Powerline Podcast | Recover Faster, Work Stronger

Ryan Lucas | Powerline Podcast

Dr. Kevin Rindal | Vimocity

Okay, Kevin. Episode number one, we talked about your why—finding your why, finding your purpose—which took us to troubleshooting your body and human capacity. Now, in this third and final mini-series episode, I want to talk about the “how.” I want to do a deep dive on how to implement some of these things: food, nutrition, recovery—all things implementation.

Welcome back for the third one, and let's get into it. So, when thinking about these things—like the “how”—first steps, what are the first steps someone needs to take to start implementing what we've discussed?

Yeah, well, again, we've laid the foundation of all the steps that you've got to start with: why. But then you have to make it practical, you know what I mean? I'm such a believer that you just have to start small and win in one area.

It could just be like, “I'm just going to work on hydration as a starting point.” You know what I mean? It's like, “I'm going to drink half my body weight in ounces of water per day. I'm going to end the day with a glass of water. I'm going to start the day with a glass of water.” And then, I'm just going to be consistent, have a little victory along the way, and then move on to the next thing. Because if you try to—I mean, we've talked about in this series like 20 different things that you can do to optimize stuff—it just becomes overwhelming.

So, start with one thing, make it a consistent habit, and celebrate the success. Something my coach told me to do too was set goals. Set a goal for yourself, like some big overarching dreamy goal. Like, I would like to drink… if we're talking about water, let's just talk water for a second. What if you started tracking your water? There's a bunch of apps out there that are pretty easy to use to track how much water you're drinking. Start tracking your water or give yourself some big crazy goal, like, “I'm going to drink 400,000 gallons of water this year.” I don't know—see if you can gamify it a little bit, try and hit it. Then, when you set the goal, give yourself a reward when you get there.

Yeah, so like set that big crazy goal, and then attach a reward to that. I think his name is Charles Duhigg. He wrote a book—I could be off on this—but I think it's called The Power of Habit. The one takeaway I remember is: you've got to have a cue, then a routine, then a reward. It's nothing big, but if you just set some type of reminder, that causes you to think, “Oh, if I'm doing this activity, I should do that,” then do the routine, and then do a quick reward. And a reward could be something simple—like one thing that you really like to eat. In that example, he gives a square of chocolate. He's like, “You know what? I'm not going to just quit eating sugar cold turkey. But there's something that I can do that I really like, and that's going to be my reward.”

Love it.

How can physically demanding work be used as a tool to make your body stronger? I like what you have to say about this; that's why I'm bringing it up as well. Because I think there are things we can do at work that are actually going to strengthen our bodies versus decline. We talk about decline all the time, like, “Oh, I did this, I injured myself at work,” but how can you strengthen your body at work?

Yeah, and we talked about this a little bit in episode number two. I'm a super strong believer that your work can make you stronger, and it all comes from intention and focus—especially on things like your body positioning when you're performing job tasks. Just like an athlete in the gym, when they focus on using good form, good posture, strong and controlled movements, they're making themselves strong while applying a high amount of weight.

When you really think about it, all weight training is is breaking your body down so you can build it back up. But when you do it in the right position, everything comes back—you’re reinforcing all these neurological patterns of the way joints move. Everything is about making you stronger.

So, if you approach your work—because your listeners, they're lifting heavy stuff all day, every day—just a slight change in mindset, in terms of, “When I do this, if I position my body here, my strongest position,” again going back to what we talked about: paying attention to your base, trunk, shoulders, being in that power zone—you’re actually going to build strength rather than break yourself down.

What are some simple, actionable changes listeners can make to their routines? If we're talking about routines—morning routines, any routine—what are these little tweaks they can do within their routines that support recovery?

I like this because this is also, like, I’ve read James Clear’s book Atomic Habits, and in a way it’s similar to routines. Habits are the same thing or can be similar. He attaches triggers to those things to make them habitual. So those little things, what are some things we could do? Then maybe people could think about attaching triggers to those. For example, “Okay, every time I sit down in my truck, I do this thing,” or, “Every time I get out of my truck, I stretch this one part,” so that it happens regularly.

