Jay Maryniak: What Trainers Don’t Tell You (Podcast)

It’s amazing. Especially if you’re an athlete, it’s so difficult to remove the ego, so to speak, take care of ourselves, and focus on maybe lessening the intensity, and focusing on things that are really building our bodies up as opposed to tearing it down.

Welcome to the “BarBend Podcast,” where we talk to the smartest athletes, coaches, and minds from around the world of strength. I’m your host, David Thomas Tao, and this podcast is presented by barbend.com.

Today, I’m talking to trainer Jay Maryniak, a personal trainer, kick boxing instructor, CrossFit trainer, and athlete who’s built a massive following based around functional training and workouts.

What skyrocketed Jay to Internet fame is his creative take on movements and workouts to keep things fun and clients engaged. There’s a lot to his history and fitness I wanted to dig deeper on. We talk about pros and cons about the current stage of fitness, including a shift to virtual training worldwide, and how Jay’s diagnosis as a Type 1 diabetic further fuel his passion for wellness.

Also, I want to take a second to say we’re incredibly thankful that you listened to this podcast. If you haven’t already, be sure to leave a rating and review of the BarBend Podcast in your app of choice.

I’d also recommend subscribing to the BarBend newsletter to stay up to date on all things strength. Just go to barbend.com/newsletter to become the smartest person in your gym. Now, let’s get to it.

Jay, thanks so much for joining today. The first question I got to ask is, we’re chatting during the age of social distancing and you’re someone who, from your social presence online I can tell, travels quite a bit to gyms all around the world. How are you holding up having to stay in one place?

I got to say it’s actually been revitalizing in a lot of ways. I’ve been working out in a gym for 12, 13, 14 years. In a lot of ways, I’m feeling really good, and I’m enjoying being out of the gym and doing just a lot of in-home training using minimal equipment because I’m getting burnt out, man.

I’m doing this day in and day out. It’s certainly I’m doing it for my own personal fitness, but obviously, I’ve built a brand around, filming training videos, filming workouts, and things of that nature. There’s a lot of content to be filmed on daily basis, so it’s good to, again, get out of the gym and do some different stuff.

Do you have any nagging injuries, tightness you’re working on, anything like that? I know a lot of people I’ve talked to, including myself, in quarantine or resting some areas that maybe they weren’t giving enough love to?

Yeah, one of the most common things I have is elbow tendonitis. I tend to get Golfer’s elbow pretty regularly when I’m training, a lot of rowing exercises, and just grip intensive pull-ups and that thing. Right now, I am nursing some Golfer’s elbow. It’s such a pain in the ass. It’s so difficult to still work a lot of our pulling muscles without aggravating the elbow and the inner elbow.

What I find helpful actually, obviously, I’ve been resting and I’ve been staying away from pull-ups and lifting heavy upper body wise, but I’ve been doing more banded stuff. Just because the pull and the resistance is different at different points, it has been feeling pretty good.

I’m able to do some more pulling things, some more bicep exercises, because it’s not such a heavy focus on that eccentric. It’s more than that top-peak contraction. It’s been helping the elbow. [laughs] Long story short. I’m nursing that. I’m trying to take care of that.

Ultimately, the way I train these days is…I’m so much smarter than I used to be. It’s taken me a long time to get to this point of having tons of injuries over the years and nagging injuries, but I’m at a place now where I’m pretty solid most of the time.

 I’ve also been nursing some soreness in the elbow. I have to say, the banded work has been something where getting away from the gym and being forced to work out from home. I never put two and two together. The banded work has been fantastic to work those pulling muscles.

I warm up with bands a lot. I warm up with bands because it makes help my elbows feel good, hence my joints feel good. Then I’ll immediately move to the heavyweights, the pull-up bar, or something like that.

I’ve never put two and two together. It’s like, “Wait, if I just focus on what actually has my joints feeling good for a little bit?” Maybe that’s a way to get in front of the inflammation a little bit. It’s almost like, “Wow, it was right in front of me the whole time.” [laughs]

It’s amazing. Especially if you’re an athlete, it’s so difficult to remove the ego, so to speak, take care of ourselves, and focus on maybe lessening the intensity and focusing on things that are really building our bodies up as opposed to tearing it down.

