Barbell Shrugged - 862 - Coaching Behavior Change w/ Cody McBroom

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

Cody McBroom joins Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash, and Dr. Mike Lane to break down what separates a list of exercises from real coaching. As a strength coach, online coaching business owner, and host of the Choose Hard podcast, Cody works with "advanced general population" clients who have tried to train and diet but still cannot connect the dots. The crew gets practical about why many people fail to progress: they are training too far from true effort, cutting ranges of motion short, or following a program without understanding how hard the work should feel. Cody explains how thoughtful exercise selection, rep ranges, video feedback, and clear progression can help online coaches create programs that are harder to misinterpret—and more likely to produce results. The conversation then moves past macros and reps into the real challenge of coaching: behavior change. Cody shares his framework for helping clients build self-control, self-discipline, self-belief, and ultimately self-respect by tying health goals to their core values and creating evidence through small, kept promises. They unpack how to handle all-or-nothing thinking, why accountability has to lead to a specific action plan, and how coaches can ask better questions instead of settling for "I'll try harder." Whether you coach athletes, general-population clients, or yourself, this episode offers a sharper way to turn good intentions into lasting habits and sustainable results.

Shrug family, Doug Larson here. And this week on Barb L shrug, we're joined by Strength Coach and Choose Hard podcast host, Cody McBroom. And in this episode, we dig into Cody's unique methods for getting humans to actually change their behavior in the real world. And we do this by covering practical tools that you can use right away, such as how to make effort measurable with tweaks to how you program rep ranges and four-range emotion, how to replace trying harder with an intricate plan that has a specific day, time, and action, as well as learn how to build self-belief by keeping small promises to yourself. first before taking on bigger challenges. So if you coach athletes and you want to help them produce enduring results by actually changing their behavior, this episode is for you. Enjoy the show.

Welcome to Barbell Strug. I'm Doug Larsen here with Coach Travis Mash and Dr. Mike Lane. Cody McBroom, strength coach, coach the coaches. You are also the host of the Choose Hard podcast. You're ahead of us, my man. You're probably going to be like episode 860 something over here. You've done over a thousand episodes. I didn't realize when I, I knew you had a show, but I didn't realize it had been

going that hard, choose hard, that hard for that long. How many of you, I mean, that's amazing. Right now, just one. For a while, we were doing multiple a week. It was, I think just two. The most we've ever done was three for a couple times. We just had an overload of interviews and stuff. But two a week for quite a while.

And then more recently, when we started choose hard, we shifted at a thousand episodes. We just did one a week at that point. Wait, when did you start that then? Oh my gosh, man. I started, you know, we were talking about mics before this. I started with a buddy in my kitchen of this. I live with like four dudes. This is the trainer guy would come over, Theo Bowie.

And we would, we had a blue, you remember those blue snowball mics? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. It's like a weird like podcast where we're both speaking into the same mic. Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. That wasn't like, what's that?

I said intimate. Just intimate. It wasn't very, very intimate. I think it was in like 2017. dozen 16 maybe that's awesome dude yeah fun fact we shot our first show in a kitchen as well so we got that go for us yeah well very very cool my man so uh give us your background your training history how'd you get into fitness how'd you get into business uh where'd you start yeah uh i was i was the fact you'd grown up i was never into lifting weights uh i played a

little bit of sports just because your parents kind of throw you into sports you know but i was never elite sports, never did much physically outside, skateboarded and stuff. I was just kind of a hoodlum, a shithead kid, getting in trouble hanging out. And that was my life. And then after high school, a bunch of friends went off to play college sports and just do things. And I was just stuck back home doing nothing, gaining weight. And that was kind of like the catalyst for me. Honestly, it was just, I was tired of being insecure.

I want girls to notice me more. And I started trying to lose weight. So I did it the, you know, started eating special K cereal instead of fruit. loops because I was 18 years old and diet Mountain Dew instead of Mountain Dew. And it worked. It was a calorie deficit. So I lost weight. And step one.

That was step one, man. And so I was going to community college for business. And I actually started training a little bit. I met a guy in school named Tim Vagan, who is, he's been in the industry for really long time. He trained people in the Olympics for swimming, rowing, like way back in the day. So he started this fitness program. I used to just sneak out of class and go kind of snoop at his class and just hang out. And then eventually I decided I wanted to change my degree to his program so I could start getting into the fitness space at this community college.

And my parents said no, I was still chubby, didn't know anything about fitness and they were paying for it. So I forged my dad's signature, changed my degree and took a while for them to find out. But at that point, I had lost 40, 50 pounds. I was really into it. And I just went head first, man. I got an internship at a place called VigarGarh, with Luca Hosephar. I worked for him for six and a half, seven years. And I left there in 2017, left all my clients behind and started online business while my wife was pregnant.

And I was like, this is going to be the thing. And she never went back to work after maternity leave. So it worked out pretty well. And we built an online coaching company. And that's basically, that's what I do now. Yeah. When you have an in-person facility as well? I do.

Yeah. So that's where I'm at right now. We do. We don't do any personal training here. But I think it was, I mean, my daughter must have been like one or two. I just could not get any work done. And I was like, I'm going to go rent some space. Rented just a big ass warehouse and put a little office in there.

