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Matt & Niki discuss visual cues for lifting: how to best use them in-person & online, common mistakes to avoid, & some helpful examples. Visual Cues for Lifting When used properly, visual cues can reduce the time & words needed to get the lifter squatting or deadlifting or pressing with proper form. Used incorrectly, they can confuse and get lifters trying to mimic something inappropriate for them. Visual cues help with stationary, simple technique elements that can often be difficult to explain. For example, "take a shoulder width stance" actually requires a bit of thought. If you take the stance and toe angle they need, however, you've probably saved time and confusion. Similarly, showing the proper wrist, and elbow position for the squat helps the lifter see the "straight wrist, close grip, elbows forward." These visual cues, of course, don't occur in isolation. Combining different means of communication (verbal, tactile, visual) hammers home important points, allowing multiple senses to receive and comprehend the technique information. Visual cues for lifting can thus simplify and quicken the learning process. Visual Cues for Online Coaching In-person coaching typically uses visual communication during the teaching progression, when the coach shows the lifter what he's looking for. When the lifter is lifting, you have to be in the lifter's vision or peripheral vision to communicate with the lifter (necessary for coaching a deaf lifter, which Matt has done). In online coaching where the coach breaks down the video, the lifter gets to watch her own lifts and hear the coach's commentary. Additionally, the coach can pause or slow down the video. The coach can draw and many coaches include video of themselves, where they can use their upper body or arms to add a visual cue. Thus, the best online coaching provides verbal & visual cues, combining the auditory and visual senses. GET STARTED with one-on-one online coaching FOR FREE! Get your FIRST MONTH FREE on all strength and nutrition coaching plans. No discount code needed and includes a 10-day, no obligation trial. https://bit.ly/2MKeOoh Special offers from BLOC and our partners: https://barbell-logic.com/offers/ Connect with the hosts

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Niki & CJ discuss what makes a bad strength coach and how to avoid the pitfalls of bad coaching. Being not bad, a very good place to start.

Bad Strength Coaching Let's face it, we've all experienced a bad professional at one time or another. Whether they were unprofessional, rude, incompetent, sleezy, inattentive, we can all relate to the experience of knowing we're dealing with a bad professional. So what makes a bad strength coach? Bad barbell coaches fall short in at least one area of coaching.

• professionalism
• competence
• integrity
• client-centeredness

Professionalism, Integrity, Competence

You can be professional and have integrity on day one as you coach your friend.

Take what you're doing seriously and commit to learning. Show up on time. Wear appropriate clothing.

Honest and integrity go toward professionalism, but as a coach people are trusting you with their time, body, goals, and money. Respect these.

Furthermore, tell the truth about your current experience & competency level. If someone asks you a question about something outside your expertise, be honest that you've never dealt with that but you can look into it. If it's completely outside your scope or something you don't want to deal with, you might look up some sources or professionals they can look to to learn more.

For competence, of course, tell the truth about your competence, but if you've never lifted and have no direction to provide for a lifter, you probably shouldn't coach. Learn some teaching progressions and cues, have some understanding of common programming adjustments and problems you'll encounter, and commit to learning.

Client-Centeredness

You can't coach without clients, and you're ultimately working to accomplish your clients' goals.

It may be true that more well-known coaches can be selective about who they coach and can say "my way or the highway."

If this is you and you're doing okay for yourself, then great, but more than likely you haven't developed "a way" and you need to understand and appreciate your clients' needs and goals.

If you never examine your coaching and always blame the client, you're not improving. Don't do this.

When a client asks a question or suggests they're not quite happy with how things are going, don't dive into defensiveness. Embrace the discomfort, and consider what you could have done better. What can you learn? Take it as an opportunity.

GET STARTED with one-on-one online coaching FOR FREE! Get your FIRST MONTH FREE on all strength and nutrition coaching plans. No discount code needed and includes a 10-day, no obligation trial. https://bit.ly/2MKeOoh Special offers from BLOC and our partners: https://barbell-logic.com/offers/ Connect with the hosts

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Matt & Niki explore tactile cues: different types, how & when to use them for in-person and online coaching.

