Rebecca Kennedy Left Law School to Major in Dance, Because Her Mentors Told Her to Quit

“Power & Empower” is what Rebecca Kennedy stands for. Rebecca’s background in dance, gymnastics and track & field laid a foundation for movement, fitness and body awareness that she brings to every Tread class. As a former bootcamp instructor, NFL cheerleader, Nike master trainer and more, Rebecca aims to make every workout the best part of the day by celebrating movement and empowering others through positivity.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

Brett Gilliland  0:01  

Welcome to the Circuit of Success. I’m your host, Brett Gilliland and today I’ve got Rebecca Kennedy on the show. What’s up, Rebecca?

Rebecca Kennedy  0:09  

Hi guys, what’s up?

Brett Gilliland  0:10  

How are you?

Rebecca Kennedy  0:12  

I am excellent. I’m so excited to be here with you guys today.

Brett Gilliland  0:15  

We’re excited to have you so you are the Peleton Master Instructor, you are a former NFL cheerleader, a US a gymnastics athlete, you are a dancer a celebrity trainer—oh, my goodness. You got a lot of stuff cooking. 

Rebecca Kennedy  0:31  

Yeah, I dabble in a few things here and there… definitely has been a full fun experience in the fitness industry over, over the last decade so far.

Brett Gilliland  0:43  

Absolutely. Well, you get the benefit of getting to workout for a living. So that’s pretty nice. And some of us have to, you know, get up early in the morning or we got to do it at night. Or if you’re like me I showed you earlier on the on the video. My Peloton sits in the corner of my office. We got to get our work in. But tell us for those of the people that maybe don’t have a Peloton out there, people that are around me all the time. They’re like, “Oh, here he goes again. He’s gonna talk about the peloton.” But it is a game changer. Tell us why your experience, why you think it is a game changer.

Rebecca Kennedy  1:13  

Yeah, I mean, gosh, there’s just been so many hurdles for people to kind of obstacle their way over and find excuses not to bring fitness into their daily life. And in all honesty, it depends on where you live, I think we figured out a way to help people find fitness in their daily routine, whether it’s for five minutes or for an hour, there’s a way for you to be part of not just like your own fitness journey, but be part of a bigger community too. So you get to meet like minded people you have we figured out like the coaching. So I know being in the gym for so many years, I just saw I felt the pain of of those coming in and not knowing what to do. And not having a trainer or not wanting to join a class. And maybe the time didn’t work out maybe a gym was too far away, like I know, I talk to so many new moms and dads that just like can’t leave the house for like, you know, logistically to get a babysitter for you to like go to the gym for an hour. Like it’s it’s pretty tough. So I think we really figured out a way to bring the the spirit of group fitness and personal training into the into your home. Just you know, you said it yourself. Like if you’re going to stare at your bike every day, right? You’re trying to everyday you’re going to use it.

Brett Gilliland  2:35  

Yeah. And I mean, just the equipment, just the physical aspect of it is amazing. I mean, it is the best stuff. You know, I’ve got another bike and treadmill and stuff like that at home. But nothing compares to that and and the nice screen and all this stuff I could go on and on. But I think people listen to the show. Obviously, fitness is usually a priority for most people. And it’s really become a big priority of mine for the last year. But I’ve had to make it that way. And I will tell you that as a guy, I’m now 41 who thankfully had good genes and stayed skinny, but I’ve not been a normal workout person, right? So I’ll do stuff here and there. I stay active with kids, I play basketball, I do those things. But, for me the peloton whether it’s right here on the app, or if it’s on the bike, or if it’s on the treadmill, or I can go outside and listen to you guys and tell us what to do when we’re running. Or if I’m walking the dog here walk this way, you know, take so much of the emotion and the difficulty out of working out.

Rebecca Kennedy  3:31  

Yeah, no, I mean, like having a friend there especially like connecting with, there’s so many different trainers and instructors on the app that everyone will find someone that they really, really connect with. And you know, we all have our favorites. And I think it’s helpful to have that familiarity and that camaraderie between just the people that are on the app and you meet each other and then having that person in your ear giving you the motivation. So even if you don’t own a piece of hardware, which I also go on about that. I mean, gosh, I’ve taught on treadmills for so many years, and the wear and tear that it can put on your body with if you’re not running on something that’s like, like the peloton, right? Your joints are just like, getting beat over and over. But I mean, from the bike and it’s so silent and smooth and really comfortable. And then the tread the slap belt. It’s like if you haven’t run on one before I can’t wait for your back the first time you do it. I mean it’s like driving a Ferrari I mean the speed and incline knobs they roll so you don’t have to there’s no buttons that you’re typing in anything. It’s not you kind of take the cumbersomeness  of a regular treadmill out of it.

Brett Gilliland  4:44  

So you don’t have to kill yourself to raise your score.

Rebecca Kennedy  4:49  

Yeah, no kidding. It’s just right there for you. You know.

