Episode 27: What I Got Wrong as a Coach in My First Two Years

Two years in and I have made every mistake you can think of. This one is me owning all of it.

I overcomplicated programs. I thought more volume meant better results. I avoided hard conversations with clients because I wanted to be liked. I priced myself too low because I didn't believe the work was worth it yet. I chased every shiny method instead of getting good at the basics.

In this episode I break down the exact things I got wrong in my first two years coaching hybrid athletes, why I got them wrong, and what I do differently now. If you are a new coach this might save you some pain. If you are a client it might explain why I am the way I am.

No fluff. Just the stuff I wish someone told me earlier.

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Lift Heavy, Run Fast Podcast Intro

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

What's going on, guys? Welcome back to another episode of the Lift Heavy Run Fast Podcast. I am your coach. I am your host, hybrid coach Mike. And today we are going over what I got wrong as a coach in my first two years of coaching. And there's a lot of things I got wrong. These are just some of the things that I that I uh tried to apply to some of the people that I started coaching early on in my career. Some of these you guys might be like, fuck, this guy was a shit coach. And honestly, I'm I was just when I first started coaching, I thought I knew what I was doing. And I would say that I did compared to even most of the people in the industry today. But everyone fucking must makes mistakes when they're new to their job. So please bear with me here and be a little bit patient. Uh or be a little bit uh understanding, sorry, not patient. Just before I get into all that, please like, comment, subscribe, and leave a five-star review if you guys haven't done that before. I don't know how all of this stuff works, but anything you guys do on here rating me helps. So that would be awesome. And if you guys want to get coached by me, there's an inquiries form down below. Or I have downloadable programs down below. They're one-time purchase programs on my Shopify. Click the link down below. These fucking programs are excellent and that will change your life. I've just released nine new programs over the past week that are basically you plug in your numbers and the program builds itself based off what you're doing. Uh, they're excellent. I spent a lot of time creating them. They are the exact methods that I've used with my own clients, but I've now put them into a Google Sheet. Okay, obviously, you don't have me tailoring things for you, but I've tried to add in my tailoring capabilities uh into these uh Google forms or Google Sheets, sorry, for you. So you can then create the program that you want based off the methodology that I still use or believe in and practice. So, anyway, that's all down there. Please go have a look. I promise you won't be disappointed. Next up, what I got wrong in my coaching career, some things I've fucked up with. Okay. Uh again, these are in no particular order, these are just a bunch of things that I think that I thought of. All right. Um, one of the things I used to do is just program a lot of volume for people, including myself. So when I was first started writing my own programs, I would do stupid like a 20-set workout to some people doesn't sound like that much, but 20 hard sets is very hard to achieve, okay? Or 20 good quality sets is very hard to achieve. I would program sometimes up to 30 set workouts for myself, and then I would be like, Okay, I can handle this. Mind you, I couldn't handle it. My most of those sets were shit anyway. This was when I believed just more was better and not quality was better. Um, I would then be like, Some of my clients, I'll program up to 20 sets per workout, literally, depending on what it was. Sometimes more, uh, depending on what their goal was. So some of the guys that I had on full body programs, I would be like, Okay, if we're doing full body programs three days a week, we need to do you know four to five sets per muscle group per workout, which means you've got to do like 25 sets per workout, which is 75 total sets per week, which is a lot of work to get done in three days, uh, let alone in a five-day program. So that was something a little bit dumb. Um, I'd also like I the other thing, the part of the reason why I also did this, by the way, just before everyone judges me for my shit programming capabilities. I wanted clients to feel like they were getting value. So I'd write sessions that stacked well that were like stacked with accessories and extra sets. Um, and the result was that like clients always walked out of the sessions. This is when I was only doing face-to-face, by the way. Uh, this is like like clients would walk out of the sessions feeling fucked and like fuck, I had such a good workout, but meaningfully, did they really progress any more than they would have if we did a little bit less and maybe focused on some other things? Uh, I'm not sure. I I basically placed that like volume was value uh in their eyes. Um, and I realize now, you know, obviously it's not the right stimulus is value. Then that goes on to my next thing. I copied my own training onto my clients. The thing is that what worked for me