Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 184: Becoming a Great Coach W. Jacob Schepis

Episode Date: April 13, 2022

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All right, guys, today I'm here with Jacob Skeppis, Director of Fitness and Education at JPS Education. Jacob's been somebody that I've followed for a very long time. I remember like five or six years ago, I was perusing YouTube and kind of looking through all of the ubiquitous fitness YouTubers at the time's work, trying to absorb as much information as I could. And I saw that so many of them were presenting at this event in Australia that I could never get to being stateside here, but I was always jealous. And I said, man, who's putting these, these, you know, these fire lineups together with all these big

names. And turns out it was Jacob who I then followed, who I found out is a personal trainer, a fitness coach, an online coach, a fitness educator, somebody who's really got a lot of skin in the game and a lot of dirt under his fingernails. So I said, you know what, this is somebody that eventually I've got to get on here so we can just talk shop, talk coaching, philosophy, and really share with you guys, I think what's worked well for us in our career. So Jacob, without further ado, you want to tell everybody kind of what got you into fitness and how you've become such a diversified kind of purveyor of fitness stuff for us trainees, enthusiasts, and all of it? Purveyor of fitness stuff. I like that.

I might even put that on my resume, man. I think you should get a shirt. I should get a shirt. I am the purveyor. Yeah. Thanks, man, for the intro. And it's a pleasure to be here chatting with you. So my introduction to fitness began when I was like 15, went about it all the wrong way, as I'm sure many of my followers on Instagram know, with the whole zero carb diet, hardcore, all or nothing mentality for years on end. I got shredded. I probably had, I guess, more dedication than most, and I could starve myself a little bit longer and harder than most people. So it worked. But it caused me a lot of problems. And during that process, I had a lot of people obviously wanting to learn from me because my body changed a lot.

I thought I knew what I was doing. So they sought my advice. And I eventually got into PT, where I started coaching at a commercial gym, had a full client roster, got my brother and my best mate on board at this gym. Then we moved to my own facility here in Melbourne, Australia. It was a small little studio that we put together ourselves, basically, like we painted the walls. And this is back in like 2013. So nearly 10 years ago now.

And then after about three years, we had eight coaches in this little facility. It was like a brothel, man. They were just like sweating bodies everywhere. Right. And we used to get complaints from council. The child psychologist upstairs used to come down for the noise, dropping barbells. And it got to the point where council was coming and slapping me with $1, dollar fines every week for exceeding my occupancy and all this kind of stuff so they politely told me to to leave um but uh we got a bigger space in that uh you know i guess period where we're super busy and i couldn't

afford like i could afford to pay the fines because we're so busy but i didn't want to pay the fines so we got a bigger space uh which is where we are now in airport west uh where we have 10 coaches i think our team's around 20 people now which is awesome and yeah we've sort of branched out to offer online education to lifters and coaches we teach the personal training qualifications here in australia i built a mentorship course and man i just love all things fitness and sharing my knowledge and experience with other people so that, you know, I just hope that they avoid making the same mistakes I did. You know, I think with time you get humbled a little bit, you know, the whole Dunning-Kruger effect, I feel like I'm sort of coming out the other side where

it's like, I don't really know if I know much these days, you know, I feel like I've still got so much to learn, but I feel like I've still got so much to learn, but I feel like I can teach people how to avoid making the same mistakes I did and at least fast track their journey, whether it's fat loss, coaching, getting stronger, and that's the goal. I think that's a really good point. And there's a lot of parallels between both of our stories. I think I started a little later than you by virtually maybe being a little bit younger, but started with my now business partners at a big box gym. We outgrew the space, just decided, this is our passion. This is what we want to do.

One of my best friends went off for physical therapy school where I pursued online coaching and entrepreneurship. And when he finished, we got back together, opening up the second place now. And it's funny, these parallels I find are pretty consistent amongst the coaches who tend to stick around, which is something that our industry is known for having a tremendous amount of turnover. I have heard different numbers, but somewhere between 80% and 90% of PTs don't make it through their first year. It's very saturated, but it's not necessarily saturated with good coaches and good intentions. It's just oftentimes saturated with people who like to work out and they want to see if maybe they can get paid for telling people how to do

what they do. And you're so big on the education side and you've obviously employed a number of coaches. I think the best first question I could ask you is, what are those differentiating factors you see with the coaches that are the most successful outside of the obvious stuff? Like maybe let's talk about first the intangibles. Yes. So I think you're spot on. There's a lot of coaches who want a career in fitness, but they end up being a flash in the pan, right? It's just in and out. And this industry will chew you up faster than you know, if you don't go about things the right way. And I think like with fat loss, dude, a lot of people have unrealistic expectations. So they come into the industry thinking that it's going to be

super flexible hours, they're going to get paid really well to do a job that they love and wear active wear and it's all fantastic. But that really isn't the case. You know, there are very few people who have the full spectrum of traits and skills to actually create a fitness business that succeeds in the short term, right? Unless they're already capitalizing on a you know a very large online following that they've had prior to starting this business right um so with that said i think you know the spectrum of uh traits and characteristics that a fitness professional needs to make it would be one uh you know you need to have a empathy, right? You need to be a people person and be able to relate to people. And I think a lot of young coaches lack that empathy just purely

as a function of their age, right? They haven't experienced a lot in their life, so they can't walk in the shoes of a mother who's got three kids at home and doesn't have a lot of time to work out, right? They can't understand the pressure and responsibility that comes with that. And I think that can be something that holds a lot of young coaches back in many ways because it narrows the demographic that they're capable of working with effectively, at least. It's a wonderful point. Empathy is a big one.

Wonderful point. Empathy is a big one. I think you also have to really know how to think when it comes to nutrition and exercise science. And although that's a really fluffy answer, it's like you can't be somebody who has a very dichotomous mindset towards fitness. Because if you do, that will only lead you down one road you will churn and burn a lot of clients and that means that you'll be in and out of the industry quick smart because you're going to have high turnover rates be very frustrating you're going to feel like a failure and that's you know a huge issue right there so you have to have a very graded approach to how you perceive nutrition and exercise science.

And with that comes, I think, openness, right? The trade openness, right? So you have to be open and willing to learn. You can't be somebody who's highly disagreeable, right? And these are sort of personality traits like big five personality traits. Sure. That I think are not often spoken about.

And we know that openness ties into empathy uh as well so i think openness to you know be willing to learn and being quite agreeable at least you know in some ways because when you're a coach you have to do what other people want you to do essentially right your clients are your boss obviously there's a time and place where you have to put them in line tell them what to do essentially, right? Your clients are your boss. Obviously, there's a time and place where you have to put them in line, tell them what to do. And you've got to be in charge of the process, so to speak, but it's a collaboration. And when we're working with clients

and you're starting out in your career, you do have to respect the wishes and wants of your clients. So I think being agreeable to the point that it doesn't obviously interfere with your ability to help this person modify their behavior and achieve the goals that they want to is super important. So I would say they would be the sort of lesser known traits and some of the characteristics I think that successful personal trainers have.

Yeah, no, I love that. And I think that they're overlooked and a lot of them are cultivated by just being in the gym and actually getting some dirt under your fingernails, putting some sweat equity into it. I think a lot of coaches get into a position where when they first get started, they're very, very excited about the idea of training their ideal client. I want to train a physique athlete. I want to train a physique athlete. I want to train a football player. I want to train a basketball player. I want to train powerlifters. And you can make a very good living specializing and doing that and putting the majority of your focus into developing the coaching tactics and skill sets required to help those populations achieve the

peak of whatever it is they're looking to do. But something that you pick up from training regular folks or your general population clients are these lesser-known traits, whether it's open-mindedness, empathy, communication skills. And so many people enter the industry at an exceptionally young age where they just genuinely haven't had enough life experience to actually cultivate these traits. And so I've noticed that our industry is kind of trending towards, and I think this is positive, trending towards more coaches being interested in creating content or creating material or working with general population clients, which for a very long time was not super sexy to even just use myself as an example. I would say at no point in my career has

the general population client percentage of my business been less than 50%. It's always been at least half of my clientele, but I never featured it. I never talked about it. What I tell a lot of my mentorship students is that coaching athletes will look good on your resume, but coaching gen pop clients will pay bills. It absolutely will. And I love that I've noticed this just with a few people that I follow their content has kind of gravitated towards communicating to trainers about the importance of being able to connect with this demographic. What is something that you've kind of done well, or what is something that you see people do well

