guest he's phenomenal how he made a transition from where he was to where he is now an owner of a fitness company and it's flourishing but i want but you know what we're going to do we don't start right away we do three deep breaths to get everybody nice and calm right are you ready inhale exhale great to see you yes there's a little story here i will add on since he was fun i and now look at you i'm so proud of you thank you so much so you are you are you are certified studying for my c s yes and strength and conditioning but i'm also getting my master's in counseling and i started my personal training company in state college pennsylvania called and b i fitness stands for mind body integration look at that  that i am so proud of you so why fitness so fitness completely changed my life now i mean you knew me as a young kid i was very fragile and stature a little socially awkward i had my academic struggles you know i was a kid that just had a lot going on and you know i went and tried to find a lot of ways to to be normal like everybody else because that's really what you want when you're younger not fitting in just the thing that you know makes life tough so i you know i saw tons of people when it comes to seeing psychologists or other things to try and get me to feel comfortable in my own skin  fitting in just wasn't happening it wasn't until high school where i got a personal trainer after i tried out for a football team and got my ribs cracked in practice because i was ninety five lb my goodness now why do you try al for the football team i me right and you know i just i was ninety five pounds and i got i got destroyed out there so you know my parents and i thought those going to my refuge like you know if i'm on the football team i'm cool that kind of thing but it just  it wasn't meant for me and it was one of the best things that ever happens because my parents took it upon themselves you know what we need to find something for him that's going to work right and at the time there was a personal trainer personal training team that came in to  high school the one school which i want to with your son and you know i got started fitness there and i was fortunate enough to have a trainer at a ph d in psychology oh well you don't see that every day you know and but his his methodology was different you know i'm used to sitting down with a psychologist or a counselor and i just talk to you whereas when i'm training with him it was like we had purpose to why we were exercising when i would go and exercise he was teaching me how to become a little more mentally tough because i quit everything i was great tennis player growing up good at golf go to soccer i kept quitting when i got hard oh and it's because i was so scared to fail and you know people in high school that's that's probably the biggest reason why people struggle growing up is were told you know you can't you can't do that in school right you can't do these things and there they have this fear that you know what happens if i fail a test or my parents going to get mad at me i'm not going to go to the college that i want to go to so much pressure for people that are that young and what fitness really taught me was in the gym failures ok we actually go for muscular failure so when you're when you're practicing that constantly it starts to come into your like whole life so that kid i was struggling academically socially started to gain some confidence put on some muscle gain self esteem and i started to take that same worth that work ethic into my academics and you know i got into penn state university which my college counselor said that's a huge reach because i was a c student freshman freshman year of high school and you know it's i just firmly believe that we need to have more action in our lives right just talking about it because anybody can talk so you attribute your sessions with your personal trainer at the hands school friends than it is to transforming you know like to where you are right now i credit a lot of it to you wow that's amazing and you know we talked a little bit in the green room and i kind of knew a little bit about that you were bullied as a as a child as well absolutely i mean when you're smaller than other people and i'm sure socially awkward and didn't have any backup you did have brothers assist those right much older than me so you know it was more even when you wanted to try and fit in you know i was a kid who are he was kind of predisposed to getting like you know offended by something or like you could get under my skin very easily when i was younger ok it's different now but then that that was just what it was so i wanted to do everything to fit in i was just lucky that i had a good support system of my parents who were both very inspirational and to stumble upon a personal trainer who had a ph d you know that brought that fusion to my life so it's just it's something that i want to start bringing to other people so you know how do you define fitness so in terms of fitness i think a lot of people have this misconception that it's just about how good you look exactly which you know if your goal is to look good that's fine that's your goal i'm not going to tell you what your goal should be right if you want to be a body builder be my guest because that everybody can have a goal and that means something to them but to me fitness is about your total wellness how how do you feel mentally how do you feel physically is what you're going is what you're doing today can affect you thirty years from now and how is that going to do it exist as your nutrition good that's fine this is not just about you know going running on the treadmill or lifting the the most amount of weight it's about improving who you are as a person now you know that in today's society we have this were close to us absolutely and talk a little bit about how mind body integration can help with reducing stress