at the time as a 90 kilo power lifter wasn't gonna work for uh a 60 kilo mum of two who hasn't squatted in like 10 years. Okay. I would I was very much just stuck on like the powerlifting strength training methodology, and I would just apply that to all of my clients regardless of what their goal was. One, because at the time, like I just thought this is the best way to get whatever results everyone wanted. I genuinely thought that was the case. I didn't then think that everyone kind of has different goals and you can get stronger in multiple ways, and you don't need to actually use a barbell to get stronger all the time. I always just thought, you know, barbell must be the way to get stronger. Why aren't we doing a barbell? But again, in hindsight, now today I program very differently uh for everyone that walks through the door. But back then I was usually always like, all right, let's just pick up the barbell. This is what we're gonna do today. We're gonna deadlift and that's it. Or we're gonna squat bench and deadlift today, and I'll do that regardless of what my clients' goals were. Many people got far with just that anyway, so it wasn't it wasn't like always a negative thing, but there were better ways that I could have uh achieved a lot of my clients' goals as opposed to always having them just do barbell movements because a lot of them didn't want to do them, or a lot of them were just intimidated by them and were new to the gym, so it was asking too much of them at times. Um, the next thing I did was uh I under I underestimated how much life stress can affect someone's training. Uh and I realize this more now as an online coach because I'm working with you know a large, a large pool of people at any given time, and everyone's life stresses, work stress, uh lifestyle, sleep, you know, family situation, all of these things can impact your ability to uh perform in the gym and be uh the kind of athlete that you want to be. Okay. Sorry, there's a bike going past. Uh yeah, they can all impact your training and basically how you respond. Um, you know, the a lot of my clients aren't athletes, they're just you know people with jobs on the side. Uh, they're humans, okay, essentially, who happen to train. Bad sleep, sick kids, deadlines, travel, all of it eats into their recovery the same way as much as hard sessions do. So, programming I have found has to really bend around real life. Um, otherwise, it just ends up becoming another stressor in itself. So, and it is a stressor ultimately, but the point is that it doesn't end up improving the person any more than what doing less would have. So, something that I've tried to consider is just understand how much of an impact other stresses can have on someone's training capabilities. Uh, I used to give clients what I think they should do instead of what they actually wanted to do, or I didn't give them sessions that they wanted to do and was always focused on uh sessions that I think that they needed. And the difference here is that yes, again, my heart was probably in the right place, and I'm not saying I did the wrong thing overall, uh, but I always was very much like, no, this is optimal on paper, and this is what you need to do. Uh, if it doesn't get done, you are uh it's kind of like your own fault, and that that's what would happen a lot of the time. A lot of my clients would do sessions or come out of sessions not feeling so good, or maybe not be able to complete them, maybe they didn't want to do them, whatever it was. So they wouldn't have that kind of like compliance to the program anyway. But I was under the belief that you know, no, you just got to keep sticking to the program as opposed to changing the program to suit them more. I was very much set in my ways, and I would come on, I would at times be like, this is what you need to progress, this is what you this is what you're gonna do, there's no if, buts, or maybes about it. What that did was um it it wasn't a bad thing. Like a lot of my clients did come around and they did kind of see the light because sometimes I was right, and still to this day, sometimes I do believe that, by the way. But I understand now that if someone's not sticking to a program, someone's not enjoying it, it's okay to you know change things a little bit. Okay, it might not be the most uh direct way to get to their goal, but if we find another way that is maybe not as direct, but they're having more fun and more likely to stick to it, this is still the most the most direct way. Because the other way that sounds the most direct to you is probably not the most direct to them, and you got to pick which one they're more likely to stick with and more likely to enjoy. That's the one we're gonna focus on. So I learned that later down the track that sometimes the most optimal program isn't what I think is the most optimal, it's what the person is gonna stick to the most, enjoy and you know, gain value from outside of just you know the physical endeavors. Maybe they genuinely uh you know have a good time doing it and it puts them in a good mood. That's what I want to achieve as well. Not just be like, okay, we need to do this in order to achieve this goal, and this is the only way to do it. It's gonna suck. That's not fun for anyone. So training should also be fun and enjoyable just as much as it should be, you