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You're listening to Mondays with Matt. I'm Matt Reynolds, the founder and CEO of BarbaLogic and Turnkey Coach. Each week I share lessons from decades of lifting, coaching and business to help you get stronger, coach better and take action. Let's dive in. Oh, what's up everybody? I was playing some drums. How's it going? Good day. Welcome to Mondays with Matt. Here I am, I am in a hotel room in Kansas City. Been hanging out with my 15 year old, my 21 year old Kaylin, happy birthday to her yesterday. Turned 21. She's up in Chicago with mom. We've done the first time we've ever done this separate trips. Mom took Kaelyn up for a girls weekend in Chicago and they saw a concert of someone I'm sure I would hate. And so I'm glad I didn't go because mostly I hate live concerts and I took my 15 year old to Kansas City. We saw Hamilton and we've done like the World War I Museum and all kinds of cool stuff. So eating good food. So welcome. Glad you're here. We're going to dive in today and talk about how to not totally suck as a coach. And I've got some thoughts about this because first off, I think that the primary issue is often that there is an enormous amount of anxiety around coaching. If you haven't coached in front of somebody, it's like getting up and public speaking. And maybe it's even more difficult than that for you or invokes more fear than even public speaking would because it's not just speaking, you have to perform on the platform. And so I want to walk through some of those things and how you can get to a place where you feel confident through competency essentially this week. And so the first thing which is it's not a joke, it's real. But to put a little bit of humor behind it is that to understand the rest of the world does suck at coaching. Think about your typical personal trainer at any big box gym, Purple Polo Planet Fitness, places like that, they don't know anything. Most of them are kids. They're all totally uneducated. If they were educated, they would be probably somewhere else. Now look, if you got your start at a big box gym or you're even still at a big box gym, it's a perfectly good place to start. You can still get reps there and you can probably separate yourself from the rest of the trainers or coaches much easier in a place like that as opposed to going to a dedicated strength gym. But in Being at a big box gym where everybody's kind of an idiot, you're not really going to sharpen your skills by watching other excellent coaches coach because there are no excellent coaches at a place like that. So number one is just to understand while in the midst of anxiety, just understand just by being here. If you're already watching this Mondays with Matt, if you've, you've, you've played around in the academy some and by the way, stick around because I've got a great deal on the academy this week. You have the ability and you're probably already here, you're probably already better than 95 plus percent of personal trainers in the world just by having access to this sort of information YouTube channel, not just ours, but others that are out there that are excellent. And so, you know, you've got renaissance periodization and Matt winning and, and there's great stuff that's out there right now. And so, so picking up where we left off last week, if you have an insatiable thirst for knowledge, it has never been a better time to be alive because you have everything you need at your fingertips on your phone, in any of the large language models of AI and of course in something like the Barbell Academy that we have at Barbelogic, that's not a ploy to try to get you to buy it. We've tried to price those extremely competitively so that essentially it pays for the admin. It's essentially a loss leader for us because we know we need to make more coaches and so it's a great place to start. I, of course back in, when I first started coaching in the late 90s, there wasn't any such thing. There was almost no Internet. Although what I had found, you know, I found the articles on deepsquatter.com by Dave Tate and others, Louis Simmons and guys like that. Of course I found Rippeto and Penlay. I became a really close friend of Glenn Penlay. He was really my first coaching mentor. And so I felt like I had a secret when I found the Russian training manual books, the Soviet sports review journals, magazines in the library. If you've heard me talk about this, I'm sure you've heard these stories before. The Science and Practice of Strength Training by Zack Siorski, Super Training by Mel Sif, the early versions of starting strength, the first version, first edition, things like that. I felt like I had a secret and I really did. There wasn't much out there and of course at the time there were message board forums and some of the best coaches in the world are certainly ones that would now would be known today as some of the best coaches in the world. They were all kind of cutting their teeth in the late 90s on the Internet, having discussions and I would stay up late, totally unlike me today, stay up late and chat with these guys because I was just absorbing knowledge anywhere I could. And so that's number