Meet The Mejoria Team... Ep 1

Aaron Duvall, the Director of Olympic Sports Strength & Conditioning at the University of Pittsburgh, shares insights from his career. Justin, with coaching experience from NCAA Champions to Olympic Trial qualifiers, unveils his coaching journey. Alex Moses, our MLB-experienced Team Dietitian, and Craig Conley offer practical insights.

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Thank you for joining us for the inaugural episode of the busy fit podcast. We're really excited to share with you a different type of podcast where we're providing tangible ways to improve your health and unbiased information for you to digest. My name is Justin, the owner and founder of Mejoria training. We'll dive into who we are as it's important to frame any information we provide. So, you know, the information is who the information is coming from and that it's a credible source we're joined today by our co-owner and director of online programming, Aaron Duvall.

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Aaron brings a wealth of knowledge and practical experience in sports science, making him a vital part of our team. He has coached a diverse range of athletes from soccer players to swimmers and everything in between, including experiences with all levels from beginners to NCAA champions and Olympians from his beginnings as an assistant strength conditioning coach to his current position as director of Olympic sports strength conditioning at university of Pittsburgh. He has consistently pushed the boundaries of what's possible in sports science.

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His relentless pursuit of innovation is evident in his utilization of cutting technologies like DARI, Force Decks, among others. Aaron is certified by every governing body that matters in strength conditioning. In addition to his coaching roles, Aaron also serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Health and Rehab Sciences. In this capacity, he co-develops and teaches the curriculum for applied sports science, providing valuable insights into modern-day applied sports science practices. In a future episode, we will dive into Aaron's experiences.

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from his early career to his current leadership role, his work with athletes and his dedication to optimizing human performance. For today, we'll keep it concise to introduce the whole leadership team. Aaron, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me, Justin, as always. Aaron, we'll start with some easy ones to get the conversation rolling. So obviously at a young age, you've accomplished incredible things in your profession. While a great deal of your work has been with athletes, you've worked with a wide range of people. So how has that experience shaped

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Your coaching of those that have a variety of goals far different than those competitive athletes say people that just, you know, want to focus on weight loss or coming back from injuries or anything of the, of the sort. So, you know, you mentioned a lot of, you know, my experience, I guess more collegiate athletics where we're tailored more to like, you know, sport performance for particular sporting events. Right. There's

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Other experiences I have, whether it's working as a physical therapist, technician and working with a real geriatric population or running a youth weightlifting club, um, back in my hometown and, and really anything in between. And I think once you work with a lot of those different levels of populations, uh, you start to garner the experiences for, uh, you know, catering to just different levels of goals. Like, um, you know, one person that, you know, I've worked with may be trying to hit

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a world record and a certain track time or a swim event. And another person may just be trying to get back from an injury and dealing with ACL reconstruction or just chronic low back pain and trying to get back from that. So I think, Bill, it has been a short career in the grand scheme of things so far. I've been really fortunate to get a lot of experience with that.

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entirety of that range of different people and work with a lot of different goals. So, yeah, it's been fun and we're hopefully going to chat about some avenues of what we can do that here in some future episodes. That's great. Really excited to dive into some of those subjects. So what are two or three things that people should know about you? Yeah, so from, I guess, the context of

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this and mayoria training and you know what what we you and I do and craig and alex you know the the platform that we run and operate I think it's it's easy to look at someone oh they're just like they're an online personal trainer like they're they're one of those people and that's really not what I am or really want to be at all um you know I think anyone can really kind of

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fill that bucket as long as you work out and say, here, try my training program. Like anyone can say they're an online personal trainer. I would try to qualify myself as more of just a performance and health specialist. Like you said, like I've certified or I'm certified through pretty much every organization that's worth a damn in the field of performance and strength and conditioning. I have been fortunate to work with a lot of different levels of athletes, so Olympians, national champions,

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Also, people that are very unskilled or unathletic and everything in between. So I don't say any of that. I say that in fear of sounding cocky or boastful because that's not what I'm trying to do. But I hope it does help kind of qualify me above some others that may just be better at marketing themselves than myself. But yeah, I am a performance specialist, not just an online personal trainer.

