[00:00:02] Craig McNeill: So welcome to mPowered – our series ‘Back to the Future’ and what a guest we have for our listeners today. Hello, Matthew Griffin.

[00:00:11] Matthew Griffin: Hey Craig, that’s it. Hey everyone, so how you all doing?

[00:00:15] Craig McNeill: I’m excited Matt. I’m excited to, to prod and ask you questions to see what your thoughts are about the future of the fitness industry.

[00:00:26] So, Matt you are an award-winning futurist and international keynote speaker. So you are based in the UK, but not very much in the UK in terms of what you get out and about. So keen to learn about what you learn about the fitness industry while you’re in all your different continents, which I know you are.

[00:00:47] Matthew Griffin: Yep.

[00:00:48] Craig McNeill: Matt is the founder of 311 Institute, a global futures and deep futures consultancy working with many, many different industries, which is even a separate, fascinating point Matt that you must be talking about many different things and be great to kind of pick your brains about that as well. But,we are keen to learn a little bit more of what your insights of what the future is in, especially in the fitness industry. So Matt, why are you here talking about the fitness industry when you are talking about different industries?

[00:01:24] Matthew Griffin: Yeah, so, well, firstly, you asked me, so, you know, thank you very much for that. So that’s a big one. Let’s face it. However, you know, my background is I’m an FTA 3 certified personal trainer.

[00:01:34] So not a lot of people actually know that about me. So I qualified about 20 years ago. I’ve always been active in sports, even sin-, in my childhood. So for example, you know, cycling, I mean the typical sports, but you know, cycling, rugby, football, cave diving you know, I do a cross-country run every single day.

[00:01:51] So typically between five to 10 K. Mainly because it didn’t really have much better to do so you know, not necessarily because I wanted to, but, you know, I enjoyed it nonetheless. And yeah, when I was about 18, I ended up sort of going down to Premier Global down in Somerset where yeah, I qualified as a PT.

[00:02:07] So I’ve stood behind the desk many a time basically staring blankly at customers basically while they stare blankly back at me. So that’s always, you know, great. My customer service skills know no bounds. And I’ve kept it up ever since just staring blankly at customers basically while I actually still stare back at me and even as, even as a futurist.

[00:02:24] So I worked with the vast majority of the world’s largest organizations and some of the world’s largest organizations that I have the most fun with are actually in both the sports industry. So, you know, whether we’re talking about things like personal training, like yourselves, or whether it’s sort Nike, Adidas, companies like Decathlon basically in the apparel space, but also sort of organizations in the e-sports space.

[00:02:46] And I know that we can have some conversations about, you know, is that really a sport? As everyone keeps saying, and I know plenty of people that will pummel me basically if we say that e-sports isn’t a sport. So I’m going to stay sort of fairly clear of that. But you know, when we actually, haven’t a look at the future of health and fitness, it’s integral to the human condition, you know, we’ve seen a huge amount of disruption through COVID and all of the different lockdowns that we’ve actually now had, I think on the UK by, you know, we’ve had four now in the sort of past couple years, And I think people are now getting to the point where they actually really appreciate their own health, but actually just appreciate having a walk outside, let alone getting down to a gym, a sports event, whatever it happens to be.

[00:03:30] So yeah, there’s, there’s lots to chat through.

[00:03:33] Definitely. And my eyes lit up when we first met and we actually did our Premier training probably more or less within a 12 month period with one another,

[00:03:43] Yeah, that’s it which is a small world.

[00:03:45] Craig McNeill: Yeah, absolutely. The amount of people that you kind of come across, who have done Premier from like 20, 15 years ago, it was, it was a really good qualification.

[00:03:56] Still is around today, which shows it’s er length of service. So in terms of going into the topics,

[00:04:03] what are the tools that gyms and trainers can start to utilize Matt from your perspective to start educating themselves to then educate the users

[00:04:13] Matthew Griffin: So, so the first thing is basically, yeah, I would say gyms, but PTs by saying anyone involved in the fitness industry, they’ve got to be personable.

[00:04:20] Y’know fundamentally this is still a face-to-face business. You know, even though we see an increasing number of, for example, digital humans, mostly with the likes of Nike and Adidas basically wo are increasingly starting to do for example, should we say screen-based coaching. And that’s a whole sort of conversation in itself, which we can sort of touch on later.

[00:04:35] You know, we’ve got the likes of Joe Wicks, basically where, you know, the vast majority of his customers might say they’ve never actually ever met him. They’ve just only ever seen him through, through either a computer screen or a TV screen. But, you know, in the, what I always think basically to get the best out of people, you’ve got to engage them face to face, you’ve got to be able to interact with them with a personable level.

[00:04:53] So that’s the first thing, you know, get to know, you know, get to know your customers basically at a personal level, trying to keep engagement levels high, but from a, you know try to understand what their physical and mental health goals are, you know, and the timelines and all that kind of stuff basically and sort of figure out where you can actually add the most value.

[00:05:10] But from a understanding the customer perspective, if we start looking at what we can do with technology, we have technologies or trends basically like the quantified self. So, and this is sort of where it can be a little bit hard for gyms because ultimately say for example, people are wearing wearables.

[00:05:26] You know, whether it’s smart clothes, whether it is different sensors around their body, whether it’s smart watches, which are obviously the common one, whether they are even using sort of a new, what we call earable computing platforms, which are built into headphones, because you can actually detect people’s pulses through headphones, you know, all that kind of stuff.

[00:05:43] When you actually have a look at our ability to gather more and more quantified self data on an individual’s biomarkers, biochemistry, biomechanics as well as just plain old biometrics. Increasingly we see as well that diets, that genomes and all sorts of crazy things. There’s a lot that we can actually do. So for example, yeah, we’ve got wearables that are going to be starting to come through that can detect cortisol levels in the blood.

[00:06:10] So as a gym owner, if you have partnered with an organization that lets you access that patient data and provided the patient is happy for you to actually access that data, you can, on the one hand start seeing that your client basically has now started their journey to the gym.

[00:06:29] Because using GPS in phones, we can figure out that, you know, at 10 o’clock they normally leave to come to the gym and they take this particular route and everything else. So on the one hand, we can figure out that the person is probably going to arrive at our gym in the next 10 minutes. So you can actually have someone meet and greet them that’s the first thing. Secondly, if we have access to some of the quantified self data, let’s say, for example, cortisol data. We can figure out how stressed they are. So we can say, Hey, John, look, you know, welcome to gym a you know we’ve just got this feeling that you actually are a little bit stressed.

