And welcome back to the Wellness Paradox podcast . I'm so grateful that you can join us on this journey towards greater human flourishing . As always , I'm your host , michael Stack , an exercise physiologist by training and a health entrepreneur and a health educator by trade , and I'm fascinated by a phenomena I call the Wellness Paradox .
This paradox , as I view it , is the trust , interaction and communication gap that exists between fitness professionals and our medical community . This podcast is all about closing off that gap by the 70 and the latest , most evidence-based and most engaging information in the health sciences . And to do that , in episode 117 , I'm joined by Lynn and Victor Brick .
Lynn and Victor Brick run the JW Brick Foundation for Mental Health and in this conversation we're going to touch a little bit on what the foundation does , specifically their Move , your Mental Health report , which we're going to link up to on the show notes page , but kind of as a follow on to last week's conversation with Dr Newsom .
We're going to talk about their mental well-being certification , and this is something I'm incredibly excited about .
As soon as I saw this come across my feet , I said I have to get Lynn and Victor on to talk about this because it's an exciting time and , as they'll mention in the podcast , the mental health crisis we're facing really presents an opportunity for mental health renaissance , and then Lynn and Victor really believe this certification is a part of that renaissance , and
this is a certification that is designed right now for fitness professionals , but , as you'll hear them talk about in the podcast , it will expand to other professions to help professionals understand how to work with individuals on self-care behaviors to improve their mental well-being .
I think this is education that is very much needed and long overdue in our field , and I think this is going to be a very enlightening discussion . Victor and Lynn have an amazing story as to how they turn their pain into passion around mental health , and I really think you'll not only find that moving but also very instructive .
Any information we'd like to share with you from this episode can be found on the show notes page , that's , by going to wellnessparadoxpodcom . Forward slash episode 117 . Please enjoy this conversation with Lynn and Victor Brick Today . We're delighted to be joined by Lynn and Victor Brick . Lynn , victor , thank you so much for joining us .
Very excited for the conversation we're going to have today , kind of piggybacks off the topic we talked about in our last episode and maybe extends it a little bit further and more practically around mental wellness and the role of the exercise , professional and physical activity and exercise .
But before we dive into this discussion , lynn Victor , can you give us a little bit more of your background , just so we have some context for this discussion ?
Sure , I'll start . Lynn and I have been in the fitness industry . They refer to us as industry veterans and you know what a veteran means , right , we're old . So we had the fitness industry 1985 with our first club in Baltimore .
We grew that to a seven club chain in the 90s or in the early 2000s and then we got involved with planet fitness and we really expanded that to where we have 100 clubs . We have three big bodies , clubs of Joe original club and we have actually 98 planets . We have 20 in Australia and we have 78 position around the country in our different territories .
And so we've been fitness people our entire lives . We started as a roving constructors of the roving only a back company , and I have an exercise degree of exercise physiology from Towson University as a teacher and an athlete , and Lynn was a dancer and nurse .
So we have this great combination of technical skill , medical skill with Lynn's nursing background , and entertainment marketing skills , and we've been in the ownership management phase of fitness as well . So we've been , we've run the whole game .
Yeah , and so I started , as as Victor mentioned , as a as a nurse . I graduated from tells . We met at Towson University and I graduated from Towson with a degree in nursing . The very next week started my new job at shock from the first trauma unit in the world in Baltimore , maryland . And if that wasn't enough shock , I married .
This guy , the following week .
So 45 years and three of the best years of my life .
Oh yeah , I love the , I love the background and you guys , you know , truly have kind of run the gamut and seen our industry , you know , grow up to a great extent from you know what it was in the 80s to you know what it is today . But that's not all you do .
A bigger part of what you do is what we're going to talk about today and specifically I'd like you to touch a little bit on the , the John W brick mental health foundation , because that is certainly a massive part of what you do . When I've been at Ursa events .
You know , victor , I've heard you talk on this before , so talk about this organization , what its mission is and who it serves .
Well , we believe that ultimately you will be judged by what you give back to society . And we built a nice little organization . We've got 100 clubs , 700,000 members , 1500 staff . We will not be remembered for what we did in the fitness industry . We will be remembered for the john W brick mental health foundation .
