Trust The Grind
Trust The Grind explores how creatives, athletes, and business owners discovered their path to a more authentic and meaningful life. Each interview takes a close look into how these leaders overcame obstacles to pursue their calling, manage the daily grind, and make the most out of every day.
Trust The Grind
#4 - Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness
•
Steve Ecker & Alec Martucci
Matt Mooney is the owner and founder of MTB Fitness, a Mountain Bike Fitness Program. Matt started out his journey as a personal trainer. Matt realized there wasn’t mountain biking training for the everyday rider. Everything out was tailored to professional riders.
He put his personal training knowledge to the test and created the MTB Fitness program. The 12-week program has been a massive success and is recommended by the British Heart Foundation. MTB Fitness helps your everyday mountain biker get fitter, faster, and stronger on the bike.
Since the launch, MTB Fitness grown to 300k followers on Facebook, a popular podcast with over 125k downloads, a Facebook group with 26k members, is officially endorsed by the British Heart Foundation. What Matt is most proud of is that MTB Fitness has helped several thousand customers spanning 57 countries, with the training Programmes and Nutrition guide. Matt is on a mission to help as many riders as possible improve their fitness, recovery, nutrition, and mindset so they can enjoy mountain biking even more.
Connect with Matt
https://mtb.fitness/
https://www.facebook.com/mtbfitnessuk/
https://www.instagram.com/mtb.fitness/
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mtb-fitness-mountain-biking-podcast/id1444727778
Support Trust The Grind: https://www.ko-fi.com/trustthegrindco
This podcast is presented by Plan Dope Sh*t. Get 15% off your next order using promo code "TRUSTTHEGRIND" at checkout. Learn more at https://plandopeshit.com/
Thinking about making a podcast yourself? We recommend using Buzzsprout to launch. Sign up using our link and you'll get a $20 Amazon Gift when you sign up. https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1026196
Hosted by Alec Martucci and Steve Ecker
Audio editing by Noa Martucci
Intro (6s):
Trust the grinds presented by plan dope shit. Matt Mooney is an owner founder of MTB fitness, a mountain bike fitness program that started out his journey as a personal trainer.
Intro (46s):
Matt realized that there wasn't mountain biking training for the everyday rider. Everything out there was tailored to the professionals. He put his personal training knowledge to the test and created the MTB fitness program. The 12 week program has been a massive success as recommended by the British heart foundation. And today's episode, we'll discuss how Matt got started, what his program is about and the mindset he has, whether you're a mountain bike rider or not. You'll learn some great things. In this episode.
Intro (1m 18s):
Matt has an amazing energy that is certainly contagious. Let's get into it. Hello everyone. Welcome to trust the grind podcast. My name is Steve and I'm here with my cohost Alec. Today. We have Matt Mooney, who is the owner and founder of MTB fitness welcome mat. Well, first of all, thanks so much for having me on. Thanks for joining us now. It's wicked. It's nice being on the other side, cause I know you've mentioned yourself, but I normally interview people from my podcast who is quite nice being interviewed instead.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (1m 53s):
And I think talking about some of the different things. So at 18 I became a personal trainer, so I was working six days a week, getting to the gym at 7:00 AM in the morning, leaving at eight, nine o'clock at night. So I just completely stopped mountain biking.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (2m 23s):
And I did that for about three years and then I moved to a local gym to me. So in Saddleworth and then as I did that, I was obviously back in the countryside, I kind of got the itch to start riding because whilst I was in the gym, I really enjoyed lifting weights and I enjoyed exercise, but I did always miss the outdoors and just being out in the countryside and out in the fresh air. So I got back into riding myself. So I was lucky enough that my girlfriend bought me a mountain bike for Christmas. She's the keeper forever.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (2m 55s):
And obviously I was in decent shape because I've been trained in weight days a week, but I got out on the bike, started up the climb and I got about quo the way open. I was just absolutely dying. Like I felt sick. My legs were killing. I was gasping for breath. Hell's up with women. And the kind of realized that like I was strong and I was relatively fit in the gym, but I wasn't mountain bike fair and then a very good cardio for the bank. So I just got, I kind of started going down into the rabbit hole of figuring out how to get fit for mountain biking myself.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (3m 26s):
And then as I was kind of going back down the rabbit hole of mountain biking, I was reading a load of mountain bike magazines, watching a lot of mountain by YouTube channels. And I kind of realized that there was no body on a large scale offering advice to mountain bikers on the fitness and the nutrition side of it. There's kind of a couple of smaller individual businesses or individual people that offered training advice for mountain bikers, but they all seem to work with pro mountain bikers and then your everyday mountain biker was kind of an afterthought.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (3m 57s):
So as I was sort of going into it, I realized, well, there's nobody really fulfilling this need in the mountain bike industry. So I sat down in the front room one night, signed up, not so free survey software. That was just saying, I'm thinking of sending out some free daily emails for mountain bikers, which is gonna help you with training nutrition, recovery, that kind of thing. It'd be really helpful to me. If you could fill in this survey right down South of what your biggest struggles are, that kind of thing. If you're interested and just put your email on the end, if you're interested in filling it in. So I put it in about five mountain bike groups thinking if I get 10 responses, that'd be good.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (4m 30s):
Went to sleep, woke up the next day. And the survey had maxed out of a thousand responses within about three hours. And the deeply everybody was saying like, Oh, this sounds amazing. Like I love it. And it's just because there was nobody in the mountain bike industry given really tailored training and nutrition advice, which for a sport that requires a lot fitness and strengths and crazy to me. So yeah, that's how that's, that's the long answer to how I got started.
Steve Ecker (4m 58s):
I mean, I first off love how you found that little niche of a miss in your mountain bike in, and just like finding that like people crave information and also you notice that they were only tailoring it to the pros. Well, there's only a handful of people that are pros. So I'm curious what made you inspire to do the daily emails?
