Ep. 130 Rebecca Rouse: From Equinox to Tactical Strength & Conditioning Coach

Donate to Rebecca's non-profit here: https://semperstrongerfoundation.org/

Ever wondered how a fitness professional can turn adversity into an opportunity for growth? Our latest episode features the inspiring Rebecca Rouse, who transformed her career from managing trainers at Equinox to becoming a fitness influencer during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rebecca's story is not just about surviving tough times but thriving by using kettlebell workouts on Instagram, which quickly captivated a massive audience. She opens up about her transition to Olympic weightlifting, her organic rise on social media, and how she uses Instagram as her personal training diary.

Rebecca also reveals the secrets of genuine influencer partnerships and the wellness benefits of collaborating with brands that share her values, such as Jocko Fuel and Blue Cube cold plunges. Learn her strategies for maintaining authenticity and consistency on social media, managing online negativity, and building a meaningful connection with your audience. Whether you're a budding fitness professional or just looking for practical advice on growing a social media presence, this episode is packed with valuable insights and inspiration. Don’t miss out on Rebecca Rouse’s incredible journey and actionable tips for success in the fitness industry!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Show Up Fitness Podcast, where great personal trainers are made. We are changing the fitness industry one qualified trainer at a time, with our in-person and online personal training certification. If you want to become an elite personal trainer, head on over to showupfitnesscom. Also, make sure to check out my book how to Become a Successful Personal Trainer. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. Have a great day and keep showing up. Howdy everybody. Welcome back to the Show Up Fitness Podcast. We are lucky today to have Ms Rebecca. She has a really, really fascinating story Her time at Equinox curveball with COVID, and now she is kicking ass in the outskirts of Dallas. It's hot right now in LA, rebecca, and people are bitching at 75, 77. What are you at?

Speaker 2: 0:52

Oof. At the current moment it is 91 degrees, but it has been high 90s, low hundreds since May probably, and it'll be that way until about September. I love it. It's humidity too, huh. Yes, Not as humid as the Southeast, but it is still humid.

Speaker 1: 1:07

When we first met, I was being introduced to you because you were overseeing Carlsbad and Equinox. We brought our students there, we got some cool photos and next thing, you know, covid happens. The world shuts down. And I look on Instagram, it seems like 2023. And I'm like holy shit. I want to recall you had a couple thousand followers and now you're over a quarter of a million. So let's talk about that. And obviously this isn't to glorify the following, but it does present a lot of unique opportunities in which we're going to talk about today. Sure does. So. How did it happen? Was there one video that you were cleaning and snatching a billion pounds? And you're like, holy shit, this is a badass right here.

Speaker 2: 1:51

No, I wouldn't say it was like that at all. It was actually quite gradual and not really intentional. We were talking before we started recording. It was never my goal to have a large following and it was never something I really cared about, nor is it something I care about now. Like, that's just a number. I was talking to people recently about the same topic and I'm like having a lot of followers on Instagram is like having a lot of monopoly money, right, it doesn't really mean anything unless you do something good with it. And it's just a number.

Speaker 2: 2:17

So how it all started, I guess, was during COVID, when I, at the time I was, most of my training was kettlebell centric, and it has since changed and now I'm competing in Olympic weightlifting, but at the time it was very kettlebell centric and so I was doing a lot of kettlebell workouts, which became very popular during COVID because, when everybody was stuck at home and they couldn't go to their gym, a lot of people got into kettlebell training and it was something that could be done from anywhere home, outside, wherever.

Speaker 2: 2:42

So I just started posting a lot of kettlebell complexes and different kettlebell instructional videos and it kind of caught on and so I started to grow the following because people were engaging with it and liking it and saving it and sharing it and that sort of thing, getting a lot of questions about it.

Speaker 2: 2:55

And so just kind of grew from there is starting out mostly kettlebells, and then in 2021, I got really heavy into Olympic weightlifting after I moved to Texas and kind of shifted my focus in terms of my athletic career but also in the content I was posting and to me Instagram. I've always used Instagram and the reason I even started in the first place was very much as like a training diary. You know, people keep it and I still to this day, keep a pen and paper training log of every one of my weightlifting sessions. But it was just a way for me to document the progress I was making, so I could look back at my movements, look back at the weights I was lifting and what I was doing and just really a visual catalog of all of my training sessions. And then it just kind of grew from there as a way that people really were bought into it and enjoying the journey and following me and asking lots of great questions. And now here we are in 2024 and 200,000 followers later.