I know for me like a classic example and a beautiful thing about different rowing techniques. One of the best ways I’ve found to still work the back as far as bodyweight exercises go with pulling is to do horizontal rows or bodyweight rows. It takes a tremendous amount of pressure off of the elbow and you’re still able to work the muscles.

The horizontal row is a very underestimated exercise and should be utilized way more. If anyone’s out there listening and you feel like you’re constantly having issues, elbow tendonitis, that kind of thing, switch over to the horizontal row. It takes some pressure off that elbow joint and see how you feel.

Great advice. I want to move on and cover a lot of different topics during this conversation, but since we’re on the topic of working out at home or being stuck away from the gym, what are some other go-to movements, adaptations, or training methodologies you’ve been utilizing during this time?

I’ve just been trying to utilize different tensions and tempos to get the most out of, more specifically bodyweight training. I feel like people that aren’t super schooled in fitness and in training, and understanding how to build muscle and stimulate muscle growth tend to not know what to do with bodyweight training and how to maximize it.

One of the things I’m a huge proponent of is obviously time under tension. If we’re trying to build muscle in general, there needs to be time under tension or else it’s not going to happen, then we start to fall into the strength realm, which is fine.

If we’re looking to build actual muscle, time under tension is the name of the game. With bodyweight training, it’s slowing things down, building in pauses, using plyometrics. I tend to use all three of those things — pauses, slow tempos like four- or five-second eccentrics, and plyometrics — to create a ton of tension in the muscle and still deliver great gains.

I tell people all the time, using your bodyweight obviously doesn’t elicit the exact same results as it would if we were lifting heavy for 10 to 12 reps. However, the pump that you get if you do the proper workouts, again, time under tension pauses, the pump that you get is very, very similar to that of lifting.

We might not be getting exactly the same results, but it’s going to feel like we are. It’s really important when we’re only using our bodyweight and minimal equipment.

It also keeps you in the mental focus, in the mental game of training. One of the biggest issues I have when I take time off of training is getting that mental focus back and that motivation back to get back and train with intensity and purpose once again.

Treating these at home workouts, like actual training sessions, even if the stimulus isn’t quite the same, that’s going to have an important mental carryover that when we get back to the gym, we’re really going to appreciate.

Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s going to change people’s perspective a lot on training. I don’t know about you, David, but I feel like this is going to last for quite some time where we’re not in gyms and staying away from big groups of people. It’s such a crazy situation out there. I know for myself, I’m going to definitely be staying out of the gym for a while.

Just maximizing the equipment I have at home. There’s some kind of treatment in place for COVID or some kind of vaccine because it’s the last place. Unfortunately, I hate saying this, but it’s the last place or one of the last places I want to be is in a gym with 30 other sweaty ass people, [laughs] getting after it.

It’s definitely not easy to keep that strict six feet of distance. People in gyms tend not to be wearing masks. [laughs]

Yeah.

I definitely understand. One thing I want to chat about a little bit. It’s something that’s very prominent in your personal brand online. You are a Type 1 diabetic. Tell us a little bit about how that impacts your training, and how it has impacted your approach to fitness and your growth in the fitness space over the course of your lifetime.

It’s a difficult thing to work with, especially when you’re someone who works out a lot. Let’s say my life was really textbook as far as I woke up, I ate this meal, I had a snack, I ate lunch, I had dinner, so on and so forth.

Diabetes Type 1 can be fairly easy to manage if I’m doing the same exact thing every single day, not having a ton of fitness mixed in. Because I’m someone who works out a lot, there are effects on the blood sugars from being someone that’s really highly active.

Sometimes, the effects to my body are it spikes my blood sugars really high. Sometimes, it drops them out and I go really, really low. What happens with Type 1 is that sometimes I don’t know what thing is going to happen. Some things are kind of textbook, but the thing with Type 1 is that it just does what it wants to do sometimes.

It’s a pain in the ass. There’s a lot of checking. I got to check before my workout. I have to check during my workout. Generally, I have to check right after the workout. There’s a lot of things that factor in. I got to say it’s definitely having Type 1 and in so many ways, that’s just heightened my awareness of how I feel during training, how I’m fueling my body before I work out.