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (5m 16s):
So as a child, I was a child as a T and a teenager. I was a bit of a computer geek. So whilst I was doing my personal training, I still kind of had that itch in the back of my mind that I wanted to do something a little bit online. So fast had to do a bit of research around like marketers and that kind of thing. And this was like way before MTB fitness. And I came across a guy called Ben settle. His business teaches you how to write daily emails and the reason behind the daily email rather than it being once a week email is just because you better send in small bits of information to people on a daily basis rather than one giant email once a week that they don't get to read.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (5m 52s):
And so, as I was kind of learning about that, I actually started up an online weight loss business, which was essentially helping women specifically. So that's when I was about four 1920, probably about 20. The one thing that had worked with that business was sending daily emails. And that's why I want to start it MTV fitness. I kind of talked one of the successful things from the lights LA is kind of my first attempt at an online business if you like and applied it to MTB fitness. So that's why they always kind of have an aim of helping people first and foremost.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (6m 35s):
So they've always got to be kind of relevant in improving people lives on and off the bike. But I just tend to talk about what's on my mind at the time. And so if I've had a client that day that said, I've got a really sore back, I've been sat on a desk all day. What can I do? Am I writing an email about what all that clients to help them, you know, just really run them, examples like that. So it's kind of it's, what's on my mind, what I do personally, what I do with clients, you know, Matt and I were just talking about like one of his, his biggest success stories.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (7m 17s):
And I know one of them out of the many that stuck out to him was, was he had a client of his who was going through cancer treatment. I believe so. So Matt, do you mind diving a little deeper in that and how did this guy come across you and what did he get out of it? Yeah. Cool. So what are the stories that I've kind of told a few times on the Facebook and in my daily emails was I had a one to one client who came to me and he was about 62, something like that. When he came to me and he had cancer and he basically got the bad thing, it started getting poorly.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (7m 48s):
This was before I met him. So he started getting ill. It was starting to feel a bit off, boy, put it off and put it off and put it off before he went to the doctor. And then after about 12 months, he went to the doctor and he was told that the cancer had spread all over his body and the other, I think it was a 5% chance of survival. So it was like my loss. I, you know, it was almost certain he was going to die now, somehow we managed to pull through it and he fully recovered. And then when he came and sat down with me to train with me, and this is self post-cancer, he said that he wants to live for as long as it can possibly live, but also with the best quality of life you can live.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (8m 20s):
So we're saying that it doesn't want to be eight to and alive, but in mobile and not being able to play with his grandkids and things like that. So, yeah, he's just, I still work with him today in person. I worked with him and his wife and his daughter now as well. Why is nutrition a key part of this program? And then I also see you talking about mindset. How do they coincide with just getting out there and riding your bike? You need to be eating right. You need to be fueling yourself for that ride. And you also need to be fueling the recovery as well. So you're obviously breaking down your muscle a lot when you ride in.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (8m 50s):
So in order to build back your muscle to help you build back up, you need to be in the right foods to help you recover. And so it has a ginormous effect on the bike, but then also off the bike as well. So mountain bike is the people too. And you know, they might be riding three times a week, but then the rest of the time, they're probably family guys and girls, so that you've got a lot look after the family, they want to be feeling good. They want to be healthy. They probably want to be slim and in shape, like you want all those things. And nutrition has a huge effect on, on all of those things. So it's, you can't just ride your bike and expect to feel peak fitness and you know, peak health.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (9m 27s):
And I think it affects your mindset as well. Like I'm very conscious of eating healthily through the day and in regular. And just before I came on this podcast, I made sure I had some food before I came on, just because it keeps me focused and keeps my blood sugar levels up so that I can concentrate like mindset. If we're both on and off the bike, if we're talking specifically for mountain biking, like mindset is so important because you need to be mentally strong. You need to have confidence. You need to like believe in yourself and know that if you're going to throw yourself down a trail that you can get to the bottom of it, you need to have this sort of mental resilience to be able to keep pedaling when you're in a 40 mile an hour headwind.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (10m 4s):
And you know, it's raining sideways. I did back in September, me and my best friend did a 24 hour mountain bike ride for charity to raise money for Alzheimer's research UK. And it wasn't fitness that allowed us to do that. Like it was the, both of our strong mindsets. Like it was never a doubt whether we were going to keep going for it. So like, yeah, you know, you get to the eight hour point and you're knackered. Anyway, your fitness has gone beyond that point. It's your mindset that keeps you go in. So man mindset is crucial. You can be as fast as you want and you can be nutritionally, like have a great diet, but if you're not mentally strong, it doesn't matter.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (10m 37s):
Cause you're going to give in as soon as it hurts.
Steve Ecker (10m 39s):
Matt, I'm glad that you brought that story up about the 24 hour bike ride, because I want to ask you about that. I know there's definitely big hurdles in the mindset. How did you trick your mind to keep going?
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (10m 50s):
The Y was huge. That was a massive, massive part of it because we did it to raise money for Alzheimer's research UK. And for me personally, it was my granddad who died from Alzheimer's. So he was somebody who got me into loving the outdoors. And essentially one of the reasons that I do mountain biking today is because from a very young age, he used the same hike in the Hills and it was very outdoors and got me into loving the outdoors. So it was to raise money for a charity in his memory. So I had a massive wise, so there was, I had to do it and it matter how much it hurt.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (11m 21s):
And then alongside the side of that as well, we had a tent and every time we got back to the tent, there was various different people, whether it was my girlfriend or my family or my friends, family, or different people there. So you kind of have to keep going because every time you came back, there was somebody there waiting for you. So you had to get back up and then go, go again. You asked about like one of the hardest points when we got exhausted. And the nighttime was probably one of the hardest bits because it just rained constantly. Like it was battering with wind, it was raining. And we at the tent, we kept going back to, and I remember at about two, am you dive in 10 and just have a quick bit of food in our cereal bar, aisle, whatever.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (11m 57s):