one is just understand that the competition in this industry is relatively low and that's not a great, don't just hang your hat on that, say well I'm better than the competition so I'm fine. We want to be the best we can possibly be. I've said before, if I were going to be a trash man, and there's nothing wrong with being a trash man, some of those guys probably make great money. I want to be the best one in the world. And so I am unsatisfied ever staying, getting complacent and staying where I am. I want to constantly get better. So you and only you can change that in pursuing knowledge, in gathering as much information as you possibly can and then in putting it to practice. And again, gathering that knowledge has never been easier with your phone, with AI, with the academy, with things like that. The other piece that's attached to this is my guess is that for a lot of you it's tremendously anxiety inducing and the only way to get over that anxiety is to get reps is to just do the thing. And so for anything that you've been scared of, as you expose yourself to the thing that you're scared of, you become a little less scared so long as nothing terrible happens. And even if it does, you often realize that the worst possible thing is actually not that bad. And so a non coaching story. For example, I have always been sort of afraid of heights. I don't like going over big bridges, especially something like the Mississippi river in the Midwest, some narrow type bridges and it's very, very long and the Mississippi river is huge. Makes me really nervous to go over it. The more times I've done that, the less worrisome it gets. When we got our cabin and our acreage back in 2020, it's up on a bluff 275ft above the river and it is a straight drop down. If that one goes bad, you're dead. So I was very nervous when I first got that land. I would go, I don't know, three, four feet from the edge and kind of look over and heart would race and I would sweat and, and as time has gone on it just doesn't bother me. I just realized I, I don't fall, I don't fall down ever. And so now I can go right up to the edge. Obviously I'm careful and it doesn't bother me. And that anxiety has gone away. And the same will be the case with your coaching as you as start with people who you really shouldn't be that nervous about and who also honestly probably don't care that much. This is like your spouse, your family, some of your best friends, maybe really close co workers, people at church that just are looking for a helping hand, being able to give that to them. The more you're able to practice that process, you'll build more and more confidence and you'll gain the competency because when you teach it, you learn it, right? You're teaching them and they learn. But you're also very much codifying that process. And so one thing I would say to do no matter what, is when you coach in those early sessions, they're probably going to be free, they're probably going to be volunteer basis. You're trying to help somebody turn on your camera and on your phone and record yourself and go back and watch it and break it down. Where are places that I got hung up on words or I over explained? This is where communication is huge. Learning how to say the most with the least amount of words is really important, right? Not making your clients try to think about five, six, seven, eight things. Picking out the biggest thing, attacking that, helping them focus on that thing, giving them the cue throughout the set to remind them of the thing you just taught, which was very tight and very short, like you know, 10 seconds, whatever, and helping them overcome that. And then if that doesn't work, you, you figure out a different way to say it and you get it into your toolbox. And those are the things that as you build that, you'll build competency and credibility and experience and reps and the anxiety will start to go away and it'll become more and more polished. For any of you who've ever been in sales or you've had to try to speak again publicly, the more times you have to do a sales pitch, the more times we've had to do like pitch the business to investors or private equity or venture capital or whatever it is so nerve wracking the first few times, then it's nerve wracking five, six, seven times in, but after 50 times, it's just not that nerve wracking. You know the story, you know your business, you know what you're talking about. It's the same thing here with teaching the progression on a squat or a deadlift and then walking through the basic movement changes that you have to teach in the lift. And so all of those things as you acquire knowledge, which you can get without the experience, but it doesn't really codify until you take it to the platform and you actually do it on the platform with somebody else, and then do it over and over again with them and do it over and over again with others. That will codify that knowledge and it will lock into your brain and you'll never forget it. I mean, the things like the. The anatomy and kinesiology of the. Of the muscles utilized in the squat or the physics, the moment arms and things like that, that is so burned into my brain, I don't think I could ever