Episode 524: Liron Kayvan: How to Make Fitness Goals Stick And The Top Fitness Trends This Year

I got his Tony Robbins you're listening to Habitson Hustle, Crush it. In today's episode of Fitness Friday, I'm joined by my dear friend and fitness expert, LeRun Kavan, to break down the New Year cycle around training and health. And of course share our perspective on the top three trend shaping 2026. We get into why most New Year's goals fall apart by mid-January and how too much daily decision-making sabotages long-term habits. And what it actually means to build non-negotiables. If you're tired of the start-over-loop and want daily habits that actually support your lifestyle, this episode gives you clear ways to build consistency that lasts. Enjoy this episode and let me know always your thoughts. Before we dive into today's episode, I first want to thank our sponsor, Therasage. Their Try Light panel has become my favorite biohacking thing for healing my body. It's a portable red light panel that I simply cannot live without. I literally bring it with me everywhere I go. And I personally use their red light therapy to help reduce inflammation and places in my body where honestly I have pain. You can use it on a sore back, stomach cramps, shoulder, ankle. Red light therapy is my go-to. Plus, it also has amazing anti-aging benefits, including reducing signs of fine lines and wrinkles on your face, which I also use it for. I personally use Therasage Try Light everywhere at all the time. It's small, it's affordable, it's portable, and it's really effective. Head over to Therasage.com right now and use code B-Bould for 15% off. This code will work sight wide. Again, head over to Therasage THER ASHE.com and use code B-Bould for 15% off any of their products. Okay, welcome to 2026. Here we go again. I'm joined by my dear friend, Leerone. Hello. Thank you for coming on again. We do a lot of, we riff back and forth on fitness all the time. So that's why I love having you because it's an easy conversation. And I'm sure if you guys have listened to this podcast, you are very familiar with who Leerone is. He's been on a few times talking fitness, health, wellness. So anyway, thanks for being on the show. Pleasure. Again, everybody, welcome to 2026. And here we go again, right? All the New Year resolutions, New Year, New Year, blah, blah, blah. I'm not a humongous fan of New Year's resolutions. I feel like, you know, I know it kind of gives people like a clean slate to kind of start over again. But that's also the problem. I think that people should be doing things every single day lifestyle wise and not just wait until January 1st. And this is what I found interesting. Did you know that the second Friday of January is when the majority of people start falling off? Like, I think that it was like 80% of people start falling off of their New Year's resolutions. That makes sense. Right? When they make the New Year's resolution for like starting in the New Year versus like, hey, you know what, I want to make this life change. I'm going to start tomorrow or right now. Fitness is also the number one New Year's resolution, right? Fitness is the number one. Health fitness. That's why when you go to the gym, it's like pack, right? For the first two weeks. And then my gym is, I know there you go, right? Well, you know, you're a gym owner. So what happens to what happens? You just get a flood of people, especially now with, you know, companies like Class, Pass and stuff, they offer people like New Year's deals and stuff like that. So you just, it kind of now has become this self-perpetuating thing where everyone just thinks, okay, I'll start in January. And they're thinking about that from probably October, November, right? Right. So December is kind of empty because people are like, oh, I'm going to start in January. That's the problem within New Year's resolution is you're basically just like kicking the can down the road. 100% and then like they, that's the problem. And then like, they let themselves be probably more gluttonous and do all these things that they would otherwise not do. Okay. So I want to go over a couple of things. I researched the top three fitness trends for 2026. And what I found was, well, not that, that unique, but what I found people searched for the most. Are you ready? Okay. And then I want you to compare it to what you see. Okay. All right. The first one, but I'm not that surprised. But well, actually, the first major one is low impact training. So the biggest trend right now in fitness is interval walking. Have you heard of this? I have not heard of this. Very new. Very new. I'm glad that I'm the one to tell you. Indervo walking has been the number one searched fitness trend for 2026. So it used to be Pilates. Pilates is still up there because it's low impact. But walking has now like take interval walking, especially for many reasons. Number one, it's for people. Anyone can do it. Anybody can participate. I do believe. I know that you're not going to agree with me. I believe walking. I know. Because I can see you're smoking. I just look. I think walking is by far the number one