And you just did not want to get out of the 10 ball as soon as you are out of the 10 and you'd written for a minute or two, then the goal was just to get back to the tent and circle back. So one of the big things that helped us bowls was, I mean, mini goals and just aiming to do another lap. And then you get back to the tent, your ally, right. I'm out. So now he's right. Just keep paddling until you get back to the tent and then you'd be like, right. Okay. Right. Let's just do one more. And we just did it one at a time. And I think throughout it as well, we also set kind of slightly longer term goals. So throughout the day, my aim was to get to about 6:00 PM when my girlfriend was coming to visit.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (12m 30s):
And then from 6:00 PM, my aim was to get to when it went dark. And then when it got dark, my aim was to get the midnight and then for midnight man was to get to sunrise. So, you know, you just kept having those like mini goals, every three or four hours
Steve Ecker (12m 42s):
Just bite-size goals and make it not so overwhelming. I think that can be applied to anything, whatever you're starting up. It's like, if you just take that first step and get to the gym, it doesn't matter how long you work out for you got there. I imagine I feel like there's an easy question. That was definitely your toughest ride.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (12m 59s):
Yeah, I agree. Yeah. 100%. I never got to the point where I was like gasping for air. I'll get an up to max heart rate, but the 24 hour ride was kind of just constant pain. What have you noticed that maybe through mountain biking, since you, you know, finished passion as you are, what have you learned at least that has translated into your personal life? And it has a massive effect. So it teaches you to kind of relax and calm down. So like when I go out the, my, what stress in me, so like recently I've gone through my granddad dying and then more recently my granddad from cancer.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (13m 31s):
So last September, she got diagnosed with cancer and sadly on new year's Eve, she passed away. So mountain biking was one of the things that got me through that. So from September to two, a passing away, but then also helped me kind of get over it as well, because I find that when I'm out and about you can your mind just kind of drifts and you can let all the emotions go. And that's like a massive coping mechanism for me. I think like getting out on the bike, I find if I don't ride my bike, I don't handle the stresses and the worries of day to day life and things like that.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (14m 3s):
So that's one thing that's crossed over and I think, and Jordan's as well would be one like an, I mean from day to day life. So obviously when you go on a ride and it starts to hurt, but you've got another two hours left to the right. You can have, you just get used to soaking up the pain and cracking on. And that's kind of the same when you work in as well. And just one more that I think is huge, is self confidence and having the belief in myself and kind of overcoming fear. So when I got back into mountain bike in this dive, there's some trails I can think of that used to look completely unrideable and absolutely terrifying.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (14m 37s):
Like there were steep and they've got really tight, tight turns and big drops on them and things. And like, they used to be terrifying, but now I can ride them kind of comfortably. And the first time I do them, you know, you'd have that lump in your throat and you'd be really, and not wanting to drop into the descendant, but you've kind of overcome that and do it. And then you get to the bottom and you're alive. And that kind of teaches you that, Oh, you know what? Like, even though you're scared, you can do something. And I think that crosses over to day to day life. So if I'm a bit nervous to come and do this interview, for example, you, you know that five minutes before you get in butterflies in your stomach, you're getting a bit nervous.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (15m 13s):
That's just like on the mountain bike, I know about this drop into a descent and this the same thing, there's a crossover. So I talk about it on my Facebook page a lot, but I think mountainbiking affects your personal life in a, in a huge way. That's just three examples that pop to mind, but I'm sure if I thought for a while, the bit hundreds,
Steve Ecker (15m 30s):
I love all three of those examples. And also I just like, I liked how you touched about how mind biking is an escape and the reason why it's a escape. Because if you're about to drop down on a terrifying trail, you can't be thinking about like what email you have to respond to it. No you're fully engaged in that moment to make sure that you don't eat shit or like something goes wrong. I think we can all agree.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (15m 50s):
And like, you know, the theme within short term goals at least can, can be sort of like patients, you know what I mean? Being patient with yourself, believing in yourself, but staying consistent. And again, that translates to any around and outside mountain biking. But man, like, have you seen your own clients kind of have trouble being consistent, sticking to the routine and maybe want results faster than it's getting, but like, you know what I mean? Cause cause patients a key component of it, the truth is anything, anything at all in life takes ages to achieve it.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (16m 23s):
You know, again, this podcast to a huge audience takes time. Like growing a business takes time probably far longer than, you know, you think it will when it starts and losing way or get an in shape or getting fit on the mountain bike or anything at all takes time. And I think people need to reshape that mindset and yeah, you want to be at the end goal, but that's where it comes back to chunking it down, to chunking it down to short term goals, because then you feel like you're achieving something and let's say as well, also focusing on the process on a daily basis rather than focusing on the outcome.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (16m 57s):
And I think a lot of people will get obsessed with the goal, but not obsessed with doing the small things that you need to do every day. And that applies to anything from buying a house, to losing weight, again, fit on the bike to, to every aspect of your life. You need, people need to go obsessed with the things that you're doing every day, the old build up to that longterm goal while still keeping a bit of an eye on the prize to get you motivated. So it sounds like between patients and commitment, you can't do one or the other without self discipline.
Alec Martucci (17m 29s):
How do, how do you train? I mean, where do you find self-discipline and mountain biking? Is that something that that's hard to kind of get out of people or is that, you know what I mean? Is that, how, how does that translate in mountain biking? I think probably one thing that people think they're not disciplined with is they try to take on everything at once and they forget that you've just got to like gradually stack on all the different, good habits in place. And then that allows you to then become discipline because the habits your body wants to work of habits.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (18m 2s):
So if you can do something for 90 days, suddenly it's much easier to do it rather than not.
Steve Ecker (18m 7s):
From what you're saying, discipline gets built off by the processes that you make. You know, since it's like you said, you can tackle everything, but if you just focus on, let's say just having that good breakfast, that's one small thing, but it's going to compound over time where you don't even think about it, like making the bed. That's, that's a habit that probably two years ago I was like, I'm going to do this. I was probably like one out of three days now. I don't even think about it. It's automatic. You know, you just tackle one habit at a time and not think of like, Oh, I got to run this business. I got to do this.
Steve Ecker (18m 37s):
I gotta be healthy. I got to have an awesome relationship. It's like, Oh, just to tell you like bite size and just like tackle it little by little and all compound over time, get 1% better every day.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (18m 48s):
Yeah, absolutely. And then when you do that, you then don't have to rely on willpower. Like if you rely on willpower, you're not going to do it, but you just said it yourself with making the bed. It doesn't require any willpower at all anymore to make the bed.
