Beast over Burden powered by Barbell Logic

Latest Episodes:

Nerding Out on Pain Science - #411 Jun 07, 2022

Show notes

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

Connect with the show

End Your Cooking Rut to Overcome Food Boredom - #410 May 31, 2022

Show notes

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!

Connect with the show

Find Clients & Provide Value as a Coach - 409 May 24, 2022

Show notes

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.

Connect with the show

Online Coaching is Better Than In-Person Coaching - #408 May 17, 2022

Show notes

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.

Connect with the show

Avoiding Coach Burnout - #407 May 10, 2022

Show notes

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.

Connect with the show

Knowledge: How to Set Yourself Apart - #406 May 03, 2022

Show notes

How do you set yourself apart as a coach? One way is knowledge. Understanding the fundamentals that underlie anatomy, physiology, programming, technique, and platform coaching will differentiate you from the typical personal trainer. Set yourself apart with knowledge. It's easy to get a personal training certification. Even earning a degree in exercise science offers no guarantee of competence as a coach. Have a basic understanding of science. Anatomy & physiology are key here. Get a high school textbook on anatomy and physiology and read it and understand it. If you acquire this level of understanding, you stand head and shoulders above the vast majority of personal trainers. The real goal of education is to learn how to learn effectively. There are an endless number of educational pursuits, so learning HOW to learn is more important than WHAT you learn. By learning how to learn you enable yourself to continue your pursuit of knowledge to whatever you want or need to learn. Learning should be a lifelong pursuit, no matter your career, and if you want to be an excellent coach, you have to be a lifelong learner. Continue to improve and learn and get better. The Academy Principles Course is targeted at barbell enthusiasts who love to learn more and geek out on barbell & barbell-related topics and those coaches looking to master the fundamentals (or principles). 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

Connect with the show

Overcoming Imposter Syndrome - #405 Apr 26, 2022

Show notes

Niki & CJ discuss overcoming imposter syndrome as a coach. The address what it is, why it's normal, when you may be beyond your abilities, and practical tips to deal with it. Learn more about overcoming imposter syndrome as a coach.

Doubt, fear, and anxiety is normal. With coaching, or really any venture, you will likely experience internal self-doubt but may also have a fear of being discovered or exposed as a fraud or imposter.

This appears and persists despite evidence to the contrary. Regardless of accomplishments, success, credentials, you still have a feeling of not being qualified.

You're in good company, as this feeling is nearly universal. This is a sign you care, and literature suggests that those who face these feelings are less likely to cheat and more likely to work harder to improve.

These feelings have become so prevalent that an entire industry has arisen to overcome imposter syndrome.

These feelings appear or heighten especially around 2 phenomena: challenging obstacles & stress accumulation.

When a client quits, you get a client who is a bit outside your comfort zone, or you're asked to do something novel but generally within the realm of your skill set, these feelings will likely arise.

Obstacles are opportunities for growth. If you successfully overcome a novel challenge--heck, even if you fail but try your hardest--you will learn and improve as a coach.

It is true, of course, that there are challenges that are truly beyond your abilities. How can you think about these?

You can ask yourself: Am I as qualified and ready as I can reasonably be? You could also add a "...yet." For example, "I'm not qualified to coach professional powerlifters...yet." This allows for the possibility for growth.

Stress can accumulate, create heightened negative emotions, and leave us with feelings of being a fraud or imposter at work. You may feel like you're in a "trough of despair." What can you do?

First, think about the immediate stressors. You the helpful HALT acronym. Are you any of the following:

Hungry
Angry
Lonely
Tired

As Niki says, you can deal with these through lunch with a friend and a nap.

You can think about conditions generally in your life. CJ discusses how as an early coach he took on too much work, which prevented him from addressing his own nutrition and training. He felt worse physically, and that carried over to how he saw himself (plus, he actually didn't look the part of a physical trainer or coach).

Lastly, there may be actual medical issues like anxiety or depression, outside of coaching or your professional pursuit, that can be addressed and improve this element of your coaching.

This is hard to discuss. You can't and really shouldn't address this with your client. That being said, you should admit when you don't know something and look it up. You can admit to not feeling great and that you're not 100%.

Consider your coaching more of a collaboration than a mechanic working on a car. Explain your thought process. This can help get buy-in.

Discussing this with colleagues can come with the fear of them denying any feelings of fraud. Talking to someone in another career field can leave you with the easy excuse that "it's different for that professional field."

Lastly, while the fake-it-til-you-make-it mentality isn't wrong, it can go too far. You shouldn't necessarily take on every client. You may be honest with clients you're on the fence on and develop a 3-month test run. This enables you to see if you're up to the challenge while being upfront and honest with the potential client.

Because, if you truly fake it--not simply fake some confidence, but lie about your abilities and credentials, you'll likely come to believe the lie yourself. The uncomfortable feelings of imposter syndrome should result in growth or--if grounded in lies and deceit--will enable you to overcome these feelings through buying your own lies.

Overcoming imposter syndrome as a coach or overcoming imposter syndrome at work can be challenging. Try some of these tips and approaches out.

