Tyler Merren | Paralympian Performance Training | Tom Rowland Podcast Ep. 675

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 675 with Tyler Merren, founder of ReVision Training and four-time Paralympic goalball athlete.

The Greatest Sport You've Never Heard Of

Tom Rowland: We are doing it right now. So, Tyler, how are you, man?

Tyler Merren: I'm feeling great. I'm visiting the in-laws and having a great time. This is trip number four in a row coming up for me, so I've been on the road a little bit, but life is good. I'm feeling super blessed and having tons of opportunities to give back to the community. Life is really good.

Tom Rowland: Well, it's an honor to speak with you. You're a four-time Olympian, Paralympian, and your sport is goalball. Is that right?

Tyler Merren: That's right.

Tom Rowland: So explain goalball for somebody who doesn't know about it.

Tyler Merren: Absolutely. Goalball is what we like to refer to as the greatest sport you've never heard of, and it's so fun to get people involved in it. I've never introduced it to anybody who didn't just take to it immediately, whether they were playing it, watching it, or volunteering to help out.

Goalball is a unique sport because it's actually been around for quite a while, over seventy-five years. It was invented in Germany after World War II to give blinded war veterans a form of recreation. You have these athletes who go off to war, get injured, lose their vision, and come back. They're still the same jocks, the same competitive spirit. So physicians got together and said, let's create a game for these guys, and it grew into a big international sport from there.

The long and short of it: it's played on a volleyball-sized court, and you've got a large goal at each end, that's why they call it goalball. Think of an overstretched hockey goal, about a meter and a half high and nine meters wide. Three players on each team position themselves in a wedge formation in front of the net and work together to defend the goal like a soccer goalie would. Every player who plays is visually impaired, legally blind or totally blind, but everybody wears a blindfold that totally blacks out any potential usable vision, so it's all based on sound. The ball is about the size of a basketball, just a little heavier, about three pounds, and it has bells inside. As we throw it back and forth, you listen for the sound of the ball and put your body in front of it, like a soccer goalie would, to stop it from going in the goal. It's a quick back-and-forth volley, mostly underhand throwing, step-and-throw, high-speed movements. In the upper men's division, we throw the ball at each other forty, forty-five, up to fifty miles an hour, so it's pretty quick. We're not real nice to each other, but we have a lot of fun with it.

And again, I love it so much because, with my vision getting worse as I get older, the sport doesn't change. It's not about my vision, it's about my ability to be a good athlete and work hard. It's definitely something special to me.

Tom Rowland: Nice. I watched one of your videos, and I noticed you were wearing what looked like eye protection, but it's a blindfold, and everybody wears it. That's interesting, because I guess there are varying levels of blindness, somebody might have partial sight, so this is leveling the playing field completely.

Tyler Merren: That's exactly right.

A Diagnosis at Three Years Old

Tom Rowland: So let's talk about your story. When did you start having issues with your vision?

Tyler Merren: If we jump in the way-back machine all the way to 1984, when I was born, I grew up on a farm in Southwest Michigan. My parents noticed something a little different about me when I was a kid compared to my siblings, I had some odd tendencies. When looking at people, my eyes would kind of shift to the side, I couldn't really look at people directly. And when we'd be out at night, even in dim lighting, my vision would go quickly. One of the side effects of my eye condition is night blindness, where dim light doesn't bother most people, mine just goes.

So when I was around three or four years old, my parents took me to a specialist to try to diagnose what was going on, and we got a diagnosis that was really dire. The specialist essentially told my parents, I'm sorry to tell you this, your son has an eye condition, it's going to eventually render him totally blind. He's essentially going to be helpless the rest of his life. He's going to need to go to a special school. He's going to need to live in a special home. He's going to need somebody to take care of him twenty-four seven.

It was such a trippy experience, I was little, I don't really remember it, my dad tells me about it, about driving home from that doctor's appointment and having to pull off to the side of the road just to sit and breathe and try to sort it out. This is wild news for my parents, who are simple nine-to-five folks with no experience whatsoever with blindness or the blind community, or what people in that community are capable of.

Growing up in that setting, my parents did one of the magical things I thank them for to this day: they worked through it and said, this isn't a death sentence. We're on the farm, we've got a lot of chores to do, there's nothing wrong with his back, so we're going to get some stuff done, we're going to let him figure this out. And they did. We'd adapt things, if we were out playing baseball with my cousins, I got the big Nerf bat and the beach ball instead. Little things like that. My parents said, look, we're not going to put him in a corner, we're going to help him figure this out.

Really, around the age of fourteen or fifteen is when my vision started to decline really poorly, that's when I really started not being able to read my textbooks in school. That was the age when I got diagnosed officially with legally-blind status and started getting services.

Tom Rowland: What's the condition called?

Tyler Merren: Retinitis pigmentosa. It's a fancy term for saying that my retinas overproduce pigment. If you look at a typical picture of a healthy retina, it's a pinkish-orange color. Mine don't look like that, mine are dark, with a dark-and-white mosaic pattern. It actually looks pretty cool in a picture, but it's just not very functional. That slowly kills off the retinal cells, and my vision, over time, slowly collapses in.

Tom Rowland: Was there any solution posed at all when you were young? Was there an operation, or anything out there that might help?