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outside of that in the sense of, you know, the professional side of things. I'd say that I'm a pretty bad, but I try to be a good woodworker. I'm a phenomenal guitar hero player, and I'll challenge anyone to that. I also foster cats with my fiance very reluctantly, but I get made fun of that for a lot at work. But.

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I guess that's now a personality trait of mine, but yeah, just a little bit about me. Awesome. What's some of the things you've done woodworking wise? Let's see. Most recently just made a cheese board for us, so that was pretty simple. Built a couple benches and work desks. Getting into lathing now, which I really suck at.

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It's fun and it makes a big mess. So it makes me feel like I'm doing something cool. But yeah. Aaron, I gotta know how many cats do you have? All right, so right now we have two of my own. Well, none of them are mine. They're all my fiance's. I'll blame it on her. We have two of our own, but then we foster two more right now. But we've total, we've fostered eight in the last.

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I don't know, a couple months. So yeah, we're just a factory of cats rolling through this house, man. Man, OK. That's awesome. I know where to go if I need a kitten, then. Yeah, please. I got two that I really need to get rid of. Everyone has the cat questions. I am curious, how many are foster fails? Or are your two cats not from fostering at all? So the two that are ours, they are

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they were like foster cats at one point, but not with us. We got them from a different foster house. And then, yeah, the other ones are just ones that thankfully we've been cycling them out through. So, but yeah, we've had these last two for quite a while. I'm ready for them to find a home. You're a saint for doing that. No, my fiance is a saint. I'm just, again, the reluctant one that is using my guest bedroom for it.

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Okay. One more question in regards to this topic. So does your guitar hero career like lapse in time over your strength conditioning career, like how, how far back are we talking here? Um, no, unfortunately I'd say they're pretty mutually exclusive. Um, you can only, you know, if you, if you chase two rabbits, you end up with none. And.

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You know, I had to stop chasing the rabbit of guitar hero. It was time to grow up. I chased the rabbit of, you know, professionalism and sport performance and getting that now. But that still doesn't mean that I'm not a bad-ass guitar hero player. Can't play a real guitar, but again, I'll challenge anyone to do some guitar hero three especially.

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What are two or three misconceptions in health and fitness that you feel like need to be discussed? Probably the biggest one for me, um, that I think people get in their heads, uh, or believe for, you know, multitude of reasons is that like getting, being healthy or getting in shape or, you know, achieving even some lofty goals is this thing that's like,

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harder to do than just being like out of shape and lazy. I think, you know, we've seen like the memes online of like, you know, choose your heart. And it's like, you know, it'd be like the sick looking athlete or the, you know, out of shape, you know, couch potato and, but there's like, I think a lot of truth to that, like, you know, it doesn't take as much as I think a lot of people believe to.

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to get to a point where they're comfortable on their own skin. They are happy with where they're at from a performance perspective, and they're hitting those types of goals. It takes discipline and some motivation to get to where people are training and eating well. But again, the dedication that it takes to doing that and getting a few workouts in a week and meal prepping a few lunches as you go is...

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that discipline is just as much discipline as it takes to, sit and binge watch Netflix for, a few episodes every day as well. So it's like, choosing your hard, choosing what you wanna struggle with. And the fact that like, it's a lot easier to build those habits of getting to somewhere or to be someone that we can, be proud of ourselves of being in a good standpoint where, we're

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again, in that healthy, in that more performance oriented lifestyle. I think another thing is that online coaching or online training is something that like, that it's a lesser than of like getting like an in-person trainer or something. Yeah, I think from services that some people, especially us provide, like when you have, when you can

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get that, not only that accountability piece, but you get a well-structured plan from a training standpoint, from a nutrition standpoint. You can still get that technical feedback through videos and stuff. You can do everything on your own time. It doesn't matter if you get busy one day and can't make it to the gym and you have to cancel your personal trainer or something. The online coaching community, I think, is growing a lot and the people that are utilizing online coaching.