fitness, like the number one thing you can do for overall health, wellness, mental health, focus, productivity, like walking, I think beats out everything. It's also great for insulin sensitivity, your VO2 maps. Like I said, your mental health, big one, you're shaking your head. I'm not saying that. Also for fat loss. I'm not saying that. Actually, fun enough. I do agree with you. Really? Okay. I also think the barrier to entry is so low that there's no excuse not to do it. You can just walk out of your house and start doing the thing. So that's the number one. But interval walking, I really kind of, there's been a lot of different before. How do you define that? What makes it an interval? Okay. So interval walking is basically walking at different pace. So you can do like a three minute basic walk, I guess I get a moderate pace. And then you can fast walk for a minute to two minutes. So you're basically changing the speed of your walking. And you can do different, 20 minutes, 30 minutes. And that's how they define it. And the other thing is it used to be, well, there's a whole trend with the, do you remember this 12? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 12, 30, what do you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The walking on a 12 in line at three miles for 30 minutes. Which I mean, yeah, that works. Any form of walking in my opinion works. You know, I actually tried this and like, like I'm not someone who buys into trends in general. Right. So whenever there's a trend, that's why I'm smirking. I know. But I did try that workout because one of the girls at my gym was, you know, talking about it from TikTok or whatever. And so I tried it. It was, it was actually not easy. It actually wasn't trying to keep that pace and that inclined for 30 minutes was challenging. Well, I think it all depends on what your baseline is. Yeah. Right. But I walk a lot. I walk an hour a day. You walk, you walk an hour a day. So what I do is I walk whenever I'm on the phone. I walk whenever I am kind of, you know, walking from eight point eight point B. And then, you know, I've said this before. But my non-negotiable is if there's anything there, I have to do or go. That is under two miles. I will walk it. I don't care if it's like a business meeting, a lunch, a dinner, I will not get into a car. That's amazing. And it's rare to, especially for busy people like yourself. And I know you, you're extremely busy. And the fact that you do it means that really anyone can do it. And it's, it's very rare that people choose to do that. Well, this is what I think. Thank you. But because I believe so much in giving yourself non-negotiables and parameters that you work within, like kind of like kind of bulls for life. That's fun. I believe in giving yourself like particular rules of life to be accountable. I agree. I agree. Right? Or else you can just go haywire. Hundreds. Especially for personality types like mine that, you know, you know, left to my own devices. You know, I would, I would eat, you know, five bowls of pasta. I would, you know, be gluttonous in every possible way. So I gave myself, and I think people should give themselves like parameters and boundaries. So just to be to state, to be the most effective optimized version of. I call it hard lines, like having a hard line, which is another way of saying non-negotiable. There's just rules that you just follow and you kind of go on autopilot and you just don't think about it anymore. This is what is happening. Exactly. Yeah, most people have brushing their teeth twice a day. It's just hard lines around that. You just do it. You can do the same thing with fitness easily. And if you do, you'll find it actually quite easy to stick to. I think that's with anything in life. Absolutely. Like fitness, of course, but I think giving yourself hard lines or ways to be accountable to yourself is very, very important, especially. But I think it comes before that is having the self-awareness to know where your triggers are, where you will fall, and then plan accordingly. So like because I know where my, I know myself and I know how I would basically flail or how I would kind of get myself into a problem, that's why I have these hard lines. Yeah, but you'll learn, I mean, I think people would learn that through the process of having those hard lines, learning themselves and where they start making excuses, right? And if you're committed to it, then you have to make that choice. Am I going to make an excuse or am I going to follow through my non-negotiable? Another one I want to say is for me, one of my hard lines or non-negotiables is that I will not take a meeting, do a podcast, or schedule something that is work-related until I exercise first. That's like a non-negotiable for me. And again, like knowing how busy you are, I think the people at home know this, but like I know how busy you are, the fact that you do that means really anyone can do that. Well, not necessarily anybody. I mean, fortunately, I'm in a situation where I can make my own schedule. I have pretty much autonomy and I work for myself. However, with that, I also eat what I