As much as it’s a negative thing in a lot of ways, it’s really…I was already pretty dialed in before I was diagnosed with Type 1. Now, I’m just even more so dialed in and have a pretty strict schedule day-to-day.

I didn’t realize you were diagnosed with Type 1 a little later in life?

Yeah, I was very fortunate. I was diagnosed when I was 28. About seven years ago, I was diagnosed. I’m very fortunate to have gone in late in life. I didn’t have to go through a lot of the trials and tribulations of being a young kid having it, so I’m very lucky.

What were some of the immediate changes you had to make? Because you’re already an active person. You’re already in the wellness and fitness space. You’re already lifting, running, doing all that fun stuff.

What were some of the immediate changes that you had to make? Where were some places that you turned for guidance? Because it does sound like it’s a very tricky and complex condition to manage, the more active you are.

One of the first things my mom said to me when I was in the ICU, when I was first diagnosed. She said to me, “Listen, you’re not going to want to hear this, but you are the best person to have Type 1 diabetes.” She’s absolutely right.

What she meant by that is, here I was. I was a grown-ass man. I’ve been a personal trainer for a long time. I’ve been sober for a long time. I’ve already been on a good diet and eating regimen for years, and years, and years. The transition for me to having Type 1 diabetes was fairly minimal. There was certainly a lot of things I had to learn and relearn about my body.

As far as health and taking care of my health, that was pretty easy. Coming in to having Type 1, I was very nervous to work out for about a month and a half to two months. I didn’t do a lot of training because, again, there’s a lot of relearning your body I didn’t know. I didn’t know if I was going low. I didn’t know if I was going high. I didn’t know what any of those things really felt like.

What has to happen in the first few months, you have to learn about yourself. There was definitely a big learning curve with that stuff, learning what kinds of exercise spike my blood sugars, what kind drop.

Also, there’s different effects on my blood sugar depending on what time I work out during the day. Like you said, there’s a lot of different factors that play in. It takes time to learn it all. There’s not just one blueprint for every diabetic. Each person can be a little bit different with different things.

I get asked the question often by Type 1s, like “How do you manage your blood sugars? What do you do?” I tend to not give detailed answers. I try to inform people that you got to kind of…I know they don’t want to hear that. They want the answer. You have to experience it on your own, and learn about yourself and figure it out.

People like having the answer. They like the training program that’s going to get them that magical result. You know what I mean? They want the protocol and they look to people in the wellness industry oftentimes for that textbook.

Do this A, B, and C. Do these three supersets and that’s your training program. Do these three things and that’s how you manage your blood sugar. Of course, it’s different with everyone.

Yeah, absolutely. Everyone’s looking for the secret. [laughs]

Being a Type 1 diabetic, managing your training and your blood sugar over the course of a busy and sometimes unpredictable schedule, I assume that means you have to be pretty data-oriented based on what readings you’re getting from your blood sugar, correct?

Yeah. I’m monitoring a lot. I monitor a lot more than probably most diabetics. I probably check 8 to 10 times a day. Some days it can vary. Some days, I have a really good idea of where I’m at depending on how I feel. Then there’s other days where I’m just not sure. I’m feeling a little bit off. I’m not certain where I’m at numbers-wise, so I’m just constantly checking all the time.

 Has that focus on data and getting the raw numbers from your body, so to speak? Is that carried over into your approach on any other components of wellness, whether it’s tracking your sleep, your HRV, anything like that?

Yeah, for sure. I’m not crazy, crazy with numbers. Certainly, I definitely focus on them. I need to know them a lot of times so that I can manage my sugars as best as possible. What also happens with being a Type 1 is that I need different amounts of insulin at different times of the day. I need to have that 24-hour data so that I can program my insulin pump to do different things.

There’s definitely a lot of interesting things that happen with the body. There’s this upon-awakening effect where blood sugars tend to spike between 2:00 and 5:00 AM. There’s all these different things that I had no idea about that I had to learn about and had to adjust my life to facilitate these things that happen with the body.

Moving back toward the general fitness realm…I almost hate to bring this up at a time when we can’t really travel around, when we’re not going to different gyms and interacting with different people in the space, but you are someone who does a lot of those things under normal circumstances. It might be a while till we get back there.