know, progressive and methodical. Anyway, uh, I avoided hard conversations. I've gotten a lot better at this now. I think just my personality type uh is like I'm quite conflict avoidant. Uh it's still something genuinely, like seriously, not taking the piss here. I still think it's something that I need to work on. Like, I'm not very good with conflict or conflict resolution. I find I don't know how to sometimes navigate uh conflicts with people. Like if someone genuinely has a problem, I'm understanding of what they're going through or whatever, but sometimes I don't know how to navigate that. And I feel like this is just a habit that I've had since I was a kid where I'm not really good at having hard conversations with people, maybe because I just never learned how to. And then growing up, I've realized now I'm 30 almost 32 years old, uh, that it's still a skill that I need to develop and improve. I've gotten much better better at it. So that's not what I'm trying to say here. The what I'm trying to say is that I would avoid it even, I would avoid it a lot more back then, having hard conversations with people because I was worried about having a conflict with them or them not agreeing potentially, or um, frankly, just upsetting them. So there's a lot of situations as a coach that you that you need to tell people that what they're doing is wrong, or that they're not sticking to the plan, or uh, you know, it's sometimes you've got to be like, dude, you gotta lose weight. And and sometimes you've got to say that to, you know, not to not to be sexist here, but as a guy, it can be hard to say that to a female, uh, particularly, uh, because sometimes, you know, not any gender can get offended, but it's it's hard to sometimes say that to someone because you don't want to see them upset and you don't want to want them to take it the wrong way because you're not saying this to just I'm I'm trying to negatively judge you, I'm trying to, you know, give you some constructive things here that we can work on together. But see, I didn't know how to have those kind of conversations back then. Uh to men or females, by the way. So a lot of the times a lot of my clients I would say, uh, you know, it's okay. Oh, it's okay, we'll do it next time. Okay, whatever next time. And you do that enough times eventually the person hasn't achieved the goals that they're paying me for. Um, and what they actually do need is a kick up the arse. And you know, there were times where I just didn't have it in me to give that person the kick up the ass, although I genuinely believed it was probably what they needed, but I didn't want to, you know, potentially upset them or um, you know, like I said, you know, hurt their feelings because they still seemed happy, but I knew that you know, if you're paying me for an outcome and you're not achieving that outcome because I'm okay with the fact that you only trained once since I saw you last week when we said we're gonna train four or five days a week uh based off the program that I've written and you've you've only adhered to 20% of it, of course we're not gonna achieve the goal that you've set out for. And frankly, why are you paying me? Those are the kind of things I should be saying to people, but instead I'll be like, oh, it's okay. I shouldn't have done that. Um, and now I don't do that. Uh, that's for sure. I'm lenient and understanding of people's situations now because I understand that you know not everyone's gonna be able to stick to the programs 100%. But if you fuck around long enough, I will be the one telling you, hey, we are whatever goals you have set, we need to push them back because you have not stuck to the program. Or I will before that point try to troubleshoot why we are not able to stick to the current program, why things aren't going the way we had planned, whether it be things within our control or without our control, let's troubleshoot that together and try to come to an understanding and conclusion of how we can then uh navigate this situation and then continue on our path. So, in saying that, long story short, previously not so good at uh having hard fun hard conversations, whether it be about body weight, missing sessions, uh whatever. Um, but yeah, and this is the point that I'm trying to say is being a nice coach costs a client more than being an honest one. So that's something that I realized. And it and it was really important for me now to be an honest coach. Because although the client's paying me either way, or if you're a coach listening to this, although they're paying you either way, you still need to have their best interest at heart. And it's really fucking important that if that means you have to tell the person how it is, constructively, of course, right? Like when you're not just gonna ridicule the person and criticize them, that's not how we do things, but if you can actually tell them in in a in a positive way, this is what I think we need to be doing in order to get to your goal, because right now we're not going there. Um, you're saving them time, you're saving them money, and you're doing the right thing by them. And if they still don't want to do it, then you gotta just be like, whatever. You can you can potentially choose to not work with that person if you're at that point, or you can just be like, okay, these are the