Weights and Plates Podcast - #6 - The Danger in DIY: Why You Hire a Coach for Your Fitness

Episode Date: July 10, 2021

Robert Santana and Trent Jones are no strangers to the DIY concept, and embrace the idea of learning and trying things for yourself. With any do-it-yourself endeavor, however, you're going to encounter a fair amount of mistakes and setbacks in the process of learning a new skill. Fitness is no exception, and while a few have successfully DIY'd themselves to a high level of fitness, most people fail to achieve their fitness goals, especially over a long period of time (how many people do you know that have lost a significant amount of weight, only to gain it back in a year?).   This is where a coach comes in. Just like any master teacher or instructor, a coach has a solid grasp of a cohesive system or model of training. With this system a coach can effectively evaluate a person and determine their deficiencies, and devise with a plan to address them. A coach has both the knowledge and experience to evaluate an athlete and draw up a training program.   So, if you want to take your fitness to the next level, or have been struggling for years to make progress and achieve your goals, hiring a coach -- even for a few workouts -- can help you figure out where you are going wrong, and what you need to do to correct your deficiencies.   Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana   Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.marmaladecream.com

Welcome to the Weights and Plates podcast. I am your host, Robert Santana, along with my co-host, Trenton Jones. Good. Well, I was about to say morning. I don't know. Is it good? Good afternoon? We're doing this in the afternoon. say morning. I don't know. Is it good afternoon? We're doing this in the afternoon. It's like 12.36 p.m. in Arizona time, which is now Pacific time this time of year. In the winter, it's mountain time because we don't believe in daylight savings here. Yeah. It's so confusing. So confusing. Well, I'm on Eastern time, so it's definitely the afternoon here. But you, dear listener, might be listening to this in the morning.

So good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are. We have a very important topic today that I think we need to talk about. Today we're going to talk about why you would hire a coach and the difference between coaching and a do-it-yourself program. And I think this is an important topic that applies to learning any skill of any kind. Yeah. Yeah. So, we were talking about this offline. You were talking about it. I was yelling about it. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. We were, it was a good civil discourse, but yeah. When you DIY something, one of the things that you do implicitly whenever you decide to DIY something is to learn. You take it on as a learning project, which means that also implicitly

what that means is that you're going to screw it up in some way. And that's how you learn about it, right? So, we're not anti-DIY here, I don't think. Well, I won't speak for you, but I'm not against DIYing things. That's all well and good. I do it a lot myself. But it comes with the territory that it's a fairly inefficient way to do things. And you just have to accept the fact that you're going to screw some things up sometimes pretty badly until you learn. And, um, that, you know, that's a, that's a big thing that we run into day to day when we're talking to people

out in the field, out in the gyms is people who have DIY their fitness, DIY'd their eating plan, their nutrition, and sometimes they make some big mistakes. In fact, well, I said sometimes. I think almost every time they make some mistakes. And that's what we're going to talk about today. Not even almost every time. Even the best of them do. Yeah. You know, this phenomena has come to my attention that you have people out there that will hire a coach and expect that coach to know exactly what that person's going to need down to their compatibility of the program or advice with their DNA. And I'm exaggerating, obviously, but they want a highly customized program that is suited for their exact DNA sequence that will not be suited for any other human on the planet. And that's how it comes across, right? And it just kills me because I am, like yourself, I am all for DIY. I think DIY is very important. I DIY'd my lifting for about, let's see, I'll exclude swimming because I got a program, although not

the greatest program, sorry coach, and then I started doing it myself in 02 and then I hired Horn in 13. So 11 years. 11 years I did my own lifting based on magazines. I'd read books that I've read pictures. I looked at, cause there wasn't YouTube back then, or at least it wasn't, you know, popular. Right. And, uh, by the end of it, you know, when I found starting strength, I, you know, looked at the program template and said, Oh, this seems simple enough. This makes sense. I'm just going to follow this myself. And then, you know, lo and behold, three months later, I tore my left adductor. At least I think I did. I didn't go get imaging or anything, but I'm pretty sure I had some sort of a tear there. And, you know, I couldn't lift my

leg when I was in a lying down position. I can barely walk for a few days. And I put a video up of my most recent squat. I don't think that i hosted the one that the injury took place on but uh you know i was shocked that rip the author of the book responded on the forum like oh celebrity response you know and uh he's like yeah you're fucking this all up you know it just tells me all these things i've been doing wrong but they were deep i didn't get called for depth um hey i think i mentioned yeah that's something i I mentioned this in another podcast, but when I first, I think we give Arnold too much shit for some of the bad advice that he's given, especially with regards to training too much and some of that stuff. But he was the first

individual in the industry that wrote a publication that suggested that deep squats were safe. And he said he chose not to do them later in his career because he wanted to work quads. And, you know, we can argue about that later. But the point was, the implied message was that if you're just starting out, you need to squat deep. So I made this a priority at age 19. And a lot of guys that I had coach coach did not. Right. Well, you know, I came from the football weight room and, um, you know, where all the coach wants to brag about is how much his linemen are squatting and nobody is squatting depth.

Well, I say, I say nobody, we had one guy in our weight room who squatted a legit 500 twice. I saw him do this twice because he was he's going for 505 which was like the school record and uh and he missed it but this guy clearly knew what he was doing and had been coached somewhere else because he actually did a no shit low bar squat to depth uh he used knee wraps but you know whatever i'm gonna give him some credit there that's pretty impressive for a senior but yeah there's one guy and he you know, whatever. I'm going to give him some credit there. That's pretty impressive for a senior. But, yeah, there's one guy, and he basically ignored everything that the coaches said, but he was really strong and jacked.

So they're like, you just do whatever you're doing, man. You do what the fuck you want to do. You're strong. Yeah, I know. So, you know, from the age of 19, I made it a priority to go deep. It always felt awkward because I'm sure my toes were forward. Yeah. My knees weren't going out.

You know, there were things wrong there. And that's some of the stuff Rick pointed out. But, you know, I always squatted deep. Anyways, it was still wrong. And it resulted in an injury early on in my proper training career, you know, when I first started actually training. And, you know, then I started, I don't know how I found out that there were coaches. And that's when I found Horn, Paul Horn up in L.A.

He was training out of his garage at the time. And he fixed me in five minutes. You know, he said, fix these things. And it just seemed so subtle, you know. And suddenly the movement transformed. Well, three months later, I DIY'd again. And then I tore the other side, the right adductor. This time it took 10 months to heal.

So correcting the squat rehab, the first injury. Then I put another 40 pounds on the lift when I ran it back up, then I tore the other side. And that one I got on tape and it's actually one of my most viewed YouTube videos. People are fucked, man. Me getting injured and falling with the bar on my back is more entertaining than anything else I posted up. But anyways, I'm not active on YouTube as the biggest thing and that probably is the most interesting video I have up. So, you know, I'm not active on YouTube is the biggest thing, and that probably is the most interesting video I have up. So, you know, I was like, what the hell? Well, I know now that what happened was I went from manageable to not quite heavy, but I have to think about it, weight, you know? Right.