Steve Ecker (19m 1s):
Yeah. And also I think motivation, as you said, is like temporarily there's days that I don't want to work out, I'm in a bad mood, but when ever I do, I feel so much better and I'm happy I did it. And I think that kind of just goes into the discipline and process and I'm sure, I don't know. I feel like you were pretty excited to go mountain biking.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (19m 19s):
Yeah. There's some days I don't want to. And that's where discipline comes in, where you say right, I'm going to go anyway. I thing, one thing that you can do to kind of help, you're just taking the mountain bike example is set things in place that help you go out. So you might meet someone else, for example. So you can kind of put safeguards in place so that you don't have to rely on discipline. You don't have to rely on willpower because you've committed yourself separately. If I can just shift gears a bit here, I actually want to ask you, you know, you mentioned the incorporation of, of interval training.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (19m 51s):
So, and I think that's something again, you know, we've, we've interviewed everyone from Irish Olympian, Shane Ryan. So has a Chi Trey hand, NFL prospect. And you know, the three of you, I think could all benefit from each other in regards to everyone's different style of training, right? So at least for interval training, what sticks out to you that you think like, isn't, isn't really just a, isn't really just geared to a mountain bike and it's like, you know, like this sort of exercise or program or this part of interval training, it's really something that anyone can benefit from if they're in a gym in Arizona or in a gym in England and their, and their mountain bikers, or maybe just considering getting into it.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (20m 27s):
Yeah. I think interval training is something that will benefit everybody. Like before I up MTB fitness, I was purely training just your everyday person and they'd have very different goals. So might be runners. Some of be, you know, just a grandfather. He wants to get fit to play with the kids and interval training, take him right back to its basics is just where you push yourself hard for certain amount of time. You know, usually 20 seconds to two minutes, let's just say for argument's sake. And then you rest for a period of time, you know, a minute or two. So you're pushing yourself way harder than you would normally.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (20m 58s):
And then you're easing off for a little bit and pushing yourself way harder. So as an example, you might sprint as hard as you can for 30 seconds on a rowing machine, then go nice and steady for 90 seconds. Then sprint as hard as you can for 30 seconds, then go nuts that if a 90 seconds and in general, that will help people improve the fitness more and have a better workout in a much shorter space of time because you just end up working much harder whilst you're doing that. And what will happen is if let's say the Roy machine example, if you would usually push yourself this heart for this length of time, what you do with interval training is you push yourself to here and then you come back down again and you push yourself to here and then back down and higher and back down again.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (21m 38s):
And what that does is it pushes this kind of level that you're comfortable with over time. It pushes it up because your body gets used to train in those higher intensities. And so training will benefit. Everybody you'll have a bad workout in a short space of time and it will improve your fitness as well. Beginners, at least it looks like it was the British heart foundation who really thinks that this is something that people who are just getting into mountain biking with heart conditions, maybe two in particular can benefit from. So how do you slowly integrate someone in that regard and to your program?
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (22m 12s):
Yeah, so specifically for my 12 week training program. So I designed that to help every mountain biker, whether you're a complete novice or a complete expert. And the reason for that is because you can just dial it up or dial it down based on your fitness. I don't tell you how much or how little you should ride. So people do three resistance training sessions a week and two interval sessions a week. And then on top of that, they can do the mountain bike rider. So, you know, there's a big scope in that people can ride seven days a week. You feel like for 50 miles a day or they can ride once a week.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (22m 42s):
So you can, you can adjust it to suit you. I like how your approach with training programs like, Hey, wherever you are, it's cool. I got a lot of people get obsessed with other people's opinions and what other people think of them and I'm not looking stupid and they just need to suck that right off and focus on themselves. Like the majority of other people, as self-conscious, as you are and the not looking at you, thinking, you look stupid, they're thinking about themselves thinking, Oh my God, I look stupid. And everybody's doing the same worrying about what everyone else thinks.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (23m 12s):
Whereas in reality, nobody's looking at anybody saying, now look stupid. And the fraction of a person who would call somebody a name or say they look stupid, or you know, anything like that. There's worrying people like that person is just more insecure than everybody else. So just focus on yourself and don't worry what other people think. If you've got a good opinion of yourself and your husband or wife or partner. So if has a good opinion of you, that's the opinion that matters nobody else. And I think if you're constantly trying to be better than someone else, no matter what field it is, there's always gonna be someone better than you.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (23m 47s):
There's always gonna be someone richer than you. There's always going to be someone more skillful than you. There's always going to be somebody who's faster than you. There's always gonna be someone fitter than you, but you're beating other people in other areas of your life and you're losing against other people, but he's not a competition. None of that matters. It's just about focusing on yourself and being happy and improving yourself, I think is what matters. Whenever you start looking outside to compare yourself against other people. I think that just leads to happiness.
Steve Ecker (24m 13s):
Very solid advice. I mean, just, you can't compare yourself, that's put in more reps than you in mountain biking or just any general realm. It's like, you got to start from the beginning and just focus on who you were yesterday and what progress you're making on a daily, weekly basis. And that's the only, only thing you should compare yourself.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (24m 33s):
And I think like that the mountain biking, that's probably one of the biggest lessons that I've learned from mountain biking is that you start a complete beginner. It doesn't matter because you're going to improve. And that's the same for any other area of your life. I spectacularly man. And you know, honestly, I appreciate your mind set and taking the time to share with folks who can relate to it inside or outside of mountain biking. So thank you, Matt. Thank you. I appreciate that. You ready to hop into the rapid fire questions? Let's do it. See what comes out with my mouth. What's your drink of choice? A sparkling water.
Steve Ecker (25m 3s):
What's your go to karaoke song? I don't do karaoke. Who's your favorite comedian? Jimmy. Kyle, if you could be an animal, what animal would you be?
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (25m 11s):
a Peregrine Falcon.
Steve Ecker (25m 14s):
Who's your favorite athlete?
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (25m 16s):
Jefferson is a mountain biker. If you don't know,
Steve Ecker (25m 19s):
It would be your last meal. When all this is over, what's the first place you're going to go to
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (25m 26s):
My parents' house. And then I'm going to go for a mountain bike ride for my best friend.
Steve Ecker (25m 29s):
Final one. Where words are you live by?
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (25m 34s):
What pops straight into my head. Then these were just instant was I know I come. And that was literally, as you said, it, that's the words that popped into my mind. So I'd say that's a pretty good one. I know I can, because no matter what it is, I always go into it with an attitude of, I know I can achieve it. And that doesn't matter what it is. Like, that's just the attitude right or wrong. I know I can,
Steve Ecker (25m 55s):
Hey, I love it. It's simple. But to the point and everyone should be able to know that they can. Alec, do you want to have less ask the last question?
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (26m 2s):
Yeah, sure. So basically, you know, I know you love your job, but let's say you didn't and you had a sick day that you could take advantage of, you know, Matt, what are you doing? How are you seizing the day? It will be great coffer Disney world. And there'd be some kind of mountainbiking in there. So if I could have a day with my girlfriend in Disney world and have a three hour mountain bike ride on the best trails in the world, that will be absolutely spot on. I would say, well, just make sure you take me with you if that ends up happening. All right, guys.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (26m 33s):
Thank you so much. Thank you.