yes so in terms of exercise you know there's been a million studies done on how exercise can make you feel great afterwards you get that high when people talk about  the endorphin rush afterwards but one of the main things that happens is we produce a protein called b d and f which is brain driven like neuro trophic factor and what that does is it's like when you get a fight or flight right in exercise you know you're challenging yourself you're really trying to push yourself to be better your body is feeling stress exercises stress and what it will do is you produce the protein you produce the endorphins and it's really just a protection for your body so when you when you're done with that stress you're still feeling that high you feel good which is why people who have depression they're always recommended to go exercise you and that's kind of what i'm trying to bring i'm trying to bring that psychological factor to fitness that you know people just kind of leave it there they don't actually try to target it enough so i'm trying to do you try to make it fun to absolutely see because the you know the wellness g you know says he advises one to seven mind body practices to transform your relationship with stress one is meditate you know the other one is resolve a stressful situation by through external communication whether it's with personal people that are in your personal life or if for whatever reason you need to seek professional help that when the included practice mindful awareness of your body so being in meditation some people feel like like they have this this thought that meditation means you just go and sit down and do nothing and you know i try to clear thoughts but you can do active motivation throughout the day to find them and when i say active meditation i mean you c be driving to work and you know you're starting to get the stress of driving down the garden state parkway which everybody knows is stressful yeah and you know you can start to control your thoughts detach yourself from that stress and you know i read a book from a buddhist monk and basically he was talking about this practice and what he would tell you to do is take a deep breath in like you do and in the beginning of your sessions and tell yourself you know i'm here for myself and then when you breathe out you're saying i accept the fact that i'm stressed about whatever and then you breathe out and you smile and it's amazing how much a smile can change the  that's just a meditation when you get into actual exercise you should have a purpose to what you're doing you know like movement itself clears the mind and that's why that's the nonscientific way of saying that exercise to relieve stress when you're moving you're thinking about what your body is doing and not about what you've got to do when you go to work at seven o'clock that is true but i know i'm now going to personalize it i know that when i'm running my three miles i do i do get a hug and i'm but i also think about i think about some of the other things i get creative creativity comes out when i exercise that's weird isn't it but it's but it's all part of exercise there's the studies done to say that exercise improves critical thinking executive functioning so i mean what you're experiencing is just another side effect of exercise so in continuing with what dr chopra would say he says also understand your unique response and then get plenty of sleep talk about sleep i mean sleeps incredibly important i mean if you're if you're up all the time in or if you're getting up in the middle of night and doing a lot of stuff you're not getting around sleep right body is not going to be regenerated for the next day right you know there's been studies done by psychologists on sleep and they study truck drivers and they're basically putting them on different  prescriptions of sleep and what would happen is some of the drivers would be sleeping a lot less and then they would go and drive and then some would be sleeping more and when they started to realize is just like anything else like filling up a gas tank and driving your body almost has a gas tank of sleep if you oversleep you start to get stores of sleep kind of right and then if you under sleep you're kind of just prolonging that that problem that you're having so if you sleep six hours one day and then you go and sleep ten hours  you're kind of bring yourself back to equilibrium i know with in my studies too i read that sleep is the only natural way to recharge your body so it is crucial it's po and the other thing is that there should be you know you can tell if you if your body has gotten enough rest yeah and that's without the use of an alarm clock i have no right about that you know i would love to say that i don't use an alarm clock but i don't use my dad doesn't either believe it or not yes so he awakens when his body is ready to well you know the weird thing and he tries to tell me this and i'm like there's no way it would work for me but for ages he's just kind of told himself you know but right before you go to sleep i'm going to wake up at this time no matter what it is a wake up at the time and i don't know how he doesn't see my face yet i haven't done that but i just does so my dad actually and he's been arguably the biggest inspiration to my life he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis one he was thirteen years old so wow and they didn't tell him until he was twenty nine i believe so he once sixteen years actually knowing wow and i don't i don't ask you why you know he's gone blind before he's lost function is what limbs before just the typical things that imus can do yeah is a strong constitution because you daddy was was i'm assuming he's retired now he was extremely successful in financial services yeah i mean the works yeah well he still does ok but so i take that back yeah but i do yeah it was pretty prominent in that arena and it's