Barbell Shrugged - Confident and Conscious Coaching with the NCFIT Collective - Business of Fitness #75

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi everyone, I'm Jason Kalipa and welcome back to the Business of Fitness podcast. On today's episode, we have Gabe Yanez as well as Matt DeLaValle. Now you guys have heard MDV many, many times on this show. He comes with a huge background in the fitness space, worked for Reebok, went and got his law degree, has worked at a ton of different gyms, and now he runs fitness for the organization worldwide. Gabe Yanez came to us with a sales background as well. He also coached a tremendous amount. And both of these guys really bring to the table a ton of knowledge, not just because of the practical information they actually share on the floor as coaches, but also the fact that

Starting point is 00:00:41 they, on a daily basis, are talking to tons of different gym owners, whether it's on the phone or in our private Facebook group. So today's episode is really in regards to that information. We dive into this concept of warm-ups and kind of adding value for the full 60 minutes. We discuss what is the difference between a veteran and a beginner athlete and what's that mean. And then finally, this concept of timelines these are just three different things that we hear come up a lot through the collective channel and we want to just take a few minutes to discuss them i really hope everybody's having a great day if you're a gym owner out there i hope you're crushing

Starting point is 00:01:16 it if you're not a gym owner if you're a coach if you're just out there listening i really appreciate it now we have a few more episodes left on the shrug collective before reverting back to our business of fitness channel i really appreciate all of you have been listening to these episodes now we have a few more episodes left on the shrug collective before reverting back to our business of fitness channel i really appreciate all of you have been listening to these episodes i look forward to hopefully after these episodes of air the next three or four i hope to get you to um come check out more of our content on the business of fitness channel that you can find on spotify itunes etc before we end the episode just want let you know, if you haven't checked out our friends over at Whoop, they make this really cool wristband wearable that I use primarily to track my sleep, look at my strain score, and give me a better idea of how I'm doing overall

Starting point is 00:01:56 for the following day. Am I too tired? Am I too exhausted? Have I recovered well? What was my strain? What was my heart rate today? Et cetera? It's a really cool way to get indicators to utilize for your performance. If you wanna go to their website, check it out. It's whoop.com. Use the code Jason. You'll get a really cool discount. And without any further discussion,

Starting point is 00:02:16 let's dive right into an amazing episode with MDV and Gabe. Let's go. All right, so I'm sitting here with Gabe and MDV. As I previously introed, these are the guys behind the NC Fit Collective, and I'm stoked to talk to them today. There's three main subjects we want to go over today. Those are managing veteran athletes versus your beginners, which I think as most gym owners know, that's a really tough, tough thing to battle, but everybody's paying the same thing. Everybody deserves the same type of coaching experience. And how do we do that?

Starting point is 00:02:55 How we build our timelines and why? And really what we're talking about with specifically what we put out for our members and collective gyms is we give them a timeline on how to break down their class. Let's dive into that. And then finally, warmups. What's the deal with it? How structured should they be? How much room for switching things up is there for our coaches? We're going to dial into those three subjects today. So guys, we're sitting in the office. We're talking about this. Where should we start? I'm game for any of them. Why don't we start with the top one? Managing veterans versus complete newbies. It's always a good place to start. It's always a good place. So let's dive into it, guys, because I think for a lot of people

Starting point is 00:03:35 listening right now, they've been in the game for a long time. They've owned a gym for, let's just say, a year, two years, five years. And not only gym owners, right? We're talking about other types of businesses. In other types of businesses, there's veteran members as well. If you own a coffee shop or something, you have someone that comes in on a regular basis. How are you going to treat them versus someone who's coming in for their first experience or hasn't been exposed to what you're doing up your business? So let's dive into it. Where are we at? So I'm actually going to take a position on this that I think some of the listeners might think is the opposite. I actually think dealing with newbie members is easier sometimes than dealing with veteran members. And let me explain why. I think it's pretty clear cut

Starting point is 00:04:16 when you're looking at newbies that you want them to experience the workout. You want them to have fun. You want them to be part of the community and class environment, but you kind of know which way you're going to angle these people. You're going to lower the load. You're going to lower the volume. You're going to simplify the movements. We're talking about complete newbies. So let's say within their first three months, and my rule of thumb for that is in the first three months of doing this new type of exercise, you should be walking out of the gym, feeling like you could have done a little bit more. Like you left something on the table. Maybe you're given 75% of your best effort. We're not throttling down yet. I don't want to see you writhing in

Starting point is 00:04:53 pain and agony after the workout's done. We're learning, we're getting used to this different style of training. And we are for the most part, probably kind of pulling people back a little bit, right? Yeah. Dealing with veteran members, in my opinion, is a lot harder. I mean, so, well, let's talk. Why? What were you going to say, Gabe? The reason this question came up was, you know, with the collective,

Starting point is 00:05:20 we're providing all these tools and stuff and scaling options and really giving people direction, but this came back from feedback from actually a collective gym where it's really tough for a very new coach to then approach a member that's been there for five years and say, Hey, you know, I really don't think you should be using this weight, or I don't think you should be doing this amount of volume. And how do you have that conversation with someone that, you know, I've been around this gym longer than you have. You just started coaching. Like, who are you to tell me, you know, how I should approach this workout?