Exactly. And that could be—you know, I’m a big believer—it’s great if people do a pre-job warm-up at the yard, but then a lot of times people will sit in their truck for an hour and 45 minutes driving to a job site. So everything that you did to activate everything needs to be restimulated. That could be, you know, when you get out of your truck, while waiting for the rest of the crew to get ready, spend one minute just doing some real baseline stuff to reactivate those muscles. Maybe it’s rolling out or doing a couple moves like that. That could be a great cue.

I do think starting to create the expectation is important. If you’re a foreman or crew lead listening to this, there are things you can do in that pre-job brief or tailboard that are cues for the rest of the team: “All right, we’re going to be doing overhead work—let’s make sure we get our shoulders ready and prepared for that activity.” You can be strategic with that, and then it becomes just part of the work process. You’re not adding something—it’s part of your checklist for getting ready to go out there and get the work done.

That’s a good point—actually thinking about what the tasks are for the day and making sure you’re hitting those parts.

Oh, 100%. And you guys out there understand: attaching a trigger to something. In James Clear’s book Atomic Habits, he talks about attaching triggers to different things to make them habits. For example, every time you sit down in your truck, you drink water. Every time you do some other action, you do another action—you’re habit stacking. Pretty soon, you’re doing enough of those things that it becomes habit, becomes routine. It just becomes part of what you do all day, every day.

Totally. And it’s that much extra work. That’s a great example: every time you get in your truck, if you have a water bottle in your truck, it’s there—you’ve removed all the barriers to drinking that water. It’s just, “All right, I’m set up for success.” Half of it is just thinking ahead so that you set your day up in a way that fits in line with what you’re already doing.

How does proper nutrition tie into human performance and injury prevention?

Yeah, so I mean, when you think about, again, any type of work or physical stress that our body goes through it creates strain on the body. That strain is actually a good thing because, again, you go into the gym, you're lifting weights, you're tearing apart that muscle, but you're repairing stronger. But you have to have the right base blocks to be able to do that: that's amino acids, it's proteins. Um, you know, it's like we talked about, vitamin D, zinc, magnesium—all these things are responsible for causing the human to build back up.

So when it comes to nutrition, it's being thoughtful about like, what activity am I doing, and what does my body need in this scenario? So if you're working in the heat, we know that your body's definitely going to be losing water, it's going to be losing electrolytes. So, um, and you're going to be, you know, using up glucose. And so keeping your head in the game, making sure that you have the energy for your brain and your muscles, and the appropriate nutrients, you're going to want like some type of hydration drink that includes those different components.

At the end of the day, you're probably going to want to focus more on like, really high quality fats and you know, complex proteins, so that you are getting some of those amino acids, you're getting the protein for your body to be able to recover. Uh, but too often it's like, we just fill ourselves with food that's filling but doesn't have those essential building blocks. And so I always think of it like, imagine building a house with a bunch of particle board rather than hardwood: like, what's going to be stronger in the long run? And so if we're healing and repairing tissue that's being broken down with cheap materials, what we're doing is we're actually, you know, setting our muscles up to become more vulnerable to injury, less, you know, less resilient in the long run.

What does a good routine look like, like from start to finish of your day? Like, how should a utility worker work through their day, wake up in the morning, what should he be eating, how soon should they be eating, what should they have, and then kind of walk through the day just briefly, like morning, afternoon, evening?

Yeah, so I, I'm super hesitant to say like, everyone needs to follow this pattern because everybody's like totally different, you know what I mean? And like, I even do a lot of intermittent fasting, I mean, that's part of my routine. So there are times where, you know, all fast 16 hours, and I'll do that for a specific period of time. But I always map out like, when I'm going to push hard physically from a training perspective, in line with, you know, when I have the fuel available. Uh, so I think it's a case-by-case basis.

But in general, if you know you're going to be physically pushing yourself hard, I do think that like a really good breakfast, high in protein, you know, good fruits and vegetables, things that are going to fuel your body, like, that's such a critical part of the day. Um, and then it's just being thoughtful about, you know, you're going to be on the job 10–12 hours, like, what can you pack in your cooler to supplement your day so that you're continuing to eat that, that good nutrition throughout the day? Because otherwise, I mean, we all resort to what's quickest, what's easiest, where, what parking lot can fit a line truck, and it's, it's usually, you know, gas stops and service stations and places like that, and you just don't have the same number of options. So again, it, you have to be intentional.