Tyler Merren: There's always new stuff developing. When I was originally diagnosed, I went to the University of Michigan and got a whole bunch of testing done, they took a gallon of blood, about a thousand pictures, all kinds of genetic testing. I think it was more research-based at that point. Now there are a lot more options cropping up, specific genetic components, stem cell therapies, depending on the genetic variation, because retinitis pigmentosa has dozens and dozens of genetic variations, so it kind of depends on which one you have. But up to this point, not a ton of options, more just dealing with the vision loss as it comes and figuring out how you're going to function through it.

A Parallel Journey with Keratoconus

Tom Rowland: My son had a vision problem, which is what led me to start researching Lawrence Gunther, who's the one who connected us together, he's a blind angler. I became more aware of the blind community because my son had a condition that started kind of similar to yours, not quite as early, but around fourteen or fifteen his vision started to decline at a very abnormal rate. He had keratoconus. For anybody who doesn't know, your eye should look like a basketball, but with keratoconus it looks like a football, it elongates. If you have keratoconus, the fibers of the eye aren't strong enough to hold that round shape, and it ends up elongating like a football. Every year it goes, it gets worse, and rubbing your eyes makes it worse. He has allergies, and his vision started to decline so quickly.

We did find a solution, which was remarkable, thank goodness for smart people like Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler in California. He had a procedure that stopped it, and it was amazing. Before that, it was a complete procedure where they'd chop off the end of the eye and use a cadaver eye to put back on there, and that in itself had a very low success rate to begin with. So we started trying to look for other things, and this doctor in California had done some really incredible work, including with another Olympian who did the bobsled, and there's a great book about that. The bobsled driver had keratoconus and was going blind, the doctor worked on him, and the team ends up winning the gold medal. We actually had an experience where I had the doctor, the bobsled driver, and my son all on the same boat, filmed a TV show, and did a segment together, one of my favorite memories of my whole television career.

In all of this I became more aware of the visually impaired community, the blind community, because we were looking at, okay, what is this going to look like? The doctors were telling us he was going to lose vision within a couple of years, and there were very few options. So that's one of the reasons why I looked up Lawrence, and then was so excited to talk to you, because it's so cool what you've been able to do by becoming a Paralympian, a motivational speaker, and everything else. So many people who come on the podcast have undergone challenges in their life, physical or mental, and I always look to stories like that: if you can overcome this and experience the success you've had, then how can we apply that to other problems? Some people think their problem is huge, and it's like, let me show you a big problem, not having vision. But it's all relative. I don't know how you feel about this, but a self-limiting belief can be as big a deal as not having vision, it just stops people dead in their tracks.

If You Think You Can, or You Think You Can't, You're Right

Tyler Merren: Absolutely, yeah.

Tom Rowland: So how did you and your family go down that path and start to overcome the challenges you were experiencing?

Tyler Merren: I'm a hundred percent in agreement with you, I think your limits are in your mind. There are so many people who have really dire situations and yet are the happiest, most successful people you'll come across. And then other people where you look externally and think, what do you have to complain about? And yet they seem so down and defeated. I think so much of it starts in your head, in your mind. For my family, I think it was a combination of things, a little bit of serendipity, some folks stepping in at the right time with the right resources to say, this isn't a big deal, you're good. And a little bit of internal stuff too, growing up on the farm and being given that attitude of, there's work to be done, make it happen, figure it out, let's get it done.

I've been really blessed to come to the conclusion that being visually impaired, or fill in the blank, being deaf, or whatever your challenge might be, maybe not even a disability, yes, that's a hard thing, but what are you going to do with it? Your options are to sit down and mope and roll in the mud, or get up and make something happen.

A good example of how this came around for me: I'm fifteen years old, just being told that I'm going to be losing all my vision, that I'm not going to be allowed to drive. I'm thinking, this is blowing my world up. And I was introduced to adaptive sports through a sports education camp for kids who are visually impaired. At this camp there were mentors and people I was connecting with, and I got introduced to goalball at this camp, May 1999, the first time I ever played a game of goalball. I started getting around people who essentially had this attitude of, hey, you're going blind, whatever, no big deal, let's go play some ball. These were people going to college, traveling the world, getting degrees, running businesses. It was like, wow, this is totally doable. So I think there's a layer of, sometimes you don't know what you don't know. My parents didn't grow up in that community, you talk about with your son, getting this diagnosis, and it's like, at first, holy cow, what does this mean? You don't know anything about this community or what people in that situation are capable of.

But I think in general you can take the principle: if you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right, the good old Henry Ford quote.

Tom Rowland: One of my favorites.

Tyler Merren: Mine too. You can apply that across the board. So when I give my motivational speeches, one of the steps I talk about, I call the presentation Seeing the True Champion Within, one of the steps is deciding it's possible. You think about Roger Bannister breaking the sub-four-minute mile, people who said, I think this can be done, and just went and did it. And now that people know it can be done, it happens regularly, even high school athletes are doing it now. It's wild. That's the biggest thing I love to share with people: whatever challenge you're facing, you still have something to give, something to offer people. And if you allow your situation, your disability, or whatever it is to trump that, then you're shortchanging the world from your gifts.

The Word Can't

Tom Rowland: Wow, that's powerful, man. I was just talking about something similar this morning in the workout, about words you may choose not to use as often. One standard rule for my children was the word can't. I didn't allow them to use it, and we had lots of discussions about it, because they'd say, well, why not? I said, it's simple: as soon as you use the word can't, you shut off all the possibilities for your brain to figure out how you might be able to do something.