It was just a huge gym. In Washington State, man, we're wearing north faces to work out. There's no heat in there. It was pretty bad. So then we upgraded to another facility, which is where we're at now. Yeah, dude, I feel you on that. I grew up in Vancouver, Washington. And my strength coach, he built a.

big a big house out in washugal washington and he's a mechanical engineer like basically just like like you know took a cad his cad machine from he worked at hill packard from work designed a warehouse basically on his own computer at work and went to home depot and just like started building a house never built the house for him just built the house but anyway it basically was a big big warehouse and he put a gym in there and there was no there was no heat in the gym and so i'd go out there in the wintertime same deal like like like long pants jacket and like in the like the bars the bars would would be ice cold yeah you would you would grab the bars and they'd like freeze your hands be lifting with gloves on like until you just until you like you know have enough weight on the

bar we like I can't I can't lift with these fucking gloves on but like bars just ice cold and washing the state with no no heat in the gym yeah I mean did he put like real racks or did he build the racks himself or what like in the oh no my strength coach yeah yeah no yeah he had he had sworn X racks and in a laco bars like it was all nice Oh, he did a nice. He was buddies with, with Richard and Bert. I actually met them like back of my teens. Oh, sweet.

For a long time ago, yeah. Wow. They did it, right? Good. Yep, 100%. We're right on, man. So now you can have the online coaching business. Who's your primary clientele?

Most of them are Jim Pop. It's interesting, man. I think nowadays it is, it's almost, and I don't totally disagree, but it's almost frowned upon to be a generalist. like you have to be a specialist. I think you can go too far. There's some people that the shit they put in their Instagram bio is insane,

how specific they are to work with somebody. But we're general. I mean, we work with Gen Pop. We always say like we work with advanced Gem Pop because these people have tried to die before. They've tried working out before. They've followed a program. They're into researching. They listen to podcasts like this.

They just can't connect the dots. They can't figure out how to actually look like they work out. They're busting their ass, but they're not seeing the result from that. And along the way, we've been able to work with some cool people too i've worked with some w w u guys quite a few actually somehow ended up in that world which was pretty random but yeah cool referrals happened it was fun some water ski jumpers um a lot of random people but just fun water ski jumpers wow yeah that's probably the first time i've heard anyone say that on the show water ski first time yeah that's cool uh yeah she

she was uh Lauren she was actually a world champion uh water ski jumper female um and then she she tore ACL she hired me and we tried to to come back in. She got second next year. But it was me and her PT working together. She was in Florida, so all in the online setting, but really fun. I mean, just really cool on people to work with. I don't know, Doug, did I ever tell you about one of my first clients that were figure skaters from the world arena? Like, it was like 1997 and I had no business coaching them. Like, Lively back is like, I was the worst choice they could have made. I didn't know shit.

But I did it. They still did pretty good. but I don't think it had anything to do with what I did. But two things. One, I think working with the principles are the same. The key thing is then you select the methods based upon who you're working with. And two, I think an underserved population, and I would maybe change your marketing too. We work with non-responders.

So people that, you know, they do training programs. They don't work. And like, that shows up in the lit. Like there's people that go through, you know, six weeks, 12 weeks of training and don't get any stronger. And it's just like, That's where it's fascinating because that's why we're working with D1 athletes. A D1 football player looks at weights and gets stronger. A quick break in the action here to let you know that I've just recently chosen to get back into coaching.

And I specifically am looking to coach Masters Jiu-Jitsu athletes just like myself. I've been doing Jiu-Jitsu for 22 years and strength and conditioning for 30 years. I'm a black belt, of course. And I live that life. I understand exactly what goes into it. I understand what's like to run a family, do Jiu-Jitsu, try to tie strength and conditioning into it all. and all of the ups and downs that come with it from, from joint pain to busy schedules to travel and all the things.

So if you are a master's jujitsu athlete and you're looking for some support, I'm happy to give it. You can DM me on Instagram at Douglas E. Larson, or you can email me, Doug at barbell shrug.com. Happy to help. Back to the show. That's why we're working with D1 athletes. A D1 football player looks at weights and gets stronger.

You give me, let me say, substandard ingredients to make chicken salad out of. Yeah, exactly. Edible, you've done something. Yeah. So, I agree. But, yeah. You know, I agree. I agree 100%.

I also think that what I have found just in, and I think this came from, I have always just, I've coached the way I coach. And then when you build a team, you start realizing that not everybody coaches the same way you coach. And you have to really start looking at what people are intuitively doing in the coaching setting. And not that there's not, actually, I don't believe there's total non-responders. I think there's people. who are less likely to respond well.

And they typically need more volume. They need to learn how to train harder with better effort. But a lot of times, too, we've noticed this more often than I like to admit is, is training form in full ranges of motion. It's just not existing everyday people. And you get people that send you their leg press PR

and they're just doing this tiny little quarter squat. And you feel bad because it's a normal person excited about their PR and you have to tell them, that doesn't count. You have to be delicate with it. But I do find that there's a lot of people that, They hire a coach and the coach doesn't take the time to actually talk to them, to actually watch their videos, to actually see what they're doing, to ask the right questions and to dig deeper with them. It's very surface level. And so the reason they're not responding is because they're not getting the level of depth, a coach should be providing them with, especially in the online world.

When you're working with people in a gym and you are right there, you can't ignore bad form or range of motion and you address it right there, which is why typically a great strength coach in person is way better than the average online coach, which is, but, you know, I'm trying to change. Right. Yeah. Related to the level of effort piece that you mentioned. Like, I remember one time I was dealing with the, she was like kind of a younger-ish woman, like late 20s, new or two, newer to lifting weights and wasn't making much progress as you wanted to.

We just started training together. And she was doing, you know, like some normal, normal amount of volume, you know, three sets of 10 on back squash type of stuff, just like, like level one type stuff. And, you know, she would put on the weight and do this, do the sets of 10. and finally I was like just just do as many as you can I just want to see where you're at with this and she did like 25 you know like something like that I was like you just aren't you're doing what it says on the paper but three sets of 10 means like the most weight you can do for three sets of 10 and she was kind of like oh I was just doing what it said yeah like as a strength coach you don't you think it's so obvious but when you're new you don't know you're just totally naive absolutely or assuming that they'd understand to warm up like if like if you say to do three sets of 10 at, let's say, 70%, which is a hard day. But, like, you just assume they're going to work. They're going to do the bar.