But go into that day thinking about, you know, there are these periods throughout the day where I'm going to really focus on, you know, good quality meals, but you also have to feed yourself in between. If, if you're pushing, I mean, every endurance athlete, when they think about, you know, running for two hours, you're gonna, every 20 minutes, be taking just a little bit of nutrition just to keep, keep going so you don't dig yourself too far in a hole.

I think what a lot of people don't realize either is an investment in yourself is the best investment that you can make. And that could be like, if you don't want to, if you don't want to do the research yourself to figure all this stuff out—which I didn't, like, I tried but I didn't know—there's people that can help with that. There's coaches for everything now, and it's not bad to hire a nutrition coach, physical coach, whatever, co-mindset coach. Like, it's not bad to hire these people, and you should, in fact, be thinking about doing that because, man, they get you on a program.

But like you said, you're hesitant to tell everybody to follow this exact program because everybody is different and everybody should be on a different program. So I'm glad you said that because people should invest in themselves. Like, you guys out there, you make freaking good money, hire a nutrition coach, and they can set up a meal plan for you. They can run you through goal setting, see if you're wanting to lose weight or put on weight. Some of you have really wicked metabolisms and, you know, you need to eat more and eat differently. So anyway, I think people should hire coaches more.

Yeah, and meal plans are awesome. Meal prep is good. Invest in that too. Like, hire a meal prep service to deliver your food to your freaking house or your job site even, and it can be good nutritional food. And it doesn't have to be your stupid gas station stop. You'll actually probably spend less on a meal prep service than you would at the gas station with your three Monsters and your three tacos. 


Totally.

And it seems strange and foreign for most of us to even think about that, you know what I mean? Why would we ever outsource any of that? But when you think about it, like, your body is your most important asset as a line worker. Yeah, and, you know, you add two to five years of productive years to your, you know, your career. I mean, quantify that and how much is it worth, you know, supporting yourself. You look at, you look at most sports teams. I mean, they spend so much money on the performance aspects of their athletes. I mean, LeBron James, I think, spends a million dollars a year just on recovery and all the specialists just to keep his body going. We don't have to spend a million dollars to take care of ourselves.

But I think it goes back to the fact that, like, if, if your body is how you make money, and being able to continue to do that, it's honestly one of the smartest investments you can make. Such a great point. Like, what's the ROI on helping LeBron James spend two more years in the NBA? Yeah, millions and millions. What's the same for, same for you guys out there? Yeah, what's the ROI on working a few extra years in the trade, like, even if it's, you got to change it up a little bit, you're not on the tools every day but at least you're still in it?



Yeah. Yeah, I think, need to invest in yourself and quit being cheap.

What are the most common nutritional mistakes that you see blue-collar professionals making? 


I think it's that mentality of thinking about food as just calories and that I'm just trying to replace calories. You know what I mean? 'Cause a lot of people would be like, "Man, I worked X men hours, I just need, I'm hungry, man, I, I just need to, to refuel." But the reality is, like, not all fuel is created equal. And when you're eating stuff that's full of preservatives, processed, I mean, it puts a strain on every aspect of your digestive system, your kidneys, your liver, everything that has to process all that stuff that the body was never meant to process. It just puts a strain on that and it creates inflammation in the body. So, I again, I think goes back to like, what is the quality of those foods, and what, what can your body actually do with that? Because those are the building blocks for repair and just feeling better.

Again, let's talk about hydration. Just briefly talk about the importance of hydration, um. Just hammer this home one more time. Yeah, yeah. Well, even 1% dehydration, and we're talking about not being very much, but like, I think, like, 80% of our body is made up of water. And so you're just talking about a slight level of dehydration. I mean, the blood becomes more viscous, the blood vessels start to somewhat collapse you know, our brain can't process information as well, our muscles become less hydrated, and the tensile strength of the muscles becomes less. So they're more prone to injury.