Tyler Merren: Yes, sir.

Tom Rowland: It just shuts it down, and you don't become creative, you don't ask for help, you don't figure out a way. You can't fly. Yes, you can, you can get on an airplane, you can get on a hang glider, there's lots of ways you can fly, but you have to think creatively. Can you flap your arms and fly? Well, not yet. But that's what I was trying to instill in them: as soon as you say can't, it's over, you shut off all creativity.

And what we were talking about this morning, my friend was listening to a podcast with Matthew McConaughey on it, and one of the words he doesn't like to use is unbelievable. He said everything you see today, any kind of record, was once thought of as unbelievable, but someone believed it, and they did it, and then it became commonplace, like the four-minute mile, which is still an extraordinary athletic achievement, but there used to be newspaper articles saying Roger Bannister's heart was going to explode if he ran it, that it was humanly impossible. Well, it's not, to that person. If you think your heart's going to explode, you may not be able to, but if you believe it's impossible, then it probably is for you, but somebody else believes it is possible.

Tyler Merren: I was at a camp just recently, teaching kids who are blind and visually impaired, and I got to stand up and share my story and give my motivational speech. I shared a corny joke about blind pilots, it made everybody laugh, but I told them, I shared that joke because we all think, blind pilots, that's silly, that can never happen. I actually know two guys, two separate individuals, who are blind and have their pilot's licenses and fly airplanes. They have co-pilots who read off their instruments for them, but these guys fly planes. So right back to what you're saying, as soon as you say you can't do something, the door closes. But instead of asking, can I do it, you ask, how can I do it? Then your brain starts turning, the creative juices start flowing, and solutions start to crop up.

I was blown away after one presentation, we did a Q and A, and one kid said, I've always wanted to be an astronaut. I want to be the first blind astronaut, but for the longest time I thought there's no way I can do it, that's totally a sighted thing. And he asked, do you think I could actually do that? I was taken aback, I thought, that is the coolest thing. I said, I don't know how it can be done, but I'm not going to stand up here and say it can't, because you could be the first blind person to be an astronaut. The work you're going to have to put in would be crazy, you're going to have to reinvent the wheel in a lot of ways, but absolutely something that could be done. I love to see that mentality in kids, when the light bulb comes on and possibilities open up. It's the coolest experience.

Helicopter Parents and Letting Kids Fall

Tom Rowland: That's so cool that you're providing that to so many kids going through this challenge, maybe born blind, maybe going blind like you did, and you're such an incredible resource for them, an impact mentor. Whereas you contrast that to the doctor who diagnosed you and told your parents you were going to have to be taken care of your whole life, that is such a fixed-mindset thing for a doctor to say. Was that just a different approach back then, or that particular doctor? And do you think doctors have a different approach to that these days?

Tyler Merren: I think it's a little bit of both. The information at that time was less prevalent, though there had certainly been very influential, successful blind people even then, many giant shoulders I've stood on. But I think it's become more understood now. There are still doctors out there, still pockets of people who just don't know, don't understand the capabilities, and assumptions get made. Spending a number of years as a personal trainer, I went to Western Michigan University, got my bachelor's in exercise science, worked as a master personal trainer and assistant fitness manager for 24 Hour Fitness in South Florida for a number of years, there were certainly members of the gym who'd look at me training clients with my cane, and they're just question marks flying over their heads: how does this even work, how is this possible? So there's still a lot of misunderstanding out there, but I think it's better now than it's been in the past. A lot of doctors, through their own experiences and through blindness organizations and advocacy groups that go to them and say, when this kid comes into your office and you diagnose him with a visual impairment, give him this, here are some pamphlets, some information packets, make sure you don't give that dire diagnosis, it's not the end of the world. There's a lot more growth and understanding now than there was at that time.

Tom Rowland: What about the camps? When you were introduced to goalball at a camp, how old were you around that time?

Tyler Merren: I would have been fifteen, just turning fifteen. I grew up in a family of athletes, my dad played football and baseball and golfs now, my sister played all seasons of sports, volleyball, basketball, softball, so I was used to that setting, being around sports. But at fourteen, fifteen, my vision started to really decline pretty quickly, and the things I loved to do, basketball especially, baseball as a family sport, I just couldn't do anymore. So when I got introduced through these sports camps, which had been happening for many years prior to my first one, a whole new world kind of opened up to me, and it was so impactful.

Tom Rowland: And so that's kind of what you're doing now, going to camps similar to that, helping at those camps, or do you have your own camps? What are you doing these days with your motivational speaking, and how are you impacting kids of that same age?

Tyler Merren: It's really a variety of experiences for me, I don't run any camps, but I do a lot of volunteering, speaking at different camps and organizations. I've worked with college transition programs for kids going from high school to collegiate settings, done speaking events with regular schools, schools for the visually impaired, churches, different organizations. So I'm all over the place with that kind of stuff, but I have a special place in my heart for camps that involve sports and activities, because that's really what set my feet on this path. Anytime I have a chance to be part of one of those, I definitely jump at the opportunity.

Tom Rowland: I bet that's really rewarding when you open a door for someone, just like it was opened for you, seeing there's this whole world of Olympic sports and this community of people who aren't going to feel sorry for you. It's like, okay, well, me too, let's go, let's play.