Steve Ecker (26m 35s):
Okay. Thanks Matt, for making the time and joining us, where can everyone find you
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (26m 39s):
Mtb.fitness? There's my website. So www.mtb.fitness, and then the main social media channels that posted on every day Facebook. So to search MTB fitness, I couldn't write up. That's kind of my biggest platform. If you like, there's 270,000 followers on there. So that's where I put like most of my daily solid advice out on Facebook. There's also a Facebook group that's attached to that. So that's the group where people can chat to each other. So just search MTB fitness, and the first result will be the Facebook page and then the Facebook group should be underneath it.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (27m 9s):
So join that group as well. Instagram mtb.fitness. So you can search MTB fitness. That'll come up YouTube, MTB fitness. And there's also the MTB fitness podcast as well. So if you just Google MTB fitness podcast, that'll come up. I think that's everything. Oh, the daily emails you can sign up to on the website. That's everything I think. And you know, it to this daily emails are definitely worth your while. If you just need a little something to wake up to and get you out of bed even, and even if it's just a walk around the block, you know, match words are really able to get you out there.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (27m 39s):
So Matt sincerely appreciate your time today. We really love talking to you this morning. I know we're about eight hours ahead. So again, I appreciate the flexibility here and making time for us, man. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for inviting me. It's been really, really good. Thank you very much. I love this conversation. Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it. We hope you enjoyed that episode with Matt. Matt is an overall great guy that is extremely passionate in what he does.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (28m 11s):
Be sure to check out his stuff to learn more. Now, if you could leave us a review on Apple, that would mean the world to us. We are just starting out and we want to hear what you think of us. This podcast was presented by plan dope shit for more information about planned dope shit, check out WW dot dot com for more information and resources, you can take 15% off everything with promo code. Trust the grind at checkout
2 (28m 47s):
.
Trust the grinds presented by plan dope shit.
Intro (46s):
Matt realized that there wasn't mountain biking training for the everyday rider. Everything out there was tailored to the professionals. He put his personal training knowledge to the test and created the MTB fitness program. The 12 week program has been a massive success as recommended by the British heart foundation. And today's episode, we'll discuss how Matt got started, what his program is about and the mindset he has, whether you're a mountain bike rider or not. You'll learn some great things. In this episode.
Intro (1m 18s):
Matt has an amazing energy that is certainly contagious. Let's get into it. Hello everyone. Welcome to trust the grind podcast. My name is Steve and I'm here with my cohost Alec. Today. We have Matt Mooney, who is the owner and founder of MTB fitness welcome mat. Well, first of all, thanks so much for having me on. Thanks for joining us now. It's wicked. It's nice being on the other side, cause I know you've mentioned yourself, but I normally interview people from my podcast who is quite nice being interviewed instead.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (1m 53s):
And I think talking about some of the different things. So at 18 I became a personal trainer, so I was working six days a week, getting to the gym at 7:00 AM in the morning, leaving at eight, nine o'clock at night. So I just completely stopped mountain biking.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (2m 23s):
And I did that for about three years and then I moved to a local gym to me. So in Saddleworth and then as I did that, I was obviously back in the countryside, I kind of got the itch to start riding because whilst I was in the gym, I really enjoyed lifting weights and I enjoyed exercise, but I did always miss the outdoors and just being out in the countryside and out in the fresh air. So I got back into riding myself. So I was lucky enough that my girlfriend bought me a mountain bike for Christmas. She's the keeper forever.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (2m 55s):
And obviously I was in decent shape because I've been trained in weight days a week, but I got out on the bike, started up the climb and I got about quo the way open. I was just absolutely dying. Like I felt sick. My legs were killing. I was gasping for breath. Hell's up with women. And the kind of realized that like I was strong and I was relatively fit in the gym, but I wasn't mountain bike fair and then a very good cardio for the bank. So I just got, I kind of started going down into the rabbit hole of figuring out how to get fit for mountain biking myself.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (3m 26s):
And then as I was kind of going back down the rabbit hole of mountain biking, I was reading a load of mountain bike magazines, watching a lot of mountain by YouTube channels. And I kind of realized that there was no body on a large scale offering advice to mountain bikers on the fitness and the nutrition side of it. There's kind of a couple of smaller individual businesses or individual people that offered training advice for mountain bikers, but they all seem to work with pro mountain bikers and then your everyday mountain biker was kind of an afterthought.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (3m 57s):
So as I was sort of going into it, I realized, well, there's nobody really fulfilling this need in the mountain bike industry. So I sat down in the front room one night, signed up, not so free survey software. That was just saying, I'm thinking of sending out some free daily emails for mountain bikers, which is gonna help you with training nutrition, recovery, that kind of thing. It'd be really helpful to me. If you could fill in this survey right down South of what your biggest struggles are, that kind of thing. If you're interested and just put your email on the end, if you're interested in filling it in. So I put it in about five mountain bike groups thinking if I get 10 responses, that'd be good.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (4m 30s):
Went to sleep, woke up the next day. And the survey had maxed out of a thousand responses within about three hours. And the deeply everybody was saying like, Oh, this sounds amazing. Like I love it. And it's just because there was nobody in the mountain bike industry given really tailored training and nutrition advice, which for a sport that requires a lot fitness and strengths and crazy to me. So yeah, that's how that's, that's the long answer to how I got started.
Steve Ecker (4m 58s):
I mean, I first off love how you found that little niche of a miss in your mountain bike in, and just like finding that like people crave information and also you notice that they were only tailoring it to the pros. Well, there's only a handful of people that are pros. So I'm curious what made you inspire to do the daily emails?