I always think about like, when we're trying to get the garbage out of our body, like, we have to filter that out through our body, through our kidneys. I mean, imagine using a garden hose to clean off your driveway versus a pressure washer. If you have more water, you're going to be able to get that stuff out of you. And so if you're chronically dehydrated, it just impacts every aspect of the body.

And so, I honestly think it's like, sleep and recovery and hydration are two of the most critical things that we can do. And it's, you know, hydration for sure is one of the most important things. We, you know, I know your guest Dylan Coke talked, gave the sponge example, and we use that all the time. It's like, a dried-out sponge is just brittle, it can break, can't do the job. But you take a hydrated sponge and it's like, totally different.

And so, the discs of our spine are like that. Our discs are mostly made of water. So even back pain, things like that, are tremendously impacted by our hydration levels. Think about, I think about too, like, all the things you talked about with regards to rolling out, rolling out your muscles, like, the dynamic stretching, like, all of that stuff. If you're not hydrated, it's not going to move properly. Those things are, star, nothing's going to work properly. And it's, it's amazing how chronically dehydrated we are. We just, like, we talked about in the previous episodes, we are not drinking enough water and keeping ourselves hydrated enough, especially if you're adding things like alcohol to the mix in the evening, which is only dehydrating you more.

And I'm telling you, get a whoop and you'll see it daily.

What is recovery? Yeah. Recovery, again, to me, has multiple aspects. Some of the movement health stuff that we talked about, it's, it could be rolling in the evening, flushing out like lactic acid. It could be some stretching to get our muscles loose, and also calm our nervous system. I mean, when you're working hard in stressful situations all day, we've got the sympathetic system, which is fight-or-flight, and we have the parasympathetic system, which is rest and digest.

And so you want to try to, as we get to the end of our day, start to shift more into like, "Okay, I've been fighting fires all day long, high levels of stress, now I need to, like, start to chill out," so that I can actually be in a spot where I can recover. Because if you stay constantly elevated in this, you know, fight-or-flight zone, your body's not going to go through the anabolic or the building-up phase of that.

And all that recovery is, it's about preparing for the next day. It's putting yourself in a situation so that you can actually recover. And so, yeah, it's the hydration, the nutrition, it's, um, you know, preparing for sleep, I even just focusing on that. I mean, you think about what good sleep does to even brain function. I mean, we're starting to learn that, like, when you sleep, that's almost when, I've heard the example, it's like, got all these proteins in your brain and it's like the street sweep comes out and they like to clear those channels out of the amyloid proteins. And so there's just so much to our longevity, um, in the way things work that are tied back to, you know, consistent good sleep over the years so that the body can recover.

I think too that, um, with regards to recovery, small things that you think that, you think that you're recovering, like you're, you're chilling out, you're relaxing on the couch at the end of the day, and I should be recovering, right? But things like even being on your phone and getting constant hits of dopamine, it's like, I've heard that, that's still keeping you turned on for sure in a way and not allowing you to recover properly.

Yeah, so I like what you said about PR, preparing for sleep even. It's like, there's a time period where you should be shutting down. Yeah, nobody wants to hear that. Yeah, like, put your phone away. Okay, but put your phone away, like, I don't know, it makes a difference, man. Put your phone away, shut down, turn the lights down, like, prepare for sleep.

I mean, think about the way the human body's evolved over, you know, however many years. It's like, cell phones are the last, like, 20 years of all humanity. You know what I mean? And so we're talking about, like, you know, they talk a lot about blue light versus the orange light. And, you know, the fire, the glow from a fire, is usually what people would look at as they're preparing for bed, versus the blue light as the stimulating, um, light. And that's what we've seen with our cell phones, with our computers, and most of us literally are looking at our screen, rolling over in bed, putting it on the nightstand, and then going to bed.

And so, just everything about how we go about modern-day life isn't the way that the body's evolved over the years. I've started a bunch of weird things on this journey that I'm on, but these things seem, we've seen a little bit out there.

Nose strips, for example. You see the Alex Heros of the world wearing nose strips and they kind of normalized it a little bit. But even that being said, lots of these guys are like Alex, who they have no idea who this guy is. But I started wearing nose strips to bed and just allowing myself to get as much oxygen as I can get. I started, it seems counterproductive, but putting mouth tape on as well as wearing nose strips.

