Barbell Shrugged - 161- Qualities of GREAT Coaching: What You Should Be Looking For

Episode Date: January 28, 2015

This week on Barbell Shrug, we talk about what you might be missing in your coaching game. Make sure you stick around to the end of the episode, because at the end we are going to cover some to-do items at the end. Some things that you can do specifically and participate in that will help identify where you can be a better coach and how to get there. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrug. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Butzo, here with Doug Larson and Chris Moore and CTV behind the camera. He threw me off. Go ahead. Oh, yeah. So, you

know the drill. No, they don't. CTV knows the drill. CTV know the drill. No, they don't. What's the drill? CTV knows the drill. We're all standing here. We're back here at Physical Culture 101, CrossFit Lucadia, hanging out. Those guys have been nice enough to let us record and take over a little corner of the gym. We appreciate it.

This is a cool place to be. Yeah. Today we're going to be talking about what is coaching. Maybe talk about what it's not you know, what it's not. I think there might be some misconceptions. I've had some discussions with people over the last, since I was born, about coaching. And it's interesting, like what, you know, sometimes you forget that people kind of maybe attribute coaching to just one aspect of coaching and don't think about the whole picture, and we're going to be talking a lot about that. Before we go any further, make sure to go to barbellstrug.com,

sign up for the newsletter. We have all sorts of cool stuff there for you to check out. If you have not been there before, the website is looking cooler than ever and has got a lot of written content. Chris Moore over here has been putting that together. Yeah, together with some special friends. We've got a lot of content there people check out.

Get your read on. Reading is fundamental, as they say. Do it. It's all free. Check it out. They say that? Chris Moore says that.

Reading is fun. Capital F-U-N. Dementor. Everybody knows this shit. Everybody knows this shit. Reading Rainbow and shit. Reading Rainbow. Reading Rainbow's coming back too,

everybody. Reading fucking Rainbow contribute support them are they on? they're coming back they're coming back okay

yeah yeah LeVar Burton or whatever that guy yeah he's bringing the shit back the guy from Star Trek with the that guy

the blind guy weren't you on an episode of that Mike? you're like Star Trek? yeah I was on an episode of Star Trek no Reading Rainbow

he had sex with a purple girl on Star Trek you're like I like the I was on I was on an episode Of Star Trek No Reddy Rainbow He had sex with The purple girl On Star Trek You're like I like the pictures That was my favorite book So alright Let's get on the subject here Coaching

Coaching Yeah I was actually Having a discussion I was at a competition This past weekend And it was It was one of those things Where like the light

Went off for me I was like oh We should probably Just talk about that Because I was talking To somebody And I was talking to somebody, and I was talking about how I don't coach athletes as much anymore. And he was like, oh, don't you write all the programs?

And for most of the programs you guys do, and so I was like, oh, I do that. And I was like, it was one of those things where he was like, oh, you do that? And I was like, oh, yeah, I do that. But I don't think about that as coaching. That's just a small piece. I see that as program design. Like, I'm good at writing workouts.

I'm good at, you know, coaching overall. But I don't do every aspect of coaching with, like, every athlete we have all the time anymore. And so it was really interesting. I was like, well, yeah, I do program design. He was like, well, isn't that coaching? And I was like, oh, well, I don't consider it to be that. So it was kind of a wake-up call. I was like, well, he's probably not the only guy who feels that same way.

Coaching's a broad category that doesn't just involve fitness. So riding workouts is an aspect of coaching within fitness, but you could be a coach and you could be a life coach, what's getting really popular right now. You could be an executive coach for businesses. You could be a fitness coach. There's many different types of coaches you could potentially be, and program design is only like a small part of fitness. I don't think the rest of the world considers writing workouts a part of coaching because coaching is this other category. We compared it also to teaching.

And use that means interacting with another person and helping them. We compared it with the idea of being a teacher before, right, Doug, where it's like you can call yourself a teacher, but if all you do is write like a lesson plan, you don't show up to class and engage and read and get feedback from students, then how can you call yourself a teacher? Coaching is the same. You work out great.

That's just basically the plan for the day. How do you get it executed? How do you read the results? That would be the same as someone writing a book and saying they're a teacher. That's kind of what you're saying. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. The information alone is great, and it's great you can put it together,

but somebody still has to take that, implement it, read the outcomes, adjust course, keep somebody motivated, all this shit we're going to get into. Yeah, and I truly believe that the workout is just – a lot of people put a lot more emphasis on the workout itself than they should. I mean, they get a lot better result if they demanded more out of coaching and coaches demanded more of themselves um then just putting together cool workouts teaching people how to move and then kind of just letting that be it we talked about why sticking to a program is good from a lot of different like maybe physiological and just like a planning perspective but i was just for for maintaining focus and getting the most out of it you can't just focus on the program and switching when you don't get the result if all these necessary inputs are completely unaddressed you haven't even thought about it so looking for the program won't ever

get you the effect this would be an explanation why because the other pieces aren't there yeah yeah you just mentioned being uh being a teacher and explaining why and i think if you think about coaching as teaching and you think about if you're teaching somebody more than likely that person in a lot of cases is a novice or a beginner. Most people you're coaching, unless you happen to be someone who coaches high-level athletes, which is a very small percentage of the population overall, most people that CrossFit coaches are coaching in the gym are relative beginners. And for those people, you as a teacher, as a person who explains things to people, you need to realize that most people don't understand why they're doing the things they're doing. So as a coach, one of the most

fundamental things I think you need to, the way you need to reframe it in your head is that you're not explaining what to do to most of your clients. You should be mostly explaining why they're doing what they're doing. Because most people don't know why they're doing what they're doing. Why are we doing front squats instead of back squats? Why don't we ever do good mornings? We did them at one time. We never did them ever again. Why do we do single leg work? Why do we do cleans?

Why do we do snatches? Why do we Metcon? Why do we do strength work? They don't know. They really don't know. You as an expert, as a coach, as an expert, as an athlete that's been doing this for 10 years, you already understand the why. It's just assumed that you know why you're doing it. You're already bought in.