[00:07:03] So you know, how are you actually feeling today? Are you a little bit stressed and John go, yeah. I had a, at a naff zoom call, hate those zoom calls they’re rubbish, you know, can’t wait to get back out into the real world again. In which case you can just use that simple single piece of data around cortisol levels to change the type of program that you might give him or her basically during that, you know, during that sort of first 10, 20 minutes, you know, let alone basically when we start having a look at things like, you know, blood pressure levels, when we start having a look at LDL, HDL, cholesterol levels which again, basically there’s wearables just actually starting to come out now that can sense cholesterol levels through the skin.

[00:07:41] So that’s coming out through China. Yeah, when we start having a look at pulse data, when we start having a look at biomechanical data, you know, we can figure out again that John has come into the gym and even before he’s come into the gym using this quantified self data, we can figure out that actually his gait’s a bit off, you know, so maybe he’s actually injured an ankle or something like that. So there’s huge amounts of data that we can increasingly capture from individuals. And if gym owners have access to that data, if they understand what that data means, if they understand how to combine it together, you can almost hyper-personalize the program on a hour by hour basis for the person who’s actually coming down to the gym, or the track or whatever it happens to be.

[00:08:32] It doesn’t just have to be gyms. And you know, even things like glucose levels, you know, we can monitor glucose levels. We can then say, well, okay, maybe you need some GI foods, you know, just before you go down to the track, we can track things like levels of lactic acid, basically within blood using wearables as well.

[00:08:47] Lactic acid recovery, VO2 maxes, you know, there’s all kinds of different things that we can actually measure, but generally, and this is, this is where if you go to an Olympic committee, for example, if you go to the British Olympic committee, the U S Olympic committees, whatever it happens to be, there is now no elite performance coach that would get rid of their access to big data.

[00:09:10] And these data sets, they are absolutely pivotal. So while the vast majority of gym goers are just going to be amateurs let’s face it. You know, I want to bulk up, I want to be able to lift lift a slightly heavier weight, basically without feeling crippled. I want to be able to run a hundred meters, basically, without throwing up, basically on the finish line, you know, all this kind of stuff.

[00:09:31] There’s still a lot of different types of data and a lot of different data sets and sources that we can actually combine together to actually help them achieve their goals faster. And again, you know, there’s a lot of people who work in the gym industry will know, you know, the dropout rates, particularly when people start plateauing is actually really high.

[00:09:49] So on the one hand, you’ve got to keep that engagement up. But we can use this data as well as the PTs own professional instincts to understand when people are plateauing, then again, we can change the programs. So, yeah. Yeah. I suppose basically the question that I would actually have for listeners is, you know, are you actually making the most basically of some of these quantified self platforms, you know, who you actually partnering with, what data do you actually have access to do your staff actually understand what all of this data means or even some of it means even down to when we have a look at things like smart clothing EMG sensors by uh, which sense muscle tension, for example they can detect form.

[00:10:26] So, you know, when we have someone that’s actually benching, we can either use artificial intelligence and camera systems in gyms, or we can actually use smart clothing to figure out that someone’s form is off. Now, when we start talking about sort of the more elite end of the spectrum as well we have artificial intelligence, which has increasingly become a, becoming a sports coach in itself.

[00:10:49] And y’know we have trackside camera systems. We can figure out that this, which you can put next to a treadmill for example, if we see someone sprinting on a treadmill, these AIs can increasingly understand what their biomechanics actually look like. They can compare. If you want to be a sprinter, they can compare your biomechanics, basically with the biomechanics and strides of, for example, Usain Bolt.

[00:11:12] And then these AIs increasingly come back and say, well, increase your stride length by this, you know, drop down a little bit, basically, you know, make your, make sure your knee basically is you know, 80 degrees when it’s actually pounding, you know, think about the frequency of your steps, get to 90 increase your stride length and all these sorts of other things.

[00:11:30] So, yeah, there’s, there’s a lot of, almost too much, but there’s a lot of information coming down the line that in some cases is really helpful and people just would never do without. And in other cases is an interesting complementary aid, basically, particularly when we start talking about, you know, amateurs basically down gyms.

[00:11:50] Craig McNeill: Yeah, completely. And just to take a step back when you were talking through that, through that journey that you’re going to the gym and your gym actually then understands that you’re on the way to the gym. Yeah. I’ve had many, many, many fun conversations of how digital will replace people. And it’s, it’s not that what it’s doing is it’s giving the power of information to the person to make it more personalized.

[00:12:17] Matthew Griffin: Yeah absolutely. It’s augmenting the customer experience as well as the PT experience. And I mean, again, you know, say, for example, you know, say, so using both the microphones and smartphones, but also using other wearables. You can increasingly detect the onset of things like dementia, but also heart disease, PTSD, cancers, and everything else.

[00:12:39] But if we actually kind of focus on heart disease, for example yeah, there are PTs there basically with specialisms in things like heart disease and cardiac, et cetera, et cetera. If we have access to a patient’s data and that data is showing us that yeah, the person’s lungs are actually filling with fluid, bearing in mind that is something that you can pick up on a vocal biomarker just by listening to someone’s voice. You know, so hence artificial intelligence plus microphone equals, you know, an ability to detect the onset of heart disease. Then from a PT perspective, when they actually get into the gym, we can actually say, well, look, you know, we’ve sort of picked up some rather interesting biomarkers basically from the data that we’ve actually been seeing from you that indicate that maybe your heart health could actually do with improving.

[00:13:23] Now on the one hand, we all know better. You’d sort of have to refer them to a GP and everything else and say, look, just go and get a check-out. But nevertheless, you know, having access to even that sort of vocal biomarker information from a PTs perspective now means that we are able to almost predict, in fact, we can in the healthcare space, in the actual, you know, the actual healthcare space, increasingly we’re able to predict the onset of disease, ailments, conditions, and syndromes like heart disease.

[00:13:50] And so from a PTs perspective, we can say, well, you know, we’re detecting some rather strange vocal biomarker signatures from you, which might indicate the early onset of heart disease. So firstly, go and see your GP when you come back from your GP and, you know, they’ve sort of given you a full check. What we’re going to do is we’re going to put you on a slightly modified program.

[00:14:09] We’re going to put you onto a sort of a gentle cardio program. And we’re just going to start working that through. We’re also going to go and have a look at your diet as well. So. Again. Yeah, there are, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of information that we can actually use at a granular level, not just to help people improve, improve their health in the way that they think that we, as PTs can help them improve their health.

[00:14:33] But we can increasingly use a lot of this data to help us predict the onset of diseases, conditions, ailments and syndromes and all that kind of stuff, which then actually puts the, gives the PT a lot more power to help people be even fitter in the future, but actually for that fitness to actually last longer as well, you know, so typically bearing in mind that the average age that people live to now is about 80.

