Robb Wolf is a former research biochemist, a 2X New York Times/WSJ Best Selling author of The Paleo Solution and Wired To Eat.  Robb has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around the world via his top ranked iTunes podcast, (The Healthy Rebellion Radio, The Paleo Solution Podcast) books, and seminars. Robb has functioned as a review editor for the Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism (Biomed Central) and as a consultant for the Naval Special Warfare Resiliency program. He serves on the board of Directors/Advisors for: Specialty Health Inc, The Chickasaw Nation’s “Unconquered Life” initiative and a number of innovative start ups with a focus on health and sustainability. Robb holds a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and is a former California State Powerlifting Champion (565 lb. Squat, 345 lb. Bench, 565 lb. Deadlift) and a 6-0 amateur kickboxer. Wolf has provided seminars in nutrition and strength & conditioning to a number of entities including NASA, Naval Special Warfare, the Canadian Light Infantry and the United States Marine Corps. Resources and Links: https://robbwolf.com/ The Healthy Rebellion Radio Connect with us: https://www.futureoffitness.co/ 

Dan Uyemura  and I talked about our own ways on how we use social media, how to be more creative with online fitness/health marketing strategies than ever and get useful social media strategies for 2021! Dan is a lifelong web application developer turned gym owner that saw a glaring hole in the gym management software space and decided to fill it. He believes customer experience is the primary thing most small business owners don't pay enough attention to, and has a personal mission to help gym owners build better businesses and help more people in their communities. Resources and Links:   https://www.facebook.com/pushpress https://www.facebook.com/danielsan (personal) https://instagram.com/pushpress https://instagram.com/danielsan (personal) https://www.linkedin.com/company/pushpress https://www.linkedin.com/in/danuyemura/ (personal) Connect with us: https://www.futureoffitness.co/

Tune in as Ian Mullane explains his software solutions for Brick and Mortar. He is the Founder and CEO of Keepme, launched in 2019 - a business dedicated to increasing the revenue of health and fitness operators utilizing Artificial Intelligence,  an AI-powered sales and marketing CRM platform for the fitness industry.   Resources and Links:   https://twitter.com/keepme_ai  www.keepme.ai  https://www.linkedin.com/company/keepme-ai/ Connect with Ian Connect with us: https://www.futureoffitness.co/ 

Coach McQuilkin is the Director of Training and Education for Power Athlete, a worldwide strength and conditioning organization focused on empowering performance. Chris has led over 100 clinics across 16 countries spanning 6 continents introducing the Power Athlete Methodology to athletes, sports medicine professionals, performance and sport coaches.   Resources and Links:   https://www.facebook.com/chris.mcquilkin  https://twitter.com/TexMcQuilkin  Instagram: @mcquilkin Connect with Chris Connect with Future of Fitness: www.futureoffitness.co

Natalia Karbasova is founder of FitTech Summit and CEO of FitTech Company and Founder of FitTech Summit. Previously, Natalia was with Hubert Burda Media, one of Europe’s largest media companies, for 9 years. She worked as personal assistant to the company owner and one of Germany’s top billionaires, Dr. Hubert Burda, looking into global digital trends. Later on, as Burda’s Creative Evangelist, she successfully launched several innovation initiatives like hackathons, rapid prototyping labs, pitch competitions and startup conferences. She founded the FitTech Summit while still at Burda and spun it off 2020 to run it as an independent company. She has been into track-and-field athletics for 8 years and is a certified fitness coach. Resources and Links: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fittechsummit  www.fittechsummit.com Connect with Natalia

