The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #5 with Don Saladino! The evolution of the fitness industry, the role of coaches vs. influencers, understanding individual needs in fitness and diet, the importance of data and fitness tracking, becoming a celebrity trainer and MORE!!
Mon, 20 Jan 2025
Tune in to The Dylan Gemelli Podcast featuring professional fitness coach and celebrity trainer, Don Saladino! Dylan and Don engage in intriguing conversations about all aspects of health and fitness. Don provides insight into his health and wellness training techniques, the evolution and continuous changes of the fitness industry, the importance of keeping up with the changing science, fitness coaches vs influencers, becoming a celebrity fitness trainer and so much more! . This video provides expert advice and guidance from start to finish and is one you do not want to miss!!Check out Don's Homepage:https://donsaladino.com/Follow Don on social mediainstagram @donsaladinofacebook @saladinodon______________________________________________________________________Follow Dylan on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Tiktok @dylangemelliHuge thank you to everyone for the support! Please make sure to subscribe, like and comment!!Email [email protected]://rss.com/podcasts/the-dylan-gemelli-podcastApplehttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dylan-gemelli-podcast/id1780873400I Hearthttps://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-the-dylan-gemelli-podcast-249695201/Spotifyhttps://open.spotify.com/show/3In4QlJj4IvHqq0eduKj7mPandorahttps://www.pandora.com/podcast/the-dylan-gemelli-podcast/PC:1001096187Stitcherhttps://www.stitcher.com/show/1096187FM Playerhttps://player.fm/series/the-dylan-gemelli-podcastPodchaserhttps://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/the-dylan-gemelli-podcast-5933919Listen Noteshttps://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-dylan-gemelli-podcast-dylan-gemelli-HDjBueWOVvG
Chapter 1: Who is Don Saladino and what is his background?
All right, everybody. Welcome back to the Dillage Melly podcast. So I am super pumped today for my guest. I have followed him. I relate to him on a lot of things and he is well known and tremendous at what he does. He is a professional fitness coach. He's an entrepreneur who does it all. My friends, this is Don Saladino. Thank you. Thanks for the intro.
Appreciate it, brother. It's great to be on here. Love your background. I'm like a sneaker fanatic, so that's very cool, man.
It's a long time collection, man, so it's taken you a while to work at it, so I appreciate it. Thanks again for taking the time today. I want to get as much info out of you as I can, so we're going to rock and roll. Well, first, You're very well known in the fitness world. You've done some tremendous work. I really like a lot of the things that you talk about that you get into.
I like your methodologies, but we all have a backstory. I'm curious, how young were you and what motivated you to go this route? Wow.
When I get asked this question, I probably start, I go all the way back to the second grade because I had a bad hearing problem. I had a stuttering problem at that age and was trying to find my, was trying to find my lane.
You know, at that time, it's like, God, schools back then, they would take, you know, kids who had issues and throw them into a class and, you know, hope that they figured it out and think that that wasn't a, you know, a bad thing where they were, you know, getting their finger pointed at them and made fun of at that age.
But like, you know, back at that time, you know, I was looking at it as something that was terrible and ended up being a blessing. It was the best thing that could have happened to me because, you know, it pushed me to become an athlete and went off to play, you know, college baseball and got really into, working out at a young age.
I think it was because of that I realized that I could be physical and I could make up for my stutter, my hearing, and it was something that allowed me to feel significant. I think it really comes down to that I found you know, what was allowing me to feel significant at a young age. And that happened to be athletics and it happened to be, you know, exercise.
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Chapter 2: What motivated Don Saladino to enter the fitness industry?
And then I started just like you probably did was, you know, admired certain, you know, figures on the covers of magazines that now today I'll be friends with and, You know, college, I went off to play Division I college baseball, had a great four-year career there.
But throughout my college career, was so immersed in training and nutrition and supplementation that I was... I mean, my college coach even told me at one point, like, do what you want for your workouts. You know, it was back then, I'm looking at it now, I'm like, no, I should have been doing what the team was doing. But, you know, he just kind of told me, he's like...
the guys don't want to work out with you. You're a lunatic. So kind of, you know, live in your own world. But I, again, I think that's where it started for me. And then finding when I graduated college, finding my lane and finding, you know, where my profession is going to be, you know, be becoming a coach back in 1999. I wasn't thinking about, you know, how am I going to make a career?
