In my interview with Lagree Fitness founder Sebastien Lagree, he reveals how workouts helped him overcome shyness and build an empire. As a CEO and Lagree instructor, he’s excited about developing Lagree workouts that treat anxiety, depression and other aspects of mental health.
“I don’t care if I have a huge celebrity following or a lot of followers on Instagram. This has never been a measure of success or how many studios we open or how many patents I have. A lot of people talk about how it’s changed your life, not just changed your body. I love that. It’s probably the best part about my job!”
Celebrity Trainer’s Inspiration
What’s the hottest workout music you’re listening to right now?
Sebastien Lagree: I love Sun In Your Eyes [by] Above & Beyond. I don’t really like hip hop and a lot of the popular music at all. I love house. I play a lot of Calvin Harris, Avicii, Tiesto, Afrojack and I love EDM music. That’s what gets me pumping and creative.
Music is so important to work out. You want to have the right beats. The songs that I listen to when I work out and I teach or when I’m in the car are very different. I love that high intensity energy when you work out.
If you could exercise with any celebrity, who would you want to meet?
Sebastien Lagree: Oh, Arnold, of course! Arnold [Schwarzenegger] is a big influence on me and was the reason I got into bodybuilding. I would love to do a session with him and see what he thinks about the workout.
I think his wife, his kids and even his son come into the studio and do the workout. We can spot them from time to time, but I would love to do a session with him.
And then Sylvester Stallone, Jean-Claude Van Damme… all my favourites from the 80s and 90s. I would love to do a workout with them!
Mental Health
The world is really stressful right now. How does Lagree Fitness help people deal with anxiety?
Sebastien Lagree: This is an interesting one. About eight years ago, I was doing some studies and I had a new machine called the Supra. I got my first method patented for the Supra, a machine that works like the Megaformer. It would incline on the back and tilt. I was very interested to see what is happening to the body when you tilt the machine – what happens to the muscles and what happens to the brain?
We found that we had over 200% muscle stimulation when you have to tilt – amazing! The part that was the most interesting is when you tilt people, the brain has to react to the change of levels.
The neuroscientist was also very excited because she showed me the participants had certain brainwaves behaving differently. She told me that workout could help people fight anxiety and enhance mood. That was the first time that I really considered making a machine or even a method to enhance the mood.
I’ve always designed equipment to target the muscles. I never considered that those workouts I’m creating could also change your mood and help you to deal with anxiety, depression, all that stuff.
Now I’m very interested in creating a whole line of fitness equipment and method to deal especially with anxiety, depression, maybe dementia, Parkinson’s… Exercise is a very powerful medicine. If we really understand how it can heal us, we can start to create specific programs for some needs.
When you do Lagree [Fitness], you build mental strength. When you do this exercise, you have to do them very slowly, you have to maintain perfect form. You’re going to develop skills and work on your commitment, discipline, willpower, and perseverance. All of these qualities are going to help you to deal with everyday life. It empowers you and helps you deal with very stressful situations.
Then you realize that hey, if I can do five minutes on the Lagree machine and it seems almost impossible, but I see people doing it every day, it gives you confidence to deal with everything else in life. Then you don’t feel as anxious because all of a sudden you realize, ‘I got this! I did this on the Megaformer. I did that full 50-minute session with Sebastien. I thought I was going to quit so many times, but I endured it.’
You start to do things that you would never do. I used to be the shyest guy in class. I would fear public speaking. Even doing an interview like this, it would be like, oh my god, I was just so red. I couldn’t be myself.
Working out has completely obliterated the shyness and being kind of worried and afraid of the world. Now I’m just out there living life to the fullest because working out gave me confidence.
The world right now is super anxious because when you read the news, everything is negative, but you have to understand and I think that everything is negative for a reason. I think we have a lot of fear that’s shown on TV and the media, so you need to be able to just not let that affect you. A lot of people are affected by that, so work out.
Focus On The Workout That Makes You Feel Great!
People also get stressed out by the constant pressure to look a certain way. How would you like to change how the media talks about fitness?
Sebastien Lagree: Fitness is for the mind! It makes me feel that I can do anything.
I was the shyest kid. I was a homebody to a level that was almost like sickening. My dad was like, oh my god, this guy’s so timid, he’s never going to be able to do anything in life. But bodybuilding and weightlifting gave me the confidence that went into making my own method and business, so the whole thing became this snowballing effect.
Fitness is not just a tool to create this outstanding body. I can exercise myself to have a spiritual experience. I can talk to G-d when I work out. This is the best time for me to meditate, visualize success, talk to whoever I want to talk to in my mind. I never miss out. It is such a sacred moment. It’s a very powerful way for me to exercise the mind.
I would tell people to focus on the workout that makes you feel great. You might go on a hike. I love hiking here in LA, we got great hiking trails. Sometimes I go for 2, 3 or 4 hours, and just clear my mind, there’s a wonderful moment.
If there’s a workout that you do that you don’t like because you just don’t like the workout itself, but you feel like you need to do it to look a certain way – stop that, stop it immediately.
There are so many alternatives, you don’t have to go to a gym to get in shape. You can get in shape anywhere you want. You don’t even need to do my equipment for that. I make great equipment, but you still don’t need that, you can get in shape just with running. So, focus on the workout that makes you feel great. It’s the most important part.