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (5m 16s):
So as a child, I was a child as a T and a teenager. I was a bit of a computer geek. So whilst I was doing my personal training, I still kind of had that itch in the back of my mind that I wanted to do something a little bit online. So fast had to do a bit of research around like marketers and that kind of thing. And this was like way before MTB fitness. And I came across a guy called Ben settle. His business teaches you how to write daily emails and the reason behind the daily email rather than it being once a week email is just because you better send in small bits of information to people on a daily basis rather than one giant email once a week that they don't get to read.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (5m 52s):
And so, as I was kind of learning about that, I actually started up an online weight loss business, which was essentially helping women specifically. So that's when I was about four 1920, probably about 20. The one thing that had worked with that business was sending daily emails. And that's why I want to start it MTV fitness. I kind of talked one of the successful things from the lights LA is kind of my first attempt at an online business if you like and applied it to MTB fitness. So that's why they always kind of have an aim of helping people first and foremost.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (6m 35s):
So they've always got to be kind of relevant in improving people lives on and off the bike. But I just tend to talk about what's on my mind at the time. And so if I've had a client that day that said, I've got a really sore back, I've been sat on a desk all day. What can I do? Am I writing an email about what all that clients to help them, you know, just really run them, examples like that. So it's kind of it's, what's on my mind, what I do personally, what I do with clients, you know, Matt and I were just talking about like one of his, his biggest success stories.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (7m 17s):
And I know one of them out of the many that stuck out to him was, was he had a client of his who was going through cancer treatment. I believe so. So Matt, do you mind diving a little deeper in that and how did this guy come across you and what did he get out of it? Yeah. Cool. So what are the stories that I've kind of told a few times on the Facebook and in my daily emails was I had a one to one client who came to me and he was about 62, something like that. When he came to me and he had cancer and he basically got the bad thing, it started getting poorly.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (7m 48s):
This was before I met him. So he started getting ill. It was starting to feel a bit off, boy, put it off and put it off and put it off before he went to the doctor. And then after about 12 months, he went to the doctor and he was told that the cancer had spread all over his body and the other, I think it was a 5% chance of survival. So it was like my loss. I, you know, it was almost certain he was going to die now, somehow we managed to pull through it and he fully recovered. And then when he came and sat down with me to train with me, and this is self post-cancer, he said that he wants to live for as long as it can possibly live, but also with the best quality of life you can live.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (8m 20s):
So we're saying that it doesn't want to be eight to and alive, but in mobile and not being able to play with his grandkids and things like that. So, yeah, he's just, I still work with him today in person. I worked with him and his wife and his daughter now as well. Why is nutrition a key part of this program? And then I also see you talking about mindset. How do they coincide with just getting out there and riding your bike? You need to be eating right. You need to be fueling yourself for that ride. And you also need to be fueling the recovery as well. So you're obviously breaking down your muscle a lot when you ride in.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (8m 50s):
So in order to build back your muscle to help you build back up, you need to be in the right foods to help you recover. And so it has a ginormous effect on the bike, but then also off the bike as well. So mountain bike is the people too. And you know, they might be riding three times a week, but then the rest of the time, they're probably family guys and girls, so that you've got a lot look after the family, they want to be feeling good. They want to be healthy. They probably want to be slim and in shape, like you want all those things. And nutrition has a huge effect on, on all of those things. So it's, you can't just ride your bike and expect to feel peak fitness and you know, peak health.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (9m 27s):
And I think it affects your mindset as well. Like I'm very conscious of eating healthily through the day and in regular. And just before I came on this podcast, I made sure I had some food before I came on, just because it keeps me focused and keeps my blood sugar levels up so that I can concentrate like mindset. If we're both on and off the bike, if we're talking specifically for mountain biking, like mindset is so important because you need to be mentally strong. You need to have confidence. You need to like believe in yourself and know that if you're going to throw yourself down a trail that you can get to the bottom of it, you need to have this sort of mental resilience to be able to keep pedaling when you're in a 40 mile an hour headwind.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (10m 4s):
And you know, it's raining sideways. I did back in September, me and my best friend did a 24 hour mountain bike ride for charity to raise money for Alzheimer's research UK. And it wasn't fitness that allowed us to do that. Like it was the, both of our strong mindsets. Like it was never a doubt whether we were going to keep going for it. So like, yeah, you know, you get to the eight hour point and you're knackered. Anyway, your fitness has gone beyond that point. It's your mindset that keeps you go in. So man mindset is crucial. You can be as fast as you want and you can be nutritionally, like have a great diet, but if you're not mentally strong, it doesn't matter.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (10m 37s):
Cause you're going to give in as soon as it hurts.
Steve Ecker (10m 39s):
Matt, I'm glad that you brought that story up about the 24 hour bike ride, because I want to ask you about that. I know there's definitely big hurdles in the mindset. How did you trick your mind to keep going?
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (10m 50s):
The Y was huge. That was a massive, massive part of it because we did it to raise money for Alzheimer's research UK. And for me personally, it was my granddad who died from Alzheimer's. So he was somebody who got me into loving the outdoors. And essentially one of the reasons that I do mountain biking today is because from a very young age, he used the same hike in the Hills and it was very outdoors and got me into loving the outdoors. So it was to raise money for a charity in his memory. So I had a massive wise, so there was, I had to do it and it matter how much it hurt.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (11m 21s):
And then alongside the side of that as well, we had a tent and every time we got back to the tent, there was various different people, whether it was my girlfriend or my family or my friends, family, or different people there. So you kind of have to keep going because every time you came back, there was somebody there waiting for you. So you had to get back up and then go, go again. You asked about like one of the hardest points when we got exhausted. And the nighttime was probably one of the hardest bits because it just rained constantly. Like it was battering with wind, it was raining. And we at the tent, we kept going back to, and I remember at about two, am you dive in 10 and just have a quick bit of food in our cereal bar, aisle, whatever.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (11m 57s):
And you just did not want to get out of the 10 ball as soon as you are out of the 10 and you'd written for a minute or two, then the goal was just to get back to the tent and circle back. So one of the big things that helped us bowls was, I mean, mini goals and just aiming to do another lap. And then you get back to the tent, your ally, right. I'm out. So now he's right. Just keep paddling until you get back to the tent and then you'd be like, right. Okay. Right. Let's just do one more. And we just did it one at a time. And I think throughout it as well, we also set kind of slightly longer term goals. So throughout the day, my aim was to get to about 6:00 PM when my girlfriend was coming to visit.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (12m 30s):
And then from 6:00 PM, my aim was to get to when it went dark. And then when it got dark, my aim was to get the midnight and then for midnight man was to get to sunrise. So, you know, you just kept having those like mini goals, every three or four hours
Steve Ecker (12m 42s):
Just bite-size goals and make it not so overwhelming. I think that can be applied to anything, whatever you're starting up. It's like, if you just take that first step and get to the gym, it doesn't matter how long you work out for you got there. I imagine I feel like there's an easy question. That was definitely your toughest ride.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (12m 59s):
Yeah, I agree. Yeah. 100%. I never got to the point where I was like gasping for air. I'll get an up to max heart rate, but the 24 hour ride was kind of just constant pain. What have you noticed that maybe through mountain biking, since you, you know, finished passion as you are, what have you learned at least that has translated into your personal life? And it has a massive effect. So it teaches you to kind of relax and calm down. So like when I go out the, my, what stress in me, so like recently I've gone through my granddad dying and then more recently my granddad from cancer.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (13m 31s):