So it's just nasal breathing all night, man. I'm dreaming heavy, which means, and I'm seeing it on my whoop too, my REM sleep and my deep sleep is increasing. My time sleeping is increasing, my recovery is increasing, all from just adding these things. So that's what I saying about a way to track this stuff. It's amazing. You can just add or take away all of these little things. These are two things that have helped me.

I've quit snoring as much, and that's probably a lot to do with weight loss and all of it combined. But that just equals better sleep too. And as you know, better sleep equals, especially for the men out there, testosterone production, which makes you sleep better. This cycle of better health overall just from some simple little things, man.

And I mean, unless you had something on your wrist that was capturing that data, you'd have no idea if taping your mouth and putting nose strip on was having an impact. I haven't gone there yet. No, but I can prove it. I can show you the data. Yeah, when you see it, it does reinforce that behavior though.

Are there any other little things that you'd suggest? Hey, try this, try that. We talked about pling a little bit, dive into recovery a little bit. What can we do to support recovery other than prepping for sleep?

I'm not an expert on the cold plunging, the saunas and stuff like that. But I definitely have gone down that path with Wim Hoff. I've done a lot of his stuff. I use his app for breathing before I go to bed. And there's actually some pretty good research that shows just focusing on breathing exercises will help prepare your mind, calms that nervous system, gets that parasympathetic-sympathetic balance down.

Cold showers or cold plunging has been shown to also help with sleep. That's something I know a lot of people do. I prefer a cold plunge. I hate cold showers. But the cold plunge, for some reason, I can stand up to my neck in the Pug sound and it doesn't bother me. I think there are some different tricks that people can do.

Talking on a bigger scale, about resources. I don't know if Peter AA has a book called Outlive. There are some really forward-thinking people out there. Casey Means wrote Good Energy. You've got Dr. Mark Hyman, who has some good stuff. All these people have great social media accounts. A lot of the stuff that I've really started to integrate into my life comes from those three people.

These are all medical doctors who have tremendous experience, who are just looking at things from a different angle. That's the cool part about the age that we live in, this stuff is out there for anyone to consume.

How does one go about setting up a good recovery plan when they're busy most of the time?

Again, you made a good point, you have to have a goal. I always think it's setting a goal and just recognizing what I'm feeling. I'm feeling burned out. I'm feeling like my body is digging in a hole every day, I can't get out. And so it's that recognition of I know I can be better, or I've felt better. Just saying, here's one or two things that I can do to really focus on seeing that improvement again.

I'm a huge fan of data, like having a wearable, like the Whoop, that allows you to be able to try different things and then say, okay, this is actually making a meaningful difference. And then, over time, you start to understand, okay, this is the formula that really works for me.

For me, it's magnesium, zinc, and vitamin D before I go to bed, drinking water, doing some breathing exercises, not looking at my screen for an hour before I go to bed. That's typically the thing that really helps me have the best nights of recovery. Staying away from alcohol, staying away from sugar a couple hours before I go to bed.

As each person starts to explore that, they'll start to figure out that pattern. It sounds like a lot, but when you break it down, it's just do this, don't do that. It's just a series of choices that really don't take any extra time. It's just having the knowledge and then the discipline to say, this is what I value more. I value being recovered so that I can do this tomorrow or feel this way. And this is the path that I need to get there.

My cocktail of choice before bed has now become, my coach recommended this, and I'd never heard of this one before. A little bit of water, powdered vitamin C packet in the water, and then a ¼ teaspoon of baking soda in there as well. Stir that up. It should fizz. Stir that up, and then take two to three magnesium, calcium, and vitamin D, because I'm Canadian, I don't get enough of it. Vitamin D supplements, and just down that all together.

Best sleep I can record it too. I can show you the data. Best sleeps in my life. And even if you get up in the middle of the night, it's easy to go back to sleep. And I know lots of people, I've struggled with that in the past too. I get a squirrel brain if I wake up at 3 in the morning. This has been able to help me, just right back to sleep, nothing ever happened.