You know, how am I going to be able to support a family one day? I just, I'm really lucky. my approach was trying to become the best coach out there and getting as educated as possible. And, you know, I'm flying all over the country, taking as many courses as possible. Remember, there was no online courses. There was no webinars. There's none of this stuff existed. So there was no social media.
Literally, you'd hear about a course. You'd be on a plane. You'd be in California. You'd be in Texas. You'd be in Florida. You'd went wherever you could go to to take a mentorship program and a coaching program on top of that every year I would always hire um some form of uh A training coach. And when I say that, it was like, all right, what do I want to get exceptional at?
Let me find the best kettlebell person. Let me find the best Olympic lifter. Who's the best bodybuilding coach? Who's the best sports performance person? And it was always nutrition-wise. I got into assessing bloods back when I was 16, 17 years old. I was going to Dr. Gary Wadler. and who was on the congressional hearing for the whole baseball steroid scandal.
And he was the one looking at my bloods at a very young age. He was at my wedding when I got married, right? This was so many years ago, but I was definitely ahead of my time in that sense. And nutritionally, I can list dozens of incredible nutrition coaches, cultural medicine doctors that I've worked with throughout the years. But no, I think that was kind of my school. And now, proud to say I've
been a coach for roughly 26 years. Um, I probably trained over 40,000 one hour sessions in my life. I no longer take on one-on-one clients. I mean, I've got a great online community. Uh, I it's more much more of a scalable business now. So I sell programs in 80 countries. I host challenges. The last three, four years, I've rented an island off the coast of Mexico and I host my retreat.
So like we've we've really built up a great business. We've got a great team working for us here at the bar. This is my facility that I built in 2021. And I just let my friends come in here and it's a place where we shoot content and do and do work.
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Chapter 3: How has the fitness industry evolved over the years?
I've walked into some pretty crazy stuff with banquet staffs, orgies going on, people leaving. No, seriously, people leaving their party during the day with another woman and then coming back at night sitting at the exact or what they thought was the exact same table in the exact same room.
It could have been, I'm going to make this name up, it could have been the O'Reilly wedding during the day and that night it was like the you know, wedding and eat someone. They would sit down and eat someone else's meal. And I'd be like, Oh my God, we recognize you from today. What are you doing? Like there was some craziest stories in this place that I've ever seen.
Um, it was, it was bananas, but it was fun. And looking back on it now, I'd say that was for me, that was a form of school. Um, yeah, just, you know, I was the minority at work. Um,
uh one of the very few white people at work you know just being around that type of grit and that type of uh you know the people i was around really were working they were this was like paycheck to paycheck so i think being around that allowed me to really respect the dollar and respect people and understand service and understand when you're working a party sometimes and
Someone's not paying the bill, you know, you're going to be treated a certain way and they're going to have too much to drink and how are you going to handle that? So I really think at a young age, if you look, if you ask me now, what was some of the best education I ever had in my life? I'm putting that in the top three category for me.
And that was something even now, my son at a young age, I've got him working at the exact same place I worked at. My daughter's working at the, because I understood how, you know, the service business, I, it's my opinion. Someone might bark at me for saying this. I feel like every human, every human being should work in service at some point.
I think everyone should be working in the service business. They should understand what it's like to deal with people. And, um, No, see that it's not always roses.
No. And I totally agree with you. I started bartending at 18 and I did situations that I lied about my age to get the job because here you have to be anyone. And I agree with you because it's good to, first of all, it's good to see what it's like to wait on people and to serve other people and what it's like.
And then maybe being a better understanding how to treat people, you know, because you've been there. And it does develop grit and personality. So I totally agree with you. So when I was in school and I want to compare this to you because I was in college in 2000 to, you know, on and they started doing more exercise sciences, physiology.
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Chapter 4: What is the role of coaches versus influencers in fitness?
Because you feel good, you feel free, and you're pushing yourself and you're learning about yourself and what to do and what not to do. And then you can help others, too. And it's amazing. But I look at you, too. Look, I think that Brian's a little kooky, too. But he's really trying to learn different things that could possibly help others expand their lifespan. And maybe it is not.
Maybe it's not. But I mean, let's learn from it and kind of put it together and utilize that as knowledge. I think if anything else, I mean.