John W brick mental health foundation was named after my brother , john , who suffered from schizophrenia his entire life and died from complications of the disease . You notice I say complications because schizophrenia is not a terminal disease , but the medication that , the things that the stress that this , the illness quit on him , him personally .
Ultimately , his heart gave out and that's really what killed and we're in the fitness . At that time , even as a young boy , I knew that there was a better way to treat my brother . I just saw him just being deteriorating and the medication and the institutionalization and all these things and how it affected him .
And once I got into fitness , I realized that some way , somehow that should be included in the treatment and it never was .
In all the years of treatment , the best hospitals and medical , medical communities in the world , medical services in the world , and you put on a fully integrated , well rounded program that included such things as exercise , nutrition , nutrition and mind body practices , along with medications , psychoanalysis and institutionalization . Those are the big three .
They're the big three today , if you have mental health issues , most likely you will be given and at the end of the day I was given a diagnosis , medication and institutionalization and John received all three of those .
We knew there had to be a better way and at his funeral , the sadness that we felt as a family and what I saw and experienced with my parents especially , I was determined to help other families through that same pain . So we started the John W Rick mental health foundation .
Our mission is to have solutagenic , which means holistic self care approaches such as exercise , nutrition and mind body practices , integrated with traditional mental health care in the promotion of mental well being and the treatment of mental illness , and that is basically the mission of the John W Rick mental health foundation .
Awesome , awesome , very , very powerful to turn your pain into passion to make the world a better place .
That's exactly what we're trying to do . Our catch line is we're trying to put a dent in the universe for mental wellness . Just trying to put a dent in the universe .
And to change the way the world treats mental health .
I'm sorry , it's to change the way the world treats mental health and the tagline is put a dent in the universe . And we hope to do it with the butterfly effect and that is just a little ripple that starts in a pond and turns into the ripple of the butterfly wings and start on one part of the world and spread across the world because it has to be .
We've realized after working with the medical community it's now going to be this huge announcement hey well , fitness and wellness and lifestyle is going to solve mental health . Help , help them , not solve . Help with your mental well being , your happiness , everybody get we . We naively thought that's what you could do .
We put together a couple of massive studies for us , massive studies that we thought would change the way everybody saw things and it didn't . And we realized it's about education . It's about changing people . One person at a time . One health professional at a time . One medical professional at a time . One person at a time .
And so , Mike , to answer your question about who does this serve ? It serves everyone , and we know that we've experienced the ill effects of the pandemic and the longer tail of the pandemic is basically the crisis we're experiencing with mental health and mental well being .
What may many people may not realize is that we're at the beginning of a mental health renaissance which is very exciting , and that's why we feel that not just for fitness professionals , but also for educators , for psychology counselors , mental well being counselors , for first responders , for so many other industries corporate wellness as well that really need the tools
to help them to start to so they can better serve the people they serve .
And that's why we came up with a certification ID .
Yeah , and I'm really excited to dive into that . One thing I do want to just touch on really briefly , because I think it was very powerful and very well done , is the move your mental health report that the foundation produced .
Can you just touch on that real quick and we'll link up to that in the show notes , because I find that I reference that document to so many people . So just touch on that really briefly and then we'll get into the certification .
As I said , originally we are going to be a research foundation . We're going to create or help fund and promote evidence based research . That was going to change the way the world perceived the treatment of mental well being and mental health .
And as we did our homework , we realized there were so many powerful studies out there already that the first thing we should do is co late them and promote them . And that's what we did with our , the guidance of our executive director the time Cassie beaten us a PhD in psychology and is a professor now at university , at University of California , san Diego .
So she comes in the academic community and she understood the power of producing evidence based research . That has already been done . We , we , we review 1400 research papers , 1400 studies not research papers studies , papers on the steps , and that showed conclusively , 91% of them were categorically positive .
In the , the position that , or the hypothesis that holistic lifestyle approaches whatever it was they were measuring had an effect on medical well being issues such as depression , such as anxiety , not not the clinical ones so much , but more of the lifestyle related ones . And that is all in the movie mental health report .
And if , if we did nothing but stop with the production of that report , we we could pat ourselves on the back , because it not only has the studies and the findings , but it then gives the recommendations , and for any health professional , any fitness professional , any well being professional , it is an invaluable tool .