That's awesome. Love that tip. I'm going to pull out some baking soda. Seriously, not too much though. Just do not go heavy on the B soda, guys. You go heavy on the baking soda, it's going to come right back out the wrong end. ¼ teaspoon, not the other way around.

Anything else on recovery? Is there anything around mindset, impact and effectiveness on recovery?

Mindset. For a lot of us, we're dealing with a lot of stress every day. When you start compounding the stress at work, and then you've got family, finances, other things that you've dealt with maybe from a young age, it's having a resource and just realizing that you can talk about those things is so important.

I know you're going to have a guest coming on here soon, who is a therapist who has that background. I think that's absolutely critical. And it's becoming much more mainstream and accepted, especially in the working world, to think about mental health being one of the core things that we need to be focusing on.

If you don't get it right up here, it's pretty hard to get all the other stuff right. It's such an important piece of things. So yeah, I'm a huge advocate of that. Super cool.

Success stories. Let's hear a couple of success stories that you've had, particularly with the utility industry so far, from what you've been doing.

One of the things that we're really focused on, and we talked about this in the last couple episodes, is talking about capacity and resilience. And when it comes to injuries, oftentimes we focus on recordable injuries, focus on TR and Dart rates. That's one piece of the equation.

As a couple success stories, I can think of three different utilities that we work with, and they really didn't have a system for managing soft tissue injuries in the past. And what we've helped these companies do is just make this whole soft tissue injury prevention just part of the workday.

People show up to work, they do their pre-job brief, their tailboard, we're doing the Daily Five—they're focusing on the rolling, breathing, and moving. They're doing a safety moment, thinking about, "Okay, guys, let's talk about, we're going to be working overhead, let's talk about the best body positioning when we're working overhead." And sometimes we just need those reminders to keep our head in the game. And then also focusing on these recovery aspects.

This one company in particular that I'm thinking of, they've seen a 46% reduction in soft tissue injury, injuries in total, which means the overall reduction in recordable injuries. But the more meaningful thing that I see is a reduction in the Dart rate. And so they have a 57% reduction in Dart rate, which means that people are getting injured less. But when they do get injured, those injuries are less impactful because the people actually have greater resilience.

And so they're spending less time doing days away or restricted time or transfers from work. And really, it's multiple factors. Sure, how's that impacting those people? But when we ask the individuals, we did a survey with this company. We said, how many of you participate in the program? And it was like 95% of people participated in the program.

Then we asked, how many of you by participating have seen a reduction in muscle or joint stiffness? And it was like over 90% of people said that they've experienced a reduction in muscle and joint stiffness just through participation.

In my mind, pain is a whole other aspect. It's like, you could have zero recordable injuries, but 95% of your workforce is in pain on a daily basis. And pain is just the body's alarm system going off, saying that there's a problem. And it's not a matter of when or if, it's when.

Giving people those tools to deal with things in the earliest stages, and to do that troubleshooting, helps avoid people from going down that path of just living with pain. And then the body becomes more and more vulnerable to bigger injury. And then all of a sudden, it's the straw that breaks the camel's back, and then it turns into a blown disc or an injury that's going to take them out of work for three or four weeks at a time.

If we can help support that entire life cycle, that's where I think the success is. It's really just implementing the capacity model into humans too, right? It's building the capacity yourself to fail safely or recover more easily.

Totally, yeah, and again, the capacity model is amazing. I just think this human resilience model, it just fits so well.

By combining that, what resources or tools do you guys at Osity provide to help people stay on track?

We have a whole system. When we partner with a company, we typically partner with the safety and operations team, and we basically map it out so that we come up with a plan. I'm a big believer: people have to understand the why, and they need to have the education to help them understand why are you asking us to do this, or why are you even recommending that we do these things. If we just tell people to focus on rolling, breathing, moving, or pay attention to how they position their body, people are going to be like, "I've got a million things to care about, why do I care about this stuff?"

Some of it, at first glance, would be like, that seems kind of crazy: why am I doing this? But when people understand that, and they also tie it back to, "Hey, I have a bigger reason why this matters to me, why I would do these things," then it just becomes, why wouldn't I do this? I want to go on my elk hunting trip; I need to have my knees or my shoulders feeling good. I want to do this with my kids. I want to take care of my body.