as they kind of transition away from like, okay, maybe I can have my ideal client type, but I also want to be able to work with gen pop clients or senior clients, because it's always been remarkable to me how many immensely qualified, intelligent PTs who can tell you every single nuance and mechanism for hypertrophy. They can tell you all the minutia about the metabolism of every different substrate. But an old lady walks in and they're like, oh my God, what do I do, dude? I don't know how to train her. And so that lack of flexibility there, how have you managed that well and with your coaches? Because I think that for a lot of the PTs listening, that's going to not only help them

make more money, it'll help them change more lives. So I think one of the biggest factors that is overlooked when coaches start out in the industry is developing a breadth of knowledge first before you pursue depth of knowledge in a specific domain, right? And with that comes a breadth of experience with the demographics that you're working with, because you pick up a lot of different things from the unique characteristics of certain populations. And it just, it does make you a more well-rounded coach in terms of, you know, your programming skills and methodologies, your ability to apply theory and, you know, understand the principles. And I think the principles is what makes a good coach, you know, effective across a number of different domains or populations. When you understand the principles of exercise science such as specificity so specific

adaptations to impose demands you get what you train for progressive overload that as you get better you need to train better fatigue management that you know the cost of hard training is fatigue and we need to manage that so that we can recover and performance improve over time individualization right the you know principle of uh periodization or phase intensification, like planning and deliberately manipulating variables. If you understand the big rocks and then you understand the variables, right, of exercise science, right? So training volume in resistance training, training volume, intensity, frequency, rest periods, tempo, all that kind of jazz, exercise selection. And you understand how the principles influence the variables for any demographic you can coach anyone and then over time you obviously develop

a niche and you can specialize in a certain area where your interests lie but i think the good coaches who are able to work with the gen pop and then go work with you know say bodybuilders or powerlifters like like i have um you have you have to understand the principles and the variables to then be able to devise those methods but i think more importantly when you're working with you know a lot of different people uh you pick up so many soft skills you know whether it's just the delivery of the program and you know how like so many different people that will vary immensely right as human beings we are 99 percent the same but that one percent makes such a difference in how we're made up you know psychologically by like you know our physiology

all of that kind of stuff right so where we differ is huge and i think when you coach a lot of different people uh you learn the importance of that which will make you a better coach when you're working with your specific niche um but yeah i think if you're wanting to pursue you know working with uh athletes or bodybuilders powders whatever the case may be you need to get some firsthand experience right i tell a lot of the coaches that i work with you know when they want to work with bodybuilders uh you know unless you have gone through that experience yourself you won't be able to coach effectively you can have all the theoretical knowledge in the world you've got to do the thing to be able to coach it right

if somebody's deep into contest prep you know their metabolism and endocrine system is just in the toilet uh and you're trying to give them advice that's like being a virgin um and telling somebody how to how to make love yeah it's like you can watch all the porn you want and you know spend as much time with this partner and five daughters as you like but that's just not going to be useful to someone you know who's in the bedroom with their partner wanting advice from you. It's just not going to work. So you have to get experience. And I think that when you do get enough experience coaching your desired demographic and you build a name for yourself, you've got a well-established client base, it's always a good idea to continue coaching GenPop clients, even just a handful like i do now i coach maybe five or so

gen pop clients one-on-one because i like to keep my finger on the pulse it keeps you grounded it prevents you from you know letting your head travel so far up your ass that you don't see daylight again right because i see a lot of coaches do that and they lose touch they lose touch with you know some really fundamental skills that working with a Gen Pop client will teach you, which is that, you know, life happens. You know, you need to be able to communicate that, you know, resistance training is at the be all and end all, you know, and having a six pack, you know, isn't the most important thing in the world. Like there's other real shit going on.