You get it. They don't get it. You have to explain to them why it's important for them. Big picture benefits. Maybe you don't explain it to yourself as, well, if I met him, I'll burn a lot of calories. Maybe you think that's like overly simplistic and almost stupid, but it kind of is, it's kind of not depending on your perspective and how you're looking at it in the moment. But, but to the random person that comes into the gym, maybe that's all they want in their head all they want to do is burn some calories right because they're brand spanking new and that's all they know they don't have all these other levels of distinctions they don't really know what's important in the big picture they just know that they heard calories burning calories is a good thing and if they burn calories they'll get leaner they'll look better they heard

cross it was a good way to do it and so that's why they're there and obviously they're going to evolve out of that eventually but you need to meet them where they're at yeah meet them where they're at i guess also if you can do a really really good job like i said just throwing all this information at them right at the start do a very good job of getting them to understand why and connect with them just as a person understand them and now you gotta now you can get all the other shit accomplished because they're gonna be committed to you they're gonna stick with it they like you they understand they go okay now what coach let's do this shit because they're going to be committed to you. They're going to stick with it. They like you. They understand. They go, okay, now what, coach? Let's do this shit.

Now they're ready for a plan. It's the wisest way to approach it. Yeah, one of the expressions I really like with respect to coaching is that you should be a guide on the side, not a sage on the stage, which right now on the podcast, we're more or less being sages on the stage. This is not a communication. We can be sages. No one else can be. Let us be your sage.

Right now, we're not technically coaching. Right. We're, we're, we might be considered, you know, authors or we're providing information, but this isn't coaching though. Mostly coaching. If you're being a guide on the side is you, you know, you being there with the other person, they're doing something. And then as they're going through it, you're giving them little, little cues, little tips. It'd be like coaching someone on technique. Like now now put your butt down a little more and they try it you know how'd you feel that feel good like there's an interaction there's a conversation there so this isn't technically coaching this is just providing advice so coaching good coaching

my opinion is being that guide on the side and most of that means questions you're asking them questions you're getting their feedback you're asking them how they feel what they think you know what do you want to do, why did that feel good, why did that feel bad. And you're letting them learn, like, Socratically by questioning them. And then if they give you, like, a totally wrong answer, you say, well, why do you think that? Have you thought about this?

And you're letting them work through the process themselves. And they're going to learn faster in that case if you can do that Socratic method of mostly questioning, and then you can kind of guide them through questions. I saw the Jedi do it himself, Andres Zeteliko, asking Christmas Abbott. That whole technique wad was question, question, question. You see her mind unfurl, and she grows.

And now her expectation of how well she should be performing or executing that lift and gym, rise, rise, rise, all on their own. He just sat back and said, do you think it's good enough? Would you like to move back? What else did you want? Those questions fucking made her bloom during that drill. I mean, and that's like working with a Y during like a training session. But just from the assessment perspective.

So anytime you have an athlete, client, whatever, and they come in and you, the first thing is an assessment. You figure out where they are so you can meet them where they're at and start them from there. And just finding out why they even walked into the gym in the first place. You know, why are they doing, why do they want to do your program? Why, you know, that type of thing, digging down really deep there. Because like you were saying, like some people are like, you ask them,

they walk in the gym and they're like, why do you want to come here? It's like, oh, I heard this is the best way to burn calories. It's like, well, why do you want to burn calories? He's like, oh, I heard this is the best way to burn calories. It's like, well, why do you want to burn calories? Like, well, you know, I would like to lose some weight. And he's like, well, is losing weight really what you want? Or do you want to look, you know, you want to have six-pack abs, which may not mean losing weight. And so, like, dig down further and further into exactly why they're doing what they're doing.

So some athletes, it is going to be like weight loss. Some athletes, they want to be more athletic. They want a faster 5K time because they want to have that metal and show that they're better than other people. But like seriously. As long as you're honest. They want to look good. That's the deeper reason.

It's like most people aren't honest with themselves even for their reason. And then that's like where the assessment should start from like a psychological perspective. How can you work with somebody if you don't really know what they want? Because if you are working with them on their surface level, they told you, you're not going to keep them motivated very long. If you can get down to exactly what it is, there's a huge motivation piece to coaching.

I think if you get down to both sides being honest, like here's, I know honestly what you want. Here's honestly how I think this is the best way. That's a great way to start a client-coach relationship too. Start with laying it all out, getting right down to why this matters, and then starting fresh. I've learned a lot of this stuff because I've moved away from coaching as many athletes and I'm coaching more coaches.

And it's like then it gets real, real, really fast. It's like if coaches can coach other coaches and then go back to athletes, I think they would be much better at what they do for sure. Yeah. Digging to those deeper reasons of why someone's there. A lot of people call that peeling the onion. If you can picture an onion, it has many different layers and you can, you can tear off a layer and then there's another layer of onion right below that you can tear off another layer. And you're trying to dig towards the, towards the center, towards the core. And that's what you're doing a lot of times with the example you just gave. You know, why do you want to be here? I want to burn a lot of calories.

Why do I want to burn a lot of calories? Well, I want to lose some weight. I want to lose some fat. Why do I want to lose fat? I want to look better. Why do you want to look better? I just broke up with my girlfriend, and now I'm back on the market, and I need to look better.

I'm not going to get laid. Okay, now we're at something that's a little more primal. Gotcha, coach. So now when you're communicating with that person, they're in the middle of Metcon. They're getting tired. You're like, come on, like fucking pick it up. You're not going to get laid.

And they're like, oh, yeah, I'm not going to get laid. You got to talk to the reptilian brain. That's right. You got to talk to those deeper emotional drivers. Yeah. Right. We're trying to be paleo. Like the primal drive to mate is like as paleo as it gets.

It's true. It's true. Yeah. I mean, and those are usually the goals. The goals are, you know, you peel back the onion, you find out, like, the real reason why, and they have goals around that that aren't behavior goals. They're outcome goals, and we talked about that on our New Year's special.

Which episode was that, CTP? You got a microphone in your mouth. Oh, jeez. 156, 157, I don't know. Yeah, but we talked about on that episode outcome goals versus behavior goals. And so, like, yeah, peeling back that onion, finding out the why, which is going to be that result they look for, and then teaching them, kind of like walking them through how to set behavior goals to reach that.

Yeah, I think a good distinction also is you're giving them, like, some people go, yeah, okay, well, I'll just tell them just tell them to get laid great well you can give them everything they need by starting with what they the real reason they came in you can always feed in the real like bacon more value exposing the bigger ideas even though you start with hey man just get laid bacon bacon bacon values i was daydreaming until i heard bacon include you can include everything you eventually want to get them to see and get motivated by a little later on, but start this way. Start right where they are. Again, they'll come up with you, even though you start with the getting laid thing.