his approach to life you know he had people tell him you can't do this because you you have m s you can't you'll never see again you'll never be able to play tennis you'll never be able to do work a full time job and look at him now he's sixty eight years old has worked a full time job for almost as entire life long time he gregan his vision back which is you know it's just a part of the symptoms but he never complained just which you know people can always out why me but he just works out every day does yoga every day like you were going to mention and you know he's just a spiritual person and wants exercise kind of guide his health and he probably does this other than the last element in the pot show for his seven elements which is do the things that you enjoy yeah so it's all about encompassing all of those wellness elements absolutely doing the things that you love so that will help you reduce the stress yeah right so but out of this out of the wellness elements i mean this is something that i think and i've talked about a lot i would say that mental wellness leads the pack oh yeah oh yeah because your mind controls you know you have thoughts control your feelings your feelings control your actions your actions have results absolutely right and that's what i was actually going to talk to you about  is you know we live life through cause and effect yes are decisions that we make end up having or a consequence positive or negative and then we think about the next thing we're going to do right and if we're programming ourselves through exercise to not run away from like a tough thing that's going to happen in life we can actually become better at making those decisions when the first becomes because we practiced it right and then when we make those decisions are positive so when i when i look at the i you know mental health professionals try to you know coach people through life if if they do that it's more about self awareness but you know they might say you should go exercise but then where's where do they go when they go with the motivation exactly so they'll say oh exercise good but ok ok so what happens now and that's where i'm trying to change that you know my my business is mind body integration i'm studying for my masters in counseling and i'd like to be able to counsel people and then also train them so that you know we're having that exposure therapy we find out what those things are that are that makes them tick right and then we use that exercise to create a purpose and you know when you start to like go through that over and over again you see changing so going in talking to a psychologist can do a lot for you it's great you learn about yourself but what i want to do is take the next step into yeah we're getting defined that ok so we have muscle imbalances in our body everybody got some and basically i got a certification in corrective exercise so when i use that with people it's not necessarily about just you know let's get them to do a different movement we're trying to correct those muscle imbalances so that they're more synergistic so if you're going to do an exercise and your muscles are off you're going to see your body start to do different things because i our bodies like to take the easiest easiest path to do something that's natural right but what we want to do is we want to change that pattern to do something else so that can include foam rowing which a lot of people have been hearing about and that's kind of like self massage right you know you're inhibiting a muscle then you might want to lengthen it so stretching the stretch in is key no matter what right absolutely and that's the most boring part i'm sorry it is it is but it's it's paramount and formal is not comfortable if you've ever gotten a massage when you're your muscles are tight it doesn't feel no it does not but but it's necessary because it loosens it pushes that lactic acid you know out yeah yes and then once you you know you've been hit it you lengthen the muscles and now you want to activate them so you might take that muscle that's been underactive right and you start to activate it so doing something that's you know isolated isometric so you're just holding something in with that muscle and that's tough to yeah and now that you've developed that strength back and that muscle to be even with the other one then you can go and integrate it so you'll start doing movements that use multiple muscles in your body so that it starts working together and that's kind of the premise but behind corrective exercise that spot is what caused it so like if i have a pain in my back it's probably not just my that's part of my back that's hurting it's probably because you know maybe i haven't  and you know you can go on massage that not all you want but if you're walking around and you're not like synergistic with your muscles right it's just going to happen again and again ok so that element there i mean twitter instagram and facebook those are the three social media platforms and i'm one of course i'm one linked in too but that's professional fitness everybody everybody is doing  that side it's always look what i've done yeah so talk about that how does that impact the evolution on fitness yes so you know it's funny bring that up because we're in an era where social media has become you know the number one thing in terms of marketing yes and all the sudden fitness models pop up everywhere they're showing themselves working out they're doing lots of which i find to be great in the sense that you know we're promoting getting moving because even if you don't move you die and that's the way i feel that's right so you know that's the good part about it then there's also also the drawbacks to it you know people always want to find out what they should be doing so if you go on instagram or facebook or snap chat you're getting a very visual marketing perception right there right you