Weights and Plates Podcast - #40 - Coaching Is More Than Just Information

Episode Date: November 14, 2022

Coach Robert and Coach Trent discuss a misunderstanding that sometimes comes up in a coaching relationship -- the idea that coaching is just a program, or a template, or a set of information that will get you to your fitness goals. The reality is that information is cheap, often free, and there's not a whole lot of information that a good coach can provide that you can't find on the internet these days. Information is rarely the road block for trainees struggling to make progress, however. What trainees often lack is a proper evaluation of where they are: how good their technique is, how far along the adapatation curve they are, what dietary habits they need to change, etc. And this is where a good coach comes into play.   A good coach can evaluate a trainee, determine technique issues that need to be cleaned up, assess recovery factors outside the gym, and make programming changes if needed. It's really hard -- even if you know what to look for! -- to self-evaluate and make accurate assessments of where you're going wrong, and what to do to fix them. But, if you are interested in truly taking your fitness to the next level, and getting results you can't get on your own, a good coach is an invaluable asset to to your training life.     Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana   Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.jonesbarbellclub.com

Welcome to the Weights and Plates podcast. I am Robert Santana. I am your host along with Trent Jones, my co-host. Yo! What up? What's up, man? Oh, man, it's pretty quiet over here. I hear that you are getting ready to go to the Starting Strength Coaches Conference for 2022. I am. This is the first conference in, did they have one? They didn't have one last year. Did they have one in 2020? I can't remember.

2019 was the last one. 2019, right? Yeah, yeah, because I went to that one. Yeah, so it's the first one in two years. I will not be going, unfortunately. It is unfortunate. We'd like to have you there. Yeah, just not the right time with a young baby at home, but next year for sure. Yep, yep. I hope we have it again next year. It should be good, though. If interstate travel is still safe and available in 2023, then I'll be there. Hopefully it is. So yeah, so today I'd like to talk about a topic that I think is important for a lot of our listeners because I think a lot of our listeners obviously lift, some with a coach, some on their own.

And, you know, we all have had to search for information on what to do when we don't have access to a coach. I used to look at magazines and message boards and websites for programs and try to follow them myself. And I've also hired a coach later on and got a lot of value out of that. So in thinking about this, I think that it's important for us to, you know, dive in and talk about the difference between finding a program on the internet and trying to follow it and hiring someone to coach you and also define what all that means, what coaching is, you know? Yeah, right, right. Yeah, I think it's funny. You mentioned that, like, in the past, you've looked at magazines and routines and stuff like that. And I forget sometimes because I've been in this starting strength,

you know, kind of deeper strength training world for several years now. So I forget that, you know, when I was like in college, a routine was just a routine, like you just did the movements, right? And if you didn't, you know, if you didn't know what it was, then you just kind of look at a video or if you could find one, or you just kind of like, look at a, like a description in a muscle mag where it's like, you know, got drawings and shit and you're like, okay, I got it. Cool. I'm good. I'll just do it. And now I'm like, there's so much more to it, you know, we've talked about, yeah, there's so much more to it.

Like we've talked about on this show, right? Like how much technique matters, obviously on the big barbell lifts, but even on the little stuff, right? Like if you're going to do a single arm dumbbell row, like how many people fuck those up? Like a lot of people, right? How many people fuck up their chin ups? A lot of people, how many people don't get the most out of their curls that they could? A whole lot of people. These are pretty easy things, but there's but there's a huge difference between doing it right and doing it wrong and just doing it half-ass. And so right there, that experience that I've had alone tells me that you just are not going to get great results if you just pick, if you look at a program as simply a bunch of sets and reps and exercise selections on a page. There's a lot more to it. That's actually maybe the least important part of

it. I would say that a program, and you know, this is something I learned in my experience and research, a program like any other instrument or protocol has assumptions. There are assumptions behind that program. So, we talk about starting strength a lot. You know, it's a novice linear progression, specifically starting strength is the book. The novice linear progression is the program. And what you're getting from the book or it's any website that, you know, has copied it over is a template, right? A template for how to structure your training program and what sets and reps to do, right? So workout A, three sets of five squats, three sets of five press, one set of five deadlift, workout B, three sets of five squats, three sets of five bench press, one set of five

deadlifts. You add weight to the bar every time, you know, five to 10 pounds on the squat the first couple of weeks, 10 to 20 pounds on the deadlift the first couple of weeks, and about two and a half to five pounds on the press and the bench press the first week. Now there's other phases to that, you know, build off of that. Then later on you alternate the deadlift with the power clean. You do five sets of three, try to add weight to that, you know, a couple pounds per workout. And then later on, you know, there's other permutations of it as you continue to add weight to that, you know, a couple pounds per workout. And then later on, you know, there's other permutations of it as you continue to add more and more intensity. So the squat and the deadlift, at least in the beginning, follow a linear progression.

You're adding weight every single time and all other variables stay exactly the same. You're still doing a squat. You're still doing three sets of five. You're just changing the load, right? Right. You're still doing three sets of five. You're just changing the load, right? Right.