Brett Gilliland  4:53  

That’s awesome. Well, tell us about what you know what before we move off of that everybody always ask us when you say some about Peloton The question is always “Oh, who’s your favorite instructor?” Right? Yeah, we got to ask you if you can’t work out with yourself, Rebecca, on the Peloton app, who are you working out with? Maybe you can’t say you don’t want to make any of your friends mad, but…

Rebecca Kennedy  5:13  

No, they’ll, they’ll, I mean, everyone has their favorites. And I think just like you have your favorites, too. I love everyone for a different reason. But I’m a huge Hip Hop junkie. So if I’m on the bike, I’m obsessed with Alex Tucsonans Hip Hop rides. If I’m taking a yoga class, I absolutely adore Ross Rayburn. I love running with Vex Gentry. I stressed Andy spear just as a fun fact. Before he was an instructor with me on Peloton. Back in the day, he was my personal trainer. 

Brett Gilliland  5:50  

 Oh, no way. 

Rebecca Kennedy  5:51  

Yeah. So I love I love working out with Andy. I mean, you said you meditate yourself. So I’m using the app Aditi has like, I see her regularly. I’m like, Is it weird that I you’re avoiding? This is like the last thing I hear before I go to bed every night.

Brett Gilliland  6:10  

I fall asleep to you every night and you just don’t know it. Well, that’s awesome. So give us a little background maybe if you can, what what helped maybe from your upbringing or college, whatever it may be. What’s really kind of helped you become the woman you are today?

Rebecca Kennedy  6:27  

 Um, I partly I think it’s just in my DNA. Like, you know, I, I grew up in a in a home that we were pretty active. My dad is very, very active. But my mom, this is back—I’m going to date myself a little bit. There was a lot of aerobics on TV that you could… Okay, yeah. So I saw my mom doing all those classes, because she had four kids at home. So she would she would pop in Gilad, and do that, you know, step aerobics, and then I would mimic that I was put into gymnastics and dance at age three. And I loved it. Because I started walking at 10 months, I was crawling and everything I was just, I couldn’t be stopped. I love, love, love movement. So much. And my mom was like, well, we need to put this energy into something. So she put me into sports. So I ended up I don’t really think the nutrition part of it and lifestyle part really, I don’t think I understood what, what I was doing until I was actually in college. But growing up, I was in school all day. And then I would be in dance and gymnastics until high school. And then I had to decide kind of which one I wanted to you know, sports are very demanding on your time and every coach wants you they are full force. So I chose to really dive deep into gymnastics because I was excelling there. And I thought that it was a really—I love a challenge. I think it’s just part of my, my spirit. And it was one of the most rewarding sports because every single day that you show up to practice you had to figure out something new about yourself and figure a way to learn something new get stronger, physically get stronger, mentally, you know, sports, especially gymnastics, where there’s like a constant level of fear playing, you’re, you’re really working with a mental, like a mental challenge there. So yeah, I mean, being an athlete my whole life and then getting into college, I was going pre law. I loved I believe in like fairness and equality. And I, I was interning at a law office in high school for a couple years. And having seen, you know, lawyers in my face and what their lives were like on a daily basis, they just kept telling me, pulling me aside like quietly and they’d say, like, “Don’t do this.” You know, follow don’t follow this. Like you’re a pretty happy person, like you don’t want to have just be like reading all the time. And I’m like, I love to read but I’m glad that I had that dose of reality and I missed moving my body and moving for a living when I got to school, so I had to make that that change. After my freshman year I decided that I was not going to go into law. I would change my major and go into dance again. And forge that river see what that held for me. So it’s a brought me to New York. I got my bachelor’s degree in dance. I got picked up by for an internship with Alvin Ailey and Broadway Dance Center. And that kind of kicked off like my fitness career in New York. 

Brett Gilliland  9:59  

Okay, so I mean, that really becomes a personal brand, right? I mean, it’s your dancing. And there’s, you know, there’s I don’t want to say on every street corner, but there’s a lot of trainers. And so to get to the level that you’ve gotten to, you know, with through through Nike through Peloton through whatever it may be. There’s a lot of people out there, right. So what do you think it was about you that helped you in that journey, if you will, or that grind? That helped me get to where you’re at today?

