Interview with Garrett Maiers

All right. So, it’s Jody with Forever Young Mobile Physical Therapy, and today for our spotlight interview, we have Garrett Meyers. Thank you, Garrett, for being here with us today.

Thank you for having me.

So, Garrett is a coach at Anytime Fitness in Longs, and I actually have a room there that I practice out of. So, I see him in there working out all the time and working out his clients. Garrett is very diverse with his workouts. He is a strongman competitor. Is that right?

Yes, ma’am.

And he’s also the yoga instructor there at Anytime Fitness. And I just think that’s so cool. [laughter] It’s like two total opposites there.

Yeah. And we try to keep our horizons broad.

That’s awesome. Well, I always say if people keep their flexibility, their strength will stick around, you know?

100%. Yep.

It’s like the biggest thing. So, I really admire that you not only take care of the strength part, but you do the yoga, too. So, that’s awesome because there’s not a lot of people like that.

No, 100%. I think it goes hand in hand. And I think that, like you said, flexibility, mobility goes very far into making sure that we don’t hurt ourselves doing certain things.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So tell me a little bit about what you do there, Anytime Fitness.

So pretty [clears throat] much just I have a wide variety of clients. My youngest client at this point is 12. My oldest client is 84. And so my goals depend upon who I’m working with. But whether it be a very specific goal, a lot of my younger ones, they do a lot of extracurricular activities, dancing, baseball, things along those lines. And then so making them as good as they can be in that facet. And then so my older clients, they tend to be more of the they just want to live as long of a healthy lifestyle as they possibly can. So that being said, [clears throat] just trying to keep them strong, keep them mobile, and keep them able to do things whenever they, you know, live their everyday lives.

Awesome. So what made you decide to be a trainer or a coach?

So I myself had a bit of a fitness journey. Whenever I was in high school, I was big into sports. I played football, wrestled, that sort of deal. And whenever I got out of high school, I sort of fell completely out of fitness for about five years. And so at the end of that five-year span, I found myself, I remember it was Christmas and I was at my girlfriend’s mom’s house and I weighed myself and I was about 311 pounds, and it was not good weight. It was a very unhealthy, probably the most unhealthy that I will ever be in my life hopefully.

And so at that point I decided that things were, I was not where I wanted to be. And that next year it took about a year, but I lost about 100 pounds and a little less, about 90 pounds. And as I did, I really got into fitness. I got into learning how to move my body well and learning how to be stronger and learning how, on the nutritional side as well, learning how to take care and fuel myself better.

And the further I got along my journey, I started to have that thought that was like, I was also at a point in my life where I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. And so I was kind of in a place where I was like, man, oh man, maybe I could help people in the same ways that I help myself. And so then that was what got me into training initially. And then after that, I got a wide variety of different clients who had different goals. And so the constant learning about how to help others in different ways is what tends to keep me enthralled and coming back.

Gotcha. Yeah. Are you required to do continuing education every so often?

Yes, ma’am. So, I started with a certified personal training certification in personal training through NASM. And then since then, I’ve gotten a yoga certification. I’ve gotten the ISSA strength and conditioning certification, a second strength and conditioning certification, and then also the nutrition certification. So, throughout the past five years, I’ve gotten five more certs through my name.

Okay. Awesome. Do you have to do any classes to keep those certifications up?

Basically, the way that it works is as long as you are adding on a new certification, that counts as the continuing education. And then in my opinion, a lot of the things that you learn throughout come from outside sources. I am always reading peer-reviewed studies. I’m always trying my best to stay up on what’s new. And I kind of try to keep up a radar of what sounds like it is something that could be beneficial for people that I work with, or things that maybe I agree or don’t agree so much with, things along those lines.

But I try to stay really up to date, and I try every, I would say every day, I try to learn at least one small thing whenever it comes to what I do.

That’s awesome. That’s a great goal too. Do you have a lot of clients that are also undergoing physical therapy for various reasons?