Speaker 1: 3:42

We were a manager overseeing trainers at Equinox, I would assume, but correct me if I'm wrong.

Speaker 2: 3:51

You had one stream of revenue for being an employee at Equinox. Is that correct? Yep, I guess too, because I had my salary as a manager and then I also got paid for my training sessions that I was servicing.

Speaker 1: 3:58

And I feel like that's what's so neat about this conversation we haven't had before is most trainers will hit that fork, and your fork was. It was forced because of COVID and I know that Equinox was at one of the, I believe, one of the big boxes that I'm aware of. They paid their trainers for maybe a month or two and then everyone got furloughed and then you were given this like kind of kicking the ass, like you got to do something. It's time to show up, because who knows how long this is going to last. And the next thing you know, you're taking this awesome opportunity and you're moving out to Texas and now you have numerous streams of revenue and you're getting bombarded with a bunch of awesome free stuff and it's just such a cool transition where, if you had that victim mentality, oh, this sucks for me. For me, you took this as an opportunity to really make something of yourself and now you are truly doing what you're most passionate about.

Speaker 2: 4:48

Yeah, definitely. I think COVID was really, like you said, a fork for a lot of people, and people generally went one of two ways they were the victim, they had the woe is me mentality. They wanted the handouts, they wanted the handouts and the other people were like I'm not going to accept this circumstance. I'm going to go make something of myself, I'm going to start my business, I'm going to create a product, I'm going to go online and figure it out, start something completely new and different. And so that I obviously took the latter path and I'm just not the type of person to wait around for something to happen to me. I want to go make things happen for myself, and that's what I did.

Speaker 2: 5:24

I started my business and really never looked back. I've pivoted quite a few times and kind of figured out along the way who it is I really want to serve and who I want to help, but I never, ever, looked back when it came time to make that decision of what's next. And it's just one foot in front of the other every single day. It's a conscious decision.

Speaker 1: 5:41

The irony is they say you grab the bull by the horns, but you literally grab the kettlebell by the horns and now look at you. I take a look at your page and I see you doing all these awesome feats of strength, but, as you've said, that's just a small little nugget of what you're trying to accomplish, and so you're doing a lot of tactile stuff with the community out there, and so why don't you talk to us a little bit more about how that presented itself and why that's so passionate for you?

Speaker 2: 6:04

Sure. So yeah, I guess it's kind of two different things. My feats of strength that you're referring to is my athletic career and that's really the one thing I do in my life. That's for me, that's my quote, unquote hobby. My fun is training for weight lifting and competing, and the rest of my time that I'm not lifting weights and working on my athletic endeavors is my business related activities. And so what you're I think you're referring to is getting more into the tactical athlete space.

Speaker 2: 6:29

So tactical athletes, kind of the umbrella term that we refer to people in uniform, so military, law enforcement, firefighters, rescue professionals, et cetera, and it wasn't always clear to me that that's who I wanted to be working with. I always knew I wanted to be in the fitness industry and helping people get stronger, move better, get out of pain, feel better, improve their health, short-term and long-term. That's just always been my biggest passion professionally and something that's very near and dear and important to me. But over the last I'd say two, coming up on two years it was it started to become really clear to me what I wanted to do with that and who I wanted to help. And so the reason I'm so passionate about this is my husband's been in the Marine Corps for just over 19 years and he has been deployed a couple of times, and when he was in Iraq in 2007, he got hit by an IED improvised explosive device. So he ended up with significant injury and damage down his left side and including brain injury. And so in 2022, he ended up with kind of all the culmination of that blast just all the 15 years later, kind of all came to fruition and he started having pain, weakness, numbness, tingling and eventually very fast and significant atrophy down his whole left side, his whole arm, and ended up very shortly after that having a disc replaced in his spine. As a result of that, there was so much compression, it was affecting the nerve, and so he had his disc replaced.

Speaker 2: 7:51

And then a few weeks after that, he went through brain treatment here in a neurology clinic just outside of Dallas. And so while he was going through brain treatment, it's a two-week intensive program that just treats the brain. It's not prescription drugs, it's not any kind of typical Western medicine. It's very much like addressing root cause. So they're doing all these different types of brain therapy and while he was going through the program, he was talking to the doctors about if they have any kind of physical component to the program. Because the brain and the body are so closely related, especially when we're trying to heal, especially when we're talking about people who have put their bodies through so much, it only made sense to him and to us, as we were talking about it, to have some sort of component to that program that addresses physical movement and functional movement patterns and strength and mobility and balance and all these things that will help somebody clearly heal from brain injury and get back to living the normal life that they want. And so fast forward.

Speaker 2: 8:42

Two months after that, I became part of that program. We became part of that program through our business. So up until that point, I was mostly helping general population. The business that I started when I left Equinox is really just out of necessity and helping people and moving everything online and creating a scalable product that people from anywhere in the world could utilize with whatever equipment they had. We grew it over the last couple of years, but then in 2022, we really started to focus in on this brain treatment and we also started our own nonprofit to fund that portion of the treatment, because there are several other nonprofits that are funding the brain treatment side, but there wasn't anything in existence for the physical movement component that we wanted to add to the program. So now we have our own nonprofit.

Speaker 2: 9:24

We're funding that part of the program which, of the 10 days that the veterans are in treatment, there's five days that they're in the gym with me and my colleague, that we kind of alternate days, and so we're working with them for two hours on everything I mentioned before functional movement, balance, coordination, stability, mobility and just helping them restore that functional movement capability that many of them have lost following brain injury and or years of being sedentary because of the physical pain and or the loss of purpose and the loss of hope because of their injuries.

Speaker 2: 9:52

So it's been a really incredible experience to work with. Now we're over 100 veterans that we've served and counting every week, usually every two weeks, there's a new group that come in. You're usually three or four of them, and so that kind of sparked my passion for realizing how big of a problem this really is, how many veterans out there are struggling with their brain health, their mental health, their physical health, and how many people are out there that actually really want to help and address the problem. And unfortunately the VA is not providing great care for our veterans, and so I just got introduced to this whole network of people who actually do want to help and solve this problem. That is vast and massive and going to be a big endeavor to solve, but it's a battle, I believe, that's worth fighting, and so that really sparked my interest in helping our men and women in uniform who are currently serving or have served, and now I'm doing a lot more work in that space with law enforcement, firefighters and other military units.

Speaker 1: 10:46

Fucking love that, because, going back to that victim mentality, it'd be so easy to. I hear a lot of people the VA sucks, the VA this, and it's like, okay, well, what can we do about it? And the fact that you took that initiative and you're like, all right, let's start up a nonprofit, and so what's the name of it?

Speaker 2: 11:00

Semper Stronger Foundation. Love it. And how'd you come up with that name? So the Semper comes from Semper Fidelis, which is the motto of the Marine Corps means always faithful. So we took the Semper from Semper Fidelis and we took Stronger from, obviously, strength being a huge passion of mine and my husband's and kind of the thread that ties together our relationship as both husband and wife and now business partners, and so we took Semper and Stronger. Put them together. The name of our business is Semper Stronger. That's the online platform that we started in 2020. And then, in 2023, we started the nonprofit side, which is funding the brain treatment and other opportunities for veterans and first responders to heal and improve their health through physical movement.

Speaker 1: 11:39

So this is such an important episode for those that are listening to constantly come back to, because a common thread that I'll hear in the fitness space is it's a saturated market, it's so hard to make it and it's not fair. You took an opportunity and you said I'm going to allow myself to do the things that I'm great at and I get to help people do it, because that's why we get into this right Help people. In your background you have a strength coach and you don't put in your bio that I have my national CPT or all these irrelevant certifications. You're a great trainer, great coach, leader, mentor, entrepreneur, and you're showcasing that with your actions. So that's really, really cool, and I'm sure that, being an entrepreneur, you don't get a lot of people patting you on the back saying you're doing big things, but you are. That's pretty awesome way to go.

Speaker 2: 12:28

Thank you. And to your other point, I think that people, like you said, have that mentality. It's very saturated and, yeah, absolutely, there's a ton of fitness companies out there and everyone's got their own unique angle. But there's room for all of us to win, because the reality is, the health of this country is very poor and people need us, and people will always need strength conditioning professionals, health and fitness professionals, personal trainers. However you want to word it, there's room for all of us to be successful. You just have to figure out what your niche is, what your target audience clientele, athlete is, and then how you want to go about helping them. And then just don't stop.

Speaker 1: 13:07

And this isn't like a paid ad by any means, but you work with some pretty cool brands and I wanted to chat about that because, with what you're capable of saying, I thought I was pretty fancy because I got a little ice tube thing that they sent to me and it was like 1500 bucks, but then I had to put all this ice in there and a fucker was expensive to maintain. It was like 60 bucks every time I wanted to do it. So I don't use it anymore. But you got some pretty fancy little things that you're associated with, so do you think you can talk a little bit about those products?