Connect with the show

Find Your Coaching VIP (Values, Identity, Priorities) - #404 Apr 19, 2022

Show notes

Niki & CJ Gotcher discuss how to determine your values, identities, and priorities (VIP). These underlie WHY, HOW, WHAT, and FOR WHOM you coach. Learn about what these are and how you can more consciously develop and refine these over time (they aren't set in stone). Whether we do so consciously or not, we have some notion of our coaching VIP. Something brought us to coaching our friends or family or diving a bit more deeply into why we might train a certain way or how training can be more effective. Approaching these more systematically and really thinking through them can help us better understand ourselves, potentially reinvigorate our coaching practice, and help us know what to say no to. What we say no to can tell us much about what we value and what our priorities are. Why? Well, it's easy to say yes to things. Early on as a coach, you'll probably say yes to every possible opportunity to coach someone. You need the experience, and a priority early on might be simply get as much experience as possible. As you progress as a coach, however, you'll start to prefer certain types of clients or gravitate toward certain types of activities. Some may love the challenges of programming for competitive athletes, who constantly try to squeeze the most our of their performance. Others may like hybrid athletes, who try to elevate multiple physical attributes. Some may simply find joy from helping older clients regain capabilities they thought they had lost forever. Beyond finding a niche, the stakes go up for us as coaches when we transition from hobbyist to professionals. We're asking for money and ultimately making a promise that we can provide more value to the client than the money they paid us. More responsibility can often lead to more introspection and why we're doing coaching at all. 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

Connect with the show

How to Never Miss Training - #403 Apr 12, 2022

Show notes

Consistency leads to PRs and meeting your goals, more than any other factor (form, programming). Nikki Burman, Director or Client Experience & Exclusive Coach at BLOC, discusses how as a coach she helps others and how a lifter she personally achieves consistency. Learn how to never miss a workout. Nikki often talks to clients who are considering quitting training and online coaching with BLOC, and her approach is "let's find a way to make this work." What this means if not forcing the way on the client, but rather examining and looking to improve two main things. The first item she considers is the lifter's support system. Not, as a coach, she cannot necessarily improve the support system BUT she can help be a support system of sorts by encouragement and accountability. She can also see if there are some sources of support that might not be underused or unused in the coach's life. Secondly, she asks "is the plan realistic?" Missing workouts can lead to a accumulation of discouragement and a sense of failure. The lifter is often following an unrealistic plan. Programs can be unrealistic for many reasons. A lifter may begin a block program that is realistic, but a life event occurs that makes that program no longer realistic. A client may feel burned out, get injured, get bored, or reprioritize activities in her life. How can lifters more easily accumulate workouts? Shorter workouts, potentially with optional exercises, can make it easier to get in the gym, and on those days where the motivation is there, you can do the extra work, on the other days just get the meat and potatoes done. Shifting how the workouts feel can help. That might mean getting a pump, getting sweaty, changing exercise selection, or doing things like AMRAPs, myo reps, or other means that can provide quick, different workouts that still enable productive stress. A misalignment of how important we think an activity is in our life versus how important our effort or time suggests it may be can lead to guilt. Niki suggests the following exercise, which can help you see that misalignment. List important activities and pursuits in your life. Give them an importance from 1-5. Then think about how much time and effort you put toward those activities, and identify the misalignments. Can you make that 5 a 4 and truly live it out as a 4? Build consistency, ensure your program is realistic, and learn how to never miss a workout. 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

Connect with the show

The Once & Future Novice - #402 Apr 05, 2022

Show notes

Lots of people execute novice programming repeatedly, and even in advanced programming a lift is being increased through novice programming. So, how do we think about novice programming, returning to it, and how it really differs from true advanced programming? Following MED programming principles, we follow a simple yet hard program because it is effective. The simplest program is the manipulation of one training variable. For a strength novice, typically, this means increasing intensity in a linear fashion while keeping other variables constant (volume, exercise selection, frequency). At the point at which you can no longer increase only one variable - when more than one variables have to be manipulated to progress - you are not a novice. Even on advanced programs, however, the simplicity of increasing the stress for a lift or lifts linearly through univariable manipulation typically makes sense. So, for example, you may have a supplemental squat lift on your deadlift intensity day on a 4-day split, even as part of block programming. You often increase the stress of this lift by simply adding weight to the same volume. Similarly, on a daily undulating periodization program, which is a type of concurrent programming where you train multiple physical attributes at once (hypertrophy, strength, power), you still add weight to the lifts in their respective slots. Lastly, a truly advanced lifter may have some advanced lifts but others that need to be progressed with novice programming. This may be because a lifter has focused on one lift while not training other lifts (e.g. someone benched all the time but only ever really did one leg day with machines, so their squats and deadlifts need novice programming). Another situation is post-injury where some lifts were affected but others could continue as normal. For many people, novice programming is simply a somewhat regular thing they accomplish because of life factors (vacations, business travel, sickness). The thing that brings people to advanced program is consistent training over a long enough period. If a lifter repeatedly has disruptions to training, linear progression will be something he returns to frequently. We may adjust what LP looks like, we may take bigger jumps and not grind it out as much, but some type of linear progression is the quickest way to return to previous strength levels - and surpass them.

Connect with the show

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Beast over Burden powered by Barbell Logic

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected