If YOUR Coach Fits These Traits - FIRE THEM ! | Mind Pump 2682

Fitness coaching, both virtual and in person, like personal training, has exploded. It's a growing field. There's more people interested today than there was just last year, and the year before, and the year before. But there's a problem. A good coach can have profound benefits on your fitness and health. The bad one, equally negative. Today we're gonna talk about the nine fitness coaches that need to be fired. If you listen to this episode and your coach falls under one of these categories, kindly let them know you'll be finding someone else. Stay away from these characters. Let's do it. Actually, this is cool because we get a lot of questions around how do I know I have a good coach, or a bad coach, or what to look for. So hopefully, as we go through your list, I think you got nine, right, that you go through here, we can go through all the bad qualities or traits of these nine coaches. Yeah, 100%. And you know what I said in the intro, there's nothing like a good personal trainer or a good coach when it comes to health and fitness. There is no better guarantee that you can get if you wanna lose weight, or get healthy, or fit, or strong, or build muscle, and you wanna be able to maintain it for the rest of your life, you wanna figure this out for yourself so that you can always do it, you can do it forever. There is nothing that comes close to a good coach. Period, there's nothing. Nothing comes close to having that guide that can really bring you on this journey and set you up for the rest of your life. But on the other side of this are bad coaches, and bad coaches ruin this for people. In fact, bad coaches are worse for people than no coaches. Bad coaches have this, what they tend to do with people is they tend to do things the wrong way so wrong, even if the person gets results, by the way. Wrong doesn't mean they don't get results. Wrong can sometimes mean the person gets results and gets back out of shape because of how it was done in the first place. What they often do is get somebody to the point where they don't ever wanna try again. Trying to get somebody, I'll speak from personal experience as a personal trainer, it's easier to get somebody who's never worked with a trainer to hire me than it is to get somebody who's hired three or four bad trainers to then hire me because they've had such bad experiences. And so, yeah, this is something we're very passionate about because this is our space. So good trainer, worth their weight in gold. Bad trainer, whew, run as fast as you can. I mean, I like, you start right out the gates with one that I think is gonna be a little bit of controversy because I think, inherently, I think people want a little bit of this. They're drawn to this guy. Yeah. That's right, that's right. It's the hype machine. This is the guy or girl where everything is about motivation, inspiration, and excitement, which is great at first. The problem is the feeling of motivation is a feeling, it will fade, it always does. It just doesn't, you can't be motivated all the time. It doesn't work that way. And so this trainer really does a terrible job because what they tend to do with people is through trying to keep them motivated and hyped, they try so many different things that they end up burning the person out. That person stops and never comes back. They're gone because they never helped the client figure out how to do this when they're not motivated. Because here's a true statement. I've never had to convince a motivated client to exercise. I've never had a motivated client go off the rails with diet. It's when they're not motivated that it becomes a challenge. So now the answer isn't to hire somebody who motivates you all the time because that's impossible. It doesn't exist. And this hype machine person causes more injuries and problems than almost any other coach. And again, we see this in social media quite a bit. You see these trainers or these types that are all about like, make it happen. You can be on beast mode, you never stop. And it's just- Push through it. A terrible message for long-term success. Yeah, I think this of all the ones that you created will be the most difficult for people to understand or to see because I think that this is attractive. I think if you're a consumer and you are inspired to make change and you come across a very inspiring or motivational type of trainer, that's attractive. Especially in that moment. Especially in that moment of, I need to make change. I'm not happy where I'm at. That guy seems like he's awesome. I want, I mean, he's full of energy and he says all the cool quotes and they're going to be drawn to this character. So this is probably, I think, the most difficult of all the ones you're going to talk about on seeing through this. And I think what you're looking for is, because it's like, oh, so what do you go for? The opposite of that? Someone who's not motivating or not, right? So it's like, but what you're looking for is somebody who leans more on behavioral change and discipline over hype and motivation. I look at them a little bit too as more of like a drug dealer, in a sense. Because they're- They are, they're dealing out the drug of- Yeah, the person coming in is like, they're looking for this external motivation and this supplier of motivation. I can't generate this myself. It's like a very passive role that they're playing in this training that they're taking. That's why it's so attractive, right? It's so