Mike Fantigrassi is the Senior Director of Product Development at the National Academy of Sports Medicine. (NASM) Mike is a results-driven leader with diverse expertise and an extensive network of contacts within the fitness industry. He has a proven ability to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment. He has an extensive background in education and training program development/presentation. Mike is passionate about fitness, education, and helping others develop new skills that result in growth and success. He is fascinated by emerging health and wellness technology and fitness startups that are driving positive change. What is Mike’s history? (0:47) Mike went to college at Florida State University. Like many people at that age, Mike was unsure what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. He was particularly drawn to fitness and, more specifically, nutrition.  Mike fumbled a bit with his choice of career. He wanted to go to medical school and then physical therapy school before settling for chiropractic school. Still, to fulfill the prerequisites for that, he had to get his undergraduate degree in food and nutrition.  That was the earliest version of the personal training undergraduate degree that someone would get to prepare to do personal training with a strong emphasis on nutrition. Mike had not wanted to go in the direction of dietetics and Clinical nutrition, but he did get to do was be a fitness trainer on Florida State University’s campus for a year and a half.  At the time, they had just opened up a large-scale recreational weight training facility that was state of the art. One of the best things that Mike went through was two weeks of training with the gym manager and everyone else who was involved.  It was Mike’s first exposure to learning how to be a good trainer. You can read about that stuff in textbooks but having the experience of being mentored and knowing you are receiving quality information is irreplaceable.  Once Mike graduated, he did a bit of coursework that he had needed to complete. After that, he moved to South Florida, where he had grown up and started working as a personal trainer for Gold’s Gym. He did that for a bit before transitioning into making sales for a gym that was going to open but never ended up opening, and from there, his journey just continued.  What steps have fitness professionals taken to educate themselves amidst everything that has happened this year? (7:11) The beauty of COVID and Mike believes that anybody in the fitness industry selling education content saw a bump in their sales because of the third recession mike has had the experience.  He started working for NASM in 2010 on the heels of the 2008 recession, which laster until 2010. During these times, you see people jumping careers; people went from personal training to real estate and vice versa.  However, during times of uncertainty, people tend to invest in themselves. Mike read an article that MBA programs are filling up; it is becoming difficult to get into different education types. Mike went through an MBA to help him with the business side of things they do at NASM.  2020 has been a record year for NASM. It has been the best year they have ever had, and Mike believes a lot of it came from COVID and then executed many things they had wanted to do for a long time. In particular, they wanted to utilize instructor teams that they have built up and maintained for a long time and push out a lot of content for their audience.  This year alone, they have done 125 different types of webinars and broadcast. They have multiple things they do on their Facebook page that gets plenty of engagement, which Mike believes audience members are hungry for.  What are the most significant differences Mike thinks fitness professionals need to understand doing virtual vs. in person? The difference is something that Mike and NASM are trying to address through their product. One of the things they were going to do before COVID was to get their instructor team together once a year.  This year in April, they were going to do media training with them. Everything from audio to on camera and how to read off of a teleprompter, unscripted stuff; because they had noticed the trend approaching. COVID accelerated that trend.   They looked at two platforms on which you can do virtual training. Mike did a lot of the research himself, and there was someone else coaching him too. They found that when virtual training is done right, it is surprisingly effective.  Mike was surprised at how much he enjoyed remote coaching. He has also seen people struggle to adopt online coaching because they treat it like a regular session, leaving the coach and trainees disjointed and detached from the session.  Mike says online coaching is a skill set that you need to develop. You cannot do the same things you can do in person, and you have to understand that. You have to know how to make the experience enjoyable for everyone involved.  NASM NASM is the world leader in fitness certification, education, and performance. For more than 30 years, the National Academy of Sports Medicine ™ (NASM) has set the standard in certification, continuing education, solutions, and tools for health and fitness, sports performance, and sports medicine professionals. Resources Connect with Mike: LinkedIn NASM: Website Connect with Eric: LinkedIn