Rebecca Kennedy  10:27  

So, well, Brett, I mean, it’s, I feel like it’s a timing thing, because I started training in New York, when there was, I’m not going to put it all in time. Definitely, well, there’s a couple of different things. But I started big box gyms. And I was just meant, like, I had a couple mentors that really helped put me into the positions to succeed. I heard I caught wind, after having got like, a year or two deep into training at a gym, I reached out to another company, and they introduced me to like corporate fitness. So I was working with people that were at desks all day, and then we’d go into like a huge conference room, and workout, you know, I lead classes there. And I just got to see what people were needing. And I think that why me, a lot of trainers, what I see now versus that or not, then but myself is that it’s I don’t care about, I don’t want to say I don’t care about me, but I really care deeply about, about my clients and about people in general. And I want them to feel the love for movement and how it makes their body feel and how that changes their relationship with themselves and their confidence and it bleeds into every area of their life. And so I know that that passion is inherent to me. And I think it’s a gift and I want to be able to share it with people. But timing like the the boom of the fitness industry in the boutique fitness industry, you had like, gosh, Barry’s boot camp was popping up SoulCycle was popping up, then then came like, you know, all the different ones that there’s just too many to even to name at this point right now. Right. But I got in, in the first year when they started and I just I walked right in, I took one class and I was like, yep, this is what I want to do. I’ve been I was uh I used to YouTube, Barry’s Bootcamp classes on the treadmill at the big box gym that I was teaching at, just because I love to be the group fitness aspect. And I love the the intensity of it. So I walked up to the owner. And I was like, Hi, I’m Rebecca, and I want to work here.

Brett Gilliland  12:51  

So let’s spend time on that right there. Because you said, you know, again, it’s not about just timing. It takes courage to walk up to a person and say, “Hi, I’m Rebecca, I want to work here. And oh, by the way, I am going to work here.” So talk to us about that and before you do that, you know, the circuits of success, we talk about attitude, we talk about your belief system, we talk about taking action, and then ultimately that gets you results. Right, those are the circuits. Right. And so that took a belief system in yourself. But it also took action to shake that hand. So tell me more about that.

Rebecca Kennedy  13:23  

Yeah, well, so my mom has this theory growing up, she was like, if anything makes you feel nervous or slightly uncomfortable, you have to go address it immediately, like get the nervousness out of the way. And so I did just that, like if I sit on anything, and it’ll just it I won’t do it. So I have to make it happen. Like right away. I love my mom for like teaching me that but it you know, it kind of came from the, the confidence that I had in myself, it came from every single moment in my sport career to then… I’m gonna I think it’s my parents really helped me instill a lot of confidence in my in myself. But I knew what I wanted also. So I think it’s it’s not just finding that confidence within you. But it’s like knowing that you’re meant to do this, and that you’re willing to add value and know why. It’s not just because you desperately wanted to do it. It’s because I knew that I could do what they were doing and I would add something different and unique to it and that they would be grateful that I came to them.

Brett Gilliland  14:38  

Yep. So I love that. And I what I hear in that is I hear passion. But I also hear and have a question about thinking so somebody just asked me this the other day they’re like “Did you know you’d be successful growing up and I’m like, or did you know what you want to do when you when you’re gonna grow up?” And I said no, I had no idea like, but I knew I wanted to be successful. I knew that I was going to give everything I could possibly give to be successful. And it wasn’t again to your point that for yourself, of course, you want nice things and finding things in life. But, you know, my mission in life is to help people see a future greater than their past. And that’s what I get up every day. And I’m fired up to do this stuff or to do client meetings and run our wealth management company. But I hear that like, think time, did you spend a lot of time thinking about that stuff?

Rebecca Kennedy  15:27  

Yeah, I mean, gosh, I wanted to be a million things I was growing up, right. I could never see myself exactly like if you asked me, even five years ago, what I would be doing today, I don’t know. So if you ask me where I’m going to be in another five years. But I do know that I believe, if I give everything that I have to what I’m doing, it leads me to the next place that I need to be going so I just, I trust the process. I have faith in in, you know, doing my best and that’ll get me to the next place. I am

Brett Gilliland  0:01  

All right. So a little technical difficulty there. So we apologize. So talk about those when you heard me say earlier about attitude and your belief system and your actions. When you hear the word attitude, what comes to mind?

Rebecca Kennedy  0:14  

I always think positive attitude. I’m a eternal optimist. But um, I think honestly, like, leading with a positive attitude can change the entire landscape of your day of your life of that moment. Yeah, I mean,

Brett Gilliland  0:34  

yeah, I think when I talked about it as if you choose to be a victor, not a victim, right? Because there’s, something’s going to happen to you and I today, and we have a choice with our attitude to either how we’re going to respond with either negatively or positively. Right. So your positive attitude, but I think so many people, something happens, and then it’s like, they want to go get in the fetal position for a week and you know, cry about it when I think my assumption would be somebody like you says, yeah, that’s okay. That stinks. I don’t want to happen. That sucks. Really bad. But I’m gonna go out and take action now and do something about it. Fair. Yeah.