Oh, and how do you pronounce tactile? Is it like "tactical?"

Tactile Cues vs Verbal & Visual Cues

Tactile cues, as you may have guessed, involve you as the coach or an object touching the lifter.

Visual cues show the lifter how to properly lift. Visual cues explain (hopefully clearly) how the client should move. Tactile cues use the sensation of touch to deliver information to the lifter. You as the coach may physically move the lifter into the correct position. This avoids the lifter having to understand your verbal or visual directions, and allows the lifter to feel proper form. An example is bringing the lifters elbows up & forward in the press set up. Similarly, you may pace your hand or finger on a body part you want the client to focus in on. For example, you may touch the lifters low back to get the lifter to extend her lumbar spine. Lastly, you may have an object impose a physical indicator that limits the range of motion. Examples of this include using a foam roller or 4x4 (often called terribly useful block of wood (TUBOW) to prevent knee slide in the squat or setting up a band so the lifter knows proper depth in the squat. Some carryover exists between verbal and tactile cues. You may give your lifter a verbal cue for her to feel a physical sensation. "Pressure on midfoot" is a great example where you're trying to create tactile feedback for the lifter through a verbal cue. Tactile Cue Challenges

You need to build trust with your lifter, so ask if it's okay to touch the lifter to correct their technique, and touch them professionally. There are some situations where you may simply want to avoid touching lifters. Matt, for example, used to coach junior high females.

What physical cues can you use in online coaching?

Adjusting the lifter into correct technique is impossible. You may recommend the lifter gets an in-person session with a coach if you trust.

There are ways, however, to bring attention to a body part or impose a physical limitation.

The lifter or person close to the lifter may touch the lifter to bring attention to a body part. You don't have to be a coach to touch someone's low back or mid-sternum.

Setting up a band or TUBOW, as well, can be done with online coaching.

GET STARTED with one-on-one online coaching FOR FREE! Get your FIRST MONTH FREE on all strength and nutrition coaching plans. No discount code needed and includes a 10-day, no obligation trial. https://bit.ly/2MKeOoh Special offers from BLOC and our partners: https://barbell-logic.com/offers/ Connect with the hosts

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The coaching transition can be hard, as you have to budget time, money, or both with a steep learning curve & avoid potential pitfalls. Niki & CJ help you learn how to make the coaching transition to become a good coach.

Also, learn the correct pronunciation of CJ's last name!

Coaching Transition - Let's Go

So, you want to be a coach!? Awesome. You'll have to move from your current non-coaching state & bring coaching into actuality.

Of course, there's the leap of faith method, where you quit everything, metaphorically burn all your ships, and decide you'll be a coach one way or another.

Let's try another path, a more deliberate path, where you learn from the wisdom and mistakes of others.

Even if coaching become your primary means of income - you find yourself coaching at a big box gym or CrossFit gym, you have to ensure you coach, learn, and avoid burnout.

If you're in this position, we can't recommend enough our (completely free) Coaching Kickstarter eBook. Check it out!

Avoiding Pitfalls During Your Coaching Transition

Whatever path you follow, you must coach. Coach your spouse, your friends, your mom, your kids. Just coach. You need the reps, just as someone who wants to lift needs to get started - even if they have a 1" bar with concrete plates, no lifting shoes or belt, and are searching correct form during the workout. Begin.

You need a deliberate learning method. This not only includes the basic academic knowledge - anatomy, physiology, principles of programming, physics - but also a way to reflect on and learn from every coaching session.

Just as a novice may not be all that strong but can enjoy the rapid growth of a linear progression, a beginner coach can similar improve quickly through deliberate practice.

Ensure your business model is sustainable - and sustainability primarily means in terms of money and time.

CJ, for example, knew he had four months of runway before he or his wife would have to begin to earn additional money outside coaching.

Similarly, someone who keeps their main job and coaches in their free time will either need to put a time-limit on this practice or ensure that their combined main job and coaching job does not lead to burn out (too much time) or resentment (not charging clients enough).