Finding out what they want, the majority of that has to do with how you communicate with that person. In the example I just used, you could take one step back and just say that really, no matter what we're doing, we're trying to achieve greater status. Almost no matter what you're doing. You're trying to learn, trying to work out. You're at the bar. You're trying to talk to people, make new friends, trying to get laid. It's all about increasing or raising your status in some capacity. More shirts with flowers will get you there.

Flowery shirts. Flowery shirts. Flowery shirts, bold confidence. People have with flowers will get you there. Flowery shirts. Flowery shirts. Bold confidence. People have different methods to increase their status. So what you're trying to do is you're trying to find out like, what's this person's, what do they think the best method is to increase their status? That way you can communicate that back to them and they think you're on the same page and they feel understood. Now you're a trusted advisor and they will take your advice. Most of the conflict that happens with coaching is that someone says something along the lines of, well, I don't want to do that. I can't do that. And then

you come in and say, yeah, you can do it. Right. And they're like, I can't do that. Or what? And you say, no, you know, you can do that. And there's like this argument almost conflict. Yeah. And like, no one's going to agree with you when you're in conflict. Yeah. Like you're trying to get someone to accept your suggestion. It's not that they actually don't want to, or they actually can't. It's that they don't feel understood in the moment or you don't understand why they're saying it. You're saying, yes, you can. Cause you think, you think they can from your perspective, but from their perspective, they can't, you're trying to find this middle ground. So if you can say, why do you think you can't? And then they can come back and say, well, because of this and you go, why do you think that?

And then they'll say, well, it's because of this other reason. You'll say, okay, well, why is that? And if you can just help them peel the onion, then usually once they, now they feel understood, they're much more accepting of your advice. Or now you realize that you had it wrong and they probably shouldn't do that thing because now you know their knee hurts or whatever. And then you say, oh, well, you're right. That's not a good idea. If you get down to a very real reason why that can't happen, then it doesn't matter

how much you're going to scream at them. Right. My fucking knee is broke. Right. It all comes down to understanding why. It comes down to them feeling understood or you understanding why they're saying it. And once you can figure that out, then the conflict kind of automatically resolves, and they're much more accepting of whatever advice you're trying to give them.

Again, I think the most important thing to take from that is the more questions you ask, the better off you'll be all over your life. Not just coaching, but the more questions you ask, the better off you'll be all over your life. Not just coaching, but the more questions you ask, the better. The better a coach I become, the better I become in all my relationships in life. This particular nugget I should write down for meself. I'm going to be all honest.

Yeah, that goes into mentality. I think some coaches find that they attract a certain type of athlete. They go, oh, I only attract, you know, athletes that are like this or that. And it's usually because they're like that themselves. But you could probably handle athletes of a lot of different walks of life

and mentality if you go back to that whole listening, understanding. Some people want to be screamed at. Some people are going to like, you know, you run into like a John North or something. You give him a workout. It won't matter. He's going to accomplish it no matter what. And then you've got some people, you know, you run into like a John North or something. You give him a workout. It won't matter. He's going to accomplish it no matter what. And then you've got some people, you give them a workout,

and they're going to look at it on paper and go, I can't do that. You know a basic resource a coach could go to for learning the basic personality types? That's always a go-to good thing. Like, look, there's archetypes of behavior. If you don't recognize that some people respond to that, some people are more introverted and aren't going to deal with that, then you're going to lose the battle right up front. I think the biggest thing is, like, I don't know about a resource,

but, like, one of the things I try to do is align with someone's values, which is kind of going back to the why. But, like, you know, some people, you know, they may value money or they value learning or they value good food or something like that, a lot of times you can kind of like tie it back into their values as well. Yeah, I like that. It's a simple approach. Or, you know, some people value their family really high.

And so you've got to like, hey, you've got to work out for your family. Yeah, exactly. And so like some people's mentality is, you know, they're along the lines of I want to just train hard and be, I want to be on stage and I want to hit big weights and I want to inspire other people and all that kind of stuff. And then you have some people who are like, I just want to work out so I can live a long life and be able to play ball with my kids when I'm 50, 60 years old.

Or again, the whole late thing. I was going to say, have you ever peeled back an onion and it wasn't like, get late? These onions are all very sexy. Seems like everything comes down to that at some level eventually yeah i mean well you know we're fucking primates me let's get down to brass fucking text we're we're smart apes looking for fun and action and salty fatty things we're not hard to fucking figure out well that whole status thing like you could right that's like you're like oh yeah yeah you know what i'll i'll accept that you know i do it for status right but i won't accept that i'll do it all for the sex and it's like it's like well you know huh yeah the status is to you know help with with mate

selection if you're if you want to talk about like an evolutionary psychology type terms but really that's that's funny you say that because people used to try to push things towards like like it's all about sex it's all about mating and there's, there's resistance in society. Nobody wants to talk about that or admit it like in, in a lot of public forums and whatnot. And so they rolled it back to status because, and then everyone was like, well, yeah, of course. But nobody says, why do you want status?

Like they cut it off one level, one level before the actual kind of end end goal there. It's not just about purely about like, like having sex. It's like it's made selection. It's, it's, it's the fact that you can like, you know like, it's mate selection. It's the fact that you can have a family, put your genes into the future, etc. I'm going to get super real here, okay?

Oh, shit. Here comes the wisdom. You're a brace for impact. It's absolutely true. Even though I'm married, I don't plan on being with other women. I still want other women. Your wife just walked in, by the way. She's here. She's here. She's listening. Never mind. Never mind.

Never mind. Look, I'm not saying I'm unhappy, Mary. I don't plan on it. It's just that I really do like chicks, too. But here's the thing. Getting attention from other women, even though I don't plan on doing it, is a huge... It tickles your fancy, doesn't it? Yeah, it tickles my fancy.

For more on that, Doug, you'd say... People want to learn more about that because that's a big pie in and of itself. Motivation. That's a huge tangent. Jeffrey Miller's Mating Mind, right? Oh, yeah. Jeffrey Miller's a friend of ours. He's got some awesome books.