Or, you know, you can keep lifting for another 60 pounds just fine, but it's hard, and you have to actually try very hard to stay in position. I didn't know that that's what happened at the time. Basically, I crossed over that threshold where – actually, the term I like to use is where it was no longer feeling light. And this is why I tell people, forget how the fuck it feels, especially if you're new to this. But I got past that threshold of no longer feeling light, and then I probably started changing my form. I got past that threshold of no longer feeling light, and then I probably started changing my form. I can almost guarantee I was knee sliding and not bending over enough if I had to peg a reason. But that was the form creep that I'd get in the years that followed. Eventually, I was able to fix it, and I'm very consistent now.

But, yeah, no, I tore the right side. It took 10 months to heal. Then I tried to run it back up. Eventually, I got with someone who was competent, who could also watch me in addition to me watching myself. And we got it cleaned up. But the point is, I was, you know, and ever since then, you know, this is an important point that I wanted to make and why I'm talking about all this. Knock on wood, I haven't had a serious injury like that that set me back and impaired my ability to move around since that happened. It's interesting because I'm lifting way more now. So at the time, the first squat that injured me

was a set of five with 295 last rep. Second squat that injured me was a set of five, 330 last rep of last set. And I've recently hit 410 for five. So we've come a long way. And the difference now from then is the way that I perform the lift. if I had to attribute it to anything, because I'm older, my risk of injury goes up with age, you know, the weight's heavier, the risk of injury goes up with intensity. So what changed? I lift better, right? But I lift better because I got in-person coaching, and then I got online coaching from a competent coach. So, you know, to bring it back home, even if you DIY and you're doing, you know, pretty damn good, you can still, you know, to bring it back home, even if you DIY and you're doing, you know, pretty damn good, you can still, you know, fuck yourself up. But chances are you're doing something wrong.

I was doing other things wrong, too. Like in the beginning, I didn't ramp my deadlift up. You know, my deadlift technique was way off. There was other things that were wrong there despite me having been in the weight room for, you know, 15 years and 11 years by myself using barbells. It doesn't matter. Rip covers this in the book. Weight room experience doesn't indicate whether you're a novice, intermediate, or advanced, but weight room experience also doesn't suggest that what you're saying you're doing is what you're in fact doing. When I took my SSC written exam, I got a question about, okay, you have a case study.

It's a college athlete says he squats 585, benches 315, and power cleans 225. No deadlift listed, right? And I had to give, okay, what would you do? And I wrote my answer. And then I forgot what I said. I assume that I had to take the squat down i did get that far but anyways when rip was giving me feedback on the phone he was like he ain't squatting no 585 that's six inches high yeah right right and uh you know he thought that

i'd started him too high and i actually had started him based on uh where Rip had to start Fox when he came in there from a football background. And he took him down at like 365. Then he ran it up to 520. Impressive athlete. Another podcast episode on that. We should bring him on sometime now that he's in special forces doing a ton of aerobic work in addition to his lifting. He's an interesting fellow. Yeah, that'd be really interesting.

But, yeah, no, no, no. So he's like, he ain't squatting no 585 he's squatting 275 and uh i've seen this story play because what he said was like you haven't had one of these guys yet but you will and you'll learn from it and uh right he's right i've had several uh gifted male and female athletes that are real strong and they still do it wrong because even they need coaching, you know, maybe not as much, but they're not even the most difficult, believe it or not. The challenging people are, you know, my CrossFit clients that, you know, come from a CrossFit

background and do things that are hard just because they feel hard with no attention to how they're doing things. Then you come in and you have to make it lighter, which in their mind means easier, which means they're not doing anything. Right. Yes. And then the ego hit that that takes is too much for some of my loose clients over it. But sometimes you got to turn away money because I'm not going to have somebody pull the round back so they can feel like they've got a workout in, which is what most gym trainers have done historically, except they won't even put them on a deadlift. They won't, you know, at least they're honest enough with themselves to know, hey, this will probably hurt

them. My reasoning for thinking that it'll hurt them might be wrong, but if I put them on a machine, they'll at least feel like they got a workout and they won't get hurt, you know? Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I think there's two things in your story about your own lifting journey that are important here. Number one, you didn't know how to do the movement correctly. You didn't know how to execute a squat correctly. And then even like why it was correct, what correct to be. Yeah, I'll let you finish. But I thought, well, I looked at the photo. I must be doing it like that guy because I looked at the photo. Right. I mean, I didn't think of it that far at the time.

But literally, I looked at a photo in Arnold's book or in a magazine. Oh, I'll just copy that. And then I didn't think about it after that. Right. And to your credit, like you got the depth right. That's a big thing that a lot of people don't get. But there were a lot of other things wrong, right? So there's two things. Number one, you didn't know what you were supposed to be doing in the first place. And the second thing, to your point there, second thing is you didn't

know how to self-evaluate what it was that you had done. Okay? So this is two really important aspects of coaching that, you know, that we harp on as starting strength coaches is that number one, you have to know where you're going, right? And so we have to start with a teaching model. We have to start with by teaching the lifts because you have to know as an athlete, what it is you're trying to do. And the biggest problem you have as a human being performing barbell lifts is that the majority of the lifts happen, or like the majority of the stuff our body needs to do happens behind our eyeballs. We can't see our body in space as we're doing it, right? Yeah, exactly. We're like, you know, we live in this first person viewpoint,

you know, it's like you've got some of those video games that are, I don't know what they call it, like third person view and then you can switch to first person, right? We live in a first person viewpoint. We don't get to see ourselves in space doing what we do. The only way we can do that is by videoing ourselves. But that's a really important thing. When you do a squat, the bar is on your back, it's behind you. So you don't really know where the bar is visually. And then your hips are going to go back behind you, your knees are going to move, and maybe you can kind of see those, maybe. But most of what your back is doing and your hips are doing, which are the important stuff, you can't see. Even on a deadlift, setting your back and getting your hip position right, you can't see that. And so the big problem you have if you're trying to DIY a fitness program is that A, you need to know what it is you're supposed to be doing in the first place.

And you really, unless you are just a very gifted athlete, you really can't just look at someone else doing it correctly and imitate that. Your chance of getting that right is very, very low. imitate that. Your chance of getting that right is very, very low. And then secondly, you need to understand how to adjust and evaluate what you're doing because it's never going to like to your point, right? You got your squat fixed by somebody. So you learned, okay, this is what I'm supposed to do. This is what it's supposed to feel like. When it's light. When it's light, but, but form creep creeped in. Why? Because you didn't know how to evaluate on a continual basis what it is that you were doing. You know, a good squat became a very, you know, a pretty good squat became an okay squat, became a borderline squat, became a bad squat, and then you got injured again. Right? DIYing and really the only way you're going to learn this stuff if you don't get coaching is by making a lot of mistakes. And you may not be able to, if you don't really understand where

it is you're trying to go in the first place, how are you going to fix the mistake? Yeah. And let me be clear here. I'm not advocating for a lifetime of handholding here. No. There's a continuum here. I remember this from high school sports. You probably remember this from high school sports. If you had a coach who gave a shit, somebody who was brand new, typically a freshman who's never done it before, didn't do it before high school, that would have been me. I came in as a sophomore with no swimming experience.