Rebecca Kennedy  1:07  

I mean, I couldn’t agree more. I think I’m a very solution based thinker. So the mentality that I live with is trusting the process, but knowing that like, you have the ability that you kind of change anything, you have the ability to filter out what you’re, what you’re hearing how things are, quote, unquote, making you feel you can choose whether or not to, to react in, in a multitude of ways, obviously. So I think if you’re in charge of of your emotions, you can really navigate into not to say that like feeling bad for a moment is fine. Growing up, we always had this rule in my house, it’s like, if you’re upset about something, you are allowed to have one pity party, and then you have to kind of keep going. And I appreciate that. It’s like okay, go be sad for a second. But then once you’re done with that, wallowing in it doesn’t change anything and it doesn’t. It doesn’t make your, your, your life any better. But if you’re solution base and I think at Peloton I thrive yours because we’re a solution based company, especially when you’re still like a startup and everyone is expected to be very like scrappy and the best at what they do. So when you’re coming to the table, and you’re trying to think about like, what’s next? How do we, how do we get from point A to point Z, right? You’re like, “Whoa,” this is like I you know, I tend to take on big massive projects, and I don’t get scared by them, because I know I can do them. And I’m a gymnastics like, you get kicked out of practice if you said the word can’t, and I don’t I don’t, I’m not joking about that you would be kicked out and you’d have to leave the gym if you said the word can’t. So it changes the way. You You’re like your your genetic makeup, like after a while. It’s like, I can do this, I just want to let you know, I’m afraid I need this thought I need help. And it learns it teaches you how to like, delegate and inform yourself of like, what? What kind of team and support do you need at this time? And when you’re going through things, and you don’t have to go through everything alone either. So knowing like, yeah, positive attitude. What does that mean? It’s not that somebody is just happy and has a smile on their face all the time. It’s like, positive that I’m going to be a winner. I’m not I’m like, like you said to Victor. I couldn’t agree more, especially when you’re whatever part of the team or of the family or of the partnership that you’re in. It can be not just obviously in sports, but in every area of your life.

Brett Gilliland  3:41  

That’s right, when thoughts become your actions, right. And then your actions become your results or your reality. And I think that if we continually say to your point, I say to my kids, okay, oh, I can’t get my seatbelt on. I’m like, yeah, absolutely. You’re right. If you think you can’t, you can’t right. Yeah, but if you think you can, there’s another way, maybe you move the backpack and you get stuff and then you make it happen. Right. So we’re on the same line there. So how about your belief system? When you think about, you know, when it comes to your eating, your sleeping, your movement, your businesses, all the things that you do? What’s your belief system that Rebecca Kennedy has to follow, like every day,

Rebecca Kennedy  4:19  

Consistency and balance. My belief in there has to be a balance of everything. I’m not I can’t live in the polar you know, ends of anything, whether that be like the extremes. I have dieting, of sleep of exercise of anything, too much of anything is not a good thing. Not enough of anything is not a good thing. So, you know, I’ll give you a little insight when I was in New York at the beginning. I was also fitness modeling and the demand of being a dancer and fitness model and I was you know, New York City is very expensive to live in. So I had another job on the side a couple other jobs and, and one of them I was bartending late at night. So I would bartend overnight, I’d show up to like the gym first thing in the morning, when it opened, I would sleep for a couple hours, I’d go to castings go, you know, to dance class, maybe an audition, and then I’d go back to work at night, and I was trying to stay really in shape. So I was I was limiting my calories, I was maximizing my energy expenditure, and I wasn’t getting a lot of sleep. That is not a sustainable way of life in your early 20s. Maybe it’s more sustainable. But now, and, you know, especially feeling like I have a greater opportunity to be a role model. And I don’t take it on as a responsibility. I just I am what I am. And so being able to showcase, okay, getting seven, eight hours a night, like how does that make you feel? Right? I’m drinking, you know, three liters of water a day, how does that make you feel? If I’m depriving myself of sweets all the time, or carbs, or you’re doing the next diet, always and you’re constantly in deprivation, like how does that mentally you feel? So I had to figure out what I needed personally. And I think consistency, when you find the things that work for you stick with them. And knowing that the balance is then okay, if I need to have one night or I’m not sleeping like the full seven, eight hours, that’s okay. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s not going to be my consistent. If I need to have that sweet. It’s okay. It’s not the end of the world. I want that because it makes me feel great . So those two things, and it works in every area of your life, especially if like I can tend to be a workaholic, too. Like I know my tendencies. And I love what I do. So I’m like, no, no, no, it’s okay, I’ll take on that extra work, I’ll take on that extra project, I can do it, I can do it. So the positive attitude also, like can get in the way but knowing your belief system, like you said, I am a firm believer and like you need to, you need to get your basics, but you need to know what your basics are.

Brett Gilliland  7:28  

Amen to that. I think that’s a crucial thing. I talked about focus 90 I have you know, the business world and we talked about is, when you walk in your office door, you need to have mapped out what your first 90 minutes are every day. Now, does that mean you know three or 65 days a year? You do it? No, of course not. You know, I don’t do it on the weekends. Right? I but I do it probably four to five days during the week. And there’s gonna be there’s gonna be a day where I miss it. But I know when I put my backpack down, I grabbed my big water. I know exactly what I’m gonna do. And I have found I’m controlling my day versus my day controlling me. Yeah. So because I think we can come into the office, right? And you you pull up your phone or your computer and all of a sudden these emails and voicemails and next thing you know, it’s noon, and you haven’t accomplished anything productive. Yep. Stop that, right. Talk to us about the food intake. So you being who you are. And you’re, I’ll be the student here, you’d be the teacher and just about busy lives and how we can make all the excuses in the world to not eat healthy. Now, again, I know there’s that cheat meal, there’s those things, but talk to us about what we need to do and how we need to prepare to eat healthy.