Dan John has coached for more than 30 years. He's helped hundreds of athletes pack on double-digit pounds of rock-solid muscle. As an athlete, John broke the American record in the Weight Pentathlon. He is the author of several books, including Intervention. How has Dan’s 2020 been? (0:57) Dan does believe in the COVID virus. He says he is one of the few people who trust science lately. His whole career has always been a dance between technology and theology.  Just the other day, Dan was at a cafe, and a young 30 something-year-old white American couple were refusing to wear masks and giving the waitress trying to reinforce the state of Utah’s law a tough time because of it.  Dan believes the problem lies with ignorance. Which is to ignore, and many people are choosing to ignore common decency to take care of the elderly. Dan himself is 63 with a history of a severe lung disease called pleurisy. Dan finds it increasingly frustrating that he knows so many people taken by the virus, and yet it is still so hard to get people to wear their masks. Dan says it goes back to Dicken’s A Christmas Carol where you know the girl has wanted and the boy has ignorance and Dicken tells us that we were both but mostly the boy, which is the most disappointing thing about 202 to Dan.  Dan has had an online presence since 1998. His new project Brian Walton has a thing called Workout Generator. You do not need any plug-in equipment; you don’t even need equipment. It will spring out workouts for you based on what you need and have available.  Dan has been able to finish writing a book this year, and he is working on Powell’s set sleeves and redoing EZ Strenght. They are deep in the project currently. He says it has been a good year, but he feels that they could do better.  What is Dan’s routine? (5:36) Monday through to Friday, at 9:30, he opens his garage, which is his gym, and people from all around the world will come and workout with Dan. When Dan was getting ready for the Olympic lifting meet three days a week, he would snatch overhead squat.  Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are whole-body workouts, so push, pull, hinge, squat, and some loaded cores. Tuesdays are ‘buns and guns’ where they do hip thrusts, many deadlifts and arm workouts, etc.  Thursday is for doing Tim Anderson’s original strength workout. That is more or less the big picture of Dan’s Monday to Friday. He does not generally work out on the weekends because it is how life has worked out for him.  Almost every day, Mike leads them through the training. They have suspension trainers, and they use their body weight to stretch and move things around. They do original strength almost every single day.  They try to do good workouts. Many days Dan will strap on ankle weights of 5 pounds each and grab 3-pound dumbbells before going for a run of a few miles. The work of Leonard Shorts works Back in from the ’80s. Dan believes heavy hands are the gentlest, which means if you put weights in your hands while you walk or run, you pump them subconsciously.  His legs counter his hands during these exercises, and he pumps slightly higher than his shoulders. It gets his heart rate where it needs to be in his target zone, and if he does it correctly, they can have a fantastic conversation.  How does Dan track his heart rate? (8:49) He bought the Phil Maffetone heart rate tracker. It is the one that connects to the IRS, and it gives you GPS tracking. He has been using it every three or so weeks and, during his testing of the product, has found that he is quite happy with it.  Whenever Dan feels like testing his heart rate or feels strange, he likes monitoring his heart rate to ensure it stays in his targeted zone. Dan always has a target zone where he can still talk, but his breathing is stable and within his target zone.  Dan also utilizes a chest strap. The strap is excellent, but you have to keep looking down at it. You have to open your phone while you are swinging weights, and it becomes a bit of a hassle.  For most lesson centers, Dan believes in the talk test. Say, for instance, you are walking with your 89-year-old grandma, and you’re walking with her, and suddenly she gets quiet. You might feel fine, but you have blown off her walking talk.  Another point that Dan uses it for is, for example, when he does the 0.2-mile loop around his block 15 times, all he has to do is what is called the MAF test, which is the max aerobic function.  Dan John University Here you will find Dan's most famous programs along with a customizable workout generator built to suit your needs. You pick the equipment you have, the schedule you want, and the appropriate difficulty. Along with the custom workout generator, you'll also have access to Mass Made Simple, the Humane Burpee, and many other popular programs. Resources Connect with Dan: Website Dan John University: Website Connect with Eric: LinkedIn

Don Moxley is the Director of Applied Science and Brand Development at Longevity Labs. His message statement is, “Understanding and directing individual changes that alleviate suffering and contribute to the betterment of well people.” He was Captain of The Ohio State University Wrestling Team, where he earned a Big 10 Championship in 1985.  What is Don’s background? (1:27) Don is an exercise physiologist by training. He spent 25 out of the last 35 years as an adjunct or assistant professor at some academic preparation level or universities. Don has always had one foot in the fitness industry, whether in sales, marketing or education roles or even applied sciences.  His last job in the human performance section was as a sports scientist for Ohio State, working closely with the wrestling program. He was there from 2015-2018. The coach at Ohio wanted Don there, but the athletic department did not care much for his presence. Don made the athletic department make decisions they did not want to, so he exited when he received an offer to enter the cannabis industry. While working in exercise science, particularly in the recovered space, they worked with heart rate variability, which is used to measure athlete readiness.  In the process of doing this, a couple of the pro guys in the industry asked Don what he thinks about cannabis. Don did not know much about cannabis at the time, but if his NCAA athletes tested positive, they would get kicked off the program.  Cannabis has been stigmatized so much that it is hard to find excellent and accurate information on the subject. However, with some push and resources from friends of his and an incredible offer, Don decided to enter the cannabis industry.  What does Spermedine do, and what is it responsible for? (8:24) Spermidine triggers an interesting intracellular process called Autophagy. It is a word seen in the health and fitness community. It is associated with fasting and intermittent fasting that triggers autophagy. Looking at Spermidine’s experimental models for extending longevity, the one universal model is calorie restriction. If you want increased longevity across the board, calorie restriction is the critical factor to do that. But it is a challenge in itself, and you cannot starve yourself to immortality. Autophagy ends up being the critical process so that when there is a calorie restriction in your environment, your cells recognize this and they begin a process called intracellular cleaning,  That cell could have a protein that misformed and is no longer functional, but it is sitting there, gumming up the rest of the process. During autophagy and intracellular cleaning, that non-functioning cell gets used up and makes space for new functional cells.  Spermidine acts as a trigger for autophagy and intracellular cleaning, therefore helping people live healthier, longer lives with the simplicity of a product they can readily purchase.  How has COVID affected Spermidine? (21:18) Looking into Spermidine and the research that is out there already, Autophagy's process contributes to immunity drastically. Don has a paper that had been accepted and is in final edits right now for a world-renowned journal that shows spermidine supplementation to human sells stops COVID transmissions by 85-92% Immunity is a big deal, especially in these times. Dirty cells do not promote immunity, so when we start to look at the process of autophagy, its relationship to immunity becomes more significant.  We live in extremely energy toxic environments where the process of autophagy is rarely allowed to happen within our bodies. With the pandemic, people realize they have realized they have to look after their metabolic health. The relation between poverty and COVID is high. People in populations that are heavily crowded within inner cities are not crystal clear and clean suburb classes. Even COVID has also affected them; they have not been hit as hard as the already lower class populations have been.  Metabolic health could, however, be a problem found within both populations. People need to start paying attention to all the intracellular activators they have to help them fix and improve their immune systems' metabolisms in the process.  Spermidine  SpermidineLIFE® is the world's first naturally extracted and clinically tested dietary supplement to promote cellular renewal. The active ingredient, spermidine, is considered key to slowing down the cellular aging process. As the body ages, spermidine levels decrease, along with the self-renewing power of its cells. Resources Connect with Don: LinkedIn Spermidine: Website Connect with Eric: LinkedIn