Like it really does keep you grounded. And it has for me anyway. Don't know if I answered the original question, but I think we sort of got something. No, you definitely did. And I think you made a great point, which is that I think for a lot of coaches, just maintaining the relationships or the connections or the training relationships you have with clients who might be gen pop, it allows you to keep your finger on the pulse of what the largest probably percentage of people are struggling with when it comes to their fitness. And I think one area where I see so many

coaches struggle is they're very invested in their education. They understand the material almost to a fault and their ability to communicate it is quite good, but they communicate it very well to other coaches or in coach speak. And they really struggle to communicate these concepts and philosophies to general population clients. Not that they can't communicate, but it's very difficult for them to communicate succinctly and get their message across succinctly. And that's something that's worked very well for me, which is over many, many years of making a lot of content, trying to impress a lot of other coaches as this young, relatively egotistical, trying to carve out a name for himself kid was like,

if I use big words, people will respect me. That's how it's got to be, right? If I show up, it's not how it works. And what worked well for me was taking those ideas and communicating them as simply as I could to the people that I felt needed the most help. And that's something I see a lot of trainers struggle with. So as somebody who's curating educational content for trainers, working with Gen Pop clients, producing a variety of different types of fitness content, what do you think is important for trainers to understand about communicating with clients, potential clients about the things that they understand so well, so not so much gets lost in translation and we can really help people get fit.

I think you said it well there that coaches shouldn't use jargon or complex words unnecessarily when a regular everyday word will suffice. And something I teach my mentorship students is to think coach speak client and when we communicate we need to think not just about the spoken word but all of the non-verbal communication as well right so our what's called proxemics so you know how far you wait how far away from your clients you are, you know, and communication is a space-time relative, like, endeavor, right? It occurs in space and over time. So you need to be aware of, you know, space and time in the context of communication in order to communicate effectively.

So I think when we're trying to educate or help people, we really need to understand the time element. So, you know, what does this person know about exercise, nutrition, and fitness? What beliefs have they, you know, come to form in their life experience about carbohydrates, for example, or exercise for fat loss. And then you have to think about, okay, now how does that fit within their value structures? So what values are underlying these belief systems that they have? And in many cases, when we're communicating, we're trying to elicit positive behavior change, it's going to come down to sort of debunking all of the incorrect or fallacious beliefs,

right? And forming new beliefs that are more accurate and better suited to this individual's goals and long-term fitness endeavors. And in order to do that, when somebody has a misinformed belief about say nutrition, they uh you know spike insulin and that causes you know fat gain so they avoid carbohydrates a lot of young coaches who haven't got the experience communicating or at least negotiating in life and trying to get people to change their mind right uh they come out swinging and they you know say oh that's not true you know here's this research paper they'll throw a bunch of citations or you know talk about how you know the carbohydrate insulin model is you know flawed and energy balance just track your calorie track in your macros bro all that kind of

you know evidence-based information but the reality is that doesn't work because when you attack people's belief systems they start to put up walls and because we don't like our beliefs being uh you know like attacked because it makes us really it erodes the foundations of our existence you know if we have somebody challenge us uh in our beliefs we feel as though the way we see the world is not right and that's a scary thing right and the way the way we feel stupid. So we don't like that. So when you're trying to communicate and help people, you know, overcome these incorrect assumptions or beliefs about nutrition or exercise, you really need to go in and approach it like a Trojan horse. You need to go in, have a conversation, try to get inside their head and understand why do you believe this? Where did this come from? And then slowly break down bit by bit the foundations of that belief.

But that takes time and that takes trust and that takes respect and that takes that person feeling comfortable to speak to you and they want to be heard and not always spoken to. And I feel a lot of young coaches because they are trying to pave their way in the industry and they want to be respected and the smartest, most hot PT in their local gym or whatever the case may be, they have this sense of arrogance or overconfidence in what they know to be true and what they believe to be the right way of getting people to change. And that again, comes back to just a lack of experience. I think a lot of the coaches who get into the industry when they're older, or the coaches who've been in the

industry for a while will attest to the fact that they don't go about things like this anymore. But there was certainly a time when I was that coach that I'm telling you about right now. And I'm pretty sure that there was a time where you were like- Absolutely. Anyways, and I think that's a huge key with communication is recognizing that more often than not,

what we are trying to deal with is incorrect beliefs and assumptions about fitness. And in order to course correct and rewire those beliefs to be more evidence-based, accurate, and I guess functionally advantageous to that human long-term, we need to softly and delicately, like Jenga, try to pull apart those beliefs.