attractive. It's like they can continuously feed me this motivation drug when I show up. And it's just like, it just burns out and it doesn't continue to benefit me. No, and by the way, most trainers start off as hype machines. Yeah. This is what you think you're supposed to be as a personal trainer. Today's program giveaway is MAPS Anabolic. If you want to win, leave a comment below this video. In the first 24 hours that we drop it, subscribe to this channel, turn on notifications. If you win, we'll let you know in the comment section. Also, go to musclemommymovement.com forward slash quiz. Take the free quiz. See if you're the comeback queen, the efficient powerhouse, the strength novice, or the lifestyle integrator. It's free. Get some free advice. Go check it out. Here we go. I'll paint a scenario, right? You're 30 pounds overweight. You see a picture of yourself. Oh my God, that's it. I got to do something about this. And so, of course, there's a self-hate going on. I'm disgusted. Hate myself. That's it. I'm going to do something. And you've got this like extreme negative rooted motivation, right? I hate myself. Don't like the way I look. Now I'm motivated. So you're looking for somebody to feed that. It doesn't last. It doesn't last for a couple of different reasons. One, motivation, all motivation is a feeling and eventually it goes away. What do you do then? And two, if you've got that negative motivation and someone fuels that, well, you can't hate yourself into better health, at least not in the long-term. Just doesn't work that way. Hating yourself leads to overtraining, injury, over-dieting, and then eventually rebelling in the opposite direction. Yeah, it masks a lot of like natural signals your body's telling you that you need to adjust intensity. You need to adjust certain things and maybe change course with your training. But like, you're not going to be receptive to that if you're always about like pushing through and hyping your way. By the way, you know who else burns out is the hype machine trainer themselves. Oh yeah. So when I would hire a trainer like this and I'd see this in them, I'd coach them out of it because I'd tell them, you're going to be burnt out. You can't keep trying to hype every client you train for long. You're going to last a year or two max. And after that, you're going to hate your job. I just pictured this trainer after he's done the work going around the corner, smoking a cigarette, just like, oh God, I don't know if I can do another day. Totally, 100%. Next up is the shame, shame, shame guy or girl. This is the trainer that when you make a mistake, you miss a workout, you ate a meal or whatever, you went off your diet, that they shame you into, trying to shame you back into shape. This is terrible. What this leads to eventually is you not wanting to really talk to your trainer and tell them what you're struggling with. If you have a trainer that you're afraid to tell that you messed up, or if you feel like, oh man, I'm going to tell my trainer I did this and this is going to just, oh man, I'm not going to like it, you'll start hiding things from them. Or what'll happen is maybe you like this because there's a little bit of a cathartic feeling when you're hating yourself, right? You hate yourself. So now my trainer tells me I'm a piece of crap and I'm lazy too. And I like that at first. Eventually that gets old and here's what happens to you. You just stop seeing them. And I've seen this before. I know the shame trainers. What happens is they'll get a clientele that sticks for a bit and then they just ghost them. They just disappear because they don't want to see them anymore because they themselves are like, I hate this shame spiral type of thing. This is like leaders that manage out of fear. It's kind of similar. It's like you get a little bit of positive feedback that it works because initially when you lead from fear, people are afraid to lose their job and so they tell you to so you think, oh, that's a good approach. That's kind of how the shame game works in coaching is like if I shame the client, there's a part of them that knows that and then they'll try and be better because they don't want to fail me again. And so it gets you a little bit further but it won't get you all the way there and eventually this is exactly what'll happen. That's the client or the trainer that uses the shame like that, the clients disappear. They don't call, they don't do anything. They just don't want to see you anymore. They don't even know how to break up with you so they just leave. And we know what shame leads to, by the way, is eventually it leads to self-medication with food, lack of activity. This is what often gets people in the cycle or spiral of weight gain, weight loss, weight gain, weight loss. It's the shame that's behind it. I'll put it differently. If you screw up on your diet or you miss a week of workouts, the first person you should want to talk to is your trainer, not the last person. If you screw up on your diet and you're like, oh man, I just ate. Yeah, I'm going to get berated for this. I just ate an entire box of Oreo cookies. I need to call my trainer. That's a good trainer versus, oh my God, don't tell John what I just did. I'm not going to let them know what happened because then I'm going to hear it. Next up is the trainer or coach that prioritizes intensity over technique. This is an easy one to spot, right? It's about just do the reps, complete the reps. They're not watching your technique and form making