A major pitfall is going professional too early. Example include buying or renting a huge gym space, getting a professionally-designed website, or purchasing some administrative or backend support when you only have a couple paying clients.

As you grow as a coach, a more professional website, a bigger space, and other marks of an established, professional coach will come - but don't do the coaching equivalent of buying a treadmill when you've never run a day in your life.

Start today, keep learning, know your coaching VIP, and - seriously - download that Coaching Kickstarter eBook.

GET STARTED with one-on-one online coaching FOR FREE! Get your FIRST MONTH FREE on all strength and nutrition coaching plans. No discount code needed and includes a 10-day, no obligation trial. https://bit.ly/2MKeOoh Special offers from BLOC and our partners: https://barbell-logic.com/offers/ Connect with the hosts

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Today, Matt & Niki delve into verbal communication - our primary means of communication as a coach, both in-person & online. While this may seem straightforward, many steps occur to correctly communicate to our clients & get them to move correctly.

This begins & 3-part series of sorts where Matt & Niki will explore communication, beginning with verbal & touching on tactile & visual (and the differences between in-person and online).

No video this week for YouTube viewers. We tried a new recording platform & lost the video. Bear with us while we try to improve our logistical & technological systems. Thanks!

Verbal Communication on the Platform

What has to occur for effective communication to occur on the platform?

The coach must first see the lift, process that information, and compare what he sees to the model in his head (which may be imperfect). Following this, he must understand any deviations from the model, prioritize them, understand how to correct them, and deliver information to the lifter in the form of a cue (e.g. "knees out").

That's a lot. But communication involves two people and is a two-way street.

Hearing the cue, the lifter must then understand it (each word and the words together). The lifter takes that information and use it to attempt to change her movement in light of that new information. Then the lifter moves.

The coach returns to the picture, and the process is repeated. Did the lifter fix the error (and potentially additional errors)? Was there an overcorrection? Did nothing change at all?

Don't worry, though, while much is involved, we can simplify this process and accelerate your effectiveness as a coach.

Teaching Versus Cueing

Typically, a coach takes in information regarding new lifters, to understand those lifters' backgrounds. This helps the coach determine his approach with their first interaction.

Coaches may perform a teaching progression, which both gets the lifter moving correctly while including certain words & phrases that will likely inform cues that the coach may use during the lifter's sets.

It can be a good idea to walk lifters through the teaching progression, especially if you're a newer coach.

For online coaching, teaching may involve some how to videos demonstrating proper form. Articles and podcasts that address lifting basics may begin to deepen the lifter's understanding.

Understand that in order for a cue to be effective, it must be understood. Teaching should first focus on the "how"s. Teaching enables better understanding of cueing and coaching during the sets.

As teaching progresses - as the lifter & coaching relationship lengthens and deepens - the focus of teaching moves from the "how"s to the "why"s, and this is often why good coaches are born as clients, because as they improve as lifters and learn the "why"s from a good coach, they consider coaching themselves.

Practical & Effective Verbal Cues

Let's move past the theoretical and come to the practical. What should you do on the platform? Some basic principles of good cueing can help steer you in the right direction. Cues should be:

• Brief - keep cues short
• *Confident - don't portray doubt
• *Loud - cues must be heard
• Clear - avoid big words
• Positive when appropriate - a "good" communicates that the lifter is correctly performing the movement
• *Note: loud & confident does not mean yelling (necessarily) - deliver appropriate cue for environment & lifter

Cues must be understood, and more words means more words that can misunderstood or not heard. Keep cues short and use short words.

If you're a new coach and not 100% sure about the cue, act like you are. Don't deliver a cue with doubt or like it's a question. Give the cue and evaluate and re-evaluate based on the lifter's movement.

Lastly, seminars and powerlifting meets can skew cue volume. Cues must be heard, but they don't have to be yelled. Furthermore, increasing the volume tends to increase the confusion. If you deliver a cue, nothing changes, and deliver it again more loudly, okay. But it needs to end there.