We can't just go in with a baseball bat and attack them with our arrogant, you know, just bombardment of, you know, scientific literature and jargon. Hey guys, just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks so much for listening to the podcast. And if you're finding value, it would mean the world to me if you would share it on your social media. Simply screenshot whatever platform you're listening to and share the episode to your Instagram story or share it to Facebook. But be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can chat it up about what you liked and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode.

I love it. I mean, you really do need to meet people where they're at at any point. Like, you've just got to meet them where they're at. In so many instances, you're going to have to help them unlearn what they think they know because fitness is rife with misinformation. It's rife with anecdote. Hey, this worked for this lady at my work. She says I should try this. And people, to your point, piece together and patchwork together this view of what they think fitness is. And it's oftentimes not evidence-based at all. It's mostly conjecture, anecdote, and quite oftentimes BS and misinformation. And that person comes to you because they're struggling. And the first thing you do is you just beat them down because you're like, how could you believe this stuff? It's so

dumb. Let me show you a bunch of scientific stuff that's way over your head, show you how smart I am. When in fact, it's probably substantially more effective to be like, okay, I hear where you're at. Let's start lifting. And while we do that, let's slowly just unpack each one of these things. And we'll do this kindly and politely, and I'll maybe inform you about why these things don't work without beating you down. Because one of the things I've noticed, and I think you probably attest to this, is a part of what we do is build confidence and we build agency. We build people's ability to think, hey, you know what? I can do this this time around. I can see this all the way through. And a really good way to undermine someone's ability is to just underline and highlight all the places they've already failed and to make them feel like they're stupid on session one, which is something that a lot of young coaches do when they show up.

So I'm glad we got to talk about that. Unfortunately, selling personal training, online coaching, or any kind of fitness related service as building confidence doesn't cut the mustard that ain't sexy enough and the expectations of a lot of our clients are to achieve these drastic rapid transformations that they see online and oftentimes in order to do that the coach is presented with all this misinformation and a very limited timeframe to achieve the goals of the client and meet their expectations. Otherwise, they're not going to come back. Therefore, they are going to come out swinging and try to do what they think works and get rid of all that misinformation and they're going to underline all the things they're doing wrong because that's their best attempt at getting them on track to achieve this unrealistic goal in this unrealistic time frame so we're really fighting an uphill battle here and i think that's

where coaches who have made it and a successful industry go through that process of you know providing those kind of services they realize it doesn't work and they learn how to balance the needs and wants of the client and you know get them that progress that they want and give them all the you know sort of quick fix stuff at the start whilst slowly slowly introducing the stuff that they actually need like the education building the confidence and if they do that well and they can synchronize make those two things synergistic and harmonious, they can convert the client to somebody who takes the high road and wants to play the long game in fitness.

And that's where that coach, the coach who plays the long game and the fitness enthusiast who plays the long game are the ones who are going to succeed in the end. Those who take the low road and want the rapid results, the quick fix, easy way, they're the ones who are going to be the 90% of personal trainers who don't last beyond 12 months. They're going to be the ones who, the 90% who regain

all the weight after 12 months of their diet, right? It's like there's a lot of parallels between those two statistics, right? You have extreme dieting approach, regaining all the weight in 12 months, 90% regain weight in the first 12 months after they diet. They have 90% of personal trainers who don't make it after the first 12 months. That's pretty interesting to see those two statistics lined up against each other. Yeah. It's funny. I was talking to somebody the other day about financial tendencies that people have and how get rich quick isn't that much

different from get fit quick in that more often than not, you'll probably end up with less money if you try to get rich quick in the same way that you'll probably end up in worse shape if you try to get quick or get fit quick. But if in fact, you're willing to take the slow, methodical road, obviously, there's many different ways to build wealth, but you can accumulate quite a bit of money being patient, saving, investing in some perhaps low volatility things that people would find boring and unsexy, the same way that you might have somebody achieve an incredible transformation with slow, plodding, methodical, habit-based fitness stuff. But when somebody shows up at your gym,

that's not what they're there for. They want to see immediate results and you have to say, okay, I'm going to give you a little bit of what you want and a lot of what you need. And we're just going to walk this line because that's how I'm going to get buy-in. If on day one, when you show up, I'm like, all this is wrong. We have to go incredibly slow. Your goals are extremely unreasonable. This is going to take a year, not two months. That person is going to be like, oh, well, shit, I'll just pass. I don't want to do that.

They're not going to stop. It's very unsexy. And so I love the idea of meeting people where they're at. And as a coach, really, there's an art to this. You have to hold people's hand enough to pull them along, but you can't hold it so much that they don't build any self-sufficiency. So part of what we do is meet them where they're at, educate them along the way, and hopefully get to a point where they become invested in learning. And they're like, yeah, this did work. Tell me more. Tell me more. Tell me more, get him excited, get the buy-in through results. And a lot of the time, what you find when you go about things in the way that you just explained it then is that people will find enjoyments and satisfaction in the less tangible, tangible quantifiable metrics uh that fitness the fitness lifestyle can improve such as quality of life they might enjoy the fact that they're able to lose a little bit of weight maybe at a slow rate but still eat out and socialize have a you know few drinks every weekend um you know not

have to restrict themselves or avoid eating their favorite foods, they might start to sleep better. They might feel, you know, more confident in their ability to control and regulate their nutrition because they've got a more graded approach, which despite not producing the rapid, you know, results, you know, it just feels better. Like they're not constantly fighting a battle in their own head, know to avoid binging and over consuming their favorite foods you know every night when they get home from work so i think there's a lot of metrics that coaches once they are educating their clients their clients are willing to sort of start looking into you know the benefits of the high road approach approach that will turn them away from that

diet culture that quick fix mentality that they came to you with and i think again as you said that's an art like if coaches can learn how to give the client mostly what they want at the start you know hold back on what they need and then as you build trust and rapport and your communication is at a level where you can start informing this person of the things that they need to be doing more of at the expense of what they want. And you can start to break down some of those beliefs, slowly, slowly inform new, more accurate beliefs, then you're going to really start to not only help people in a meaningful way, but you're going to have a full client roster and you'll have return clients, higher retention rates, and you'll be the coach who not only passes the 12-month

mark, but has a very fruitful and long career in fitness. Yeah, I love that. I'm going to ask you a question that I've been asking a lot of my colleagues lately. And it's a fun one because it just shows where kind of the minds are at and where we gravitate to as professionals who've been in this space for a while. But are there any lines of research? Are there any things that are particularly interesting or exciting to you now in the fitness space that you're like, man, I'm really consuming a lot of this. This is interesting to me. An example would be for myself. I find the creatine cognitive link, the creatine and the brain link to be particularly fascinating. So that's been something that I've really been diving into of late. Are there things

in our space, whether it be specific to training, coaching, physiology, nutrition, that have really kind of enticed you of late that you're excited about? Yeah, man, this one's like so left of center. No, I love it. Yeah, this one's very unorthodox. But and there's no direct link that I'm aware of, but I'm sort of drawing a lot of parallels and using some of the principles to understand i guess human behavior as it relates to nutrition and exercise but evolutionary psychology and sexual selection so basically evolutionary psychology you know we have uh eight or so you know fundamental

biological objectives find mate retain mate pass on genetic material, invest in kin, build coalitions, avoid poisonous food, avoid predator. And there might be another one that I'm forgetting. Anyhow, and it's like it's crazy how through technological advancements and agricultural technologies, we've solved a lot of those problems. We don't have to avoid predators. We don't have to avoid poisonous food. We've got an abundance of food now. We don't have to avoid predators we don't have to avoid you know poisonous food we've got an abundance of food now uh you know we don't have to avoid starvation that was one of the other ones uh the eighth i should never forget that um but also like how you know sexual selection criteria

influences uh you know aesthetic ideals and you know our pursuits of a physique really and like why we exercise because it's very well documented that leaner fitter individuals have you know higher paying jobs in corporate for example and that brings status and that increases you know I guess the score of a male on sexual selection criteria from women so it's like oh well it pays to shape, you know, not only from a status position in the hierarchy, but also in terms of, you know, finding a mate, because that's what we're designed to do. Right. So it's like, that's why people pursue that, you know, healthy, aesthetic looking physique. And when it comes to women, the hourglass figure is not only, you know, biologically advantageous for birth rates, like there's so women who have a, you know, waist hip ratio of,