forget it. I remember all the muscles of the hamstrings and the quads. I haven't taught that sort of lecture in a very long time, but I could still probably do it in my sleep because I did it so many times. And so that's really how we accomplish this. And what I want you to do is get to a spot where for many of you, you probably really want to coach, but you're terrified of the actual session. I want you to get to the spot where you are excited about the session and you're excited to teach someone new and you're excited to teach them something they've never been taught before, rather than worried about like, oh, my gosh, what have I screwed this up? What have you screwed up? They don't know how to squat now, and you're going to give them something that they can take with them today, which is going to make them better. And even better than that, synergistically, you're going to get better because you continue to give that codified knowledge that you've accumulated over the years. You're able to speak into that and communicate that back to the clients on the platform, which, again, may just be a spouse or a friend or a kiddo or whatever. So there you go. That is how we attack, how to coach so that we are the best we can possibly be, build proficiency with reps and experience, build the knowledge base with things like the academy, large language models, YouTube, et cetera. And that's how we do it. And so I'm actually going to. I'll open up for questions coming in, but I do want to give you. I may mention this again at the end. So this week is the first time that we have actually a really solid promotion for you. Um, so if you're serious about becoming a coach, there's one shortcut most people overlook, and that's the basic competency that we just talked about. Coaching 101 in the Academy is a fully online course designed to do exactly that. It's not theory, it's proven action. It's rooted in the systems and delivery that we've used at Barbellogic to coach thousands of clients around the world at a fraction of the cost of traditional personal training. And for a limited time, we're taking a hundred dollars off coaching 101. So it's a sweet deal. And because one of the best ways to learn how to coach, this is the best part, is to be coached by professionals who do it at a high level every day. We're also including one full month of free coaching for yourself so you can get coaching from one of our professional coaches and $100 off coaching 101 all. And that free month is just free. It's just added on, which is fantastic. So you can learn from an outstanding professional coach. On top of that, you'll get access to your own turnkey coach account so that you can deliver high touch service to your clients in just minutes a day. If you're ready to turn this into a career or even a side gig that brings in actual income, then this is your move. Go to barbelllogic.com matt101 that's matt101 and get started now. Barbelllogic.com matt101 and you are now free to coach. So that is, man, super, super sweet. So, all right, let's check out some questions and comments that are coming in. Please feel free to submit your questions on YouTube. If you were a young coach today, with the existing technologies mainly AI, how would you learn as much as you could today? One of the things I really like to do. Let me take a drink. I'm on a San Pellegrino kick lately. I love it. One of the things I love to do in talking to large language models is take someone I look up to. I'll just run. Use Barbalogic as an example. This would work fine for barbalogic. I really enjoy renaissance periodization. I think some of their stuff is goofy and nerdy and whatnot, but I think they've got a solid way of training for hypertrophy and their concepts of minimum effective volume and maximum volume and everything in between and how they adjust those things. So I'll take those large language models and I'LL say, okay, pretend you're Micro Israel or Renaissance periodization. The executives there help me understand your training philosophy from a 30,000 foot view about programming, training and coaching. And then from there you'll get a pretty solid overview and then I'll start to just add more prompts to learn more. Okay, tell me more about this piece. Tell me you do the same thing with Barbalajit. Tell me more about minimum effective dose. How does that work? Practically help me understand it. Kind of 30,000 foot view and then in the trenches as well. And so that's typically what I do. And then I'll often even take four, five, six people that I really look up to and I'll pretend there's a roundtable. Say there's a roundtable and here are the six names at the roundtable and we're having a discussion about someone. We've agreed that everyone needs to start with basic linear progression, the basic barbell lifts, adding weight, you know, intensity, load over time. Once that stops or slows down or plateaus. I'd like to have a six person roundtable discussion from these actual six people and what that conversation might look like and where, where they would agree and where they would differ. And you really start to understand. And then you get to the whys. Now why would Mike Israel say this? Why would