In this episode Shaun and Matt discuss the 3 most important tools they use when coaching clients for the best results and the ones they teach their coaches to use when going through their programs.

As a coach it's frustrating to have all of the knowledge about movement and exercise but without a good system of delivery you will never get good results for your clients.

01:51 So when we sort of planned this episode out we thought why don't we give one for explaining moment, or having a system around teaching someone something, and for different styles of learning. Then we look at the doing it sort of thing, and how to make people better through doing certain stuff. And then the third one we get into how to then correct it or make corrections along that line. So that's sort of where we're heading with this.

03:29 Yeah totally. And I like this topic as well because I think that any coaches, or potential coaches listening to this can think about the systems that are behind it. But even for clients as well, and athletes, they can be like, "Oh man coaches actually have systems for seeing things, and doing things. It's not just like watch someone doing something and hope for the best."

06:56 There's so many skills to go through as well. I think there's a whole bunch of them we go through in our mentorship program, probably in the vicinity of 10 or 12, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. But there's definitely three sort of big ones we identified. So let's start off with the first one. We call it, "Demonstrate, explain, practice." Or, "Demonstrate, explain, perform."

09:36 So what I mean is there's a lot of power in the silence. So if you're the one coach up at the front, and you've got 30 athletes in your class, they're all going to listen to you really intently while you do this thing, and you have to crush that demo. It has to be the best snatch you've ever done, the best muscle up you've ever done, the best push up you've ever done.

12:25 Yeah, that's a good point. Where I see it go wrong the most is when ... Let's say they made the effort to do the demonstration at the start of the snatch, but they've given the entire explanation of every single point of performance, of every single position that's under the sun to be able to complete that movement correctly.

17:00 The explanation would be like you said, just a one liner. So if you're really good with it, like you said, 10 words or less. That's also only going to take you 30 seconds. So you've basically done the first half within a minute, and then you might spend four or five minutes doing the practice stuff. Because we know that's where most people learn the most, by doing things.

20:29 So deliberate practice first of all, is a way of getting people to learn a particular task, whether it's shooting a basketball, playing golf, learning a snatch, or learning a squat, it's setting a clear stretch goal. So for this movement, as in the snatch, we've demonstrated what the clear stretch goal is. If you've done a really good demonstration, then the person knows what the intent is, and how it should look, and how explosive, and how aggressive, and all that type of stuff. There's all these subliminal things that you're giving off with a really good demonstration, and setting a clear stretch goal for that person to emulate.

35:38 Yeah, so we talk about a start, a transition, and a finish to give everyone context of the full thing. So what you've just said there is rather than looking at the whole movement we're just choosing a singular lens the look at. So when this person does their first set of 10 reps, we've set them some sort of a clear stretch goal, and some sort of feedback mechanism, and then we're giving them the 10 reps to do.

Rather than watch the whole 10 reps, the whole thing, and give feedback on the whole thing, we've just chosen as coaches to look at just the start position. So you can pretty much just look at them start, as soon as they start moving the bar off the floor, you can just close your eyes, and you've already got your feedback.

42:24 Well it's up to you as a coach to then use reps as your friend with that type of thing. So set aside, 5, 10, 15, 20, or three sets of five, or whatever the amount of reps are. But also it allows you to go back to ... You can have a lesson plan, and one of the things I did on my level two if anyone wants to go do that Crossfit level two, I highly recommend it, is you write down three points of performance for the start, three points of performance for the transition, and then for the end. And then all of those points of performance you write down one or two things that can go wrong in that. And you've just got ... what's that, five coaching cues now…

46:57 So I personally think, there's a clear difference between people who are pursuing coaching as a career, or to make ends meet. So what we wanted to do was make it so that people can't just come in and on their resume it's like, "I made the regionals in 2014. I can snatch 225. This is my Fran time, and this is what I can do." Because I'm sure that person is going to move pretty well, and they're going to be able to do all the stuff. But are they personable, can they have a conversation with someone, do they actually care about that person?

This week Shaun chats with guest Andrew "PAP" Papadopolous. Andrew is a gym owner, fitness influencer and all round nice guy.

During this episode they talk about how Pap got started in the fitness industry, what he is currently training for and the tools he uses for himself and his clients to achieve some of the successes he has seen since starting out.