Those people need more attention. They usually have a JV coach for that, you know? And they need more attention, especially in their first year. By my second year, I didn't have much supervision because most of the stuff was an autopilot. You're fine-tuning at that point. And, you know, that's really where you need it the most is when you first start out, when you first start performing the activity. And the same can be said with any skill. It kills me because we live in a society where it's pretty widely accepted that you have to go through some sort of schooling or education to learn basic skills, whether those basic skills are always

taught everywhere is a whole separate argument that's outside of this podcast. But we've all agreed that, hey, if you're a kid, you probably need to go to school, you probably need to go to high school. And a good chunk of the population to go to school. You probably need to go to high school. And, you know, a good chunk of the population should go to college. And that tends to be the dominating paradigm in most developed countries. And nobody really argues this. You know, if you're not built, you know, when you get to the higher education level, you know, there's a dispute there depending on what your skill sets are. But most people will send their kids off to school.

Why? Because what's a kid going to do when you have them sit at home and read a book, you know? They're going to play video games. They're going to ride their bike, you know? So my point is we have accepted that we need education in all these other areas, right? You know, you need to, you know, go to school, then you need on-the-job training, you know, that tends to be favored by a lot of people. If you go into a trade, you know, you need so many hours before you're independent, you know. If you're in a sport, you need a coach.

So if you're playing basketball, baseball, football, all these sports require some sort of coaching. If you want to go learn how to use a firearm or a bow, you know, and get into archery, typically you want to learn how to handle that so you don't shoot yourself, you know. Right, right. learn how to handle that so you don't shoot yourself, you know? Right, right. And it's accepted in all these areas, but the amount of ego in the weight room that I've seen over the last 10 years in multiple areas is unprecedented. Like, for one, there's this common belief that, okay, it's acceptable that Michael Jordan is a gifted athlete and you can't train yourself to be Michael Jordan. But for some reason, in the weight room, people think they can train themselves to become Ed Cohen if they just work hard enough, you know? Or Arnold, or that Instagram model, or that, you know, or

Brad Pitt and Fight Club, like we keep bringing up, or who's the most recent guy that was ripped in Hollywood? Whoever it was, Thor, I guess, you know, it's somewhat recent, you know? Like, there's this belief that you can train yourself to look like somebody else. And the reality of that is that is not true for a lot of people. Some people cannot train themselves to that, but that is the ego of the weight room that you can do it all yourself, that the stuff is just simple enough as looking at a picture, watching a YouTube video, and you're going to look like the guy in the picture in the YouTube video performing the exercise. So you don't need to do much more than that. And number two,

if you just work hard, you'll get that result without any drugs, any coaching, anything, and just, you know, your own set of genetics and hard work, essentially. You know, you just work hard, and you'll get ripped, you'll get big, you'll get strong, you'll look great, and you won't get hurt, you know? Right. Yeah, it's really like, you know, when you put it like that, how, how many people would expect a level of mastery in, um, biochemistry? Exactly. With zero formal schooling, with zero, you know, foundational knowledge, like, you know, without learning the basics of biology first and basic chemistry and then organic chemistry and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, I don't think anybody would be like, yeah, you know, I could totally write a dissertation and, you know, defend that and earn my PhD just by a little

self-study. Of course, I hope I'm not bringing up like bad memories of organic chemistry. No, I did well in organic chemistry, but I had to sit in a classroom, you know? I mean. Yeah, right, right. That one tends to be the weed out class for a lot of people. Yeah. But, um, you know, but, but yeah, nobody would say that, right. That would be a ridiculous thing to claim. But yet, yet what you're saying is like people expect to achieve what are really like fairly, what you just described are high levels of fitness in, in various ways, right? You know, Ed Cohn is, is the greatest power lifter of all time you know arnold is the greatest bodybuilder of all time right it's fantastic physique thor um he's an actor but

has a fantastic physique for what it is right um these are not low levels of achievement we're talking about physical fitness we're talking about hemsworth right not half thor oh yeah right so chris hemsworth right yeah i forgot there's a celebrity named Thor now, so we got to clarify. Yeah, so you got Thor the strongman, who's also- And some guys want to look like Thor the strongman, to be clear, but you get a lot of guys that want to look like Hemsworth. Sure, sure. But so we're saying these guys essentially have a PhD in their fields, for lack of a better term they've got the equivalent of mastery and you know nobody would say that you could just go get a phd with just some basics right it needs a you know some sort of structured education and a a lot of of practice and doing the thing to get there and

the same thing is true of fitness and it's so strange to me that people think that there's really nothing to it, right? Like, well, you know, you just kind of put a bar on your back and you just sit down like you're sitting in a chair and stand back up, right? That's it. Yeah. And, you know, you just show up and, you know, do the exercise on the guy. Well, I don't know. I used to look at magazines. I don't look at magazines anymore. So, you know, that Instagram link sent me to a webpage that had a program. I need to follow that and, you know, just eat this diet they tell me to eat and I'm going to look exactly like them.

And, you know, then you get people on the opposite side of the spectrum that are bitter because they haven't had good results and say, oh, that's all drugs. Well, in a lot of cases, you know, steroids help tremendously, especially when it comes to physique changes. If you see a skinny guy that clearly put on 30 pounds of muscle in a short amount of time, he's probably using some stuff. But then there are guys that also don't respond to drugs. So, with any pharmaceutical, not just anabolic steroids, you have responders, you have non-responders, and you have adverse responses. So again, even there, you have to have genetics that allow you to tolerate the drugs safely, right? Right. And one guy I was talking to once about that, that's where that

whole myth got debunked for me. I was talking to a guy who was heavily on drugs, unapologetic about it. And he had trained with guys that had taken even more than him. And he told me that at the top levels of the strength sport that he was in, that, you know, it becomes who has the strongest fucking liver. You know, and this just blew my mind. He's like, you know, he's like, you take more drugs, you lift more weight. And then I'm like, well, you know, they say it's hard work. Well, yeah, it's still hard work, you know. You still have to lift the damn weight, and eventually it's easy until it's not, right?

You know, you get like, how did he describe it? He said it's not, right? You know, you get like a – how did he describe it? He said it's like novice effect all over again when you take something new. But the problem, he says, is the limiting factor then becomes the risk of liver toxicity or kidney toxicity, you know, depending on what drug you are taking. So this is not an area that I'm familiar with. I've never taken any of that shit because I was not a competitive athlete that was going to damage my body to the max to do that. I've never had a good reason to take that, and it's illegal, so I don't really want to deal with buying illegal shit. if you just take one look at me, I think it's, you know, the results speak for themselves. I don't have a steroid body, you know, but, and I'm not very strong. Although there are guys that have taken shit to lift what I'm lifting, apparently, that's what I've heard. But my whole point with that is, even when you start introducing pharmaceuticals into the mix, there are genetic limitations there, you know? I knew one guy who pulled 640 without it,

and then by taking steroids, he was able to pull in the mid-7s, low to mid-7s. So I think when I did the math on it, it was a 12% improvement. So it's not like he went from, you know, 640 to 1,000, you know? He's still not up there with Eddie Hall, who's also on a bunch of shit, you know? Right. So my point is, it goes back to what we said earlier, you know, the average consumer of fitness products and services has this expectation that, oh, I've just been lazy. I need to read this book, do this diet, take this supplement, follow this program, and I'm going to get really ripped, you know? And then when it doesn't work,

then they go to another bad assumption that, well, I did the program and it didn't work, then they go to another bad assumption that, well, I did the program and it didn't work, so now I need to hire a coach, an expert, to give me an even more specialized program, because now they're operating on the assumption that I did everything perfectly and it didn't work, so I need something completely different under the supervision of a coach. This is kind of what inspired me to do this episode, because, you know, there's a lot of big assumptions there. Number one, you're assuming that you were given a good program, and in some cases you may have been, right? And then you're assuming that you did the actual programming correctly, and then you're assuming that you moved correctly while doing it, and you're assuming that your diet was perfect

every single day of the week while doing it. These are a lot of big assumptions. That's right, yeah. So, you kind jumped like a couple of steps ahead there, right? Like, so a lot of people before they even get to hiring a coach, right? They just program hop. You know, they're like, well, that program, that's a bad program. I just need to get a better program. That's my problem here. Yeah.