The deadlift starts alternating with the power clean by week three or four, depending on the lifter. Yep. And later on, you start spreading out the intensity, too. It becomes nonlinear at some point because you start squatting light, heavy, light, heavy. So it's no longer a purely linear program. But this is more for a periodization discussion. program. But this is more for a periodization discussion. For our purposes here, what I want to say is the assumption there, if you are just copying the program that's free on the internet, as people like to say, the assumption is that you are performing the technique as written in the Starting Strength Basic Barbell Training 3rd Edition textbook. You have to have textbook

technique every single time and that you are fully recovered every single time, meaning you are eating enough, you are sleeping enough, you are gaining weight. Weight gain is an assumption of the program if you need to gain weight. If you're overweight, you should be maintaining your weight, losing inches. That's usually what we see with somebody who's truly overweight. But typically, if you're an underweight novice, the assumption is you are eating in a surplus to gain body weight as you are performing these exercises. If you are an overweight novice, you are eating at maintenance or maybe a slight surplus, probably at maintenance, and losing inches off of— I like to say that if you're i mean really if you're pretty fat right like if you have a large amount of adipose tissue then you know that's the one scenario where you

you may be in a slight it really you're eating at maintenance and as your metabolic rate increases from the activity and from the lifting and from the gain in muscle mass you might start to lose a little bit of weight but that we're talking about people who are borderline obese, if not obese, in that case. If you're just kind of overweight, chances are you fall in that skinny fat category, in which case you should be eating to gain. Just want to clarify that. Yeah, absolutely. We talked about skinny fat recently. Yeah, yeah. If you are a skinny fat novice, you need to eat to gain. You may not need to gain as

much as the skinny lean novice, but you need to gain. So yeah, so you are a skinny, fat novice, you need to eat to gain. You may not need to gain as much as the skinny, lean novice, but you need to gain. So, yeah, so those are your assumptions. You're sleeping enough. You're anabolic with your diet, meaning you're eating to gain weight if you're underweight. You're eating at maintenance if you're overweight. And your technique is impeccable and mirrors that which is in the book. And your technique is impeccable and mirrors that which is in the book. It also assumes that you are incrementally loading the lifts as instructed in the book,

meaning your bench press is going to go up a couple pounds after the first few weeks, right? Your press is going to go up a couple of pounds after the first few weeks. Your deadlift is going to go up by a lot the first two weeks, and then a little bit less in the remaining weeks. You might go up 20 pounds per workout on week one and then stay at 10 for the next few months if you're truly a rank novice, right? Right. So there's all these assumptions, but in practice, and you can go on the starting strength boards and see this in the training logs, you will find that even people who are reporting what they're doing on the Starting Strength website aren't doing the program as described. I mean, this is just incredibly common.

RIP has an article called A Clarification, which I recommend reading. You know, Google Starting Strength A Clarification or Mark Ripito A Clarification. It's a good synopsis of what happens when you hand somebody a template and say, all right, do this program exactly as it's written, follow all these rules. They don't do the program, so much that Rip had read an article 12 years ago about it. And this applies to anything. I mean, if we could, you know, you can go on the internet and pretty much find anything these days. Back in the day, you can go to a bookstore or library and find written information on how to do things, some bad, some good, but let's take something, you know, you're a musician.

I'm a quasi-musician and amateur musician, I guess, you know. I just bought an actual instrument recently, but I used to DJ. So I like to use musical examples. You can go buy a guitar, and there's plenty of books and videos on how to play it. How many people self-teach that aren't gifted and, you know, go on to become, you know, become successful guitarists, right? Yeah, very few. Yeah, exactly. Now there's people that do self-teach and never become successful guitarists, so, you know, abilities and all of it, but that's a different story. But the whole point is,

you have access to information on how to play a guitar, but does that mean you're going to use that information to get yourself to a high level of proficiency? No, no, it's not. And in fact, I actually do have some numbers off the top of my head on this. So Fender has studied this for years. Of all the people who buy our guitars, Fender's guitars, how many people end up playing guitar past the year mark or two year mark, right? And it's somewhere a little less than 10% end up playing guitar for the long period of time. Now that's nothing to say about how proficient they get at it. Like a lot of these people I suspect probably get to just a very beginner level and stay there forever. Right. Yeah, that's right. couple of years later. And, um, yeah, I mean, that's not surprising, right? Like, uh, you, you mentioned, um, the, uh, not doing the program article. I I'm, I'm recalling an article that was posted on the starting strength website called, um, you know, you didn't do the program with,

uh, Nick Rekulia, who is, uh, I believe he's, he's got a PhD. I believe he has some sort of like a statistics background. Oh yeah. But so basically went through, as of 2015 or 2016, they went through all of those starting strength novice logs that you were talking about on the website that were posted, and they statistically analyzed, well, how many of the people actually did the program and what kind of results did they get? And I want to say that the adherence rate

to people who followed the program to a T and did everything right was like, I don't know, like 2%, you fuck it up, works. It works pretty well, and the novice effect works. But yeah, it was basically almost everyone bastardized the program to some extent. Yeah, so, you know, that's the whole point. You know, you can hand somebody a manual on how to do something, and you are probably going to fuck it up. If I hand you a program and say follow it, you are probably going to fuck it up. And those of you that don't probably will end up working alongside of me as a colleague, you know? Yeah, right, right. Well, although I will say that even coaches, like, part of the reason why you hire a coach is because we have fucked up all the things that you can fuck up and we had to fix it. And so we've gotten proficient at identifying the problem. We have personal experience with the problem often

And we've had to fix fix it ourselves and that's what makes us good as coaches like, you know You tore your adductor and you tore it again from squatting improperly, right? So you're very sensitive now to understanding The things that are going to lead to a torn adductor if you're fucking them up, right? Right. Um, i've had you know patellar tendonitis a couple of times. It really sucked, and I had to rebuild my squat technique to fix that. I've had biceps tendonitis. I've had all these things, and I've fixed them,

so that makes me a good coach. And that's the thing about handing someone a program, a template, without coaching, is that what people lack, whether it's playing an instrument or trying to lift weights with good technique, what people lack is the ability to evaluate where they're at and what mistakes they're making. Exactly. You know, you can look at all the videos you want of how to play

