[laughs]

 

Kris Peters: [laughs] I love it! It’s so much fun.

 

Neely Quinn: Four in the morning? What fourteener did you do?

 

Kris Peters: We ran up Gray’s Peak and ran down. It was epic. It was awesome.

 

Neely Quinn: Nice work. Really nice work.

 

Kris Peters: Thanks.

 

Neely Quinn: Honestly, nice work on still being awake right now, so… [laughs] So today we’re talking about – and by the way, I didn’t do anything like that. I woke up and I sat on my ass all day.

Today we’re talking about the different kinds of training that a climber can do. We’re going to go through online training, one-on-one style, another one is online training through programs like ours and others that are out there, but aren’t one-on-one with a trainer, and number three is one-on-one in person. Tell me a little bit about all those and let’s talk about the pros and cons of each.

 

Kris Peters: Well, first off you cannot beat hands-on, one-on-one coaching. You can’t beat that. That is the most prestigious thing you can have as an athlete/as a client, is to have someone there telling you what to do. Most – I mean, if you look at any pro athlete in some of these major sports, they all have so many resources to make them a better athlete. It’s a very hard thing to find people who are so self-motivated and self-driven to stay focused on things, and that’s why athletes hire trainers to work with them. It’s to make their plan, to see their progress, to basically tell them what to do, and putting their trust in them to make sure they get more fit/they get stronger.

Really, that one-on-one stuff is like, when you’re feeling down and you don’t feel like you have anymore left and you have a good coach who can motivate you and get you back up and back into whatever it is you’re doing, you can’t get that with anything else. That is the best thing to have. With all my coaches and trainers that I’ve had in my life, I always respond much differently in my sessions when I have someone there telling me what to do.

I’d say the cons with that at times is obviously pricing. It’s very expensive to have a coach, even if it’s just once or twice a week. It’s still expensive. That is the deterrent part for a lot of people of having that trainer or that coach.

For online stuff, usually you have something that’s cheaper. You usually have something that’s going to give you a full regiment, all written out, all laid out for you, that is for you. Whether it’s a customized plan or we have our subscription plans that are just for everyone to have, we try to give as many options as possible to make sure everyone can be successful at it. The pros with that are it’s cheaper and you have something out there for you.  A lot of people just want to know what to do. “Just tell me what to do.” That’s a good resource for that.

The cons for that, it’s not as interactive and motivating as if you have someone there next to you. It is very hard for people to go to the gym when they’re tired, go do things when they’re not feeling up to it, and try to give it their all. That trainer or coach, if they’re a good coach, they’re going to be on you and they’re going to be yelling at you and telling you what to do and it’s going to bring that intensity out of you, for sure. Where, if you just have an iPhone or an iPad and you’re staring at a screen, “Okay, I’ve got to do this next. Oh, that sucks. I don’t want to do that. I’ll just skip it.” Where a coach or a trainer is going to be like, “There’s no way in heck I’m going to let you skip that.”

Those are kind of the differences right there, but I’d say the main thing that really defines people in what they’re going to do is lack of resources. If someone doesn’t have a good coach or trainer then that online stuff is going to be more motivating for them because they don’t have anything else around them. Another thing is going to be that money. Money is really going to decide what direction you’re going: if you’re going to have someone there to work with you one-on-one or you’re going to do online.

Again, it just kind of depends on the person. Everyone’s different. I’ve had plenty of people do an online program that didn’t like it. They didn’t like it, it didn’t work for them, they couldn’t do it, and I never heard from them again, which is fine. Everyone responds differently to different scenarios when it comes to their training. I’ve had some people that hate one-on-ones. They cannot stand my personality. I’m in your face, I’m loud, I try to be encouraging but motivating at the same time, but it’s definitely like, I’m right there with you. Some people don’t like that, which is totally fine. Everyone is different. I think it’s about finding what works for you and what you respond to the best.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay, that’s a good overview. I want to go back a little bit because there are couple of things about the one-on-one training, in person, that I think are notable. One is that the one-on-one trainer, like you, can correct people’s form. This is one of the main things I honestly worry about with our programs, the online programs, is people are doing these lifts and these things and their form could potentially be awful and there’s nobody there to tell them that. What are your thoughts on that?