[00:14:57] One of the things that we generally talk about in society, isn’t how long you live. It’s how long you live well. So now for example, we see 70 year olds, whereas you’re still going down to the gym. You know, I get overtaken by 70 year olds on, on the bike, basically when I’m actually out and about most, which is still frankly embarrassing and I wonder how they do it.

[00:15:15] You know, maybe they were on one of those electric bikes, you know, that’s where I’m missing the trick. But you know, we talk about basically being, being, living longer, but also being fitter for longer as well. And being able to spot the deterioration in someone’s health sooner rather than later, allows us to put slightly different programs and preventative measures in place. You know, maybe we can, so again, using different sensors, we can actually detect the onset of things like, you know, rheumatoid arthritis, as well as general arthritis and other things. And we could then say, well, okay, look, you know, we’re starting to see your gait change.

[00:15:50] We’re starting to see bone density change, which is something that you can do with smart scales, for example. So we can figure out bone density using that, in which case we then start saying, so what we’re going to do is we’re going to put, put you on a program that actually increases bone strength and bone density, which is more of a sort of resistance type program.

[00:16:08] And again, you know, from a, from a PT and from a gym perspective, we can do all of these things. But your ability to bring customers into the gym, your ability to help gym goers be loyal and stay with you longer also comes down to your ability to communicate, your ability to do these things. So you say, look, we’re not just a traditional gym.

[00:16:32] What we do is we actually use all of this information that we get from you, but also our own professional skill sets, to analyze you and your performance and your health, basically in new ways, which then lets us put a highly tailored plan in place. So from a gym perspective, you’ve also got to think about how you market these, you know, most of the gyms that I go to around the world, but it’s, you know, the, of. By the way you know, use a cardio strap or you know, we can sell you a smartwatch basically for a hundred bucks, from a gym goers perspective and from a gym perspective, include some of these wearable devices actually in the gym subscription, because this is where you can start getting information from.

[00:17:13] So it is valuable in that perspective. And as we see, you know, we’ve got a wa a 20 to 30%, 20 to 30% of people in Western society actually go to a gym, you know, and then I kind of joked, I said that about 28% of those actually have a gym membership, but actually never go to the gym, you know, sort of go once or twice, basically they’ll go to the coffee shop or the vending machine in the gym that’s full of that’s full of soft drinks, basically and chocolates which is another conversation. There’s a staggering amount of stuff that the industry can actually do both to improve the health and wellbeing of its clients, but actually differentiates it, differentiate itself in the marketplace.

[00:17:50] Craig McNeill: Exactly. Here’s an open question. so we’re going to clone Matthew Griffin, right? We’re going to have Matt 2.0 and before we’ve cloned him, you’ve obviously said all the bad bits of 1.0 and seen whether you can get rid of odd bits for 2.0 Matt.

[00:18:07] And we’ve got 311 Gym alongside 311 Institute dot com. Yep. So now we’ve, we’ve opened, we’ve opened up your first gym. You’re going to go global with your, with your gym train. Tell, tell me what, what you’re going to do in the future for the experiences that we’ve just mentioned and how we’re going to move forward with getting some good results?

[00:18:28] Matthew Griffin: Yeah. So, so firstly, I suppose, so at the moment I’m actually building a university. So I, I tend to say to my kids, I say there are three things that you actually need to endeavor to be basically throughout your life. Particularly when we actually have a look at the impact of the future, which is it’s going to be faster paced.

[00:18:44] The, it’s going to be more disruptive than people imagine both in a good way, as well as a bad way. And I say to my kids by, so you’ve got to be smart, sporty and social. Let’s see. So I’ve started a university a little while ago by saying that’s a whole story in itself where we’re sort of looking at people’s soft and hard skills.

[00:19:01] From a sports perspective, actually, I, I sponsor a couple of sports teams because I think it’s actually important. So these are typically for children under about the age of 16. So typically from about the age of sort of four to 16 and they’re athletics teams, pentathlon teams, and we sort of got some really good results fact.

[00:19:18] Some are actually now in team GB as well, which is just phenomenal. That’s a credit to them all. But what if I was setting up if I was setting up a, a new gym chain, the first thing that I would actually do, and again, it comes down to resources and money, but just to put this into perspective in my area our ice rink is closing.

[00:19:37] Our football stadium is being turned into a, basically a block of flats once all the legal stuff’s done. Our sports track basically is falling apart and is no longer actually being refurbished partly because of COVID, most of the pump rooms in the swimming pools basically are actually busted.

[00:19:54] So one of them, one of the places where my kids go, we’re supposed to have one and a half million pound refurb this year, but it took them three years to get that money. That’s all gone. So much so to the point that the kids are getting into the pool and they’re getting out halfway through sessions because they are freezing cold, literally blue.

[00:20:09] I mean, that makes me cross in itself. So when we actually have a look at sports from a grass roots perspective, you’ve got to have some good facilities. And increasingly I think a lot of those facilities should actually be joined together. So we have a look, for example, the things like Lloyd’s gym, you know, where you’ve actually got a variety of different activities under one roof, you know, it’s generally all well-maintained, staff are friendly and everything else.

[00:20:29] So you’ve got to have some good facilities. Although, you know, I know that people are going to argue with me and say, well, you know, if you want people, if you want to teach people cardio, all you need is a field, you know, or a path around an estate. And I agree with that as well, but yeah, if we sort of go and do this properly so the first thing I would do is invest in good facilities where people are able to are able to improve their physical health on the one hand, but actually also able to improve their mental wellbeing on the other.

[00:20:53] So this is where we talk about, you know, calming facilities, energetic facilities, you know, facilities that stimulate mind and body as well. You’ve got to bring in food as well. You know, there are far too many sports centers, particularly around the UK, but see where the snacks that you have, you have access to as a can of Coke and Cadbury’s dairy milk bar, you know, I mean, come on, you know what?

[00:21:13] I just worked on a treadmill to work 700 calories off and I ate a chocolate bar. Now I’ve stuck another thousand on. I mean, you know, what’s the point in that plus it’s bad calories and that’s another conversation. So good facilities first. Secondly, I would actually hire staff. Yeah. They’ve gone through both mental health training, but also physical training.

[00:21:30] So like we sort of discuss with Premier Global who are absolutely energetic and driven to deliver the best service, they’re proactive. They’ve got the right attitude that, you know, they don’t need to be managed, you know, so they are self-managed, they are enthusiastic about turning up at work.

[00:21:46] They’re enthusiastic about making a difference to people’s lives. Whether basically it is a young, you know, a young person, an old person, whatever it happens to be And then from a technology perspective, I mean, this is sort of where you can really go big brother. I said, I don’t really like the big brother approach, but you know, if we’re sort of going down that tech route you’ve got to be able to trust you, trust your staff because ultimately they are the front of your business.