Matt Reynolds say this? Or, or Scott Hambrick or whatever. And that's a great way to do it with the long large language models for sure. And then a lot of times I'll even write programming like I wrote a program for myself which is I'm really doing one main heavy lift a day. And then an accessory movement which for upper body is probably dumbbells, for lower body is, you know, maybe it's like a trap bar deadlift or an RDL for the deadlift for a squat, maybe it's a safety squat bar squat, maybe it's a hack squat or leg press and then go into accessory movements. And then I'll try to take that program. I'll say, now apply the overarching view from, I don't know, barbelogic and Renaissance periodization, maybe a few others to make sure this lines up with the theory across the board. And if there's places that they would differ, tell me where that is and I can, it's sort of like choose your own adventure. And so that's the way I do it. The other piece is this, is that combined with something like the Academy. The Academy is great because it's, it's, I don't Necessarily want to use the word static, but because it's not like a AI interactive type tool, but it is, you are, you are just accumulating knowledge. You do this incredible foundational base of knowledge and then take that into those large language models, into AI and build out what you want to build. And so you can continue to build understanding training theory, programming theory, intensity, volume, frequency, things like that, how you adjust those over time. And then write the program and tweak the program and have it tweak it and eventually spit out something that looks great and you can take it and test it on yourself or you can test it on somebody else. It works really well. So there you go. That's how I would do it. Would I still recommend those old Russian books for people that. Yes, of course. But again, and I haven't done this, this would actually be really cool. I'd be interested. They're published books. You could probably take those to the AI models as well and say, let's take Science and Practice of Strength Training by Zorski. Give me a thousand word overview of this thing. Help me understand that dual factor model of strength. How does that work? How does that apply to things like the way Barbalogic incorporates minimum effective dose programming into their coaching? Um, but I love those old Russian books. I love the Soviet Sports Review which is, if you've ever seen the American version of that. The closest thing we have is something called Milo, which was. I don't know if it's still around, but it was put out by Ironmind at the time. And it's just, it's been translated. A guy by the name of Bud Charnega translated it from Russian into English. And so there's English versions of that. You can see exactly what their training programs were. They feature some of their best lifters, you know, throughout the 70s, 80s, whatever. It's really cool. So that's a great place to start as well. I love those books. Melsif, super training, very dense book. He does not do a great job of saying a whole lot of stuff in short amount of words. He says a fair amount of stuff and a whole bunch of words and it could probably be tightened up. He probably needed an AI model. You probably take that and tighten it down by about 66% by 2/3 and it'd be great. But it's a great reference book. He's one of the first ones to talk about things like speed, work, dynamic work, speed, strength, strength, speed, all that sort of stuff. How to program, understanding the fatigue method of building up Fatigue over time, that stress recovery adaptation process which as you get beyond the novice phase becomes not just workout to workout, but over periods of weeks and even months and slowly building up fatigue and letting it die off. And then fitness rises. And Zasiorski was really the first one to ever talk about that in the first place. And so others, any books Assurin and Bonderchuk on block training. Not barbelogic online coaching, but like eastern block training. Bonderchuk was the throwing coach for the Soviets as well as strength coach and he developed block training and it was fantastic. The Bulgarian method stuff is fantastic. I think it's got to be paired back certainly for powerlifting, but I think, you know, kind of a high frequency, high intensity and not a tremendous amount of volume, but it's very high frequency, very high intensity, like every single day, six days a week, something training, understanding who that works for and how we might do it. I'll give you an example that tends to work better for lighter weight athletes, athletes in the say the 198s and below in powerlifting or. And you have to back off the percentages because, you know, 80% on a snatch or a clean and jerk is still a big time power lift. It's a fast movement whereas powerlifting is a slow movement. And so you can't exactly equate 80% of the clean and jerk to 80% of a deadlift because it'll, it'll beat you up and kill you. So but those things are fantastic to learn from and again, I think it gives you a great foundation that many, many others don't have. So, all right, what are the things one needs to do before coaching a