I think I can't remember the exact figure. So I'm not going to try to remember. It's in the twenties. I know exactly what you're talking about. I'm very familiar with the golden. Yeah. Point two, eight point. I'm pretty sure it's point two, eight. It's two, eight. I know there's a two, eight. Yeah. Well, I was, I was not going to guess that, but if you know,

I'll take your word for it. So 0.28 waist to hip ratios, like, you know, very advantageous for birth, right? But also, you know, men have a sexual preference for that ratio, right? Like why? Yeah, if you show them, I think, like if you show men this series of hip to waist ratio, a shocking number of them go for that specific one,

even when they're presented with like 10. So there's studies on escorts where men always like the high paying escorts, like more successful escorts have that waist ratio. Same with men's searching pornography. They'll watch the women with that waist ratio. There's actually studies on congenitally congenitally blind men who have never seen a day of life. They do a touch test of a woman who doesn't have that waist ratio and then women who have that waist ratio and they choose the woman with you know the wider waist and it's like well now we have you know i guess some converging lines of evidence uh it's called neurological networks of cumulative evidence which when you can't directly

study something you study multiple different things that are related to that to sort of give you some idea of what's happening and that's why women want that you know physique it's like it's attractive to the males and like sure right so i'm getting into all this kind of stuff which is like yeah it's so fascinating to me because i do think it's a it's a wonderful evolution of the thought processes in a trainer or a coach's brain which is you know so much of what we start out focusing on is the theoretical, the physiological, the chemical stuff specific to nutrition, and maybe some of the anatomical stuff and the physics stuff and the math stuff. And you can dive into that stuff and really sharpen your science sword as it is and get

a good understanding for it. But then you realize, well, if I don't understand people, this shit doesn't really help me too much. I can know every little tiny nuanced detail, but it's then when you take that kind of polished approach and ability to look at science that I find a lot of good coaches are drawn to the evolutionary biology, the mechanisms that cause, like you said, why do people want this physique? Why do they think this is attractive? Why do people know they shouldn't eat something but can't help themselves from eating it anyway? What's driving these hedonic tendencies? And you start to realize, yeah, I'm in the business of coaching people, but I'm also in the business of working with somebody who has 200,000 years of human evolution,

kind of undermining what it is they're looking to do because it's like, you know, you shouldn't eat that. I told you not to eat that, but that tiny little reptilian part of your brain is strong as a motherfucker and it really wants you to eat that. And it's just, I found that I'm quite interested in this stuff. Other coaches I know are very interested in this stuff. So hearing you say that is cool because I do find it to be very fascinating. And it does help indirectly and directly with what we do and how we engage with people. I think one thing that's super important for coaches out there to understand is that there is no part of my practice, whether it's mentoring other coaches or coaching my clients, where I use what I study in my own curricular time, extracurricular studies on evolutionary psychology, directly in my practice. It is all just something that is separate, that is a hobby, that, you know, I think is useful, both directly to me in as a learner, and somebody who's becoming educated,

and, you know, trying to improve my thinking and, yeah, thought processes and way of understanding the world. But I never try to take what I learn directly when I'm not qualified or, you know, within my scope and practice that in a direct way. You won't ever hear me present, you know, lectures telling people, you know, specifically that this is why we, you know, want this waist-hip ratio because evolutionary theory and sexual selection criteria and preferences of men, you will never hear me present on that. It's got to be something that is separate to your actual work,

but I think it's really useful to understand the link between evolutionary psychology, human behaviour, and then nutrition and exercise. And being aware of some of the big rocks, which I think is a strength of mine. As I said, good coaches know the principles. I've taken the principles of evolutionary psychology and started to use those in my, I guess, mental framework and thinking apparatus when it comes to understanding why people do what they do. Yeah, I think it's a great way to put it. Like too many trainers, I think, are effectively trying to operate as pseudo-therapists or

pseudo-psychologists with the way that they communicate with clients. And it's always outside of their scope. But circling back to the point about being empathetic, once you start to understand human psychology, it gives you a tremendously enhanced ability to be empathetic because you realize, okay, there are a lot of mechanisms at play here that are happening for me, that are happening for them, and we're not all in complete control of every element of our psychology. And understanding what went into, like you said, 200,000 years of evolution that may or may not make us predisposition to want