Starting point is 00:05:52 So I think that it's a lot tougher just from a place of, of how long you've been at the gym. And if you're a new coach, like you might have this blueprint that you can follow, but how do you get people to buy into it when they feel like they know more than you? Yeah, that's a really good point. So for those of you listening, our business has three verticals to it. We have open to the public locations. We have corporate locations that are only for companies. And then we have a digital product where we share what we do in our gyms with hundreds and hundreds of other gyms. Now we get feedback from

Starting point is 00:06:26 them and that's one of the questions we're bringing up. But I think, you know, Gabe, I think you hit the nail on the head. One of the challenges as a coach is that you want to be looked at as a leader. You want to be looked at as credible. Now that's earned, not just given. You have to earn that trust, but it becomes tough when you're a new coach walking to a gym and you have an athlete that's been working there for three, five, seven years, and maybe other people just kind of let him do or her what they want, and you're going to come in and try and guide them different. It's a really tough situation. And it's hard to appropriately create your session plan and your warmup and everything you're doing, if you're going to have members, they're going to be not adhering to it, right? Yeah. I think that this is a

Starting point is 00:07:12 particularly tough scenario, like Gabe said, when you're dealing with a veteran member and a brand new coach. And in particular, probably a veteran member who's on the more difficult side of dealing of member relations, right? You've got some members, no matter if they're, you know, very, very new, or they've been around the gym for years and years and years who are very, very easy to deal with no matter what they understand that the coach is new and they will make some concessions and now they will engage with the coach and help them along the journey. Right. But there's also a segment or a group of people who they want to be coached and they

Starting point is 00:07:52 deserve to be coached at a certain standard. And maybe they don't necessarily want to have to, um, and this is going to sound harsh, but deal with somebody who's still very green. And I think that scenario can be hard for, for both sides, right? The new coach is probably timid and a little bit, uh, gun shy about dealing with the, the veteran member. And the veteran member is probably a little bit like, Hey, let's get this party started. You know, I want to go and you're helping me out here with some really basic and fundamental stuff. So what can we do about it? I mean, look, at the end of the day, managing veteran members versus complete newbies, I think essentially what we're talking about here is if you're a gym owner or if you're any type of business owner, oftentimes

Starting point is 00:08:37 the easiest people to impress are the newbies, right? Because they don't know what to expect. And if you could provide them a premium experience, that's fine. But hopefully your experience is the best they've ever experienced. But then over time, people get exposure to different coaches. People learn, get into their own habits. And then all of a sudden, if you're a new coach walking into a veteran athlete, that's the toughest situation that we're talking about. If you're a new coach working in with a new athlete, it's not quite the same thing. It's totally different because you have kind of a level playing field. But when you have this veteran athlete, you have a new coach, what can we do? How do we provide a better product?

Starting point is 00:09:12 I mean, I think that it really falls on the shoulders of the owners, the head coaches from the top to establish a culture where like, you know, teaching and progressions and spending time and listening to the coach is just what everyone does, right? Like if you start allowing veteran members to, you know, while you're explaining something, go grab their barbell and start putting weights on, then how do you expect a newer coach to come in and tell them that they're not allowed to do that? I think that, you know, if owners are, you know, making it clear that we're all going to listen, we're all going to go over the cues, we're all going to spend some time with the PVC pipe, then there's no wiggle room. Even if a new coach comes in, that's what we do.

Starting point is 00:09:52 And it's just a part of the culture. People understand it. I think it's up to the owner to set the standard, right? Yeah, I agree. It's got to be cultural to start. I think that everybody within the gym should have an understanding that they go through these certain steps and processes, no matter who you are, what your skillset is coming in and everybody can learn from anybody. Right. And, you know, there's a reason why I said this in one of the Facebook chats that we had,

Starting point is 00:10:20 that the best athletes in the world still have coaches and they still seek out skill development and they still practice. They still warm up because those guys know that they can always get better. They can always learn something. You know, I think with those newer coaches as well with those veteran members, I think it's important to bridge the gap on both sides and start forming relationships and get to know those individuals, not just who they are within the 60 minutes of the class, but, you know, start breaking down some of the relationship barriers, introduce yourself. If you don't know somebody, ask them how long they've been coming to the gym. And this is on both sides. Like the veteran member can talk to the coach, the coach can talk to the

Starting point is 00:10:57 member and just humanize the relationship with one another. So it's not, Hey, who is this person who's trying to tell me what to do? You know, it's now Jason talking to Matt, right? Well, I mean, we, we talked about that in a few different realms. One is that if you're the head coach and you want to bring on another coach, I think that's very important. If you're the owner and you want to bring on another coach, that's a critical component to your business, but you need to validate them. So you could co-coach together. You could have, you could, you could be coaching, they could assist for a while. And now you're validating, you're validating, you're validating. And it all stems with, if people are bought into the owner and the owner's bought into this coach, then they're going to be bought into the coach. But if you

Starting point is 00:11:32 didn't go to that process and didn't introduce in that fashion, then it's just this other person, right? There's no personal connection there. And I think it's really important that as an owner of the gym or the head coach, that you set the tone that regardless of who you are, whether you're the best athlete in the room or the brand newbie, you follow the guidelines and directions that are being performed. Where you're warming up, you're doing elbow punch throughs, you're doing this. And I think for anybody who's too past that, it's unfortunate because there's still some stuff that you can learn through those processes. And working with lighter loads, you can develop positions a little bit better than just immediately grabbing a barbell and putting 135 on it.