When you start to integrate these systems into the workday, people become champions of it rather than detractors, and they start encouraging their teammates.

This whole system, that we've talked about in the last three episodes, those three different components just get incorporated into the workday. We even do stuff like challenges on our app. We could break up an entire organization by work group, and then you have these different teams. Every time there's a challenge going on, when people do their Daily Five or muscle maintenance, they click “I did it,” they earn points for their team. There's a live leaderboard. We send a championship WWE belt to the winning team, give them a barbecue lunch, just stuff like that. There are ways to celebrate it, to gamify it.

Supporting people at home as well, there's the structure for the company to fit into that infrastructure, but then resources that people have on their phone, so when they're at home or on vacation, they can still continue down this path. It supports them in that way.

What are some ways from leadership or from the employer side that they could help support people in recovery?

Much of it comes back to the leadership just realizing that people are our greatest assets. As a leader, the primary job is to remove barriers to people just being able to make the right choices. A big part of that goes back to doing the pre-job brief, where you're doing a readiness or a 360 walk-around of your body, and you provide the space for people to say, "Yeah, I'm ready to do the job today," or, "Hey, we need to take five and do some preps so that we can all have our heads in the game."

Having available good nutrition options or hydration options helps support people being successful. There are many great examples of Mental Health Resources and Recovery Resources that are part of the larger corporate offerings and support. But it's about encouraging it and presenting it in a way to frontline workers so that it doesn't feel like something imposed. You need key champions out there. The foreman level is the greatest level. That level of individuality is the one you really got to reach because upper management, executive level, is usually in support of these things, but they're not in support of it when none of it gets implemented.

Time is always the greatest competitor, and distribution is also the biggest thing. That's been the nut we've been trying to crack. Everybody has a smartphone in their pocket. A lot of companies have tablets or iPads. How do you integrate into these systems, send people reminders? Our app sends movement reminders so people get that nudge, that notification, and it helps them remember to stay on track with the right things.

If you had to sum this up or focus on one thing, say “do this,” what would that be?
I would say the foreman-level crew lead has such a profound influence on the way the day 
goes. The more we can support that group and their leadership and help them realize they’ve got some amazing people working with them, the performance of the job, the safety of the job can really be influenced by doing the right things to invest in those people. They perform at their highest level.

We see ourselves as a partner to the people in those roles, giving them the tools so they can keep their teams performing at that high level. Sometimes you have to slow down to speed up. When you slow down and make sure you're ready, you're investing in the performance of people, and the quality of the performance is even better.

We've loved working with these workforce athletes who put it on the line every single day. That level is so important. Foremen have a huge impact because the boots-on-the-ground workers don’t really have much of a relationship with executive staff. In small companies, they might, but in bigger organizations, they probably never met them, seen them, or really know the names. They know the people who are leading them every day, leading them to come home safely, leading them through work, having the answers. That’s your foreman-level person.That person needs to be bought into the program and the system, for themselves and to show that to everyone else. It's a huge responsibility.The ability to make the biggest difference too.

Thanks for this. Is there anything I didn’t ask properly that you’d want to talk about?

Ryan, first of all, thanks for the opportunity. I’m proud of you and the way you’re serving this industry. You’re skilled at having conversations and asking really good questions. I think we covered everything in these three episodes.

Even if you listen to this one but not the other two, we probably covered it. I appreciate you having the format to talk about this stuff. My goal is to serve the industry, help people come home safely, get to the end of their careers retiring strong. If there’s anything I can do or we could collaborate on to support people, I’m all in.

Where can people find you, and get more info about what you do?

My email is Kevin@vimocity.com, and vimocity.com is our URL. You can definitely find us there. We do a lot on LinkedIn, host live events, so you can follow us on LinkedIn. Plenty of opportunity to get high-quality content to use with your crews. Definitely reach out to me.

Thank you, Dr. Kevin.

Ryan, thank you so much. I hope you got some value out of this episode.

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Appreciate you guys. Hope to see you again soon. Peace.