Tyler Merren: Yeah, exactly. It's so refreshing, and it has this wider ripple effect. I like sport, I love being active, I love being outdoors, but you and I both know that has a wider impact on your life, you learn perseverance, teamwork, dedication, discipline, and those things apply. So when I get an opportunity to do these things, I'm not just teaching them sport, I'm teaching them life. When you've had some of those experiences, I'm in the gold medal match in a stadium full of people in Rio 2016, I'm standing in the White House shaking President Obama's hand, wearing a medal, doing all these really cool things, after something like that, a simple job interview doesn't seem so intimidating. It has this wider ripple effect: you get these kids involved in situations where they're pressured and molded and pushed and formed and grown, and it improves their quality of life down the long stretch for sure. It's really exciting to be part of that.

Tom Rowland: What about with the families? Because so many times, well-meaning people who love you very much are so concerned about safety, whether you're blind or completely physically capable, you have these helicopter parents who are so afraid the kids are going to get hurt. How is that in this community? Do you ever get an opportunity to talk to parents about this journey the kids are going on, and what do you tell them?

Tyler Merren: It's such a funny thing, because variety is the spice of life, and parenting styles, you see them all when you interact with the parents of these visually impaired kids. It really does span the spectrum. Some parents are getting their kids involved in everything, my kid's gonna be a superhero, to the other end, I was dragged into this event, I don't want my kid here, my kid's not blind, I'm gonna take care of them, whatever their mentality is. It's really cool to be able to talk with them directly and share our stories. My wife and I are both visually impaired, my wife is blind as well, she lost her vision when she was two years old to a childhood cancer. We've been married twenty years, we have four kids, we homeschool them. Two are grown and flown, graduated from college, working full-time. It's a cool thing to go to these parents and say, look, your kids are not incapable of these things, just based on our experience, sharing our stories with them, and seeing them kind of wake up and look at each other and realize, oh, maybe we've been holding our kid back too much, maybe we've been trying to keep him too safe and not letting him experience life a little bit, because kids need to fall sometimes, kids need to scrape their knees, climb trees, get bumps and bruises. Unfortunately, all too often, kids who are blind and visually impaired have parents or gym teachers who assume they're more fragile and at more risk, and they get put on the sideline way too often. It's something we're combating pretty regularly, trying to convince parents: let your kids go out and experience life a little bit.

The Gap That Started ReVision Training

Tom Rowland: And so one of the things you do is help visually impaired people with physical training, that's what ReVision Training is. How did that start?

Tyler Merren: So, really, what happened, I got my bachelor's degree and became a personal trainer because I was an athlete, very interested in how to be the best athlete I could be, and eventually that translated into, I could teach others how to do this, how to become fit. I loved personal training, I have a teacher's heart, and fitness was always something I really enjoyed, so I meshed the two together. I'm working as a personal trainer full-time, with dozens and dozens of clients on a regular basis. My wife, like I said, we've been married twenty years now, she's super connected on social media, different blindness groups, blind parenting groups, and things like that. We were living in South Florida, I'm working at the gym, and I come home from a day of work, it's late, I'm tired, and, hey, so-and-so was asking about fitness in this group, is there anything accessible out there, any accessible apps or videos, you should get on there and teach them what you know. My typical response was, I just trained people for ten hours straight, I'm not interested right now, but I knew this need was out there, even from my own experience. I'm going through classes at Western Michigan University and having to spend tons of extra time in my professors' office hours, can you explain this graph to me, I can't see it, checking out different models of bones and muscles, learning all this stuff, slogging through it. So I know how difficult it is to learn fitness as a person who's blind and visually impaired. If I came to you, Tom, with no prior knowledge whatsoever, put a blindfold on you, and said, okay, now do a three-sixty Frankenstein squat, I'm just going to make up an exercise, do it like this, follow me like this, you're standing there with the blindfold on going, what in the world is this guy doing, you have no idea.

There was one particular event that solidified this idea for me. I'm working at the gym, standing at the front desk, waiting for my next client, and there was only a handful of people who were visually impaired at this gym, ninety-nine point nine percent of the people I worked with were just average gym-going clientele. I heard a white cane tapping its way to the counter, thought, okay, this must be so-and-so, and struck up a conversation. This was a young mother who'd been coming to the fitness center for two or three months, kind of new to the area. I said, hey, how's it going? You've been coming in pretty consistently, everything's going great. She sounded a little down, and I asked what was going on. She said she'd been coming to the gym regularly, walking on the treadmill, really enjoying it, losing weight, and then it just kind of slowed down and came to a screeching halt. She was doing the same thing but not losing weight anymore. How often do we hear that story? So I said, okay, totally understood, it happens all the time, I'm a trainer here, I'd love to ask you a few questions. Do you do any of the other classes, any weight training, any stretching, do you balance out your routine at all with that kind of stuff? Well, no, I don't really know how to do that. I said, okay, cool, let's talk about doing some training, I can set up a program for you and show you how to use this stuff. But working for a commercial company, I'm limited, they set the prices, they set the regulations, I can't train anybody outside of that, and, unfortunately, she wasn't able to afford the training. So she walked away disappointed, and I was disappointed for it. There were hundreds of people I trained who couldn't afford it and said, I'll try it on my own, figure it out, they could go upstairs into the weight room, look around, see someone doing an exercise and try it, sit down at a machine, look at the picture, figure out how it's supposed to move, jump into a class and follow the instructor, pull up a YouTube video. But this mother didn't have that opportunity, she couldn't do any of that stuff. There was no resource put together that was helpful enough to teach her anything aside from the treadmill, which the staff had shown her the first day she came in. That's all she was knowledgeable about doing.