[00:22:09] You know, they are the front of your business and they’re the face of your business. If your staff come across really well to customers and everything else, then your customers are generally going to think ‘I like this business’. But if we do sort of look at big brother, then increasingly I would actually incorporate different areas within the gym.

[00:22:25] So I would have an area of, I said, that is just completely private, where there is no, should we say big brother surveillance? You know, people can go into the weights room, the cardio rooms or whatever it happens to be the, the, the fitness studios basically they can do whatever they want to do with whoever they want to do it basically and they can be trained in a traditional way. However, for people who want that sort of, that personalized touch. Now, that’s a slightly different thing to personal touch. That’s a human thing, but a personalized touch to their training. This is where we can use a corner of the gym that actually is sensor driven.

[00:22:57] So what I mean by sensor driven, this is where we’re looking at wearables. This is where we’re looking at camera systems. This is where we’re looking at the use, the use of artificial intelligence and big data. Where, for example, as I mentioned earlier, we have artificial intelligence looking at people’s form, along with the trainers as well.

[00:23:14] From different angles by seeing where AIs are increasingly able to say, well, look, you know, let’s use this kind of form, not that one. And if you want to be the Usain bolt of running, basically, then, you know, this is sort of what you need to do. But from a, from a wearables perspective, I would also either partner with an organization that has a good quantified self platform.

[00:23:35] Because building one yourself, let’s face, it is an expensive hiding to nothing. So, you know, when we have a look at things like Apple health kit basically and Google and all these others, your ability to personalize and hyper-personalized someone’s experience provided, that’s what those people want, and you’re able to explain the benefits of those hyper personalized, personalized experiences, typically comes down to your ability to gather hard data, which is bits and bytes and everything else flows off wearable devices. But then combine that basically with the observable data that PTs will actually see on the ground.

[00:24:10] And that’s really what I would do mostly. I don’t really think it’s particularly rocket science. It’s have decent well-maintained clean facilities that allow people to do different physical activities that also caters to their mental health as well. It’s having engaged, proactive, alert, and attentive and knowledgeable staff at front of house, as well as back of house who enjoy what they’re actually doing and love showing up to work.

[00:24:35] And then infusing. Should we say a tech stack into that for the people basically who. People and for the customers who actually want, and don’t mind having that, that sort of more personal experience. And when it comes to informing customers about what technology could actually do for them, that’s an education piece, which again, is generally left up to the gyms.

[00:25:00] You know, when you have a look at Apple and Google and the Huawei and Samsung and everything else you know, who I also work with they will provide you with the tools, but they won’t really do that great a job of saying, look, if you use our quantified self platform or our wearable platform, this is what you can, these are the health outcomes that you can actually expect.

[00:25:19] So increasingly from a gym perspective, you should actually start tech’ing. And when you start explaining to someone, so from a privacy perspective, what we want to do is we want to capture and analyze all of the data that’s actually coming off you now, how regularly you get on the, on the mountain bike, you know, I’m always on the mountain bike, you know what you’re doing outside of the gym, because again, gym’s only really see what you’re doing in the gym, unless you’re having a conversation and someone says, yeah, you know, I’m in the gym three, three days a week. But for the other, you know, four days a week, I’m actually on the mountain bike. Basically. I’m actually playing squash at my company’s local club. I’m doing a bit of golf, I’m sprinting around the athletics track as it’s falling apart or whatever it happens to be.

[00:26:03] Quantified self data will let you see what your customers have been doing when they haven’t actually been in your direct field of vision. Plus the more quantified self data that you have, the better, the digital platform that you’re able to either buy into, subscribe or develop. You can then start offering people, experiences through a screen when they’re at home.

[00:26:24] So you can say, well, you can come down to us, you know, three days a week, but then when you’re actually at home we can take all of this data. And if you’ve got 10 minutes, if you’ve got 10 minutes free in the morning, we can create a tailored, for example, stretching program for you that you can do.

[00:26:41] There’s all sorts of things that we can actually do. A lot of it comes down to, you know, money, cost, resources, and effort. And if you really want customers to get the best from you, if you want customers to be loyal to you. You’ve got to show them the value. Every single customer basically will say the reason why I left the gym and I canceled my subscription is because I just wasn’t seeing the results.

[00:27:07] Yep. Yeah. Let alone, basically. I just didn’t enjoy it. You know, I wasn’t having a chat with people. I’d go in people, people would ignore me. So I was being ignored. I didn’t see results. So I just canceled the membership and I ended up going somewhere else maybe, or just doing nothing.

[00:27:23] Craig McNeill: But we are allowing them to think like that aren’t we, because we’re not, we’re not actually helping them to realize that the results that they’re actually gaining

[00:27:31] Matthew Griffin: No. I mean, PTs, PTs base. We’ll also know this, you know? Yeah. The first time you ever see, you see a new member by, so you sit down with them and you ask them what their generally their physical goals are. So again, ask them what their mental goals are as well.

[00:27:44] Y’know. You’ll then develop a particularly personalized program for them generally. You’ll then have review stages where after, you know, a couple of days, a week, two weeks or whatever it happens to be, you’ll sit back down with them and say, you know, how’s it actually going? How are you feeling? And you sort of measure their progress, on the charts, I see that you’ve sort of, you’ve developed for them.

[00:28:03] But it’s yeah, again, that’s that sort of personal touch. Yeah. Bearing in mind that, you know, if 20 to 30% of the UK’s population actually have a gym membership, bearing in mind that a lot of them don’t actually ever really use it, you know, if you can sort of go and listen to a, to Martin, what is it, you know, on compare the market or whatever he is, you know, the money saving expert, you know, go, go and check your memberships.

[00:28:27] Cause you’ve probably got a gym membership that you’re not using? Cancel that straight away. Yeah, it’s that, it’s that personal touch that is absolutely crucial in today’s world, because if you are a gym that is not providing a personal touch, if the PTs are standing behind the desk or even if they were actually walking around and actually not engaging with customers, then frankly, why don’t I just watch Joe wicks on the television?

[00:28:53] Because I’m getting the same level of interaction basically from him, but actually at least he’s talking to me through the television and this is, so this is the differentiated value that you can actually offer. But then in addition to that, if you do actually have motivated and engaged staff, you can charge a premium.

[00:29:10] You know, the people down the road, you know, was it 24/7 gym or, or you know, Fitness First and all these other sorts of these other organizations basically sort of is, can say, well, yeah, we’re 35 pounds a month. And you can say, well, we’re 50 pounds a month, but the reason why we’re 50 pounds a month is because of X.