So at this moment, I think that I have two or three that are actively in physical therapy right now. At this moment, they are older clients who need a little bit of extra help whenever it comes to balance. [clears throat]

I’ve also had a few instances where I’ve gotten people directly out of physical therapy. Last year, I started with somebody who had shattered her, or she cracked in half her patella bone in her knee. And so with that said, she went through six months of being completely immobile and then six months of physical therapy. But at that point, at the end of that six months, they’d said, “You’ve gotten pretty much everything that we can give you out of therapy.”

So, she came in and she started with me. And when she started with me, she was still relying on a cane and was fairly atrophied because of the amount that she hadn’t done. And so at this point, it’s been about a year and we’ve gotten it to where she can walk upstairs now, and she has put on about 10 pounds of good weight. And if you look at her whenever she walks at this point, it would be hard to determine what leg was the injured leg because she’s so much more balanced than where she was.

So worked with people actively in therapy, and I’ve also worked with a few that have come directly out of therapy to me.

Okay. So, it is possible though to do physical therapy and still go to the gym and keep up a program.

My thoughts with the ones that I work with that are currently in therapy, a lot of their therapy revolves around their lower body. And so with them, they had actually been with me prior, and then they had said, “Okay.” We had gotten to a point where I said, “I think it might be a good idea for you to see if your insurance will pay for some physical therapy because the things that we can do in here, I think that they may be able to help you a little bit more, and then we can focus in on some of the target areas whenever it comes to the upper body, whenever it comes to your back, posturally, stuff like that, that can tend to work well with the balance training and with the things that you’re getting at the therapy that you’re going to.”

Yeah. Yeah. I agree too. And so also, you mentioned this and I just want to make sure people understood it. So, you can continue an exercise program with Garrett while you’re in PT. But also, if you have not been with a coach or a trainer and you want to transition out of PT to Garrett, that’s also a possibility.

And so, as far as it goes, like with me, obviously, I’ll communicate with you when I am referring people to you from PT or during PT. So, that’s nice to have that gap, you know, bridge that gap between the PT and the coach or trainer.

No, I think that it is something that can go hand in hand very well because, like I’d said, I would say just generally speaking, the more help that you can get, the better in certain aspects.

Yeah, I totally agree too. And I feel like, you know, I tend to see a patient and I’m going to really hone in and use a fine-tooth comb to go through and figure out what I think is wrong. And my exercises to the patient will seem simple because, you know, they’re taking out all the muscle groups and just trying to get down to one. And so people will be like, “Well, this is not enough. I need to do more.” [laughter]

So that is definitely where you would come in to help him with some more of that other gross motor movement stuff around whatever it is I’m focused on. But yeah, so let me ask you, what is a common misconception about what you do? I feel like one thing is what we were just talking about. People think if they’re in therapy, they cannot also be at the gym or with a trainer or coach. Is there anything else you can think of?

So, one misconception that I tend to get pretty frequently, and I’ve just gotten straight up asked before, like, why do I need you when I can come in and do exercises myself? Why do I need somebody to tell me the exercises to do?

And I would answer to that and say that you don’t necessarily need me. But the thing that I can teach you that a lot of people don’t innately know how to do is how to work hard and to work efficiently.

And so when I say that, I mean that whenever it comes to certain people, they have a certain understanding of what hard feels like and what hard is supposed to feel like. Maybe they feel like they’re supposed to get out of breath, or maybe they feel like if they’re not sweating, then they’re not working hard or something along those lines. And that’s not necessarily the case.

The idea whenever you’re doing any sort of resistance training is you want to take your muscles close to mechanical failure. You don’t necessarily need to fail, but you need to get to the point where your movement is slowing down because your muscles are fatiguing. And so, a lot of people don’t really understand that.

And they also don’t really understand, in the idea of working efficiently, how to progressively get stronger over time, how to manage being able to add a little bit more weight or a couple extra reps or something along those lines in order to continue to have an adaptation over a period of time.

A lot of people whenever they work out, they think, okay, they come in, they do exercise X, exercise Y, exercise Z, and they’re done. But really, the exercises are the easiest part because there’s so many exercises that you could use, and if you do them properly, you can get benefits from. But if you’re not, A, doing correct form, but B, also understanding the ways to promote the adaptation through the actual overload of doing just a little more every single time, then you’re probably going to hit what you’d call a plateau or you’re just not really going to see the same results.