 

Kris Peters: Sure. That’s why we really try to have as many videos as we can, to show form. If your form is not on point, you’re not targeting things like you need to be. I’ll be totally honest, there’s a lot of people out there that have been training for awhile, they think they know what they’re doing, and I watch them workout and I’m just, “That is completely wrong.” That’s a very big thing.

I know when we were training together, Neely, I was being very on you about your form and getting it really locked down. You can’t get that from videos. You’ll watch a video and go, “I think I’m doing it right. Okay, I think my feet are right. I think my back’s straight. I think my fingers are engaged,” but really if I’m right there watching you that does not mean it. You might think you’re doing it right and then I’ll make those little tweaks and then you’ll see, “Oh. That feels different. Now I get it.” Some people are more hands-on. They need that correction and that manipulation of someone else behind them. So, yeah.

 

Neely Quinn: Somebody asked us recently why we don’t have deadlifts in our online programs, like the subscription programs, and I was like, “Well, [laughs] because it’s a really hard lift.” Training with you and really learning how to do it, it took me probably two full days before I actually got it.

 

Kris Peters: It definitely took awhile to have you do form without heavy weight. That’s the thing – a lot of people, with my one-on-one clients, I can do that with them because we Skype or we go over it in detail what the form looks like so we can really do that. With the online subscription, I don’t know who you are, I don’t know what you’re capable of, and I’m just not going to throw you a deadlift or anything like that nature because one little slip – boom, you’re done.

I’ll always go back to my back injury. I was warming up. I’ve been doing squats for years. It’s something that’s one of my favorite lifts. I was using a warm-up weight and I went down and was on my face. It’s just kind of like you just never know with that stuff, so if you don’t know what you’re doing, that’s why I would not put that on the subscription plan. It’s such a fine line of I don’t want to hurt people.

 

Neely Quinn: So then how do you do it with your online clients? Like, your one-on-one online clients?

 

Kris Peters: With my one-on-one online clients, we get/we usually get in depth about it. We usually talk about it and we’ll communicate if it’s working or not. You know, I give them plenty of links to go over form, we do the Skype call and we kind of go over it. Some people send me their form with just a warm-up bar and then I can tweak it there. One of my online clients, Peter, he was taking video of him doing deadlifts every time. We’d critique it, we’d go over it, we’d analyze it, and I’d tell him exactly, “Okay, this is what needs to change, buddy.” Now he does them great.

It’s still kind of, “Okay, we’ll see how this goes,” and I’ll tell everyone, “Keep it super light. Always keep it light until you get the form.” That’s what my coach had me do. He would not let me put heavier weight on until my form was down pat.

Again, I try to put that stuff on there. With some people – and there’s some clients I get where I just know by reading the overview of all of them and stuff like that, that there’s no/they don’t need that on their plan right now. They just need to get strong in other ways, but some of my more advanced athletes/more fit athletes, for sure we’ll kind of put that in there, but we’ll go over it in depth.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay. So, we were talking about money stuff before. Let’s talk about what does it actually cost to see a coach, one-on-one? I mean, how much do you cost and how much – do you know what other coaches across the country cost?

 

Kris Peters: I mean, right now coaching pricing has gone way up. I know for a while there I was at about $60 an hour and now I’m at $100 an hour. That’s my hourly rate. It’s kind of about time. My schedule is slammed and I’m just 24/7 going, so I have to make sure that it’s worth my time. I know that sounds bad, but it’s like, “Okay, well if I’m going to walk away from all these other responsibilities, all these other things, I need to make sure I’m compensated for all of that time.”

You have driving, you have all these things that take away from what a coach could be doing. A lot of coaches, you have to remember, they have to give money to the gym. They have to take a cut and that’s another big thing. A lot of people are like, “Man, you’re so expensive.” Well, this much money goes to the gym. That works for any trainer at any gym. That’s what happens. Some coaches, depending on it and in different sports, it’s not uncommon for a coach to be 200 or 300 bucks an hour, you know?

 

Neely Quinn: Wow.