sure it's perfect. Exercise is only as effective as the way that they're performed. Okay, so I'll repeat that. The better you can perform an exercise or the better the technique is, the more you're going to get out of it. Intensity is never better than technique. When you start to sacrifice technique for intensity, not only do you not get better results, you get worse results, but your risk of injury goes through the roof and you just give yourself enough time and you'll see yourself, eventually you'll get an injury. And you can pick these coaches and trainers out in the gym because you can watch what they're doing and they're just like, five more, four more, keep going, keep going. And there really is no- Always four more. Focus on the form. Yeah, they a lot of times go hand in hand with the motivation person. That's right. Yeah, and this is, again, there's a few of these characteristics or avatars that you've built that I think will feel, yeah, crossover or they'll be appealing to people. This is another one. I mean, how many clients do you guys remember having that thought they needed that or thought they wanted that? They wanted the punishment. That wasn't hard enough. I mean, I can't remember how many clients I remember having to talk to where I'd catch them going and doing a workout after a workout because they think they needed more. And so a lot of times clients think that they need to be sweating and burning and they're walking out, limping out of the gym. And if they didn't, they didn't have a good workout. So this is another one that I think many times the consumer is drawn to thinking it's actually better. Some of these are like, oh yeah, I don't want to coach like that. But some of these are like, oh wait, I thought that's a good thing. And so this is another one of those. This is why it's your job if you're a good coach to educate your client on this. Why do you want to hire a trainer? Oh, I need someone to kick my butt. I mean, I've even heard that. Oh yeah, that's a common one. And it's like, what do you mean by kick your butt? You really literally want me to kick your butt or do you want to have good results? And so a good trainer or coach would educate the client on what actually produces good results. And technique when it comes to exercise is everything. It's superior. It's everything. By the way, you know what this looks like, this intensity over technique? If you ever watch a strength training group exercise class, that's a great example of intensity over technique. Body pump or whatever, everybody's in the class and they're just, it's like, it doesn't matter what exercise you're doing. You're just moving. So you might as well just sit in the corner and do jumping jacks. And that's literally true, by the way. It's actually better because your risk of injury is lower than the people doing 15 exercises in a row with no form or technique whatsoever just to get the reps in. That's what that looks like. It goes such hand in hand with that motivation. It's just like, yeah, because the only way you can get through a lot of these reps is if somebody's hounding you to get through it. And it's, again, yeah, it's attractive to most people that don't know that it's not beneficial. Biggest loser strength training would look like this. Yeah, exactly. Exactly like that. This episode's brought to you by the most advanced sleep system in the world, 8sleep. Go to 8sleep.com forward slash mindpump. Use the code mindpump. Get up to $350 off. Back to the show. Next up is the low calorie solves everything person. Oh, you're not losing enough weight? Drop your calories. Oh, you plateaued? Drop your calories. And it starts getting really ridiculous. These are people that I would have to try to fix. They have one button. Yeah, they'd come to me and they'd be like, you know, I lost 20 pounds. I had 15 more to go. I plateaued. And I'm like, what were your calories at? Like, where are you at? Oh, I'm at 1,100 calories. Okay, we can't go any lower. We gotta bring this up and figure something else out. Low calorie, you know, calorie deficit is how you lose weight but a deficit just means a deficit. It doesn't mean your calories get so low that it's unsustainable and now you're sacrificing things like energy and lifestyle to the point where it's just like, this isn't happening. I can create a deficit by speeding up your metabolism, building muscle, making things more efficient. When your calories get so low to where it's like, this is just unbearable. Yeah, we gotta figure this out. We had a nickname for this coach. It was the Jenny Craig coach. And I'm dating myself a little bit, but 20 years ago, that was so popular of a diet and it's a point system and it's completely built around just eating less. And so the trainers that either one had gone through that and had success with weight loss themselves or had seen people have success with that, so that was like their go-to move was just like turned everything in. Even if they weren't using Jenny Craig's diet or thing, they would just, they'd make everything into just as low as possible, like a point system. And if I could just get these clients to eat as low calorie, they'll lose the weight. And so that was the go-to strategy. And again, here's another one of these things where initially this kind of can work. I mean, you get somebody who eats terrible and you tell them, hey, you only get to eat 1,500 calories or less and they do that consistently, they will lose weight. Unfortunately, it's not sustainable and