And they're going to, don't assume that. I mean, nowadays, they're going to throw on 70%. They could start. It's the literal, like, make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. You know, they literally put the peanut butter directly on top of the bag of bread. And don't probably get up. Exactly. Just go to work.

You've got to be a little bit more. Oh, and one more anecdote, one of my favorite things I was teaching, class here did body comp on these students and had them do programs over the semester. One of them did exactly that. They did everything at their 30 RM for sets of 10. And go figure, that's the one student that made, they lost muscle and gained fat over the semester. And the one that just, you know, did everything to RM loads, this gal, it actually kind

of pissed me off in four months, put on six pounds of lean and lost two pounds of fat. It's like, it's nice to be 18. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I think it's worth saying that this is why it helps to be a in-person trainer or strength coach first. I think that there is there should be this. It's unfortunate that, you know, like the barrier of entry for a gym owner is extremely high. You got to get, I mean, you got to have capital. You got to get a loan to get all the equipment.

You have a staple facility in front of people in your community so they know whether you fail or not because they see the sign. Like there's a lot to it. And you've got to be able to deliver results when people walk in the door. anybody who likes working out just decides that they're an online coach. And so it ends up really watering down what a great coach does. And in some of those scenarios that you were saying, Doug, like, you can learn, there's so many cues and little things I learn from being an in-person trainer that I implement into my programs because I know it's going to happen. An easy example is when I see somebody, a gal is doing dumbbell, a super set of dumbbell bench press

and a one-arm dumbbell row. And she uses the same 25-pound dumbbell for both exercises. you could probably row more. So the next week, what do I program? It's 8 to 10 bench press and then AMRAP on the row with the same weight. Because I know the same thing that you talked about is going to happen. She's going to do 25 reps. And then I can show her, hey, see why this happened?

We have to approach it differently. We have to use a range of reps, not a percentage in like a dead set number because I can't trust that you're doing it the right way on your own unless I literally spoonfeed you these little tweaks. That's brilliant. Yeah. Yeah, programming for people online really is distinctly different. Like little, I wouldn't call it a hack, but it's like little methods like that go a long way for choosing exercises that are hard to screw up. It's like another one. Like there's so much you're not seeing as an online coach that there's programming in a way where they'll automatically do it correctly without you having to watch becomes a skill in and of itself.

I definitely do at least for general pop. You know, let's say that I say work up to a 5RM at, you know, let's say 8RPE, which might be 80%, you know, and if they have lost, even better, 0.5, but they're not going to do drop sets. But normally for Gen Pop, the final drop set will be AMRAP. And so I know at least they're getting one set to where it's going to create some type of stimulus. Yeah. Because they're going to go until they can, you know, I try to tell them to take. So with a lot of it's awesome because I can tell them exactly.

Your velocity should be this before you stop. So that forces them to keep going. That's why I definitely love using that. Well, I think that this is where to, I don't like using black and white terms or rules for programming. But when you're working, especially with Jim Pop, when we're working with the stuff, I just, I'm always going with the double progression method. because I can't trust that they're going to do the right weight for eight reps. So I'm going to say somewhere between six and ten. And I want to encourage them to strive for a certain amount of effort.

I rarely ever use RPE because for the normal person, it's hard to comprehend R. R.R is just easier. It's like mad. Yeah. Got one in the tank. Cool. Go to that point. And if you go over the rep count to get there, that's fine.

Go over the rep count and then add weight next set. You know, there just has to be those limiting terms. And like, you basically, it becomes easier if you just narrow your program design terminology and tools so that people can't screw it up because ultimately they just need to train harder. You know, it's just, uh, yes, most of them do. Yeah, that's where you get into the junk volume issue. And then at the same time, you know, I like the idea of, you know, for really, you're starting off with them, you're taking at least that last set or maybe the first set to failure and

that sets everything out. So for some of the strength program I'll do with folks, it's like first set, go hard next sets are 80% of those reps. So you get it for eight on the first set. I want you to hit sets of six for some back down volume. So we know it's still stimulating because that should put them at least in that two reps in reserve. Because in theory, that eight was everything you had for that day. And you progress them from there.

Even just filming themselves. I mean, you guys probably know this. As soon as the camera's on, all of a sudden, I train harder. I get another rep. It's like, oh, shit. I probably could have push harder. So even just at the beginning in the foundational phase, I'm like, hey, just film everything.

Send it to me. Even if I don't need to critique your form, send it to me. You know, because at the end of the day, you're going to send it to me and told me, I could have gone heavier, could have done to the wrap. That went faster. They feel like they're grinding through a rap and it's just like, stand up like butter. It's not that hard.

They got to see that. Yes. I mean, but, you know, MASH, remember, you shouldn't have them do 30 sets of RDLs with the camera behind. That's just uncouth. Definitely uncouth. But I think at the same point, like, Mike's been fired a couple times over here.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I avoid meetings. That's why it's like you stand on the 90 guys. You stand on the side. You know, you look for their back angle. But that is nice because you can get the ones where they think they're doing a Romanian devil is a great one. They think they're breaking at the hips. They think they're sitting back and they just look like a dog taking a bowel movement in the backyard.

I'm like, yeah, RDLs, I don't feel in my hamstrings. Like, yeah, I wouldn't feel like my hamstrings if I didn't like that either. That would be, of all the movements, I feel like the hands is so hard to teach, especially online. I mean, that's just hard to teach in person, but like online, it's like some people get it, you know, and you get the typical good athlete, but like, you know, otherwise it could be a minute. Oh, yeah. That's that as well. Sorry. Yeah.