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Is growing a lot as well and I think again the reality is that it's it's fantastic. It's a lot better for most people. And you know, it's also if if you look at like if you're training 3 to 5 days a week with a personal trainer. Getting online coaching is a lot less expensive too and you're getting the same quality if not better in a lot of ways. So I'd say lastly to and I don't think this is really a misconception in the field of.

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or like things, something that needs to be like cleared up in the field of like health and wellness. But definitely I think a point that could be made is when people are looking for people to help them with some sort of like coaching or getting themselves on track. Like one of my favorite quotes from Yuri Verkhoshansky is any idiot can make any other idiot tired. And it's an aggressive way of, you know, saying a lot of truth though at the same time.

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Sound training isn't just like throwing something on a whiteboard because like, oh, we feel like it's good for that day. Like, you know, there's a time and a place for that. But I think that, you know, when you have someone that actually knows what they're doing and from a programming or periodization standpoint, and they can put together sound training that isn't just going to make someone feel tired, you know, that's where we can really start to see a lot of improvements in people as well. So.

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And not really a misconception, but I think a definite good point that could be made for a lot of people. It's interesting that, you know, we see people that do kind of a general program and like their back issues get worse, their hip issues get worse, and then they have that specialized training and all of a sudden those things go away within weeks. I remember in the very first clients we had, and she had had, you know, she's a police officer had had back issues for 29 years and what was it? It was like three weeks and she like, yeah.

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pain-free, I don't even know what this means. And yeah, it's just, it's a whole new world that they're not used to. For sure. Well, I'm going to, I'm going to flip it, Justin. I've talked a lot now, so I want to make sure we introduce you as well. Um, so Justin Andrade, um, the owner and CEO of Maioria training since, uh, our inception and back in May of 2022. Um, so Justin's had an awesome coaching career, uh, in

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including roles as the associate head coach of men's swimming at University of Pittsburgh, where he and I met. I was also the head coach for men's and women's swimming at Florida Tech. So coached a lot of swimmers to NCAA championships over 25 school records at Pitt. Swimmers qualifying from different global competitions, world championship, Olympic trials, world university games, and then even tenure at Florida Tech.

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led the team to a national champion relay. A lot of different qualifiers, all Americans, and a ton of accolades for that school. So you've garnered a lot of success as a swim coach, both at Florida Tech and at University of Pittsburgh. Also involved in some different initiatives, such as the ACCs, coaching the whole athlete academy and gone through stuff like the Pits Rising Talent.

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Uh, program. So I have a lot of coaching expertise and a really good track record, both athletically and academically. Um, you know, now you're bringing that expertise here to the more, you know, general health and fitness world. So I'll flip your questions over to you, Justin. What's, uh, what's two or three things that, you know, you would want people to know about you. That's a, that's a good question. I think the first thing is.

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Obviously most of my background's been in college athletics. Before that, obviously I was a student athlete. And I think that people view that as being something that I'm really passionate about, and then I wanna stay in that competitive world. When in reality, like the biggest thing for me is just helping people improve their health. When I was at Ashley University, where I went to school beforehand, and even before that, I was really involved in basically doing some different studies with the local community, where we were looking at

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obesity rates. And one of the first studies I did was with fifth graders. And what we realized was 90, I think it was 92% of the fifth graders that we worked with couldn't do a sit-up, a proper squat, or they couldn't basically pass like a basic shuttle test, which just required them basically to run five yards there and back three times. And I think it was under 12 seconds and they couldn't do it. And that really scared me because that's the future of our

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You know, of our country, that's the future, you know, leaders. That's the future appeal that like down the line are going to have chronic diseases and, uh, ultimately you're going to see like early mortality rates because of that. Um, so I'm really passionate about that. I'm really excited to be back in a space where we can help people on every level. Uh, and the other thing too, it's just, uh, I am by far addicted to golf. Uh, it's, it's border. It's, it's healthy, but it's unhealthy. You know, I love doing it. I think I spend too much time watching it.

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Uh, even like the golf vlogs and stuff like four play podcasts and the good, good golf and all that stuff. I'm, I'm all about it. I'm not good, but I'm getting better.