what, 80, 90% of those people gain it all back, but it tends to be a go-to move for the trainers that have had a lot of weight loss success through just calorie cutting. That's right. Next up is the absent coach. So this is typically the virtual coach who sends you the workout, the macros or whatever, and then you're not really getting any coaching. So this is like the chat GBT coach. Might as well go with chat GBT and get your nutrition and exercise advice. They're just absent. You're just not getting much coaching whatsoever, in which case I say, why did you hire them in the first place? Where's the value? And the space started trending this way a little bit. I think it's moving out of this direction because people kind of saw like this doesn't work, but there was a second there, it was a little while there, where there was a lot of virtual coaching. A lot of influencers kind of started this whole thing and got called out. Because it's like, this is a lot of times the consumer, it's really, it's their fault because they're the ones approaching this influencer, this person looks great, I want to look just like you. Then they take them on as a client, then they take everybody on as a client, and then they try to kind of bring people in and figure it out, but you're not getting good service at all. This wasn't an avatar until online coaching. That's right. This didn't exist. I mean, back in the days when you trained someone, you couldn't be absent. You had to show up to their appointment. You were, they'd be like, what are you doing? Yeah, yeah. So that didn't exist until then, and it is, I would say this is the most popular one now for the point that Justin's bringing up is that you get all this fame and attention online for your body, and you've got a million people following you, and these trainers are, they have 100 clients, 500 clients. I mean, it's wild what you hear some of these internet trainers are. It's like, dude, I remember when my book, when you get around like 25 clients, that's a lot of people. To manage. To offer them good value. Yes, to really be able to help them individualize things, to be constantly tweaking. Managing 25 is a lot. Managing 50, 100, some of these hundreds of people. They're just sending out emails. Yeah, you're getting a generic program, you know, a generic diet sent to you, and so yeah, this is that coach, and that coach didn't exist until, you know, online coaching really popped up. Next is the everything but the kitchen sink all at once coach. Like you hire them, and it's like, boom, diet, program, sleep regimen, supple, it's like everything. All at once. This is a surefire way to fail. This was me. There's a couple of these that fit me as the early trainer. This was me, man. I got a new client. I'm giving you all the answers. Oh, just follow all this stuff, and we're going to fix this. Terrible way to coach, because this is a guaranteed way to make somebody fail. Yeah, this one to me is, again, we have these ones where I feel like that will be attractive to the consumer. Then there's these are the ones that like tend to, you like, oh my God, right away, you'll be turned. Most people are like, this is too much. Unless you're maybe that person, like your engineers tend to be like this. They want very- Your Strava people? Yeah, yeah, yeah. All the detail, all the things. There's a small percentage of people like that. Most people are like, they get all the things, and they're like, oh my God, I didn't realize I'm going to have to do all of these things. And so you'll feel like that from this trainer, right? And if you, the reason why this doesn't work is because that's just not how it works. That's not how you develop behaviors, and not how you lead to a way of doing this for the rest of your life. This is all the answers to the test, but you never figured out how to do the work. And so now you go into the real world, and you're like, oh, cool, you have a degree in this? And you're like, yeah, because I had all the answers. Like, cool, go figure out this problem. I don't know how to figure out the problem. Give me the answer. Never actually done it. It doesn't work this way. A good coach meets you where you're at. You have to be met where you're at, and they have to step-by-step this process so that you can develop these disciplines. You can develop these behaviors, work through them, figure out what works, what doesn't work, and it's a process. And that's the only way. It's a real art with good coaches to know what to present and what time to present it and to give them just enough so it gives them the work so they can get wins along the way. That's right. Next up is the trainer or coach that only talks and never listens. They love to tell you everything and what's going to happen, but they're not asking questions. Every time you ask a trainer or coach a question, a good coach will typically ask you a question back because they needed more information. This is just a fact. Hey, what's the best exercise for glutes? Okay, well, what part of your glutes are you looking to work on? What does your workout currently look like? Hey, what's the best form of cardio? Which one do you enjoy doing the most? When's the best time to work out during the day for fat loss? Well, let me know what your schedule looks like, and let's talk about this a little bit. Like, what's the best food for this? A good coach is asking a lot of questions to get more information to really figure this out for you. The person that