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You're listening to Mondays with Matt. I'm Matt Reynolds, the founder and CEO of Barbellogic 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. All right, Good afternoon. Good afternoon, everyone. Glad you're here. We're going to dive right into the AMA Mondays with Matt. This week we're going to talk about should I become a coach. By the way, this is available both on Barbelogic's YouTube channel. A lot of you are probably there, as well as my Instagram eynoldstrong. You check it out there as well. Either one will work just fine. We will collect questions throughout the live and I'll answer those. I'll talk for probably 10 minutes or so and then jump into 20 minutes of questions. So let's dive in. So I get this question all the time, like, should I become a coach? How do I know if I should become a coach? And let me give you some quick background for me. I gave you some from my personal story last week and this week I'll talk a little bit more about my coaching practice. And so my start into this was I was just, it was really obsession from 99 till about 2005 and really stayed. But it was just purely obsession in those first years. So I was just obsessed with learning, reading everything I could. Obviously this is very early in the days of the Internet. I would read books. I would go to my university, Missouri State University, down in the basement, I call it the Catacombs, and find the old strength books that were written often by the Soviet coaches back in the 80s and got translated into English. And I just was totally obsessed with learning everything I could. And so while I was obsessed with it, I was also training, constantly training all the time. First in competitive powerlifting. Started as a 220 pound lifter and then 242, 275, 308s, got really strong, totaled elite in four different weight classes. As part of that obsession, I started coaching my friends and training partners and family and everybody I can get my hands on. And so in that process of obsessing over knowledge, just a never ending pursuit of knowledge and training constantly and gaining some credibility there with my powerlifting, strongman accolades, coaching friends and family, it was like my entire life was consumed by it. Now look, I'm 47 years old now and have a family. It probably couldn't be as consumed now. But this was just, this is my story and this is probably Why I gained some notoriety in a relatively short period of time. And so really the turn for me in coaching came in kind of 2005. I became a high school strength coach at A4A high school, large high school here in southwest Missouri. I had between 150 and 300 students every single day. And it really refined my coaching eye. It taught me how to really coach, how to use cues quickly. If you're coaching 12 or 14 squat racks all at the same time, and there's kids in each one, you have to know their names, you have to shout a single word, cue, you can't, you can't over talk. And so it really refined my eye because I got so many more reps than I could, I could get doing one on one coaching or just training friends or family. And so that's where I learned to cue. That's where I got all these reps. That's where I refined my I. That was from 2005 to 2012. In 2008, I opened Strong Gym in Springfield, Missouri. That grew to be one of the largest privately owned strength gyms in the country. And that was really where my first paid reps came in, where I started to coach actual clients who were paying me money, writing me checks or billing every single month. And then shortly after that, I became a starting strength platform coach in 2010 and started lecturing on that seminar circuit as well. And so by 2012, my coaching income really coaching from 2005 to 2012, 2005 being the first time I really started doing this for real and charging people and things like that to 2012. By 2012, my coaching income had surpassed my public school teaching income. And so I was able to leave teaching. I did them both for a long time, and I think for a lot of you, that's what you'll have to do if you're trying to build a coaching business is you, you continue to do the thing that you do. Be the cpa, be the engineer, be the electrician, be the plumber, and second shift is coaching. And over time, if you don't spend both amounts of money, both salaries are both what you're getting paid. But you take all of the money that you make from coaching and you, you put it in the bank and you save it and you invest it, then the day will come when you can actually leave the main gig and move over to the, what was the part time side gig. And so that's what I did. And it worked really well. I gained a lot of leverage in 2012-2015. I started coaching on the side. I ran the gym full time. Sorry, I was online coaching on the side, running the gym full time. I sold the gym at the end of 2015 and went fully online in what you all now know as barbelogic. And really, that just gave me massive leverage. More reps, better, better systems. I was able to coach a tremendous number of people in an online format, way more than I could ever coach in person. And so that really refined my eye over the years and gained reps. What I had already gained under the bar as a strength athlete, I was able to gain on the platform. Both literally on the platform as an