Starting point is 00:12:09 And I think that stems from the head coach. And so to summarize, I think when we're talking about managing these veteran members, it stems from years and years and years and years of what they've been able to get away with and the culture that's been provided. And as an owner, one of the ways that we can help these new coaches dealing with veteran members and complete newbies is this concept of warm intro versus cold intro, right? Validating versus just kind of stepping in like, oh, hey, guys, my name is Jason. I'm just here to coach today versus John's coaching. He's like, hey, guys, I want to introduce you to an assistant coach. His name is Jason. I'm going to just be your coach today versus, you know, John's coaching. He's like, hey guys, I want to introduce you to an assistant coach. His name is Jason. He's going to be coaching in the future, but for now he's just shadowing, developing. He has a great, you

Starting point is 00:12:51 know, depth of knowledge. Can't wait for him to work with you guys. All of a sudden it's just a totally different experience. Yeah. The validation from other coaches to the new coach is huge, right? And you get the members to buy into this person. And I think before we move on though, one thing that new coaches certainly can do when they're, when they're in a class and they're faced with a lot of veteran members is you can kind of put it back on them a little bit by talking to them and asking them what their goals are, or what are they trying to accomplish in this workout? Or do they have something coming up that they're training for? Or where are they at in this movement? If it's more complex, what is their PR? What are they trying to do? And by doing that, you've now opened the doors for the conversation from that veteran

Starting point is 00:13:34 member back to the newbie coach, right? Where you can start to talk about things back and forth, as opposed to necessarily just prescribing something for this athlete to do, right? And that's a position that I think a lot of newbie coaches sometimes find themselves in is that they try to pull things out of hats for these veteran members, where if they just put it back on the veteran members, just say, Hey, Jason, what are you, what are you working on today for the squat clean? Like, what are you thinking about for your PR? Where have you hit before? How are you feeling today? That then now the door is open for the conversation, right?

Starting point is 00:14:04 Yeah. That's a really great point. I mean, I think going back to like everybody pays the same membership. Everybody has the same importance in the gym. How do you add value for a veteran member if you're a new coach or an existing coach? A great way to do that is just ask them. Like, hey, what are you looking to work on today? What are your next steps? Hey, this is what's worked for me.

Starting point is 00:14:24 One of the things I always love doing, and I know you guys do too, is just explaining like, hey, this is just what I do. This way, no one can ever hate on it, right? If you say, hey, what I like to do in the split jerk is this. It's like, okay, cool. Maybe they try it. It works for them. Maybe it doesn't, right? I like a wider grip. You like a narrower grip. But then you're sharing from your current experiences and you're trying to really add value for them. I think you gain their trust. And that same thing goes for a newbie, right? With the newbies, it's important to have that personal connection with them. I mean, one of the things that we talk about, and I hope we all, all of our coaches do this, is, you know, two to three personal touches a class minimum.

Starting point is 00:14:58 You're just having a conversation. Hey, what are you working on today? How many classes have you been in today? Oh, well, you just started your air squat. Okay. Here here's what i want you to do today that same attention you take for that newbie you're still having the same thing with the veteran you're just approaching it in a different way where it's more asking them their feedback versus you're kind of directing a little bit more of the newbie is that a good way to put it yeah i mean one pitfall pitfall that i've fallen in when i coach is sometimes the veteran member that doesn't know what they're doing. You kind of don't give them as much attention. It's so easy to just like, oh, well, you know, Jason knows what he's doing and you almost like check them out of class.

Starting point is 00:15:33 And now you're looking at everyone else. And I think it's, it's, it's a shame, you know, everyone deserves some attention and there is some level of value that you can provide to everyone in the member from newbie to veteran. Yeah. I actually think, you know, when you hear about these veterans leaving a gym, it shocks. Like I was on the phone with the gym owner today and he had like five old school members leaving, like shocked him. Right. But, you know, like we say, you have to earn their new, you have to renew them every single day just because they've been with you for five years. They don't owe you a damn thing. They don't have to show up tomorrow.

Starting point is 00:16:03 They can cancel if they want. I think that's really important to remember every single class. And this concept of being intimidated to work with a veteran, right? I think the way you break that down is if you're intimidated, you're saying, hey, this person's fitter than me. Well, identifying just a way to show them you care is a great step. You don't need to blow them away with talking about lumbar curves and stuff like that. What you need to blow the veteran away is showing that you care. And that could be as simple as just walking over and be like, hey, I know you really know how to do squat snatch really well. But today, somehow what I want you to try and focus on, man, is let's go a little bit lighter. Let's go a little bit faster.