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Man, I'm gonna put you on blast here, Justin, your best game. My best game, like the best I've ever shot. Yeah. The best I've ever shot, I believe was 92 and it was, could have been way better. I was playing great through like nine holes and that's the story always. Like you just don't can't hold on for 18 holes. So that's the goal next year is to get in the eighties and stay in the eighties.

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I really liked golf too, until I went and actually played it for the first time up. And, you know, it was just putt putt and like top golf for a while. I was like, Oh, this is fun. This is easy. And then I went and played actual golf and I don't think I've gotten under like one 30 for like the two or three times I went, so I'll leave that to you. Hey, it all it takes is a couple of times to hitting the ball straight and seeing it fly through the air and they're like, Oh, I could, I could do this again. You know, you need two, two good shots of the 130 and you're like, yeah.

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Yeah, I'm coming back. Yeah. But when the other 16 look like crap and you lose your balls, then I don't know. That's a, it's a little more debilitating to me, but we'll get there. And it gets expensive too, you know, cause you lose 12 balls and that's like 30, 40, $50 on top of the, you know, paying for the course and all that. It's not a, it's not a cheap hobby for sure. I'm, I'm fortunate that my wife likes to shop. So I get to spend my money on golf. So it works out well.

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Awesome. Well, uh, again, I'll flip the other question over to you. What do you think are, you know, two or three, like different misconceptions about general health industry or just, you know, wellness practices? I could go on for days on this. I think just the marketing around health products in general has always bothered me. Uh, you know, people see the ads for pills, diet supplements that are, you know, kind of the easy fix. And they're like, yeah, I just got to find the one that works for me.

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And that can be, you know, pre-workouts, it can be diuretics, it can be, you know, now there's, uh, appetite suppressors and, uh, you know, all those things are, you see people that are on, you know, All these different, you know, cholesterol medicine medications, uh, in reality, it's like, let's actually focus on the root of the problem and actually find like what's going on at the base of it. And usually that starts with just like leading a healthier lifestyle or finding like what, you know, contraindications you have, or things that are going on with you specifically.

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that prevent you from having to go those routes. And because that stuff's so easily marketed now and it's so profitable and you see like the pharmaceutical industry is just absolutely massive and makes decisions even kind of in the food spectrum of things that influence carries over. And you see people see it on TV and they're like, it's on TV, they're advertising for this, so it must be good. And in reality, like if you saw the support

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And initiative behind, you know, health and exercise and nutrition, understanding how to fuel properly. And, you know, there are limitations on refined sugars, you know, and so I, I just feel like that marketing shouldn't be allowed to happen that way. Uh, and it's frustrating, you know, I just had a conversation with someone yesterday that was on, you know, some of those appetite suppressants and let's focus on the base of the problem and likely you'd never have to be on that medication. Um,

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And just the overall commercialization of health and fitness. And you see through Beachbody and through other organizations kind of like that, where it's becoming almost like a pyramid scheme where people get involved in it. But they're not doing the base things that improve their health, that help them lose weight, add muscle, feel better, get their energy levels up, fix their actual digestive issues that are going on. If that was the true focus from day one, I'm not sure that those businesses would be in existence.

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But, you know, they're profitable and they're doing really well for a reason. I think that's enough from us. Justin, do you want to introduce Alex and Craig? Yes. So we'll start with Alex Moses. So she serves as our team dietician since April of 2023. Alex, do I have that date right? Yeah, I think that we originally talked in... It was January or February, because I remember it was like actually kind of cold in...

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Florida when you first called me. I don't know why I remember that. But I think we first talked then, I think maybe official April was probably right. Okay, okay. Yeah, I remember being in the car and taking that phone call and was happy you were excited. So you bring an extensive background in sports nutrition. You're currently serving with Philadelphia Phillies for their minor league.

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Um, before that year with the Baltimore oil Orioles, uh, as a minor league dietician, your expertise, uh, in creating nutrition programs for athletes has possibly impact the performance and wellbeing of numerous individuals. Uh, you hold a masters of science and nutrition and food science from West Wayne state university. Uh, unfortunately from the state up North, uh, where her thesis on nutrition strategies for injury recovery within a major league baseball organization showcases her commitment to optimizing, optimizing.