I thought, this really isn't fair, this isn't acceptable, that she's just stuck with no opportunity to make gains. And that's what spun out this idea: I need to help with this, I need to figure this out. I'm standing in a position where I can potentially bridge that gap, I know the fitness world, I'm very versed in that, but I also know the blindness world, and not many people stand at that nexus point. I think there's something I can do about it.

Building ReVision Fitness

Tom Rowland: Nice. And so how do you start?

Tyler Merren: I start with figuring out, how do I teach the masses? As a personal trainer, I knew for a long time that I love working with people one-on-one, it's such a fun experience, but you're impacting one life at a time. And not that that's a bad thing, but if you can cast wider nets, why not do it? So I thought, I want to create something digital, something that can be accessed all over the world through computers. I started spinning out these ideas, talking with friends and family, writing up plans, designing and implementing, recording, typing, getting with a software company to help me put together this platform, and it's been four months now since the app launched, available on iOS and Google Play and on the web. It's called ReVision Fitness, and it's a fully audio-based fitness app, where I use my experience as a trainer and as a person who's blind and visually impaired to describe correct body movements, postures, and positions. I use reference points, clock-face directions, to describe exercises in great detail, so that somebody who's blind and visually impaired can either do the audio workouts built into the app, or go into the fitness center and take a yoga class, or do whatever, and be confident they know exactly how to position themselves in Warrior One and all the rest.

Tom Rowland: That's awesome.

Tyler Merren: Yeah, it's been a pretty wild ride, I've been working on it for over three years now, and the feedback so far has been crazy positive. It's been super exciting to see it take off and see the work you put in come to fruition.

Tom Rowland: That's fantastic. I guess, do you have gyms, I mean, in the CrossFit space there's a whole adaptive division for all kinds of everything, and I'd imagine some gyms would be more open or easier for certain people to get into. If you had a CrossFit gym with a trainer who really knows the gym and the group, it's a slightly different model than some of the bigger fitness places that want as many memberships as possible, and if they all showed up at the same time there'd be no way anybody could work out.

Tyler Merren: Yeah, that's right, it's a little bit different, there's more hands-on personal touch in a CrossFit-type environment.

Tom Rowland: What's kind of the best course of action for the type of facility a visually impaired person should go to, if they're using your app or otherwise?

Tyler Merren: The app at this point has about a hundred fifty lessons in the classroom section, different exercises, postures, positions, basic body movements, and about thirty-plus audio workouts in the fitness studio, plus a couple of basic fitness plans to follow. Every bit of it at this point is bodyweight movement. I started with that because people who are blind and visually impaired, maybe at a higher percentage than the average population, find it intimidating, it's intimidating for anybody unfamiliar with fitness to go into a fitness center, but especially for somebody who's blind and visually impaired. So I built all of it to start with as something you could do in your living room. From there, growing into weights and machines, that's all going to be included in the app in the future as I work through my queue of things to create and teach, and that's where you can go access the weight equipment, CrossFit classes, and other things in your neighborhood. The beauty of it, and the trick of it at the same time, is the only common denominator here is blindness. When you talk about the variety of people, there are people who are blind and visually impaired who'd do better at a Planet Fitness, a little more low-key, a comfortable environment, and there are people who'd do much better in a CrossFit setting, a big group jumping from circuit to circuit doing big Olympic lifts. So the beauty and the challenge of this program is that it has to encompass anything and everything fitness-related. I started with the basics, the body-weight movements, I've got a lot of really light stuff and a lot more advanced stuff, burpees, jump squats, plyo lunges, but all of it, at this point, done in the comfort of your own home. From there we're going to grow and expand it: if you want to do a leg circuit on the Nautilus machines, here's how you do it, here's what you're looking for.

Tom Rowland: That's awesome, I mean that really is. It's really just such a fantastic thing you're doing, because exercise has so many benefits beyond the physical, building muscle, keeping flexibility through range of movement, I almost exercise more for what it does to my brain than for what it does to my body, and I've been training my whole life. There's plenty of benefits for the body, but there's even more for the mind. It's almost like running, when you start running, it's drudgery, it's awful, and if you don't run for a while and start again, you think, how could this ever be pleasurable, but if you keep at it, there's something called a runner's high, and you experience that, and you think, this feels effortless, this feels amazing, I want more of it. But it takes a long time to get there. And then you're like, well, this endorphin rush is fantastic, but what I really gained from that hour-long session was that I had some problems I was working on in my mind, some challenges at work or at home, and now it's clear, I have perfect clarity, I could see what's going on, and that's the benefit. For people, like, when you think about visually impaired people, why wouldn't they be fantastic at yoga? I do yoga ninety percent of the time with my eyes closed. But someone has to introduce that, someone has to show the movement, show, feel, talk, explain the movement so somebody can understand it. And once you do, there's nothing that would hold you back from being one of the most advanced yoga practitioners the world's ever seen. There's a huge gap between never experiencing it and learning a handful of positions that you could go into any yoga class and, when somebody calls it out, you can do it. That's really incredible what you're doing, and the ripple effects, like you mentioned before, are going to be amazing.