[00:29:26] And I see plenty of gyms now that are charging frankly, very expensive subscriptions for absolutely nothing that, that you can’t get from some of these, you know, 24/7 gyms. Yeah. In which case why am I paying more to you than someone else?

[00:29:45] Craig McNeill: Well it comes back to price point and that’s again, risky isn’t it? Price point is risky for obviously if you have a higher price point

[00:29:54] Matthew Griffin: Well, it’s, you know, someone I was talking to yesterday, I said, they said, yeah, the, if you want to know the value of your service, the market’s price point will tell you.

[00:30:05] You know, if you’re charging 70 pounds, basically for your gym memberships, but you don’t really have many people coming through the door and they say, well, actually you’re expensive then actually they’re not the you’re not communicating the value or they’re not seeing the value. So the market is a great level of basically when it comes to trying to figure out just how much value you’re actually offering.

[00:30:22] And if you’re in that sort of that cheaper end of the market, where it is literally, here’s a set of equipment, basically come in and use it and then you leave then that’s fine. But if you’re sort of charging north basically of sort of 50, let alone a hundred, 150 pounds that I see quite a lot of gyms now doing and you’re providing the same level of engagement, support and service basically as a gym that is literally just standing up equipment for people to use, then what are you up to?

[00:30:48] Craig McNeill: You’ve mentioned AI a few times. It’s a phrase. And it’s a, it’s a term that we’ve all come a lot more accustomed to over the last couple of years especially, I want to pick out human intelligence and I watched a couple of your keynotes and you, you’ve made a couple of good keynotes, which obviously resonate in, in my memory now, in terms of, it sounds like I’m talking, like I know what human intelligence is Matt, but what the hell is coming next in terms of what you’re saying and seeing about human intelligence.

[00:31:22] Matthew Griffin: So so when we have a look at human intelligence, so there’s a, so when we have a conversation about some, about the future of sports, basically there is this, there is an, there are an increasing number of people that talk about automation in sports, both in personal training, but also coaching.

[00:31:38] Now, I’ve alluded to some of this, for example, where we have an artificial intelligence that can actually watch you as you are performing particular exercises. And the artificial intelligence can actually then coach you back and say, extend your stride. You know, whatever it happens to be now that’s more at the elite level, but these types of artificial intelligence coaches are actually coming downstream.

[00:32:02] That, which means that they’re going to be a lot more accessible for people to use. They’re going to be a lot more affordable for people to use. And we’re going to see the technology actually, ultimately democratized. Now, one of the trends that I’ve actually seen increasing, certainly with the big sports giants mostly is the use of digital humans, where we have a, where we use a mixture of artificial intelligence, neural networks, high definition rendering as well as what we call digital human platforms or a digital human OS.

[00:32:29] As we see coming out of organizations like Soul Machines down in New Zealand as well as others. Where, you know, today we might be watching Joe wicks performing particular exercises, but as computer power lets us render more lifelike humans, increasingly we’re starting to see digital humans taking the role of personal trainers in fitness videos.

[00:32:55] Now it’s at a very early, early stage. But if people want to sort of know what I’m talking about, go and have a look at a a Soul Machines digital human. Yeah. Increasingly they look lifelike with a lot of the organizations who have actually started developing digital humans. One of the first places they stand, they started basically is biomechanics.

[00:33:14] And of course, you know, in the, in the fitness world, I said, we’re kind of all about the biomechanics. So now that we have artificial intelligences that are able to create digital humans, basically with the right biomechanical structures and and abilities, we start sort of getting interesting, but from a, from an, from an artificial intelligence perspective, we can increasingly see how some aspects, some aspects of fitness coaching and training or monitoring.

[00:33:44] You know, if we’re just watching can be automated, but from a human intelligence perspective, what we’re seeing is we’re seeing the use of automation at the lower end of the markets. This is in other industries, but this will eventually come to the sports industry. So we’re seeing the automation of what we call low level cognitive work and manual labour basically in other industries.

[00:34:10] So from a human intelligence perspective, this is where if you want to say, for example, provide training to a billion people at scale. Increasingly in the future and the sort of the next five to 10 years, you’re going to use a digital human to do that because you don’t have to pay Joe Wicks. These digital humans basically can be all designed in parallel so they can be watching you through the cameras and the sensors on your, devices, whether it’s your TV, your tablet, whether it’s your smartphone and they can personalize themselves exactly to your situation again, using quantified data.

[00:34:44] So for example, the digital human can take the same cortisol data that you as a PT can take from a wearable watch, understand that somebody is slightly stressed and then the artificial intelligence can design a custom tailored program that helps you unwind and chill out before taking you into the, sort of the main part of your your program.

[00:35:04] But from a PTs perspective, this is where, and from a human intelligence perspective, this is where we ended up being pushed up the stack. So we end up doing the more complex programs. We end up doing the more complex routines and exercises. We end up doing a lot more of the complex communication and engagement stuff.

[00:35:24] AI is getting much better at a greater number of things, much faster. And it is one to watch out for. But I always say that when we start seeing disruption coming into a particular industry and these digital humans, haven’t, they’ve not made their mark on the sports industry yet at all. But you know, in my field, I can see them being developed all over the place.

[00:35:48] As, and when they do come, disruption from a business perspective is both a threat because it can start taking your business away. So for example, imagine Apple creating a digital human trainer, as opposed to an individual, it was opposed to hiring thousands of PTs. And they can just extend that at scale, essentially, you’re paying for compute.

[00:36:08] You’re not paying for a human to actually perform the actions that we see in a particular video. And if people are sort of wondering how a digital human can actually show people, for example, how to do a yoga pose, this is where we get into the concept of synthetic media, synthetic content, kind of like deep fakes, basically where we see artificial intelligence actually creating the video and the sound that you see on a screen.

[00:36:31] That’s how we do it. Then that disruption is a threat to established organizations. It’s also an opportunity, because all of a sudden, you know, from, from an Apple perspective, you know, they can be doing personalized training to a billion, to 2 billion people around the world for the sake of two quid a month.

[00:36:53] Know if that, you know, they can charge whatever they like and they’ll charge more than that. But it’s, it’s staggering when you have a look at what technology is, how technology is disrupting other industries, what it’s already letting us do, you know, it’s something that you need to get your head around, need to actually at least get a point of view on and actually understand and then figure out is this a benefit to you?

[00:37:15] Is it a threat to you? Is it an opportunity to you? And then use it accordingly. And again, you know, how you use technology within your own business and with your own particular environment very much depends on the part of the market that you’re trying to target. And even if we actually have a look at PTs, you know, throughout the pandemic, I know loads of PTs that suddenly couldn’t go and see customers and everything else.