It quantifies things by type of activity and and how they , how effective they are in different types of mental well being issues , and and gives basically a roadmap that a person can follow , themselves or for whoever it is that they're serving , to maximize benefits and in addition to that , it's 30 years worth of correlated data right , which is very impressive .
In addition to that , it's also an interactive report , so if you wanted to research how mood or depression and anxiety are affected by cycling , for example , you can just click on that and it will pull up all the information , the data with pie charts , etc . That can that you can review to gather that information .
But here's one of the main findings of the report that , quite frankly , wasn't shown in a scientific study . That relates almost everything in the report . Do you know the best activity for anybody to do , whatever they'll stick with , whatever they'll do ?
That's the key we can give you and that's where the certification comes in , by the way , we can give you the results , the science . But let's take my brother . My brother wasn't going to get in 345 minute activities , a week of interval training and a moderate intense level . If you were to do tennis , he would run with his brothers , victor and Merrill .
He would do all anything with his brothers . We were his rock , but he wouldn't do it by himself . You can't just give somebody that's had a hard time , quite frankly , with reality , coping with life . So a set of instructions and how to is how you deliver it , how they perceive it , and the most important thing , of course , is what do they call it ?
Not compatibility , but you know that they actually do it .
Yeah .
And a consistent manner .
Right , right .
Consistency . You have a credit for it too , got it .
The best form of exercise is the one that you're going to stick with .
We know exercise works .
You've got to stick with it to make it work , and so I will say the report to both of your points is such an invaluable tool . Everything you said , I think , is really accurate .
But as someone that reads a lot of research and realizes that a lot of research is above a lot of people's heads because it's written in an extremely academic fashion , that's one of the things I like best about the report is it was written in a very approachable way that I can send it to somebody who has a degree from University of Michigan or you know ,
housing or wherever they would get it . But I can also send it to somebody who doesn't have a degree . Maybe they're just starting out in the field and they would understand it . So we're going to link up to that in the show notes page . Highly recommended as a resource .
It's so informative and so educational and kudos to you guys for putting the work on that , because that is a meta-analysis on steroids with what you guys did right there .
It's a serious work , and the C word I was looking for is compliance . Usually I looked at my wife to tell me what I'm forgetting in my old age . It's got to be compliance , and the best way to get compliance is something they like Exactly .
And I just want to add on to what we've just discussed is the fact that the executive summary is only 10 or 11 pages long , versus over 100 pages is the entire report . So your listeners , can I invite you to log on to review the executive summary ?
And in that summary it clearly states that three to five , 30 to 45 minute bouts of moderate to higher intensity movement is best and cardio and strength together is also very good , especially for depressive symptoms , for anxiety , it's more .
It's better to do more mind , body or chagang or yoga or something that deep breathing meditation , those types of activities which are seen to be most beneficial for anxiety symptoms .
I'd like to take a quick break from today's episode to tell you a little bit more about one of our strategic partners as a podcast .
As many of you know , the wellness paradox is all about closing off the trust , interaction and communication gap between fitness professionals and the medical community , and no organization does that better than the medical fitness association . They are the professional member association for the medical fitness industry .
This is the industry that integrates directly with healthcare in many facilities throughout the entire country . The MFA is your go-to source for all things medical fitness . They provide newsletters , webinars . They even have standards and guidelines for medical fitness facilities .
They do events around the entire country and , most importantly , they are one of the more engaging networks in the entire fitness industry . I personally have benefited from the network that I've developed through the medical fitness association and I highly recommend that all of you that are interested in solving the wellness paradox engage with the MFA .
To find out more about the medical fitness association , you can go to their website , medicalfitnessorg . That's medicalfitnessorg . Now back to today's episode Awesome , awesome . So we will link up to that .
But really , what I want to get into and again , when I saw this come out , I can't remember where I saw that it come out initially that you guys put together this mental wellbeing certification , and my initial reaction was like well , finally , somebody has done something that's a little bit more focused in this area .
We have so many certifications in the field , and you guys know this . We've got nutrition , we've got cycling , we've got personal training , we have all these things , but we've never had a mental wellbeing certification , and you guys kind of talked about this earlier . But I really want you to kind of focus the message in here .
Why did you feel like this was the time and the place for you guys to do this certification ? To educate I think you're saying more than just fitness professionals , but a wide variety of people .