client? Anything someone can learn or memorize to be better than most. In general, I would say no, like 30,000 foot overview. I'd say just try it. Just coach. The one thing that I think would be really good is just a basic script of the teaching progressions, which you can get if you just go to Barbalogic's YouTube channel, How to squat. There's videos there of me or Nikki Sims teaching the how to squat, how to deadlift, how to press, how to bench press, teaching progressions. We go through those as well in even more depth in the academy and probably taking a three by five note card and just putting some bullet points. You don't want to write the whole thing out. You don't want to read it like a script. You want to just have bullet points and say, okay, so when I teach the squat, the first thing I'm Going to do is I'm going to walk them through. Take your stance here. Do it without a bar on your back. Get them in the right position. How do I do that? Right butt back, knees out, bend over. Okay, that's it. Now make sure they can drive up. Make sure the hips come up a little bit early. Make sure you can see the hips driving, which is really from knee extension. Then we take them to the bar. How do I do the grip? Where does the bar go? Step up, stand back, walk back. You know, almost nothing changes. We're not going to stop in the bottom. We're going to go nice and slow down and up. Give me set of 5. Walk it back in. Right. And so you just walk through those basic teaching progressions. If you have that on a three by five note card, you're ready to go. And then what I would do again if you're videoing yourself is you'll go back afterwards, you'll compare what you said to what was on the note card and maybe you make some little tweaks to the note card and you get kind of a really tight script of how to teach us. Look, the script is the same. I've coached thousands and thousands of people for the very first time. People I'd never met before until they got on the platform. People who are not my spouse, not, you know, not a close personal family friend. That teaching progression looks exactly the same for everybody. The only thing that you end up taking into account that changes that progression potentially a little bit is major anthropometry differences. You know, if I've got a middle aged person who's £350 and they cannot get to parallel, that may change the way I'm going to teach the squat just a little bit or the deadlift and they can't get bent over and keep the bar over midfoot. But for the most part that progression is exactly the same. And so you can really refine that script. And then it's much easier when that script, when you know it, you know, like the back of your hand, it's very easy to make very minor tweaks and adjustments because somebody may actually have something that lets makes them not be able to do it exactly right. So again, maybe for that bigger person who can't squat to parallel, maybe I teach them on a box on day one. Just get them squatting down to the bench or to a box so you get like really close to parallel. And they also have kind of a fail safe so they can sit on the box or the bench. And not feel like they're going to fall over. And so those are the things I would do, but that's really all you need. Next question. What are things that one needs to do? Oh, that's the same one. So I'm getting. Sorry, double questions. I had another question come in again, about what have I. What are some things I've changed specifically about programming or coaching since I first got started? And so from a coaching perspective, the process of understanding, kind of a Newtonian understanding of coaching, which is from that knowledge base, like, do I really understand what I'm teaching? And by the way, in the beginning, you probably won't. You're just going through the script. So it's like memorizing a math equation, Right. Versus really understanding what the math equation means. And so over time, you'll understand that that really hasn't changed. The personality stuff hasn't changed. You've got to be likable, you've got to be cheerful, you've got to be encouraging. You've got to remember that no matter how nervous you are at teaching the client on the platform, if it's their first time, first time doing this or first time receiving coaching, they're more nervous than you are. Your job is to swallow your nerves and to relax them and help them just focus on the thing that they need to do. It's really, really important. And so have them take a deep breath, tell them everything's going to be okay, you've done this a million times, probably even if you haven't, and walk them through, like, why it's going to be fine. They're going to be just fine. Right? And then if something happens and they struggle to stay balanced or midfoot, you know, don't freak out. You just. You say, no problem at all. Now on this next one, try to stay back on your heels a little more. You're right. Just very calm cooling. So help them to just take a deep breath and not get frustrated. That's one of the biggest things on the platform. Help your client not to be frustrated from a programming change. From what I thought, I don't know, 10 years ago to now, or even when Scott