Episode 149. Talkin’ Shop with Supertrainer Lee Boyce

Show Notes

Lee Boyce is a Toronto-based strength coach and internationally-published fitness writer, and speaker. He’s also a part-time college professor in Fitness and Health Promotion. Lee’s regularly featured in many of the largest platforms as a Fitness Expert, and speaks around North America at professional development conferences, helping trainers become more effective at their craft.

Lee has been featured or contributed in well-known media: Wall Street Journal, Esquire, Men’s Fitness, Men’s Health, Muscle & Fitness, Men’s Journal, Oxygen, Shape, Huffington Post, Arnold Schwarzenegger media, and ABC News Radio.

The expert personal trainer and social media

• There’s a lot of copycat training expertise in the market.
• How many trainers are dependent on social media and numbers of followers? The footprint you leave on the industry has to come from someplace else.
• There is a place and need for the social media “fits-po” type trainer. They’re just not on par with experts who try to make clients, and other trainers, better.
• If you’re going to be someone who wants to be viewed as an expert in the health industry, a trainer should try to physically evidence like they’re walking the talk.
• The role of a good coach is to put [themselves] out of business.
• When Lee speaks at conferences, his goal is to deliver information people can use, rather than furthering an agenda.
• Lee and Scott agree that experience is the greatest teacher.

Ouch!

• In April 2017, Lee suffered a bilateral patellar tendon rupture during a basketball game. Contributing to it were new shoes, concrete floor, had not played in a while, and was insufficiently warmed up.
• The injury taught him lessons on how to approach training and other things, and forced him to find different substitutes for movements he did before.
• Mobility, calisthenics and bodyweight training are important. We get into a run of performing the big, strength movements, working in the sagittal plane and overload.
• Need to address connective tissue and mobility, and other forms of resistance.
• Limitations since then: longer warm-up, sets with the bar only. Can still run, jump, sprint, and squat over 300 lbs.

Matching the client and training program

• Look at chronological (biological) age, and training age. Lee would address a first timer to the gym who’s 43 lifting weights differently than a first timer who’s 18 lifting weights.
• There may be accrued injuries, weaknesses or imbalances in the older trainee.
• Someone working a desk job for 22 years will likely have immobility and maybe lacking coordination and other basic skills.
• Some trainers put all clients through the same program, regardless of the trainee’s goal.

What does the number of chin-ups have to do with achieving a physique goal?

• Are high-impact, ballistic training styles contributing to many sports injuries we see today?
• Longer sports seasons are abbreviating careers.
• There’s something to be said for lay-offs and time away from the gym.

“It’s great to have a 600-lb deadlift but what’s your shelf life going to be…?”  – Coach Lee Boyce

Becoming a great trainer

• People who have disposable income are a “blue ocean” for trainers. Blue oceans are markets where the competition is limited.
• Lee used his writing as a way to differentiate himself from other trainers.
• Personal training fees should be set just like any other profession, like dentists or lawyers, whose fees are all within a finite range.
• Most trainers don’t put in the energy and effort to make themselves stand out as true experts. Fewer people are willing to put their heads down, be a learner, and do what it takes.
• Tips for becoming a great trainer:
  • Don’t skip steps.
  • Work with as many clients and demographics as possible.
  • Continue learning. Read the experts, like Dan John, Mark Rippetoe, JC Santana, Vern Gambetta, and others.
  • Stick with what you know.

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