So last September, she got diagnosed with cancer and sadly on new year's Eve, she passed away. So mountain biking was one of the things that got me through that. So from September to two, a passing away, but then also helped me kind of get over it as well, because I find that when I'm out and about you can your mind just kind of drifts and you can let all the emotions go. And that's like a massive coping mechanism for me. I think like getting out on the bike, I find if I don't ride my bike, I don't handle the stresses and the worries of day to day life and things like that.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (14m 3s):
So that's one thing that's crossed over and I think, and Jordan's as well would be one like an, I mean from day to day life. So obviously when you go on a ride and it starts to hurt, but you've got another two hours left to the right. You can have, you just get used to soaking up the pain and cracking on. And that's kind of the same when you work in as well. And just one more that I think is huge, is self confidence and having the belief in myself and kind of overcoming fear. So when I got back into mountain bike in this dive, there's some trails I can think of that used to look completely unrideable and absolutely terrifying.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (14m 37s):
Like there were steep and they've got really tight, tight turns and big drops on them and things. And like, they used to be terrifying, but now I can ride them kind of comfortably. And the first time I do them, you know, you'd have that lump in your throat and you'd be really, and not wanting to drop into the descendant, but you've kind of overcome that and do it. And then you get to the bottom and you're alive. And that kind of teaches you that, Oh, you know what? Like, even though you're scared, you can do something. And I think that crosses over to day to day life. So if I'm a bit nervous to come and do this interview, for example, you, you know that five minutes before you get in butterflies in your stomach, you're getting a bit nervous.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (15m 13s):
That's just like on the mountain bike, I know about this drop into a descent and this the same thing, there's a crossover. So I talk about it on my Facebook page a lot, but I think mountainbiking affects your personal life in a, in a huge way. That's just three examples that pop to mind, but I'm sure if I thought for a while, the bit hundreds,
Steve Ecker (15m 30s):
I love all three of those examples. And also I just like, I liked how you touched about how mind biking is an escape and the reason why it's a escape. Because if you're about to drop down on a terrifying trail, you can't be thinking about like what email you have to respond to it. No you're fully engaged in that moment to make sure that you don't eat shit or like something goes wrong. I think we can all agree.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (15m 50s):
And like, you know, the theme within short term goals at least can, can be sort of like patients, you know what I mean? Being patient with yourself, believing in yourself, but staying consistent. And again, that translates to any around and outside mountain biking. But man, like, have you seen your own clients kind of have trouble being consistent, sticking to the routine and maybe want results faster than it's getting, but like, you know what I mean? Cause cause patients a key component of it, the truth is anything, anything at all in life takes ages to achieve it.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (16m 23s):
You know, again, this podcast to a huge audience takes time. Like growing a business takes time probably far longer than, you know, you think it will when it starts and losing way or get an in shape or getting fit on the mountain bike or anything at all takes time. And I think people need to reshape that mindset and yeah, you want to be at the end goal, but that's where it comes back to chunking it down, to chunking it down to short term goals, because then you feel like you're achieving something and let's say as well, also focusing on the process on a daily basis rather than focusing on the outcome.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (16m 57s):
And I think a lot of people will get obsessed with the goal, but not obsessed with doing the small things that you need to do every day. And that applies to anything from buying a house, to losing weight, again, fit on the bike to, to every aspect of your life. You need, people need to go obsessed with the things that you're doing every day, the old build up to that longterm goal while still keeping a bit of an eye on the prize to get you motivated. So it sounds like between patients and commitment, you can't do one or the other without self discipline.
Alec Martucci (17m 29s):
How do, how do you train? I mean, where do you find self-discipline and mountain biking? Is that something that that's hard to kind of get out of people or is that, you know what I mean? Is that, how, how does that translate in mountain biking? I think probably one thing that people think they're not disciplined with is they try to take on everything at once and they forget that you've just got to like gradually stack on all the different, good habits in place. And then that allows you to then become discipline because the habits your body wants to work of habits.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (18m 2s):
So if you can do something for 90 days, suddenly it's much easier to do it rather than not.
Steve Ecker (18m 7s):
From what you're saying, discipline gets built off by the processes that you make. You know, since it's like you said, you can tackle everything, but if you just focus on, let's say just having that good breakfast, that's one small thing, but it's going to compound over time where you don't even think about it, like making the bed. That's, that's a habit that probably two years ago I was like, I'm going to do this. I was probably like one out of three days now. I don't even think about it. It's automatic. You know, you just tackle one habit at a time and not think of like, Oh, I got to run this business. I got to do this.
Steve Ecker (18m 37s):
I gotta be healthy. I got to have an awesome relationship. It's like, Oh, just to tell you like bite size and just like tackle it little by little and all compound over time, get 1% better every day.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (18m 48s):
Yeah, absolutely. And then when you do that, you then don't have to rely on willpower. Like if you rely on willpower, you're not going to do it, but you just said it yourself with making the bed. It doesn't require any willpower at all anymore to make the bed.
Steve Ecker (19m 1s):
Yeah. And also I think motivation, as you said, is like temporarily there's days that I don't want to work out, I'm in a bad mood, but when ever I do, I feel so much better and I'm happy I did it. And I think that kind of just goes into the discipline and process and I'm sure, I don't know. I feel like you were pretty excited to go mountain biking.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (19m 19s):
Yeah. There's some days I don't want to. And that's where discipline comes in, where you say right, I'm going to go anyway. I thing, one thing that you can do to kind of help, you're just taking the mountain bike example is set things in place that help you go out. So you might meet someone else, for example. So you can kind of put safeguards in place so that you don't have to rely on discipline. You don't have to rely on willpower because you've committed yourself separately. If I can just shift gears a bit here, I actually want to ask you, you know, you mentioned the incorporation of, of interval training.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (19m 51s):
So, and I think that's something again, you know, we've, we've interviewed everyone from Irish Olympian, Shane Ryan. So has a Chi Trey hand, NFL prospect. And you know, the three of you, I think could all benefit from each other in regards to everyone's different style of training, right? So at least for interval training, what sticks out to you that you think like, isn't, isn't really just a, isn't really just geared to a mountain bike and it's like, you know, like this sort of exercise or program or this part of interval training, it's really something that anyone can benefit from if they're in a gym in Arizona or in a gym in England and their, and their mountain bikers, or maybe just considering getting into it.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (20m 27s):
Yeah. I think interval training is something that will benefit everybody. Like before I up MTB fitness, I was purely training just your everyday person and they'd have very different goals. So might be runners. Some of be, you know, just a grandfather. He wants to get fit to play with the kids and interval training, take him right back to its basics is just where you push yourself hard for certain amount of time. You know, usually 20 seconds to two minutes, let's just say for argument's sake. And then you rest for a period of time, you know, a minute or two. So you're pushing yourself way harder than you would normally.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (20m 58s):
And then you're easing off for a little bit and pushing yourself way harder. So as an example, you might sprint as hard as you can for 30 seconds on a rowing machine, then go nice and steady for 90 seconds. Then sprint as hard as you can for 30 seconds, then go nuts that if a 90 seconds and in general, that will help people improve the fitness more and have a better workout in a much shorter space of time because you just end up working much harder whilst you're doing that. And what will happen is if let's say the Roy machine example, if you would usually push yourself this heart for this length of time, what you do with interval training is you push yourself to here and then you come back down again and you push yourself to here and then back down and higher and back down again.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (21m 38s):
And what that does is it pushes this kind of level that you're comfortable with over time. It pushes it up because your body gets used to train in those higher intensities. And so training will benefit. Everybody you'll have a bad workout in a short space of time and it will improve your fitness as well. Beginners, at least it looks like it was the British heart foundation who really thinks that this is something that people who are just getting into mountain biking with heart conditions, maybe two in particular can benefit from. So how do you slowly integrate someone in that regard and to your program?