kill, right? So like if I don't work, then I just don't make money or I just don't, I just don't, I'm not able to do what I do, but that's why why I do it for me is twofold. Number one, it actually makes me more productive when I exercise before I work or do a podcast because it like turns on my brain. It's the best form of brain training. Exercise to me is the number one best form of brain training you can give yourself. You will be more productive, more efficient, more effective, smarter. I can go on and on and on. So why I give that, myself, that parameters, like if I do not exercise before I work, I'll just be sluggish. Like and now I've trained myself and my brain has been now trained where it just doesn't turn on until I get that done. And I will be probably ten times more productive if I worked out before. So I don't even, so I don't even give myself that option. So that's the first part. The second reason is that makes me like, okay, it's like kind of like habit stacking, you know, like if I wake up, I eat my breakfast, I have my water, blah, blah, blah, then I go, then I work out, then I go to work, that's my stack, right? So it's again, the habit stacking is again, what keeps people accountable and keeps them successful. Do you look forward to working out? No. Do you look forward to the feeling you get after you work out? Yes. I never do anything based on how I feel in the moment. I do things based on how I feel after the fact. I think that's one of the things I've noticed about fit people versus non fit people. Almost every person I know who's fit has an unconscious shift of their attention to how they're going to feel when they leave the gym or finish their workout. Yeah. Rather than how they're going to feel going into the gym or starting the workout. One, well, yeah, I always say that your emotions is information. It's not factual. I think that I don't ever do something based on how you feel. That's not fact, it's feelings, and that can shift and change. I won't do that. I will do it anyways. I say these things, these four words. I do it anyways, those four words, no matter what. If I'm sick, not totally sick, but if I have a little snuffy nose, if I'm sad, if I'm low, if whatever it is, I will do it anyways. Do you apply that to non-fitness things too? Yes. Well, it depends. I think what I love about it is fitness is a microcosm for everything else in life. What you do in one area of life is how you do something in every other area of life. So how you do one thing is how you do everything. But fitness has really trained my brain to really have a level of discipline and really just a self-assence of standard where then I apply it to everything else in life. So that's why to me, I really kind of like deep dive into or I became super interested in the business and area of fitness because I think it's so much more than just lifting a weight and putting it down. I think the skills and the foundation that you get from building a fitness routine and lifestyle is unsurmountable and will basically one million extra life in every other area. So that's why. How is that for an answer? That is great. Now, with that being said, let's go into it. Okay, so walking is number one. Walking is number one. The other thing I found very interesting is recovery is another thing that's become a number two on the list in terms of top searches. Like cold plunging, saunas. Massive right now. But I feel it's been massive for a long time. But I feel it's been massive for a long time. I don't know why now it's becoming. Probably because it's becoming an industry. Wasn't it an industry before? I think more and more now you're getting these companies that are recovery based companies with recovery. They were always around hyper-race, they're a body. Yeah, they were early, but I'm saying you get loads now. Everyone's kind of wants a piece of that pie. And a lot of it's really good stuff. I mean, in general, I would say that recovery is something that people still know, no matter how much they know that they need to prioritize it, like people who have any sort of experience in the fitness world, it's still underappreciated by most people. Okay, I have a question for you. In the space of recovery, what is your number one modality in recovery? Sleep. Yeah. Number one. Yeah. Okay. Good, long sleep. Really? Yeah, I got it with my life. Someone was telling me today that Matthew McCone is the same random. But like... Well, it's Matthew McCone? He says it. Yeah, he's not. I mean, the guy is not only hyper-successful actor, but he's also extremely fit. So he has this really well-balanced approach to life, I think. Most people err on the side of one or the other. You know, their professional life and their fitness life are two separate things. But like, you know, the guy like him. Okay, well, that's a couple of this. Great. Matthew McCone, he's fit. He's always been fit. He's got great genetics. I love Matthew McCone, he's been on the show. What about in terms of recovery, though? What do you think? I say sleep is a number one modality. What would you say is number two? It's closely related to sleep, I think, is... So, I