Starting point is 00:16:40 Or, hey, I want you to try and hit that in two minutes. But giving them some type of goal. And for a lot of those guys, they're going to really appreciate it. Speaking as someone who's in that, um, you know, category a lot, I go into gyms all the time and rarely do people ever talk to me or coach me. And, and it just feels good if someone just comes over and just like, Hey Jay, like, dude, uh, you know, try this today. I'd be like, all right, cool, man. Like you feel like you're getting some attention. Yeah. That's kind of why I said at the start that I think some coaches would be like, oh, the newbie members are so much harder to deal with because a lot of people put

Starting point is 00:17:12 the veteran members on autopilot and those guys don't get as much coaching as they should or they deserve. But, um, the, you know, the last thing here is the fact that the best way to impress anybody or to, to continue to, uh, bring new knowledge to people is just get better, man. Like for these coaches who are out there who are new coaches, if you're worried about veteran members in the room, not listening to you or what you say doesn't have validity, go home and do your homework, get a study, get better, come back tomorrow with a plan and just keep doing that day after day. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:17:46 Or if you talk to them, for example, if they want to get a bar muscle up, maybe you go research multiple different ways to incorporate the bar muscle. If you come back and say, hey, John, I know you want to work that bar muscle up or, you know, and being humble enough to know that. Like I've been in a situation before, this was years ago, and someone asked me a question on they want to get better at something. I tried one thing, couldn't get it. Tried another thing, couldn't get it. Tried another thing, couldn't get it. I just told him, I said, look, I'm just letting you know, I've tried all

Starting point is 00:18:10 the tools in my toolbox. I don't have something to help you right now. Give me a day. I'm going to go research some stuff and I'll come back with some new ideas. And it's just like, you know what they said? They said, really? Thank you so much. But if you try and like put on a front, like, oh, you just, whatever. I think more times than not, people just want to be heard and they want to know that you care when you go home and educate yourself. That's a great sign. Yeah. The more, you know, the more confident you'll be. And I think that that's what it comes down to is how confident are you when you're talking to a group of 20 athletes, some of which may be fitter than you. Yeah. And that's okay. That's a good thing. Yeah. I mean, you know, you got to work on yours too. Well, I think guys, so to summarize, managing veteran members, complete newbies, it's a

Starting point is 00:18:48 really long conversation to have. It's very common that we get these questions primarily from people when they're trying to administer our session plan, our warmup, our execution, but it starts with the owner. And so if you're a coach, go have a conversation with the owner, go take them out to coffee, say, hey, look, this is the culture I've seen that's stemming. Here are some ways I think we could improve it. And just hear what they say. And if you're the owner and you see this coming around, just work on it together.

Starting point is 00:19:13 It's just through collaboration, through good discussion. You know, one of the questions we get a lot is at our gym, we distribute on our own app timelines. And these timelines are like, they're designed to keep people on a timeline. Within certain guardrails. We talk about it a lot. People are paying you for 60 minutes, 45 minutes, whatever of your time. And when the class starts, the class ends, you're supposed to be providing value. And these timelines are designed to do that. But when your class ends 20 minutes early, that's a problem.

Starting point is 00:19:49 You haven't provided enough value. But also when your class goes over 10 minutes, you know, MDV and I, uh, multiple times. I mean, I, I've been, I run, I'm notorious for running my classes over and it screws up everybody else's day because of it. And so talk to me a little bit more about building timelines and how we do it at our gyms. Yeah. I think you hit the nail on the head on the intro. There is, um, being time sensitive. It comes down to respect, right? I think that that's one of the most important things here is that you have these individuals in front of you for

Starting point is 00:20:21 60 minutes or whatever it is, 30 minutes. It's a 30 minute class, 60 minutes, 60 minute class. They're not, they're not there for 61 minutes. They're certainly not there for 70 minutes. And some of those people might have the freedom and the ability to stay later, but you can never assume that they do. And the reason we put timelines together, like you said, is to help the coach understand where they need to spend their time throughout that 60 minute window appropriately to give everybody the type of experience that they need to have an effective, fun, safe workout, right? And it includes time for the intro, the warmup, transition skills, bigger blocks for the warmup or the strength portions, and then also elements like closings and stuff like that. And they're guidelines for us. They're not necessarily meant to be, hey, this is the only way that you should run your class. We think it's a great way to look at the class for that day,

Starting point is 00:21:16 because obviously we recommended it. But if you're on the other end of the equation and you're looking at that timeline and you're saying, hey, listen, I wanted to try something today in my intro or my warmup that I haven't done in a while. And it's going to take an additional five or seven minutes. You have to understand that you're going to have to make some concessions elsewhere in the timeline, but you're not pulling, you can't pull away from the workout. You can't pull away from obviously people being safe or being warmed up. You're going to have to figure out whether or not that's the appropriate day to do it. Do you have the time to do it? All that kind of good stuff. Certainly don't run eight to 10 minutes over because you wanted to try some new stuff. Yeah. I mean, I'm looking at our timeline right now. And so just to give you guys an example, it's zero to five intro. And so I think

Starting point is 00:21:58 this is really important to discuss because we've seen intros go from zero to 20. Oh, yeah. Okay. That's a problem. Then, again, rough stuff, 5 to 15 general warm-up, 15 to 25 skill and teaching, 25 to 28 pre-workout and staging athletes, 28 to 49 workout, 49 to 52 cleanup, 52 to 60 cool down and closing. That was today's example. So we're not fabricating in this. We're not making this up. This is literally right here on our thing. So what type of issues can you see? Do we see when people don't adhere to this type of timeline? What are the biggest concerns you see across looking at coaches? Is it, is it really happened in the intro? I feel like the intro is really where you could get in a hole and it's hard to dig yourself back out. Oh yeah, certainly. You know, if, if you're, if you're blowing your intro and you're going 15 or 20 minutes in an intro on a day, that's got, this is a, we're looking at this