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athletes, health and performance. Her bachelor's of science in dietetics further solidifies her academic background. Throughout her career, she's been a proactive educator, delivering nutrition insights and guidance to athletes through presentations, hands-on applications and social media content. She excels in collaborating with various teams, including medical, strength, mental health staff and to establish comprehensive programs within player development. And she says she's got a really rich background in sports nutrition.

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I had the opportunity to work with her personally at University of Pittsburgh when she served as the fellow that worked with us for nutrition. I'm really proud of myself for remembering that it was a fellowship and she really does an incredible job looking at the, I guess, desires and areas from each element within an organization, whether it be coaches, athletic trainers, strength staff, and really making sure she's supporting and bringing all those people together.

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putting our student athletes in like the best possible position to help them be successful and also advocating for the student athletes and what's best for them in the long run. So we're incredibly thankful to have someone of Alex's, uh, background and expertise and character on our team. So thank you for joining us, Alex. Thanks Justin. And I'm proud of you for knowing that I was a fellow too, because I think that every other time that we talk about, like when we actually met,

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You always think that we met way earlier than we actually did. So a lot of that you remembered what I did. Well, you're, you're, you're too personable. So it was like, yeah, I feel like I've known Alex for years and I guess it hasn't been that long, but feels like it's been that long. So how has your experience in athletics prepared you to work with those, uh, people with different goals outside of sports performance? Nutrition is a really unique field.

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Everyone needs to eat. Everyone requires nutrition. If we're just taking it down to the basics, I'm working with humans that all need to eat, all need nutrition. Whether we like it or not, we're going to need that until the day we die. So I think that athletics, yes, athletes are different in that we work a lot towards sports performance, but I still work with players and even staff

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have health issues and injuries and all these other things outside of just actual performance. And all that is, there are things that have connected me to general population and all things that happen to general population. So at the root of it, we're all humans and we all need some sort of help with our nutrition.

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Great. So what are two or three things you want people to know about you? Well, as you did mention, I am from the state up North. I am a Michigander at heart. Um, I think that might be the biggest riff in mahoria's training team. As I am also a huge Michigan fan, go blue. We can have a whole podcast episode about that whole debacle right now. One day. Uh, but I am now in the state of Florida. I.

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Lived here for a few years now and I absolutely love it being in the warmth. Those are, that's my biggest thing that people need to know about me because I feel like that just like makes me who I am. But I am a former athlete, a washed up athlete to say the least. I played soccer for.

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a year in college at Oakland University before I transferred to Wayne State where I finished my bachelor's and master's. And I still do play as a washed up athlete, rec soccer every week. My body hurts like hell. I cannot run the way that I used to run, but I still do it. And I have been a sports dietician for four years now. So I've worked with

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now collegiate and professional athletes. And I've gotten to work with almost every sport at this point. So I started out at University of Miami as an intern, worked with football, basketball, tennis, and baseball there. And then ended up in baseball, worked with the Pirates as my first job in professional baseball.

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and then University of Pittsburgh where I met most of this lovely team and found myself back into baseball and somehow I did all of that in the last four years. So it's been a crazy ride. One, I want to go back to like two minutes ago when you said the word Michiganer. I feel like you just made that word up. One. Is that a real thing? Michiganer. That is a real word. You've never heard that? A Michiganer.

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Yeah, the definition, Michigander is a person that resides or grew up in the state of Michigan. I stand corrected. Well, that doesn't make me like Michigan anymore, but I still like you. So I am curious, as a dietician being in the nutrition space, do you often have people, I guess, just think or assume that you eat perfectly?

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And like, how do you navigate that? All the time, every single day. If I am eating in front of another human, someone is commenting on it. Uh, just literally today, uh, had Chipotle catered for lunch today for the players. And I really was just not feeling Chipotle. Just grab some chips and guacamole and they're all like, Oh, where's your, where's your protein? Where's your vegetables? I'm like.

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It's just not happening today guys. And that's okay. If I'm eating a sweet, that's it. That's even worse. Like if I'm eating ice cream or a cookie, like you would have thought that like, I just, I just like, I don't know. I just like killed someone in front of them. They're like, Oh my God, I can't believe you did that. Or you're doing that. What are some misconceptions around health and fitness that you'd like to discuss? I think same as everyone on this call, this could be something that we.

