Barbell Shrugged - Focusing on the Fundamentals w/ Jason Khalipa - Business of Fitness Ep: 62

Episode Date: July 8, 2019

You may recognize both voices on today’s show, as M.D.V (Matt DellaValle) is a seasoned guest and co-host of the Business of Fitness Podcast. MDV is the Chief FitnessOfficer at NCFIT, managing all fitness, coaching, and programming operations worldwide for the company. Over the past decade, MDV's journey has taken him a few different directions—coaching at some of the best gyms in the biz (CFNE, Reebok CrossFit ONE, CrossFit ONE Nation & NCFIT), leading seminars as part of CrossFit HQ Staff, and managing fitness partnerships for Reebok INTL. Before all this fitness stuff, MDV earned his law degree from William & Mary Law. He is passionate about coaching, fitness, and American traditional tattoos. In business, fitness, and life we have the tendency to want to over-complicate things and often end up biting off more than we can chew. Today, Jason and MDV, tackle this concept of the “Novice Curse” (thank you, Greg Glassman, for coining the term), and provide actionable steps athletes, coaches, and business owners can use to capitalize on virtuosity. Minute Breakdown: 0-5–The “Novice Curse” and how both athletes and coaches struggle with it. 5-10–Simplifying cues and better movement. 10-15–How this relates to business and how to build on fundamentals effectively. Work with Jason, M.D.V and the NCFit Collective Crew at http://ncfitcollective.fit Find Jasonat @jasonkhalipa Find MDV at @m.d.v_

Hi everyone, my name is Jason Kalipa and welcome to the first episode of the Business to Fitness podcast on The Shrug Collective. For a little over a year now, we've been putting out this podcast every week. We've now transitioned it to The Shrug Collective channel, which we're really excited about. My background really involves the CrossFit Games, competed there eight times, won the CrossFit Games, and we also opened a business 12 years ago called NC Fit. Since then, we expanded from one location to over 20 locations, from no coaches to hundreds. And what we want to dive into through this podcast is through practical application,

through being in the trenches for owners by owners, for coaches by coaches. We want to talk about how to raise the bar, put one foot in front of another, professionalize our industry, and create sustainability. We're never going to share anything that we haven't experienced ourselves and just talk about it from practical application. We've learned a lot over the years, and if I could share some of that with you and hopefully help you not make some of the same mistakes that we have or perhaps implement some of the things that have really helped us, then we're winning. On today's episode, we're diving in to a subject of just basically this beginner's mentality, this concept of wanting to go too complex before the fundamentals are

mastered with MDV. His name is Matt DeLaValle. He comes on the episode quite often. He's the head of our coaching and fitness across the entire organization. And I can't wait for you guys to enjoy this episode. Have a phenomenal day. We are here to discuss a very important topic, which is going to be focusing on the fundamentals. And something that Greg Glassman said a long time ago that resonated with both MDV and I, that we were just discussing was the idea of the novice's curse. So we want to dive into it. For those of you who are unfamiliar with CrossFit, there's a bunch of different movements from more complex to less complex. And a lot of the times coaches get wrapped up in the complex movements.

And so we want to do is break down how that relates to business, how you're always looking for the next sexy thing, then the most complex thing. And really what I think that comes down to is a lack of kind of doing the common uncommonly. Well, yeah. So MDV, we were, we were chatting earlier. I mean, look, it's a, what day is today? Monday. Today's Monday. We are fired up. We are ready to go. We're at our gym and a class is about to crush it. And I came up here. I'm like, I'm like, MDV, dude, we got to talk about the fundamentals. And he's like, all right, let's go. So here we are. Let's talk about it. So I love this topic because like you said, Glassman kind of famously quotes

the novice's curse in the level one materials. And what he's referring to there is the tendency for athletes to skip past the most basic fundamental elements of movement and the most basic movements and go right for the most complex, the sexy shit out there. And they forget that the foundation of it all, the most important stuff that you could ever do is just practice the basics. Practice in the basics. And I think this happens. So I see this in jujitsu, right? You see a guy, he's doing some barren bolo, which is like this crazy inverted move. And you're like, Oh, I want to be able to do that. Name sounds complicated. It's phenomenal. Right. But, but you don't even have the fundamentals

down of learning side control or the basic mount, but yet you want to do these, these, these complex things because there's something alluring or sexy about it. I think this also happens as a coach. Yeah, for sure. I mean, how many times are you coaching a class and you say to yourself, man, I can't wait to coach the complex skill here instead of just refining and being able to coach the air squat

or the most basic foundation of the deadlift extremely well? Yeah, yeah. You see that a lot with coaches. You see coaches kind of like give that deep exhale and be like, oh, I gotta coach the air squat today. Or the pushup. Yeah, the pushup. There's so much that you can dive into with those basic movements. But I think even when you're coaching the more complex movements, even when they show up in the programming, I think a lot of coaches tend to overcomplicate them, which is another element