chords and scales and stuff like that on the guitar. What you may not realize is like, are you even holding the pick correctly? Are you playing with too much tension? You know, are you fretting the notes in the right spot on the fretboard? Because if you're messing those things up, then you're never going to get the chords and the scales. You're never going to get the proficiency with them that you need. So a lot of people might be like, ah, well, this program just sucks. Well, no, you're not getting the fundamentals right. And we can say the exact same thing about barbell training. fundamentals right. And we can say the exact same thing about barbell training. Yeah, no, that's 100% correct. I train on my own these days, and it seems to be working fine. I'm progressing steadily

each year, but I worked with coaches for a while. But the reason I bring this up now is because, let's say you decide to hire a coach, and your coach gives you the linear progression and says, well, dude, you're squatting high. You're rounding your back on the deadlift. Your press is going seven inches in front of you and you're gripping it too wide and you're bouncing the bar off your chest and the bench press while tap dancing. Most common things we see with novices. Right, right. So we're going to start over, take the weight off, and we're going to follow the program. And then you turn around and try to tell me, well, hey, I could have got this program for free.

Right. And we get this. This happens. People say these things. Absolutely. So we feel that this needs to be addressed. When you hire a coach, chances are if you're hiring someone who's proficient at something, the information aspect of it is probably available elsewhere. That's not what you're paying for. Information has become very cheap or free these days, you know? Right, exactly. So that's like saying, okay, I wrote a book on how to play golf

and I followed the program on how to swing the club and all that shit, and now my golf coach wants me to do exactly what's in the book because he says i've been doing it wrong my i've been doing it wrong on my own so what the fuck am i paying him for that's free all that's in the book right yeah despite the fact these people never ask themselves too they're like oh well but it's not working what i'm doing yeah you know generally generally the people who who have a problem with this have tried it on their on their own and they haven't gotten anywhere and they're like and they're convinced that it's just, it's some sort of magic programming decision. It's just the sets and reps need to be changed somehow, or like the exercises need to be picked in a certain order. And once they get that right, it'll, things will start to move again. And I think a lot of times these people are looking

for programming solutions to technique and recovery issues. Or programming solutions to body composition issues. Or body composition issues. Yeah. Yeah. Because I deal with both in my line of work. And what I will say is that when you hire somebody to help you with anything, not just lifting a barbell or designing a training program, they're going to use some sort of template that you can probably find on the internet. That's just how it is. Because in general, humans have a finite number of ways to move, okay? We have a finite number of joints and muscles on our body, you know? The specifics, you know, and the finer details can vary across individuals.

One person's stance might be different on the deadlift than the other. I might have an old guy only squat twice a week, you know, after week one or two, you know. Right. I might use a safety squat bar for an old guy. I might do a high bar squat for a guy with tight shoulders, you know. I might, some of the guys that I train might not even bench. They might just press, you know. Right. And you learn that once you start watching people move.

So I, oh, you know, here's another thing that you get. once you start watching people move. So, here's another thing that you get. When somebody hires a coach, might say, well, I can't do X exercise because it hurts. Well, the assumption of that statement is that you've been doing X exercise the way that I would teach you to do it. And the chances are the odds are against that. Odds are highly against that. So, yeah, show me what it looks like. Keep the weight light enough to where it's not going to actually injure you. It might hurt a little bit, but show me what you're doing now. Every time people actually do that, I find a bunch of things wrong. I fix it and they start feeling better, you know? Yeah. So let me ask you a question on that front. So of all the people

that have reached out to you for coaching, I assume some are going to be rank novices that are just totally new to this, but a lot of people probably have previous exposure to the program, especially people that find you through the starting strength materials, articles in the directory and stuff. Right. Of all the people that you've worked with, day one, they send you videos or you see them in person in the gym. How many of them had rock solid, great technique where you're like, yeah, we can maybe change some tiny little things here, but you look great already?

I'd say less than a percent. Right, yeah. It's basically nobody. Everybody's screwing it up to some degree. The number's greater than zero, but not by much. Not by much, right? Once in a blue moon, I might see a guy that comes in and say, okay, move your feet out a little bit, fix this.

Wow, you've self-taught pretty good, dude, but that's not very often, you know? Yeah. Very, very rare. Almost everyone that I work with, even the great movers, is screwing something up. And when I have seen that, when I'm most impressed, it's usually when the squat's right on, but then you get to like the deadlift. Yeah, right. It's like all fucked up, you know? Yeah. There's always something yeah because you know squats the most complex lift that we teach so i expect that to

be a train wreck most of the time but occasionally i'll get a guy that looks just like the textbook we'll move to the squat we'll move to the press we'll move to the bench press you know maybe some finer adjustments here we'll get to the deadlift and it's a train wreck yeah right or vice versa you know the squats a train wreck and then the other lifts are fine. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, right, right. I'm like, whoa, you didn't round your back in the deadlift? I'm like shocked when I see that. Yeah, yeah. But the point is, what does a coach do, you know? You're hiring a coach to supervise you, first of all, because you can't supervise yourself. The idea that you know exactly how you're moving

is flawed from the fact that you can't watch yourself. And if you do video yourself, it's still flawed because the assumption there is that you have an eye for what's fucked up, and you probably don't because you haven't watched millions of people do this, you know? Yeah. Develop that yet. Right, right. And even if you do, right? So like you and I have watched thousands and thousands and thousands of squats and deadlifts and stuff. I noticed that even when I'm looking at my own videos, I can point out problems here and there, but I'm blind to my own problems a lot of times

because I think a lot of times I don't want to be wrong. Like I don't want to admit the fact that like, yeah, those deadlifts were not that great. you could fix that up. I'd be like, yeah, fine. Yeah, it's good enough. You know, this is fine. It, it, whereas somebody that's, you know, when a coach is watching your movements, like I'm dispassionate, I really don't care. I have nothing emotionally invested in how well your set goes. I'm totally neutral when I'm watching these videos. Um, and nothing is going to upset me. Nothing's going to make me go. I mean, I get excited when people do it right. When they've been really struggling, you know, that's great. This gets me excited, but like, I, there's no emotional response wrapped up in me watching