Starting point is 00:23:00 workout and it's a 21 minute workout with eight minutes worth of recovery afterwards or cool down. That's, that's about 30 minutes, 29 minutes, right? So if you're already 15 minutes deep in your intro, you only really have 15 minutes to get the other stuff you need to get done, which includes warmup, workout prep, transition time, allowing the athletes to use the bathroom, do what they need to do before the workout. And then you've probably already gone over at that point on a 29 minute working time day. Yeah. And so the reason why we have it, I mean, I would say this is like relatively in depth, zero to five, five to 15, 15 to 25. Would you say that it's too in depth or do you think that's how in-depth we need? Because if we don't go this in-depth, maybe our coaches don't understand the desire. I mean,

Starting point is 00:23:55 this is somewhere in the middle. So, you know, if, if I was to make, if I was to, to boil this down and make it less detailed, it would only be two or three blocks, right? It would be like intro skill, intro warmupup, skill, workout, cool down. And it would just kind of be cut in half. And then we've also kind of evolved our timelines from super, super, super detailed minute to minute where it's like a list out of everything that you need to do, you know, have the athletes put the weights away, pull them back out, all that kind of stuff that, that has value. sometimes if you want to give somebody an example about exactly how you're going to spend your next 60 minutes. But what we provide is, like I said, something in the middle where some of those smaller transitions are built into some

Starting point is 00:24:37 of these other elements. But it gives you an idea when you look at this timeline, you go, okay, my workout's going to be 21 minutes. My cool my cool down is gonna be eight minutes i see where they have the pre-workout time i understand what i got to do for skill and teaching and general warm-up i probably got to keep my intro at five minutes and that's how i'd go out there and kind of execute on a timeline like that right and so and gabe so if you have a five minute intro on a workout what kind of things can we do i mean do you want to ask a 20 person class where their favorite places to go on vacation? What are you thinking about? No, I mean, I think that's where it takes, you know, like situational awareness of like,

Starting point is 00:25:13 if you have a tiny class that day, then maybe it is a good time to kind of, you know, break the ice a little bit, get to know those members a little bit more. Like, you know, it just happens to be an off time. You have three people in front of you. If you have 20 people in front of you, like get the must do's out of the way, you know, like any injury, like pose the injury question and make sure that people approach you. We've talked about how important that is in the past. Just get everyone's names. If there's any drop-ins, make sure people introduce themselves and that's it. Get going. I think that it requires obviously a little bit of, you know, what's the workout, what's your crowd, and then, you know, approach it accordingly. So there's no one way to do it. But I think that, yeah, there's room for a little

Starting point is 00:25:50 bit of everything. Yeah, I agree. I mean, one of the challenges we find with the timeline is that we can make it as detailed as possible, overly detailed, but unless it's being administered to, then you're not going to hit your timeline. So we need to, to your point, we kind of found like this, we bridge the gap between too little and too much. And that's the way we do it. And so for any of you owners out there and you coached out there, even, even I know some jujitsu owners listen to this episode. If you're doing a jujitsu class, it's the exact same thing. Any class structure. The idea is, is that we are putting out for all of our coaches worldwide and our collective members, at least a, a, a guidelines where at least giving them something to look at before their class begins, which already sets them up ahead of, uh, ahead of schedule. Cause they know, for example,

Starting point is 00:26:36 if they're looking at a workout, that's maybe a, I don't know, shorter day. Maybe it's a, maybe you're just doing a 12 minute AMRAP that day and you're doing maybe a 10-minute EMOM for skill work. Well, maybe you have a little bit longer in the intro to kind of do something a little bit different. But a lot of that's going to be based on our timeline. We got to look at it. Yeah. Like Gabe was saying, I think that situational awareness at the front of the room is huge because you walk in, maybe you have a class of 30 people and 28 of them are within their first three months. You're like, oh man, I'm going to have to get moving a little bit quicker. I'm going to have to get these people through a very simple general warm

Starting point is 00:27:08 up today. Uh, and then I have to get in, I need more time for teaching. They, they just need to see these movements and go through the progression a little bit longer than it would with a 10 person class where everybody is three to five years deep. So, you know, the timelines are really good baseline to look at when you're preparing for your class to understand like generally where we want to spend our time, but you might have to call an audible at the start of the room or at the front of the room. So like in regards to calling audibles, we put out really in-depth plans, but we're okay with audibles. Audibles are required because, you know, like you said, you might have a smaller class, you might have a bigger class. How do you know as a coach, you're walking into

Starting point is 00:27:49 a class, you know, maybe, you know, it's going to be a big class. What are some kind of broad strokes you're thinking about when you're dealing with the big class? Like when you're introing, when you're getting a moving, maybe there's one complex skill. What are we thinking about in a big class with a variety of different skill levels? Yeah. You want to go first? Yeah. I mean, I just think that like with anything, preparation is key, right? Like you buy yourself so much more wiggle room. If you've done your homework, you know what the workout is, you know, like, Hey, if I have a tiny class, a medium size class and a large class, here are my non-negotiable things that I am going to do. Here's what I'm going to do if it's a little bit smaller