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could ram ran on about about like forever. Again, nutrition's a really unique thing and that everyone eats. And with that, everyone thinks they are an expert in eating because they do it. So it's a really fun field to be in where everyone just assumes that they know what they're doing because they tend to eat every day. So

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There's only a few I will focus on for the sake of time today, but the big ones, I would say, you can only get results counting macros. I feel like more than not, I'm working with people who have had a past of trying to get on their nutrition journey in some other way. And a lot of times that was a lot of like calculations, weighing out their food.

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Um, and unfortunately that just doesn't work for most people. If anything, that creates a lot of disordered eating and eating disorders. Um, and I feel like that only really works for one very particular personality. Um, and most people don't fall into that. And people think that that's the only way to get it because they think that nutrition has to be so specific. And while nutrition is very individualized.

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it definitely doesn't have to be complicated. So I like to work with people, getting results, working on servings of things, or even just focusing on individual goals with people. So a lot of people will come to me and be like, this is what I eat. They might even show me measured out things of everything they eat in a day. And I'm looking at this, I'm like, if you just zoomed

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add some veggies at your dinner, or you really just need to add some protein to your day. And they're like, oh, okay, like, how much, how much? And I'm like, just work on like getting a serving in, just get in something. And a lot of times that's when I see the best results, because that's something that's more sustainable over time, like no one's going to be going to their kid's birthday party in the future and bring a food scale, that's just not going to happen. So it's the best way to see.

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more sustainable results is actually just not counting your macros in my opinion. Another big one I would say eating healthy is expensive. If anything, and this is a hot hot take, I think that it's almost more expensive to eat unhealthy. I have this argument almost daily with players who use Uber Eats to get fast food. I'm like, you guys could have

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cooked an entire meal for like $5 a serving, but instead you paid $30 to have Taco Bell delivered to you 45 minutes later. And I feel like that's just like, it blows my mind that people think that it could be more expensive to eat healthy when in reality, I think that it is just the opposite and eating unhealthy is more expensive. And to Erin's point earlier, I feel like

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People make it this complicated thing, but it's really more effort to be lazy and to eat unhealthy. And in reality, you plan that out. Eating healthy can be actually a lot less expensive. Another big one is not eating anything after 7 p.m. I hear this from everyone, like athletes I work with that are young, like 17, 18 years old, all the way to some of our clients

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in their 50s, 60s, like everyone has this idea that they shouldn't be eating after 7 p.m. And I just wanna know who started this? Who decided that that was the case? There's definitely some research on like not eating certain things later on, especially like high carb or high fat meals just because that can disrupt sleep. But I always shock people when I tell them

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Hey, you should really add like high protein snack at night. Like that could actually really help with muscle synthesis. And they're like, I thought I wasn't supposed to eat anything after dinner. I'm like, no, no, like huge misconception. I feel like those are just like my biggest ones, but I could just talk forever about this stuff. That's great. I got to ask, what's your favorite, uh, high protein snack for the evening then. Ooh. Okay. So I'm a sweets person. Um, so I personally like.

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Greek yogurt with peanut butter and chocolate chips. I wanna go back Alex to your hot take though, cause it was serious and I'm in agreement, but I think people listening to this, many may not be, right? And so what do you think is the barrier, limiting people from eating healthy when it is less expensive? Usually the-

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the argument is like, oh, it's too expensive. I can't do it. So if it's not the cost, what's the actual barrier in your opinion? Planning. Yeah. And it out is the biggest barrier. I think that like everyone will say there's a bunch of barriers, including like skill time, all these other things, but like is time really your issue or did you just not plan well enough? Like.

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I think that that's probably the biggest one is just making sure that you actually plan out everything. Or if you're like me, it's just not having the ability to not burn your house down if you want to cook anything other than cereal. But I'm getting better. But that's to my point, that's planning. If you know your cooking skill is at a zero, then you're just buying stuff that requires no cooking.

