We recently connected with James Goodlatte and have shared our conversation below.

James, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you recount a time when the advice you provided to a client was really spot on? (Please note this response is for education/entertainment purposes only and shouldn’t be construed as advice for the reader)

One story that comes to mind is a day that I was working as a trainer in a big-name gym. My client was unable to make the scheduled appointment, last minute, so I was available to train two women who wanted a joint session.

The thing that stood out the most for these two 40-something-year-old mothers is that they both used asthma inhalers, and both carried the inhalers with them onto the gym floor. In other words, their need to breathe was so pronounced that it was not enough for them to leave their inhalers in the locker room; they needed the medicine very close by, and it was clearly a large part of their lives.

I found out these facts only as i began to move the two women through the exercise session. Within just a few minutes, i could also tell that they were both heavy “chest breathers.” Their chest breathing was not necessarily more pronounced than anyone else’s, but that’s when i decided to ask them to lay down on the floor, and literally teach them how to breathe more diaphragmatically.

I spent a few minutes having them feel their “bellies filling with air” and other cues to break their dominant chest/neck pattern of breathing. They each made great progress, and quickly.

Then, i asked them to stand up, and before moving onto the next exercises where I would have them apply this new abdominal diaphragmatic breathing, i asked them to take a few breaths standing where they were. I knew that it would already be a progression for them to apply this new motor pattern when standing, so was careful before whisking past this important transition.

What i witnessed was surely one of the most profound lessons of my coaching career.

They breathed diaphragmatically, yes, I could see that. However, their faces changes radically. One of them said just, “wow” really taking her time to feel the change. The other one said, “I can’t remember feeling a breath like this since i was a little girl.”

What i learned that day was two things: One, asthma, at least in some cases, can be cured by just teaching someone how to use proper breathing muscles & mechanics. Two, teaching people how to breath would be one of the most important “exercises” that I could teach as a personal trainer.

Breathing would ultimately be one of the most critical foundations in my career.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is james and although i’ve never been pregnant, I lead one of the world’s most influential companies for women’s fertility, pregnancy and postpartum health & fitness.

Today, Fit For Birth (GetFitForBirth.com) offers fitness & holistic health education to fitness & wellness professionals and pregnant people. In addition, we offer online personal training, and in-person training in some areas…

When i was in 8th grade, I ordered a scientific journal on strength training and began waking up at 5am to lift weights before school. I began to understand the personal training culture in high school, when others recognized saw that i seemed to know something they didn’t, and asked me for advice. My first paid advice came while i was at university. Then, in 2000, i began full time personal training with some small and then big gyms. I earned the title “Trainer of the Year” for my club, and soon after was asked to teach continuing education on various topics to the other trainers.

Witnessing multiple clients have exercise-limiting aches & pains, I began learning the principles of corrective exercise, which was a rather different focus than just “fitness.” Within just a year or so, I began to be known in the community for helping people heal sometimes life-long impediments.

Meanwhile, i was a holistic fiend, absolutely enthralled with how to naturally solve things that seemed to cause most people to reach for medications. This complimented extremely well with corrective exercise, of course.

I was obsessed with finding the most natural ways to strengthen one’s health without side effects.

Then, in 2007, my Corrective Exercise and Holistic Health Coaching was redirected when I decided to become a father. My guiding intention suddenly became, “How can we create the healthiest baby? To my surprise, there were no “pregnancy” coaches for me to turn to, for me to hire myself.

So i did what i knew best: went to research it myself. I also knew that I wanted to be a very hands-on dad, so i envisioned my little one crawling into my home garage-gym while i was training clients. GetFitForBirth.com was set up to be a “come train at my home” offer for local pre & postnatal women.

However, an article of mine was picked up by an international newspaper, which then asked me to write weekly for their fitness & wellness section, while i was at the peak of my research for pre & postnatal holistic health. So, every other article i wrote was on pre/postnatal concepts, and each time was being linked back to GetFitForBirth.com. Within about 6 months, my articles had been translated into a dozen languages, and we had 150 countries regularly visiting our little “mom & pop” website!

Then another defining moment came. My passion and practice as a master instructor for fitness & wellness professionals combined to uncover some radically needed changes at the intersecting cultures of fitness, wellness & childbirth, leading professionals to ask for a course specifically for them.

Today, Fit For Birth practitioners in more than 50 countries have applied their progressive holistic techniques to help families around the world to not only have healthy pregnancies and babies, but also to help avoid common pre & postnatal challenges like diastasis recti and joint pains, as well as empower families to know their choices when it comes to birth.

In addition, we offer personal training services to women wanting to enhance their chances for fertility, boost their health during pregnancy, and return to full strength in the postpartum stage.

I love that I have had the unbelievable opportunity to coach the next generation of trainers in women’s health & fitness. I love that I consider my job to be that of empowering others.

If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?

My current favorite quote that continues to resonate over and over for me is “You can fail doing what you don’t like, so you might as well do what you love.”

This, i think, is one of the most important potential lessons in life, applicable not only to business, but family and health and literally EVERYTHING!

One day, when i look back from my deathbed and consider my life, i imagine that it will be far more important that i loved it along the way, and hopefully literally felt the emotions of love and enjoyment for as much of that time as possible.

So, yes, even though i said for my entire university career that “i would never be a trainer” and “personal training is not a real job” I am so thankful that circumstances aligned to just have start doing it “until i find something better.”

Today, working as the leader of Fit For Birth, i get to help fitness professionals feel empowered about themselves and their careers. My favorite days are when a student is in tears of joy overcoming their own psychological obstacles.

I am definitely in the right profession, coaching others to achieve health with ease, and to believe in themselves along the way.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Well, Fit For Birth was created in the midst of the 2008 crash. Combining this info with the fact that “most businesses don’t last longer than 1 year” i think is a testament to our resilience.

More pertinent, however, is that we have continually reinvested into various online marketing agencies, all without additional financial success. Fit For Birth runs magically on word of mouth from graduates who consistently leave reviews saying things like, “life changing” and “this is the best course i’ve ever taken in my professional career”, but we’ve not yet been able to rely upon any particular marketing measure.

In other words, to date, each month I have no idea how many registrations we will have. This requires me to meditate quite a bit ;)

So, we haven’t figured out marketing, and the worst part is that we have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on various agencies over the years.

I have currently reached the point of acknowledging that i am no longer going to put high expectations into a marketing agency, and will instead just focus on great innovation and solid relationships.

Contact Info:

• Website: getfitforbirth.com
• Instagram: Instagram.com/fitforbirth/
• Facebook: Facebook.com/getfitforbirth
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesgoodlatte
• Other: TikTok.com/@fitforbirth