Levi Jaeckel - Unlocking Athletic Potential

Levi Jaeckel grew up always feeling a step behind when it came to the latest advancements in technology and medicine. Despite this, his journey took a remarkable turn when he enrolled at the University of New Mexico. There, he encountered a formal training program through the university's athletic strength coaches, which profoundly influenced him. This experience sparked his interest in strength and conditioning, steering him towards a path in exercise science. Levi transformed his initial introduction into a professional pursuit, embedding himself into the world of fitness and athletic training.

Discover Levi's journey from small-town Iowa to founding Perform 24, his experience with elite training at EXOS, and his mission to bring physical fitness for broader life success to his community. Learn about the importance of personalized fitness programs, the significance of client participation, and the power of detailed planning in achieving health and fitness goals.

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Takeaways

1. Customized fitness Programming
2. Evaluate physical abilities through mini training phases
3. Personal effort in exercise and movement is paramount

Connect with Levi Jaeckel:

Website: https://www.perform24tampa.com/
Youtube | Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn

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Dr. Trip Goolsby & LeNae Goolsby are the co-founders of the Infinite Health Integrative Medicine Center, and are also the co-authors of the book “Think and Live Longer”.

Transcript

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Welcome to Eurofinite Health. Are you getting older? Are you feeling it? How would you like to do that in reverse? We're your host Doctor Tripp. And Lanae. We've run an integrated medicine practice for 13 years. Together, we have 60 years of combined experience helping clients. We've helped tens of thousands achieve success in health and live longer, happier lives. In this show, we'll cover peer reviewed and evidence based integrative approaches to creating the health you've always wanted. We also share professional experience we see in the field every day. So if you're ready to feel, look, and live your best life, you're in the right place. Welcome to Eurofina Health podcast. What's going on, Tripp? Hey, Lene. Hope you have a good week. Had a great week. It's workday. And Lucky is a silky terrorist, So we brought him, so you might hear listening, you might hear him in the background. So there's a dog here. I have a joke. No. I know. You didn't see it coming. No. I didn't see it coming there. How does a computer get drunk? Don't spend too much time, Tripp. Okay. Okay. Go ahead. Tell me. It takes screenshots. That was cute. Listener, I got pulled over. Tripp's been making me drive to work and back so that he can do Duolingo. He's obsessed. It's a problem. So he made me drive, and I was getting off the onto the interstate. So getting off the exit, and there were stupid slow people in front of me. And so I really wanted to get around them, and so I pulled out to speed up to get around them. And then when I looked in my rearview mirror, it felt like that the people coming from behind me were, like, really screaming. And so in my mind, I was like, I really gotta ramp it up and get around these people so that I can get out of the way. I'm gonna get run over, and I'll be darned if one of those people running up behind me. I thought it was a cop. I got pulled over by a cop in an unmarked car. It was a beautiful blue Dodge, and when the lights went on, it was just so pretty. But I got pulled over. I was going 86 in a 70. And he's, is there a reason why you're speeding? And I'm like, I'm just trying to get with the flow of traffic. And he laughed. And then so he gets my information, and we're standing on this bridge. It's windy. It's loud. It's scary. I told Tripp to tell the kids I love them if I died. And so he comes back, and I was like, actually, I was trying to get out of the way of cars coming up on me. And he's, yeah. No. You flew by me. You passed me. And I was like, oh, oops. So, anyway, I've got a ticket sitting on my desk, and I'm scared to find out how much it is. And that was the highlight of my week. But the next highlight is this guest that we're about to bring on. I think you're gonna really enjoy it. His name is Levi Jake Jackel, and he is coming to us out of Tampa, Florida. He started perform 24 to help people use their physical routines as a foundation for success in all areas of life. And after working with some of the best professional athletes in the country at EXOS, e XOS, Sports Performance Training Facility in Dallas, Texas. He was recruited by Tampa's top strength coach to work with his team at their facility. Today, Levi has built a community at perform 24 that embraces fitness as a gateway to a more balanced lifestyle. His team of coaches specializes in everything from weight lifting to weight loss, and we're really excited to have him on today. Alright, Levi. Thank you so much for joining us today. Yeah. Thank you guys for having me. Are you coming out of you're in Tampa? We're in Tampa. Yep. Nice. My daughter lives in Saint Petersburg. Oh, it's just yeah. No. That's great. Yeah. Saint Pete is great. That's a great place to live. Tampa's a great place to live too, but there's a lot going on at Saint Pete too. Yeah. Yeah. It's fun. I want to see have you share with the listeners about how you came to be doing what you're doing with Perform 24 and what inspired and motivated that life choice. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. So let's see. So we let's see. We launched in 2014. So this will be the summer late summer fall will be year 10 for us, which is pretty crazy. Awesome. Yep. Yeah. It is it's pretty crazy actually thinking about that in that context. But, yeah, prior to that, I was an athlete kinda growing up. I went to the University of New Mexico to pursue athletics. And going into that scene I'm from, like, a really small town in Farmtown, Iowa. Just Oh, wow. Out in the middle of, yeah, out in the middle of nowhere. No exposure to any cutting edge anything other than maybe agriculture. We're the the last to know yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, we were the last to know everything, whether it was technology or medicine or anything like that. But ended up going to school at the University of New Mexico and being I got introduced to a formal training program for my first time there with the strength coaches, with the athletic program there. And so that kinda introduced me to the world of strength and conditioning. It influenced my education path as well. So ended up pursuing exercise science in school. And then, yeah, following that, I knew that was what I wanted to do. I didn't know how that was gonna look, but career in strength and conditioning is an interesting one. And, ultimately, long story short, I did I went to a an internship right out of school in Dallas with a company. They were going through a rebrand at the time, but they're called EXOS, which they're a really high end elite training facility. A lot of people will consider them the gold standard for human performance, exclusively trained pro athletes there. We did a lot of NFL, MLB, professional golfers, Olympians of all kinds of different sports. And and so right out of the gate, I got the exposure to this, like, really high end cutting edge training methodology and system, and that has ultimately led to what we're doing now. And, yeah, what we're doing now, my roots are obviously in sports performance, and we still do a lot of that. So we still work with professional athletes, but then we work with a lot of local Tampa adults as well. And so we run the gamut. We don't have a population niche at all. We work with all kinds of different people, and we get all kinds of different people in our door that are either chasing some type of goal or trying to fix some type of problem. And so they usually will fall into one of those two camps. And so, yeah, we've worked with a lot of people over the years. We've worked with a lot of people over the long term too. So I think in the medical profession and in the medical side, there's you don't see your patients too frequently. Like, a lot of our clients will go to their doctors, to their medical professionals every few months or something like that. But we're seeing our clients multiple times a week over the course of 6, 7 years. And so we've got this different finger on the pulse on how to change your physical capacities and physical abilities and physical baselines over the long term through those experiences. And so that's what we're doing now. Let me back up. How did you get from Dallas to Tampa? Yeah. That's a good question. So I was recruited out of that program. So that's that's a it's one of the few, like I say, kinda gold standard private sector training operations. And so that opened a door to come work for a coach here in Tampa, and he was another private sector guy that had an extremely impressive book of clients. He was working with the top of the top. And so he brought me in to help him, and that brought me to Tampa. Yeah. And then once it's in it is a nice place to live. So once I got here, you know, I ended up Forget Idaho. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Good. Yeah. We're sticking here. Yeah. He did end up relocating. So he moved his operation a little further south, and I didn't really have much here at the time, but had a few, like, a handful of local people that I had met. And, I decided that I'm gonna keep doing my thing. And, yeah, we started yeah. I was a one man operation for a long time. I went through of course, like, the personal side is obviously a a big part of the story too, but, yeah, I was a single one man show. I was just a, basically, a trainer. I built a a book of business. Did have pro athletes even then, but, again, just working a lot of the a lot of the local adults. And I think one of the one of the big parallels that we draw is that sports performance training, there's, like, an underlying theme of general functionality and general health that has to be applied even to the high level performing and competitive athletes. If those athletes aren't healthy, they're not gonna be competing, and they're not gonna be useful for their team. And in some case, they might not even be making any money. When if they're sidelined with injury, that's a big problem. And when program with that in mind, it is helpful for the pro athletes, but it's also really helpful for just regular people like us. And so that's how we draw that parallel between the sports performance side and the the general local Tampa adult side. But but, yeah, I was a independent contractor at another facility for a year, and then we got our foot in the door on our own space, and we worked that for a long time. Yet got married. So then you're I really have to hustle. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Things change. And so then it's like, alright. Like, I'm a one man show, but I can't be there all the time for that. And so we started hiring a coach, and then we have we had our son in 2018, and that requires more evolution. And then we had another we had a daughter in 2020, and things just changed. And then last summer, my wife left her corporate job. So she was in a corporate job for almost 15 years, and she left that and came on board with us full time. And that has really been an inflection point for us. She's really good at what she does and yeah. Anyway, she's been, like, fuel to the fire, literally, like, gasoline to this whole form 24 thing. So yeah. So, yeah, we're just out here doing it. Yeah. Okay. So I wanna get so you talk a lot about foundations, and that's your starting point for somebody looking to, onboard with you. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. For sure. And I'm sure, again, in the medical field, like, you guys have your own eval system. Right? And you've got your own information gathering process, whatever that process is. And in the training world, those systems are we went through a few iterations of that idea, basically. And what we developed and, again, this actually does draw back to to my wife, Jessica, but she really pushed us to redesign our eval process. And what we built was Foundations. And Foundations is a 4 session eval. So from our side, there's like a it's from our side, and then there's the new client or the new athlete side to foundations as well. But from our side, we built a 4 session. We call it, like like, a mini phase. It's like a mini training phase. It's scripted, but it's scripted in a way that shows us a ton of their physical abilities, limitations, capacities, strengths, weaknesses, all that stuff. And so we take them they think that they're just coming in for a training session, which they are, but underneath the surface, we're really evaluating their movement patterns, their postural tendencies, their muscular function, their conditioning capacity, all of that stuff. And so SAT for the body? Yeah. Exactly. And we're coaching them up the whole time. So it's definitely not like we just let them loose in the weight room and just watch what they do. We're pretty hands on with this. And, yeah, we're just we're taking them through methodically all of the major movement patterns. And, of course, that does include, like, a squat or a hinge and deadlift pattern and upper press and an upper pull and all those things, but it also will evaluate their single leg movements. And so their lunge patterns, their lateral lunge patterns, their rotational patterns. So we throw some some small med ball progressions into that as well. And so we're a lot of mobility movements are programmed into that. Again, the client thinks that, oh, like, this is just a nice hip stretch, but we're actually looking at this. It's like, I don't know. Their hip extension is actually not very good. And so that's a note that we then take and we'll use that note later. But, yeah, the foundations, it's a great step one. They get to feel us out. That's a big part of this too. They've got to enjoy coming to us. If they're if they're gonna get any benefit out of their training, they need to enjoy spending time with us. And it's a it's a good system and it's a good way for them to experience the weight room, experience our systems, experience us as coaches. And then, like I said, from our side, we're, like, really getting a lot of helpful context on where they're at physically. So do you record those foundation sessions? And then as they progress, do you do they see that, and can they, like, evaluate sort of tracking method for improvement? Yeah. So we do some baseline strength testing. Again, it's very passive. They don't necessarily know that, hey. This is your, like, test. Because as soon as we tell them it's a test, it changes what they're gonna do. They're not just gonna move freely. Right now, they become more self conscious, I'm guessing. Yes. Exactly. So, yeah, all of a sudden, they're trying to put out for the test, and that's not really the point. We wanna observe we wanna observe 2 baselines. There are yeah. We do some standard strength testing, some standard mobility and flexibility testing, but it is done under this under the scenes or behind the scenes. Okay. Okay. And so then once somebody goes through the foundation, then you what? They reevaluate, decide if it's gonna be a good fit, and then you tailor. Do you do a more tailored program for them to get them from where they are to where they wanna go? Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So we build everything beyond foundations through custom program. Of course, there are themes that are similar through most of our programming, but everybody's program from then on changes. But, again, there the range of people that we work with is really unique. We work with, like, just for an example, we've got our pretty highly competitive, like, amateur competitive athlete in right now. She's she's in her mid twenties, and she competes in some of the common, like, fitness competitions. And that's definitely not our specialty. Like, those competitions are what we specialize in, but that's what she's going for. And so we're applying some traditional strength and conditioning and athletic performance development to her program. But then we've got another we've got another adult. He's 67 years old. He's he plays tennis 3 times a week. He's travels to surf, and that's what I know. That's what he wants to do, and he's also got, I think, the worst. He he had a a failed shoulder surgery that then led to 3 subsequent shoulder surgeries. Alex. And his right shoulder, which is his serving shoulder, is the worst shoulder we've ever seen. And so, like, those 2 individuals couldn't be further apart from their program design. And so yeah. But that's what we do. And so foundations is tweaked a little bit to the individual as they're going through this. But but then from there, the path that we take is endless. Fascinating. So you really have to