know you're seeing what people look like and if you see them doing exercise you're like oh well i want to look like that's all do that so you don't know what else to do in though that's you know like one little microcosm of of their you know  and you know we just talked about corrective exercise right you can look like the most fit person in the world but off camera you don't know what they're feeling that's right you know they could have you know slip disks they could have all sorts of injuries going on  and they'll go on on instagram they'll kosar video and people will be like yeah i want to i want to do that too and you know i'm all about movement like do it i want i don't care what you choose to do as long as you're moving that's great  but then if you're actually starting to really want to get into what's best for me right that's where you should seek professional help so glad you said that i feel good you know but do you see that the people that post d those share their experiences with social media are they mostly professionals or are they just this is what i've done you know i think i think it's both ok you'll get a lot of people who could be certified or right you know could have tons of experience they work at as a personal trainer full time but you also get people you know who just started working out they look good they realize ok i can profit off of instagram you know i have twelve million followers because i look like this  talk to me and she has some advice on what you would do for a person that's just starting to work out this is starting with fitness yes so you know visit the physical part in the mental part yes so whenever someone comes to see me for for personal training i always offer them a complimentary assessment because you know the most important thing for me to know is that they're they're realizing that i'm taking a vested interest in them i want to know how they move i want to know what their nutrition is like what their lifestyles like their medical history injury history all look at their body stats all these different things and it takes an hour to an hour and a half but i want them to know that i've caring about what they do and i and i'll take all that information and i'll put it into their program so that it's completely individualized versus going on instagram or snap chat and kind of just looking and picking exercises for beginners i think that's just so important to get an assessment done right from someone who's actually going to want to move because some people don't do that but yet there's you know you'll be surprised you know a lot of times you'll go to a place the kind of just go over your injury history all that kind of stuff and then they don't watch you move before they give you a program right which is like you know throwing something at the wind right you know you want to make sure that you're that your trainer is taking their time to look at everything about you because otherwise how are they going to know what to give your first that is true so you do a complete  three hundred sixty degree assessment oh yeah yeah that that's really great so do you work on the mind well yeah i guess you will be working on the mental aspect because you so i can go on the koan when i do the assessment i when i said i ask lifestyle questions you know that's where i kind of ask does stress do you feel exercise helps with your stress right how do you feel you respond to adversity that's one of those questions that i find interesting because you know you ask ninety percent of people like that  good i'm good you know i got this theory and then not tell him the truth and then that's why on their first session i'll put in an exercise that you know maybe i'll take the movement out of it so that they have to think about every sot that goes to their head while they're doing it right and you know what if i tell him the plank and word and i'll just say i'm not going to tell you how much time we're going to do i'll let you know when we're done you're just going to hold that and you know i have a a time i had it's not going to be crazy right but i like to see what people go through with their thought process you get people be like how much longer that tells me something is one if you're already asking about how much longer any just drug when you're thinking negative thoughts in your head and then when is this going to be over if they just dropping in quit without saying anything that's their first instinct to adversity i'm going to quit when something gets hard look at that yes so that's where you take exercise and make it psychological without them even knowing it right and then i'll do that every now and then it's not something completely like ingrained in the program but it's amazing when you see the changes so it's it's interesting when you do it that way excellent final thoughts any tips for the viewers yes so in terms of fitness you know i want to are the days that you probably should be there because when you go on days you don't want to go that's where the results are mean and you're training your body your train your mind to become more resilient and you'll just be proud of yourself for doing it so i encourage everybody to go engage in that movement enjoy a healthier lifestyle and and then you get to go to the beach with a better six pack than you would had before and you feel much better for yourself absolutely adam where can people reach you yes so you can reach me on my website  visual right and i want people to see things but yeah so i'm on pretty much every social media platform except twitter ok that's where people can find me and i post a blog i try to do that as much as i can but i'm busy law a lot of time but i want to thank you for being a guest on it that's a choice show and adam let me just tell you i am so proud of you know thank you for how my goodness it warms my heart but until next time make sure you take care of