don't know, there's 1.5. I can go his more separate, but just sort of relaxation, slash inappings, less specifically, I think yoga and nidra. That's sleep. Yeah, but yoga and nidra is actually technically non-sleep deep rest. Basically, I think that people should not only be sleeping, but taking time in the middle of their day to just switch off. But it is kind of an asterisk on sleep. It's kind of a form of just general rest. I think that stuff is more important than just rest in general is more important than things like jumping in a nice bath. I think I, you know, cold therapy definitely works. I use hot therapy and cold therapy both, but I think if you're prioritizing that over things like napping or just taking time in the middle of the day, and definitely if you're trying to ice your way to recovery without getting really good night's sleep, then I think you've put in the car before the horse. Okay. I like that. I think that at the end of the day, well, the research actually says that people are trying to work out smarter, not harder. So that's why recovery has taken a really, has really hockey pucked. People want to work out less time of course, but not even to do hit training, but just more smarter, smarter ways of working out. That's great. That's great. I think sleep obviously personally. How much do you sleep, Joe? Not very much. I can tell. I think this is a thing. Okay. First of all, I think that not that I don't, I want to sleep eight hours. I think I try to sleep, I'm not trying, I try to sleep eight hours, but if I get six hours, I'm happy. I've been waking up a lot lately just because I think that when your, when your brain doesn't shed off, it's, you know, that's why. But I definitely, I know I, I very much value sleep obviously. I mean, but what I was going to say is besides sleep, the other recovery that I think is like monument, I think the best one is just sauna. Sure. I think it's my favorite one. Sure. I do not like a cold plunge. I think it's terrible for your hormones for women. I think it's good for men. I don't think it's great for women. And I just don't like it. Yeah. You know, I just don't like it. I remember when cold showers came out, everyone was doing it because I went off and stuff. And again, there is a place for it. I'm not saying it's throw the baby out with a lot of water. But all it did for me personally was make me not look forward to showers because I was going to have cold showers and stuff. Well, also, I think it's a stress of like having that angst every time. Yeah. It's like, to me, that like that to me is not appealing. Yeah. And there's other things you can do. Like the other thing is like, not everything is for everybody. Right. Right. Right. Right. And then, you know, I think it's not something that's going to be, just because something works for you, doesn't mean it's going to be working for me. And then what we try to do is we see an influencer, someone that says, oh, this is the best thing since sliced bread, but it doesn't only work for you. And then you feel guilty or bad about yourself because you're not doing it. That's true. Right. So I think, you know, going into the new year, pick one thing in that, in that area, in that space. And like try to do that. You don't have to do everything. And the nice thing about that is you get momentum as well. If you can start with one thing, rather than having ADD about it, start with one thing and just master it and get successful at it. It will give you the momentum and the confidence to then start adding other things, rather than starting with four, five, six, seven different things and kind of just not having anything stick. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right And use my code Gen for 35% off your first subscription. That's livemomentis.com code Gen for 35% off your first subscription. Trust me, you'll be happy you did. The other one, the number three, most trending in terms of things that people are searching for or Googling or chat GPTing these days is home gyms and fitness tech. So that's a big one. So this is like, I kind of feel like what was trending during the pandemic is kind of now having an uptick a little bit. Which is interesting because at the same time, what's really trending on the social front is community and... It's like to opposite the social. Yeah, which is really interesting. Well, the extremes often magnate, like, you know, polarize each other and they kind of feed each other. There are more people probably wanting to be home, especially after COVID. It still has that. Some people really liked being on their own and then some people it was torture for them. Yeah, but I do find it interesting. Like home gyms, AI, tech kind of assisted work out. You took them like, um, tonals and mirrors and things like that? I'm talking... Yeah, like, first of all, let me humongous fan of something called Amp Fitness. Have you seen this thing? I have heard of it peripherally. You can tell me about it. Oh my gosh. It's... It will blow you away. First of all, it looks like an iPhone, but just a little... Like, a little bigger. Uh-huh. And it is really