Jim Crowell is the Founder at JWC Advisory Group, Founder and Investor at Boost Capital, and former CEO of Opex Fitness. He is a board member of The Brand Q Method. Jim is a strategist who loves to learn and help others improve. How did Jim get to where he is now? (1:35) Jim went to Penn State where he played tennis for them.  Jim had been an athlete his whole life and loved the idea of training and fitness.  He enjoyed training tennis because it had been his college sport and he enjoyed going to tournaments and competing.  He loved the idea of getting better at things. Being a hedge fund trader had taught him how the world works and how money flows etc.  Towards the end of that career, Jim felt that he wanted to be a part of the health and wellness industry.  Leaving the hedge fund business, Jim opened a CrossFit gym with a friend of his in Pittsburgh. They did well and opened a second gym. After 4 years Jim sold the business to his business partner at the time.  Gym moved to Arizona to work with Opex Fitness. He worked himself up to the role of CEO and helped them build a global coaching education, a gym licensing business, remote coaching, and one on one sessions.  Jim left Opex in 2020 and has been advising and investing typically around the fitness and wellness area.  Jim loves the idea of being a part of the evolution of fitness because he believes fitness is a very immature market in many verticals.  What does Jim consider to be a mature market? (4:00) Setting COVID aside, consider going to a restaurant.  You have a good idea of what type of restaurant model will work.  Technology is being put into restaurants too. We are seeing this now especially because of COVID.  People are eating from home a lot more but in terms of successful restaurants, considering COVID lifts and the vaccine is out, people will want to go back out to restaurants.  Restaurants have a fair amount of competition and the restaurant owners either have competitive advantages or they have to run extremely efficiently to survive.  There’s an efficient market in fitness right now. You are seeing so many new things come out and you are seeing brand new markets that do not have competition yet.  A lot of legacy brands like Equinox have immediately shifted to an online ecosystem.  So where people thought there was no competition there is now becoming competition. We are seeing jockeying for who is going to take the lead in the big categories.  Jim believes in the big categories there are always a few that win and by win he means they get higher margins because they have competitive advantages.  It’s the companies who create sustainable competitive advantages that have the most likelihood of success. What should an investor be looking at in 2021? (40:50) Once you put investors on your LinkedIn profile, you will get a whole bunch of stuff coming through to your profile.  Some of them might be interesting but a lot of it won’t be worth looking at.  Jim’s friends like to invest in early but not launch products that have shown traction and can scale.  These are not highly competitive markets unless the product has shown that it has better traction in a significantly large market.  Looking at the technology side, it is where most investor’s minds are going. You have to differentiate and you have to be simpler and more valuable. If you are brick and mortar in terms of gyms, investors are only looking at you if the price is depressed and they think they can get a return based on that.  A lot of investors are looking to buy into franchise concepts, corporately owned concepts out of bankruptcy right now.  Technology obviously has scale. It is where people are going. There are opportunities for the investors to get into companies that just got obliterated by COVID but still have good assets on the book.  You have to know what you want and what your return profile will look like. If investors aren’t direct experts in the industry they need to have conversations about what real value and real barriers are.  JWC Advisory Group At JWC Consulting they offer you a complete service in Compliance which includes but isn't limited to Food Safety, Health and Safety, Human Resources, and Internal auditing to enable you to perform better and safer. From creating systems of excellence conforming to international standards ensuring product and process safety to training your people to work in a safe way, assessing how you’re doing, and helping you perform even better in the future, they are there to assist you at every step of your safety journey. Resources Connect with Jim: LinkedIn JWC Consulting: Website Connect with Eric: LinkedIn