Show notes:

00:03:19 So eventually I decided that I'm going to put the paramedics aside, even though I had my enlistment date, I didn't go, full pursue this fitness industry. And at the time, I was sleeping on my sister's couch, I didn't have a dollar to my name, I couldn't even afford to get my certificates.

00:06:27 But I know that, a thing I like to touch on a lot in conversation and continue to remind myself, is that, how you respond to people's successes tells you a lot about where you're at, in yourself. If you see other people succeeding, doing really well, if you're not happy for them, or you're not inspired or all that stuff, if you're begrudging them, jealous, you belittle them, you talk behind their back, what's that telling you about yourself? It's telling you nothing about the person you're talking about, it's telling you everything about where you're at currently.

00:11:42 Yeah... exactly right. So it could be a lot of the... Instagram, it's for consumers and you follow people for different reasons. You'll have your ratios, X amount of percentage follow you for advice, follow you for the education, follow you to have a bit of perv, follow you for, maybe just to keep tabs on you. And so, some people will sell themselves as, hey I'm a master body weight instructor, I'm a master kettlebell instructor or whatever, without any real qualifications or time behind it, with boots on the ground, teaching classes and stuff, not understanding how to communicate and control group dynamics and whatever. And they rock up and they just melt, they fall apart, it's like 30 or 40 people are staring at you, and it's like, "Oh this is what we're doing," and you've got no clue.

00:17:13 Because we just waste too much time and energy on worrying about what other people are saying and doing and thinking about us, and social media has amplified that.

00:41:11 Yeah. Six years ago, I was at a dawn service in Terrigal, like a local dawn service for me, and it was just pissing down cats and dogs, it was just raining, and I had these two young girls in front of me. It was a really busy dawn service, and these two young girls, one whispered to the other and said, "Our ANZACs would have had to fight through the rain." And as soon as I heard that, I had this light bulb moment, and thought to myself, it took a little bit of adversity to make this day more significant for this girl, or for these two girls. And I just thought, why not present a lot of adversity, why not make it a bit more specific to what military personnel will have to go through day-to-day, on ANZAC Day? And if it's supported right, if it's founded in the right theme and it's for a good cause, it's just going to be able to bridge that gap between the civilian and military community.

00:47:50 Yeah, that's right, and that influence comes at a high cost, and they got a large military personnel behind that and that affects a lot of people in the military. And I think a part of that, identity as an American is their military mind. So I think it's front and center in their culture, but the troops over there get a lot more respect, whether they get stuff for free or the people say, "Thank you for your service," and all that stuff.

00:50:14 And so if we can all, on ANZAC Day, march with one voice, Midnight 2 Dawn, saying "We're here to support our returning vets, our current serving defense force personnel, and we're here to celebrate the life that we're lucky enough to lead because of their sacrifices, because of these people," then that's going to create a culture and a sense of community that you want to create in your gyms, why not create it on a larger scale? And the Midnight 2 Dawn March is one facet, we want something for Remembrance Day, and like I was sharing with you, with the Share The Weight, being able to have that thought provoking conversation. Where, if someone's wearing a weighted vest, okay why are you wearing a weighted vest to work? Let's do a training session with weighted vest because of these reasons.

00:57:31 It's the next process, isn't it? I'm actually leaving Monday, so today is Friday, leaving in a couple of days to go to Europe for a 273 km run through four countries in the Alps.

00:58:15 I've done a few other multi-day adventure races covering lots of distance but that was mixed modality. And yeah, I've done a lot of longe range missions, you know. Just going out in the wilderness, going flat out there for time, carrying weight, and so it's really understanding, being conditioned to be able to physically and structurally be able to get the task done, but also understanding your nutrition, sports nutrition is key.

01:00:53 And that's where I think, you look at social media bypasses a lot of that, people that follow accounts and they aspire to be someone. Someone's like, "Look eat your greens and say your prayers, and you're going to look like me," but I'm not telling you that I'm on all these Mexican supplements. And I don't have to have a normal job because I get paid from promoting things I don't actually take or believe in. So we get this warped mixed view on actually how people are living their lives. And someone's like, "Okay so I'm just going to follow this person's program, I'm going to eat a certain way and then do what they've been telling me." But this person's not living that life, and they've got all these other things that are actually assisting them to be there.