So my thoughts are the misconception is I’m not telling you what to do. I’m telling you how to go about doing it in a way where you will see benefits from it.

Understood. Yeah, totally get that. People sometimes just like I am one that I need the accountability.

That’s fair.

So I like to have a coach so that I have the accountability. But even with me being a PT and exercising, I still need correcting on form.

100%. And I myself do as well. I will ask other people like, “Hey, how do I look on this? Does this look like it?” You know what I mean? I think that no matter how knowledgeable you are or experienced you are, an extra set of eyes and an extra helping hand can be beneficial for literally everybody from the top to the bottom.

Yeah, absolutely. So I want to know the best way for somebody to get up with you if they want to schedule a training appointment.

So, whenever it comes to training, the easiest way is just to hop by our gym. We’re located in Longs, in the Bingo Plaza here. And if you just pop in and ring the doorbell, our front lady Jess will come to the door. And from there, if you’d said like, I did hear about, I wanted to schedule an appointment with a trainer, that sort of deal, then it’s easy.

We’ll just set you up with a free consultation so you can come in and just talk, and you can see if we jive as far as your goals and if you feel like I can help you. And then from there, I would kind of take you through an assessment of what your movement patterns look like. And so that would kind of give us an idea of what the most beneficial things for you would be to start.

But easy enough, just the easiest thing would be to come to the gym. I also have social media handles, [clears throat] gears fitness on Instagram, and then just my name, Garrett Meyers, on Facebook. If you did just want to shoot me a message on there, then I have had a few clients roll through that way too.

Okay. And then there are other coaches with you there as well, right?

Yes, ma’am. We’ve got three other coaches right now, and we all have similar styles whenever it comes to how we approach exercise and fitness, but we all have our own unique little flavor about us.

That’s awesome. And also there at Anytime Fitness, you have group classes as well.

Yes, ma’am. In the mornings, myself and then our female trainer, Sadee, we split the load when it comes to our senior fitness classes. But we run those at 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. on Monday through Fridays. And so those days, it is more of a functional style. Anyone is allowed to come in, but anyone over the age of 55 or 60 and up are our general demographic whenever it comes to that.

And then the female trainer, Sadee, and our other trainer, Brandon, they split the load on our boot camp classes. That is a little bit higher intensity, still a functional training class, but it’ll kick your butt a little bit more. And so they run those in the evenings on Mondays and Wednesdays and then on Saturday mornings, and I believe they do the mornings, very early mornings, Monday, Wednesdays as well.

And then I run my yoga class on the evenings of Tuesday and Thursday at 6:00 and then at 9:00 on Saturdays. So yeah, we have a fairly wide variety of different things we offer.

Yeah, that really is awesome. Just to clarify, I would need a membership to be there for a class or to train.

Correct. So whenever it comes to it, we have different membership options that can include classes. But if it is something where you did just want to take a class, we do make exceptions and we allow for that as well. You just don’t get access to the full gym. You just get to come do and participate in whichever class you’d like to.

Oh, that’s awesome. That’s good to know. Okay. Well, that’s great to know. Do you have any final thoughts for anybody out there who is, you know, they’re wanting to get started with working out, but they just don’t know where to start?

The biggest thing is just finding a trustable source that you can rely on to give you just a little bit of information to get you going, that sort of deal. Hiring a trainer is always a fantastic thing because we can tend to put you in a direction.

A lot of times, that is the hardest hurdle to get over, is you walk into a gym and you say, “Man, oh man, there are so many different options. What do I do?” And a lot of times, no matter if you chose option A, option B, option C, you can probably get something out of it. So just heading you on a path to start is one of the best things, so that way you know and you can learn over time how to work hard to progress yourself.

Awesome. All right. Well, Garrett, we really appreciate you being with us today and everybody hit him up. He can do yoga with you, or he can train you to be a strong man or strong woman.

So I thank you very much for having me. It was awesome.

Absolutely.

Enjoyed this a lot.

All right. Thank you so much. All right. Have a good rest of your day.

Okay. Okay.