expectations instead that we're gonna have because our the goals that you originally set out to achieve with me aren't there anymore, okay? They're unrealistic based off what you're currently doing, so it's not clearly not a priority for you to hit these goals right now. So we're just gonna prioritize doing the bare minimum, which is what you're currently giving me, which might be something that you also need to say to them. I have had that conversation before, by the way. I've gotten rid of clients before. Thankfully, no one recently. I love all my clients right now, but there have been times where I've gotten rid of clients before. Um, a couple face-to-face guys, a couple online guys who just just we didn't gel, and frankly, I just didn't like we didn't find that the way we were going about things are productive. Um, nothing against them personally. I just think uh from a coaching perspective, they weren't the kind of people that I wanted to coach, and for that reason, I'm like I think it's best we just part ways. Maybe another coach is better for them. That's another conversation you might need to have with someone. Uh just saying, and those conversations for me were hard to have, just putting it out there. The next thing I did wrong was uh okay, this is another one. I won't go, I won't blab on two months uh too much, but I made check-ins more about numbers than I should have been about realizing patterns. Okay, so one bad way in or one miss PB means nothing, but the pattern across four weeks means everything. I used to react to data points uh as opposed to looking at trends and asking better questions. So I used to look at the fact that someone's you know missed this number here, maybe their squat or run, or not really the running because I had gotten better at this point. But when I looked at someone's squat, uh be like, oh fuck, you missed this number the other day. Let's, you know, why'd that happen? Blah blah blah. I I instead I should have zoomed out more and been able to look at like what the last few weeks had had shown leading up to that. You know, I may have been able to predict that kind of would have happened earlier. Uh the next thing I often did is I confused complexity with quality. I used to sometimes write programs uh with more complexity because I felt like they needed it. Um for those that want to know, like you can use conjugate style waves, fancy block period periodization, a whole bunch of this. There's so many different things you can use. And not saying that any of these are periodizational programming methods don't work, they certainly do. But like, does my 60-year-old mum of two need like a waved progression in her program? She fucking trains like hardly one day a week with me, let alone two. She doesn't need to worry about the high-low model, you know what I mean? She just needs to come in the gym and just train hard for the 45 minutes to an hour that we're working together. And then if I see her again that week or next week, we're gonna do it again because she doesn't exercise enough. And if we're gonna achieve anything, we need to really push these programs. We don't need to worry about RPE and the details and stuff all that much. We just need to worry about getting her to exercise at the moment and trying to build a better habit, uh, form better habits here. So, anyway, I used to overcomplicate things at times. I'm I'm less uh prone to doing that now, although I will say that in the hybrid world when you're trying to balance running and lifting, sometimes complex uh can be useful because you're you're juggling different modalities right now. So I'm not gonna say that complex is completely useless because a lot of people who don't look at the complexities of balancing the hybrid program are generally the ones who don't last very long or progress for very long. So sometimes you do need to, you know, actually step back and and and try to think, okay, how do I make all of this work? And that can be quite a complex task at times, but not always and not for everyone. All right, uh, those are the main things I think. Like there's there's so many more, but I could be here all day. I don't want to bore you guys. Look, I'm gonna leave it there. I've got a few others, but you know, they're all the same shit. So I hope you guys, you know, got something out of me just being honest here and hopefully uh reflecting a little bit. This whole podcast was just me reflecting one day on some of the things that I've gotten wrong in my first few years as a coach and some of the things that I think okay, uh, is anyone gonna gain value out of this? I don't know, but I wanted to be honest and tell you guys some of the things that I'm thinking about, not was thinking about and realized about myself that I do differently now. If any of you are thinking about coaching with me, I hope I haven't deterred you. Uh be assured, you know, I don't do these things anymore, or at least realize that I'm doing them, so I'm less likely to do them with you. But the point here is uh, you know, I'm not that person anymore. So, you know, still continuously learning, still continuously trying to improve, but I think I've improved quite a bit with those things. Anyway, my links are down below. Like, comment, subscribe. Thank you so much for listening. If you're still here, I'll see you guys next time.