 

Kris Peters: Oh yeah. For sure, especially running coaches and cycling coaches. More of those bigger sports where it’s just a different demographic a lot of times. Those coaches are very expensive and a lot of online training plans that I’ve been looking at are $500 or $600, just for the plan, you know? It’s definitely – training has turned into a very big thing across the board in all sports, you know? You kind of see it all over the place now, ‘Online training! Online training! Coach! This coach, that coach’ and a lot of marketing.

Even prices of gyms have gone up. I know a gym out here in Denver it’s $180 an hour for a personal trainer, where before when I started it was $60 an hour.

 

Neely Quinn: A climbing gym?

 

Kris Peters: No, no. Just a gym here in Denver.

 

Neely Quinn: Really?

 

Kris Peters: Oh yeah. It’s totally normal now. I mean, you’re looking at well over a hundred bucks an hour for a trainer now at gyms, for sure.

 

Neely Quinn: Woah, so this is for the elite of the elite.

 

Kris Peters: This is for people who are not the elite. This is just people…

 

Neely Quinn: I guess I meant the financial elite.

 

Kris Peters: Right, yeah. I know. Again, some of the homes I go to, there are some clients that want me work at their home and that’s even more expensive because it’s like, okay, I’m driving there. It’s an expensive thing for sure. It totally, totally is.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay. Let’s talk about who should do what. I was talking – so in my case, I wanted to do personal training because of my injuries and because I have sometimes a hard time motivating myself to try really hard. Give me some more circumstances of people who should do, if they can afford it, who should do one-on-one training.

 

Kris Peters: I think you hit it on the nose. I think it’s people who have injuries, people who have never trained before who need guidance to do that, and I think kind of with Joe Kinder and those guys, Joe’s never trained before so it was really good for him to have that one-on-one training. Some people, they get that one-on-one training and then they’re good to go. You don’t need me anymore. You have it all down and you’ve figured it out, but definitely people who have never trained before, people who have injuries – yes. People who are very deconditioned and kind of need to know the parameters of how to progress as they go on – yeah. People who just kind of need that accountability. If you know that you’re not going to get the work in, you’re not going to do it right, you’re going to slack off – definitely recommend that you work with a coach or a trainer.

People that don’t need it – there are some people that I work with them one time and it’s just to kind of work with them, assess them, give them a plan. They are self-motivated, they are good to go, and they’ve got it. Also, if I meet people financially, I’ll try to do my best to give them the best deal possible but I will recommend that they just do an online plan or a subscription plan. Especially with people in college or who are just starting out with their jobs or have moved to a new state and are in transition and just getting married – whatever it is. If there is a life transition, I highly recommend you don’t work with a coach or trainer if there’s a lot of stuff going on. If you’re buying a home or you have all these different expenses, I try to keep it as cheap as possible and that’s what we try to do with our subscription plans. We try to make sure that they are as affordable and try to give you guys a lot of content.

 

Neely Quinn: Right, yeah. Do you feel like people can actually get – and I know the answer to this – do you feel like people can actually get a lot out of a subscription plan where they’re just getting these workouts that are premade by you? They’re tailorable to most levels of climbers but do you think that it actually works?

 

Kris Peters: Absolutely. Absolutely, because we get emails all the time from people who have been doing our subscription plan that are just getting so much stronger. They are seeing so many improvements in their body. Again, we try to make these subscription plans – we try to put as much as we can, we try to give as many options as possible to make sure that people are having every single piece available to them to be successful, whether they’re at a high/elite, intermediate, or beginner.

 

Neely Quinn: Right. Okay, and you can you describe a little bit more about what they do get in these plans and what else you’ve seen other programs give?

 

Kris Peters: Sure. I mean, in these plans you’re getting different cycles. You’re getting power cycles, you’re getting power endurance, strength cycles, you’re getting finger cycles, you’re getting maintenance cycles, you’re getting rest weeks, you’re getting all these different elements that are all catered around that focus. You get that every month. Three days a week, every single month, which is a huge, huge thing in my opinion.