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (22m 12s):
Yeah, so specifically for my 12 week training program. So I designed that to help every mountain biker, whether you're a complete novice or a complete expert. And the reason for that is because you can just dial it up or dial it down based on your fitness. I don't tell you how much or how little you should ride. So people do three resistance training sessions a week and two interval sessions a week. And then on top of that, they can do the mountain bike rider. So, you know, there's a big scope in that people can ride seven days a week. You feel like for 50 miles a day or they can ride once a week.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (22m 42s):
So you can, you can adjust it to suit you. I like how your approach with training programs like, Hey, wherever you are, it's cool. I got a lot of people get obsessed with other people's opinions and what other people think of them and I'm not looking stupid and they just need to suck that right off and focus on themselves. Like the majority of other people, as self-conscious, as you are and the not looking at you, thinking, you look stupid, they're thinking about themselves thinking, Oh my God, I look stupid. And everybody's doing the same worrying about what everyone else thinks.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (23m 12s):
Whereas in reality, nobody's looking at anybody saying, now look stupid. And the fraction of a person who would call somebody a name or say they look stupid, or you know, anything like that. There's worrying people like that person is just more insecure than everybody else. So just focus on yourself and don't worry what other people think. If you've got a good opinion of yourself and your husband or wife or partner. So if has a good opinion of you, that's the opinion that matters nobody else. And I think if you're constantly trying to be better than someone else, no matter what field it is, there's always gonna be someone better than you.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (23m 47s):
There's always gonna be someone richer than you. There's always going to be someone more skillful than you. There's always going to be somebody who's faster than you. There's always gonna be someone fitter than you, but you're beating other people in other areas of your life and you're losing against other people, but he's not a competition. None of that matters. It's just about focusing on yourself and being happy and improving yourself, I think is what matters. Whenever you start looking outside to compare yourself against other people. I think that just leads to happiness.
Steve Ecker (24m 13s):
Very solid advice. I mean, just, you can't compare yourself, that's put in more reps than you in mountain biking or just any general realm. It's like, you got to start from the beginning and just focus on who you were yesterday and what progress you're making on a daily, weekly basis. And that's the only, only thing you should compare yourself.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (24m 33s):
And I think like that the mountain biking, that's probably one of the biggest lessons that I've learned from mountain biking is that you start a complete beginner. It doesn't matter because you're going to improve. And that's the same for any other area of your life. I spectacularly man. And you know, honestly, I appreciate your mind set and taking the time to share with folks who can relate to it inside or outside of mountain biking. So thank you, Matt. Thank you. I appreciate that. You ready to hop into the rapid fire questions? Let's do it. See what comes out with my mouth. What's your drink of choice? A sparkling water.
Steve Ecker (25m 3s):
What's your go to karaoke song? I don't do karaoke. Who's your favorite comedian? Jimmy. Kyle, if you could be an animal, what animal would you be?
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (25m 11s):
Steve Ecker (25m 14s):
Who's your favorite athlete?
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (25m 16s):
Jefferson is a mountain biker. If you don't know,
Steve Ecker (25m 19s):
It would be your last meal. When all this is over, what's the first place you're going to go to
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (25m 26s):
My parents' house. And then I'm going to go for a mountain bike ride for my best friend.
Steve Ecker (25m 29s):
Final one. Where words are you live by?
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (25m 34s):
What pops straight into my head. Then these were just instant was I know I come. And that was literally, as you said, it, that's the words that popped into my mind. So I'd say that's a pretty good one. I know I can, because no matter what it is, I always go into it with an attitude of, I know I can achieve it. And that doesn't matter what it is. Like, that's just the attitude right or wrong. I know I can,
Steve Ecker (25m 55s):
Hey, I love it. It's simple. But to the point and everyone should be able to know that they can. Alec, do you want to have less ask the last question?
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (26m 2s):
Yeah, sure. So basically, you know, I know you love your job, but let's say you didn't and you had a sick day that you could take advantage of, you know, Matt, what are you doing? How are you seizing the day? It will be great coffer Disney world. And there'd be some kind of mountainbiking in there. So if I could have a day with my girlfriend in Disney world and have a three hour mountain bike ride on the best trails in the world, that will be absolutely spot on. I would say, well, just make sure you take me with you if that ends up happening. All right, guys.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (26m 33s):
Thank you so much. Thank you.
Steve Ecker (26m 35s):
Okay. Thanks Matt, for making the time and joining us, where can everyone find you
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (26m 39s):
Mtb.fitness? There's my website. So www.mtb.fitness, and then the main social media channels that posted on every day Facebook. So to search MTB fitness, I couldn't write up. That's kind of my biggest platform. If you like, there's 270,000 followers on there. So that's where I put like most of my daily solid advice out on Facebook. There's also a Facebook group that's attached to that. So that's the group where people can chat to each other. So just search MTB fitness, and the first result will be the Facebook page and then the Facebook group should be underneath it.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (27m 9s):
So join that group as well. Instagram mtb.fitness. So you can search MTB fitness. That'll come up YouTube, MTB fitness. And there's also the MTB fitness podcast as well. So if you just Google MTB fitness podcast, that'll come up. I think that's everything. Oh, the daily emails you can sign up to on the website. That's everything I think. And you know, it to this daily emails are definitely worth your while. If you just need a little something to wake up to and get you out of bed even, and even if it's just a walk around the block, you know, match words are really able to get you out there.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (27m 39s):
So Matt sincerely appreciate your time today. We really love talking to you this morning. I know we're about eight hours ahead. So again, I appreciate the flexibility here and making time for us, man. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for inviting me. It's been really, really good. Thank you very much. I love this conversation. Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it. We hope you enjoyed that episode with Matt. Matt is an overall great guy that is extremely passionate in what he does.
Matt Mooney | MTB Fitness (28m 11s):
Be sure to check out his stuff to learn more. Now, if you could leave us a review on Apple, that would mean the world to us. We are just starting out and we want to hear what you think of us. This podcast was presented by plan dope shit for more information about planned dope shit, check out WW dot
2 (28m 47s):