and I first launched the podcast in 17, which I guess is we're coming up on 10 years. Nine. Nine years ago, eight years ago, when we were talking about minimum effective dose. I'm still all in on minimum effective dose. The only thing I think I would change or tweak is that we pursued intensity for as long as you could. So we added five pounds per workout for as long as you could. I wouldn't change anything about that. When that started to slow down, we would often then go to things like five sets of three for upper body lifts, top set of five and back off sets for the lower body that eventually maybe like a five, three, one, like a top set of five, week one, top set of three and back offsets, week two, top single and back offsets, week three, and continue to pursue intensity that way. And I don't know that I would change a lot through that piece, but at that point or somewhere in that space, at the point that I've actually started to introduce supplemental exercises, and I've introduced not just fives, but I've introduced triples and singles. I think one of the things that I would do is I would continue to use minimum effective dose programming, but I would start to incorporate more volume. Minimum effective dose. So now we start looking at, okay, we keep the weight the same, but we do three sets of. Instead of three sets of five, we do three sets of seven, maybe three sets of eight, up to three sets of 10 or three sets of 12, bump the weight up, drop back down three sets of eight, and then keep working up. Same thing for working sets. Working sets could go from two working sets on the supplemental accessory movements to three to maybe four, probably no more than four. That's probably plenty at that point. So that's another place that you could, you can continue to add volume. Then the other place would be the reps in reserve or what is always what's been argued for years about rpe. I think it is somewhat valuable for primarily accessory movements. Not I don't like RPE or reps and reserve as much on the main lifts because the main lifts are so heavy and that'll lie to you in your brain. But when you're doing dumbbell curls, you kind of know if. Excuse me, you know, if you got one, two, or three reps left. So in the beginning, when I'm. When I'm doing med with volume, I might have a weight that I do bar dumbbell curls, let's say, or rolling dumbbell tricep extensions, something like that, or lat pulldowns. And I'll leave three reps in the tank the first couple weeks, and the next two weeks I'll leave two reps in the tank, and the next couple weeks I'll only leave one rep in the tank. And then every once in a while, I'll take the very last set to failure, but only the last set to failure. Renaissance also uses things like Myo reps where they hit as many reps as they can on set one and then they can and on the next set they make sure they hit the same number of reps. So if you hit 15 reps on set one and you rest a few minutes and you go to set 2 and you only hit 10, you rest for a short period of time, very short period of time, 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds and then you knock out the other five and you try to match what you hit on set one. So these are all ways to minimum effective dose volume, not just intensity. And I think that works great for building contractile tissue. More cross sectional area of the, of the myofibril of the, of the muscle fibers I think is a great way to do it. And ultimately more muscle creates stronger people. And then I transition back out of that and move back towards. Once I've kind of added that volume in and peak that volume, which may not be a huge peak the first time or two they do it then eventually I'll start dropping the volume back down, I'll raise the intensity back up and we hit new PRs and then just cycle that through again and again. So few more minutes for new coach who might be too focused on getting through the script and nervous. How can they have a normal interaction adjust if the script needs adjusted? Yeah, so the same like with the person that needs to squat to a chair. There is remember that you have time between the sets that the same thing that you have to do often for a client is telling them to take a day deep breath and relax. You can do the same. You should do the same. I have often used especially like in my home where a bathroom is right next to my gym between sets, like, hey, I'm going to run the bathroom really quick. I don't even need to go to the bathroom. I'm thinking about what is the next thing to say to get them to do the way I need them to do the lift or what adjustments do I need to make. And so often when someone is too ingrained and too like laser focused on the script, they talk, they talk, they talk, they talk and they end up talking themselves out of the kind of things they really need to be doing. Sometimes it's good to just have a moment of silence, take a deep breath. What do I need to get them to do to help them relax, to help them feel more comfortable. They can sit down on this box to adjust it to make sure that they can't hit depth or they can't stay on their heels. How do we help them do that? Those are all things that I'm willing to