[00:37:37] All of a sudden they started YouTube channels. Yeah. You know, this is technology lets us decentralize and democratize access to services – in this case, a personal trainer in new ways, because you can be doing a YouTube live live event as a personal trainer. Now watching the comments come in and people can be going:

[00:37:59] that’s great. I really love what you’ve sort of done there, but you know, I’ve got a dodgy hip. So what could I actually do for me? You know, so there’s a lot of different ways that technology is increasingly having an impact basically on the customer experience. And that’s before we start talking about, and that’s, before we start talking about the impact of virtual reality, you know, so yeah, my kids got Oculus Quests and all that sort of stuff, and they muck around with those and virtual reality basically is still relatively nascent, but actually there are some fun things that you can do. Cause I mean, you know, so for example, my son, he was actually running around Cairo the other day and on the virtual reality side of things, when we actually talk about the use of virtual reality, basically within the sports setting, we’ve got virtual reality headsets and environments and content and everything else.

[00:38:41] We’ve got the, we’ve got an increase in the amount of haptics. So haptics actually let you feel things it’s a little bit like tactile sense. Vodafone a little while ago showed off a 5G demonstration where they had a, a connected punching bag really. And they had a, an English rugby player who was dressed in the haptic suit and someone in Coventry tackle the rugby bag and the professional rugby player in London 150 miles away fell on his feet, you know, so this sort of stuff. And then we’ve even seen, we’ve even seen the development of electromagnetic floors and all kinds of things that actually are like, I mean, there’s sort of like big squares that move around and we’ve got a whole variety of different virtual reality treadmills and all this other stuff, but we’ve got things like electromagnetic floors that as you are actually running on the spot, basically in your living room, these floors are changing beneath you.

[00:39:36] So all of a sudden we asked, we are taking a, what has traditionally been a relatively static virtual reality activity where you have two feet planted on the ground. You’re not walking, you’re not running. You’re not sort of swinging around. And all of a sudden we can now add motion and all this other sort of stuff into it.

[00:39:55] We’ve seen the use of virtual reality and haptic clothing, basically in boxing, for example, where people can actually box. Basically, you can feel like you’re being hit, you know, if you like that kind of thing. Even when we start looking at Pokemon Go, we sort of talked about, we’ve got the use of things like Microsoft Mesh, basically, which is sort of more augmented reality and mixed reality where we can create augmented reality sports that people can actually partake in at the same time.

[00:40:19] So you can be on different continents and yet you’re still playing, you know, chase the Pokemon or catch the ball. For example, you know, it’s I’ve seen, I’ve seen one of the tech giants showing off recently sort of in their labs virtual reality baseballs.

[00:40:32] As well as an augmented reality baseball system, where, you know, you’ll stand there basically with a bat, but someone on a different continent is throwing a ball at you and you’re smacking it out the park. So when I literally say that technology allows us to decentralize access to all sorts of different services, including sports, there’s a lot of interesting things coming down the line, that’s it.

[00:40:55] And it’s, you know, some of it let’s face. It is interesting and fairly useless from a day-to-day perspective, particularly when we start having a look at gyms and that sort of stuff. But you know, one of my, one of my big sports, apparel customers, basically that pretty much everyone is probably wearing, has bought stuff from they’re experimenting with building sort of virtual reality and augmented reality superstores, you know, where you go in and you can play a hundred different sports all under one roof.

[00:41:23] Craig McNeill: One roof? Wow.

[00:41:24] Matthew Griffin: You know? And and that’s, that’s fun, you know, because again, you know, so when I was having a chat basically with with one of the directors over there, he said, you know, my kids basically are typical. On the first week, basically they want to play football. So I go and buy them all the football boots and everything else I see in the second week, they’re no longer interested in football.

[00:41:40] They want to play hockey. So then I buy them all the hockey gear. And then this third week, they’re no longer, sort of interested in hockey. They want to do swimming. You know, cycling is that frankly, as a parent, basically, you know, you sort of want to encourage your children to have as many different sports experiences as possible so they can find what they really enjoy.

[00:41:57] But frankly, as a parent, it’s really expensive and time consuming and everything else. So with some of these new superstores, basically that they’re going to, they’re already starting to come through. The idea is that you can take your child basically down to experience a hundred different sports, all under one roof.

[00:42:13] And then they can go, well, I kind of like that. And then you can do it in the real world, you know, or they go, oh, I like that today, but actually, no, hang on. I liked that yesterday. I don’t like it today. And you can sort of figure out, you know,

[00:42:22] Craig McNeill: I can, I can resonate with that. Absolutely.

[00:42:26] Matthew Griffin: So, yeah, I mean, there’s all sorts of different sort of fun things coming through.

[00:42:29] But even from, again, from a gym perspective, you know, you can incorporate some of these augmented reality and virtual reality sort of 5g enabled sports basically, just in the corner of the gym, you know, and again, a lot of them are look fairly basic today because they are relatively basic. But nevertheless, when we sort of talk about the physical health, but also playing to people’s mental health, we’re now starting to see the use of virtual reality in helping treat chronic pain.

[00:42:55] Because for example, you could be using virtual reality in a corner of a gym, but you know, when treadmill on the treadmill companies are starting to sort of think about this kind of thing, you can have a virtual reality headset on, which is a bit dangerous on the treadmill. Let’s face it, but you know, that’s a different story.

[00:43:10] You could be running on a treadmill and you can be running through a wood. You know, with butterflies flapping about and all this kind of stuff, which actually helps you relax. So, you know, while when we have a look at the use of different immersive technologies, mostly within the sports environment there’s still quite a long way to go before the technology actually feels natural and immersive, and, you know, you’ve all of a sudden don’t fall off the end of the treadmill by saying, break an arm and then start suing the gym.

[00:43:36] So, you know, health and safety’ll have a riot, basically with most of these things, but a lot of these things are starting to come through and it’s actually sort of, I’d encourage people to at least go and have a look at them. And then again, getting that point of view, because it might not be right today, but you know, in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 years time, it might actually be a case that these things are much more mature and you go, well, I have a, an, an immersive reality corner of the gym and you know, and again, that plays to the customer experience again.

[00:44:04] Craig McNeill: Yeah.

[00:44:05] Matthew Griffin: Relatively cheap once it’s actually embedded. And once it, once it’s put in.

[00:44:09] Craig McNeill: And the opportunity comes across problems that gyms are trying to solve. So back in 2005, I got asked from the owner of the gym that I was working in. And at that time we have 40% of our opening times. We have a studio that is, that is used 40%. So how can we increase our revenue for this space?

[00:44:31] And I’m thinking straight away, you know, the example is you’re talking about that back in 2005, I would’ve loved to have the opportunity to improve the, the usage of that space with what we’re talking about today.

[00:44:42] Matthew Griffin: That’s it. I mean, yeah. So one of the areas that I also work with is it’s super yachts and super, super yachts basically are sort of fairly interesting sort of space.

[00:44:51] Craig McNeill: What’s a super yacht?

[00:44:52] Matthew Griffin: So, so there’s three types. When we talk about big ship, big, big yachts, you know, sort of owned by billionaires by so there’s actually three tasks that a lot of people might not know. This are actually three types of yachts. We’ve got a superyacht. So a superyacht is typically classified as a yacht that costs more than a hundred million dollars.

[00:45:09] Okay. Then we have a mega yachts, basically are large yachts that typically are cost more than about half a million, half a billion, sorry, with a B dollars. And then we have giga yachts by seeing a giga yacht by sea is a yacht that costs more than a billion dollars. So when we actually have a look at the super yacht industry, you know, The vast majority of the world’s billionaires go.

[00:45:33] So what I have is I have this super yacht and I want all these toys and gadgets and everything else, and fitness is generally in there. You know, a lot of the super yachts in the past would have the private gyms and all that sort of usual stuff. But what else? You have a look at high net worth individuals and what they really sort of trying to now get out of their superyacht investment bearing in mind.

[00:45:51] I mean, there’s one at the minute that I know that it’s being built and it’s a $750 million superyacht, you know, I mean, these, this is a sector of the market. I see where people go, what do you want? Would you like a country to come with your vehicle? You know, you’re super yacht. And it’s like, oh yes.

[00:46:06] I’d like Bolivia, please. It’s yeah, it’s an insane world. But actually increasingly when we have a look at the, the world of superyacht we’re now increasingly talking about developing fully immersive holodecks, like the ones that you see in Star Trek, we’ve got Gene Roddenberry, for example, is now developing what we call a parallax a set of parallax screens that give us a holodeck feeling.

[00:46:31] So this three-dimensional holodeck feeling. And for those of those people that still don’t know what a holodeck is, a holodeck basically is a relatively science fiction like technology. Essentially it’s a room outfitted with immersive reality technologies. So for example, holographic projectors and systems and everything else That make your, fool your five senses into thinking that you are actually in a different place and time, for example, that you would really are in a wood or a jungle or a forest or a desert or a city or whatever it happens to be.

[00:47:04] And, you know, even when we start having a look at the development, basically of these, sci-fi-like, Holodecks when you start using more sort of augmented reality basically sort of Microsoft Mesh, and you combine that with parallax screens. So this is where you for example, you have screens on every single wall, the floor, as well as the ceiling, basically of a particular room.

[00:47:26] All of a sudden people feel transported to a completely different place. And if, if you’re running, let alone, if you’ve got some of these odd sort of soft, slightly slippery, virtual reality treadmills in there you can be running and you increasingly feel as though you are running through a completely authentic environment. And as I say, you know, when we actually have a look at HNWs and UHNWs, yeah, they’re no longer talking about just having a gym, you know, I would like a bunch of Precor equipment and Life Fitness and Hammer Strength equipment in my nice, you know, superyacht gym. They’re increasingly talking about how they can incorporate some of these higher end technologies to help them create fitness and sports-like experiences that we couldn’t have made before.

[00:48:13] You know, like for example, playing, being able to play baseball or rugby, basically while you’re on your super yacht and somebody else is in New Zealand or on their super yacht you know, and you’re playing catch or whatever it happens to be with them. There’s some quite frankly, nutty stuff coming through Yeah, when we still want to, we sort of bring this back to gyms and again, a lot of it is completely impractical basically within the gym environment, but also it does play to that customer experience.

[00:48:37] It does help gyms differentiate themselves, you know, a little bit like these these golf simulators, you know, I’ve got a golf simulator in the corner of the gym, you know, I mean, companies like Airbus are actually looking at putting virtual reality and these sort of simulators actually into the future, A330 Neo.

[00:48:53] And they sort of the, the Airbus concepts that they’re generating for sort of 2030, 2040, 2050, so that you can be at 30 to 40,000 feet in the air and you are playing a sport, you know, while you’re in business class, obviously, you know but you’re playing some form of sport or doing some form of exercise, authentic feeling exercise while you’re at 30 to 40,000 feet and stuck in a really small cabin.

[00:49:19] Craig McNeill: Yikes! Imagine! It’s going to be our futures Matt.

[00:49:23] Matthew Griffin: Yeah. But then there’s a whole bunch of nutty stuff. So they’re coming through, which then brings me there, which then brings us back basically to a, you know, all the pulley equipment that we actually see down the gym. Let’s say, while we’re doing a, you know, what we’re doing, pull downs and all that kind of stuff.

[00:49:36] Craig McNeill: Absolutely. And that’s, and that’s going to be the blend isn’t it, of, of, of traditional versus new whatever that phrase will be. Okay. I guess. Yeah. The, the, the one really the one I really enjoyed it, you mentioned before is that you allow the experience what the user wants. If they want an offline concept go into that area of the gym offline, traditional.

[00:49:59] But if you want a personalized approach where we can help you, we can guide you. We can teach you, we can coach you. This is the area that we can then get that data from that. So that for me was like, ah, yes, that’s exactly where we must go.

[00:50:12] Matthew Griffin: Or even more of a tech sent a tech centric approach. I mean, if you actually have a look at the vast majority of millennials, you know, my kids basically are already starting to exercise in virtual reality and we’ve seen a, because virtual reality helps you visualize different environments better. You know, we see this in the Olympics. We see this w so we see this in Olympic cycling. We see this same approach being used in formula one. Typically you get a 30% improvement in performance because people are able to visualize themselves running around a track, you know, or cycling around a track in Rio or London or China or wherever it happens to be, or driving around track

[00:50:53] if you have a look at a lot of the formula, one. A lot of the formula one organizations, especially in the UK, they will actually use virtual reality simulators where you have the likes of Lewis Hamilton, who will be in a virtual, who will be sitting in a physical replica of the car that he’s normally driving, but they’ll have virtual reality headsets on they’ll have pulleys on their necks basically to, to demonstrate different G-forces and everything else.

[00:51:15] But it’ll be bending into the curves of, you know, say the Abudabi circuit, which you know, was probably not his favorite at the minute. Yeah, but yeah, there’ll be doing that. But the other thing that we’re starting to see coming through, again, really it’s an elite level, and this has been over the past five years is actually the use of what we call neuro training.

[00:51:30] So the US Olympic team a little while ago, mostly used neuro training. So this is where we use what we call TMS devices to modify people’s brainwaves. Which is a, I mean, it is literally neuroscience on steroids, but in the case of the US ski team, they managed to use neuro training to improve the performance of their Olympic athletes by 70%, seven, zero percent bearing in mind that when you’re actually in the, when you’re, when you’re part of an Olympic team, if you can grind out a gain of naught 0.5 to 1%, basically, then thats stunning, you know, as we saw with the sort of the razor suits, for example, you know, with with Speedo and all those kinds of guys There’s a phenomenal amount of different stuff coming through.