Well, as I said, that's that in person training experience that you need. Because if I can tell them how to hinge, like, hey, lead with your hips. Don't bend over with your chest. Like these little cues or wrapping a band around their waist, like a light band. I don't want to add band resistance forever because that's not the goal of the lift, but let it pull you back to a squat rack as you're doing RDL because it's going to pull your hips as you hinge, keeping your back flat and then you sit in your hips instead of just bending over and rounding a ton, you know. I would never know those things though if I didn't work as an ever trainer. And I think the online coaching world now, and I hate it because that's all I do is online coaching now. But it's it's kind of just coaches just put an exercise list.

There's no like art to it. There's no actual sequencing or rhythm or flow or understanding of why things are going the way they're going. It's just a list of exercises. I bet the case is nothing's happening. It's just like you're just taking people's money. They got tired and they got sore. Okay. So like I mean, I mean, sore maybe.

So but then you should charge a quarter. But like you got these people charging an extraordinary amount for like that. I'm like, okay, man. And then you get those folks, they get a bad taste in their mouth, then they're not going to do it again. Ever again. Yeah, I mean, honestly, the older I get, the more I take it seriously, every kid, every adult I have in front of me. I have a chance when they leave me, they've learned to enjoy fitness or not. And like when you're in a country that has such a high obesity rate, if you take it seriously, that's not cool.

Like, I do not want anybody who's come in contact with me to leave me hating fitness or I've contributed to someone who thinks that I, you know, who's the opposite of that, I have then therefore done the same thing. You know, I've contributed to the obesity rate. So I'm not going to do it. I'm going to find a way to get them to love it. Yeah. Be the reason they come back to the gym, not leave it forever. Yeah. Some of these coaches, they forget that, you know. Like, yeah.

There's more to it. So, Cota, I know you coached plenty of, of kind of quote, quote, quote, gem pop people, but you also coach coaches. You coach coaches on how to be better coaches, not just, not just from a strength conditioning perspective, but from a business perspective. As a coach, you have to be able to do both. If you don't have clients, then it's hard to get better. Like so you got to know the business side, but then also you have to be able to train people and get them results.

So I know you have been coaching coaches on strength conditioning and how to program, et cetera, but you're also coaching them on business as well these days. Yeah. And it happened pretty naturally too, man. Like we at one point, we kind of looked across our clientele and realized about half of them were coaches and trainers and dietitians and stuff like that between me and my coaches. And I think it was a matter of the content I was creating. and I just, I have a passion for the science and the education and just teaching on a deeper level and teaching people out of fish, not just giving them fish kind of thing, you know, but even regular

people because I've always said, you know, especially in the online world, you don't hire a coach forever, you know, there's gyms. I know people who own gyms that they've had clients that literally for 10 years straight, but it's like their second home, you know, they're going to keep coming there. But as an online coach, we don't have that home for you. So I have to assume that you're not going to stay with me forever. And we retain clients pretty well. But I want to make sure that when you do leave, you have, you know, to your point, Travis, a good taste in your mouth about fitness, but also you know how to keep the result. Especially as we started touching more people in my community, I go to my daughter's cheer practice and I see clients of ours. If they're fat six months later

after they start working with us, that is not a good look on us as a company. So I need to make sure that they are still in great shape. And because we've never ran ads for the company, literally ever. I've ran some ads for my personal brand and my podcast and stuff, but never ran ads or crazy offers or anything. It's just grown organically. Our main source of getting new clients is referrals and in content and SEO, which I think is underrated. But people go tell others about us. And the reality is that a person who loses weight isn't going to go up to their friend and say, hey, I'm overweight and insecure. So I hired a coach to help me. You look overweight and and maybe insecure. Do you need a coach? I could refer you. Like it doesn't happen.

You know, so referral programs for that kind of stuff don't work very well. And strength and performance and a gym, a little bit different. But for us, we do fat loss. So the only way for us to do it is to make the result so crazy that somebody walks up to them and go, what are you doing? Because you're different. And that starts the conversation. And so, yeah, we started noticing that.

And then I just started getting this insanely bad taste in my mouth of all these terrible business coaches who claim to be experts. And you look and you're like, I don't even know what fitness company you ran. I can't find anything about results you've achieved or, you know, anything notable about your your strength conditioning science or nutrition education or anything. So we started helping some of these people and it turned into basically another part of our business is just mentoring other coaches. Like how does that look? I'm curious because I mean, I do more of that than anything now. And I really dig that. Like since I have been

coaching 1997, you know, like it's much more exciting to me to coach the coach. The coach. but I'm definitely curious. What does a mentorship look like for you guys? Yeah, and I agree. It's fun. It's also fun, too, because you can be very blunt. Yeah. Coaches.

Yeah. Nice. You don't got to sugarcoat anything. Right. But it's pretty multifaceted. So we have basically our community or platform and we have courses. So program design courses, nutrition courses, supplementation courses, psychology of fat loss courses, which are most of those are done by the director

of coaching on my staff who has her. master's in psychology and a second master's in curriculum organization because she was in the world of school and teaching teachers and setting up programs, which was unbelievably, it was such a God moment because I'm like, I'm trying to figure out how to organize my thoughts and all this stuff. And she's like, that's what I studied here. This is how we put it together in a curriculum. So we teach all that. And then we also teach content creation and SEO and AEO because a lot of people find us through

AI search and just asking Gemini or chat DBT. who's a good coach and manipulating your website marketing and things like that. So we kind of, it's full spectrum. There's between courses and then live calls with the group of mentor clients. And we have four different calls every week. So like call on business and leadership. We have a call on psychology of clients with case studies and stuff. I have a content creation call.

And then I just have a hot seat call where I get on there and just answer questions. So there's a couple people I run it with. And we're helping people every day in there just do the different things. Some people need more help on business. Some people are trying to figure out how to get a client to finally adhere to the diet they're doing. All right. Yeah, that's that's actually what I was about to lean into. Like you can be a great coach and a good athlete and think you kind of know it all as far as training, assuming the person will do everything you tell them to do exactly as you told them to do it, then everything can be great.