like... It's really intuitive, but more than that, it gives you three different levels of resistance training. So you can do like eccentric, you can do regular, you can do band. And it can... It's super small and it's aesthetically nice. But I've been using it super easy to use. And I'm not just saying that because... Because I'm saying it because legit, it's amazing. So companies like that, I think are are going to have a real big uptick because it's because of the fact that home gym... Home gym stuff is becoming popular again. I just don't understand what it is. Yeah. I know why. I mean, I don't know why, but I'm guessing is because everything... So much... There's been so much focus and emphasis on AI in general. Yeah. Yeah. So anything that has an AI element in it, right? It's very, very... People are very curious. And so like a amp, it's AI... Like, it's basically... It's helping you with your workouts. It's tracking your workouts. It's doing everything in terms of like telling you when you should progress, or progressing it for you. It's very intuitive. So maybe that's fun. Easy to follow, yeah. But you're okay. I want to ask you because you're again, you're a gym owner. Are you noticing... Besides like we talked about like the January, have you noticed that even in like the last year, people have been showing up more or less? Showing up to the physical gym. Yeah. If you do like boxing classes... Yeah. No, I mean, my business is growing for sure, but and it's continuing to go. But I think what you have to do with a gym is you have to realize that you are competing with home gyms. You are competing with baps. People do kind of want to stay home. They want to work from home. They want to work out from home. There's the convenience factor and you just have to kind of accept that. And then you have to focus on what you offer. And really the biggest thing that you offer with a physical brick and mortar location is two related things. One is your own energy as the trainer, the coach, etc., etc., the gym owner. What you're bringing almost really physically to people, you know. I do believe that there's something that we can't put our finger on, which is like energy that people get. They feed off it. And two is the community. So that other members of the gym, those two things, which are related, you cannot replace with AI, you cannot replace with a home gym. And I think that maybe there's some type of hybrid model where people do a few workouts from home for the sake of speed and convenience because convenience is a huge factor in fitness. Nobody wants to drive 45 minutes to their gym, right? There's nothing more. Exactly. Demotivating them that. Well, you know what I've noticed also is I'm a member of, let's say, Equinox, right? I have like the all access to all the gyms and blah, blah, blah. All the bells and whistles. All the bell, all the like all the locations, let's say, right? To get laundry as well. Can I get laundry? No, I don't think I do. You know what? I might. I don't even know. Because honestly, this is a thing like I have to have a lot of time. To go to the gym. Did that make sense? Because I like get to the gym. I got to like walk up the stairs. I got to do all the things. And then like by the time I'm there, I'm like, oh my god, now I can start. So there is definitely that convenience factor of working out at home, right? So my point is like here I am spending all this money on a membership to all of these gyms. And yet I work out at home, quite honestly, like 75% of the time. Because by the time I go to do all the whole thing, it's like two hours a lot of times. That's why I find that I think that people are priding themselves on being so busy these days. That's like a badge of honor where they're getting more bang for their buck in their time by just working out at home. And a lot of these things that are popular like vibrational plates are very popular. That's under I guess. Would that be a recovery thing? I think so. I don't know what that is. Like those you like stand on it. I know, I know what the point of it is. But yeah, that's the thing. A lot of these things are very like again. I think what does a vibrational plate do? I should look it up. Do you want to look it up? I'm sure I'll have all sorts of claims. But no, I mean like no, I think suffice to say I'm not okay. What? I'm going to write. Okay. What does a vibrational plate do? Benefits. Okay, let's see. I don't know. It's great for your nervous system. It works harder to maintain. It's for balance. It helps with the balance. Stabilization. Although things I understand, I don't know how. I guess for balance and stabilization, it's very helpful. Yeah, maybe. I think it's also, no, I think it's good for its your circulation for like lymphatic drainage, bone density support. So I mean, I don't know. We could get into it. But this is pretty much a perfect symbol of core engagement. The type of thing that we're talking about here about trends and stuff like that. Like when you compare, what are these things like a couple grand or something? Like when you compare a vibrational plate to just, I bet there are almost no