your squat set. And therefore I'm dispassionately kind of marking down the things that, that you need to fix, right. And prioritizing them. And that's, even if you really know what you're looking at and you're a coach, that's really hard to do for yourself. It's just, you're just not going to do it. Yeah. You know? So, yeah, again, you're assuming that, you know, you've done everything correctly on your own and you need something novel. And chances are you fucked up a lot of things on your own and need the same thing applied correctly. And when you hire somebody to coach you, you're hiring somebody that can identify your errors and correct them, you know, and troubleshoot sticking points. For instance, you know, I may get through the technique stuff in the first, you know, usually the first day if it's in person, maybe the or two, um, if it's online and the person's reasonably coordinated, if they're uncoordinated,

it takes longer, but, um, you know, we might get through that. Then we might start adding weight. Then you start missing reps because you are sleeping five hours a day, or you're not, you're eating, you're eating 80 grams of protein when you need 180, you know, or you're not eating enough carbs because you've been doing keto, you know? Yep. Or you're resting two minutes between sets instead of five minutes. And when you're on your own, you're going to downplay all of that because when you're on your own and you don't have experience with this, the common thing that most of us

are going to think is, well, I showed up and I worked hard. That's all that matters, you know? And you may not even be consciously thinking that, but you're feeling that, you know? And then you're like trying to minimize all these other factors outside of the weight room, you know? Yeah. You know, this is one of many examples. The whole point is I'm here watching you fuck it up and telling you you're fucking it up and telling you how to fix it. That's what you hire a coach for. If you just want to program, you can find those on the internet, you know? If you just want to program, you can find those on the internet, you know? Right. Yeah. And there's, yeah, there's, there's so much that goes into that. You know, there's, there's these, there's these basic factors that we see beginners mess up quite a bit. Um, you know, for me, I work with a lot of older folks, you know, folks that are a lot of over 40, like almost

everyone I work for is over 40, quite a few are over 50 and quite a few are in their sixties. I even have some trainees in their seventies that I work with. And that's a whole nother ball game because, you know, you may say, like you said, you may say like, oh, I can't squat, hurts my knees. And I'm like, well, you know, we can, let's, let's see what we got here. Let's see what we work with. But, you know, sometimes it's true that they can't do the, the textbook technique or they can't go to the, you know, the perfect range of motion. Like they can't do the textbook technique or they can't go to the perfect range of motion. They can't get their hip crease just below the top of the patella and hit those landmarks that we expect in a textbook starting strength style squat. But they may be able to

squat an inch higher to a box, right? Same thing with a press. They may not have 180 degrees of shoulder flexion, but they may be able to get 165, 170, right? And so they may not be able to move the bar in a perfectly straight line, but they can move it in a fairly straight line. And so we do that. And that's having a coach be able to tell you like, okay, no, no, no, that's just something you're messing up. You're messing up the technique and the execution is wrong versus, Hey, listen, you've got some anatomical issues going on, right? Your joints don't move like they used to. And we're going to have to adapt. We're going to have to modify the movement to work, but we can, and here's how we're going to do it. Right. That, that's another thing that you're paying for with a coach is, is, is telling you like what stuff is, is, um, prioritizing for you, right. Telling you where to put your focus

and where to not worry about stuff. So like, yeah, I have some guys, their upper back looks like a question mark. They're so kyphotic, like their deadlift is never going to look like their back is set in a straight line because they can't, they physically can't. So I tell them, it's like, Hey, listen, don't worry about that. Don't worry about that. Right. What we're going to work on is making sure your lower back set. Right. Some guys who just can't squat to depth, um, because of like, I've had some post-op hip patients, but I'm like, okay, we're going to squat an inch, inch high, but we're going to do it every time. And as long as you do that, you're fine. We're not going to a powerlifting meet here. There's no judges besides me. So, there's that aspect too.

Yeah, absolutely. So, what we're really hitting on a lot here is that, you know, we are, we spend a lot of time coaching technique. And that's not surprising because starting strength is 90, 90% of that book is dedicated to technical execution of the five main lifts with a small portion dedicated to programming. That's why he published the Gray book separately. Practical programming for strength training, third edition. That's the programming book. So, you know, we spend a lot of time coaching technique because barbell lifts and free weight exercises in general are limited by technique because you have to stabilize yourself while you move. That's the biggest reason. These

are very specific movements. They can be, most people can learn them, but if you are less coordinated, that's going to take you longer, which means your progression is not going to be so linear because you're going to spend more time fucking around with technique and motor learning than somebody who's, you know, a little bit more proficient can pick it up, right? So, you got to be patient with yourself. You know, you get guys that come in and they want these, they want to either lift these big numbers or get this dramatic body composition change in a short period of time, but then they get pissed off that, you know, there's no measurable progress in terms of numbers because we're spending all this time on technique,

right? So, you know, my rebuttal to that is, well, if you don're spending all this time on technique right right so you know my rebuttal that is well if you don't want to spend time on technique and all you care about is body composition go do a bunch of machines because they're practically idiot proof and they're still technical by the way you can hurt yourself on a leg press if you don't control your back you know absolutely but sure you don't have to stabilize your body as much if you're on a machine and then add a little bit of weight to those each time. This is for the gen pop listener who does not give a shit about strength or performance and just wants to look a certain way. You're going to look better with a barbell, first of all, but it's going to take you a long time if you're a motor moron because you're going to fuck around a lot trying to fix your technique.