But people don't work like that. People don't adhere. And it's hard to get people to make big changes in their lives for a million reasons. I know you're big on teaching kind of the mechanics behind behavior change. How do you get your clients and or get coaches to kind of change how they're coaching so that clients will change how they're performing, how they're training, eating, et cetera, so they can actually achieve the goals and results that they're after. Yes.

So from like a higher level, there's kind of two specific things that we lean into and teach. And they're a bit that one I literally made up. So it's kind of a made up process and framework that I'll explain. And then the other one is something different. and I think a lot of coaches realize is at the core of it, that's identity and values. And so we started seeing more and more people apply for coaching because of my values as a person, which was interesting. And it wasn't because they always agreed with my values.

They had same values, but it was that I led my business by my core values and I didn't make decisions that weren't aligned with my core values. I was very confident who I am. And we started looking at, it was actually really good. This is one of the cool things to do with AI. and I highly recommend people do it. But we took all of our testimonials. We took all of our, we actually exported.

At the time of it was Google chat, we were using a lot. All these conversations, we started taking all these, I mean, old Excel sheets and Google forms and then just like we use train rise now for a lot of our stuff, pulling stuff from there. And we gave it to AI and we want to find the commonalities. Like what are the most successful people saying or having in common? And it was that all of them had these breakthroughs that created identity shifts. And then we started digging into the research on long-term weight.

loss. All these individuals had big identity shifts. It's actually, unfortunately, a reason why a lot of times if one person has a crazy transformation inside of a marriage, the divorce rate goes up. Because they change who they are. And whether people like to hear it or not, if you lose 50 pounds, you are a different human being. You look at the world differently. Period. Your work ethics, different, your discipline, your control, your way of thinking, your open mindness, everything. It's all different. So these people experience an identity shift. And if we can accomplish that identity shift earlier on, which is done by helping them understand the importance of their core values, usually the lack thereof because a lot of people don't really, if you ask a random person,

what are your core values? They don't really know what to say. So being able to lean into what actually matters to you in life is how we can anchor their fat loss goals to the important things in their life. And when I say values, I'm not talking about priorities. That's a big thing that people misconstrued. Family is a huge priority for me. My daughter and my wife from my everything, but that's not my value. That's not my core value. You can't describe me as a family. You describe me as a leader.

Leadership can be a value or discipline. I need to be a disciplined leader in order to prioritize my family. So we start connecting these dots for people to understand how working hard is where choose hard came from. Losing weight, building muscle, getting stronger, pushing yourself in that endeavor, changes who you are as a person and that impacts everything else in your life. And when you connect it to those things, it becomes much more important to them. and they understand at a greater level.

So that's one kind of pillar of this. And then how we actually take them through this, because sometimes that's like a very woo-woo thing to talk to people about on day one. And so we can't just always go right into it. We take them through what we call self-formation, which is basically the transformation of yourself. And we teach self-control, which helps them develop self-discipline.

And it starts to build their self-belief and that eliminates their self-doubt. And self-respect is the highest honor you can place on somebody. but when you respect somebody, it's because they probably went through something difficult and they handled their self-swell. They have these traits and characteristics or skills that you admire. And so if you have self-respect, it's realizing that you possess those traits. Those traits keep you accountable personally. And it's a level of autonomy to continue holding on to those results. And so this is why people can keep the weight off for so long afterwards is because they're accountable to nobody but themselves.

If you look at people who are obsessed with a gym or in, to fitness or stay lean you around, they identify as somebody who trains hard, who is athletic, who lives a healthy lifestyle, who eats healthy, who doesn't treat their body like crap. You got to respect your body and yourself to be that kind of person in this endeavor. And that's what we're trying to shift people into because I can give you the macroes and the reps pretty easily, but it doesn't last. Yeah. Oh, that's the, that is obviously the real challenge is how do you get someone to fundamentally change

you know, their self, how they self-talk. Obviously, you know, the behaviors that they just go through every single day. And, you know, it's, we're kind of, you know, we're preaching to the choir right now since all of us obviously see a big part of our identity and fitness. And, you know, whereas if this person has spent over a decade or more removed from anything athletically inclined and like, oh, no, that's something, you know, I'm 30. I can't run anymore. I'll snap something off.

Like, you're not 3,000 years old. I'm pretty sure the joints still work. Right. But if you keep on, then yes. You know, like it doesn't get easier at 40 or 50 or at 60. So like, let's get it moving. Like, yes. Well, the problem is too is that as all guys who identify as individuals who love training and being fit and stuff,

it's hard for trainers because we look at it like, how can you not want to train? How can you not want to treat your body this way? Like, it's just what we know. And so the normal trainer is like, you just got to want it. Like, come on. You just got to, you got to do it. You got to want it. And that is nothing.

They're just staring at them like, I don't want it. So that you're not speaking my language. And then they send this dry check in every week that is just the basic KPIs, which are important. You need the KPIs. Weight, macros, adherence. Like, are you doing the checkboxes? But you have to ask about those four pillars.

They're self-control. They're self-discipline. They're self-belief. And we usually don't put self-respect in there because that kind of just happens. but we ask about their ultimate goal because they have to set an ultimate goal that matters to them in the beginning. We have to remind them every single week. And then we touch on those pillars every single week in a different way. And I have a literal somebody who has their masters in psychology making these questions for my entire staff every single week.