have to do research on the fitness competition to, like, tailor that program, and seems like you'd have to Yeah. Yeah. And in that sense, she's pretty highly trained, and we take their previous training history into consideration as well. And so somebody that's got a regular training routine, they know maybe what works and what doesn't work for them already, and so we try to piggyback off of those previous experiences a little bit. Obviously, we've got our own spin on things that maybe we'll circle back to, but, yeah, I don't know. That's, yeah, she's a fun one because it is this is different. I think it's a puzzle. For us, it's we there's a phrase that we use, and you could definitely apply this to the medical field as well. But, like, good training and good medicine is really just problem solving. What's the problem that we have, and what are the pieces that we might be able to spin or manipulate and click into place over here that'll help that person? So the more complicated the puzzle, the, I guess, the more we get enjoyment out of it because it is it's fun. Yeah. I know trip trip really likes the complicated cases as well. Yeah. They're more time consuming, but they're the reward at the end of the day is is worth it always. For sure. Yeah. And I'm sure that the lessons that you learn end up getting applied down the road anyways in a different way, and so it's a worthwhile endeavor. Yeah. I I think when, you know, the using we use, obviously, the physical component to do our optimization program, and and those things are it's probably nowhere near as as comprehensive as what you do. In fact, I'm I'm thinking about how much more detail and how much the our current collaborators differ from maybe your program because it sounds quite comprehensive what you're doing, 4 days evaluation, even though it's under the radar, so to speak, sounds sounds like it's very detailed and then at the end result. As long as the individual has that that end end image in mind, then and you can identify with that image, then going for that, the more information you have, obviously, the better. What we do on top of that, obviously, is we do the the metabolic and hormonal and physical, biological optimization at the same time. I guess the end result we see is sometimes just we'll have people coming in in weird wheelchairs, and you probably have that too from time to time, and we'll end up with the and then in 6 months or or or so, depending on what the challenges are, they'll be ambulatory looking at increasing that to maybe jogging or cycling or other things. And and those are the results that I love seeing. Those and seeing the change in their energy levels and their how it affects them. It's not the level, obviously, of a professional athlete, but the reward going from somebody who, reward going from somebody who can't do much to somebody who can do comparatively phenomenal things is really cool. And that brings up the this other question I had. So you also work with people like that guy with the shoulder damage. So Mhmm. Helping people get past their injury, what does that look like? Yeah. So we get a lot of we we deal with a lot of injuries. I mean, you were talking about your the example that you were given was progressing somebody through a training program with the end in mind. And, yeah, we do we work with a lot of people that are either battling injuries or maybe even we get a lit a lot of referrals from physical therapists, from clients that have completed their PT protocols, but maybe they're still not quite there. So sure they passed the test, but there's still work to be done. And so we get a lot of those clients that find us as well. And, yeah, when we're yeah. I guess when when we're working with those guys, we'll make progress and we'll accomplish the goal and okay. Our tennis player can still play tennis 3 times a week. And is his shoulder function perfect? No. But it's still functional. It doesn't keep him sidelined. It's definitely improving. And it's just yeah. I guess it is keeping him in the game. We've had a lot of success stories like that. We've had we had a a lady that and she was, so she was in her late fifties, but she came to train with us because she knew she was gonna have knee surgery. And so she wanted to build up before the surgery, which was that was a really smart decision. Very proactive thinking on her part. Yeah. Very proactive. So we started training and strengthening her lower body and kinda getting her ready. And then it ended up, you know, come to find out she needed 2 knee surgeries. And, yeah, so she had so she had bilateral knee replacement, simultaneously had them both done. My gosh. I know. Insane. And that's what she wanted to do. That's how she wanted to do it. Alright. So we trained for that, and we built up a margin for her to then go through that big physically stressful process. And and then we started training with her after she was done with her PT protocol again. And so we have those types of stories as well. And, yeah, super rewarding, though. People that are I guess, maybe the one of the differences between the physical training that into the spectrum that we're on in the medical side is that we expect our clients to do the work and make the change. And there's a there's an understanding there that, yeah, we'll build the road map, but you're the one that's gonna have to walk it. Well, in in our practice, that is the same thing. You know, we got the tools, but you gotta put them into play. Mhmm. Yeah. So really getting people to start taking an ownership of their health as well as their physicality. Our initial add not to detract from your program. Our it's a very initial thing that I do with them. So I sit down with