If you're at a gym like mine in person, that speeds it up. That's not always an option, you know? But, you know, it speeds things up when you have somebody there watching you in real time, making the corrections, giving you those tactile cues so you can feel those muscles work and perform the movements you need to perform. You're going to go further, you know? But if you're training on your own or with an online coach and you're a motor moron, expect this to take a while. Expect this to take a while because you're going to spend more time on technique than somebody who's a little more athletic. Yeah, exactly. You know, I found that as I get older, my time becomes more and more precious.

Like, literally, my day is busier than it used to be 10 years ago, even five years ago. But also like I'm getting closer to the day that I won't be here anymore on planet Earth, right? So my time is getting more and more precious as I get older. And so I'm finding more and more value in good mentorship and good coaching in all aspects of my life. And I'm much more likely to try to find somebody who's competent to teach me something than I am to try to self-teach nowadays. Absolutely. And part of the reason is because, I mean, I already said it, but I just want to reiterate it. It's because what a good mentor or coach or whatever teacher does for you is helps you figure out where you are now, which you're not always, it's really hard to

self-evaluate. I had this experience recently. One of the things that I do besides barbell coaching is I'm an audio engineer. I produce podcasts. I've produced at this point, thousands of episodes. I didn't know that, man. Right? You didn't know that. Maybe I should hire you. So, you know, I've mixed a lot of podcasts, right? I've mixed a fair amount of music as well, but that's a skill that I'm still developing. And I've gotten pretty good at it, but I hired a guy to just do a little bit of, basically a little bit of mentorship, right? I just paid him for a

couple of coaching lessons. I was like, hey, I want to send a couple of mixes to you that I've done of these musical tracks that I've made. And I just, I need some feedback. I just, I don't know where I'm missing. And one of the things I said is like, I'm having trouble with having my snare drum sound present in the mix without having to turn it way up and drown everything else out. And so I was convinced it was some sort of thing I was messing up with the snare drum in the mixing process to make it cut like it's supposed to.

And he immediately comes back and he's just like hammering me about the bass. He's like, dude, your bass, like what's going on? The bass is like all over the place. You got way too much low end going on. And I'm like, what are you talking about? The bass sounds fine here. Like, that's not what I need help with.

I need help with the snare. And he's hammering about this stuff. And i'm like okay all right he's hearing something i don't um let me just try this and i remixed the track with his suggestions and the snare pops out the snare sounds great now i'm like what the hell i just changed the bass i didn't do anything to the snare okay well that's just the same example as what we're talking about here is that I just, I didn't, I couldn't hear what I, what I had. I could not yet hear what he was hearing because I hadn't identified the problem yet. low frequency mess that I had created that I couldn't even hear it. That was the thing. It's not like I lacked the right fix for it. It's that I couldn't even hear the problem in the first place. And he did. And that's what the coaching did for me. And that's why I'm finding like in all aspects of my life, when I can, when I can afford it, I really like to work with, with people, with good coaches, because that's what they offer that a program or written,

with people, with good coaches, because that's what they offer that a program or written, you know, manual can never do for you. There's never that evaluation process. Right. And, you know, same thing applies to diet. I run into some of the same problems, right? Like, I'll give out a general, you know, start somebody out with a general diet template based on estimates that I make based on height, weight, age, sex, and, you know, maybe some data that they provided me. You know, I come up with these ballpark figures and give a general template of how to distribute their macros throughout the day, give them a list of foods that they can choose from, you know, the most common things available.

If they have questions about things outside of there, I, you know, tell them, yeah, you can have that. That's fine. You know, I'm pretty flexible with that. But at the end of the day, you know, if you come to me and you're a 45-year-old male or female, let's say you're 5'8", you're 200-pound male, you know, and you're untrained, you need to lose weight, you know, because you're untrained, you know, or let's say you're, you know, a 200-pound female at any height, you know, you're probably going to get a similar breakdown as

somebody else that's in the same boat as you, because I don't know you, you know, I have no way to predict your idiosyncrasies or any individual issue that you have. You can tell me things like, oh, I'm following these macros. Okay, well, that's data. I can build off those. I might go a little bit higher, you know, because I always assume that there's a margin upward, you know, so there's things that I do there. But at the same time, I'm going to make similar estimates if I'm dealing with a complete stranger whose body I don't know yet, right? Right. Yep. And, you know, I've had that same thing. You gave me a template. And it's like, yeah, and what? If you downloaded off the internet yourself, you probably did it wrong.

Let's go back to the classic, you know, for those academics out there listening, the Dan Singer study from 2005. It's one of my favorite professional research articles to cite. And I reviewed it with Sullivan a couple years ago. John Sullivan, the author of the Barbell Prescription, a book that I recommend for my 40 pluses. Anyways, we reviewed this article because it's my favorite one to cite when I'm talking about this phenomena. They compared four different diets, I believe. It was Zone versus Atkins versus Ornish versus Weight Watchers. And they had a registered dietitian educate the research participants on how to follow these diets, right?

Which meant that they came in, they gave them a bunch of paperwork on what the diet entails, what they're supposed to eat, etc. And told them to follow it every day, and then kick them back home to do it. So basically, they handed them a diet, these people followed it on their own, they came back, they kept food logs, they provided data. Now, people who listen to me regularly know how I feel about food logs, but this gets interesting. So the Ornish diet is 10% of your calories or less from fat. So it's a very low fat diet, right? Right. Yeah. And the people that were randomly assigned to the group that had to follow the Ornish diet

ate too much fat. Shocking. And that's according to their self-report, so it's probably much higher, you know? But they reported more fat than that 10%, a lot more. The people on the Atkins diet were instructed to eat 20 grams of carbohydrate or less. That's what I remember Atkins being. I don't have the paper in front of me, but it's probably not far off from that. And guess what? They ate too many carbs. The people on the zone diet were supposed to eat 40% of their calories from protein, 30% of their calories from fat, and 30% of their calories from carbohydrate, 40, 30, 30. I think if you're truly following the zone, you're supposed to do that every meal too, but I don't remember. I never got in the zone, but never got in the zone, you're supposed to do that every meal too, but I don't remember. I never got into zone.

