with back pain who are going to need a more hands-on approach.
The focus will always stay on ensuring that the service we offer is the best. Following evidenced-based training and proven techniques that work. Not just making it appeal to whatever flavor of fitness that consumer is into at the moment. We don’t want to over do something like barbell training, for example, just because Crossfit has brought it to the masses. Just the idea of bringing quality strength and conditioning training to the average person is something that I think is the future of the industry. Unfortunately there’s not a ton of people or locations who do it that well at this point in time.
Matt: So I read on your blog that you do not do any online training yourself because you prefer being able to interact with your clients face-to-face. Even though my team and I build software that works really well for online training I don’t think it will ever replace in-person training and shouldn’t. Could you talk about where you see online training fitting into the industry in the long-term?
Will: Yeah, so I have nothing against online training. I just don’t think it’s what I’m best at. I can certainly see it has value for people who are chasing a fairly basic goal. Let’s say that you have a weight loss client, which is 90% of the market. Primarily they need accountability, solid nutrition advice, habit-forming techniques, and some basic resistance training. That’s going to get the job done. Obviously the details can enhance or diminish that, but that’s the basics of what they need. Delivering that online can be fine. So if a consumer has found a trainer/coach online and they like what they do, like being a part of the online environment, and are going to listen to what the individual has put together, then great! That’s probably ideal for them. I’ve sent several of my clients to Precision Nutrition when they needed help with weight loss and it worked out great. To be able to get access to someone online who they aren’t able to get access to in-person is huge. It can also makes a lot of sense financially. On the trainer side, it gives them more flexibility and the potential to make really good income. Now, the trend was that everyone wanted to jump into online training and it seemed like that was the one place the industry was headed. I played with it for about two seconds and realized that it just wasn’t going to be ideal for what I was doing. My clientele, the type I excel working with, are a lot of post-rehab low back pain clients and then a lot of young athletes. Clients at both end of the spectrum. With them it’s really important to be there in-person. You need to be able to see how they move and fix technique on the fly based on what they’re doing. My pre-programmed stuff is more of template rather than a set list to follow. I also like to get in there, be hands on, and experiment with different things. I tried to assess people online and it was simply a mess. There just wasn’t a way for me to be able to deliver the type of service I wanted to online. So, it wasn’t for me, or my niche, in my opinion, but I can see great value in it for trainers with different focuses.
Matt: That’s an excellent way to put it. I think more trainers should avoid trying to force their training into an environment that may not be the best fit for it and stay focused.
So even though you didn’t end up doing online training yourself you were still able to create an online community for trainers with your Facebook group, The Education of a Fitness Professional. How did this first get started with this? Were you involved in other groups before this one?
Will: I was in another trainer group and it was the only one that I’d ever been a part of. I jumped in and started answering a few questions here and there. Over time I became one of the bigger guys in the group. I saw the benefit. I was able to get some exposure online and help a lot of people at the same time who otherwise would struggle to get access to this information. The guy who ran it lost the plot. He was always trying to sell something (laughing). He went off with a few people and I was just like, fuck this. I told several people I was starting a group of my own and continually added more content over time. At a certain point we had a good amount of people so I put took some time to make it even better. I put together the file section, made a recommended reading list, did a review on subscription sites, and it just grew from there. Other trainers started to upload studies and it started to get really good. More and more people came in and I just decided that I wasn’t going to let any spammers or anything in there. I checked every single person that came which worked really well, but it was a ton of work for me. Eventually this hit a tipping point where it wasn’t just me, but other people recommending the group to trainers they knew. I think when a group gets large enough on Facebook they start to recommend it to other people so the group just blew up to over 3000 members. It’s just a quality group of trainers who choose to procrastinate productively together and it’s been really good.
Matt: Did you ever have any concerns that you were going to lose control of the community as it grew?
Will: I’m not that attached to it to be honest (laughing). Let’s look at it for what it is, just a Facebook group. Facebook is going to run it’s course one day and something else will pop up to replace it. My attitude towards it all was that if I was going to run a Facebook group then it was going to be the best Facebook group for trainers that there is. That’s just how I approach everything with my life. Even if it’s not the “best” group out there I think we’ve done pretty well. I have a lot of people who message me behind the scenes and tell me what a great resource it is. The feedback I really like to hear is when they say that it really changed their mind on something. That’s when the community becomes really valuable beyond just the content that’s been put together. If the information is challenging ideas and forcing the members to really understand the different aspects of all the discussions, then it’s going to help them for a long time to come. It’s been really cool recently to run into people locally who tell me that they’re in the Facebook group and that it means so much to them. I never really expected that to happen.
Matt: Have you ever thought about running a smaller mentor group for personal trainers similar to what Luke Johnson and Chris Burgess are doing? It’s clear that trainers are getting a lot of value out of this and it’s something you’re very passionate about.
Will: Yeah, trainer education is one of my favorite aspects of this. I present at trainer workshops and for our own company from time to time. I just did a presentation for EFM over the weekend for Luke’s community. I doubt this will be something that I’ll focus on online for right now. I’m just not that tech-savvy. If anything, I’d be much more interested in doing something that has a physical presence. Branching something off of my own gym like Alwyn and Rachel Cosgrove did with Results fitness to educate other trainers. I look at it in that sort of format, but you never know. If I’m the admin for this current FB group in a few more years and members want something more out of it I might be inclined. I haven’t really planned that far ahead.
Matt: What are you excited about for the personal training industry over the next few years?
Will: The obvious one is that technology is going to play a big part on many levels. Quantified self and improved data-tracking. That’s all cool, but what’s more interesting to me is just seeing more evidenced-based input coming through, I know that’s a bit of cliche, but evidenced-based just means that you’re following the best evidence. It doesn’t mean research-based. It doesn’t mean that everyone has to be walking around quoting studies and being a Pubmed genius. That’s a part of it, of course, but it really should just be taking in that extra data to decide what to use and what to throw out. If there’s a gray area then you should just fall back on your professional judgement and what you find works for you and your clients until research proves you wrong. Being willing to step back and figure out what’s really causing change is something we continuously need to do as trainers. The dodgy, and often dangerous, practices that we see are a form of self-regulation themselves. We all agree that there isn’t a lot of regulation for personal trainers right now, but one way we can self-regulate it is by just having an appreciation of the evidence hierarchy and letting that led our own practices. There’s always going to be the snake oil salesmen in the industry, there’s always going to be the Tracy Anderson’s, but as more and more people understand how evidence works the industry is going to continue to head in a positive direction.
Matt: Well I think that you’re having a much bigger impact than you know with the work that you do. Thanks so much for giving me your time Will!
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