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And you're gonna need to serve me up a meatball of cereal one day. Yeah. Hey, I'll put the protein powder in the cereal. We'll get the protein in still. There you go. We'll move on to our last, but definitely not least, person on this call and that's Craig Conley. Uh, he's our success coach. Uh, he brings a great deal of experience in nutrition, fitness, science and lifestyle counseling. Uh, he serves at our, as our current success coach, where he works with our clients on health, exercise, nutrition coaching.

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to clients worldwide. He's passionate helping clients achieve their fitness and lifestyle goals and conducts life specific coaching and helping kind of meet them where they're at. Uh, before joining me, Horia training, Craig served as the performance director for CrossFit future in Blacklick, Ohio. There he created sports specific training plans for youth athletes and facilitated educational seminar seminars on sport performance topics. Craig's coaching expertise extended to private small group fitness and coaches a diverse group of sports.

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Craig also contributed to the University of Pittsburgh Sports Science Program as an intern with the swimming and diving program from August of 2020 to July of 2021. During that time, he conducted power-based experiments to assess athletes readiness and recovery and coached dynamic exercise sessions for Division I athletes. I had the opportunity to work with Craig during that time and he is wise beyond his years. And actually a lot of that data that he was able to provide was helped us to understand

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and after we were doing some of our higher intensity sessions, what the next few days after that needed to look like to get the most from it. Craig holds a master's degree in sports science from the University of Pittsburgh. Craig, thanks for joining both the call and for joining our team. Absolutely. It's great to be here. So Craig, what are two or three things that you'd like people to know about you? I'd say the first one, you know, I'm a husband. I am a brother.

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you know, oldest of four with three younger sisters. And yeah, I say that one, because obviously they're, you know, important factors of my life, but two, it just highlights, you know, how important relationships are to me. And that translates into my coaching style, I would say. The relationships that we try and foster here at Mejoria.

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and I specifically do with our clients are very, very important to me. And so, you know, when we're coaching someone or when I'm coaching someone, obviously I'm thinking about their results. I'm thinking about the science behind their training and their nutrition. But I'm also thinking about them as a person first and foremost, and I'm thinking about, you know, their, their life situation, their kids, their family, their finance, whatever it is, you know, we want to make sure that them as a person is, are okay.

37:57

I just as much as like their physical or fitness. It's okay. So that's one. I would say the second thing outside of fitness, which is, you know, my first passion, I really, really love writing and all kinds of writing, honestly. Like I love to do like poetry. I'm not good at it, but I like it. I'm trying to get better at it. I can make stuff rhyme. So,

38:27

I like to, if you asked me to write like a scholarly article, I would enjoy it. Like I just like articulating and like putting stuff onto paper. I feel like I can think very freely when I write and that's probably a big part of why I enjoy it. I really enjoy stories. So I really like reading as well as writing. So yeah, when I'm not, you know, diving into something fitness related, I enjoy writing and I always have a notebook by me. Can you read something to us?

38:56

Can I read something to you? Yeah, you gotta have like a poem that you have in your mind or something that you've written, right? Or just freestyle. Whoa, whoa, whoa, okay. I'm not a rapper or a spoken word artist. So I actually, just yesterday, since you put me on blast here. So I just yesterday showed my wife a little poem that I wrote or that I said.

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recorded it on my phone. And I don't have it memorized right now. So I'll just send it to you later. And partially because I'm slightly embarrassed right now. But also, it, I didn't tell her what it was about at first. And, you know, it started out with, as I sit in the bottom of the hole, and it sounded like really, really dark. And I continued and then she was like, Craig, what is this about? Like, it's about a squat.

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Like I wrote a poem about a squat and it was talking about sweating and being extremely tired and feeling like you're about to die and it was all about a squat. So I'll send that to you. It sounds beautiful. We're going to have to post that one in the show notes. That way everyone can reference that. Oh man. That's a must for sure. This is my moment. Right. Sorry, I'm a poet.

40:24

All right, Craig. So what are two or three misconceptions around health and fitness?

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One, I would say, and this one's I think pretty common, but the thought that carbs are bad. And I think this one's getting debunked a little bit. But I still think it's pretty common myth that carbs are just a bad food to eat and they cause you to gain weight or they cause you to have sugar crashes and everything. And I really want to help educate.