Well , the main reason why we wanted , we felt there was a need , is to add credibility to anyone that is serving others and , as I mentioned before , provide the tools to help them to better serve the people that they serve .
And we've gathered folks from experts from around the world to provide scientific , evidence-based research , which we have recorded onto the certification online certification .
And , as Lynn said earlier , the pandemic was really the driver of this , because we it drove the entire world , not just the United States but society in general into this mental health pandemic , and people use that term . It's not just bandied about by a small group .
But what a lot of people don't realize is that we are not only experiencing a mental health pandemic . I mean clinical analysis of people with mental health issues has doubled from 24% a year to almost 50 or more . I could quote stat after stat that we all know . But it's also the beginning , beginning of a mental health . Remiss on why ?
Because every time there's a need , there is a solution , and so the timing was right .
10 years ago , this certification might have just been a blimp on the radar for most people , but all of a sudden , everybody is scrambling to help either themselves , their clients , their friends or their family , and so we realized that we needed to go from a research institution foundation to an educational foundation and , if you think about it , moving mental health
report is education . This certification takes to a whole nother level . It's one thing to have altering hey , yes , but what can we do ? What can I take home ? I'm going to hear you speak for an hour . What can I take home and apply immediately ? And we realized we needed a roadmap that people could follow . And again it's not .
We just said you know , our daughter is struggling with a variant cancer and if anybody has needed to follow that roadmap and help themselves in this , this dark hole that at times seems like there is no light , it's us . And we know firsthand that we have employed every single technique Lafioca .
We do eight to 10 minutes of Lafioca Just to fool our bodies into being happy . We do the breathing , all these things , and so we know that it works and we want others to realize I can employ these things myself as well . I can help others with it , I can transfer to my staff , to my members , to my clients , to my family , and it's not rocket science .
We are not teaching , giving people a degree in psychology . We are giving them self-help , really Self-care , we can call it self-care .
Yeah , the timing piece , I think , is so right . I kind of think that it's the old Winston Church Health quote that you should never waste a good crisis , and I feel like COVID and where we're at with this data mental health in the world . It is and Lynn , use the word , it is a crisis and in that crisis it is an opportunity .
So let's dive into this a little bit . Can you give our audience a little bit of a peek under the hood of what they could expect if they were to engage with this certification ?
Absolutely . I'm honored to do that . Well , what we did was , as I mentioned , we gathered the experts from around the world to provide didactic , evidence-based research information that is all online and as well as we have practical professionals who share how to apply that research into the real world .
So , for example , for Rubex instructors , they would approach the research and practically make it a practical application in a different method versus one-on-one , a personal trainer or a small group . So , under the hood , we start off with by welcoming everyone .
Our first module is redefining mental health with Dr Jerry Boddiker , who is world-renowned as a mental health expert , and then we go into . The next module is moving and exercise , and we have another module on eating well and nutrition .
The next module is on mindfulness and meditation , and the next one is on social connection , which we all learned is so critically important People need people and then creating a safe space , overcoming discrimination and bias and stigma . The next module is basic health and wellness , coaching and communication skills .
The next module is ethics and collaboration , and then our last module is next steps what you can do , then . Serve those who you serve .
So , as Lynn , said , it's kind of like each module . There's a kind of a little lecture , if you want , but it's really the information , and then there's a practical in individual , actually demonstrating what you can and can't do . Not can and can't , but how best to utilize the information . And there's a crossover and transfer of application between all the modules .
It's not like this one's only for this and this one's only for that , but at the same time , if you wanted to be able to communicate with people better and how to approach someone with health issues and mental health issues and how to get them to open up or comply and it's not like you're trying to be their counselor , but how can you get them to participate
and to enjoy it and to not be so self-controllable you could go to the . What would that be ? The communication ? Yeah , coaching and communication . Coaching and communication modules . You don't need that . They're not progressive . You can pick and choose , like with nutrition , it stands on its own , but there are 10 total , I think .
Yes , 10 modules total and one of the most , the first module by Jerry Vodeker , is so critical and it's really going to be in every one of our certifications , because in some of our certifications let's take the K through 5 .
There'll certainly be a lot of different information than the one for the fitness industry , being with adults , most by the fitness industry and K through 5 , you're dealing with , of course , young kids . But you have to understand the concept of the dual continuum .