Philipp Roesch-Schlanderer is CEO/Co-Founder at eGym GmbH. Prior, he studied Business and Technology Management at Columbia University in New York. With eGym Philipp Roesch-Schlanderer has taken fitness training into the digital age. Before his keynote at the ISPO Digitize Summit, he talks about the digital transformation of the sports industry and his company as a positive example. How did Philipp get to be the founder of eGym? (0:48) Philipp was born and raised in Germany before moving to the U.S for University.  He attended Columbia Business School in New York City.  When he started there, his friends told him he needed to wear his Columbia T-shirt every day and at least two times a week take the shirt to a gym.  That was the first in Philipp’s life that he ever went to a gym and he did not understand the product.  He would press the quick-start button on cardio machines and it would just go, not according to his own goal or body.  Whenever he left the gym, Philipp was never sure whether he was successful or not because there was a lack of data.  During that time, and speaking to his friends and other people who go to the gym, a lot of them had the fact that they weren’t very successful in common.  They also said the experience does not feel great and most of them said that they’ve been in and out of gym memberships because of New Year resolutions.  So many people understand that they have to go to the gym but the product just doesn’t work for them.  Philipp believes that with technology he can fix a lot of that and he believes technology will also help make the fitness industry much larger than it is. That is why he started eGym.  Where does Philipp see the greatest potential for technology within the fitness space? (4:09) When Philipp thinks about the gym, he sees it more as access to tools.  You sign up for your membership and you have access to all the machines and weights etc.  About 80% of people go to the gym with a training goal in mind. Philipp compares access to tools vs access to solutions.  For example, imagine a restaurant where you cannot order a salami pizza already made, but you have access to all of the tools or ‘ingredients’ to make your salami pizza.  This is how gyms are providing service, if you have a training goal, you still only get access to the tools.  In gyms, you need to find your way on your own.  And so Philipp believes through technology, gyms can turn from access to tools, to access to solution providers.  Philipp imagines a gym where every piece of equipment knows you, knows your training goal, and your current state of training.  Every piece of equipment would set itself up for you automatically and guide you through an ideal, perfect workout for you.  When you leave the gym you also see the data that is meaningful and makes sense to you.  It makes you understand the progress you have made while training.  80% of people do not just want the solutions and what they need is a personalized experience. You hear a lot of, what could be the digitization of gyms? How could digital technology be used for gyms? And it turns into a lot of different rabbit holes.  Philipp firmly believes that the digitization of the gym means personalizing user experiences. He believes this is where the biggest impact of the technology lies.  What future does Philipp see in the industry? (29:26) There is no question that 202 has been a tough year for the fitness industry.  If politicians decided that gyms are now on a zero revenue level they could shut down gyms again.  Sometime in 2021, there should be a point where gyms are allowed to reestablish themselves and get their finances in order.  Philipp is excited because the gym industry has never been dependent on the economic cycle.  Whether it was 2001 or 2012, it has always been a great time for the gym industry.  There might be a recession because of Corona but it’s not problematic for gyms, the industry keeps growing by about 4-5% yearly.  The growth in the industry was large because of health awareness and Philipp feels that 2020 has made people more health-conscious than ever before.  A lot of people are wondering about their immune systems and this has woken people up to want to live healthier lifestyles.  Stats from a McKinsey study shows that in China people were already living a lot more health awareness than before.  A lot of people in the gym industry have been frustrated about politicians locking them down. Everyone understood gyms as being an aesthetics kind of thing but not people’s views on it are shifting from aesthetics-focused to more health-based workouts.  And so Philipp believes in the future that the growth of the gym industry will be exponential and easily surpass their steady 4-5% growth rate yearly.  eGym EGYM is a global fitness technology leader providing fitness and health facilities with intelligent workout solutions. EGYM makes exercising smarter and more efficient with its comprehensive suite of connected gym equipment and digital products that integrate seamlessly with 3rd-party hard- and software. The result is a fully connected training experience that drives measurable business and health outcomes on and off the training floor.  Resources Connect with Philipp: LinkedIn eGym: Website Connect with Eric: LinkedIn