Rebecca Kennedy  8:38  

Yeah. So I’ll start this off by saying I’m not a certified nutritionist. So I’m not going to ever give anyone a prescribed diet plan, but I’ll give you a generalized suggestion that I typically teach my clients about and and will I live by myself. Um, so first and foremost, I, I can’t help stress enough like how important having water is and obviously like, you know that your first 90 minutes or like you’re getting it, I do my routine first thing when I wake up in the morning, and I’ll have my water and then I’ll have a juice of some sort, like, I don’t talk I’m not talking like orange juice, right. Right now I’m having a green juice something that is going to be a little bit more nutrient based and not I’m I’m a very low sugar person. I just don’t think it helps me sleep well. I have energy crashes and my schedule is all over the place in terms of like when I’m teaching when I’m working out so I need to have consistent energy. I don’t want to have spikes in my energy. I love having college and coffee in the morning gives you a little protein. If you’re not a coffee drinker, you can put it into your smoothies you can put it into so many other things, but having protein first thing in the morning is really, really helpful. And then throughout the day, it’s going to be one of those things where like, a macro approach is always the best for me. And I think it’s works really well for most people because it doesn’t say what you can eat. It shows it teaches you like when you’re figuring out what an apple is, versus a steak versus a bowl of cereal. You’re you’re you understand what you’re putting into your body. And I think education is the best tool for helping people understand what they’re trying to achieve here. So there’s plenty I work I’ve worked with nutritionist or naturopath and I love the naturopaths approach because she takes into consideration or that he or she, whoever you’re working with, will figure out the stresses in your life too. And like kind of what you need and give you a personalized macro approach. And the reason I love this is because I can have different foods every single day. That means if I’m traveling, as long as if it fits my macros, I’m totally fine. So I can be in the airport, I can be you know, in Kentucky, I can be in New York, I can be in Marrakech, I can be anywhere, wherever you’re going. I’ve never been to any of those places, I don’t know

Brett Gilliland  11:21  

what the tie is to Kentucky, but Okay, now, I don’t know. But

Rebecca Kennedy  11:26  

either way, the point is, is like you can enjoy the foods of wherever you’re at. I also want to mention like how, throughout the day, I think making sure that you’re getting enough protein, enough fiber enough vegetables, my rule of thumb for the way I’m eating is like I want two thirds of my plate to the vegetables, and then protein and and the carbs come from the vegetables, we can also have, you know, sweet potato, some rice, some, you know, Cauliflower Crust Pizza, like whatever it may be. But I think it’s really important to, to learn that carbs are actually necessary for your energy systems. Especially if you’re working out if you’re doing if you’re riding on the bike, if you’re running on the tread, if you’re lifting like you need that energy supply. So in the past, they’ve been like demonized by the press. The carbs are not your friend or the keto diet or intermittent fasting and like we’re all looking for a fast solution. So I encourage everyone not to take the path most taken but to take the path, path least taken which is the slowest one. And know you’re not going to see the results overnight. And I have to say that you shouldn’t see the results overnight because this is for the long game. So changing the way you think there’s never going to be a pill, if there was ever going to be a pill that change it would have already existed. And I’d be afraid of what it would do to my metabolism to be honest. But I think it’s a it’s a fun game to learn how food can fuel you and how food can nourish you, know we live in a society that’s extremely built around, built over meals, right? So we love to have conversations and quality time builds around meals. So be the owner of that and create meals that are are delicious and start to cook more I think if people cooked more, and ordered out less or went out less that it would be a far different relationship that that you’d have with food. But there’s plenty of apps out there too, that when you start putting the food in there, that’ll show you what you’re eating and not to, like, get you all caught up in the mental side of things like how many calories am I eating, but just to educate you from a very baseline standpoint. And then you can kind of go from there.

Brett Gilliland  14:01  

Yep. I think it’s good feedback. And I think too, you know, like for myself as your work during the day, I got four kids, I’m going to soccer games and basketball games and baseball games. And it’s like last night, it’s a perfect example. We’re 45 minutes from home, it’s gonna be late, they gotta get home and get showered and get to bed. And I know the parents are like they’re saying, Yep, that’s exactly what I did last night. Right? And so you find yourself going through a Chick fil A or Burger King. And it’s like, you know, it’s like, gosh, I’m so tired of doing that. But yeah, you know, so I don’t know what the answer is. But I guess it’s preparation and a process to have it maybe a cooler pack before we go. Yeah, it’s not as fun.