It’s just like, “Wow. That’s a great price for that much work.” You’re getting cross-training, you’re getting recovery training, you’re getting conditioning, you’re getting core, you’re getting shoulder recovery – all these different things that a trainer would charge you $100 for that one hour, just to learn a core workout. We’re giving you all this content, three a week, for 15 bucks a month. That’s a really good deal. We put our sets in, we put the reps in, and all that stuff.

I get plenty of emails from people going, “Hey – how do I make this easier? How do I make this harder?” We give them that answer and boom – they have great success.

 

Neely Quinn: And a lot of times the exercises say right there how to make it easier or harder, but it can sometimes not be super obvious.

 

Kris Peters: Exactly, exactly.

 

Neely Quinn: And then for the online one-on-one, what exactly do people get?

 

Kris Peters: So, we’re actually changing things up. For a while we were kind of just using Google Docs and kind of realized that it’s just not the most effective, efficient thing. It’s been kind of hit or miss for some people, so we’re actually moving to a new system. We’re moving to a different company. We’ll be launching this in about another week or so.

What we’re going to have, is we’re going to have a new website that has all our workouts. People have a full calendar in front of them. They’ll have full access to me as a coach. It’s just going to be a whole new platform. The website that we’re using has an app for your cell phone, for your iPad, and it’s not a Google Docs. It’s an actual app. You can actually hook-up your heart rate monitor to this. If you want to record that, your heart rate monitor can hook-up to it. You can do your stats after your workout depending on what cycle you’re in.

It’s going to be five weeks. You’re going to have a profile. It’s free. You don’t have to pay for it. It’s free to become a member on this site. Yeah – so I’m really excited about it. I’ll be working on that more today but for that one-on-one, you can just expect full-on, in detail, you can record your stats on the site, you can leave comments, ask questions on the site, and I can see those right away. Before, I was trying to get emails and text messages and phone calls and it was just all over the place. Now it’s all going to be on one page, one site, for all of our online clients to have access to as much structured training as we can possibly give them.

 

Neely Quinn: And it’s called Addaero for anybody who’s curious. That’s what we’ll be using.

 

Kris Peters: Addaero, yes.

 

Neely Quinn: So, people will sign-up and they’ll get a five week program from you.

 

Kris Peters: Yes. What we’re going to be doing is one-on-one programs, like catered programs, and then we’re actually going to be doing – I hope so – a subscription plan for our one-on-ones. You’ll get five workouts a week on this site.

We want to have two different things, where you get personalized training where we give you your own personalized plan, and then we’re going to have a subscription plan where you just – kind of like the ones we have, where it’s three days a week but this will be five days a week. You’ll have that as well, which I think is going to be really, really cool for some people who are like, “You know, I don’t know if I want to pay all that money for the one-on-one customized, but hey – let me do the subscription plan and get five days a week of training.”

 

Neely Quinn: Right, and then also get access to you through that…

 

Kris Peters: Yes, and you still have access to me through that. Exactly.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay. I think that’s it. I think that gives people an overview of kind of what’s out there and what’s better for who and – yeah. So, thanks.

 

Kris Peters: Cool. Yeah, thanks guys. I hope everyone has a great day. Enjoy the beautiful weather wherever you’re at and I’ll talk to you guys again next week.

 

Neely Quinn: Alright. See ya, Kris.

 

Kris Peters: Alright. See you guys. Bye.

 

Neely Quinn: Alright, thanks for listening to that interview with Kris Peters. I hope that that sheds some light on maybe what you should do for your own training if you want help with that. As you know, we always have training programs for you and you can always find those at www.trainingbeta.com and then at the top there’s a tab that says ‘Training Programs,’ and all of our options are in there.

For the next few weeks I may be gone. I may not be doing podcast episodes but hopefully there is enough to keep you busy and occupied on your road trips. Seth and I are going on our own road trip. We’ll be going to Victoria Canyon in South Dakota, which I’ve never been to and I’m pretty psyched. It’s limestone and hopefully there will be some cooler temperatures up there, because it’s in the 90s everyday in Colorado. It sucks.

In the meantime, have fun climbing, have fun training, and maybe I’ll see you out there somewhere. I’ll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening.

 

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