Yeah. But never got into zone, man. But they didn't eat enough protein. So we see a theme here, right? It's really hard to eat a lot of protein unless you're instructed to do so. It's really hard to stay on a very low-fat diet for very long or even for a short period of time. It's very hard. It's logistically hard. And it's also very hard to stay on a very low-carb diet for very long, right? I think the Weight Watchers

came out the best, which is unsurprising. People that follow it tend to follow it until they don't, as with any diet, but it tends to be easier to follow because it's a point system. I don't know how I don't know how it's structured now, but back in the day it was a point system. I think that's the same, but they didn't discriminate between good foods and bad foods, you know, just add up your points. So I can see that being easier to follow. I don't have the data on that, but I'm pretty sure they probably reported going over their points. Now, let me remind everybody, they reported not doing the program. They reported not doing the program. So that means they probably really didn't do the fucking program, you know? Because we don't have actual intake.

We have reported intake. So, again, you hire me, you're going to get a meal plan to follow, and somebody else might get a similar one, you know? You know, if you have a medical condition, it might restrict certain things here and there. But again, if you're doing an apples to apples comparison, you get two people that are the same height and weight, same training age, and I know nothing else about you, never worked with you before, you're going to get something similar to the next guy. You might even get something that looks similar to something you download off the internet because the information isn't what you're paying for. That's free. You're absolutely right. That is free. If you just want information and a diet template or a menu of meals to follow, you can get that off the internet and just do a one-time payment.

Eventually, I have these on my website. I don't sell those yet, but more of the design part of it. I need to start designing them. I don't know how to make things pretty. That's not my forte. You hire people for that, right? I do. I have a couple people that can probably get that done.

So once I get that done, I'll probably have menus and meal plans available on the website, but you can, and you can download, you can get recipe books. Like if you just want information, that's free. But, you know, that's like, you know, if you buy a guitar on your own and then go to a guitar coach or teacher, instructor, guitar instructor, let's say you buy a guitar, go to a guitar instructor and he tells you, well, you have to have a guitar, and let's get started. Well, fuck this guy.

He told me to get a guitar. I already knew to do that, you know? Right. I did that on my own. What the fuck did I need him for? I already bought the guitar. It's the same thing, you know? The template that you get is the guitar.

Now, you know more about that instrument than I do. There's things you can do to a guitar to modify it that help the person out, right? Um, but yeah, I think what you're describing is, you know, we have to remember like how the starting strength template, if you will, even came about in the first place. Like, why the heck do we do fives? Why three sets of five? Why not five sets of five? That's what strong lifts does. Why not five sets of five? Why not 10 sets of five? Um, well, the whole reason that we pick that in the first place is because, you know, from empirical data of coaching a whole bunch of people over the years, we have determined that sets of five are a nice sweet spot between intensity, as in you can do themrophy stimulus, right? So you're putting your muscles under tension for a long enough period of time to make you stronger. And there's an added aspect of this is that when you are a novice, five reps is also enough practice to get good at lifting weights. because remember, you don't get good at lifting lightweights. You don't get good at technique by lifting lightweights a whole bunch of times. You get good at technique by practicing lifting heavy weights by making them heavier every time, right? Like you're never going to get good at lifting, at squatting 225 with good technique by doing a whole bunch of warmups at 135. Your 135 will look awesome and your 225 is going to have whatever problem it has Right you get better by lifting 225 with better technique. It's a skill. It's a mental skill and a physical skill 100 Yeah, so

Um, so that's why we picked fives in the first place It's not because we that five is the perfect magic number that just has something about it That makes you stronger than anything else. We could have done threes We could have done eights, but we found that fives are the sweet spot. Same thing with three sets of five. It seems to be enough work for most people to drive progress for a while. Okay. So the way that we approach things in coaching is, is with everything is kind of a similar thing, right? Like we have to start you somewhere. There's gotta be some sort of structure to start with. So that's where we start you and we adjust as needed, right?

Based on our observations of how you're doing with the starting point. Absolutely. So it's not that this program has any magic to it. It's just simply that it's a good starting point based on our experience with lots and lots of other people. And then we modify it as we go. And guess what? That's what happens if you actually do the program and you stick with it, you're eventually going to become an advanced lifter if you do this long enough. And when you become an advanced

lifter, advanced lifters have much more individualized programs, right? Because they have to adapt things as they go, right? So it's just a process of iteration that we do. And that's the difference between coaching and just, you know, template hopping, right? Yeah. You know, and if you want to progress inefficiently because an intermediate program is more entertaining for you, you can do that. But again, you can download that off the internet. That's not what you're paying a coach for. If all you want is information, that's a lot cheaper than hiring somebody.

Because you're right. If I'm just handing you a template and that's all you want, and you're not interested in the other aspects of coaching, the guidance, then don't fucking hire a coach. Download the template. I mean, you can buy the templates are pretty cheap. I think, what does Baker charge, 30 bucks or something? Yeah, I think you can even get a deal if you buy a few of them at a time, you know? But what we do for you is we guide you through the process of following that template as intended.

You know, we make sure the application is correct because you're likely to fuck it up doing it on your own. It happens all the time. We're human. We're guilty of it ourselves, as we've said. But, you know, you're not hiring me to design a fancy program for, you know, a textbook on strength and conditioning program design. That's not what you're hiring me for. You're hiring me to guide you through the process of getting stronger or building muscle, you know, or getting healthier. You know, some people just want to exercise, you know, and I work with those people too. But the recipe is not all that complicated. And there's only so many permutations of programming that you can do.