Speaker 2: 13:35

Sure. So, like you said, I have quite a few brand partnerships that have happened organically, either through referrals or just through outreach or people I've just known for a long time. I'm very adamant when it comes to brand partnerships that I will only promote, partner with, post about brands whose products I use regularly and truly believe in and would recommend for other people to use, because you couldn't pay me enough money to say I use a product that I don't actually use. I think people see right through that and I think that being able to speak organically from experience about products that I use regularly is just going to help everybody win. So anything I post about, you can trust that They've grown a ton as well. I think they have phenomenal high quality supplements. They use really good ingredients and nothing artificial and just Jocko himself. He is his own brand and I love everything he stands for. So Jocko Fuel my cold plunge is a blue cube. I've been working with them since 2022. And I firmly believe in cold plunging and all the mental and physical benefits that come with that. Especially being an athlete that lifts heavyweights five-ish days a week, that cold plunge is very, very beneficial for me.

Speaker 2: 14:56

I also have a sauna and I work with the Hotbox Sauna. They're a very unique sauna. It's like a one person. They make a one person and a two person. You kind of like get down into it and then slide the lid closed over. It's different than like your bigger barrel type saunas, but I love it. I'm in that thing probably six days a week.

Speaker 2: 15:13

And I work with also Dream Recovery, my friend Todd. He started this company, I think just over a year ago, 2023. They make what they call sleep performance products and I am big on sleep, as you can probably see, there's kind of a wellness, sleep recovery theme to everything that I'm talking about here, because I believe so much in the power of recovery as much as training. And so Dream Recovery, they make mouth tape, eye masks, pillowcases and they're coming out soon with the nasal strips, so pretty much anything and everything you need to maximize your sleep quality and quantity for a good night's rest. So those are the main brands that I work with. And then I have some kind of shorter term partnerships through the Grid League, which I just joined, and so they have some Grid League sponsors that I'm also working with for some content creation and stuff. But those are my main ones.

Speaker 1: 16:02

Do people get a discount code? If they were to buy from one of those, what could they use?

Speaker 2: 16:13

Yeah. So it depends on the brand, but usually it's all in my on my Instagram bio, but usually Rouse or Rouse in the number of percentage discounts. So for Jocko Fuel, it's Rouse 10. For Dream Recovery, it's just Rouse. For Blue Cube, I just I put them in touch with with them directly. If people are looking for a Blue Cube, they don't really have a discount code for that. And then for Hotbox, for the sauna, we have a charitable partnership in that if people use our code, they get 5% off and then that 5% gets donated to our nonprofit. So the code for that is Semper Stronger.

Speaker 1: 16:38

That's awesome. I love that. So again, everything's an opportunity and you can look at the whole social media space and say I don't want to do this, it's stupid, blah, blah, blah. But you said earlier one of the things that maybe even had that mentality where it's like, ah, social media, who gives a shit? But you'll look in your DMs and you'll see some hey, you know what you motivated me to show up today, and so that's like kind of keeps you moving, along with the social aspects.

Speaker 2: 17:01

Absolutely, and don't get me wrong there are days when I want to throw it all away and just go off the grid and not have to deal with creating videos and answering messages and everything. But then, like you said, I zoom out, realize I've probably helped somebody add years to their life. I help them get out of pain, I help them improve their ability to move and get on the ground so they can play with their kids or grandkids. Those things are priceless, and getting messages like that reminds me why I do it and the responsibility that I have as somebody who's putting out information and inspiration and education online. I think that there's a big weight to that, and so I don't take it lightly and I really do value the impact I've been able to have on people's lives people I've never met before and probably never will meet.

Speaker 1: 17:45

That's pretty crazy. Yeah, it's so powerful and I'll give with our recent partnership of Lifetime. That's when we originally met. You were at Equinox and I'm always trying to get our certification out there. But it just kicks me in the ass when I go to a seminar and someone says, oh, I came across you because you helped me pass this other certification. So what that does to me it's like fuck man, if I would have put three other pieces of content out there, this class would have been three times bigger, and so I use that as motivation for it. It's like, hey, I can be a victim today. I can sit down and say I'll do it tomorrow, or I know that I'm going to reach X amount of people and I wouldn't have the opportunity to help those individuals if it wasn't for that action.

