We get to know Alex McBrairty in this Trainer spotlight episode of FITLETE Radio.
GEORGE: Introduce yourself and tell us a little about what you do and your background.
My name is Alex McBrarity, and I run an online fitness coaching company called A-Team Fitness, A-Team like the old TV show. And it started as an in-person personal training business in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I'm originally from. I've since moved to the Jersey Shore, and so I'm now completely online, me and my team. And we help men and women all across the country and across different countries to really gain mastery over themselves through fitness. So my background is actually in psychology, is what my college degree is in. And I basically got that degree because I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. But fortunately, I got that degree because it really helps me to understand our clients better so that we can serve them better. And I got into fitness because I was out of shape and overweight my entire childhood. And my senior year in high school, I lost 80 pounds. And that was really the start of my personal fitness journey, which then became my career as well. And I remember, I think back to that time of like what really has inspired me through the years to continue becoming the man that I am and the business owner that I am and the coach that I am. And it stems from that teenage Alex journey of I got in shape because I wanted to stop hating myself. And I remember clear moments in my high school years where I would have given anything to trade places with someone who I thought had the life that I wanted or they were cool or popular or whatever the case was. And I'm so fortunate now and where I am in my life to know that I would for no cost trade places with anyone in this world because I love who I've become. I love the person that I am. I love what I've achieved and what I am continuing to achieve and the life that I'm building for myself. And so our ultimate mission at 18 Fitness is to help others do and achieve the same thing where they are so confident in who they are. And they have stepped into their fully authentic selves that they would not want to trade places with anyone else because there is a level of confidence that you walk into your life with when that's the case.
GEORGE: Tell me a funny or interesting story about yourself that help's us get to know you as a human.
I remember about two years into my career, I was teaching a group fitness class. And so it might've been a room of about 40 people. And I was demonstrating how to do medicine ball slams. And it was one of those larger, softer medicine balls that you can really slam. Not the sand filled ones, but they weren't the hard plastic ones either. And I wanted to encourage people to really use some power and slam these medicine balls into the ground. So when I went to go demonstrate it, it might've been a 15 pound ball. I gave it all the force that I could and emphasized just going at it. And what I did not expect was for this medicine ball to bounce as high as it was going to. And needless to say, as I'm hunched over, just having thrown this 15 pound medicine ball full force into the floor, it bounces and hits me square in the face. And it hurts so bad. And I am in my head trying to deal with the pain, hope that my nose isn't broken, and also try to figure out how to salvage this moment of embarrassment in front of 40 people who are now suddenly questioning all of the advice that I gave them about slamming this ball. And it's still one of the most embarrassing professional moments I've ever had, but it really taught me in the moment that we can't really ever take ourselves too seriously. So we all laughed it off. I encouraged them not to do it that way. And it all worked out for the good.
GEORGE: What strategies do you use to attract and retain clients in your personal training business?
Well, we'll start off with how we attract clients. And I am a firm believer that personal training, fitness coaching, whatever you want to call it, as the cliche goes, is really about the relationships and the connections. And so you have your typical no like trust model, and I actually wrote an article about this called The Friendship Formula, which I've since used to create my entire social life since moving to a new state across the country. But we leverage those principles to just be a good person and be an interesting person that our clients would willingly opt to spend time with. So the rule of thumb I keep in my head is I want to be the type of person that my clients would want to grab a drink with or would want to hang out with and get to know better and have these conversations. Because still to this day, we've been in business for over 10 years now, 90 plus percent of our new clients come from word of mouth referral, come from the members we already have talking about their experience with us and how it's a different experience because they can tell their coach is truly invested in them and their coach truly cares. And that attracts people to us. And then they get to know us and they like spending the time with us on the check-in calls via the text messages. We help people have a positive experience. And that's a big guiding principle for me and my team is we always try to be the person that's injecting moments of positivity into our clients' lives so that as they're traversing their fitness journey, they're constantly inundated with little bits of positivity that make them feel good. And that is a force in their life that they tend to want to keep around. And that leads into the retention of these clients once they sign on with us is they feel good while they're in the program, not because of the physical changes, although yes, also because of the physical changes, but also just because of the experience that they're having. It's beyond the workouts that they're having and the nutrition guidelines that they're getting and the accountability to follow through with that. But it's also just they feel a sense of presence and positivity when they're in communication with us that makes them want to stick around and make them want to stick around throughout the phases of their life so that they don't just hit one goal and then move on is then it becomes the new goal and how can they change things up to achieve that as well.
GEORGE: What is your process for assessing a new client's fitness level and addressing their goals?
