So this episode comes about because for most of my years of training, I wrote my program for myself, or pulled from templated programs as a base for my own programming. I’ve never had a 1:1 coach, outside of interning with other performance coaches in person. That mainly comes from the fact that I enjoy being my own guinea pig and have always loved the process of training. Even in seasons where I probably wasn’t as consistent as I would’ve been if I did have a 1:1 coach.

So we moved into our rental in June 2021. And we had pretty much our full home gym set up at that point. But since essentially January 2020 I was wildly inconsistent with training. And that was coming off only training for six months from June 2019 through December 2019 after we were done with our first year of full-time travel. Basically, since April 2018, I have not been consistent with training. And that brought up a lot of past injuries, and just general weaknesses and loss of range of motion that I got as a result of inconsistent training largely while traveling.

Back to June 2021 when we moved into the rental and had our garage him, I trained myself not at the intensity that I was training in 2018, but with the same style of training. And after prepping for shooting over 400 videos for YouTube with Paige Major, my friend and videographer, I just saw that I had some nagging issues that quite frankly I didn’t want to coach myself through. But I did feel that I had the answers or the knowledge needed in order to pick an appropriate program.

That, it’s what brings us to today’s episode. I’m currently following a very well-known coaches templated program, that has everything I need in addition to what my sports masseuse has kind of told me to work on in my own time.

I will likely do another episode on my experience with a local sports masseuse so far and why I sought her out in the first place. So look forward to that.

To program for yourself or hire a coach?

When it comes to being a trainer, I really do believe that you should always to some extent be your own guinea pig. I think there is a power and different level of coaching that comes from you having experienced some of the things that you are going to program for your clients. No that doesn’t mean that you need to move as much weight as them or be in as good of shape as them or even have the same goals or background as them, but having done German volume training or some kind of super high volume training gives you an idea of what that feels like and you can better prepare your clients for that if you happen to program some kind of high volume program or even super set.

I guess really that is just the experiential piece of being a coach. Because you can have those experiences even if you’re not programming for yourself.

There are pros and cons to programming for yourself, and hiring a coach, or following someone’s templated program. I personally find that templated programs are a bit of a sweet spot, because again, it gives you that base but also allows for you to modify as needed, or according to your own preference.

I find a lot of times that coaches have this guilty complex because they know how to program in a way that would get them a good work out, and they know they could be consistent, but they aren’t because they simply don’t have the time or brain space to program for themselves. And even the time and energy it would take to just whip up a single work out four days a week, can be too much. And then that coach is left not working out at all. Not feeling good about themselves from maybe an integrity standpoint,