Rebecca Kennedy  14:41  

I was like, what did we do when because I’m like having a hard time remembering she’s like, sometimes you would just go home and after gymnastics practice and go to bed and I was like, I didn’t eat?

Brett Gilliland  14:50  

Yeah, just went to bed hungry. But you have a good breakfast.

Rebecca Kennedy  14:55  

No, I know. Like, this is kind of crazy. But yeah, I mean, gosh. Having, like logistics makes make eating really tough. So I think you just said you have your first 90 minutes of the day, planned out every single day. Yeah, what happens if you just looked at the calendar, this is what I do on every Sunday, I map out and I use different colored pens for everything. So that I know when my workouts are, and I know, okay, well, I’m going to need to eat that day. So either A, I’m going to order something before, so it’s like ready to go after and I know it’s clean, and I know where to get things from. So knowing what’s in proximity to where you’re at. Or I’ll just start to cook a ton of things on on Sunday, and then have it ready to for me to go. So either I can take it with me and just like put it in a tupperwear to eat like right after. Or I have a hold over. So I can have like a bar with me, which is like not super ideal or a smoothie or something like that. But get something into your system. Like right right away. Having, I’m a snack person. Like if you ever travel with me, I have a bag full of snacks. I know what you can take on TSA like but I think it’s important like you can you can… Nothing is worse. You can probably relate to this, like you ever been so hungry, that you’re just like, I don’t care what I eat. I just need to eat right now.

Brett Gilliland  16:18  

Absolutely. My wife says I get hangry all the time.

Rebecca Kennedy  16:21  

It’s a true, it’s an emotion. It’s an actual emotion.

Brett Gilliland  16:25  

I think the choices so you see I got my red shirt on. You see the cardinal hat in the background. I’m in St. Louis Right? So huge Cardinal fan. So here’s my dilemma. So I’m gonna go to the cardinal game today. It’s a 12:15 start. Yeah, I’m gonna go with some buddies. And we’re gonna go have some fun and we’re gonna go to a restaurant it’s like you know, basically ballpark village at the at the at the game. We’re gonna watch the Cardinals bring home a win, but I’m probably going to partake in like, you know, wings and a hot dog and maybe a couple beers. And what you’re telling me is it’s okay. Right? Because it’s the balance the integration part, you’re talking about? 100% Rebecca Kennedy would do the same thing. If you were going to Cardinal game with us today. You’d have a couple beers and a hot dog.

Rebecca Kennedy  17:06  

I’d have a burger.

Brett Gilliland  17:10  

We were gonna plant burgers or whatever the heck it’s called from Burger King last night to try to be somewhat healthier. And I’m like, yeah, it actually tasted somewhat normal.

Rebecca Kennedy  17:18  

Oh, yeah. No, they do taste like burgers. It’s very bizarre.

Brett Gilliland  17:22  

Yeah, it is kind of weird. But alright, enough of that. So talk to me about fears. How much has fear played a role in your life? And the second question that I always ask is, how many of the fears you put in your mind actually blew up to the magnitude you put them in your mind to be?

Rebecca Kennedy  17:38  

Yeah, I mean, you know, the monster that exists is like whatever you believe it to be right? It can. It can, it can grow bigger and bigger. But gosh, there was a there was a moment in time, I think I have a level of fear and fearlessness in me that evacuated my body at some one moment. And I remember this pivotal moment in gymnastics where up until that point, nothing shook me. I was like, I would jump off anything. I’d flip anywhere. I loved it. But I remember this one teammate of mine said, you know, like, you could get really hurt if you if you just bailed out a backflip and landed on your neck or like, you could break things, you can prick your neck, I was like, I think it was seven at the time. I was like, Oh my God, you’re right. I was

Brett Gilliland  18:35  

Never thought of that.

Rebecca Kennedy  18:37  

not doing that anymore. You know. And unfortunately, in gymnastics, like, you can’t not flip backwards. It’s part of every apparatus and it only things, you learn one flip, then you learn two flips. If you learn one twist, then you learn two twists, you know, it’s like you have to learn the baseline, but it’s always going to be there. So, for me, once I had that fear in the back of my head, every single practice that I showed up to I had to face that fear. And that I’m not talking about once a week, it’s four to five times a week three to four hours every practice and it is emotionally taxing. So you I had to find a way to kind of get through it. I’m gonna tell you a really quick story that the way I got over it, because it was pretty cool. And my mom is a very creative lady and I hope that I’m as creative as her when I have kids down the road but she would be she’d be the one bring me just like you bring your kids to practice. Every meeting every single practice sit there wait for me and then drive me home and seeing your kids like if they have ever have a roadblock like a mental roadblock or just a fear, you’re just like, I wish I could help you but you can’t do it for them. So she got me these books on tape to listen to on way to practice I’ve listened to them like before I go to bed. That didn’t work. She took me to hypnotherapist, I went and talked to like multiple people, I’d go to extra practices just to have that one on one time with my coach, and not a lot of people around me. Nothing seemed to be working. So she went to, she was a visiting nurse. And so driving around and other towns made sense. She said, she stopped by this gym, and talk to the coach about my fear. And she brought back this, but like vial of, of tablets. And she was like, basically what you do, and we’re going to do it when when we go to the next practice is, before you go to do your next backflip be like we’re gonna go into the bathroom, put the tablet on your tongue, stare at yourself in the mirror, and you can’t chew it, you have to let it dissolve. But while it’s dissolving in your mouth, you just have to repeat the words, I can do it, I can do it. And you have to visualize yourself doing whatever it is that scares you. So I had visualization technique, I was like repeating this positive mantra over and over in my head until this thing which took like five minutes to dissolve. And then I’d go right downstairs immediately do it. And all of a sudden, I had no fear anymore. I could do it. So I did that for years, Brett, I’m not gonna lie. We had a lot of like those moments in the bathroom. I’m sure my coach was like, What is this?