certain things or have certain hedonistic triggers. It's a really, really good thing to layer into that base level theoretical model of how you coach and how you look at coaching. A good segue to our last question, which is another one I ask a lot of coaches, which is, that's something that's particularly interesting to you. Is there something that you're seeing now thematically or across the industry that is particularly agitating to you, frustrating to you? There's so many things. They're almost memes at this point, but I always like to parse it out. What is bugging you and grinding your gears in the fitness space right now? is bugging you and grinding your gears in the fitness space right now?

The blanket approval and application of intuitive eating. Oh yes. Yeah. It is, it is a tool in a toolbox and it's not something that is the only approach to nutrition that, you know, coaches should and could be using. And it doesn't mean that dieting is necessarily bad. I think we've just had a long history of teaching people all of the, the wrong ways to diet.

And as a result of that intuitive eating has become quite popular for good reason. But in the fitness industry, the it's a pendulum. We always see things swing one way, right. And then it swings back the other way. But oftentimes the answer lies in the middle. So it's not that, you know, dietary restraint is bad, right. Or the intuitive eating is good. It's like the answers in the middle. It's like both can be good and bad. Both are just tools, time and place.

Yeah, no, that's one that I've always really struggled with because I think the more you understand about nutrition, the more informed decisions you can make about food. And if we're only acting on intuition in the environment which we live where there's hyper palatable foods, you know, all over the place all the time, and you're allowing my uninformed or my informed intuition to attempt to make good decisions about food, that's going to be a lot different than somebody who does not have any nutritional literacy. And so the notion that like, Hey, you know, really the best way to eat is to just listen to your body and do what it's telling you. It's like, okay, yeah, but listening to my body and doing what it's telling me is why

70% of people in the United States are overweight and 45% are obese because my body is telling me to eat all these things around me, my psychology is. And unless you, like you said, unless you have some nutritional literacy, the ability to make informed intuitive eating decisions, I think if left to their own devices, people might do more harm than good. I don't know. Is that kind of what you see the central problem being there? intuitive eating model has a couple of really useful, I guess, principles. But I think the fundamental like application of it to modern Western citizens is just a fool's errand. Because there's nothing intuitive about our current environment. We have food technology that makes everything we eat hyper-palatable, you know, extremely energy dense. We have technological advancements that have decreased our activity and make transport a lot easier, right?

So cars, buses, trains, all of that stuff. So anything intuitive in this day and age is complete garbage right unless you're living a very paleo lifestyle like liver king right maybe that's a little more intuitive goat baby the greatest who's ever done it the central tenants you got to live by them yeah bro ground yourself to the floor right that has become like it's it's honestly like i love the guy because every time i'm around my buddies it's like oh what's up liver bro oh no no big just eating my liver rice krispies everything we now have the prefix of liver on and it's become one giant meme and for i i love the appeal to naturalism the the strange appeal to traditionalism

like hey if this is what worked for our ancestors it's like that's what we need to get back to it's like well yeah but they also live to be like 43 so yeah they yeah they also like died of the flu they were also riddled with you know diseases, right? It's like, I don't know if I'd want that ancestral life too much more than this one. But yeah, intuitive eating, I don't think would have worked back then necessarily or now. I think there's a lot of context that is heavily predicated upon the current environment that dictates what is intuitive and what is not. And I feel at the moment, it is intuitive to exercise some dietary restraint

more often than not, given our exposure to hyper-palatable, extremely energy dense food. I think you hit the nail on the head, man. And I think that's a great place to kind of wrap things up for those of our listeners who aren't already following you. Where's the best place for them to do that, to keep up with all the different content? And I'm sure they're looking for education too. Yeah. So you can just

follow JPS education on Instagram. Check out the JPS health and fitness website that has all of our courses, books, seminars, and coaching services. And yeah, you can follow me, Jacob Skeppis, S-E-H-E-P-I-S underscore JPS on Instagram for just a bunch of ramblings and other fitness related musings. All right, man. Thanks so much for coming on. We'll catch up again soon. Thank you.