Because it's like a coaching cue. If you're yelling at somebody to squat better and you're throwing out cue after cue and it's not sticking and you're like, what the hell? And then you say something weird like grip the floor like you got monkey feet. And all of a sudden they're just like, boom, they lock in. They actually rotate. they sit in their hips perfectly and you're like oh shit that worked you just never know what's going to click and so if we're asking the same question every week we can't expect them to get it so we're having these deeper conversations and we're letting them unravel it that's definitely what

i learned from one of my old mentors doma collie like the dude had so many crazy cues until he finally could get them to see his point like he would come up i don't know the shit like umpa lumpa what like i I mean, I mean, like, unless you coach Olympic waylifting, you wouldn't even know what talking about. But like, and it worked. And I blew my mind. I'm like, okay, I quit. Like, you know, umpa, lupa. That's what it took.

Or backflip. I'm like, what? And then sure enough, it would work. Like, he was the master of just meeting them wherever they were. Whatever their brain, it's like you could see inside their brain and see a misconception. And so he could like sometimes offset it by like going completely the opposite way. To get him to where he wants them. It was the weirdest.

It was the wildest thing. Well, the adage I like, and I think I heard it from Jam Blakely, and if I'm misattributing it, my apologies. But I need to figure out how to say it in a way that they can understand it. Yeah. So like when you're teaching, it's not like, I told you one plus one equals two. Why don't you get it? And so it's like, okay, well, what's another way? way that I can go ahead and try to teach this to you.

And that's obviously the really difficult thing with coaching is I think a big issue with the number of coaches is they can sometimes get that perfect client, that perfect soldier that's going to do everything they want. And that's the first person they work with and they think, I'm great. Yes. And then it's like, no, dude, that person was going to do whatever. You just happen to be the one that was in the room. Like be the strength coach for, you know, LeBron James.

Yeah. I'm really about turning on the lights. My favorite is like Michael Jordan's strength coach. I'm like, man, shut the fuck up. You had nothing to do with it, man, like he was awesome. Like, you weren't even that good, but good. You had Michael Jordan, so you must be the best coach of all the time, I'm sure. So, yeah.

Show me somebody who had somebody that wasn't very good, and then they became good. I want to talk to that guy. Yeah. So, and I agree 100%. Because at the end of the day, and this is why it drives me nuts to me. coaches put out there like I work with highly motivated individuals who are ready to be consistent and committed it's like well then they don't need you that's not what I'm not motivated I want to be I'm not consistent I want to be okay let's get this person and it can be tough it's not easy but I do think

this is you know speaking on those like the backflip the umpalumpa thing the problem with that in like fat lost nutrition world is that I can't throw out a cue throw out a queue throw out a queue throw out a queue throw out a cue and then it sticks because it's a conversation and then they go back home. So a lot of times you have to get them to define things. Easy example. Somebody says, it's just really frustrating to do this. Okay, well, tell me why it's frustrating. Frustrating implies that you're doing something repetitively and it's not working and you

don't understand why. So what are you doing multiple times? And work? Well, I didn't really follow through with it. Okay, so you didn't try because what is try? You started putting food into the container from milk? And then you just said, fuck it and decided to stop. That's not trying.

You just didn't actually act upon it. You chose to. And there's a delicate way to have these conversations. But I think coaches, I mean, I'll just say for lack of mention, they're soft. People hire us because they want accountability. And we're so afraid of hurting their feelings. And it's like, hey, if I can approach this person with respect, they're, they might not like what I have to say, but that's literally what they're paying me for.

I can deliver it in a way that shows like, hey, I love and care about you so much. I want you to get results so badly that I'm just going to tell you the truth. You're not trying. Your effort's not there, but it could be. And there's some friction that's stopping you from getting there. So let's define that part. Let's figure out what that friction is. And I'll show you how easy it can be.

Because as coaches, we know, but they don't. I agree. I would just say the key is like, when I'm going to see everything you said, the key is getting them to understand how much you care about them first. If they see that you really care and what, want them to get these results, it opens the doors for you to say whatever you want. But like, if you say those things first, you're going to get fired. You know, like, but like, you know, when they think, man, I care about you.

Like, if I didn't care about you, I would just take your money and go to the bank. But like, if we're going to do that, I'm not your guy. I want you to get your results. And when they see that you sincerely care, it opens those big, hard conversations. and those are the fun ones. And then those are the kids that stay with kids or adults who stay with you forever. And I'll give an example of this too. I had a guy recently say basically I've been trying to throw out all this,

this junk that I have in my pantry still. And so I literally called them out on it. So how did trying look? Do you have so many that you need like a forklift or something so you literally couldn't do it? Or did you just not try at all? And his exact words were, touchet, you're right. He knows. And I'm like, hey, man, I'm just telling you because this is the reality. Yeah.

And you can be for a result. I don't want to just keep taking your money for longer and longer. I want to get you to the result as soon as possible. Yeah. And they respect that. But from there, I go, cool. So we admit that. Now what's the action plan? Because most coaches stop there.

Okay, cool. You admit it. You didn't really try. What are you going to do now? I'm going to try harder. Great. Does that mean? What is that?

It's not mixed. Yeah. So then the question is, perfect. When are you going to try harder? What day and time do you plan on doing this and fitting in your schedule and how are you actually going to get rid of those things and then once you're going to do it all and what yeah exactly yes you got to get you got to get specific as possible and i mean this goes for

athletes or gym pop you think athletes are the easiest hell no it's not true at all like they're just like they're just like gen pop they just happen to be good at a sport and so but for the you know but then they come to you and they say how you know they say they're a basketball player and they come to you they're pretty good, but I want to go to the NBA, all right. Well, get the NBA, you've got to do all these things right, you know. It's the same exact thing. It's the same exact conversations. Believe it or not, like, no matter how good they are or how amazing they are for me

to get them to go to bed at the right time or to get up and eat properly. We're having the exact same conversations. Especially kids. With General Pop. Oh, yeah, for sure. Or even 20-year-old man, like, damn, it would, you blow your mind. And I'm like, oh my God, this is giving you from making millions of dollars. I can't believe I've got to tell you.