them for about an hour and guide them through this process of creating this what we call the successful health image. And that's taking all the parameters that taking all the challenges they have and all the problems that they've identified that they want to get rid of and then actually honing in on what they actually want to create for themselves. And so it gives them that image that they can focus on and that metric they can focus on to make sure that the steps they're taking are achieving the outcome they want. And that's is really before I started doing that, it really wasn't done. And Yeah. And it's the the outcomes have been so phenomenal. Well, you know, when it comes to exercise, I think it's not as hard to convince somebody to do the work because in that scenario, nobody else can do crunches for you Right. Yeah. That's gonna give you a ab. Yes. So and the the paradigm in medicine has has been, oh, you go to see the doctor. There's a problem. He gives you a pill or sends you for a pro a a procedure. Right? And that paradigm is is still in in virtually every patient I see has that it's the same mindset. Oh, can I just take a pill? Yeah. Yeah. Or it's your job to fix me. Yeah. Yeah. I know we have a phrase, and we'll say it every day. It said some somebody will say it whether it's one of our coaches or a client or an athlete or something, but it's the funny thing about the weights is that they don't lift themselves. But you have to do it, and, like, that and it is. That is a very strong theme for us. But it applies when as you guys know, the movement component is on the individual. It's on the client. It's on the patient. The movement side is and, again, we talk about this a lot, is that there's so many different variables in all of our lives. Right? We've got all these different inputs that we're all dealing with. Like, every single person we work with is super busy, and they've got a lot of responsibility going on in their life. And but the only thing that you have full control over is your own movement. It's your own movement habits. And so you don't control all of your work. You don't control your relationships. Like, you don't control your family. There's that's a two way street. You're only half of the equation in in your own household. You don't necessarily you don't have full control over anything other than how you train, when you train, where you train. You can always find a way to move. Right? Exactly. Mhmm. Yep. So, yeah, that's a big one. But yeah. No. It's yeah. We see a bunch of different people in different stages of life, and I think that's what makes what we do interesting day to day. Yeah. Do you offer any virtual training programs or everything's on-site? So everything is on-site for right now, which we're so weird about this, to be honest. We're we haven't dabbled at all in the digital space even to the point where when our clients come in to train with us, we have a physical pen and paper and clipboard program that we take our clients through. Analog over there. Super analog. Exactly. And it there is an element of intentionality there, which when when our clients are physically riding their weights down on their program, I think that does reinforce the dynamic that we're talking about on, like, the self sufficiency side of things. And so the digital side, though, we we've talked a lot about foundations specifically, how we could get foundations out just for people to go through. People could go through foundations on their own, and it it would probably have to be a video series of some kind. But, yeah, we would I would like to do that. We this spring so we just renovated a 98 year old warehouse and then moved into it. Yeah. So we just launched in our new location on June 1st. So we're it's yeah. It's brand new to us. It's definitely not brand new in the grand scheme of things, but it's brand new to us. And that was a huge effort on our side. But now that's behind us, yeah, we're talking about what's the next project that we wanna tackle, and some of these online avenues are in that conversation. Okay. Cool. We'll have to stay tuned on that, see where that goes. Love it. What is, one thing you'd like the listener to know? Oof. Man, that is a great question. I would say the biggest thing is that I'm strangely agnostic on the type of training that you do. I think that there are a lot of really good coaches that get a lot of great results from a a whole bunch of different training methodologies. And so I don't think it matters how you're training quite as much as it just matters that you're training. Find something that you like. If you like it and enjoy it, you're gonna stick with it. And I think that would be that's encouraging. But you don't need to do a specific type of high intensity training or a specific type of group training or a specific type of personal training. It just matters that you're moving regularly, and every once in a while, you challenge yourself. That's cool. I like that. Where can the listener find more about you? Yeah. Let's see. I would say we're pretty active on Instagram. So the perform 24 Instagram page is pretty active. I think that's probably the best place to start because from there, you'll find other digital avenues. Okay. Cool. Listener, I'll have that in the notes somewhere. Levi, thank you so much for taking time and sharing with us. It's really exciting what you're doing over there in Tampa. Yeah. No. It's fun. I appreciate you guys having us, having me. Alright. Well, sir, hope you found this educational informational somewhat entertaining, and until next time. Thanks for subscribing to your Infinite Health. I'm doctor Tripp. And I'm Lanae. Until next time. Feel it, look it, and live it.