A typical bad interaction goes something like this: lifter lifts incorrectly, coach delivers cue, lifter repeats the error, coach gets louder, lifter repeats error, coach delivers the cue again, this time yelling and getting frustrated and angry, lifter is beginning to tune the coach out.

If you find yourself in this situation, stop. Shift your angle. Think about a different cue. Don't get frustrated. It's possible that this set gets away from you. That's okay. Keep observing, thinking, and coaching as best you can.

Control the Platform, Control the Emotions

Controlling the platform doesn't mean channeling your inner drill sergeant. You might feel frustrated and be terrified that Matt Reynolds is 5 feet behind you observing the lifter (which, if he's 5 feet behind you, you might take that as a suggestion to move 5 feet back, FWIW).

Pay attention to how your lifter is responding to you and your cues on the platform. If you're frustrated, the lifter is likely frustrated and confused.

Breathe. Slow things down. Encourage. Teach between sets. Think. This is how you'll become a better coach. The only way you can fail is to give up.

GET STARTED with one-on-one online coaching FOR FREE! Get your FIRST MONTH FREE on all strength and nutrition coaching plans. No discount code needed and includes a 10-day, no obligation trial. https://bit.ly/2MKeOoh Special offers from BLOC and our partners: https://barbell-logic.com/offers/ Connect with the hosts

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Nerd out on pain science, what it's like doing scientific research, getting papers published, and what we understand about pain interventions for humans. Jayson Ball, staff coach & PhD student, rejoins the podcast with CJ Gotcher.

The Pain of Scientific Research

What does science look like from the trenches of laboratories, where experiments are designed and executed, papers are submitted and defended, and knowledge is furthered?

Jayson is mid-way through a PhD program. He has transitioned from spending most time in the classroom to now spending more time in the laboratory.

Research takes much time, and some studies end with apparent dead ends (though knowledge & benefits to those involved can always be gleaned). He enjoys the process, and conducts as much research as possible to learn as much as possible.

Nerding Out On Pain Science

Jayson & his colleagues focus their research on rats. Rats enables some methods & interventions that are not possible with humans, but how much can be gleaned from experimenting with rats is always an issue.

Rats love exercise. Put a running wheel in a container with a rat, and you will get high compliance. Put a treadmill in someone's house, and the same result does not follow.

Pain and exercise research focuses on mechanisms, not interventions. Psychosocial interventions best serve humans (at least for now).

Biological interventions (e.g. pain killers) come with serious side effects. Psychosocial interventions such as not catastrophizing help people deal with pain and recover from injuries.

GET STARTED with one-on-one online coaching FOR FREE! Get your FIRST MONTH FREE on all strength and nutrition coaching plans. No discount code needed and includes a 10-day, no obligation trial. https://bit.ly/2MKeOoh Special offers from BLOC and our partners: https://barbell-logic.com/offers/ Connect with the hosts

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How do you end your cooking rut? What do you do when your go-to foods bore you? Niki Sims & Nikki Burman have tips & tricks to re-energize your cooking & meal preparation, so you don't turn to unhealthy, convenience foods that take you away from your goals.

End Your Cooking Rut

It's easy to grow sick of the same meals, get burnt out by cooking, meal preparation, grocery shopping, and all the other steps (including eating) that go into healthy, sustainable nutrition.

Tackle this thorny issue from both sides: remember your goals & enliven the steps to crush your goals.

Remember Your Goals – Know Your Why

What are your nutrition goals and why do they matter to you? Reminding yourself of why you're cooking, preparing meals, and eating healthy foods matters. Ruts happen. Don't forget why you're doing this in the first place.

Nikki enjoys seeing her family happy & healthy. The physical manifestation of her goals is her family, so she not only looks toward her personal goals but her loved ones for motivation.

Taking time to write your goals, post them, and investigate why they matter helps.

Now, on to reenergizing meal preparation.

Find New Recipes

Finding new recipes can reenergize your nutrition, but doing this requires work (find the recipe, purchase the food, try it out, see if people like it).

Unless you absolutely love trying new recipes, look for simpler recipes. Look at the ingredient list and the number of steps. Double-check that you're comfortable with the cooking options (if it requires an air fryer and you don't have one, move on).