And if I could take a moment now to discuss the dual continuum , health care , mental health , has always been thought of as a continuum and on the one hand was no mental illness and then mild mental illness and then severe mental illness and people moved up and down this continuum based on their physiology , heredity and what not , and life events .
And in reality there's a dual continuum , two continuance the first continuum , the traditional continuum , is pathogenic in nature . You either have a mental health issue or you do move up and down the continuum , to a certain extent based on events , but for the most part it's based on illness .
The vertical continuum is a lifestyle continuum , it's a salutogenic continuum and it's based on life events . The pathogenic condition goes from no mental illness to severe mental illness , whereas the salutogenic , holistic approach goes from flourishing to languishing . So you can have a mental health condition , such as depression , anxiety and a clinical issue .
And if you have , you exercise , you have a nice support system , you have a nice job , you have a proper medical care that you need , you can be happy and thriving , you can be flourishing , whereas with somebody else that has no pathogenic mental health condition , you've lost your job , your wife has left you , your husband's left , your partner's left you , you're
struggling with loneliness because of the pandemic or because of who knows what . You don't eat well , you tend to drink , you smoke , all the medical , physical health issues . You can be languishing even though you have a journey , but don't really have a pathogenic condition .
So the horizontal continuum , that's health care , we , the medical , the fitness professionals , deal in self care . We deal on the salutogenic continuum . We have to know that's our space . We have to work with the health care community , but they need to be willing to work with us and together we can get people flourishing and if we don't .
We can have people that are basically healthy languishing so , and the thing is , you can go from flourishing to languishing in the drop of a hat . You get the call in the middle of the night that your child's not coming home . Your dog gets hit on the road by a hoop . You walk in and you lose your job .
Your life investments get blown up in the stock market . You can go from flourishing to languishing like that .
And if you don't have the proper skills and tools to employ to help you come back and the people the support system is a big part of it you'll stay there as opposed to being able to reverse it , like , hopefully , all of us that have these go-to tools .
I want to make an addition to this too . This certification is really wrapped around the concept of prevention and I was . As a former trauma nurse . We were in the reactive phase of the medical community and now switching to the fitness and health club environment for industry .
For many , many years , it's always been our passion to focus on prevention and education , so that is the lane that we really want to help so many other people to understand that they can engage these tools to help not only themselves , as Victor said , their family members , their loved ones , their neighbors , as well as those that they serve .
And I also want to make a statement I've said it several times already and that is it's all about integrative . You need that wellness community . You need the medical community . It's not alternative care , it's self-care , but it's integrative self-care and working together . But many of the people that contributed this certification are psychiatrists and psychologists .
They are from the healthcare community Health care and self-care . We use a yin and yang model where they interplay , but there's always some self-care and health care and always some health care and self-care . But they work together just like a yin and yang .
The holistic nature of all this , I think , is what is the most exciting aspect . You said it , and this is something I think a lot of people that think of modern psychology is very pathologizing in nature , just by the way it's structured , and that's a whole separate conversation .
But the idea of this dual continuum that exists where you actually there are things that you have agency and control over and the way that you practice those behaviors , I think are so important , and the holistic nature of the curriculum that you've talked about , I think is also very exciting .
I feel like exercise professionals get a lot of these things in bits and pieces , but integrating them together doesn't always happen quite so well . So I think this just sounds like it's going to be a tremendous resource for the professionals in our industry and expanding beyond , which is very exciting .
We're going to link up to this on the show notes page but just so the people who are listening hear it , where can they go if they want to find out about this certification and then all the other great work that your foundation is doing ?
Through John W Brick Foundationorg is our main foundation , but on there through the Mental Well-Being Association is a separate association . You can just click on the links through the JWB and find all the resources we've already talked about , as well as the links directly to the Mental Well-Being Associationorg page as well .
And when Lynn says it's a separate association , we realized that we had to have a separate division that really focused on certification . So we created the John W Brick Mental Health Foundation , created the Mental Well-Being Association . So it's a division of the John W Brick but it is the certification arm .
So the people didn't think that John W Brick was trying to get into an area that we weren't qualified , and it is an entire division with its own focus and budget and everything else , and both are nonprofit .