Tyler Merren: Yeah, absolutely. And the thing I'm, I don't like to necessarily use the word proud too much, because I think this is a blessing for me to be able to do this, and the work I'm putting in is just me trying to give back to this community. One of the things I really like about this project is that it's not just a collection of workouts, you're touching on something, Tom, that's so valuable and so misunderstood when you're not in the middle of that fitness community: there's so much more to it than just a workout. There are so many benefits mentally, physically, even spiritually, that happen, and I've experienced that in myself and with my clients. So I built into this program a lot of my training experience, I have a series of action groups, built-in lessons that I take users through as part of the fitness plans. Action group one, think it through, is about sitting down and talking about your goals, why are you here, what's the purpose of this, what are you really aiming for, what's your X factor, what are you trying to get out of this whole experience. Using these different action groups, I've got almost forty different to-do items that say, here's how you set yourself up for more success in this fitness realm, because ultimately it's going to create more than just a better physique, it's going to create a higher quality of life. And again, something the blind community, there are plenty of people who are blind and visually impaired who are very active, fit, and successful, but when you talk about percentages compared to the average population, we're way behind. That's where I want to use this program to step in and say, this is totally doable with the right instruction, the right knowledge.

How to Support ReVision Fitness

Tom Rowland: Well, it's amazing, I love it. I've always kind of thought, if I were to donate my time, or money, or whatever, I would like to do it in this world, especially with the experience I had with my son. He's always said he'd like to start a foundation, his thought was for kids who needed glasses or some sort of treatment they couldn't afford. I'd love to talk to you about that, if you know of something like that, or maybe it's this, this is just such a cool thing, an opportunity to help so many people, or maybe not so many people, maybe a few people in such a massive way. That's really attractive to me, what you're doing, and being part of that. Is there a way people can help you with what you're doing? Do you have a foundation?

Tyler Merren: Absolutely. Everything we're talking about, my motivational speaking and all of that, is all funneled through an LLC I have, ReVision Training LLC, the name of the company I founded. In 2019 I peacefully parted ways with 24 Hour Fitness and decided to strike out and do this adventure. Right now the biggest thing I'm looking for is community support, getting the knowledge out there, getting feedback on it, people downloading the app and contacting me: this is really great, did you think about adding this material? The world of software development is a whole other world for me, it's a wild ride. I've got a list about a mile long of updates and features I want to add to the app. So really the thing I ask for is for people to join the app, download it, create an account, check it out, subscribe, give me some feedback, try the workouts, let me know how it comes through, share it with friends and family, giving me opportunities to share it with the community. And even if you're not somebody who's blind and visually impaired, the program is universally designed, if you're fully sighted and have never met anybody who's blind, you could still use this app. It's made for everybody to be able to use. It's also very text-based, you can listen to the audio, I read out a lot of the stuff, I do all the recordings, but there's also a lot of text-based content, so it's universally designed for that. Even if you're not blind and visually impaired, but you're hearing this and thinking, that's really cool, download it anyway, check it out, it's something you could utilize as well. The more it's shared, the more it's known, the bigger impact it'll have, and that's ultimately what I'm going for, trying to create a big impact with the blessings and experiences I've had, trying to pay that forward to the blind community. Somewhere out there, there's a fifteen-year-old kid losing his vision who's scared, and his parents don't know what to do, and my hope is that eventually this will become a household name in the blindness community, certainly, but even further than that, so these parents and kids know there's so much more available, and maybe this could be the springboard into the next blind astronaut, or whatever else they want to be. All my contact information's on there, if you have thoughts and things you want to share, I'm easy to get a hold of. My email is tylermerren@gmail.com. I'm in this for the long haul, so I'm just asking people to go on this run with me.

Tom Rowland: So is your app free, or do you charge for it, or what is it?

Tyler Merren: You can download it on iOS, Google Play, or go to revisionfitnessapp.com if you're web-based. You can download it for free, create an account for free, there's a two-week free trial to check it out, try it out, see what you think, with access to everything in the program. After that, there's a monthly or annual subscription, it's pretty reasonable, especially compared to other fitness apps, about a cup of coffee a month for the monthly subscription. Ultimately, when I did the business plan for this, I knew it was going to be expensive on my end, but this isn't an adventure for me to get rich quick, what I'm looking for is the opportunity to create this program and impact lives, and I wanted it to be as accessible as possible. When you look at the statistics, unfortunately there's a pretty high percentage of people who are blind and visually impaired who are unemployed, and it can be financially difficult for them to do this sort of thing, so far cheaper than a gym membership, with plenty more access, is really what I wanted to create this program for.

Tom Rowland: So it's in South Florida, you said?

Tyler Merren: I lived in South Florida for a number of years, moved back up to the Midwest, I'm in Fort Wayne, Indiana now, training with the USA men's national goalball team. We just competed in Tokyo several months ago, and our next World Championships are in December, this fall, in Portugal, so we're looking to qualify for Paris 2024.

Training for Paris 2024

Tom Rowland: Man, with all you've accomplished, you still have to qualify every year?

Tyler Merren: Yeah, the team has to qualify, and then I have to qualify for the team, it's a lengthy process. Top eight teams in the world get to go to Paris, so it's a fight tooth and nail to try to get one of those spots.