benefits of a vibrational plate above walking for half an hour. Okay, here. Okay, here are the. Okay. Lymphag drainage, I understand, because of the shaking. We'll get that from walking. Okay, says here, who vibrational plays her best for? Vibration, vibrational plays her best for beginners who need low impact movement. People with joint pain or limited mobility, older adults focusing on balance and bone health, busy people adding short movement snacks. Does that? Recovery focused athletes. Okay. So and how do you use it? You use it for five or 10 minutes. Blah, blah, blah. You can also, you can do squats and like you can actually work out on the vibrational plate. If you are someone who's more of an intermediate, let me ask you this, have you heard of those, those electric body suits? Yes, of course. That's a huge. That's also so popular. I've actually heard those are awesome. It's very, very, for people I trust, I mean, people I haven't used it, but I know people actually are friend of mine, and I'm trying to use it. And she is, I just like sings the praises to heaven and back. So maybe maybe some of this stuff works. I don't know. This is what I think, right? I think anything is better than nothing. I agree with that. I think anything is better than nothing. Exactly. I think that also a lot of these things have their place, but there's nothing. I don't care. You can give me a vibrational plate to stand on to do my stability work and my core work and my lymphatic drainage and all the other things. It's not going to take the place of lifting weights as you age. I don't care. The vibrational plate, the Pilates, whatever it is, nothing is going to be as effective. Plain and simple. There's nothing else to say about it. All of these things are very fun trends. And yeah, they can, they can like uptick or like, you know, move your, your, your baseline, maybe a couple of percent here and there. But like the tried and true people don't want to hear what actually works because it's not, it's not like sexy and fun. Like no one cares. Like if I say to you, walk 30 45 minutes a day and like lift heavy, people yawn because it's boring. They're like, oh no, I'm going to go sat on a vibrational plate. I'm going to go do this hybrid with a bunch of like, you know, bracelets that are weighted and whatever's like, cool. Those are fun. Okay, you can do whatever you want. You're not going to get the results. But you can do it. Yeah. Or if you do that, great. It's better than doing zero. But sometimes it's like, just do what actually works. And then I want to just, okay, I just want to say one more thing while I'm on my high horse here. But the funny thing is, and I said this before and I talk about this all the time that when I wrote that my, my first book ever was called No Jim Required. No Jim required. And that book was like before it's time is before people thought like of, of, you know, working out with no basically body weight and blah, blah, blah wasn't as popular and trendy. Okay, whatever. So it was very basic, right? Like I talked about like the main principles of how you can go and become like go from average or not healthy to like really, basically really becoming the most healthy fit version of yourself without going to the gym. Okay, it was very basic because it and these things actually work. No one gave a shit. There was like, there are the other books that were coming out at the same time were very kitschy, super trendy workouts, blah, blah, blah. And those like, outsold my book because it mine was like, yeah, that's like nobody cares. It's like boring to hear about lift, you know, doing your own body weight and pushups or but now calisthenics are cute. True, but it's not sexy. You're a place like Europe, like Israel, calisthenics, they have these calisthenics parks everywhere in Europe, everywhere. Everyone does it. Everyone does it. But that's the thing. Like I think that not everyone does it, by the way. People do it that you like people, you're more like honed into it because that's what you do. No, I'm not in Europe. I'm talking about what I get about England. Yeah. Well, we're going to get into it. But my point is that my that book, I was written whatever, how many years ago, many, people don't care about things that are like they're they're not sexy and fun. It's like, it's not, doesn't sell. Doesn't. Yeah, I'm still going to talk about it there because it's true. Right, I'm going to keep on, I'm going to keep on beating that dead horse. Yeah. That's what I do. It's true. Okay. So anyway, thank you for coming on. Thank you. I hope we gave people some information and Liren, I always love having you on. That's off being here. It's good. Well, we're going to keep keep the fun going here. Guys, let me say this too. Thank you for everybody who has subscribed. If you have not subscribed, I would appreciate if you do. It makes a big difference with how we track on the algorithm. And if you have any particular topics, questions, and things you want me to cover, I would love to hear from you. So with that being said, have a great happy New Year, have a good 2026. And we'll see you soon.