Brett Gilliland  21:24  

“The heck is she doing?”

Rebecca Kennedy  21:27  

But at one competition a few years later, I asked my mom for one of them because I was like I’m having a little nervousness right now. And she was like, “Okay, well, you know, I have to get a new vial out of my bag. So just hold on for a second. Just close your eyes.” And I obviously it was like, “Why do I need to close my eyes?” I saw appealing a label off of them. And I grabbed it. And it was vitamin C tablets.

Brett Gilliland  21:53  

So I was gonna ask… it’s called placebo.

Rebecca Kennedy  21:59  

So it was like that moment. And I knew I just went and did my competition. I didn’t really well. I knew how much of it was in my head. And, and so now, like, for example, I’m afraid of heights and I always have been. But I do everything in my power to challenge them. And I think if when you when you when you put it into… You try to justify your fear. You laugh a little bit, because it doesn’t make sense. And I think that helps me. I don’t just chalk it up to well, that’s who I am. I’m like, no, that doesn’t have to control my life. I hated the fact that I was afraid to do certain things and unlimited me on the amount of fun that I could have. So rock climbing, you know, walking on high bridges rope, like rope courses, anything that’s going to challenge my fear. I have heights. I do it all the time.

Brett Gilliland  22:55  

It’s awesome. Yeah, I like it. Talk to us about maybe a moment on what took you to your knees. You thought Man, this is it? Maybe you haven’t had one. And but is there any big challenging moments that you’ve had? You had to overcome that? And how did you overcome it?

Rebecca Kennedy  23:12  

Yeah. Well, I think the the first one I remember is like moving to New York City, and not knowing anybody here. And just going from college where you had, life was like kind of taken care of for you. And then being in a big city where like, no one cares about you. No one knows your name. Like you can just exist here. So that was scary for me. But then I was barely making ends meet. I didn’t. There was one month it was the first month that I was here that I didn’t have enough money to pay both my rent and MetroCard. But I was living in Brooklyn. So I had to have a MetroCard. And I didn’t have I couldn’t have money leftover to pay my phone bill. So I had to live for a month without access to my cell phone and my parents didn’t love that absolutely proud to even ask for help. But that was a scary that was a really scary month. Like I didn’t know if I was going to be able to make it I didn’t know if I made the wrong decision to move here. If I was always like going to be living in this… you know scarcity mindset, but I had to really rely on myself and I feel like the rock bottom moments are what really changes a person and sees what you’re made out of. And that’s where you kind of have to rely on your positive attitude and your belief system and like creating this. There’s no in my mind, I’m not going to lose. I’m relentless in that way. And I figure out way to make it happen. So I ended up getting another job and like, you know, picking up a little extra work, which is not something I had really the time or desire to do, but like you do what you have to do, and obviously, I gotta turn back on and it was fine. So it doesn’t seem like a big thing. But like the the amount of fear that I had in myself like I was here alone, and I had no way to get in contact and like it just felt very overwhelming and lonely. But I’ll circle back to like a couple years ago, I tore both of my hamstrings while I was a trainer, and my entire livelihood is built on being able to move. You don’t show up for work, you don’t get paid, you don’t train client, you don’t get paid. I was supposed to be running a triathlon in four months, I was supposed to be leading my first retreat. And four months in one week, I had a lot going on. I just started my own business. It was it was mentally like debilitating. And I remember being like, so down on myself, it was also like I just gone through a breakup, I tore both my hamstrings. It was just like not things in life. We’re just like, it felt like every wall was crumbling around me. And…

Brett Gilliland  26:17  

Don’t you think that made you stronger, though? I mean, like when you really think about it, and whether you write a book or not. I always say whether I write a book or not. But this is a chapter of my book.