of this kind of novice's curse where you see coaches think that they have to go out there and use the most complex language that, you know, they have to reference every article, every person who has ever been an Olympic, Olympic, Olympian, Olympic lifter. I don't know if I've said that right, but they forget that these people who are standing out in front of them with the PVC pipe in their hand, they don't give a shit. They don't know. All they want to do is they want to jump and throw their hands over in the air. That's the most effective type of coaching that you can have for those people. Early on in my career, I would always shy away from the snatch and I shied away from it because I was not comfortable with it. Then I started learning a little bit about it and I always focused on it. So I learned a little bit and I wanted to

sound super smart to our members, right? Be like, I'm looking for triple extension. I want this. I want that. And start using all these big words. And ultimately the sign of a good coach is how well your members are beginning to move. And it's your fault if they don't pick up on it, not theirs. That's what I've always figured out, right? If you're, if you're telling them, you know, using a cue and they're not making a change, you all automatically want to get frustrated. They're like, why don't you get this? You got to look deep inside yourself and say, Hey man, maybe I'm using too big of vernacular. Maybe I'm using too big of words. Maybe I'm not communicating this effectively. And I think that oftentimes happens

for me when I'm less comfortable with material. I rely on like too much complex discussion points, right? Cause I, I haven't gotten it down to the fundamentals. Yeah. I think people, you know, maybe their, their intentions are good. They want to go out there and they want to show these people how much they know. And they want to be validated by their language. And they want to introduce these concepts that they've heard of or read about. But like I said, man, like the people who are standing in front of you, they don't want to have a fucking dissertation about the snatch. They do not want to attend a snatch seminar for their class.

They want to learn a thing or two and then they want to start moving, right. And no one has ever walked out of a class and been like, man, that class stunk because we moved so much. Like all we did was move the entire class. Nobody in the history of classes has ever said that. Right. But you know, people walk out of class and they go, man, all coach did was fucking talk the entire class. He talked a whole time. I didn't get any movement in. Yep. And I think what that comes down to is this idea of kind of like the beginner's curse in that you want to overcomplicate things. And how many times have you gone up to someone who really knows and is extremely knowledgeable? I'll never forget. I was talking to this guy, Kendrick Fares. For those of you who are unfamiliar with him, multiple time Olympian for the United States.

King of the platform. King of the platform. Phenomenal lifter, right? And I just asked him, multiple time Olympian for the United States. King of the platform. King of the platform. Phenomenal lifter, right? And I just asked him, I was like, hey man, you know, give me a cue on the snatch. Give me a cue on the squat. Get out of the pocket. What do you got for me? Something magical.

And he's just like, for the squat, he's just like, get out of there. Like, that's all he said. Just get out of the hole. Just get out of there. It wasn't like, oh, drive your knees out. And I was looking for something super intricate and he simplified it for him. I mean, there was more than I said, but the point being is that he wasn't trying to make it more than it was. He was trying to simplify the movement to help me move better versus trying to make it so complex. I was focusing on all these different

things and it actually didn't impact my lift. Yeah. I think a common characteristic among the best coaches in the world in what we do in functional training and CrossFit is the fact that they can take these more complex movements, the snatch, the clean and jerk, the muscle up, handstand pushups, and they can break them down and they can kind of bridge the gap for the people where they look at these things and they're like, oh, man, this is so complex. I'm never going to be able to learn this. And they can make it digestible for those people. I think that the best coaches in the world aren't out there coaching with talking about anatomy and physiology, and they're not talking about all these complex and verbose types of things that you were just saying. They're breaking it down in simple terms that

members understand, and they get them moving and moving well with those simple terms. And I think you have to be comfortable in your own skin to be able to do that. And I think that's a big takeaway for any owner in any industry or any coach out there is that you have to be able to do that. And I think that's a big takeaway for any owner in any industry or any coach out there is that you have to be comfortable in your own scheme when you're sharing information to simplify it as much as possible. And again, I'm a, I'm a big, um, in business, this has been something that I've fallen trapped to is that for a while when I would do seminars or gigs for, for gym owners, I'd always want to rely on like the graphs and the, and the docs and, and still to this day, I still use some of them, but I think part of it was that I wanted to rely on this complexity instead of just sort of taking a step back for a second and just simplifying it

and getting back to what really made our business successful in the beginning, which is the fundamentals. And I think we all are, we all are striving to grow and develop but sometimes that's the expense of what got you to where you're at which is ultimately a phenomenal product on the floor phenomenal service and it's not that hard it's just the fundamentals done really really well yeah look at in and out burger yeah three items on the menu right the the the thing there that is hard is that there's not a lot of people out there doing the common uncommonly well, right? And we tend to go, oh, you know, well, this is common sense.

Everybody understands this. They know how to do this. They know the basics. They know the fundamentals. Let's talk about this stuff over here that's really sexy and sparkly. And like, that's not the case, man. You have to really master the fundamentals. And when you think you've mastered them, you got to go back and do them over again.