Beyond finding all new recipes, you can tweak go-to recipes to make them fresh and prevent boredom. Try cooking vegetables or meat, for example, with a different method (if you typically roast, try the air fryer or grill them).

Change out meats and vegetables to find a different flavor profile. The basics of the recipe will remain, but the result will taste much different.

Vary the spices and see what works and what you like.

Make Cooking Fun

If you're cooking for your family, make it a family event. Have your family join you, so you don't feel like you're sacrificing family time for food time. This is also a great way to teach your family how to cook and what is involved in making healthy food.

If you're meal prepping for yourself, listen to music or your favorite podcast. Have it be – like training time – a time away from work and that is all about you and moving toward your goals.

Preparation & Planning

Have healthy meats & veggies frozen & on-hand. Maintain a well-stocked spice cabinet. Keep necessary & go-to sauces in your refrigerator.

If you made too much of something, freeze part of it so you have a ready-to-go meal.

Schedule your grocery shopping. This might mean having it delivered to your house, delivered to the car, or going in yourself, but ensure you have your grocery list complete & ensure the time works for you and your family.

Don't Fear Failure

You might make something that doesn't go over well. That's okay. You'll make more food that is tasty and healthy, and you'll occasionally find a new favorite dish that you'll want to make for and share with others.

Experiment and try new things. If you're sick of eggs, try overnight oats, recipes with greek yogurt, or cottage cheese and fruit.

Try breakfast for dinner (or dinner for breakfast).

Ultimately, if you're dreading eating your prepared food, lower compliance is likely to arise. Lower compliance means moving away from your goals. Notice this early and try some new recipes or new ways of cooking now before you're noticing metrics shifting in an undesired direction.

Let us know if you have some other ideas to end your cooking rut and reenergize meal preparation!

GET STARTED with one-on-one online coaching FOR FREE! Get your FIRST MONTH FREE on all strength and nutrition coaching plans. No discount code needed and includes a 10-day, no obligation trial. https://bit.ly/2MKeOoh Special offers from BLOC and our partners: https://barbell-logic.com/offers/ Connect with the hosts

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Are there too many coaches!? Learn how to stand out, find clients & provide value as a coach in a seemingly flooded coaching market.

The Flooded Fitness Market

Are there too many coaches!? Learn how to stand out, find clients & provide value as a coach in a seemingly flooded coaching market. With social media & the internet, it's easy to be overwhelmed by the quantity of personal trainers, content creators, and coaches trying to find a piece of the fitness market. Niki & CJ can help.

Think about your Values, Identities, & Priorities (VIP) & consider the market. Ideally, these two circles are aligned perfectly. They won't be, and you're not looking to coach everyone in the fitness market.

You are not in the same pool as the expert, online coach who has been doing this for decades. While you may look up to this coach and learn from him or her, comparing yourself to him or her is ultimately counterproductive. Plus, these people didn't begin with huge social media followings or large online coaching companies.

Finding Clients as a Coach

What comparative advantage do you have over a Matt Reynolds, Louie Simmons, or whatever coach you look up to? You know your co-workers, friends, and family and can help them meet their goals with a relatively low knowledge level and for much cheaper than a professional barbell coach.

The people around you should know that you lift and coach. Like any other hobby, talk about it in person and on social media. Start coaching friends, family, & co-workers. Do it now. Start coaching.

Don't worry about finding a niche. Don't worry about marketing, having a website, starting a podcast, getting a certification, or getting articles published. These are all great. They don't help you coach.

Providing Value as a Coach

It doesn't take much experience or knowledge to be able to help those around you. Having some teaching progressions, knowing some cues, and understanding the basics of programming a novice means you can people meet their goals.

It is not a big gap between posting videos of your friends and family hitting PRs on social media and posting videos of your clients hitting personal bests on social media.

You don't need to know how to program DUP or Conjugate programming to help someone get stronger. You don't need to have 10k followers on Instagram to double someone's squat. You don't have to have a personal training certification to teach someone how to deadlift.