Tom Rowland: What are the strongest teams traditionally?

Tyler Merren: On the men's side, USA is definitely ranked in the top ten in the world. Brazil, gold medalist in 2020, previous world champions, has very good presence on both the men's and women's sides. Lithuania, interestingly enough, a small European country, has a fantastic goalball program on the men's side. China, Japan, and several other European countries like Turkey are all strong teams in our pool, lots of work for us to do to try to make Paris 2024.

Tom Rowland: Wow. What does the training look like when you qualify, you've got your team together, what does that look like?

Tyler Merren: It's pretty intense. The reason we relocated to Fort Wayne, Indiana is we have a residency program there at the Turnstone Paralympic Training Center. An average week, especially in-season prepping for an event, is typically three days a week on the court, two to three hours at a time, and two days in the weight room, a lot of heavy power movements, power cleans, push presses, sled pushes, tire flips, a lot of explosive stuff. And when we're on the court, a lot of defensive and offensive drills, we wear heart rate monitors, and it's not too uncommon for me to burn close to two thousand calories per workout. It's wild, we're going like crazy. And with goalball, when you watch the sport, I think in some ways we make it look a little effortless, but the way I try to explain it: imagine doing burpees for twenty-four minutes straight, because you're down, you're in a blocking position, you dive, you block, you stand up, you backpedal, you throw, you're down, you dive, you block the ball, you sprint out to get it. You're up and down and up and down, and there's a lot of lag, a lot of core strength involved, definitely pretty taxing on the body.

Tom Rowland: Nice. Well, I've done burpees for twenty-four minutes straight, and you're right, that is taxing on the body. It's one of my, you're a machine, I'm sure you've done some of those. The burpee is the foundation of my fitness.

Tyler Merren: One of the best and the worst. Right? Exactly.

Tom Rowland: You love it, you hate it, you can do it anywhere, but you also want to do it nowhere. But what a great movement for anybody, visually impaired or otherwise, because it takes very little skill, zero equipment, and very little space, it's a prison workout, you can do it in a jail cell or in the world's finest gym, and either way it's equally effective.

Meeting His Wife on the Goalball Court

Tom Rowland: I had another question I didn't ask you at the time, how'd you meet your wife?

Tyler Merren: Great question. My wife actually played goalball as well, she didn't compete for the US team, but a great athlete, loved to travel, loved to compete. I actually met her through the sport. Funny enough, when I first met her, she'd been out of the sport for a little while, she'd had a baby boy, my oldest son is actually my stepson. That's when I got introduced to the sport and started going to practices in Southwest Michigan. She came back to practice and was like, who's this kid? And they said, oh, he's pretty good, I don't know if you want to play against him yet. She said, ah, fine, it's not a big deal. So I actually gave her a concussion, and I literally swept her off her feet, her claim to fame is that I didn't score, that's all that mattered, she blocked the shot. So, yeah, it was love at first hit, I guess. We just kind of struck it up, ended up traveling to some tournaments together, getting to know each other, and the rest was history. Never looked back since. She's by far my biggest fan, my biggest supporter, she holds down the fort while I'm gone, doing so much of the traveling and competing. I couldn't do any of this without her support.

Tom Rowland: Sounds like y'all are a good team.

Tyler Merren: Yeah, absolutely.

Tom Rowland: And then do you help with the homeschooling as well?

Tyler Merren: Yeah, for sure. Like I said, I've got a teacher's heart, so I enjoy it. My older kids have a curriculum, they follow a lot of self-teaching. My six-year-old is a little bit of a different story, lots of energy, so I'm usually the front-runner for teaching her, doing the math and reading with her.

Tom Rowland: Are any of your children visually impaired?

Tyler Merren: That's an interesting question, because the answer is a little convoluted. Short answer is no, none of them are legally blind. My eye condition is very recessive, so it's very unlikely any of my kids would show signs of it. My wife, though, as I mentioned, lost her vision due to a childhood cancer, and unfortunately that's a dominant genetic trait, so my older three kids inherited the eye condition. But knowing they might have it, they were treated for it essentially from day one, their eyes were checked, and any little tumors that showed up on the retinas were treated with cryotherapy laser treatment. If any of them became a little more stubborn, there were some more extensive procedures, but you look at them now, happy, healthy kids, my son's got some reduced vision in one eye due to some scarring on his retina, some little things like that, but fully sighted for the most part. Happy, healthy family, we count our blessings every day for that.

A Question of Faith

Tom Rowland: For sure, man, that's awesome. So I've been preparing for one final question, which I'm sure you get often, and I want to ask it with all the respect in the world, not a trivial question, but you're obviously very successful, very happy, you have a wonderful family, you've learned tremendous things. If you had the opportunity to go in a time machine and go back and live your life sighted, or live your life the way you have, which would you choose?

Tyler Merren: Going deep. I think I could count on one hand the number of regrets I have with not having vision. I'm a sports guy, my kids growing up, I encouraged them to play sports, and if they didn't want to, they didn't have to, but when they did, I was always really pumped about it. My kids loved playing soccer, living in South Florida is a big place for rec and travel soccer, so I'm sitting in the stands with my wife, and the soccer pitch is pretty big, and what's going on out there can be anybody's guess when you're visually impaired. That's one of those things where I wish I had vision to see my kids moving out there and see what they were doing, we had parents around us describing what was happening, but it's a bit of a diluted experience. My kids all have beautiful eyes, my youngest has bright blue eyes, a lot of hazel and green that runs in my family, and one of those things where I think, man, if I could have vision, I'd love to see their eyes, I've been told time and time again how beautiful my kids are.