Who are some recent people in the fitness industry who you’ve worked with, who either gave you new knowledge, who taught you something, or whose perspective changed your outlook on training?

The most recent is my buddy, Eric Leija, who’s the Primal Swoledier on Instagram.

We’ve had him on the podcast. [laughs]

Cool. He’s a good friend of mine. I met Eric some years ago. I saw what he was doing a long time ago down at the Onnit Gym. I was fortunate enough to go down to Onnit and spend some time down there with him, shoot some training videos, and learn a little bit more about kettlebells.

I’ve been doing kettlebell work for a number of years, but he definitely brings a really cool flair to it and probably, a lot of people feel that way. It was cool to go down and train with him. I did the Onnit Kettlebell Certification. I’ve done the CrossFit Kettlebell many, many years ago. It was cool to do that. Just learned a lot from Onnit, from him, what he’s doing with his brand.

It’s just so important to break out of our normal routines, meet different people in order to grow. As far as in our own personal growth and business-wise as well as, growing our brands and that kind of thing. He definitely opened my eyes to some different things, brand-wise, training-wise, and things like that.

As someone who’s done some of Eric’s workouts before, I have to say, a lot of them are deceptively difficult.

 Yeah.

You look at his posts on Instagram, and it’s like, “Oh, three or four movements. This doesn’t seem like too hard of a rep scheme or a time domain.” Then, you get to round five out of six and it starts kicking you in the ass a little bit. I assumed some time spent training with him in person, you’d be pretty exhausted because he’s pretty heavy on the volume.

Absolutely. I feel like that’s the way too with most fitness stuff. I’ve been training and I’ve been a trainer for 14 years. I can still write a workout at times and be like, “Oh, yeah. That looks easy.”

Then, you get a one round in two and you’re like, “Fuck. Why did I do this, man?” It’s funny, after all these years, I can still get like that. I feel like a lot of my clients felt the same way. I just feel like that applies to a lot of things across the fitness world.

Yeah, certainly. I do want to talk a little bit. You are a trainer and you do have clients. This is a difficult time for people worldwide and across industries, obviously, but a lot of people in the fitness industry are suffering. People who train folks in person.

Obviously, we have a lot of digital resources and a lot of people do online training now. It’s certainly something where gyms have taken a hit. A lot of people are wondering if the gyms are now closed or ever going to reopen. The answer is, a lot of them, probably won’t.

How have you been impacted as a trainer? Obviously, you have a significant online brand. It sounds like you do a lot of remote coaching and training as well. How have you been affected? What impacts do you think this might have long term on the broader fitness and specifically, personal training industry?

 I actually stopped training clients in person probably about a year ago. I officially made JTM FIT an S corp about two and a half years ago, so I really went full-time with JTM. I was still training some clients while I was launching the brand and the business, but over time, it just got to be too much.

I couldn’t handle both. I couldn’t create enough content for JTM FIT. I ended up making a decision to let all my clients go for the most part. I’m pretty fortunate in that regard. I have one or two clients that I still train at their houses, so we’ve actually been doing training via FaceTime which has been cool.

I’ve been able to keep one of my clients moving and getting some good workouts in through the whole thing. My entire business is online at this point. Unfortunately too, even though all my stuff is online, I’ve definitely had a 40 percent to 50 percent drop in business since things have happened.

Although I’m still one of the fortunate ones where there’s still a little bit of revenue coming in, which is good. We’ve taken a major hit to the business. As far as gyms go, this is going to be really bad for a lot of gyms.

Putting aside even a CrossFit gym, you start looking at more of the franchise places like Rumble Boxing, Orangetheory, these kind of places I imagine are going to be completely annihilated by this. I hate to say it, but who’s going to want…?

I know I already mentioned this in the beginning. The last thing I would want to do is go into an Orangetheory class. I hate to use their name, but any fitness class with 30 other sweaty people where who knows if someone cleaned that thing over…You know what I mean?

I feel like this is going to have a really, really major effect and I think a lot of people are going to be shifting, if they haven’t already, to getting some dumbbells for home, kettle bells, smaller pieces of home equipment.