Book recommendation. Mating Mind and Spent. Spent is very good, too. Mating Mind's all about purely about sex and relationships and whatnot. And Spent is all about how those kind of sexual primal drives drive our spending habits which is really really interesting and people are spending in your gym too I'm going to pull the train back on the tracks another thing you need

to consider when doing an assessment when you get a new athlete either in your gym or if you're an online coach or something like that is consider their training history for me personally I find out someone hasn't been training at all. Then you got to start really, really basic on everything. And as Doug was

talking about earlier, you want to dig as deep into the why as possible to almost a ridiculous amount of why. Like sometimes I, it's easy to forget. I mean, if I've been, I've been in the fitness industry, you know, and studying that stuff since, uh, for like 18 years. So for me, like sometimes I think I'm being basic and I'm digging into the why for someone. And then they ask a question. I go, Oh, we got to go even further back than that. And it's like, I almost have to like really have to try to put myself in their shoes and go, okay, you know, I got all these problems and I've never trained before. What would, you know, What am I scared of? All that kind of stuff.

It's like a proper thought experiment. But you've got to think back. Okay, history. Or you get someone who's been under two years. That's still fairly new. If you've only been doing CrossFit or training weightlifting for under two years, I still consider you a novice. It's also really tough, though.

You might get an advanced athlete at the start, and then they have a whole separate history. There's a hitting injury. There's some things that are trained very well, and because of that, there's other things that are really behind. And because they think they're awesome, it's going to be hard to get them to see why fundamentals are important. There's a lot of questions right there at the beginning.

There is a lot of that, too. Yeah, they may have a big training history, but not a healthy training history. Right. If you get a meathead like me and there's been piloting and playing Division I football for 20 years, there's a lot to fix. There's a lot of doing, not a healthy training history. If you get a meathead like me and there's been a power thing of playing Division I football for 20 years, there's a lot to fix. There's a lot of doing, not a lot of thinking. There's a lot of stubbornness, a lot of dumbness, and a lot of injuries and tight, jerky-like tendons.

Doug and I were just talking about that too. I've always been a big doer my whole life. It's like if something hurts, that's the only time I address it. I'm not good at being proactive. And I'm a huge advocate of being proactive for other people uh do as i say yeah and the older i get the more injuries i've accumulated i definitely become more proactive but going back to training history it's something to consider as well i think a lot of times people kind of skip past that and go this program's good for everybody and like you know with with our stuff, most of the things we do are like,

we assume that people are fairly in the beginning stages, two years and less. That's a big thing too, is personality type differences. Like getting someone's history or doing some type of an assessment on them. You can learn kind of how people are. Like if you know that you're training you versus training me, you're a person who's a doer.

You just want to go try it out, get the experience of it. And then you're, you're willing to learn about it after you've had the experience. Whereas I can go learn about it first and then I want to try it. You want to try it and then go learn about it. And like just knowing that about somebody, you can, you can program for them differently or you can coach them differently.

If you, if you've never done a clean before with a client who's a super doer, you're like, it kind of looks like this, try it out and just give it to them. But if you do that with some other people, you'd be like, it kind of looks like this try it out just give it to them but if you do that with some other people you'd be like it kind of looks like this right out they're just like well that's true where do i where do i put my hand where do i stand so what what can you show me again and they're so fucking confused because that's just the wrong personality type to do that type of training that's how i learned everything all right i did

my first muscle up i watched the video i grabbed I grabbed the rings. Just kind of tried it a couple times and I did it. Oh, fuck, that hurts. Don't do it that way. Butterfly pull-ups. No instructional videos. I tried to watch a couple of instructional videos on butterfly pull-ups years ago. And I was like, I was like, and I would do the drills. I'm like, uh, you know what?

Screw it. Every time I walk in the gym, every time I walk by a pull-up bar, I'm going to do five attempts. Yeah, neither one's really right or wrong.-up bar, I'm going to do five attempts. Yeah, neither one's really right or wrong. A month later, I was just like... It's a preferred approach. It's not a right or wrong thing, right? Yeah, it's like, I can't learn that way.

And there's probably a lot of people like that who you're frustrating. Yeah, on that note too, if you're training someone like me, maybe you write out this whole workout and I do the warm-up and I feel terrible. It written down though if i you know like not me like i'm experienced enough at this point to to be able to opt out of a workout if it doesn't feel good but someone who's who has my personality type they're gonna do the whole workout no matter as it's

written no matter what no respect to their feelings at all yeah or a person like mike like he might walk in and be like i just don't feel very good today you know like maybe stick that off he's like he's very in tune with how he feels and he might, might come to you and have a conversation about it. I wouldn't say shit. So you might have to ask me how I feel. Cause I'm not going to come tell you, right? Like my personality type is not very in tune with my feelings. If you will. I'm very in my head. I'm very logical and, and I'm going to follow the directions. Right. And so just knowing that about somebody, you might have to ask a person like me,

do you feel good today? Is anything hurting? Do you feel like you need to take the day off? Do you want to go harder today? You're going to have to walk me through that process where someone like Mike might come and just tell you all that without you ever saying anything. And a lot of times in a class,

you guys, somebody like each of you is going to be in that class. I mean, you can probably assume that somebody's going to prefer one approach or the other. And you've got to be, you can't just sit in front of the class and shout out what's going to happen and then just watch how low people are going on their squats. That engagement is where it will happen.

You've got to keep reading. Because in time, you'll know exactly who is like Mike and who is like you in this example. But, yeah, you're going to have to do both techniques in one coaching session. Yeah, I mean, it takes experience. Like, having done it for so long, I can meet somebody within a minute. I know who they are. I know what approach to take, and that just takes experience.

You start trying one method with somebody and you see that it's not clicking, just switch to the other. And being able to change gears is going to be really helpful. So that's kind of like what we're talking about with assessment. I think assessment, a lot of times people talk about doing mobility assessment, find out, and that's definitely one of the first steps. But we spend a lot of time on the psychology right here. I think that's something that's commonly not taught.

It's just not taught. And because there's so much focus, and it's not technical either. I think, well, Doug might disagree because he's a more technical guy. He's like, oh, no, you can totally write that out. And for me, I'm like, I have to try. It's only from experience. It's hard. It's like, there you go. It's like, yeah, to me, It's only from experience. It's hard. It's like, there you go.

It's like, yeah, to me, I feel like it's an art to dug in. He's like, no, it's totally a science.