Find Clients & Provide Value as a Coach

The low barrier to entry should not discourage you but encourage you. To find clients & provide value as a coach does not require intensive study and years of experience. You can start now.

This also means there are many bad coaches and personal trainers out there. You can quickly surpass them by acting professionally now, by developing and maintaining an academy study habit, and by coaching now.

Certifications, content creation, and finding social media followers are great. Do these along the way. Like you shouldn't feel like a failure because you can't squat 315 on day 1, don't feel bad that as a newbie coach your skills and knowledge reflect that.

Just as two months on a novice linear progression can make a big different, two months of study, coaching, and posting on social media can make a big difference.

Accomplishing your goals as a professional barbell coach requires consistency over a long period of time. Start now - there is no better day or time to begin.

GET STARTED with one-on-one online coaching FOR FREE! Get your FIRST MONTH FREE on all strength and nutrition coaching plans. No discount code needed and includes a 10-day, no obligation trial. https://bit.ly/2MKeOoh Special offers from BLOC and our partners: https://barbell-logic.com/offers/ Connect with the hosts

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Online coaching is better than in-person coaching. It provides more value to the coach and client, enabling greater flexibility, personalization, and effectiveness. Online Coaching is Better

Since Barbell Logic began providing online coaching, we have offered it almost apologetically, only as a backup if you lacked in-person access to a great professional barbell coach. We have changed are thinking on online coaching's value.

Online coaching is better than in-person coaching for most people most of the time.

Online coaching provides greater flexibility, personalization, consistency, and effectiveness for coaches and clients.

We still love in-person coaching, and most of our coaches offer both online and in-person coaching.

Effectiveness of Online Coaching

We used to believe in the extreme importance of the first few sessions and first few months for novice lifters.

Coaches correct technique errors in the initial sessions, getting lifters moving in the most biomechanically efficient way possible (with proper form). Clients needed to get as strong as possible in those first few months.

While we still value correct technique and getting clients stronger in the beginning months, these are rather the initial steps in a longer transformative process of building strength to improve quality of life.

Numbers on the bar increase drastically in the initial months of training, but the true value comes from how strength training and health habits become a part of their life, which ultimately creates the effectiveness, value, and lifechanging changes the clients are looking for.

Flexibility of Online Coaching

Online Coaching provides flexibility to coaches and clients that in-person coaching cannot compete with.

Clients train when and where they want, and coaches coach when and where they want. This flexibility has led to greater consistency and higher consistency to more effectiveness.

If you have an in-person session and something comes up so you can't make it, the chances that your coach has the flexibility to modify his schedule are slim. Whereas if you typically train before work and something arises where you have to train after work, it's not a problem with online coaching. This also leads to greater compliance.

As a client, you can maintain your training habit through a gym closure or a vacation while still receiving coaching from your coach. As a coach, you can continue to retain your clients as they move. If you want to live in small town USA or in sunny southern California, you can and coach people around the world.

This also enables better coach-client pairing. Clients with specialized needs such as postpartum or pregnancy training, training for military requirements, or training around injuries can find coaches with that knowledge. Coaches can be paired with more clients who they are better-equipped to coach.

Value of Online Coaching

Online coaches earn more money per hour and can have more clients than the limitations of a daily or weekly schedule allow.

Beyond this, the pathways to higher-paying coaching are limiting. Personal training wages are low, and not all people want to open their own gym (plus, with business closures, this is riskier than ever before).

Clients pay less money for online coaching while typically getting more or as much feedback from their coach as they would from their in-person coach.

In-person coaching from an excellent professional barbell coach is extremely expensive. Most people typically get occasional technique tune ups or follow a group coaching model to make in-person coaching more affordable.

Online Coaching Delivery Differences

Online coaching enables coaches to video themselves while watching their clients videos and provide video feedback. While online coaching has some limitations (especially tactile cues) its capabilities enable some different coaching methods.

Through either moving your body in the video or drawing on the screen, visual cues are easier to deliver to clients than when in-person.