So we like to use in assessing new clients' fitness levels some of the standard practices that you might think of. Movement assessments like an overhead squat test, some mobility drills, wall sit hold push-ups, max push-ups, etc. to gauge not only any potential muscle imbalances that may need to be addressed to keep them injury free, but also just see what is their starting fitness level now so we don't make any of their workouts too difficult that makes them feel defeated early on. But what's probably the most different about the way we assess new clients is bringing that psychology background into play. We actually assess all of our new members coming in on the big five personality traits. And the big five personality traits are openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, extroversion, and neuroticism. And that is basically one's disposition to act in a certain way. How open are they to new experiences? How much do they like routine versus spontaneity? How likely are they to be sort of a yes man yes woman and just say yes to everything even though they might not agree with it? Or have trouble questioning the advice that we give to create that sort of open dialogue? Or how likely are they to constantly challenge the advice of their coach? So does that shift how we need to present that information to them so that it's more likely to be accepted? Or give them the chance to ask questions so that they feel very comfortable with the process forward? As well as how likely are they to worry about things? Or how social are they going to be in their life? And is that going to present nutritional challenges? And so this is one of the unique things about our program is we can evaluate these personality traits and then we can tailor not only our communication with the client, but also the different pieces of their program and how it's structured, how much workout variety they need, how much food variety they need, so that it's more likely that they're going to stick with the program and not feel like they're constantly battling their sort of natural disposition for these various elements. And so I think that's one thing that we do very differently and one thing that works really, really well to have a truly personalized coaching experience.
GEORGE: What certifications do you hold, and how do you stay updated on the latest fitness trends and research?
So this might be where my answer differs a little bit because my certifications are National Academy of Sports Medicine, certified personal trainer, corrective exercise specialist, and behavior change specialist. And couple that with obviously my degree in psychology to really get to the bottom of people's struggles and self-sabotaging behaviors. And there are certainly newsletters that I subscribe to in the fitness industry at large in different publications that constantly send to my email the latest in research trends and and the sort of typical fitness knowledge. But one of the things I'm very big on, and I instill this in my team of coaches as well, is thinking outside of the traditional box of fitness. And how can we get new information that might not even be in the fitness industry proper, might be from other industries, it might be from other experiences or other people, that then we can find a way to creatively bring in to solve our clients problems in new meaningful ways that allow us not only to connect with these people better because we're not just speaking the language of fitness, we can speak the language of fitness in the dialect that they understand. But it also gives us unique perspectives that our members don't hear of because by now most of the people that come into that program and the people that we help have tried multiple diets, have tried multiple fitness programs, potentially have tried multiple coaches. So the typical conversation, reps, protein synthesis, carbs, etc., like all of that is stuff that they're familiar with and they probably already have the right answers for with a few misconceptions here and there. But if we can go outside of the box and connect dots in unique ways, I think that has led to a tremendous impact in helping people understand not only their fitness journey a little better but also understand themselves a little better. So we like to go outside of the industry, the fitness industry proper to sort of just be as curious as possible in as many ways as possible to get away from the typical pragmatism approach which of course is the usefulness of knowledge or the value of knowledge is its immediate usefulness or applicability and instead think about is we never know when we're going to be able to connect the dots and so the only way to ensure that we can have the chance of connecting dots is to make sure those dots exist in the first place and so every piece of knowledge we consume is adding additional dots that can be connected.
GEORGE: How do you envision your personal training business evolving in the next few years?
So this is a really interesting question. And our unique advantage at 18 Fitness has always been in the connections we create with our members. Not only just in their fitness program and in the results that they get in our program, but also just investing in their lives, caring about the things that they care about. And being a part of their family, being one of their friends, being someone they can turn to for advice throughout all of life's transitions has really the cornerstone of being one step ahead of all the technological changes that are happening in our industry. Because that connection piece is something that's not easily replaced. And so for us to evolve in the next few years, we're really leaning into that even more and continuing to leverage that. Just being able to understand our clients better than they may understand themselves to help them better understand themselves. That is really where our magic is going to be. Being able to know what questions to ask to help them get the answers that they're looking for. Whereas right now, sure, AI can write them a good workout plan or can design them a meal plan. But AI doesn't necessarily know those meaningful questions to ask because they don't know this person the way another human does. Continuing to create a truly connected coaching experience via human-to-human in the way that we do best is sort of how we're going to continue to evolve over the next few years.
GEORGE: What do you think are the biggest challenges currently facing the fitness & personal training industry?
I think the biggest challenge facing our industry right now is confusing the hard fitness variables, the strength levels, the weight loss, the nutrition variables. Confusing those hard fitness variables as the end goal, as the end and not the means. And when we confuse it as the end, then we limit ourselves to only focusing in the context of those variables. And those are the variables that can easily be technologically accounted for or can turn to other things or is available for free so much online that there's really no need to hire a coach to customize it for you. And that will continue to be more the case as time goes on. But if we can understand as coaches that fitness is a means to an end. People get in shape, people improve their performance, people improve their diet because ultimately they want to feel a certain way about themselves or they want to live a certain lifestyle that they believe will make them happy. And so all of the things we do in fitness is just the medium through which we are helping our clients become the best versions of themselves and live the life that they fall asleep at night dreaming about. And if we can recognize that, then we can expand the way we think about the process, not just the hard fitness variables, but the soft variables too. Are these people taking care of their stress? Not just so they can perform better in the gym, but so they can perform better in their life. Are their relationships taken care of? Is their self-image in a good place? These are the sort of things that if we can overcome the challenge of mistaking fitness as an end and not just a means and a medium through which we are just choosing to help these people, then I think we start to see a world of opportunity that's going to create a more meaningful impact in the lives of the people we help and probably honestly lead to better retention rates of our clients because that's a never-ending process.
Want more Alex McBrairty in your life? You can find’em here:
visit: https://ateamfit.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_ateamfit_/
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