He's like, we can distill this down to these three basic principles. And I'm like, what? Questions, observations. Like,

I always think of this one book when I think of it, making better observations on looking is a great book on it. It teaches you, it goes through these scenarios on how you can, your awareness,

you're always going to filter out some bit of information. You're always going to skip something because you're a primate and you don't have time for everything. But it's very good to work specifically on drills where you're actively trying to look for things you normally don't notice. I think just doing that and practicing that, like you said with personality types, before you know it, you'll enter

a room and you'll pay attention to the details and you'll look to the people who are in there and you'll try to read them. You'll be better at observing if you just practice it. Oh, you run into that coach that can hear a snatch? Yeah, the sound of the plates jiggling and all that. It's like, you see that? He's like, oh, you know, you try this.

You weren't even watching. That's experience. Roy Munson. Roy Munson. Oh, shit. Unless you get in the habit of going in, what do Roy Munson. Roy Munson. Oh, shit. Yeah, but unless you get in the habit of going in, what do I hear? What do I see? What do I sense?

Who's in here? What are they like? You've got to be asking yourself those questions to train yourself to do it automatically. Yeah. All right, let's roll into some other things that make a good coach. I mean, during the assessment, you also want to cover the movement stuff. You're going to look and see, okay, we probably shouldn't be prescribing overhead squats and kipping pull-ups to somebody who's completely internally rotated on their shoulders.

They're going to probably just, well, a month later not want to come back to you. And things like that. So you can program intelligently for them. And if you're in a facility where you're not writing the programs where you're coaching, that's where the virtuosity comes in. You can spot stuff. The person may have been told at some point you should avoid these movements,

but if they're hard-headed, like we all are at some point, until you're injured, you're hard-headed is usually how it goes. Projecting. That's me. Man, Doug, what is he talking about Doug's over analyzing me

but you know you gotta be the one to watch that movement at all times and then hold them accountable to doing the right thing

so not only keeping them accountable we were actually just in the gym we witnessed accountability happen that's like one of the you did?

yeah in the wild I experienced it yeah in the wild of physical culture, uh, physical culture. There was a, there was a trainer, uh, training somebody and he walked over and said something to me and Doug. And then the, the lady he was training comes up and goes, I think I'm just going to call

it a day. Like, I was like, I've had enough. And he was like, what? No, no. Like, he's like, you're finishing this workout. And I was like, okay. Yeah. It was one of those things where like, it was like, as? No, no. He was like, you're finishing this workout. So he was kind of like, okay. Yeah, it was one of those things where like,

as we're like talking about doing the show on this, I saw the perfect example of accountability. So you hold them accountable while they're in the gym. You hold them accountable to doing the movements that they can and can't do. And then also holding them accountable like, you know, if they haven't showed up in three days, you put on their Facebook wall, where have you been? You loser, you., if they haven't showed up in three days, you put on their Facebook wall, where have you been? You loser, you. You don't want to say that.

If they're the kind of people who respond, they get motivated by public humiliation and whatnot. That's me. That's you. Okay.

I like to be called really horrible things. I get my feelings hurt. You can't try that with me and Michael. I know. I've tried it with you and then you just

ignore me for days. Inside, I'm really more of a 17-year-old pubescent girl. Emotionally not very in touch with the feelings, I guess. I love chocolate. I love late night. Late night romantic.

You like Ben and Jerry's. Late night Ben and Jerry's, yeah. It makes me feel better about everything. I was super lucky growing up. Like Mark, my strength coach growing up, he held me accountable for everything, good technique like like in a lot of crossfit gyms are like oh we always use good technique and then then you go there and you watch them coach and everyone's not using good technique but they're all beginners not the coach's fault but they're not actually holding people accountable as as much as i was held accountable like i sure was not fucking allowed

to ever do anything wrong ever and if i if i ever got in a good starting position it was just like stop no don't don't fucking pick it up you're not allowed to don't even start yeah like we would sit there and just work on starting position over and over and over again if i if i wasn't getting a good position we would elevate the weight or we would move to hang cleans or there was something was done the weight was was lightened until i could do it correctly i was never allowed to do it incorrectly it's like that in gymnastics too gymnastics is you're basically scored on your technique the whole sport is about being perfect and having a perfect technique that's the sport like getting things done and just accomplishing them and looking good on paper

not the case at all it's not like you lift a thousand pounds that way yeah you power lift a thousand pounds you squat a thousand pounds and power lift meat rather you get to depth knees dive in shaky you look like shit you round your back as long as you stand up and rack it on paper a thousand pounds you win not like that in gymnastics at all it's all about being perfect so i did gymnastics for like five or six years when i was young and then i moved into weightlifting with a person who who was always holding me accountable and now i have very good technique because i just simply wasn't allowed to so i was jealous of me this these conversations i'm extremely jealous yeah i was i was put out in the wild by myself i had to raise myself on on weight training you should have said it like

scottish like i had to raise myself i had to raise myself in the highlands picking up stones i feel like a big issue with that though is like in the crossfit classes especially if you're training with other people you got five or six people and then the coach sees that you're the one with the bad technique we've talked about this before you go over there and you know it's a battle between like motivating them psychologically and then trying to get them to do the technique because you don't want to make them because they're gonna have to scale and that's gonna be its own thing so yeah, absolutely. The interesting part about retaining somebody at your gym is that you kind of have to play this game where you're letting them do something that maybe they shouldn't be doing, but it motivates them. And that's going to let them come back because they think it's fun and exciting.

Right, yeah, the balance. And keeping them safe at the same time. So there's definitely a psychological component to that. In my case, I was already motivated. So if you have someone who isn't motivated, then you have to play this game a little bit where you can let them do some things that maybe are a little bit beyond what they're currently capable of, but they can't be things that are unsafe. If this is a total disaster and they're going to hurt themselves, then obviously they can't do that, but you can let them do something else. So if they can't do full cleans from the floor because they have a round back, well, you can modify and let them do hang cleans. It doesn't mean that you have to take them back and just do goblet squats with them

and the whole class is doing cleans and now they feel like a loser. You're always playing that game where you're doing the back and forth of safety versus motivation. Right. That's your main point. We've talked before on the importance of being responsible and stepping in and playing the role of protector over who you're coaching and being the person who's going to make sure that they get the best possible outcome and you do not allow them to do things that are going to hurt their progress

and hurt their long-term health. Yeah. Because we all know once you get hurt, then progress comes to a screeching halt. Yeah. And in a lot of ways, we're even just teaching this to anyone listening to this show, like we've almost skipped over the thing that we think is obvious.