The thing is, I was just having this conversation with somebody a couple of days ago on Instagram. It's like, you know, your program isn't the problem. That's not your first problem, right? If you are, if you haven't been coached, then I can almost guarantee you that your problem is execution and consistency. And it's like, your program doesn't even matter yet until we get those figured out, right? Like, okay, yes, your program ought to call for you to do some strength training exercise. And we talked about why in previous episodes, like you should be squatting and deadlifting and pressing, right? So I'm just going to take that as a given, right? If you're

doing machines, that's a bad program compared to what we advocate. But let's just assume that you're doing a barbell program. I don't care what it has you doing as long as it has you lifting a barbell and doing compound exercises. The program doesn't matter yet until you A, learn how to squat correctly. And then B, learn how to do it consistently, and also develop the mental fortitude to continue to keep going and doing your workouts and not missing. And then once you've done those two things, then we can start talking about the program. Because, you know, it's not really going to be a factor until you actually get those two things down. So I see a lot of program hopping first. And then, you know, that that's a reason why is because a lot of these people aren't seeing the results that they could

from the program because they're not executing it correctly. And then you get to where you're going is like, okay, finally we decided at some point I need to hire a coach to help me figure this out. Yeah. But I, you know, I think it's because of all these programs that were terrible because I failed on all of those. And so I go hire, I go hire Robert Santana and, and then what, right? What are you going to tell me to do? The same thing you've been doing. And then you're going to get pissed at me and say, why are you giving me a template? Right. Cause you were, you were fucking it up on your own. That's why, um, you know, we'll get to that. You brought up a good point earlier and my mind jumped in 10 places. But, you know, you're not going to learn organic chemistry by sitting there reading a book. Yes, there's genetic outliers out there. You know, statistically, there are outliers. There are people out there that can do that. movie. I can't believe it's old now, but Good Will Hunting. Matt Damon was a janitor in the movie,

and he was smarter than all the calculus professors when it came to calculus. Self-taught, genetically gifted, but that had nothing to do with hard work. The fucking dude was gifted, and sure, he put in work and read the book, but you can put in the same amount of time and effort and maybe get a fraction of a percent of what that individual got, that theoretical individual, that character, I should say. Those people exist in real life, but that's not you. That's not most people listening to this. Those guys, you know, they figure it out young. There are guys out there that didn't finish high school that have careers in science fields because their brains are so hardwired for that, you know? But for the rest of us, we need some level of guidance. And again, it's not – I'm not recommending a lifetime of hand-holding. No, no, no.

One thing – another – I have my – I bring up Arnold a lot, but there's a lot that I learned from him. And one of the things that he said more recently in his post-political career was there's no such thing as a self-made man. And it just goes into the myth of that, right? And talks about how he would not have accomplished the various things that he accomplished without the help of others. So, for instance, Weider got him to the States. Weider sponsored him, you know, gave him enough to live off of, you know? And then when it came to Hollywood, Lucille Ball essentially, quote-unquote, sponsored him, got him into the movie business. His wife got him political connections. That's just one example of many people, and if you kind of look through successful people in anything, there's that

element of, there's the human element of interacting, networking, whatever word you want to use for it, that allows you to break into things and become more successful. There's plenty of talented people that never use their talents too. And some of it has to do with that human element. So yeah, so I am all for doing certain, I'm all for doing things on your own, but to a fault, right? You can't do everything 100% on your own. And I think that that mentality that at one point dominated the culture here gave people false expectations about what they can realistically do. I know it certainly held me back in certain areas. And I had to learn the hard way. And I had to learn where I have to push things off and get help and where I need to do things on my own. I'd say that where I drew the line with that and where I tend to advise people on this topic is if you're trying to learn something

and you need help, it's okay to ask for help, but not until you've fucked with it on your own a little bit. Don't go ask somebody for help and, oh, well, what have you done so far? Well, nothing. Can you tell me what to do? No, at least read the book, attempt to do something, fuck it up a little bit, and that's how you come up with questions to ask the person who's going to guide you. And some people are open to helping you, and some people aren't. There are people that were open to helping me throughout my career, and there were people that told me to go fuck myself. Sure. And that's fine.

You're going to get a mix of both. And ultimately, you have to find people you connect with. But my point is I don't have a problem asking for assistance, but not until I've tinkered with it myself for a little bit. How can you ask meaningful questions when you have zero experience going into it? So I just want to put that out there. I'm not sitting here saying hard-selling coaching or saying that you need hand-holding for the rest of your life on this, but I will say that when you're learning something new, that's when you need the most help. And then as you do it for a while, you need less help. Yeah. So yeah, I think people sometimes

misunderstand. I know I did before I really got into strength training and was coached. I didn't really understand what coaching meant. You know, I thought coaching was kind of like, ah, you know, you guys are football coach who yells at you. Maybe, maybe it does a little bit of one-on-one work, but you know, that's like, it's just a guy that sort one-on-one work, but that's like, it's just a guy that sort of organizes the team, right? It's like, well, I'm not a team, you know, I'm just a, I'm just an adult now trying to, you know, be fit. But, but yeah, what you're saying, even if you get coached, like I have a handful of, um, of folks from, uh from the gym that I managed in Keller. I'm now in Tennessee and these guys I train remotely and I've trained every

single workout that they've done. They've done under my guidance as their coach, but guess what? You still have to try things out and learn and, and do yourself in order to get something out of the coaching. Like I can't actually move for them, right? That wouldn't do any good. And often, especially now that these guys have been with me for a couple of years, they're now intermediate lifters. They're, they're pretty dang experienced lifters at this point. They've gone through a lot of progression. And so that

means that we have to, we have to start exploring things and trying things and experimenting in a way that I have to rely on them and the skills they've built to figure out how to do some of these things, right? Like I can't actually guide them step by step through every single thing that we do. Sometimes, for instance, I'll have them do an accessory lift, let's say and be like hey listen I need you to choose the weight that you're going to use here here's a ballpark here's where I think you should be ballpark but I need you to actually choose the weight and here's how I need you to how I need it to go they say here's how many reps I need that takes experience and it takes they have to have learned in order to do that they they have to have learned, um, a couple of things, a, how to do the movement correctly, B, how to manage their mind under load, right? They have to, to have built the mental fortitude to, to know if like, Hey, if I'm, if I'm going to have