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really what carbs are. We all have a knowledge that fruits and vegetables are healthy, but I think sometimes we forget that fruits and vegetables are also carbohydrates. And so they can't be mutually exclusive. So I'd say one is that carbs are bad and that's definitely not true. And there's no food that is bad, similar to Alex's point earlier, you can be very flexible in your nutrition. Another is that calories in and calories out

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is the most important or the only factor I would say in weight loss. I don't like that misconception. Is it a true principle? Yes. Like foundationally, if you eat more calories than you burn, you likely will gain weight. If you eat less calories than you burn, you likely will lose weight. But there are so many other factors that go into weight loss and weight gain, honestly, and just metabolism in general.

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um your sleep, your gut health, your stress. Like this is just three right off the bat that we can name that if you don't take those into account you're doing yourself a disservice. If you just think the calories in versus calories out is going to be your your ticket to you know your fitness goals. Number three, man this one I was confused about for a while is that soreness equates to a

42:29

And, you know, when I was first starting out working out, if I wasn't sore, I wouldn't leave the gym. So I was like, I didn't do anything, you know, I didn't have a good workout. I wasn't working hard enough, whatever it was, I'd go back later on because I wasn't sore enough. And I used it as a marker of progress when really, you know, soreness is literally your body being broken down. And if it's not, if you don't recover properly, soreness is actually a detriment.

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can make you regress instead of progress. So there's so many other markers to progress. Soreness in itself is not a bad thing. Soreness can be a marker of, like I said, your muscles being broken down, which if you recover properly, they will build stronger. But soreness in itself is not a good marker of progress. So Craig, obviously you and Alex work together on our nutritional programming here at Mayoria Training.

43:24

I, so I'm going to kind of ask a two tiered question here. And so the first one's going to go to you, Craig. Uh, what's your, you know, obviously when you have two people kind of work in the same thing, they bring different philosophies. What's your experience been like working with, with Alex, when you kind of have to find that middle ground and what are some things you've enjoyed or not enjoyed about working together? Yeah, man. That's funny. I honestly, one of the reasons.

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One of the biggest reasons that I wanted to join the team here was because of you, Alex, and being able to work alongside and honestly learn from someone with your level of expertise, not only your level of expertise, but your nutrition approach. You explained it so well during your segment, but your flexibility, your care for people, your genuine care for their situation and lifestyle.

44:21

Um, your courage to be like, Hey, you just need to plan, like get your stuff together. You know, you, your ability to have those difficult conversations, um, is something I I'm learning from, uh, I can consistently reach out to you for questions. So it's going to be a stretch to try and find something Justin that I don't like about working with Alex, maybe that can't talk to her more, you know? And same question to you, Alex.

44:50

Wow, I didn't know this was a hype up Alex call. This is nice. Same back to you, Craig. I think that it's been just, it's been great to have someone to collaborate with. I think in almost all of my jobs, like a dietician has been like a one man team. And if we have other dieticians, they're working on completely different sports or

45:18

even in completely different buildings. So I feel like I've been on so many like one man teams that it's just so nice to have someone to like truly collaborate on. And like, not only are like we working like together in the same space, but oh my gosh, we're working with the same clients, which I literally have never had in another job, which is it's awesome. And even though Craig is not necessarily like a dietitian like myself.

45:47

He has a great nutrition knowledge and he comes to me for questions that are supposed to go to a dietician. Like a dietician is supposed to be the only one who can answer like medical nutrition therapy questions. So anything that falls in the medical realm. And he does a great job of making sure that I'm the one that answered those. And our clients are getting the right answers and correct help. So yeah, I have nothing but great things to say about.

46:16

Working with Greg. Good answers, good answers. Well, great, well, obviously we've gone through and talked about everyone on the team. I think we're incredibly fortunate to have a team like this come together. It's nice when you have people that are experts in their field coming together, but it's even better when you have a group of people that come together and care about each other and care about the people they work with and actually make it feel like we're a family on these calls. So appreciate you guys.

46:44

I guess that's a, that's a wrap for episode one of the busy fit podcast.