This week Shaun and Matt discuss 5 strategies you can use outside the gym to improve the results you get in the gym.

Most people often focus so much on the program they're following, the sets and reps of every movement in the hour or two they're in the gym and then completely undo all their hard work in the other 23 hours of the day.

Listen in to hear what 5 things you can work on for better results in the gym!

0:00 - 5:00 Bali retreat recap

06:21 Yeah, so essentially, the point number one is a flexibility or mobility routine. And we just talked with one of the boys at the gym before and he said he'd like us to talk about a morning one and a nighttime one, and how to know the difference between what you should do, and what they should entail.

07:47 Yeah, and I really found that was nice because, when I get out of bed, I just feel stiff because you've been lying there. I'd find it after five minutes, just from simple breath work and just sitting in a pose that my body would already just open up so much.

12:48 Yeah, well, so I've got two. I've got ... I've been a massive user of True Protein's ZMA for a long time. That's just a lemon drink that I had every single night, or I used to have every single night until this new one came along. But, essentially, it's zinc, magnesium, amino acids. And they're all just proven things for relaxation and sleep. And it comes in a nice little lemon drink. It's a little trigger. At the end of the night, to have the drink. Half an hour later, winding down, bedtime, lots of other things.

13:17 So it's setting your body in a routine habit around sleep so it knows what's coming and it's ready for that state.

19:10 I actually sleep a little less than I think I do. I definitely get eight hours in bed. And I fall asleep straight away and I'll wake up and I'm pretty much out of bed straightaway. But the ... I reckon it's going to tell me I'm getting like seven ... between seven and eight hours sleep, not eight hours plus, like I think I'm getting.

26:19 So that's the only tricky thing that I find. With ... In terms of tracking it, to go from zero knowledge to a shit-load of knowledge, which you will go to after tracking some food stuff, it is amazing. Like MyFitness Pal, hands down for someone who's going from complete novice to actually learning about how many calories are in a 200 gram steak

29:44 Yeah, that's ... So I didn't really like MyFitness Pal, but I found the Zone diet really good. If you haven't done it before, or heard about it, Dr. Barry Sears wrote a book on it. It's really good. CrossFit endorses it, as well.

30:58 It shows a little bit of discipline, doing it for a full month. And, also, do it while you're out. I mean, you don't have to take scales, but just practice the discipline and the self-control around divvying it up with your eyeballs, and being honest with yourself, and not saying, "Oh, for this meal, I'm just going to have a little bit more, and then the next one, I'll have a little bit less." So divvy up each one how you meant to, throughout the day, even whether you're eating out or eating at home.

33:01 Okay, cool. We getting there. Environment is super important to help your training. So we're talking about the space that you're in. So whether it's your car, your workspace, how you keep your house. Any other environment you may typically be in right?

36:17 Just like if your TVs in a prominent location, you're probably more likely to walk straight into the house and turn it on. So just things like that. So if you set up your environment, like let's say you put your TV in the cupboard every night, are you more likely to go in and get it out, plug it in, plug in the antenna, tune the channel and then turn the TV on? Or are you going to walk in and turn the TV on that's already set up?

40:31 Set your environment around the habits that you're trying to build. Don't put things in there that you know are no good so there is the temptation every single day to do it because ... your temptation muscle is just going to die and one day you're just going to grab it and go for it. And in that moment of guilt, you are going to probably have another one. Feeling bad for yourself.

45:10 Yeah. That's cool. The big thing for me is being able to distinguish that, because ... and I've talked about a lot recently, this thing ... and I talked about on our last podcast, Episode 73, I think it was, with Luke. But the studies they did around soldiers who came back from Vietnam. And when they were in Vietnam, they were heroin addicts. And they came back to America, the environment and the people that they were around, completely changed. So it took away all the social triggers, it took away all the environmental triggers of having those drugs.

51:32 I would suggest you probably be better off spending a little less time with those people, if CrossFit and the training is the thing that you value. And find more friendships within the gym and start divvying your time up a little more to them, or making a little more time for them. Because that's just going to reinforce the good stuff you're doing in the gym. And if that's something that you personally value and want and want to continue doing, then that's the best way to do it. Not to say that you shouldn't hang out with those friends, but just limit the time. Just divvied it up appropriately, based on the goals that you have, spending time with different people.