you do an AMRAP set where you're going to do as many reps as you can, but leave one in the tank, I actually need that to happen. I don't need you to leave four in the tank and I don't need you to go balls out to where your eyeballs are popping out of your head. It takes a lot of discipline to do that as a lifter. So to wrap that point up, even if you are coached, you're going to have to do learn things on your own. You just have a guide for the process. And I think that's how the coaching relationship evolves over time naturally is that when you're first starting out, you need a lot of guidance. It is kind of hand-holding the first few workouts. But when you're month two, month three, month six, year three, it becomes more and more of a sort of like mentor relationship or even maybe like a consultant relationship. Like, hey, listen, here's what I see from a third party perspective

where you should go. But you tell me too where you want to go. That's how it evolves. And it's interesting, you know, like when somebody decides to hire a coach and, you know, I'm kind of segwaying into the main topic that made me want to talk about this, they're going to find somebody that is known or referred to them in some way, either by somebody who worked with somebody or through a website that they consider to be reputable. And one of the assumptions, at least to me, is if I'm hiring a coach that, let know, let's say is on the Starting Strength website, I'm probably going to learn things that are in line with Starting Strength. Yeah. Same thing with other companies, right? Well, you know, I noticed this phenomena where these people will hire a coach from a website full of content and then get mad

when the coach gives them a program that matches the content on the website. So, you know, that's problem number one. So it's like, you know, like, okay, you know, you work for a company that says, you know, eat, you know, four meals a day and have a couple protein shakes, you know. I can't eat that many meals. Well, okay, you know, we can change that, but you, you know, why are you surprised that you got that when you came here, you know? Right, right. You know, they go to starting strength, like, why are you having me back squat with a barbell? My back hurts, you know? You know, like, these are just examples, but the main thing that I'm trying to get at here is that you'll have people that will hire a coach with the assumption that they've done everything that the content on that website

prescribes to a tee with no fault, and they just need somebody to give them something more complicated and specific, hyper-specific, to their individual needs that completely lines up with the DNA sequence of every ounce of their body, you know, and accounts for every atom that person is composed of. And, you know, they'll hire you and they'll expect this. So, as a coach who's trained and competent, which, you know, we're unfortunately a minority in this field, you know, and I say that from personal experience and, you know, personal experience as a consumer of fitness products and services and personal experience as a former employee of a commercialized gym. What you get trained on in the gym business is selling. Selling personal training packages specifically because they have different guys that sell memberships.

But you get trained on selling. And when I started at a reputable commercial gym that has a high membership fee, has high personal training fees, that is in affluent areas, typically in wealthy areas, I won't name it. But when I worked there, the quote-unquote department heads or trainers or sales trainers or general managers would say something to the effect of, I don't give a shit about your education or what degrees or certifications you have. If you can't sell it, it doesn't matter. None of that matters. You have to be able to sell. And there's a nugget of truth there, obviously. Your knowledge is only as good as the people who buy into it.

So I get that. But they basically would not encourage continuing education, would not talk about anything content-related. Any type of meeting that was, you know, employee training, so to speak, to develop your employees was focused on selling. Not even marketing. So that's where I learned the difference between marketing and sales. You never learn how they got those people in the door of the gym. You know, what they try to teach you is how to solicit people that are already members. Right, yeah, right.

You know, they always got to leave elements of business development out of the equation, because if you know how to market, why would you work there, you know? Right, yeah, exactly. So, and it's just an aside, a little business aside, but the focus there was selling. You learn nothing about content. You were expected to learn it independently, which is not bad. You know, you should be keeping up on your trade anyways, but are you learning the right things?

Are there other ideas from other trainers? You weren't having these discussions. The discussions were, what could you sell? How can you get people to buy more training memberships so that you can hit your quotas every month and keep your job? That is the typical personal training department business model in most global gyms. So let me back up. We are held to a higher standard as starting strength coaches. And I don't say that as a bias. I have the NSCA.

I had an ACSM certification that I let lapse. I'm an RD. I have a master's in kinesiology. And I'm in a PhD program right now. And what I will say is, you know, RIP and Asgard Company hold us to a much higher standard than any other certification I've had. Why? Because they require you to demonstrate your proficiency both performing the exercise and evaluating somebody else performing the exercise before you get any type of academic test. You have to pass that practical examination. They call it the platform examination. And, you know, they're of the position that if you cannot demonstrate that you can lift and coach the lifts, there's no reason to answer any academic questions, whether it be oral or written.

I don't know what they're doing now. When I did, it was written. Then I went to oral. Then I heard it was both. You know, I'm not a mentor with a development program, but my understanding is I believe it is still oral and there might be a written component if they need additional rationale. But the point that I'm making is you have to physically demonstrate what the hell you can do before you start getting into academic discussions. Right. Yes. And no other cert does that. Typically, it's a computer-based exam, and you might have videos

on it like the NSCA where you evaluate some videos. And it's just designed for a mass audience. It's not designed to screen people out that aren't actually competent. It's designed to make money for the certifying body and to demonstrate a basic level of academic competency. You know, there's no way they're evaluating your physical the early 2000s. You had to demonstrate that you can collect a blood pressure and carry out an exercise test, and that's what that certification was for. So it made sense. They since eliminated that. But back to that exam question I got from Rip, he was like, you know, that guy squat nine inches high. And the assumption that we are to make is that self-reported data is just as good as no data. You have to gather your own data. And this is a good way to approach it.

And that's how I'm assuming that's what they cover in the development course. That's the feedback I got from them when I passed. Gather your own data because anything they write for you is junk data. The assumption there is that it's probably bullshit because they haven't been coached by you. You know, they're doing something else that they learned somewhere else. So that's how I approach a new client. You know, they're going to come in, and this is all in the Starting Strength book as well, on how to establish baseline loads. It's how we're trained as coaches. They're going to come in and you're going to have them squat with the empty bar. You always start with the empty bar, except in a deadlift. You might start a little heavier. The plate's elevated off the floor, et cetera, and it tends to be a

lift. You can lift heavier, but generally you start with the empty bar. You do a set of five. You do another set of five. Then you might add five to 10 pounds. You might add five to 10 pounds. If it's a grandma, you might start with the empty 11-pound bar or 15-pound bar, depending on what you have at your gym. The point is you start light and you add until the weight slows down such that it looks challenging, but it's still done correctly, and adding another pound to it will probably break down the form. And that's typically where you want to end up. That requires a judgment call, requires experience. So being trained in that way, that's what I do online.