Reflections On Building The #1 Workout On ClassPass
It’s amazing how you built Lagree Fitness around the world. What does success mean to you?
Sebastien Lagree: Success is to be able to do the things I want to do whenever I want to do them. I don’t care if I have like a huge celebrity following or a lot of followers on Instagram. To me, this has never been a measure of success or how many studios we open or how many patents I have. It’s to make sure that I’m just happy.
At 50 I would say that I’m more excited about the future than the past. I’ve already had a blessed life, man. If I died today, I had a great life already. I got amazing kids and an amazing business.
I’m so excited about these next 50 years. I’m actually excited about the next 100 years. My goal is to be here for as long as possible and to keep doing what I’m doing. Giving yourself a purpose in life is your greatest form of success. Do you feel like what you do matters and people enjoy that?
With Lagree [Fitness], we’ve helped so many people become a better version of themselves. I get a lot of emails and the messages are not ‘my ass is so fantastic, blah, blah, blah’. We get some of this stuff, but a lot of people talk about how it’s changed your life, not just changed your body. That is great that I’m able to do this and impact people’s lives. I love that. It’s probably the best part about my job!
Gaining A New Perspective From Diving
How do you balance being the spokesperson for Lagree Fitness versus building the business behind the scenes?
Sebastien Lagree: Oh my god, I don’t balance it well, and I’m so sorry [if] I never responded to your message, I just get a lot of messages. It’s difficult because the business keeps growing. We are getting very popular. The opportunities are coming in, in waves, but these waves keep getting bigger each time. I’m doing my best. I do my best to keep my feet on the ground. I take a lot of personal time off.
A lot of people don’t understand I’m a big introvert! If there’s a spectrum of extrovert vs. introvert, I am really on the far end of the spectrum. If I’m going to speak to you right now like this, I need another hour for myself where I don’t talk to people.
I do two things. Number one, my weed completely disconnects me from everything in the world. No matter how busy my day is, I’ll go home and then just completely unplug from the world and smoke my weed and fall asleep. Because without it, I can’t even sleep.
The second thing I do is I travel and I do a lot of diving. I love the water. I’m a water sign and I swim. But diving specifically, when you are under the surface you completely forget about your life above.
Five days of diving is comparable to 30 days off for me. After five days of diving, I come back to LA and my mind is completely refreshed, I have a new perspective on things.
I hate to be stuck and look at a product the same way all the time. I love to have multiple perspectives on the problem. This is how you create better product.
Sometimes you just need to break away from your routine, so diving does this very well. It gives me a reset every single time I dive. It’s like I press this reset button and it feels great! That’s how I’m able to kind of balance the work-life a little bit.
Understanding Your Customers
I saw that you posted a contest and the lucky customer gets to win a dinner with you in Las Vegas. When you go to Vegas, do you see yourself having a good time or do you see it as an opportunity to have a mini focus group?
Sebastien Lagree: Oh, totally the second one. It’s always an opportunity to have a focus group. I spend a lot of time with licensees and teachers. I talk to people all the time.
I teach every Sunday at the studio in Brentwood. I love to stay before/after class and talk about the exercise, see what people like. I love to be in the trench with everyone else and smell the dirt, smell the sweat, be with everyone on the battlefield.
That will always get a really good sense of how things are because fitness is changing and then you have to be able to capture the subtleties in that development. And that’s why I think we’re doing very well.
My co-worker thought it’d be a fantastic idea to have dinner with me, so it will be a mini focus group. I don’t plan on getting **** up and party. If you know anything about me, I go home, smoke my weed, 8 PM, I’m in bed. I love to go to bed early and I love to wake up early. I just love to seize the day. I like my sleep, so I intend to sleep in Vegas.
Long-Term Impact
I love your expression “smell the sweat” to collect customer feedback for Lagree Fitness. What’s next for you personally and professionally?
Sebastien Lagree: A lot of things! Personally, I’m very happy. I do videography on my dives, so I’m going to go semi pro. I got some really good equipment because I love to share it with everyone else.
I get the opportunity to go on amazing expeditions, things that are off the chart for most people, so I want to capture this and show that, so we care more about oceans and our planet. I’m a big nature guy. I’ve always loved animals. I grew up on the farm in France, outside of Paris in a tiny little village, so I’m going to start to spend a bit more time on that part because it gives me immense pleasure.
On the professional side, this is amazing. We have new manufacturers that we’re working with, we got new resources, we’ve got a lot of opportunity to advance the machine and the method to a level that I only dreamed about 10 years ago. Now it’s becoming a reality for me, so I’m so excited. It’s coming on the market at a perfect time.
Right after the pandemic, oh my god, there’s been so much interest for Lagree [Fitness]. I read somewhere that in the US, this is the third consecutive year where more Americans are looking for low impact alternatives. I’m like hallelujah I’ve only been preaching it for the past 25 years.
Everything that I’m doing coincides exactly where fitness is going right now. Hopefully I’m going to be able to be a positive influence, a good voice in fitness, and then help steer more people in the right direction.
When I started to lift weights back in the 80s, the information that I got in France was very little and completely wrong, so I did everything wrong because I read the wrong articles. Now that I know so much more about fitness, I’m very excited that we’re able to evolve it, so a lot of great things are happening on both fronts.
*Interview has been edited for length. Watch the full interview on YouTube!