just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, it's like going to a mechanic with your car, and the mechanic doesn't even ask you what's wrong. Cool, we'll fix your car. We'll see you later. It's like, you don't know what to do. This actually reminds me of a story of a trainer that worked for me. So we've talked about this before. Like, when you get a, sometimes, man, with clients, sometimes you might just go for a walk with them, right? Or maybe an hour session does end up being like a real deep, like, personal therapy type of session. Like, you get these when, and you, as a good coach and trainer, you'll know when it happens, and you'll feel it, and you know, you get to a point where sometimes a workout could look like that. But they're rare, right? It's like, it's not a common thing. I remember I had a trainer who like, and I remember giving them that freedom that like, yeah, no, definitely. You have a client that you can tell is going through something, is stressed, not sleeping, personal stuff like that. You beating them up in the gym is a disservice to them. You walking them and maybe, you know, hearing them out and talking to them and stuff like that may be something that's far more beneficial and healthy for them in that moment. And so like, absolutely, as a leader, I'm not going to tell you not to do that. And then I remember that this trainer I'm thinking of right now, you know, it became like a, you know, almost every workout she was sitting in the back corner, like, you know, Indian style with her client, and they're just like talking for the hour. I'm like, you can't possibly have that many clients. Too much. Yeah, it turned into like, she figured out that, oh my God, like these people love to talk and they would go in this back area and go do it. And it was just like a constant, like you're hanging out with your client. Too far. Yeah, you're exactly too far. We're going to do some work. Yeah, yeah, you actually have to get these people to live weights. They can't all be in that place, the same place where they don't need to work out. And so there are those trainers that they end up, and I feel like this trainer, likable, personable trainer, you know, they enjoy talking. And a lot of clients, you know, they're not going to tell you the move along the workout. So many times you have these trainers who are so unaware of the situation that they just end up sitting, or they'll sit on one machine and they'll talk the whole hour on that one piece of equipment. Yeah, yeah. So it's kind of all the same. And it's all due to the spending more talking than they are listening and moving them through the workout. Then you have the know everything guy. This is a trainer that never says, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. Let me figure that out for you. A good coach or a good trainer, you may find the one in a million trainer or coach who's got so much experience and knowledge that they just know a lot of things. But most trainers and coaches know some stuff. They're good at what they know. But what they also know, or what they should know, is they should know people who know things that they don't that they could refer to. That's what a good coach is. So when you ask them a question about gut health or sleep, and they're like, you know what? Let me find out for you. I know somebody who I think might have the answer. That's a good coach or trainer. The know-it-all person oftentimes will give advice that is wrong because it's out of their scope. They just don't want to admit it. They're insecure. I would throw in this category, because I think it's the same guy or girl as this, which is the heavy science person. This is the person that every time they answer you, they reference a study, or they talk in those terms, versus maybe their experience of what they've seen or had done in the past, and where it may not always align with a study. But the heavy science nerd, or the fresh out of getting their master's degree kid is like, this is how they talk. They communicate as if their professor was talking to them. They talk to their clients that way. I would put that person in this category too. And that to me, if you're always communicating from that perspective, that's a red flag that, okay, maybe this trainer knows a lot, book smarts, but maybe they haven't had a lot of experience with a lot of people like me, or trained people like me. Well, yeah, initially the client that's going in might be wowed by your knowledge, the terminology, and know that you have a good educational background. But then when you keep going, the relatability really drifts off. And it's like, you can't really connect based on real life things that you're coming in with because you're just going to get talked at. And then lastly, the trainer that treats you like a competitor, these tend to be coaches and trainers that compete themselves. And so you hire them to lose weight, and this is a ex bodybuilder, maybe a current bodybuilder, a physique competitor, bikini competitor. And they're treating you like a competitor with macros and diet and cardio and strength training. And it's going to be this way. And look, I think they have value when they're training competitors who are competing for a specific goal, like I have a competition coming up. But for the average person, the last thing you should do is train like a competitor or eat like a competitor. That's not sustainable for competitors. Competitors don't even do that all the time. They do it only when they compete. And so if their