Starting point is 00:28:28 class. Like, did you take five, ten minutes before to make sure the bikes are out? And, you know, prepping the room. The more time that you can prep yourself for, there are going to be things that are in your control and things that are out of your control. Class size, probably out of your control. So the more that you can do to buy yourself the time, I think the better. So I think that that's a huge part of it. Yeah. Just being prepared. Yeah. Gabe, I think Gabe, you know, stole the words right out of my mouth, being prepared for all the things that you know are going to happen, helps you with some of the unknowns, right? So you won't be as on your heels if you walk on in and you're like, oh, there's 30 people here for this class. But you're still going to have to make some

Starting point is 00:29:09 accommodations probably versus what you planned for. And I think what's really important for coaches to recognize is that like at that point, you have to get the athletes on your side. You get the athletes all gathered up around the whiteboard. You calm everybody down for a second because in a 30-person class, everybody's talking to one another. Get them calm for a minute. You'd be like, hey guys, listen up. We got a lot of people here today. We're going to have a hell of a good time. We're going to go through the workout. Everybody's going to get a safe, fun, effective workout. It's going to be a blast. I need you guys to be on my side today a little bit so when I start talking, we'll get everybody to calm down and we'll rock and roll. At that point, everybody

Starting point is 00:29:43 probably looks at each other and goes, oh yeah, there are a lot of people here. We do have to be a little bit more like aware when the coach is talking. And ultimately too, like what you can do, you see a big class like that. This is, I almost never do this, but send them out for a 400 meter run. If you have to at that point and just get your bearings around what you want to do in your head, that's okay. If you're faced with something that's like a complete anomaly. 35, 40 people showed up. All right, everybody, let's go out for a 400-meter run. You send them out.

Starting point is 00:30:12 You do your thing in your head about how you want to partner them up, different stage or stagger the workout, whatever you need to do. But damn right, when they come back in the room, you better have your plan ready, right? But you don't want to just always do that as a default. So I think that's a really interesting point. And I've done that before too, where you're just in there and it's like, oh, because the last thing you want to do is, all right, guys, come on in. Here's the workout. And then you're sitting there like a deer in

Starting point is 00:30:37 headlights, right? Instead, it's like, hey guys, so today's a really big day. Let's go ahead and start off a 400-minute run. When you guys come back in, I have some really great things planned for you. And you know, just that's, that's literally two minutes where that two minutes is going to make you look like a professional versus sitting there for 30 seconds and looking like you're unprepared. So don't rely on that, but that's a, that's kind of like the, you know, it's the ripcord. That's the ripcord. Um, something else I like to do, you know, with big classes, one of the things I'm a huge fan of, MDV knows this, is I like the idea of you bring them in, you discuss something, you break them out. You bring them in, you break them out. For me, I think about it more like football.

Starting point is 00:31:16 When the coach had something really important to say, hey, guys, huddle up, bring it in, bring it in, you would know that there's something important. Maybe you talk about, hey, some big picture stuff I'm seeing here is that some of you guys on your front squad are doing this, this, this, this, this. All right, let's go back out. Ready? Go. Boom. And that's a little bit easier than trying to like yell at the whole class or whatever. You just kind of like, Hey guys, come on in real quick. And it just kind of shows this difference of, Hey, coach has something really important to say versus coach is just talking again type of thing. Yeah. Um, cool. That was a really, dude, I love that. The, yeah. If you use, uh, MDVs 400 meter run trick, uh, and there's a cool example, shoot me or him or one of us a message on Instagram and we'll send you a free t-shirt.

Starting point is 00:31:57 Please don't do that every time you coach them, please. That is the worst thing. MDV told me we should send everybody out on a run every single day. Uh guys, finally, you know, a big question we get here at the collective, as I mentioned, you know, Gabe runs the lines for the collective and we have a private Facebook group with quite a few people in it at this point. And so we're talking to a lot of gym owners on a regular basis. And one of the things we hear about is, you know, what's the deal with the warmups? You know, CrossFit, when I first got into it, it was all about the workout of the day. Everybody would always talk about what's your why, what's your why, what's your why. I think as we've progressed, we've realized that it's not just about the why, right? It's not just about the workout itself. It's about the experience.

Starting point is 00:32:42 From the moment you walk into the moment you leave. And one of those key components is the warmup. Not only from a safety perspective, right? Making sure your body's prepared for what it's about to do, but also it's a great opportunity to engage with people. It's a great opportunity to educate. And truly during the warmup and skill work is my opportunity to essentially coach. Because once the workout starts, my coaching goes from a, you know, peak, peak, peak to, to now it's more of a, Hey, did I scale people effectively? Are they doing this right? Stimulus? Once the workout starts, maybe I'd say two thirds of the coaching has probably already been completed.

Starting point is 00:33:22 Would you, would you agree with that? You think I'm a little, I don't know. I'm a little bit. Maybe. What do you think? No, I'm serious. It's a good debate. I know, I know. It's a good debate.