Like, stop. Like, God. Well, dude. I mean, there's obviously parallels. And given the fact that we're all married and we all got kids, it's easy to be a good parent for five minutes. It's hard to do it for 24 hours. Oh, no. You know, you got athletes that they can go hard for that one hour practice.

But then the other 23 hours of the day, they sleep for four hours. They don't eat, you know, only drinking leaded Mountain Dew. You know, they're just not helping themselves out. And that's the thing where it's like, yeah, especially if you're talking weight loss and body weight manipulation, you're a bodybuilder effectively. Like diet is the biggest thing outside of the sleep. Absolutely. That you can easily screw themselves over or put themselves in this position to win.

One thing, and this is just out of curiosity, because I run into, and I'm sure a lot of you guys do as well, you get those action potential people. They all are none. So either my diet's perfect or I might as well just go straight and to the bottom of a gallon of Ben and Jerry's. Like if I don't have my cake sauce salad with kale and like my organic chicken breast,

I might as well just go Mick Murder my GI. Yeah. How do you like to, you know, frame it with those folks? So like, hey, it's a continuum. Like there is perfect, but you're not going to hit it. Yeah. So. I don't do it's better than regular.

I think that, Initially, this is where like ultimately it starts with the right buy-in, right? And I think that you have to present two different things. So the first thing is you have to explain it with, and you've done this a couple of times, my analogies and stories, you know, so the like the all or nothing thing. Like, okay, so if you're, are you like this with everything in your life? Absolutely. So you just pick up your kid once in a while from school and just leave them there when you don't feel like it.

And the answer is always no, obviously. It's like, okay, so you're prioritizing that, but you're not prioritizing this. Like, it's the same fucking thing. And there's so many examples of that that you can look at. Like you have to treat it the same way. Somebody says, I just, I just don't have discipline. But you have three kids work a job and do X, Y, Z. You don't have self-control or discipline.

Yeah. Mom, like, come on, you got more discipline to me. I got one kid and I'm a dude. So my wife stays at home. Like, don't, don't you, but again, analogies, frameworks, because they can't connect discipline in these traits to fitness because they haven't had the evidence. And that's the second thing is the. evidence. I believe the first part of that actually, because they don't have any evidence when they

come to you, they have no proof that they can do this. Understandably, like if they've done it, they probably did it and then gained the weight back. So it's negative proof. That's why they're coming to us. They have to borrow your evidence and your belief. So if you're not one, if you're not in shape yourself, you're not doing the work yourself or if you have clients that you can share stories from and examples with, they have to borrow that belief from you or your stories or your client's story so that they can go, well, shit, if that person can do it, I guess I can too, right? Then from there, you have to create evidence in their own life. You have to get these, like, small wins. And as much as I hate these like little tiny habits and wins and like at the end of

day, that's where you got to start. And you have to be able to do that. And using, using some logic and science, I think is helpful depending on the person. Some people goes right over the head. Other people, we can actually use legitimate science and legitimate studies or or examples of real world scenarios in a more logical manner. Guys are a lot like this usually to show them why these things are so important and how things change in their brain. So for example, really just easy, easy example. If my wife's like, hey, can you can you grab the trash can on your way out?

And I say, yeah, and then I forget. It's not a big deal. But I'll get it when I go from work. So I'll get at some point. But if I say, yeah, and more times than not, I don't actually do it. In her brain, she registers that as my follow through is low. Therefore, she doubts my ability to be trustworthy to do things. And it's such a simple, stupid fucking thing.

And if I ask my wife, hey, do you trust me? Do you believe me? Even if I did that all the time, she would say, of course I do. But subconsciously, she doesn't because that is how the brain registers things. Your brain is skimming through basically old evidence and memories to find proof and evidence to whether or not this is a good decision in the background. And so if you're doing things incorrectly, you're telling yourself you're going to accomplish something and you don't. Every time you do that, every time you say you're going to go gym and you

don't, like shoot, shoot lower if you need to at first, that's fine. But if you're saying you're going to do it, I'm going to wake up a five and start the David Goggins program on day one, you're screwing yourself. You're not, nobody is. And you are literally setting yourself up for failure by lowering yourself belief. But if we can teach them a little bit of the science behind of like, hey, this is what happens in your brain as you do this versus this. They can see how consequential it is to have this all or nothing. and maybe they'll have a little bit more patience because they don't want to do this over and over again. Absolutely.

I'm not trying to get on his plan. Well, this is all a thinly veiled intervention, MASH. I'm glad that you're finally picking up, so it's time to. Yeah. That's the Ducks, man. So you've kind of packaged up all these ideas into a certification. Is that correct? Yeah.

So it launches. is January, 27, we're taking some people through a beta test right now. I've flown out and done a couple workshops at some different gyms and like training their staff in it. But it is, it's funny because we started at first with wanting to do just, it was just a cert for online coaches. And we're like, all right, we got to just let's just cover the basis because there's no just good online coaching cert, not business. I think just coaching. So program design, behavior change, nutrition, you know, like let's put it all together. And then all of a sudden we, I mean, there's like a hundred modules because I'm like, well, we can't, like if we're going to talk about strength training,

we've got to talk a little bit about aerobic capacity. And then we'll have some purization modules. And then like, all of a sudden, it's just so crazy. So we're like, okay, let's break this up. And so we decided to go with just behavior change first because that is probably what we've seen with clientele as well as just coach that come to us. That is the biggest roadblock. And it's the lowest available free educational content out there because most behavior change is just either a this is the neurochemistry in your brain but it doesn't actually teach the application or it's cool quotes from books you know like from like socrates or something and that's great I love those because I love quotes you quote guy but you read it and you're like yes and then