And you got to get even better at teaching those things, right? And the same thing in business. You say you go out there and you have these fancy docs and charts and all this kind of stuff. Most people are probably not doing the most basic things that they need to do well enough to even be looking at those things. Right. And I think it's a, you got to check the ego a little bit and you got to go, well, maybe my, I got to take myself out of this equation. I got to just be like, all right, let's start step one.

Step one. Step one. Right. Answering your phone's front desk. I mean, I just looked at an experience that our member just had, um, shot, shot, shot. Hey, just came into the gym for the first time. I'm looking from an outsider's perspective. Hey, how was her greeting at the front desk? It was good. Could have been better, right? How was her agreement with the coach? It was good. Could have been

better. Um, and these are the fundamentals that make her experience go from an eight to a 10. And those are the little pieces that could take us from where we're at to the next level. And I think that there's something again, exciting about the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. But if your business isn't where it's, where you want to be, the first step you got to look at is how is, how are the fundamental components of your business going? Yeah. Right.

If you're in the haircutting business and you're not providing a premium haircut experience and you're out there looking for new marketing plans, maybe you need to focus on your core product and then move out. And it is tough, man. I mean, as an athlete, I know how it goes, right? I want to learn the complex stuff. I don't want to just be doing, you know, I'll never forget with the snatch in particular, I was stuck at a weight for a long time. And this coach came up to me and he put me down to the 45 pound barbell for one month straight. And I felt so foolish. I felt so goofy. I'm like, dude, I got this down. He's like, no, you don't. Like you, you can't do it with a 45 pound barbell. So how are you going to expect to ever lift any type of large load when it starts to get heavy? And from that day on, I started to see my snatch

go up because I had built up that foundation. That was a big learning lesson for me. Yeah. Sometimes it's not sexy. Sometimes it's not fun. Sometimes you're going to feel like you're banging your head against a wall and you're like, oh man, I know this stuff already. But if you can go out there and you can coach the most basic movements with virtuosity and you can go out there and you can make those more basic movements interesting and fun, and you can think about new ways to scale them and make the members appreciate them. And it's going to make not only their journey a lot easier because they're going to have a really good understanding of the basics that you're, you need to have before you get to those complex movements, but also for you as a coach, it's going to make that journey for you a lot easier.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm in full agreement. So guys, basically the talking point for today and something that I'm really taken into everything we're doing is that first off, before we started focusing on, just like with you and your athletes, if you're listening and you're a coach before you would ever have them, you know, snatching, they first need to develop what a squat and a deadlift is. Otherwise you're not going to be able to hit those positions hypothetically. And so in your business, how does that relate? Well, if you're trying to go out there and do Facebook ads, but you haven't even developed to answer your phone or to greet somebody when they come in, then you're, you're doing things out of order. You know, think about it like your core to extremity, right? Like you're throwing a ball. When you throw a ball, not that I'm very good at this.

If anybody saw the CrossFit Games from years ago, you step, you open your hip, you finish these small extremities, right? There's certain rules that apply to help you get the best out of it. Well, the rules also apply in business. If you're not working from the core, then you have no business going to extremities yet. Yeah, for sure. I think that the snatch, all fired up on these analogies. The snatch example is a beautiful example because let's just pretend you get somebody in off the street. They've never seen these movements before. They've never, never touched a barbell, never touched anything. And you put a barbell on their

hand. You're like, all right, I'm going to show you the snatch. And you don't give them any sort of progression. You don't give them anything. You just show them the full movement. Their mind is probably exploding, right? You have to first teach them, hey, this is the air squat. Hey, this is the deadlift. Hey, this is the overhead squat. This is how we bring it all together. And that I think is something that people miss. You know, the ability to break things down, start small, and then eventually you get to those more complex things and you get there probably much quicker and much more efficiently and you don't have the big setbacks that you might have if you just jump to that to start right yep i know you've seen it i've seen oh yeah for sure you get these

guys who just can muscle some stuff eventually it breaks down yeah you got to focus on fundamentals and go from there so guys if you're an owner if you're a coach if you're in any business let us know how you like these podcasts shoot us some messages a coach, if you're in any business, let us know how you like these podcasts, shoot us some messages. And you know, if you're in the, in the functional training space and you have not checked out our NC fit collective session plans and programming and coaching tools, I really believe you're missing out on at least checking out what I believe is the best in the industry. So go ahead and check those out. Shoot us an email to collective at nc.fit. Mr. MDV and I are going to be out there continuously trying to improve our product. You got any closing words for the crew? No, I think that today's one is really powerful. And I think that a lot of times it's like, you got to check the ego and you got to

just go back and you got to realize that nobody cares what you know. Nobody cares how educated you are. All they care about is having a great experience, learn a thing or two and having a hell of a good time. And if you break it down like that, you're going to have a lot more successful classes. Period. Let's do it. Guys, we got a great class going on downstairs right now. MDV and I are going to go check it out. I hope everybody continues to have a phenomenal week and we'll see you again next week for another episode of the Business of Fitness podcast.