Starting point is 00:33:30 But I'm just saying, when the workout's actually going on, by that point, you should already know what are common faults this person's going to have. So you've watched them move through the warmup. You've watched this. You've already addressed what weight they should be at. So the warmup's critical for that. That's where I think, yeah, the warmup is critical for movement evaluation. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:33:47 Yeah. Not that coaching stops once the workout starts. Please note, coaching does not stop once the workout starts. No, but you hit the nail on the head there. The warmup is a really great way not only to prep athletes for the workout, get their bodies into the physical state they need to do high intensity training,

Starting point is 00:34:04 but to identify who's in the room, what limitations they might have, what are they working with that day that you might not know of, and just generally get a gauge for the movement overall for the crew. Yeah. And so what kind of questions do we get with the warmup? I'm curious because what we try and do, and maybe just to break down a little bit, how do we get with the warmup? Like I'm, I'm, I'm curious because what we try and do, and maybe just to break down a little bit, how do we create our warmups? Because if, if I was in charge of the warmup, we'd be rowing and doing burpees every single day. So I'll handle, I'll handle how we create the warmups. Then I'll kick it to Gabe for what questions we get. So the way that we create our warmups is that we have a team of, of individuals who drafts all of our workouts for all of our

Starting point is 00:34:46 programs. And that goes through a very rigorous process of checks and balances, testing workouts, reviewing workouts, sending them out to different people, getting feedback on them. And then they reach a final state. And once they reach a final state, the programming team meets up again, and we look to include different suggestions or prescribed portions for warmups for those workouts. So every day that there's a workout program, somebody on the programming team is going in there and filling in what their suggestion would be for the warmup for that day, format wise, movements to include, equipment to include, or if they wanted something in particular for that day, they would actually prescribe the warmup out from that point.

Starting point is 00:35:30 The warmup and the workout go out to our briefing team, the individuals, the head coaches and coaches on our team who test the workouts and test the, uh, write the briefs. And they will take either the inspiration from the warmup that the programmer put in there or the prescribed portion, and they will make their warmup from that. So it goes through a couple of different stages. The person who writes the workout suggests a warmup and the person who briefs the workout after they've tested it writes in their final warmup for that day. And even though it goes through those kind of rigorous stages of testing, it might not be what's best for the class that day when you go to run your

Starting point is 00:36:12 workout. And I think ultimately with, with this point here, there's a couple of things, but the one thing that I want to make sure that I get across is that the warmup is our best suggestion based on our view of that workout for the average size class, the average size room, and the average equipment layout. And if you are faced with anomalies, you might have to change the warmup up for that day, or you might have to change it for individual people based on what they're working with. And that's okay. It's a part of the class where you as a coach can demonstrate not only your creativity and fast thinking, but also your one-on-one relationship with your athletes and your class members on creating a warmup or, or tailoring the warmup to the individuals in

Starting point is 00:36:57 front of you that day. Well, not to mention weather, right? Oh yeah. Weather, all those kinds of factors. Yeah. I mean, you know, it know, it's a common topic amongst the gyms that we talk to that are either a part of the collective or trialing it and seeing if it's a good fit for their community. And I think that a lot of it stems because the questions are all over the place. It's why aren't we stretching every day? You know, like, what are these movements? I mean, it's a bunch of stuff. And I think that it really comes down to the fact that, you know, like you said, there's, it's, it's as dynamic as scaling is right. Like there's going to be so many different situations and so many different, you know, athletes. And, you know, like I would say that the jury's even out on like, whether you should be stretching every day before you work out. You know, like you can make an argument for or against. But some people feel very strongly that like if you're not doing dynamic mobility before

Starting point is 00:37:52 you work out, that's not a warm up. So I think that a lot of the questions just stem from how many different, you know, schools of thoughts there are on what an appropriate warm up is. So, I mean, you know, MDV made a really good point where this is the best suggestion that we come up with based on our coaches, our experience, and what we're seeing. But at the end of the day, communities, you know,

Starting point is 00:38:15 how your community's feeling that day, there's so many factors that you have to take into account. And I think, you know, I'm gonna sound like a broken record, but situational awareness and just having the skills to be able to adapt on the fly is really what it comes down to. Yeah. I mean, talking to your members, listening to your members. I mean, you're right.

Starting point is 00:38:31 We are creating these warmups. You know, our organization has, you know, well over a hundred coaches that we're receiving feedback from and many, many, many, many, many members in a lot of check-ins and a lot of workouts and a lot of years under our belt that we create this. But that's not to say that what we're creating needs to be to the T held responsible to everybody all the time.