do. And if somebody comes in and they've got, they've got very flat soled shoes or minimalist shoes, I might put their heels on a ten pound plate. If they absolutely. Well, let me say it again. If they absolutely cannot squat with their heels down, their heels are coming up off the ground. I want them to feel pressure in their mid foot, through their mid foot, but that means pressure on the heel as well. I'm going to do what it takes to get them there. Right. And so these are the things that you can take a minute, take a deep breath, get through it and then just know in the grand scheme of things, especially in these early sessions, you're often dealing with people. You probably care more about this session than they do. They're nervous and want to perform because they want to perform for you. But ultimately they may not even remember most of the stuff that you tell them, but you will. And so it's as much for you, if not more so than it is for them. So. Okay, last one and then we'll wrap up because it's four o'. Clock. What are your thoughts on doing kettlebell sports once a week to assist in barbell training? I think it's fine. I'm somebody again, maybe, maybe younger, hardcore Matt would say, like, I don't waste time with that kind of stuff. I'm at the point now, people who are into certain activities, if they want to, you know, ride their bike, e bike, you know, 5Ks even do, I don't know, some kind of crossfitty or high elite type stuff, kettlebells, things like that, I. And they want to do it and they'll do it and they'll stay consistent. It'll help keep them focused. Do it, it's fine. Just understand that it's a budget and if they're doing it, you're not going to be able to go quite as hard on the main lifts in the gym. But it's fine. Right? So this is not literally a marathon, but it's, it's a, it's a marathon, not a sprint. And so I want to do the thing that helps people keep enjoying training, whatever that is. And if they want to play in the men's rec league, basketball, that's fine. Go do that. Now if every time they do that they, you know, we've had problems with torn ACLs and sprained knees and stuff like that, some way we got to have a talk and I have a client. If they're listening to. This middle aged guy, looks a lot like me, loves going to concerts and moshing and hurts himself all the time. Like bro, you're in your mid-40s. Stop going to crazy concerts and moshing. It's time to watch the concerts on your big screen television. And so you gotta have that conversation every once in a while. But I think it's perfectly fine to keep people doing what they love, to keep them focused and keep them motivated to keep doing what they're supposed to do in the gym. So there you go. There is another Mondays with Matt again very quickly. Thanks for hanging around. Remember that you got that great deal $100 off coaching 101 plus a full month of coaching from Barbell Logic online coaching as well as an access to turnkey coach as a coach so you can learn on the best platform available. Go to barbelogic.com matt101barbelogic.com Matt1 $100 off coaching 101 which is already a great price and get a month free coaching. Hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of value for very little price. So thank you so much for sticking around. I'll see you guys next Monday. We'll talk a little bit more on this coaching. We'll wrap up the coaching series. I think we're going to dive into nutrition next and we'll get in there. So thank you so much for meeting and hanging around and we'll see you next week.
Host: Matt Reynolds (Barbell Logic)
Date: March 4, 2026
In this episode, Matt Reynolds explores the root causes of anxiety in new coaches and lays out actionable strategies for developing genuine confidence by building real competency. Drawing on decades of experience in coaching and business, Matt discusses the low bar in the fitness industry, the power of reps and feedback, and the unique opportunities today’s coaches have with technology and information access. He answers listener questions on programming, learning approaches, and practical adaptations for coaching clients of different backgrounds.
Coaching feels like public speaking (or worse):
Solution: Confidence through competency
Most coaches are underqualified:
Start where you are, but don't stay complacent:
Strive for excellence regardless of role:
Information has never been more accessible:
Practice cements knowledge:
Practical advice for first sessions:
Teaching progression scripts:
Observe, reflect, adjust:
Personality and client care matter:
Leverage AI and roundtables:
Classic training texts:
Minimum Effective Dose (MED) philosophy remains, but with tweaks:
Be flexible for client context:
Let clients pursue other physical activities if it keeps them motivated, adjusting gym intensity accordingly.
If you’re new to coaching:
Script your teaching cues/steps:
Pursue learning via AI and foundational books:
Keep your clients’ enjoyment and context in mind:
Matt’s delivery is direct, encouraging, candid, and peppered with humor. He is blunt about industry shortcomings but persistently optimistic about what focused, motivated coaches can achieve today: “You are now free to coach.” (01:12:00)