[00:52:17] But as I say, you know, my kids are already starting to do training in virtual reality, mainly because they like it. Not really because, because they’re sort of forced to. But, and again, with a lot of the organizations that I work with increasingly starting to step up the use of wearables and their training as well, because as I sort of mentioned, you know, some of the teams that we actually sponsor, I mean, you know, the kids basically are sort of under 16, but they’re actually already competing in team GB.

[00:52:42] I think we’ve now got about 14, 15 athletes basically, who are actually in team GB, even though we’ve not been able to travel for international world worlds competitions. And so a lot of the kids that are starting to come through are already starting to get accustomed and acquainted with technology that lets them do new things in new ways.

[00:52:59] And these, these kids basically will be coming through into the gyms and, you know, 10, 10 plus years time. And I mean, even on that sort of front, you know, my, my kids basically can’t step foot in a gym to even go on a treadmill until they’re 12, they can’t do resistance training basically until the age of 16.

[00:53:18] So we’re sort of having to find, you know, lots of different alternative ways to actually help them improve everything from sort of swimming and the shooting basically and cycling and all that kind of stuff, you know, triathlons for example and things. And yeah, they like it, but I mean, certainly my son, he can’t wait to get into a gym.

[00:53:36] He’s gagging to get on a treadmill and blasted out

[00:53:40] Craig McNeill: Two questions will e-sports be in the Olympics one day?

[00:53:43] Matthew Griffin: Ooh, so actually that they are actually talking about putting e-sports into the Olympics, because even though there’s a lot of people go well, is it e-sports actually a sport in itself. And in terms of, you know, so the way that we traditionally think of sports, where you’re pushing yourself physically a lot of the e-sports athletes will, will typically say, well, we’re pushing ourselves self cognitively.

[00:54:02] And if you think sitting in front of an eight in front of a screen for eight hours, doesn’t require physical stamina, then you’re wrong. So yeah, I mean, so ironically, the IOC is already thinking about incorporating e-sports and when we have a look at e-sports there’s we’ve got Qatar, basically they’re building a billion dollar sports university.

[00:54:21] So they’re sort of starting to build that up as sports campus, the middle east are going all in on e-sports, particularly Saudi Arabia. They hosted the, the latest e-sports tournament. And again, when you have a look at e-sports, they’re an interesting model, particularly when you start combining virtual reality, when you start combining haptics.

[00:54:38] Because again, you know, if you’re doing say Call of Duty, basically what you’re doing, DOTA2 or StarCraft or any of these kinds of things, you can literally be running around the environment. You know, so e-sports space is almost this e-sports, which typically started off, as you know, you sit in front of a screen and you use a keyboard and mouse and, you know, different controllers basically to do different things.

[00:55:02] When we start having a look at future technology, a lot of it’s coming straight into e-sports where we are now starting to see e-sports make huge use of immersive reality technologies with championships like Realms. If people know that which had a $32 million prize fund. Yeah. And they had, I mean, they had something like 50 million people turn up.

[00:55:23] I mean, it’s, it’s nuts. E-sports markets are nuts and they’re taking off big style. But when you have a look at the use of new immersive technologies in e-sports increasingly the people who were sitting in front of a screen for eight hours and now starting to get out of their seat and actually start running around in particular environments, you know, shooting people and doing whatever it is they’re up to.

[00:55:42] And the second question. What is on your downloaded podcast list at the moment Mat?

[00:55:48] Ah, so I’ve actually, so I’ve got loads of different stuff. So I mean, it must be, I must say if I say I like listening to EDM and all that kind of stuff, so I’ve got TS Dope. I’ve got a lot of business podcasts and everything else.

[00:55:59] So I’ve got a podcasts, basically like a future cast as well. And all these sorts of things, Singularity. So typically, yeah, because one of the, sort of the biggest problems I have is what I do is. I’m an information junkie and when I’m actually down in the gym and I’m doing weights and everything else yeah.

[00:56:19] You can’t watch a YouTube video and all that sort of stuff. So I like I must admit I do, you know, when I say, when I’m out on the bike, that’s probably going to sound wrong, but when I’m out on the bike, basically, I’ll actually be sort of watching a little bit of YouTube videos, but also listening and everything else. So summer’s my favorite time because I’ve done about 3000 miles basically on my mountain bike.

[00:56:37] And I learn like that, but what am actually down in the gym, increasingly I’ll sort of listen to podcasts. And you know, I’ll be doing some benching the ancles basically still don’t like me doing anything basically that involves standing. So I listened to all kinds of different stuff. Awesome. Jack Spicer a bit of a mess.

[00:56:54] It’ll jump basically from it’ll jump from hard house, like Tiesto basically, or whatever it happens to be or Above and Beyond basically and then it’ll go basically to a, a, a sort of Reid Hoffman. You know, let’s talk about the future of business podcast and all sorts of weird things.

[00:57:10] Craig McNeill: That’s the beauty of, of the, of the platform isn’t it? You can go from one place to another.

[00:57:15] Matthew Griffin: Yeah. Although we’ve got the Andy Rose show as well, which is a good sports podcast. So those guys basically actually do the rugby pod as well. So sort of yeah, I’ve done a lot for them and we there’s quite a lot of good stuff on the Andy Rose show as well. So go and check that one out.

[00:57:28] Craig McNeill: We could talk to you for hours and hours. If our listeners to wanted to go find out a little bit more about Matthew Griffin where can they go?

[00:57:35] Matthew Griffin: So go to the web. So 311 Institute.com. There’s thousands of articles. If you go to my YouTube channel, basically you can see future of sports, as well as future of everything else I’ve got a load of reports and codexes that are free, free for people to download?

[00:57:51] So if you want to know about the latest 250 exponential technologies that are only going to change everything about society, culture, and global behavior, then that’s on the website as well. But a YouTube channel by seeing the website basically is always a good point.

[00:58:07] Craig McNeill: Awesome. And I’ve watched a couple of those and they are incredible.

[00:58:11] Gets your brain working. Let’s put it that way.

[00:58:13] Matthew Griffin: Well, this is it. You need a physical workout and you need a mental workout for your brain. I say if you’re physically fit, but if you’re, if you’re if you’re a mental potato by the age of 60.

[00:58:26] Craig McNeill: Awesome. Thanks again for joining us on the episode.

[00:58:30] Matthew Griffin: Pleasure, cheers Craig, take it easy everyone, nice talking to you all, bye!