Every penny brought in because the Brick family covers all operating administrative costs Every penny raised goes to the certification or goes to the foundation for their work , every penny . And on top of that we match every dollar that's brought in as well .
Personally , you guys are making a profound difference and I'm very excited to see where this certification goes . As we speak , this is just launching , so I know it sounds like you guys have plans to expand this .
So we're definitely going to be paying attention to how this proliferates and I hope in a year or two we will bring you guys back on and you could talk about all the amazing successes that you've had with this .
We appreciate that . And , just so everybody knows , the certification will launch when ? In March , in March , in March , and you can get it at a discount at the present time .
This isn't a sales pitch , but it should be stated that and again , all the money that comes in goes right back into the foundation and we are fast tracking the next two certifications , which is an education . Do you know why ? We've been approached by several school districts asking what can we do ?
And I hope that literally people are at a loss as to how to stem this tidal wave of mental health issues . And so we realize we already had the basic framework and now we just got to tailor it to education and we realized well , you're going to speak to a elementary school kid a lot differently than a high school kid and a lot differently than a college .
Higher education .
So those are the three next certifications primary , secondary , higher ed .
Awesome , awesome . We're going to be on the lookout for all of those Before I let you both go . I have the final question that I always end the podcast on , and I suspect you're going to have a very interesting perspective on this because of everything you've experienced For me .
I've considered the wellness paradox , probably in ways you have the kind of the trust , interaction and communication gap that exists between medicine and the fitness and wellness community .
With your decades of experience in the industry , if you had to give fitness professionals one piece of advice to close off that gap between our community and healthcare , what would that one piece of advice be ?
In a word . For me it would be education . We don't have street credit . We talk off the top of our head . We say what we've seen , what we feel , what we've experienced , and we don't speak science , we don't speak research , which is why the foundation started as a research community .
But the research is out there , which is why we went to the Mental Health , moving Mental Health Report . But then what do I do ? Which is why we went to certification .
We hope to become an accredited , accredited , nationally accredited certification where people in the medical community will say , yeah , that's great , and they will talk to you because right now we do not have street credit and that is changing by demand and , for instance , something as simple as understanding a dose of happiness . Why don't you explain that All ?
right . So , as Victor said , we love to laugh and there's a scientific reason why we love to laugh is because it doesn't matter whether it's a real laugh or a fake laugh . Your body secretes the same happy hormones and it's all . We call it a dose of happiness . And D is an acronym .
D stands for dopamine , of course , your addiction , persistence hormone , oxytocin . O is for oxytocin , the connection , the bonding hormone , especially when a mother , nurse or baby . S is for serotonin , your happiness hormone , and E is for endorphins , so created of course , when you're ever , you exercise and it just make you feel good , and also serotonin .
Most of it is secreted in your gut . So that's why it's so important to have a good belly laugh .
But when you can talk , like she just did , to a medical professional with such confidence , what are they gonna say ? This is science . This is science . The dose of happiness . They're called the happy hormones . Go look it up online . The medical community . So we have to start talking their language and their language is out of the space .
Research , and all of a sudden we will be respected . It's about respect .
And your word is education , my word is collaboration , and I think that it's really , as we described , the yid-n-yang model of healthcare and self-care working , collaborating together , and you do that through , as you mentioned , effective communication .
So it's a beautiful way to help everyone in the world , and we're all in this world together , so we might as well collaborate and make everyone's day more productive , more happy and , in a beautiful , beautiful way to connect , improve mental well-being .
And one final word on that is that the medical community perceives often other industries like fitness , proposing quote alternative . We have to understand it's integrated , the dual continuum is totally integrated and people aren't gonna work with us if they don't think that we're working with them .
Absolutely . Education and collaboration could not agree more . Lynn Victor , it's been an absolute pleasure . Thank you so much for joining us .
No , it's always great to speak to like-minded individuals that wanna put a dent in the universe .
Well , I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Lynn and Victor as much as I did . If you found it insightful and informative , please share with your friends and colleagues . Those shares make a big difference for us .
There'll be a lot of great information linked up on the show notes page from today's episode that can be found at wellnessparadoxpodcom forward slash , episode 117 . Please be on the lookout for our next episode when it drops in two weeks , and don't forget to subscribe through your favorite podcast platform . Until we chat again next , please be well .