Oh yeah, what's that? Right? The why behind listening to this as a coach is that you can give your clients better results. But we assume that to be the case. And so we didn't even mention results. Right. Right?

We're almost having the, this is like us not following our own advice right because coaching this specific thing is new to us as coaches like coaching athletes on movement is something we've practiced a lot and so it's it's obvious to follow the advice we're giving but now we're coaching a new topic in a way to to coaches and so now we're making the same fallacies that we're just that we're talking about so so all this being that being said everything we're saying is is with the frame of if you do this you'll give people better results yeah make sense yeah yeah yeah and uh you know kind of how we started off is like people think about coaching they think about either standing in class and teaching

movement or writing the program and so writing the program and teaching the movements is definitely a part of coaching but i think people put so much emphasis on it because there are certifications that revolve around that specifically. You know, the certifications for movement, you go for a weekend and that's all you do is talk about movement, talk about program design for about five minutes and so on and so forth. You'll go to another certification and they'll talk about movement selection and then, and then program design and maybe they'll'll get into uh you know some other stuff uh but talk about different workouts for different types of people different goals assessing a weakness and then and writing workouts and movements to assess those those are definitely

part of coaching definitely part of fitness coaching becoming a better performer performing athlete yeah there you go yeah so Do we want to dig into those few things and the rest of that category when we come back after a break? That's a great idea. We've been going. This is Tim Ferriss, and you were listening to Barbell Shrugged.

For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Barbell Shrugged is brought to you by you. To learn more about how you can support the show, go to barbellshrugged.com and sign up for the newsletter. Feels like the very first time.

And we're back. What are they talking about? We are singing songs, Doug. You missed out on my beautiful voice. If you could just imagine my voice singing. It's terrible. Needs a little polishing,

I think. A little polishing. Maybe some lessons. We were wanting to talk about... Coaching. Yeah, I should probably get some coaching on my singing.

Or I'll probably just abandon it altogether. That's my hold you cannibal. Yeah, so we want to talk about exactly how you might be able to refine your coaching skills so yes yes coaching is is program design coaching is teaching people about movement but um and those are the things that people commonly associate with it but we want to

challenge you to go deeper uh and and be able to communicate better with your athletes and stuff like that. And that is what we try to do with our programs is, yes, we do offer what is typically known as a list of workouts for program design. We do have instructional videos with technique on how to do that. But when we have programs and stuff, our coaches are highly trained in being able to figure out where people are at and give them the advice they need specifically for them to reach the specific goal they have and so that's kind of what we're digging into now we're going to talk about how you if you're a coach how you can be a better coach and and this just doesn't apply to people who are

kind of in the fitness industry this applies to you know if you're a mother or a father I mean coach you're coaching your kids this is any type of mentorship at all, really. Yeah, and if you're a mentor, that means you're not a mentor just the one hour someone's in the gym. A lot of people call it a CrossFit therapist. They realize once they start coaching that they're not just coaching movement, that really they're dealing with a whole person. Lifestyle. They're getting the whole package.

They're getting all the things that happen in the gym and out of the gym. They're getting all that person's problems, all that person's fears, their frustrations, their aspirations for the future. You're turning into a therapist. You're a life coach in addition to a fitness coach. If you can coach that all, you can coach them comprehensively or

we call it integral coaching a lot of times. One of those terms that Mike coined a while back. Integral performance coaching. Integral performance coaching. IPC. IPC. That's right. So recognizing that you're not just coaching movement,

you're not just writing workouts, that you're actually coaching this person on how to be a better person. You can kind of like kick it up one level and realize it's not just fitness. You're trying to make them a better person in all aspects of their life. Then now you're not just this one guy they person in all aspects of their life then now you don't just you're not just this one one guy they met one time that helped them learn how to do push-ups better now you're like and you're an actual advisor to them there's something that you are someone they look up to uh in all areas of their life this is something that didn't really

occur to me like in the beginning of of being a fitness coach when i first started to me in the beginning it was um before crossfit came, it was all about program design. It was like, you know, how do we write workouts to solve problems? You know, what movement can we do to solve this problem? The magical combination of numbers. And then I got deep into movement. Like, you know, how can we get people to move just right? And I didn't think too much about program design.

And then I kind of came back around to lots of program design. And then with Doug as a huge on movement, like he was talking about before, he had a background where it was all about movement. And then Doug kind of brought to my attention more the mobility side of things. And then Kelly Starrett also helped kind of. You know, I had Doug telling me, and since we're really good friends, it's hard for me to accept his advice sometimes. But Doug's always like, oh, mobility, mobility. Kelly Starrett comes along and I'm like, this Kelly Starrett guy is amazing.

Doug's like, this is all the shit I've been telling you the whole time. For seven years. Yeah. But, and so, like, he's like, okay, I got the program design down. I got the movement down. I got the design down. I got the movement down. I got the mobility down. I got the nutrition down. You know, get all that stuff dialed in.

And then I started having my own coaches, but on business. Yeah. And then I find that any time I do any, I've hired a business coach. And, like, so much of what I work with him on my business stuff is like personal stuff and like really digging into like what I'm, what I need to get out of my own life and stuff like that. I'm like, that's coaching. And, and so I was like, now it's like, if you have all those aspects and then you throw it, now you bring in that whole lifestyle thing and like getting out of life when you really want that, the fulfillment aspect to me that's that's integral like performance coaching it's all stuck together if you if you're

if your lifestyle is lined up as an athlete outside of the gym and you can really um recover when you're supposed to recover and and the the training is serving your lifestyle and stuff like that that's that's the sign of a good coach if you can help athletes go that direction. Obviously, with this podcast, we're trying to fill in the pieces of coaching that we think are neglected by coaches by and large, like movement and programming. People always talk about that. It's constantly talked about.

So we're not really talking about that in any level of detail here. It is important, but we don't feel like it needs to be. That's a dead horse. We're talking about the other stuff. And to your point, damn it, I had something really good to say, and I just fucking lost it. To your point. Hit him in the head.

Maybe. Somebody bonked me in the head. No, he'll just kill you. Yeah, so one of the things you can do is practice perspectiving. It's a real thing. It's a crazy-ass word.... It's a real thing, not a crazy-ass word. Yeah, and, well, it is a crazy-ass word. Not just a crazy-ass word. Not just crazy.