advice is coming from, look, my experience is training bikini competitors, bodybuilders and physique competitors, and you're Mrs. Johnson, you don't have any desire to do that, you just want to lose weight, probably not the best trainer for you. This is actually really common in the trainer-competitor space, meaning if you are a trainer that's competing, because you've seen it work at the highest level, therefore you apply it to all these clients. And your clients come in sometimes with goals like that, like, hey, I want to be ripped or I want to look great in a bikini. You're like, dude, I have the formula for it. Trust me, I've done it. I've been on stage, I've done this, or I've taken people. And so therefore they apply that way of training to everybody. So it's really common when you get, and this has gotten bigger today with Instagram and how many online coaches that we have, because it seems like anybody who took themselves through a competition and did at all remotely good is now a coach and coaching people. And so then they turn around and they basically do the same thing with all of the clients that they deal with themselves. And man, unless you're training a competitor, that's a failing strategy for most clients. Most clients, I mean, one of the most common things that I found in being in that space was, boy, maybe some of these people didn't understand diet that much. Maybe some of them weren't, their programming wasn't good, but their discipline and their sacrifice was insane. And so it takes a very unique person to be able to compete and get on stage. And if you think that that's the average avatar, you're crazy. Very few people are that regimen and discipline. And if you approach training your clients the same way you approach getting ready for a show or getting another client ready for a show, you're going to have- These kind of coaches oftentimes destroy people's metabolism. They crash their bodies. They destroy people's hormones because that's what competition does. Getting ready to be on stage is a very unhealthy way to diet and exercise. And you apply it to the average. These are people we'd have to heal. I'm so glad you're bringing this up because one of the hallmarks of a bad coach, and I guess you would fit him in this category, is taking a client and putting them on an extreme diet when they're not in a good place metabolically. That's right. And so I don't even care. I had people that wanted to compete and I could get them ready for a show that I would refuse just because I knew they weren't metabolically ready. I'd do an assessment of their diet and I'd be like, you're eating 1,600, 1,700 calories. You're at 25, 30% body fat. You want me to get you on stage? Nowhere to go. No way. And they would give me a date. Like, oh, I want to get ready for a November, whatever show. And I'm like, in 12 weeks or 16 weeks, I'm like, yeah, no, not happening. I already know where you're at currently right now that I can't just put you on a diet where some of these coaches, or a lot of these coaches, will take somebody from that position. So that in itself is a major red flag. They get clients afterwards with hormone profiles that are wrecked, with health issues that they end up causing. And then we end up having, sometimes they are callers, by the way. Sometimes we have callers that are calling in. This happens a lot. That came out of that and they're like, yeah, I didn't get a period for a year or two years afterwards. I destroyed my metabolism. What do I do? We got to reverse them and help them out because they were treated like a competitor when they definitely shouldn't have been. I'm so glad you're saying this right now because I didn't even think about talking about this and I do think this is such an important time to bring this up because there's a lot of people that think that signing up for a bikini contest or a show is a good idea to get themselves in shape. And there's a lot of coaches that will take those people's money even though they shouldn't. So one way to know, and I don't know if this falls in this coach or not, but if you've ever considered doing that and your coach doesn't do like some sort of a metabolic test with you or get an idea of where your current calories are before they put you on a competitive diet, huge red flag right away because that was the first thing I would do when someone asked me that, hey, I want to do a show in X amount of time. I'd say, okay, well check your food for the next two weeks. Let me see kind of where you're at. And when I would see these people at 1,500, 1,600 calories and a long way to go from stage ready, there's no way I would do that. My integrity wouldn't allow me to do that. I feel like a good coach would, will always do that first before they would just take that person's money. Look, if you like Mind Pump, come find us on Instagram. We'll see what's at Mind Pump Media. All right, I know you liked that episode. If you did, check this one out. How strong should you be? Ever wonder if you're actually strong or at least compared to people like yourself? Today's episode, we're gonna talk about that and we're gonna help you determine how strong you should be. And also talk about the steps to getting strong as fast as possible. In fact, we're gonna talk about the fastest way to get bigger and stronger all at the same time. I know you- You say, I don't milk at night. Yes, it does actually. And I know that you wrote a really complex episode here but I think Justin's metric has been the one.