I get a new client. I just skip over the self-reported data. I completely ignore it because it's probably bullshit. That deadlift is probably done with a round back bounced off the floor. Maybe it's an RDL that squats probably nine inches high. The press is probably a push press and the bench press is probably the only lift that's kind of maybe 50 to 70% there. So I do this and then I get a lot of pushback from the type of client that you typically find at a commercial gym. I'll get questions about, you know, why are you giving me a template? And I'm like, I'm giving you a template because, you know, we have enough evidence out there to confidently believe that if you hand

somebody a template and tell them to follow it, they're going to do anything but the template. that if you hand somebody a template and tell them to follow it, they're going to do anything but the template. Right, right. Yeah, I can't remember who it was, but someone who is an instructor once said, he's like, I can't believe how much money people will pay me to tell me what they know. Exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah, that self-reported data. So, you know, it's not that you don't care about where they're coming from. That's important in your evaluation. But the thing that these people lack is like they're paying you because they know, they've recognized that they have some deficiency in their own ability to evaluate where they are and what they need to do to go further and reach their goals, right? further and reach their goals. Right. Otherwise they would never like, they would never ran the credit card, but there's, you know, there's this element of human nature, this hubris that we have sometimes in like wanting to impress the people that are our instructors. You know, it's like, well, you know, I'm maybe I'll like fudge that squat number a little bit. Cause you know, it's

like, if I'm, he'll think I'm more legit if I tell him I'm squatting 315, you know, rather than 245 or whatever it is. Right. And the thing is like that, you know, like we don't care. Like that's like the best clients to work for the ones who come in with a completely open mind because, you know, I don't really care where you start. I care where you end up. I care where you go. And I don't know. I don't know if it's just human nature, if this is something that's, uh, I don't think it's unique to the fitness

industry here. This, this idea of like wanting to like promote ourselves as something that we are not, but it certainly gets blown up in the fitness industry. And that data doesn't like, it doesn't matter if you can't do the thing. Exactly. And, you know, I even had one guy, not just one, just one example that pops in my head, spreadsheets that went back years with, like, all the sets and reps they did and, you know, the program in writing looks, you know, good as written. I'm like, well, you didn't post your videos, man. What do you need videos for well i have to see what that squat looks like you telling me you squatted 300 doesn't mean you

actually squatted 300 i have to you know see it that's right you're hiring me for it so then he posts it up and i told him like you know you might be nine inches high you know it's common that guys will send me squats or nine inches i'm not saying you're doing that you look pretty organized but you know just send it over he's squatting nine inches high you know and then's common that guys will send me squats or nine inches high. I'm not saying you're doing that. You look pretty organized, but, you know, just send it over. He's squatting nine inches high, you know, and then I'm just sitting there. I might have done this for a while, huh? You know, because it just blew my mind. I was just giving him an example. I wasn't being accusatory. I didn't, I wasn't even sure that he would be nine inches high. Then he, again, squats nine inches high, you know, and I'm like, bro. So anyway, we fixed it. You know, I got him squatting

deep enough. Eventually, it got him with a live coach because he wasn't the most coordinated. It wasn't a good candidate for online coaching. But that was one example. The more common thing that I get is I get people that'll do the test workout. And I don't get too much pushback on that. Occasionally, I get some clients that don't want to see themselves on video because they have body image issues, you know. And I've only had one that drew a line in the sand there and wouldn't do it. So I fired the client because I'm not going to assume that somebody's squatting correctly. These lifts done wrong can hurt you, and I'm not going to be responsible for that. But where I start to have problems is when I give them a program, just an outlook of what the next three months are going to look like.

And, you know, I start everybody on a basic linear progression and there's rationale for that. It's not because I'm lazy and want to just give you something cookie cutter. It's because my assumption is that you're probably doing the lifts wrong and you need to get proficiency and doing, you know, a squat press and deadlift one workout, squat bench press and deadlift one workout, and then later adding some chin-ups after a couple of weeks or pull-downs is a good way to start and you're going to make linear progress for a while and if you are if you're under trained to begin with because you've never really added weight to your lifts you might stay on that longer than you know a couple of months you know like yeah you know someone like fox who i mentioned earlier 365 on

day one got to 519 but he did in like a two-month period because he had training experience. He was sufficiently strong going into it. So it didn't last very long. So that's typically how I like to explain it. If you're truly strong and intermediate, it's probably going to last a month or two, but you can start anybody on a linear progression for various reasons, not just because you're a novice. A novice might stay on it for six to nine months. That's where it's unusual. That's where it changes. Somebody who's been lifting, like if I started one now, maybe one to two months would be appropriate. If I was coming off of a layoff, like if somebody hasn't been doing anything and they stopped lifting for

three months, perfect way to segue them back in without getting them insanely sore and restoring their levels of strength quickly. If somebody's been lifting wrong for a long time, which is usually the case with the people that I inherit, it makes perfect sense to put them on a linear progression because they're going to get back to where they were with correct form in an efficient timeline. But they'll look at this and say, you gave me something I can find on the internet myself. Yeah, well, you're going to find it on the internet yourself and you're going to fuck it up. Right. Right. So yeah, let me be clear here. When I start some, I'll see if you agree with me or not. When I start somebody out and I'm going to just going to say that somebody who's brand new, it actually,

it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, but just somebody that's brand new to me, right? The first couple months of working with them, when the programming is the simplest, like you're talking about, those are the, that's the most work that I'll have to do with that client for a long time. Now it'll get, you know, if they stay with me for years, then it becomes a lot more work again. But, but like the first couple of months I'm working with someone are definitely the most work. And the reason is even though the program's the simplest it's ever going to get, everything else, the evaluation, the coaching, right? And it's not just coaching somebody through the movements. That's a big piece of it is coaching someone to do it correctly and to consistently

do it correctly. It's also coaching someone through the mental side of this, which is like, you know, how to stay focused when it gets hard, you know, when it gets really hard, how to handle the sort of aches and pains that come up with just anyone who's going to do hard physical work, right? You're going to have some aches and pains. So, there's a mental side of things too. So, it's a lot of work in those first couple months, even though the program is quote unquote, just a template. Exactly. And let's talk about templates for a minute.

How do – well, we're going to exclude scammers that just put bullshit together to make money, but how does – There's plenty of those. There's templates for all sorts of things. There's templates for learning how to play golf or play pool or shoot a firearm. You can find general principles to learning a variety of skills on the internet that are kind of templated for just the general person trying to start out. And if you've done it correctly and you're an ethical coach, those templates are based on your years of experience and things that you've generally seen work for many, many people, right? Sure. So in other words, these templates, when done correctly, when done as intended, work quite well.

The thing is, most people don't do them as intended. And then you obviously have some people that need modifications. You know, I have guys that come to my gym that cannot do a squat with a bar on their back. They have to use a safety squat bar. I've had it happen. Have guys that can't low bar need a high bar. Have guys that have to bend their wrist back, you know? Yeah.

You know, you get all sorts of things you have to work around, but these things, you know, unless you're into an elderly population, we're dealing with a normal age adult or youth lifter. These things aren't the norm. They're the exception, not the rule. Most of the people can get into these positions, perform these lifts correctly and safely with few exceptions, right? So my point is templates work when you do them as intended. Most people don't do them as intended. Then they hire me and if they have the patience to stick with it, I will teach them how to do it as intended. And the thing is,

when you hire a coach, you're not paying for the fucking program. That's what you buy a template for, you buy the book for. A coach has a system that he's going to follow. And if you hire a starting strength coach, he's going to follow that system. If you hire a coach that coaches something else, they're going to follow the system that matches with that, right? There is no way that you can customize something for a complete stranger, you know, right out the gate. It doesn't work that way. So, you know, I might put you on starting strength and you say, dude, my freaking shoulder kills, man. Okay, well, you know, put the bar higher on your back. Well, it still hurts. Okay, put the use safety squat bar. Oh, yeah, I can't get any lower. I fall over,

get on the leg press, you know? You modify, but you have to have a starting point. That starting point is going to look similar for virtually everybody. And then it changes, right? But I can't sit there and assume that what you've told me you've done has been done as intended, you know. I can't assume that your ache is from a correctly performed squat. Your knee might not hurt doing it the way I tell you to do it, so give it a fucking chance. A guy say, hey, my knees and back hurt when I squat and deadlift, and I've done it right, so I've heard.