Think about how many people started on trajectories where others were like, oh, he's crazy or she's crazy. And then, you know, then they find something out and they're like, genius.
i'm like give the guy a break but i was i was more turned off by uh how critical people were of him and it's just you know you should be able what they should be saying was like listen if this is what makes this person happy fantastic about go live a little maybe maybe maybe he's living you know what the amount of joy it sounds like he's getting out of you know slowing down his aging process if he even is is he's happy knock yourself out buddy
Like you just said, the people that pushed the envelopes that were thought to be crazy are the ones that figured everything out that we have now. I mean, falling in line is never going to get you anywhere. It's just not. I know. I know. I can't show you that concept, but you know, hey. Everybody's going to live different and people are going to have their opinions and that's fine.
I try to stay away from the negativity as much as I can. And I try to learn. You know, I always say you can never know too much, but you can always know too little. So I take people like you, people I respect. And I look, I try to give what I can, but I also know that the only way to advance is to take time to learn from everybody.
You have to. I mean, I can't believe the amount of knowledge out there now and the amount of access we have is extraordinary. You know, on the other hand, there's so much of it that, you know, confuses the living hell out of people. So I can understand why a lot of people are confused, but yeah, the access that we have now, the fact that you can turn around and if you,
forget something or you have to look up, you know, I can't tell you the amount of times like I love watching documentaries. I'll literally sit there with my phone next to me and I'm like, oh, this person's still alive. Google. Wow. How many teams do they play on? Google. Wow. And it's like, it's just, it's just like encyclopedia that you have next to you. God, we didn't have that 30 years ago.
It's like, it's, it's amazing.
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Chapter 5: How important is data and fitness tracking in today's fitness regimes?
Give them a diet of organic, you know, grass-fed, you know, whatever, like proteins and slow-burning carbohydrates and veggies and fruits and, like, would they have seen even more progress? Like, that's what they didn't do. They removed the Doritos and the beer and they threw in bean patties and they said, well, this is why it happened. Okay, you removed the Doritos and beer.
What would have happened? If you ate the way that you and I eat, my assumption would have been that they probably would have seen even better results. Yet, I can't tell you how many people that I work with are vegetarian. My daughters are pescatarian, that are carnivore. I never really talk people out of these things. I say, well, why are you doing it? I want to understand.
They give me their reason. I'm like, you sure you want to do it? They're like, well, what's your viewpoint on nutrition? I said, well, this is what I typically recommend. But if this is something you really feel like committing to, let me help you do this in the best way possible. So I don't even like try talking them out of it.
The times I start talking them out of it is when they turn to me and they're like, I feel terrible. My energy level has dropped. Look at my skin. There's things that are going wrong with it. Why? And then we try and do a deep dive in to figure out why. And even most of the time, I'm not even the one that can give them those answers because we're going for blood.
So I'm turning into like a Dr. Gabrielle Lyon or a Dr. Dwayne Jackson. And we're doing a really... You know, a much deeper internal dive into their life to understand about just to say, well, it's because you're not eating meat. There might be a there might be a problem that's way worse than that. Right. So, you know, I try not to jump to the conclusion there.
But I think it's understanding, you know, why people are doing things is very important.
I'm interviewing Dwayne Thursday, man. He spoke so highly of you when I talked to him. Yeah. Oh, highly. He's a good dude, man. I'm looking forward to that one. So I just wanted to bring that up to you.
Thank you. Tell Don, Don said he loves it. Say Don said he loves you. That's what he said.
I will. You know what? Look, you were talking about, you know what I noticed? is that you never see, like in these documentaries and things, you never hear two things. You never hear them talking about blood panels, and you never hear them talking about sustainability. You know? And it's frustrating because those are the two most important things, is how does your blood panel look?
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Chapter 6: What are the key principles of nutrition according to Don Saladino?
Drive 495 cost me $2 million a year just to break even, just to cover my overhead. My monthly nut, it was probably even a little more than that, my monthly nut was like 200K a month. I had to do that before. Anything above that was profit. The amount of business that I did in that place, the place was incredible. To this day, I was able to pivot to something that I believe is so meaningful to me.
Do I ever miss it? There's aspects of it that maybe I missed, but honestly, I was able to exit the way I wanted to exit. But to get to the end of your question, that gym that I opened, that first one was a golf fitness gym. Facility. We worked with golfers. We did kinematic sequencing. We had a phlebotomist coming in doing blood work. We had nutritionists. We were doing this stuff in 2005.
We had indoor golf simulators. I had a bar upstairs. I was hosting Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, all these companies. So we started this business off. So imagine being the first place to open like that in New York City that had indoor golf simulators. Wow. Every corporate entity was booking their events with us. So we had the gym during the day downstairs.