Yeah, perspectiving. It was actually, perspectiving was brought to my attention by a guy named Eben Pagan. And I think he actually made the word up. And because you have perspectiving and then you have empathy. And so, like like they've done studies where they have empathy and then perspectiving can also be called see-through

or, you know, knowing what people are thinking. So empathy is knowing how people feel or feeling what someone else is feeling. And that's important. There's a lot of benefit to that. But see-through or perspectiving, understanding what people are thinking

is even more powerful. So whereas empathy is important and, youiving, understanding what people are thinking, is even more powerful. So whereas empathy is important, and usually people associate, oh, a lot of women have a lot of empathy. I mean, that's pretty common. Guys usually lack in that. And I think empathy is extremely important. But the perspectiving or see-through and seeing the way people think, I think is 10 times more powerful. Do you think it's a harder thing to get down? Is it more of an unnatural thing that it's easy to feel?

You can look at somebody experiencing something and feel it. I think there's a natural, everyone has some natural empathy built in unless they're a sociopath. There are some of those out there. And it is something that can be developed. But the see-through is something that people don't, if you were to go through your whole life and no one talked about it, you wouldn't even think about it. We've all met that person who like,

you can't convince them of anything ever. Like they have their lens that they see the world through and they will never consider like, you know, I meet some people sometimes I'm like, I was like, they have no idea that people think differently than they do. I mean,

and I know that because I used to be one of those people. So, I mean, I remember watching myself. I can look back at myself in the world, see myself going through the world thinking, everyone is so stupid. If they just thought like me, everything would be so good. You know what I mean? If everybody just read The Fountainhead,

all this shit would just go away. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's a perfect example, yeah. And so, like, I, you know, I was like. Yeah. And so like I, um, you know, it was like, man, if they just understood this philosophy, you know, this world would be a better place. So it, it occurred to me at some point, there's no way ever that people are going to see things the way I'm going to see them. What I have to do is accept that they see things differently.

And I, years ago, I stopped trying to convince people to see things from my perspective. And I put all the effort into seeing things from their perspective. And so, and then. It's a lot less burdensome. That made me a better coach. It made me a better husband, whatever, friend, whatever. And when I really focused on, and it's one of the hardest things I've ever learned in my entire life. But once you get it, it helps with everything.

So once I understood that, and now all my effort goes into understanding people, not only do I understand them and I can talk to them better and tell them the things that they need to hear, and I understand at what point in the spectrum they are because we've got to meet people where they are. I find what point in the spectrum they are, and I've got to meet people where they are. I find what point in the spectrum they are, and I keep trying to move them along the way, right? But they're also more willing to listen to me,

because once someone feels, and we talked about this earlier, once they feel understood, now they're open to suggestions. And if you can understand where they are, all right, okay, I'm open, and then you make the suggestion that it's just one step beyond where they are. That's huge. But the two common things is they don't feel understood and then you make suggestions

that are like 100 steps beyond where they are. So if you can do those two things, you can just kind of hold their hand and lead them down the path and they can make so much progress. And that's a good coach. A good coach is going to do just that. Yeah, a big part of being a good coach is good coach is going to do just that yeah a big part of being

good coaches is helping someone believe they can do it yeah right telling them how to do it it's easy right but right you know telling them why it's important and then telling them how to do it that's really the easy part getting them to actually believe they can accomplish something is really a tricky situation in a lot of cases some people are going to walk in and they just think they're going to you know do and they just think they're going to do CrossFit two years, they're going to win the games. And they already believe they can do it. That's great.

But a lot of people, they're scared. They're intimidated. It's because they don't believe they can be as good as all those people that they already see that are in the gym. They never see themselves as being an actual athlete. They may have never been an athlete before in their whole life. They may have never done a push-up before. I had a conversation with somebody one time.

I said the word push-up, and they said, what's that? They'd never heard of it. Did they speak English? You'd think that would be impossible. It happened to me one time my whole life. They're probably homeschooled like me and never went to PE class. It wasn't that they'd never done it. They didn't know what it was.

That's crazy. That's a hard perspective to take on. Yeah. What's it like to be that person? How do you, how do you, you know, how do you deal with that person? Yeah. I don't know. So, so a big part of being a leader, and I forget the exact expression behind this.

I think I've said it on the show before, but a big part of being a leader is, is, is providing. Mrs. Bledsoe. Nice. Make a noise of the future that's bigger than the vision of the future that person has for themselves. That make sense? So if someone comes in and they say, man, I really would just love to snatch 100 kilos someday, 220 pounds. And you go, well, that's pretty cool. I mean, I think you could probably do 275, but, but you know, let's get there first.

And they're like, wow, like this person believes in me. That's a vision of the future. That's bigger than the vision of the future that they had for themselves. And that's, that's what being a leader is. You don't, you want to provide that future for them, paint a picture of that future for them, and then help them believe that it's possible. And explain just what the steps are that will inevitably lead them there. Yeah, and now when you tell them how it's going to happen, like they believe it's possible. And if they believe it's possible,

then it is possible. But if they don't believe it's possible, then that's a rough road to force them down. Whatever your mind conjures, that's what's going to be true for you. So we have a few resources for you. So we're not going to just put all this stuff out there.

Best of luck, folks. Go be better. What we told you, you should be able to take what you heard right here and be a better coach for it. No doubt in my mind. Um, but if you want to dig deeper, which I think you should, if you want to dig deeper and find some resources that are gonna be really helpful. Uh, we have a few, uh, got them written down over here. The first book is The Art of Explanation. That's a super powerful book. That book led me to another book called Back of the Napkin. And so, you know, especially in CrossFit boxes, there's a lot of whiteboards and chalkboards around. And Back of the Napkin actually teaches you how to communicate complex or what might be complex explanations very simply with drawings. And so it has exercises in there as well.

That book teaches you how to be smart yourself. The classic anything you can grasp and fundamentally break down into digestible chunks and get other people to see, that's how you know you actually understand and firmly grasp the topic. I think Richard Feynman said that. A picture is worth a thousand words, you know. You can get up and give a 30-minute talk, or you can draw this one picture. You can do 10 pictures in 20 minutes,

and the next thing you know, you've got hours and hours of information. That's a good one. Another book is Made to Stick. I don't know if I've even, I've listened to that one, but it's been a long time. I think that's one of Doug's favorites.