Starting point is 00:38:58 This is just our best expression for that day given what we know as an overarching sum of. Now there's gonna be some gyms where it's not gonna fit for that day, given what we know as an overarching sum of. Now there's going to be some gyms where it's not going to fit for that day. Adjust accordingly, utilize your awareness. Maybe your entire gym on that Saturday went for a crazy hero workout and it's Monday. Maybe doing assault intervals and playground overhead to warm up is not the appropriate stimulus. Maybe we need to do more pigeon stretching and whatever. And that's for you to decide because your gym in that particular case would be like an anomaly. It'd be outside the scope, right? Is that? Yeah. I like, like we've been saying, you have to, you have to look at the warmup and you have to look at the class in front

Starting point is 00:39:39 of you and you have to make the adjustments that you would need to make for that group of individuals and that time of day and that weather and all that kind of stuff. Like your 5am class is going to need to warm up differently than your 6pm class. And you need to make some of those adjustments on your own. Now, I think it's important for people to understand like our viewpoint on warmups is, is we want to one, raise the athletes core temperature to get them in a state ready to do fitness. We want to get them literally warm and start to sweat. Number two, we want to move through an appropriate range of motion based on the workout for that day. So we want to do different

Starting point is 00:40:18 exercises. We want to move through positions. We want to use different equipment that will move them through a range of motion that's appropriate to help the body get into the positions it needs to for the workout. And then number three is a lot of times in our warmups, we're looking to transfer certain types of skills or core movement patterns from the warmup into the workout. Not only does that help the coach bridge the gap between the teaching and the workout, but it also helps the athlete understand that they're going to have to put their bodies into these different positions, right? There are things that we generally do not do. We generally do not do long hold pose stretching, static stretching before workouts. We do sometimes

Starting point is 00:40:57 some mobility, some soft tissue work, some of that kind of stuff, but more often than not, the prevailing research is going to say that long static stretching is really not appropriate before you're going into high intensity training. So we err on the side of being a little bit more dynamic, a little bit more movement focused. We often start off a little slower and progress a little quicker as we go through the warmups. And we found that that works really well for our style of training. And science, like there's going to be different rules of thought to static stretching versus dynamic and this and that. I get it. I've done plenty of both. For me, one of the things that

Starting point is 00:41:34 we've always held our hat, you know, been important to us is that we are also running a business. And as a business, one of the things that I've recognized is that people like to move and that shouldn't be the only factor, but it's one thing we think about is that they're not coming in here to hold poses for 20, 30 minutes and then get into a workout. And is that the best way to prep them? I don't think it is either. But one of the things we always need to consider is that we are also wanting to provide a product where members are feeling like throughout the duration of the hour, they're getting the best value. And most of the time, I think people evaluate in our gym value to movement and getting coached through it. And I think that's important

Starting point is 00:42:15 to us. And I think that there's a place in time for this static type stretching, particularly after the workout, you're sweaty, you're creating community and culture while you're doing that. Hey everybody, go ahead and hold a pigeon stretch. Let's go ahead and talk about what you guys have planned for this weekend. I think that's super, super valuable, but more times than not across many locations that we've seen is that members, when they come in, they're ready to move. They want to get after it. They've been sitting at their desk all day. And that's the way we like to think about it. Right. And you know, look, is there exceptions to the rule? Sure. But more times than not, we're going to like to think about it, right? And look, is there exceptions to the rule?

Starting point is 00:42:45 Sure. But more times than not, we're going to look to get people moving, get into a workout position, move through things. And then at the end, then there's time. And also, if there's not enough time, we found that most members like to, if they're encouraged to do that, they could also do that on their own. They could follow different types of apps and different types of programs. Whereas we're there to actually physically implement the coaching product. Well said. So guys, look, one of the final notes here

Starting point is 00:43:13 is this concept that when you're talking about managing your new members or veteran members, building your timelines, your warmups, we've been talking about what we use the collective, but it's important that if you're a gym owner out there and you don't use the collective, that's fine, but you should have some type of baseline warmup and baseline template that you're giving to your coaches to put them in the best position to be successful. Now, am I going to tell you that I think we're putting out the best product? Absolutely. I really do. And you can email Gabe over here and he can hook you up with a little trial to collective at nc.fit. And he could take care of you. That's collective at nc.fit.

Starting point is 00:43:47 But if you don't want to use ours, still go out there and take the time to go through this. And, you know, one of the things I'd encourage you as I was talking to a gym owner the other day and I asked him, I said, how often, how much time a week do you spend creating your program? And he told me one hour. I said, okay, you spend one hour a week creating your program that your members do. And you believe that's enough time to provide the critical thinking

Starting point is 00:44:11 to provide the best product for an entire week. And he didn't necessarily agree. He didn't think one hour was enough, but that's all the time he had. And so if you are going to create these on your own, really give yourself enough time to formally critical think, hey, what do our members need for this week? What does it look like from couplets, triplets, heavy, light, long, whatever? And then how do I also add to that a day's not done until I put a timeline and a warmup associated with it and a perceived stimulus that our coaches can all have one similar message from 5 a.m. class to 5 p.m. class. And as an industry, we've evolved. Back in the day, it was all about the WOD. Now it's about the program. What's the program our members are joining? So I hope everybody out there is creating that on their own or utilizing ours. If you have any additional questions, let us know. Do you guys have anything to add on that? No, I'm all good, man. Yeah, I think that was well said. Hope people reach out. Yeah. So email our friend Gabe over here, collective at nc.fit. I hope all of you guys

Starting point is 00:45:15 keep rising the tides, keep getting after it, keep crushing your business. If what you're doing right now is not working, evaluate, switch things up, get after it it everybody have a great day

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Barbell Shrugged - Confident and Conscious Coaching with the NCFIT Collective - Business of Fitness #75

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