Online coaching enables more long coach-client relationships. Although long relationships certainly exist with in-person clients, oftentimes the coach or the client moves and though both would like to continue the relationship it must end. Online coaching can sustain these coach-client relationships.

Online coaching excels at programming. Not only is delivering workout programming (coach) and receiving programming (client) easier, but the coach can explain strength programming decisions and adjustments easily.

Metrics can be automated and tracked for all lifts and all rep ranges. While this may seem like a small benefit, if seeing different PRs go up over time motivates clients, then this again increases compliance while ultimately leads to greater effectiveness.

Online coaching enables automatic storage of not only metrics and PRs but also information. Whatever cue the coach wants to think about next time, you can automatically remember. You don't have to write down programming or cues or anything else in your notebook in order to remember it. The App logs it. Client Education & Empowerment

Lastly, online coaching naturally leads to greater client education. In-person coaching the coach can do more in terms of immediate technique cueing and load changing. As clients learn and coaches better understand their clients, developing guiderails in case of bad training days (or awesome training days) involves the coach enabling the client to make those decisions for themselves.

The clients, too, are not on their own with these decisions, but the coach can provide feedback as to the decision the client made. For example, if a client has a tendency to make decisions that take it easier on themselves, the coach can both adjust the guiderails and let the client understand this tendency they have.

GET STARTED with one-on-one online coaching FOR FREE! Get your FIRST MONTH FREE on all strength and nutrition coaching plans. No discount code needed and includes a 10-day, no obligation trial. https://bit.ly/2MKeOoh Special offers from BLOC and our partners: https://barbell-logic.com/offers/ Connect with the hosts

• Matt on Instagram
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Connect with the show

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• Podcast Webpage
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• Or email [email protected]

Burnout can occur in any pursuit or career path, but can be particularly noxious for careers coming from passion. Coaching fits that bill certainly, as no one comes to coaching to make billions. So, acknowledging that burnout exists and can happen, how do we avoid it (or stop it if we find ourselves burnt out).

What is Coaching Burnout?

Burnout isn't being tired. Maybe the analogy in training is that it's not the soreness or exhaustion that one hard workout can create, but rather the buildup of stress unrecovered from (overtraining).

Coaching burnout will feel like emotional exhaustion, and symptoms may include:

• not training
• not attending nutrition
• dreading work
• feeling like you're putting on a show
• resentment

Burnout is a signal that something or many things are wrong. This is an opportunity to right those wrongs and grow as a person and professional barbell coach.

Causes of Coaching Burnout

What causes burnout? The reasons to feel exhausted differ, but it likely comes from a violated boundaries or a lack of priorities. It ultimately comes down to not knowing and pursuing what you want.

You may not know what you want as you begin to coach. That is okay. Those desires may change, and probably will.

You may begin to say yes to every coaching opportunity that presents itself, as you want coaching experience. As you gain experience and expertise, you will likely need to know how to choose opportunities, which means saying no to things that do not bring you closer to your goals.

If you allow your in-person sessions to regularly bleed over their allocated time, you are not only providing more than you agreed to but you are likely stepping on your training time, family time, personal time, or lunch time.

Similarly, if you retain old clients that are paying lower rates when you were a less-skilled coach, you likely need to tell those clients that your rate has increased and be prepared to justify why. You'll likely be surprised at their response.

Avoiding or Ending Coaching Burnout

Know your boundaries. You may not know them as you begin as a coach, but identifying them and communicating them to your clients and other clearly sets expectations up front. You may (and likely will) have to defend them at some point.

Identify what you want and work toward your goals. This will require checking in, as your desires and goals will change. Keeping your goals in mind helps you evaluate opportunities and know which to follow and which to avoid.

Know your scope of practice. You cannot be all things for your client. It can be helpful to have other resources or experts you can refer your clients to, but you are not and should not be a therapist or other professional.

Take the time to check-in with how you feel. How do you feel after a call with a client, an in-person coaching session, or how are you feeling in general? Just as slower bar speed and lower desire to train can indicate you're heading toward overtraining, seeing repeated negative emotions can help you identify you need to change something in your coaching practice.

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