Yeah, Made to Stick's a good book. It's written by chip and dan heath and they've written a written a number of books another book is called switch which is all about how to get people to make change so if you're a coach that's a good book as well but made to stick is all about making your ideas easier to understand make them sticky in someone's mind really easy example from that book because they talk about using very concrete, tangible examples. Like as a beginner, and again, if you've read Art of Explanation, you know, beginners need more why and experts need more how. And using concrete, tangible examples makes that easier to understand. So here's a concrete, tangible example.

So if you walk into, as a coach, as an expert, if you walk into a gym and they go, oh, yeah, like come on in. And they start telling you all about the why of a crossfit gym yeah you come in here like we do high intensity workouts you're gonna burn tons of calories you're gonna lose body fat you almost feel like they're like it's like condescending you're like i fucking know why are you trying to like be like a sleazy salesman like i know all this shit like it's it's it's almost right it's almost like offensive right they're telling you the why because you already know the why because you're an expert a beginner needs to hear that.

Total novice, like, yeah, we burn lots of calories with high-intensity exercise. You're going to look good. You're going to be buff. You're going to be stronger. Telling all these benefits, they're like, oh, that's what I need.

I need CrossFit. Six back abs. But on the other side of things, if you took the experts category of just telling the how and neglecting the why, if you walk into a gym and someone said man we have we have a lego barbells and we have rogue racks and equipment

and you'd be like fuck yeah this is a cool ass gym i totally want to train there because you understand all the what what things are right all these features that aren't benefits right but if a new person like you're an expert so you understand that so you're like fuck yeah i'm totally gonna train there they got a lego bars and rogue racks and and whatever like that can't be beat but if a brand new person walks into the gym in this example and you tell them the what you tell them what the gym has you're like oh we got lego bars and rogue racks they're like the fuck does that mean for me right why is that important why should i give a shit and why should i listen to you right right so so the art of explanation is very good because it helps you understand

what to say to different categories of people, beginners versus experts. And then made to stick comes in there and it kind of even further clarifies a lot of the points that are, that are laid out in the art of explanation. So those are both very, very good books. I haven't, I haven't read on the napkin yet, but that's a, that's definitely on my list. Yeah, and then another one we didn't put down, which is Start With Why by Simon Sinek. And there's something else. I can't remember. That's enough books. Yeah.

Knock those out. If you read those four books, you're going to be in good position. Yeah. Start With Why is more about, it's more on the sales front. But again, anytime you're selling, really you're trying to just convince somebody to take your advice. So if you're a coach, you're selling your ideas to your clients. So the big, big, big picture of Start With Why is that people don't, if we're back to talking about money and buying things, people don't buy what you're selling because of what it is. They want to buy from people who believe what they believe.

Okay? Yeah. Not who have what they're offering. That's why you watch the news station that matches with your ideology. Are you suggesting that conformational bias skews our perception of our world? True that. We go looking for what we want to find. That's exactly right. Yes.

Right. So the best way to sell an idea to somebody is to get your beliefs aligned. So if you ask somebody a lot of why and you peel that onion, you get down to their core beliefs of why they're there and what they want from the world. And then you can empathize with them, empathize with their perspective, provide understanding of their perspective. Now you have that rapport, you have that alignment, and they're much more likely to accept your advice. Yeah. And now all that hard-earned programming you put together will really be maximized.

You'll get the most out of it. Yeah. All right, we have some take action steps. So what you want to do is go over to barbellshrug.com. You want to pull up this episode, and in the comments we want you to answer some of these questions, all right? Do it.

Chris Moore, you want to lead these? Do it, for real, yes. What are the questions? There are some key questions, three key questions to answer some of these questions. All right? Chris Moore, you want to lead these? Do it for real. What are the questions? There are some key questions. Three key questions to answer. You will be better off if you go and do this. It's going to be a learning experience as you answer the questions, okay? Question number one.

What aspect of coaching have you been neglecting? Knowing what you know now, what do you think you're neglecting? Put it there. We can comment. We can mix the ideas up. It could be program design, mobility, empathy,

nutrition. What aspect of if you were to look at the entire picture of what an athlete needs to find to get success, what's the one thing that you've been you think you could do better at? Athlete assessment, performance testing, testing listening who knows right so which one

are you neglecting number two what is keeping you from getting better and refine this craft of coaching yeah so once you identify that thing you go oh man i could be doing a better job of that like what's keeping you from actually getting better at that thing that you're that you might be missing and then you probably could peel your own onion with that one. Like, well, why is that keeping me from getting better? And then dig further. Why is that happening? Why is that happening? And dig down to the core belief or the core restriction, the core, uh, block or obstacle, and then you can handle it kind of at that deeper level. Then you will know the power of a good

question. And to think we all, we still have one more question to go, which is question number three. What resource could you use to address this flaw? Or resources, preferably. That would include books, websites, podcast episodes, which are great sources of information. People you could talk to. Who around you, who can you travel to see? Who you can capitalize on their experiences and take what you need to make yourself a better coach? Like we just said, where can you travel?

Because I think the majority of our listeners do not live somewhere where they have access to that solid mentor. And that's something that we've all done is we've had to travel, you know, hop on an airplane and figure it out, spend lots of money. Yeah, literally. That's kind of what's happened. hop on an airplane and figure it out, spend lots of money. Yeah, literally. That's kind of what's happened. What we've done for a decade or more is find somebody that you need to go talk to because you recognize them as being somebody

who can teach you something useful, do whatever you got to do to get there, and then on the flight there or on the road trip there, podcasting books, learning other interesting shit too. From all angles, you have to just be learning and absorbing. Yeah, so you got these three questions. Make sure, if you go to the website, if you go to barbellshow.com,

find this blog post, the podcast. Chris will actually, in the show notes, put those questions so you don't have to, like, try to remember exactly what we said just now. But go there, answer them. I think it'll be really cool to see what other people say. It might be a little bit enlightening. They may say some things that we missed here that we didn't cover. They'll go, oh, you didn't even

mention this aspect of coaching and it might be enlightening to us. That'd be fantastic. Yeah. Then we'll jump in and we'll just continue the flow of value in those comments. Absolutely. Awesome. Thanks for joining us today. We really enjoyed doing this episode and we hope you enjoyed it as well. Cheers.