You know, there's a line to be drawn. You know, I'm not going to sit here and I'm probably not going to give you a band program. I'm going to say, you know, you should just go to be drawn. You know, I'm not going to sit here and I'm probably not going to give you a band program. I'm going to say, you know, you should just go to LA Fitness and hire somebody there, you know, because I got to draw the line somewhere. I'm not going to be very motivated to do that for you, you know. Right. I'm not a bodybuilding coach. If you're like, hey, man, I want to be a great bodybuilder.

That's just not what I do. I'm sorry, man. I can get you real strong if you're a total beginner. I can give you a good foundation, but I'm not the guy if you want muscle. I can help you lose body fat. I use barbells. I use dumbbells. I use machines. You know, I'm not a strongman coach, so I can't really program that, you know? Right. Yeah. You know, there's just, there's certain things. I don't CrossFit, you know? So, if you want WODs, you know, you can go hire a CrossFit coach, you know? So, I understand all that, but when you hire a coach, you're paying for guidance. You know, the information is highly accessible and

relatively cheap these days. Information's not that expensive anymore, not like it used to be. But if you want to learn how to use the information correctly, that is what you are paying a coach for. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, so, you know, let's, maybe we can, that, I think that's really well said. So maybe we can wrap up on, you know, how do you become more coachable if you do hire a coach? Because there's like to get the most out of your hard earned dollars that you're spending on coaching. Cause I know it's not cheap.

Um, there, you, you should, you want to be coachable, right? And how do you do that? Well, I find that the people that are the best, they get the best results and they're the easiest to coach for me are the people who first of all are open-minded with their technique, right? And they're willing to try out changes. And this can be hard when you're working. This is easier when you're starting with novices who don't really have an idea of what good technique feels like or looks like in the first place this can be really hard for people who have been lifting for several years and maybe have some deeply embedded

errors in their technique that they need to kind of back up and address but if you have an open mind to be like hey listen let's just let's just try it for me okay and it's the same thing with if it's an exercise that you're not familiar with what you've never done before, or it's a programming style that you're not familiar with, then just be open-minded and give it a try and look for like, how, how is this program working for me? Not in the first three weeks or the first six weeks, but give it three months. How's it going after three months? And I, you know, and, and then you can kind of make an honest call. Like, am I, you know, am I really getting what I wanted out of this program?

Am I communicating well with my coach? And is this like, is he getting me to a place that I couldn't have gotten to on my own? Now, I'm not saying three months is going to give you like ripped abs and the awesome body that you want. What I'm saying is that, are you starting to make progress? Because sometimes it takes a while

when you're working with somebody new to fully understand the system that they're putting you through. And it does me no good if I start to work with somebody, like there's no good for me to sit here and explain top to bottom every single thing that I'm going to do for you because it's just throwing, it'd be just like blasting a fire hose in your face of information. It's not useful yet. Right. I just know I have a system. It's like, if you just let me work it for you, then I think we're going to get you to

a good place, but it's going to take some time. And I think just knowing that and being okay with that, um, and being vulnerable sometimes is, um, is an important part of being coachable. Absolutely. Yeah. What I would say is the most coachable, uh, most coachable client is one who could go in knowing that he's probably fucking something up, you know, plain and simple. Yeah, sure. And, you know, it's hard for some people, you know, and you have to be able to take criticism. And you have to be prepared for trial and error, especially if you're an intermediate. Oh, yeah, right. You know, there is a period of time where your coach has to learn how you respond to things.

Yeah, sure. We're all making estimates when you're brand new. I have no idea what the hell your body does over a long enough timeline. It's not something that I know. And the only way to find that out is to collect data. And the more further along you are in the adaptation curve, the more intermediate or advanced you are, the more time we have to spend doing that. And that's normal. Again, if you're late intermediate or an advanced lifter, PRs are happening less frequently.

So we have to spend several months. You want things directionally going in the right way. If you're beat up week two, not going anywhere, you probably fucked something up, you know, then you have to adjust that, but that really generally shouldn't happen. You know, I tried, you're on the side of easing in versus diving in, you know? Yes. Yeah. Same here. Always. Yeah. And that's what any coach should do. You know, I make no assumptions and yeah, that's what's important. You have to understand that the post-novice phase is where people get weeded out because training is less predictable, more sensitive to factors outside of the gym, you know, and much more nonlinear, you know. What I've noticed with advanced is it becomes predictable again, but you're just training in months and years, you know, so you're just kind of directionally moving and you're going

in a certain direction and you eventually get there, you know, like sometimes I get interrupted. I did a bad hike two weeks ago, had to reset my squat because it just wrecked me and, you know, I knew to go lighter that week. I thought the next week I'd get it back. Then I slept like shit. So, you know, and I did a little reset working back up, but intermediate was the most fucking volatile moment or volatile phase that I've been through as a lifter, because you're just figuring it all out. You don't know what you need. You know, progress is there one week. It's not there the next week. You feel strong one week. You don't feel strong the next week. It's a novel experience because you've never been through it before. It's like I always use the analogy.

It's like when you grow your hair long, there's that in-between phase where it's not long, it's not short, and it just looks like shit. That's intermediate training, essentially. And then your hair just gets long. That's advanced training, you know? Yeah. And if you shave your head, it grows real fast. That's the novice effect, you know? So, that's my favorite analogy for it. And I noticed that when people go from novice to intermediate, you find out who really just, you know, wants to push their limits and become a more advanced lifter, gain more muscle mass beyond the newbie gains. And, you know, who doesn't? And there's various reasons for that. You know, this, people don't like to hear this, but, you know, if you want a dramatic

transformation and you're, you don't have the genetics for this, you're in this for a few years, you know, those six to nine months of newbie gains, after that, you're in for some frustration, you know, that's part of the ride, man, you know? Right, right. And it's gonna be more demanding on your time. You know, it becomes like a part-time job, you know? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and you know, I'd say with this, like I like the way you put that, that, you know, you gotta be ready for some trial and error

because that's the way that programming and this stuff works, right? Even, you know, even technique fixes are like that. You know, I don't know. I can't get inside your head and understand exactly how you're going to interpret a cue that I give you. No.