So there are things like that, but my life is very, very rich, God has blessed me in a lot of ways. There's a verse, one of my favorites, from the Gospels, I want to say the first chapter of John, where Jesus is walking along with his disciples and they see a blind man by the side of the road, and the disciples ask him, who sinned that this man was born blind, was it him, was it his parents? And Jesus responded that nobody sinned that caused this man to go blind, he was made that way so the glory of God could be shown in him. I try to live my life by that. I'm here for a reason, I'm in this situation for a reason, God has put me here for a purpose, and it's a little beyond me to say, well, what if, why can't I go back, why couldn't I be sighted. I'm here because God has me here for a purpose, and whatever that is, I'm going to trust in that and do the best with what I have. So in the end, my answer is no, I wouldn't go back and change it for anything.

Tom Rowland: That's beautiful, man. I have another friend, Kyle Maynard, who was born a congenital amputee, and he says the same thing, he doesn't have a disability. He says people with limiting beliefs and negative self-talk, they have disabilities, he just doesn't have arms or legs. He says he wouldn't change it for the world, and I really feel he's sincere when he says that, because he's had an incredibly rich life, just like yours, you've been to the White House, you've won medals, you've gone to the Olympics, this is incredible, and now you're having this opportunity to help so many people with what you're doing. I just love it, I'm in your corner, man, I think it's fantastic what you're doing. I'd love to help in some way, and I'd also love to encourage others to help, so download the app, that sounds like the simplest way anyone could provide immediate support. We'll put that in the show notes and everything else. Is there any other way people can support what you're doing?

Tyler Merren: For sure, you can reach out to me, send me an email. If you want to donate to the project itself, there's a tremendous number of features and functions I'm looking at adding to this program to make it fully accessible for the blind, and that takes a little capital to build in. So if it's something where you just want to donate, absolutely reach out to me, and I'd be happy to work with you on that as well. It's a big project, it's going to be an ongoing project, something I'm going to be working on for the next three, five, ten, twenty years, who knows, but I'm in it for the long haul, because I think this community needs and deserves something that can help them bridge this gap. So any way you feel like you can help with this, I'd love to hear, so reach out to me via email or text or call, whatever, my contact information is all over the web and on the app too. If you download the app, there's a Contact Us section that goes straight to my email, so pretty easy to get a hold of.

Closing Thoughts on Recovery and Range of Motion

Tom Rowland: Fantastic. I want to train with you sometime, I don't know where you're going to be, but if you're in South Florida, maybe I could drop by, or maybe I'll come to Indiana.

Tyler Merren: I love it, match up sometime, we'll go through some workouts together. I was going to tell you, one of the exercises you introduced on Fitness Friday, I've been working on doing the reverse Nordic.

Tom Rowland: Oh, right.

Tyler Merren: Yeah, kind of digging that.

Tom Rowland: Well, I was really concerned because it was audio and video, I didn't know if people were going to be able to follow it on audio, so I was really careful about how I described it. But apparently it worked.

Tyler Merren: It did, that reverse start too, it was very cool.

Tom Rowland: That one's pretty advanced now, you're obviously a great athlete, and I've worked on that to where I can actually raise up from my shoulders being on the ground to raising back up onto my knees. That was tough, man. But that's also just a great stretch, that lie-back quad stretch with both.

Tyler Merren: That's the thing I really dig, I kind of recline back and it feels good.

Tom Rowland: Doesn't it? Your hip flexors and your knee.

Tyler Merren: Opens everything up, man, it just opens it up.

Tom Rowland: That guy I get all those stretches from, Joe Hippenstiel, you might want to check him out too, he has something called Ultimate Human Performance, and he told me when I did a private lesson with him, he's over seventy years old, spry and fit and nimble and flexible, he said this is the fountain of youth, and it is: that flexibility and range of motion, to maintain that through your life, is just the fountain of youth.

Tyler Merren: That is so cool. Oh, it's huge, huge returns. Definitely something I notice about myself as I get a little bit older, I've been playing ball for a long time, I still play at a very competitive level, but I recognize now that range of motion, flexibility, and maintenance of the body are essential for sport performance and essential for general health.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. We don't have to spend very much time on it as young athletes, we probably should, and it would have benefited us, but as you age and get into being an older athlete, a master's-level athlete, it becomes more and more important, and you end up spending more time on that and less time on the actual physical training. I feel like I'm training, or stretching, or getting in the sauna, or doing something pretty much all day, just to preserve, just to be able to continue to do what I love to do. But Tyler, this has been awesome, man. Thank you so much for sharing your story and for what you're doing, it's really great. I'm behind you a hundred percent.

Tyler Merren: I appreciate you, Tom, thank you so much for what you're doing as well, and thanks for giving me a chance to step on here and share a little bit of the story.

Tom Rowland: We'll do it again when you bring home that next gold medal.

Tyler Merren: No pressure. Alright, I appreciate it.

Tom Rowland: Alright, Tyler, thank you.

Tyler Merren: Thanks, Tom. See you next week.