you don't know how to apply it so what kind of questions do you ask the client what kind of questions do you ask yourself what should you be doing in your journal practice I mean like we've taken this so far I literally I make custom choose hard journals they have my own prompts in the days and everything like because it has been, we started it with just, I designed them, sent them out to a factory, and we would just give them to clients. And then people started wanting extras and to buy them and stuff. But it's like you wake up and you go through a series of questions that actually shift the way you look at things and set up your day and plan ahead and give you specifics to actually

take action on things rather than just saying, I'm going to try or I intend to do this, but you're not actually following through with anything. So the cert right now is it's all behavior changed from the lens of getting people, to actually take actions that align with their values and lead them to an outcome. It's not just woo-woo. It's literally do this. Here's like here's the formula and the framework for how to do a weekly check-in with a client. So they have an identity shift. And it is a four-part sequence and they go through that process and learn how to do it in a reasonable manner. So you're not on a Zoom call for an hour every week with the client because that's unrealistic. But you can do it in 15 minutes and you

can get them to start taking action and answering questions before you even get. get a chance to get back to them. But it's it's all around behavior change for now. Oh, I like this. Yeah. Well, so you said that's coming out early 2027. Again, he said, yeah, I had 100 modules at one point before you. What it all down to behavior change? Like, is it, is it an educational curriculum? You said you have a person on your team who, who structures all that. You have a curriculum and then there's like an in-person component to it. Or how does it work logistically for actually getting certified? Yeah. So there is a series of modules. So there's basically, there's, there's different sections and chapters and then each one has different modules within it.

So for example, like systems would be a whole category and we have to go through an onboarding system. So how do we onboard somebody? Not from, I don't care if you use true coach or trainer eyes or or coach or X or whatever use. I don't care. It's like, what does your onboarding questionnaire look like? What is the interview process initially? How are you setting an ultimate goal? What is the importance of an ultimate goal?

How do you bring in the core values to this and going into the check-ins and then communication week-to-week? That's like, that's a whole section. but we have multiple modules to break it up so that it's very digestible. And then each, every single module has worksheets and, and depending on the module, glossaries or index, kind of like a vault. Because what we realize, too, is that sometimes you have to borrow somebody's language or script to get used to it. So if I'm talking about these questions that get people to be honest and admit and

and hear, they don't know how to use it in their own language, cool. Here's a list of, you know, I think we have. six months worth of check-in questions. It's like, just copy and paste them until you start to see the patterns because there's always a question on self-discipline and here's the framework for it. And then you start to get the hang of it. And then you know how to address the situations and you can do it on your own. So there's a lot of tangible stuff with it.

And one of the things I'm excited about right now is we're taking a group through it and we're basically extracting all their questions as they go through it. And then we're recording basically podcast with me and Ariel, who's the other person that I run this with on my team. And we're just answering the questions and doing almost like FAQ. So when we actually go live with the cert publicly, people will get like these mini podcasts

for every single chapter module and we'll be able to go through like, oh, perfect question. And here's a client that we went through this exact issue with and how we addressed it and kind of worked through the back end

so that they have application with it. Yeah. Yeah, hypothetical. Here's a real thing that happened. Yeah. Super cool. Yeah, super cool. Well, very cool, man.

if they want to get on the wait list or learn more about it, where do they go? Yeah, online coaching cert.com, which that was another like choose hard moment. I can't believe nobody took that. I know, dude. You're getting super lucky. Get this. You know what else I have? That lost transformation.com.

I bought it for like two bucks. Dang, really? Yeah, and it was only like a year ago. So that goes to my normal coaching. But crazy. Then online coaching cert.com, though, that goes to the waitlist. And you can get, we give a teaser in there too. So you're not going to get spanned.

we don't send you like emails or anything like that we're literally just you just get on the waitlist and you'll get notified when we're going to launch it so you'll get like early access um but we give you a teaser along with that and it's the the check in module it's called the check in masterclass so it actually goes through the check in process the framework so when you jump on the wait list you can get a taste of that and actually start implementing some of that to see how well it works basically right away yeah yeah right on man very cool dude by the way i tried to i tried to buy a URL with the word Praxis in it and assumed nobody's going to want this thing. I'll go by buy for a few dollars.

They wanted 380 grand for it. I was like seriously? Like I never heard of this for. Forget nobody wants this. But and then you got, you got those gangster websites for like two bucks that like, but like should have been taken 30 years ago. Yeah.

And you tried practice. 380,000. Yeah. That makes. Uh, well, very cool. Everyone can go there to get,

um, a master's license went out. You got to move around, buddy. You can go to those URLs slash social accounts to learn more about the program and the certification. If they want to learn more about you and what you do, what are your personal social media handles, et cetera. Yeah, just Cody Mcbrougham. My name, first and last name on Instagram. I don't do TikTok. I probably should do Facebook. I don't touch Facebook much, though. I basically just, I post on Instagram every day, do podcast. That's choose hard. So that

choose our podcast. And then the website is Taylor Coaching Method. But I kind of stay in my lane. coach and a podcast. Yeah, very cool. Right on. I appreciate it coming on the show. Coach Travis Mash. Mash. Mashleet.com.

Yeah, that was great. I learned a lot today. Thank you. Both. It's two good podcasts today. So, yeah. Awesome. Oh, yeah.

Dr. Mike Lane, PhD on Instagram. I also try to minimize my digital footprint. So kindred spirit's there. Yeah, for sure. And he really minimizes it. I should go on Instagram, much more than I do these days. Speaking of that, you can follow. me on Instagram, Douglas E. Larson. You can follow us on Instagram at Barbell underscore

Strug. And if you want to work with Dr. Mike Lane, Coach Travis Smash, Dr. Andy Gappen, on the whole team at Biomolecular Athlete. You can go to Biomolecular Athlete.com, friends. We'll see you guys next week.