I think that the companies selling equipment potentially could [laughs] see a big boom in some ways. I’m sure in some ways they’ll be hurt as well. There’s going to be a long-lasting effect here.

We’re recording this on April 14th, 2020. If you try and find a kettlebell or dumbbell online right now, you might be able to find some use ones on eBay for a huge markup, but good luck to you if you didn’t already have that. Places are just sold out for months.

It’s crazy, man. Everything is sold out. I still have not seen a bottle of Purell or a Lysol wipe in a month and a half. Who knows what we’re going to see all these things? Dumbbells, all this stuff. Who knows what’s going to happen is so crazy?

It’s interesting because my thinking was a little off. When we went into this and people started buying home fitness equipment, I wondered, I said, “Are there going to be more kettlebells sold to individuals than to gyms?” Because gyms buy a lot of kettlebells.

You open a gym, you buy a lot of kettlebells. You might have 30 kettlebells and 300 clients using those kettlebells coming in for classes. That’s a lot fewer than if 300 individual people want to buy individual kettlebells or sets of kettlebells.

The demand for this fitness equipment actually has gone up, even though the large institutional buyers like the gyms aren’t buying it because that equipment just isn’t shared. The numbers are interesting if you dig further into it.

What are some pieces of equipment you might have at home that you’ve been leaning on? If you don’t have a piece of equipment that you really want, love, or like, what have you been using to work around that?

I’ve been really fortunate. I’ve been putting a little home gym together for a long time, picking up a kettlebell here, and a kettlebell there. I have a fair amount of things. I have a lot of kettlebells, some parallettes, battle ropes, and things like that.

If I were somebody out there right now, I feel like an important piece is obviously trying to get one pair of dumbbells and it would have to be a medium weight, so something that’s not too heavy for you but not too light. Something right in the middle.

Try to invest in that and probably try to invest in a kettlebell. Again, a medium to probably heavier weight, maybe some bands. That’s probably I feel like the top three things as far as minimal equipment. I know bands are probably a huge, huge selling item right now. I know a lot of people utilizing bands and a lot of people are posting a lot of fitness content using bands.

Beyond that, you got to get creative. There’s so many ways to use different things around the house. Most people have a backpack, take a bunch of books and magazines, throw them in the backpack, and you got yourself a fucking back squat. [laughs]

You got some good resistance there. You can use towels on your hands to do different sliding, core and push-up exercises, hamstring exercise. There’s a lot of different things. We got to certainly get creative, get on the Web, Instagram, or whatever, and seek it out and get after it.

One thing I have to say is I see folks complaining and look, I’ve been complaining too. I miss the gym. I’m not going to say that I’ve gone into this and been like, “I’m completely fine.” No, I miss the gym. I miss lifting heavy.

If you don’t already have a perfect push-up, a perfect bodyweight squat, a perfect bodyweight lunge, a perfect glute bridge, and hollow rocks for days, there’s no excuse not to come out of this without those things.

I totally agree, man. This is the time. I know it’s hard to get motivated. I know for myself, the first couple weeks I really struggled. I was depressed and I was just having a really hard time working out. I didn’t want to work out.

When I finally hit my stride and got back into things, it’s like I’m even a little more fired up than I was before. I touched on throughout our talk. This is the time. Certainly, some people are still busy. Some people are still working for sure, but a lot of us that aren’t working.

You might devote some time to really, like you said, mastering different techniques. Just like getting fit. This is the time to do it.

Jay, last question I’m going to ask. For some people, it’s a softball question and for some people, it’s the hardest question that I can possibly ask. I’m curious what’s going to be.

If you could spend time training with and learning from one person in the fitness space, who would it be?

I don’t think I really have one. Collectively, I would want to just have a group of people together. I can’t think of somebody, but if I were, I would be somebody who’s working all facets of fitness. It’s something that I’ve always look to be the best at everything as oppose to mastering one thing.

Wise words, Jay. Thank you so much for joining us. Where is the best place for people to keep up to date with the work you’re doing?

People can find me in Instagram @jtm_fit. Also, you can check out all my workout programs at www.jtmfit.com.

Jay, really appreciate it.

David, thank you for the talk, man.