And upstairs, we had a bar. And we had three simulators upstairs, two simulators downstairs. It was 15,000 feet. So it was like, I had companies coming in. It was like, boom. We were killing it. And then I think 07, 08, when we had that financial crisis, I remember looking at my brother, my business partner, being like, holy shit, we're going to have a problem here.
And we just had to do a complete restructuring of our business. I had to raise a million dollars to keep the place open, but I didn't do it in a loan. I did it in prepaid. So I went to some pretty successful members and I said, I need a hundred here, 50 here. They're like, how are you going to pay it back? I'm like, I'm going to trade it off.
So like, if you're coming in with a hundred grand, I'll trade it off. So I worked off a million dollars in roughly 18 months of training. That's how much I had to train. So I was getting up at 3 a.m., opening at the club at 3.45, taking my client Rick at 3.45. That's when I would start. And I did this.
Once the 18 months were up, I mean, I probably ended up, I've trained over 40,000 power sessions in my life. I mean, I'm a machine. But in that time where we had to restructure, I had an actor walk into my club named Hugh Jackman. And he came in with his trainer at the time, Rico Wesley. Rico, who I saw recently, is doing great. But Rico's the reason why I got Hugh.
So Rico ended up having triplets and had to move. And Hugh saw me working out one day and kind of came to me and was like, you know, I want to work out with you. And I was looking at him like,
treatment Rico get away from me like you're like it's almost like he was cheating on Rico but no I didn't realize that Rico and him were already knew that they were leaving it wasn't that he was leaving Rico Rico was leaving him And he was like coming to me to be like, I'd like to work out with you. Finally, Rico came to me. He's like, you idiot. Like he's, he's one. So I'm leaving.
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Chapter 7: How does Don Saladino approach training for different individuals?
So when I worked with Hugh, yeah, we did all the mobility, we did all the performance stuff, but at the end of the day, he had to be resilient. He had to turn to take his shirt off and look a certain way. So I really, that kind of became my niche.
And then out of nowhere, there was, I mean, there was no social media back then, but I remember Hugh turned to me and he wanted to do some press for me and I turned to him and I said, no. And he looked at me, he's like, why? I'm like, this is your, this is, we got a job. And I was so against exposing any of those clients. I was like, I would go too far from it.
Like, I probably should have done some press, to be honest. Like, I should have been like you, it's going to benefit us both. But I was like, no, no, no, I'm not doing it. And we didn't do it. And I think word got around that I had that approach. The next thing you know, like... you'd walk in there at any given deck. I've never seen a place in my life.
This is like walking in like Sandra Bullock's on the treadmill. Uh, Owen Wilson's over here, the rock Dwayne, the rock Dwayne Johnson walking through the, uh, the club. Um, you know, and then he introduced me to, um, you know, I started working with Scarlett Johansson. I met Ryan Reynolds and then it kind of all, you know, it all just steamrolled from there. And, uh, yeah, I, I, um,
that's really so then what ended up happening was you I'd have these actors literally on a weekly come in and just say I gotta get ready for this and we would go into my office and I'd say well what does that mean what do you have to look like and we would google like Liev Schreiber came in once and he was like I gotta look like I'm training for this role Chuck Chuck Wettner and I gotta train to look like this it was like Rocky but before it was Rocky that was what Chuck
Yeah. Boxer. But like, um, we have was two reps, so we had to soften them up. But how do, how do you do that without, so out of nowhere, this became this like factory, this like experiment lab for me to be able to go in and get people ready to wear like prosthetic suits, like hell boy, like, um, Dave Harbour, we got him in this prosthetic suit. We do all of his measurements beforehand.
He weighed 250 pounds. Production company calls me in five weeks. We're going to pull the budget. Why? He's losing too much weight. I'm like, he was 249 pounds this morning. He lost one pound. They're like, he's not fitting properly in his prosthetic suit. He's just getting in too good a shape I'm like, all right, just bear with me. And I'm calling Dave up like, hey, man, go for ice cream tonight.
He's like, what are you talking about? I'm serious. You're craving ice cream? I want you to eat it tonight. I want you to eat it tomorrow. But stick with everything else. And literally, those are the conversations that I'm having with people. So that's how my career really kicked off. Now, I'm fortunate to where I'll get calls from people. And like, I've been working with Matt Bolber for a while.
I haven't met Matt in person. I probably been working with Matt at this point now for two, two and a half years. We haven't like met in person yet. We still laugh about it. He was on the, he was on the phone with my daughter recently helping her out with like college decisions because she's going to go get a degree, bachelor of fine arts.
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