And then I say, well, look, I put those in there knowing that because I want to see what it looks like because it may just be the way you're doing it because when you do it correctly, it may be rehabilitative. Guy turns around and says, you gave me something that doesn't match my needs i want a refund well take it i'll pay you more you know right yeah you know i'm just you know i'm tired of this shit because it's there's arrogance in that in those comments it's the arrogance comes from i've done everything correctly and i hurt well i don't know that you've done everything correctly show me the fucking lift you know yeah there's another thing embedded in here you know in this

sort of like want for complexity and for for something that's unique to me and that's the the idea that like that you are like a unique species that needs its own like attention and uh you know like there's there's only one one thing that will work for you that's like you know you really need if you just do these six reps here then five reps that meant for you nobody else though this is the magic ticket no it's ridiculous like i you know i'm sorry but physically we are all uh we're all of the same species i think i hope as far as i know and uh you know there's really not that much variation in how we all respond to stimuli now the variation comes in what you just said like right so people have different um backgrounds and they have varying

things that have happened to them they have injuries and all sorts of stuff that they bring with them when they start with us and that we have to adjust for. But when it comes to the programming, when it comes to the template, there's really not a whole lot of variables there. And we all respond to something about the same way, right? Some better than others, some worse than others. Sure. But we all respond to like, we got to lift heavier weights and we gotta lift weights a certain way so you know you're just you're not special i'm sorry but i hate to say you're not special you're not a special snowflake no rip likes to say it no the same thing with diet too you know that the most people that i've worked with on nutrition fail on any nutrition program they follow because they part-time diet.

They'll follow the program Monday through Friday, and then they'll have pizza and beer on Saturday or chocolate and wine or whatever the hell their vice is on Saturday and Sunday. Come back three pounds heavier, piss out the water weight in two days, consider that progress, but then restart the whole cycle the next week and then say, you know, I don't know why I can't lose weight. You know, I did your program and I can't lose weight. Well, no, you didn't do the program, you know? Right. And, you know, it's the same thing as, you know, these carb zealots. Why did low-carbon it worked? Well, then why did you gain back 50 pounds, you know?

Right. So the point is, so a diet is the same thing. I have a general idea of where I'm going to start somebody on a diet, and I want seven days. A lot of the time they can't give me seven days for a few weeks because they are so unconscious of their weekend habits that, you know, or they minimize it. They minimize damage. What about a cheat day? You know, some people believe that a cheat day should allow them to continue losing weight. Well, you have a math problem. There's an arithmetic problem. Right, yeah. You know, some people believe that a cheat day should allow them to continue losing weight. Well, you have a math problem. There's an arithmetic problem. It doesn't work that way.

If your cheat day involves an entire cake, then I'm sorry, you're going to undo what you have done. You know, The Rock's another example. He has, you know, superb genetics. You know, he practically almost got in the NFL, if I remember correctly. But, you know, he played college football, Division I. His father was a pro wrestler. He was very muscular out the gate, even when he was, quote unquote, fat by the bodybuilding standards in the 90s, which basically meant he didn't have abs. And then he took drugs on top of it and is a monster. And then he eats some ridiculous cheat day. Well, you got a big Samoan guy who's naturally muscular. He was pretty lean for a Samoan guy without the drugs he's currently taking, you know, when he was younger. You know, most of those guys are obese,

you know, in that part of the world. Sure. He was not, you know, he's an athlete, you know. And then he took drugs. So yeah, he probably needs like 7,000 calories to maintain all that. So, yeah, he can eat like two boats of sushi and probably not gain weight or eat a pizza and not gain weight because he has a big surplus of calories. Some guys can buy $500,000 cars cash. A lot of us can't. Life's not fair. So, to sit there and think that, oh, well, so-and-so has a cheat date. Well, so-and-so burns three times the amount of calories that you burn.

So it's not a fair comparison. But my point is I get the same thing with diet. You gave me a cookie-cutter template. Well, how many different ways can you calculate macros? And how much do macros or calories vary between individuals? Number one, you probably don't know that question because you don't do what I do for a living, which is why you hired me. Number two, there's not very much variation. It's bell curve, man. Classic statistics. Most people are around the same spot. Then you got outliers. You got people that have hypothyroidism or PCOS and they need to have

very low calories to lose weight. Then you got people like The Rock that have good genetics, are on drugs, and need thousands of calories just to maintain what they have, you know? Right. Yep. Yep. Yeah. And so, you know, there's one other thing I want to say about this. This, you know, when it comes to like, what is, what are you getting with coaching? And how does this data thing come into play? Because you said like, you will adjust the templates. If you will, you will adjust that template as you start to work with somebody. Well, unlike other things in life, we can't directly measure a lot of the things, a lot of our physical attributes, you know, like I can't just like put a meter up to your leg and be like, ah, yep, you can squat

235. Yeah. That's it. That's where we're going to start you. I mean, you could, but it would be bullshit. Well, yeah, it would be bullshit, right? It's not good data. It's the same in the same way. It was like, I can't, you know, I can't know exactly what your macros need to be by just, you know, like, uh, analyzing your, you know, your urine or something like something crazy. Like you, what we, what we learn about the human body and how you as an individual will respond is through empirical data. It's an, it's an emergent process. We have to do something that we know works for a very wide population, like the novice linear progression. And then we, we measure your response to that.

And so everything that we're doing is by proxy, right? Like I know you got stronger or not, if I know that you added weight on the bar. Like you put weight on the bar, you got stronger. You didn't put weight on the bar, you didn't get stronger. Okay, now we adjust. So all of this data that we're gathering is it's not something that you can know at all. Like there's no way to know it. There's no like master who can just, you know, like dial in and say like, this is exactly what you need. No, it doesn't exist. The only way to find it is by actually iterating through a process and you have to have, you have to have a starting point. And you know, the other thing there is

that in order to, for us to isolate things that you need to work on as an individual, we have to start with something simple. If we start with something that's really complex and there's like a bunch of moving parts and you don't respond the way that we think you should, what went wrong? We have no idea. Like it, was it variable a, or was it D or was it B or X? Like you have no idea. So we have to start with something simple so that we can figure out when you run into a, a plateau, we know exactly what the problem was. And then we can use our experience as coaches to help you problem solve and get out of it. So that, you know, there's a reason behind get out of it. So that, you know,

there's a reason behind why it's simple. It's, you know, there's, it's not just, it's not laziness. Most things are. It's the opposite of that, you know. Yeah. Most things are. I took a motor, I took a motor learning class in my master's and the instructor, he was pretty good at like simplifying things. And some of the stuff was, you know, practical information. You have people in there that wanted to be sport coaches. So he had to dial a lot of it down. And he started bringing up how, you know, if you take a new golfer, you're not going to coach that person the same way as you coach Tiger Woods. And some of this stuff is similar to what we've learned from starting strength.

He says, you know, you're going to give very broad advice in the beginning, very general advice in the beginning, and keep it very broad, and I guess vague for lack of a better word, you know? General. General, yeah, stay general. You know, whereas you might take Tiger Woods or a pro golfer and say, okay, you need to move your elbow at that angle, you need to swing the club at this angle and you need to, you know, hit the ball with,

you know, a certain way, right? A very specific way. You know, I don't know much about golf. I just remember he used a golf, I remember he used a golf example and he started talking about angles like that, right? Yeah, yeah. And he's like, if you tell a person who's never touched a golf club before to do that, are they going to be receptive?