Right? So sometimes I have to try a couple before we land on something that really sticks. That's magnified online. Yeah, absolutely. And it's magnified online because I can't get in there and like physically put you in the position

with my hands, right? To make you feel what you're supposed to feel. So yeah, I like, I like the way you put that as an important part of being coachable. And I'd say the last thing is that good communication, right. The people that I do the best job for are the ones that keep an open line of communication and they tell me how they're feeling. You know, if, if they're like, Hey, after that workout, like my, my elbows really killing me and it's, it's kind of lingering here. Okay. I want to hear that. I want to know that rather than the person who's like, Hey, I tried to press and I just, I can't even get the bar off my chest once. And I'm like, Oh, what's, what's going on here? That's kind of weird. That's out of the blue. And they're like,

Oh dude, my, my right elbow has been killing me for like, you know, it's just killing me. And I'll, I'll dig in. It's like, Oh really? Like, well, how long is this going on? Oh, like about three weeks. And I'm like, well, fuck, like, well, I worked you into a hole now that I didn't know about. And now we got to back up and dig you out of that hole. If you just would have told me the first couple of days, then maybe we could have adjusted and not, not gotten ourselves to this point. Right. So an open line of communication. And then the other thing too, is like when people are open about not understanding something, right? So if you don't understand what I'm saying with a cue, you know, if it's like, Hey, I just, I don't quite

understand what you're saying, or I'm confused about rest times or whatever. I'd much rather you ask the question and let me clear it up for you. Then you just make a bunch of assumptions and then like move on and just, you know, and sometimes that comes from inexperience. Like you just don't know that it's an issue that you need to be worried about and that's okay. But you know, I'd much rather you ask the question than not ask the question, right? I've only had a couple of people who asked too many questions and even then we get to a good place, but I've had a lot of people who don't ask, who don't give me any feedback and they just, they're impossible to work with. We can't do it, especially online, especially online. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, you know, online's not for everybody, you know.

And, you know, there's no substitute for in-person coaching from a competent coach. It's just there's not a lot of us out there, you know. Right. This information's relatively new. I think the first edition of the book was published 17 years ago, almost 18 years ago. Yeah, 2005, right? Yeah. 2005, I think. think man 11 years since the

first printing of the third edition so yeah yeah a lot of people don't know how to coach these lifts effectively you know there's some people that accident that probably accidentally get it right through other methods you know but they're few and far between i mean look at what you see at the globo gym you know yeah right with personal trainers you know weird fucking movements and you know we don't even have to go into that but the whole point is heinous abuse of machines yeah exactly let's watch this gym fail videos on youtube yeah but you know the point is you know you hire a coach you're paying for guidance not information you know they're going to guide you through whatever process you need to go

through to achieve whatever goal you need to achieve, and this can apply to anything. The information is probably the same information that you can access on your own that's not what you're paying for, you know? And that goes for diet coaching, that goes for training, you know, that goes for pretty much anything, you know? That's what a coach does. We teach you how to do things you can't do yourself. Yeah. And, you know, you're not a programmer, you're a lifter, you know. Exactly. I mean, if you want to learn how to be a programmer, you can, you know, a training programmer, not a software engineer or anything like that.

But if you want to learn how to design training programs and you can be an apprentice, you know, and you still, you know, you're going to be under the supervision of somebody who's going to show you how to apply information that you can probably access yourself, you know? Exactly. You know, if you are a millennial, this probably goes for Gen Xers too, but I think this is probably mostly aimed at millennials. Think about all of the time that you have spent over the last 10 years learning about stuff online. 10 years ago, it was probably reading blogs. Nowadays, it's probably watching YouTube videos about something. And think about how many of those things have actually gotten you to a advanced level of skill at whatever you're doing. Like, I don't know, wood carving, right?

If you're like, I want to learn how to whittle, you know, chess pieces. Okay. You can look up YouTube videos. There's a lot of wood carvers on YouTube, some great stuff. But how many of them, how much of that experience and all that time that you've spent has actually led to you developing a high degree of skill? I know for me, I can answer that very little of it. Very little of it. There are a couple things I've self-taught to a fairly high degree of skill. I had a knack for them already, but I've made leaps and bounds of gains by just doing like some small, like really, frankly, not even very much in-person coaching, but I've done a little bit of in-person coaching on those things. And every time I do that, I make huge gains. And all the time that I've spent hours

and hours reading shit on the internet or watching YouTube videos, I really don't have much to show for it. And I think I'm willing to bet that's a lot of people out there, especially in the millennial generation, because we're kind of like the kings of these like DIY, you know, internet information age. So just give that a thought, you know, is it really, it might be a fool's bargain spending all this time trying to learn stuff on your own rather than just, you know, spending a little time with coaching. Yeah. That's my plug. Yeah. I like it. I think that's a good stopping point there. Sign us off, sir. All right. Thank you for

tuning in to the Weights and Plates podcast. You can find me at weightsandplates.com or on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana. You can find my gym at weights, double underscore and double underscore plates. Very good. You can find me on Instagram at marmalade underscore cream, or you can go find me on the internets, jonesbarbellclub.com. That's where I offer coaching services. So if you need a coach, whether it's in person or online coaching, hit me up there. You can send me a message and we'll get you to the right place. All right. We'll talk to you again in a couple of weeks. Bye.