Rebecca Kennedy  26:27  

100% Yeah, it was at the moment that you’re like, “What did I do back then?” That because I didn’t sit in the shower and cry every day. I was like, this is a game plan. I’m gonna go do this. I’ll meet with my physical therapist, what do you need me to do? I am, you’d give me homework, I’m going to do it. I was like, adamant about my recovery. I did what I can. So my also belief system is do what you can with what you have right now. So it starts with like, okay, what are you working with today, it’s gonna be different than the what you’re working with in a month. But like start with start with today work with the body that you have work with the means that you have eventually, like, you know, I think about the greats I always listened to. If you haven’t already, like the the podcast,

Brett Gilliland  27:18  

The Circuit of Success?

Rebecca Kennedy  27:20  

The Circuit of Success, you have to listen to it. Because there’s just listen that whether it’s like Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates, or John Foley, or whoever it is, like everyone’s success story is just teaching you that it has to start with nothing, or an idea, or maybe their rock bottom that got them to where they are now. But it all starts somewhere. I’m like, maybe this moment is the moment where I’m going to not just get back to where I was. But I’m going to I always end up spring so far forward. So I kind of look forward. This is weird to say, but I look forward to those moments because I’ve just, I’ve risen so far above where I was even before I get injured or before that rock bottom. And that is just like kind of it gives you this exciting opportunity to see what you’re made out of again.

Brett Gilliland  28:14  

So now we’re having fun here. I take I steal your cell phone right now. What’s the one app you hope I don’t delete from your phone? Besides email? Not that fun? I said? Besides that you can’t say like my email or something like that. Oh, yeah, that’s not very fun. Exactly. He can have emails.

Rebecca Kennedy  28:34  

I think I would say Instagram only because I really like connecting with everyone. I think it’s a great way just to be able to share fun experiences and and you know, honestly, like I communicate with so many of my friends, family members, friends from the past members on Peloton, like you just have an opportunity to meet a lot of cool people. I’ve met so many people on Instagram, which is fun. Ya know, that’s how we’re here.

Brett Gilliland  29:05  

That’s how we’re here today. Favorite book? You’re reader I see some books behind you there if you’re watching…

Rebecca Kennedy  29:12  

I’ve read all of them. Um, my favorite book of all time would definitely be Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements that changed my life about 10,11 years ago when I read it, The Four Agreements are always do your best to be impeccable with your word. Don’t take anything personally. And the fourth one is escaping me at the moment but I’ll come back to you. But the the way the philosophies behind each one of them help you take a moment where you’re going through a hard time and an understand it. It puts everything through a filter and allows you to see it through a different lens where like say for example, you know They’re, they’re doing layoffs or at your work or you didn’t get chosen to be head on a project or whatever it is, or you get, you know, broken up with or you, you know, whatever the situation is it feels negative is don’t take anything personally nothing anyone ever does is because of you it’s because of that. And knowing that that is so true and you can really understand that it’s they’re very difficult to live by but when you do you end up having this deeper appreciation and the level of happiness deeper appreciation for for yourself in life and also just a level of happiness that that you might not have attained prior to that so it’s good

Brett Gilliland  30:49  

I’ll have to check that book out. Sounds good. I’ve never asked this before but I’m gonna have you do because I can tell family is really important to you if your mom and dad, I think they’ll probably listen to this but if they’re gonna listen to this, what’s one message you’d like to tell mom and dad right now?

Rebecca Kennedy  31:09  

That I appreciate their support. And I think there’s a my mom and dad bent over backwards for me to to do the things that I did. And I know there’s probably a lot of parents out there that if your child was going into law, you’d be really proud of them and they decided they wanted to go major in dance instead that you want again, yeah, you’re like maybe not and try to coerce them into doing something else but there was nothing that I could have said to my parents that they wouldn’t have been like okay, well that’s it that’s what you’re gonna do and I support you like what what can we do to help you like when I moved to New York, they moved me here like when I had my first show they were there. So I appreciate their support. I think that’s one thing is like, in, in, in life um, connection is what people are really looking for. And having support from people. You just want to be seen you want to be heard you want to be felt like you’re important you feel support is all of that. So I can’t thank them enough for that. And I also appreciate them pushing me.

Brett Gilliland  32:17  

Is your mom crying right now hearing that?

Rebecca Kennedy  32:20  

She’s a crier so she probably is, my dad, no.

Brett Gilliland  32:23  

dads that cry moms. Right? That’s funny. Well Rebecca it’s been awesome having you work in our listeners find more of you. Obviously you talked about Instagram but talk to us about your Instagram handles your websites anything else like that? Where can we find you?

Rebecca Kennedy  32:37  

You can find me on Instagram. I’m at R K solid NYC is RK Sol ID NYC. I’m also on Facebook. I know a lot of you guys are on there. So you can jump on my Rebecca Kennedy Peloton page. I’m very active on that. You can go to my website. It’s Rebecca Kennedy fitness.com.

Brett Gilliland  32:59  

Awesome, Rebecca. It’s been awesome having you and I look forward to everybody getting to hear this. You’ve been awesome. We appreciate your time.

Rebecca Kennedy  33:07  

Thanks for having me, Brett. It was great.