SSP 149. Talkin' Shop with Supertrainer Lee Boyce

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♦ Talkin' Shop with Supertrainer Lee Boyce ♦

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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 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…?” ♦♦

♦ 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,