And we're all just like, no, you know, without knowing anything about motor learning, we all said no. And he said, that's exactly right. Your advice becomes very broad and general and gets more specific as the person advances into their career. And the same thing applies here. And I try to use this example when I get these types of complaints. I'm like, if you buy a golf club swinging around, then you come to me and ask me to teach you to coach you on golf. Are you going to get mad? Cause I hand you the same golf club, you know? Right. And say, well, you can give me something custom. You gave me the same thing. I bought it, you know, a big five.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. And, and as, as we said, you know, we, we identified some folks in the first couple episodes we did who built a lot of strength and fantastic physiques with very simple programming. Right. So we identified some masters of physical fitness who used, you know, really not a whole lot of exercises to get there. And, you know, so that's reality. It's not about variety. If you're actually training, right. If you're doing this for the result, not, not just for fun, right. Then it's not about variety. It's not about complexity. It's about what's going to get you the result.

Yeah. This is process oriented work that we're doing here. So your, your mastery in something is not going to be measured by how complex it was, you know, to get there. It's by your mastery of the basics. Or how you feel. Right, yeah. I mean, it's important when you're going into something to ask yourself, do you just want to go in the gym and feel good? Or, you know, do you want the result? Because oftentimes they're not the same thing.

You might get some overlap you know i obviously have done this for many years so something about it feels good but i never go in there and uh expend minimal effort and you know just make myself sweat and leave you know as much as i love to do that i i can't you know i know too much but there are people out there that just want to exercise but but want the results of training, you know? And the people that actually achieve that either A, have good genetics, good genetics, or B, just take drugs. And I'm not saying that, I'm not saying to go take drugs. I'm saying that that's often the case what happens, you know, you get guys that go in the gym, fuck around, take some drugs and their body changes, you know? If you're not that person, or you don't have good

genetics, which often is the case for somebody who hires a coach, it's going to take long. It's going to take long. It's going to be hard. It's not necessarily going to be fun. You might not actually sweat. If you want to sweat, go do the silly bullshit after we've practiced your squat because you might be stuck on an empty bar squat or a light squat for a few weeks because you move like shit. So you might need to get your little endorphin high by doing a little circuit afterwards. And it'll be fine. It won't interfere with your recovery at that point in time.

And by the time it does, the squat will be hard enough to where you won't want to go do that circuit. Right, right. So go do other stuff. But I don't prescribe that stuff. That's not what I do. I'm going to teach you how to squat. I'm going to teach you how to squat heavier and heavier and heavier and dead lift and press and bench press and get to a chin up. You know, most people that stick with me can

do a body weight chin up. Um, I've had the heaviest guy I've had was 265. I'm working on a 300 pound guy. Now he's pretty damn close. He got his nose past it. Um, that's a, that's a big achievement. That's a, that's a much different thing than a 175-pound guy doing chin-up. out, the endorphin high is not there that would be present during CrossFit or during cardio or during circuit training or during boot camp. But all of those things are exercise. My goal is put muscle on this person's body. And the best way to do it is with barbell training. And sure, you could probably sub these exercises out and, you know, you could do a machine bench press, you can do a leg press, you know, you could do a machine bench press, you can do a leg press, you know, you can do a machine press and you can incrementally load that and probably see some

changes. But I don't know any way with a machine that you can isometrically load the back and core, core, quote unquote, for lack of a better word, abs, obliques, you know, your stability muscles. That's a lot of muscle. That's a big chunk of your body right there. And those muscles are designed to work isometrically to keep you in balance. You can't do that with a machine. So that's where you're losing out. That's a whole lot of muscle mass that's not getting trained. So unfortunately, I want you to learn how to pull weight up and extend and flex your hips safely. And for some people, that is very difficult. This person I'm thinking of is having a hard time. Most of the frustration right now is that the workout doesn't feel like what this person believes a workout should feel like. And that's unfortunate.

So maybe you just need to go do a circuit afterwards to get your endorphin high. But understand, this is the long game right here. This is the results-driven workout. The circuit training is exercise. That is recreation. Yeah. So first thing you need to do is decide how bad you want the result because exercise won't get you the result. You can exercise and

train in the beginning. Eventually, you know, something's got to give, but you know, if you're in that phase where you're repeating the deadlift for a month because you're learning it online, you don't have a local coach, the learning curve is steeper, then maybe you need to do, you know, some cardio and, you know, some arm work and, you know, circuits to entertain yourself while you develop proficiency at that movement. It's not, obviously not taking a ton of your resources to do a light deadlift that you just can't get correctly. Once it starts taking up a ton of your resources, you got to drop that other shit, you know? Right. Yep. Yep.

Absolutely. And we're going to talk about that more as we, as we go on in the show. Like, how do you figure out the answer to that question? Cause I think that's actually, that's a, that's actually a hard question to answer.

Like, what do you really want? So, because a lot of people are like, well, I want these results. Like, okay,

all right, well, let me show you what it's going to take to get there. And they're like, well, I don't know. Because the answer of like, well, I just want the maximum physical fitness that I'm capable of with my genetics. Okay, well, that's an answer. That's a valid answer. But that may actually not be the right decision for your life because it's going to take a lot of work and you're gonna have to sacrifice a lot of things to make that happen. So there, there is, as with most things, there is a middle ground there. Absolutely. But I think we're,

you know, we need to explore that question on future episodes of like, okay, well, how do you answer that question? Like, what do you want? But in the meantime, know that you're going to have to train to get there, um, in some capacity and you're probably going to need some coaching, right? Whether it's, uh, you know, whether it's in person, whether it's online, whether it's working with a more experienced lifter, you're going to, you need some way to help you evaluate where you're at and know what it is that you're going for, right? What it is that you're trying to do in the first place so that you can do it.

Absolutely. Well, I think that pretty much concludes this episode. So I'm gonna close it down. All right, yeah, let's close down. Rant over. All right. Thank you. Was it slash rant?

What do they say on Reddit? Slash, no, it's a hashtag. Yeah, it's like slash rant, right? It's like. Hashtag is Instagram, slash is Reddit, huh? Yeah. I hate social media, but I use it so that you can all get in touch with me. So thank you all for tuning in.

You can find me at Instagram, the underscore Robert underscore Santana. Or for the gym, it's weights, double underscore and double underscore plates, or you can go to weight, www.weightsandplates.com. If you're in the Phoenix metropolitan area, I have a gym here, weights and plates, strength and nutrition center. Please come visit. I think you'll find it to be a very fun and enjoy and a joyful experience, I guess. Excellent. Well, you can find me in the meantime at marmalade underscore cream on Instagram, or you can send me an email, trent at marmaladecream.com. That's the name of my production company,

but I also offer coaching services through there too. So you can reach me. I just had a conversation with a gentleman who likes the podcast and has been listening. I had that conversation over Instagram. We were talking about, um, he was just trying to get back into the groove, get back into lifting and just asking a couple of questions about programming and stuff. Happy to answer it. I love, um, I love it when y'all reach out and ask questions. So please do talk to me and talk to Robert.

We'll help you out. We'll get you where you need to go.