Speaker 1: 18:24

Exactly, what would be your pieces of advice for trainers who detest social media? We had Andrew Coates in over the week. He did a seminar and I love hearing the pieces of advice for those that have grown it. But again, you were at like 3,000 and now you're in the 200s, and so for those that are thinking, oh, I couldn't do that. She has way too many followers. You were once in their shoes. So what's the blueprint for Rebecca giving that advice to?

Speaker 2: 18:53

I think, depending on who you ask, you're going to get a different answer, but my best advice is to just be authentic, because you can't go wrong when you are yourself. And one of my favorite compliments to receive is when people that I've met first online and corresponded with via Instagram or whatever, and then I meet them in person and they tell me that I'm exactly the way that I portray myself online is how I am in person, because there's a lot of people that are not that way and they're one person online and there's somebody else in person, and that's really discouraging, especially when it's someone you thought you looked up to and so just be yourself and also, at the same time, recognize that you, being yourself, you're not going to be for everybody, and that is okay. And for a long time I was trying to please everybody and I would get so upset if somebody would leave a negative comment or be hateful, and the reality is there's always going to be those people out there keyboard warriors and being online and so much of life happening in the virtual world now has created this environment where people just have no filter and they'll say things online in the comments or in the messages that they would never say to someone's face, and I think that's unfortunate. But it also is an opportunity for us on the other end of that to recognize that that one person or that one comment does not define us and, like I said before, we're not going to be for everybody and that's okay. So the more you realize who you're not for and who's not for you, the more you can get closer to realizing who you are for.

Speaker 2: 20:18

And when you find those people and you stand for something and you put your stake in the ground and say this is what I stand for, this is what I believe in, this is what I'm going to talk about on this platform. You're going to find your people. You're going to push away the people that are not for you, and that's a good thing. So we'll just get rid of them and focus on the people that do want to hear your message, that do want to buy your product, that do want to support your journey, that do want to donate to your nonprofit. Whatever it is that you're trying to do. Find those people and speak to them and forget the rest.

Speaker 1: 20:49

Do you ignore the negativity and the toxicity or do you respond?

Speaker 2: 20:54

Depends on the comment. I think the most common hateful comment or negative comment that I get is people accusing me of using steroids which used to bother me and it would ruffle my feathers and I would be all down about it. And now I just laugh at it because it doesn't matter how many times I tell people or post the results of my drug test because I compete in a drug tested sport or any, it doesn't matter. These people are never going to think any other way and so I usually just delete those or I don't engage. But it really depends on the context. I say for the most part I just don't give them the time of day every now and then I will engage if it's something that seems worth engaging in or if I can. I really think I can change someone's mind or educate them.

Speaker 1: 21:34

That's impressive and very humbling of you, because I would be like fuck you, limp dick 12. You don't know what the hell you're talking about. I can do 40 pull-ups, but that's pretty. I learned from Andrew that you can restrict people so you don't block them. Restricting means they can just comment into the wind and no one ever sees it. Oh, I did not know that. I learned something new today. Yeah, so if someone's you know they say like a mean comment, you can just restrict them and they'll still stay there and they can still follow you, but then they can't comment or they will comment but no one gets to see it. That's pretty cool.

Speaker 2: 22:06

That is good to know. I usually just block them, but now I might do that, and it's nine times out of 10, they're not following me anyway. I probably just came up on their explore page or their algorithm, or someone shared it, something that I posted, and then they saw it and felt the need to express their opinion, because everybody has an opinion these days about everything. So usually I just block them.

Speaker 1: 22:24

That's awesome. I wanted to keep this short and sweet. Let people know that you are, as we call it, show up a hunkette, because you're kicking ass and doing big things. Where can people find you on social media?

Speaker 2: 22:41

Instagram is the main platform that I use. I'm slowly making my way over to YouTube as well, but for right now, instagram at Rebecca Rouse and my website is SemperStrongercom, which is where I have all my online programs and one-on-one coaching and such.

Speaker 1: 22:50

We'll be out in Dallas at the Mansfield Lifetime at the end of August, the 30th and 31st. I would say maybe we could get a workout in, but you'd absolutely destroy me, so I may just have to drink.

Speaker 2: 23:02

I actually have a competition that weekend anyway.

Speaker 1: 23:09

Okay. Well, make sure, if you're listening to this, everyone, send her a message, let her know that she's motivating you, or just speak to her, as this podcast did to you. So thank you for showing up today and we'll be chatting soon.