in person coach and then figuratively on the platform as an online coach. And so I didn't start as a coach, I trained into one. And this is really the big takeaway for today that I want you to come away with. And so a quick summary of what I just told you was that I feel like I had some unfair advantages, although they weren't really unfair. And it's not something that's just unique to me. One, I was obsessed. I was obsessed over learning everything I could. I dove in and learned everything I could. Two, I trained hard and consistently. And because as a coach, you have to know what heavy feels like when you're asking a client to grind out that fifth rep on squats. You have to know what it feels like to grind out that fifth rep on squats or to keep pulling for five seconds of grind on a heavy deadlift off the ground, off the floor. Obviously, because of all that training consistently and training hard, I gained a lot of credibility. And that gave me the reputation that I needed to succeed in the industry. I coached everyone available. Obviously, this for many years. I wasn't at the point that I am now where I can charge what I charge for coaching. I didn't charge anything. I didn't get paid anything. The first several years I was a strength coach at the high school. Eventually they gave me a stipend which wasn't very good. But I just needed the reps, I needed the experience. And so I coached everybody I could. Those reps are always better than readiness. You're never going to be ready. Just jump in and go. And so that's what I did. And then after that, I started leveling up. I started noticing that I went from coaching one on one at the gym, to coaching groups, to teaching seminars, to moving fully online, which allowed me even more excellent reps than I could get in person, as I said, to owning a business where there were Countless other great coaches that I could learn from that proximity to excellence really accelerates growth. I'm incredibly blessed in what I'm able to do because it's of course, given me tremendous freedom to coach who I want, when I want, where I want. It's given me financial stability, both at top line revenue and to make far more dollars per hour than I ever thought I could make. And so you can do this too. But I do want to have hard lessons about who you have to be to be able to do this. So the key lessons and slash takeaways is that you have to train to be a coach, to be a good coach. Coaching is pattern recognition. And that pattern recognition requires exposure to it. Again, you have to know what you're asking your clients to do. And so you don't have to be a professional strongman. I'm not saying you have to become an elite level powerlifter or whatever, but that exposure to understanding what you're asking requires reps under the bar, bar in the hands, bar on the back. And so no reps are no I equates to no I. Two, you need a coach before you even coach others. And so one of the things that we've seen so many of our clients at Barbelogic do, some of our best coaches started as clients because they learned what it looked like to be a great coach. And so they were coaching, learning from a great coach. They started to understand what that looked like, what good cueing looked like, what accountability looked like, what structure looked like, how to program good communication. And then you reverse engineer what your great coach did, and you take those things that you can run with and continue to build your career. So three, I videoed everything, even from the early days. And I've never been somebody who wanted to post a lot of PRs online. There's nothing wrong with that. But that's not why we video. We video because it connects what we felt with what actually happened. I remember what that heavy squat set felt like. Now I want to know what it looked like. And so I would video myself and I would just go back, even in the middle of the workout and watch the sets. That set I just did to see if it really was what I felt it was. Or for those of you who are familiar with rpe, like, how hard was it? I thought, that's so hard. I probably only had one more rep in me. Maybe no reps in me. Then I would watch it and go, it was pretty fast. Maybe I had three more reps in me. I didn't know. And so it connects your feels with your eyes, and that makes a connection in your brain. So it builds that internal calibration for you. And so this is how we refine our eyes. We can do it very like right now, you all probably are training or should be training. And so if you're doing that, you can start videoing yourself right now and pretend that you are your own client. And what would you say to yourself if you were a client? And you can connect that back to what it felt like while you were doing this. Set number four. Volunteer immediately. Don't wait for permission. We'll talk about this in a future week, in the next couple weeks. Don't wait for permission. Start coaching right now. Usually it's free. It's friends, it's family, it's church members, it's coworkers, it's going to schools, it's volunteering at the Boys and Girls Club. Just coach everybody you can get your hands on. Know that your first three clients are probably already in your life and you're probably texting them on a daily or weekly basis anyway. And you can start to offer real help to those. You can help them, like, change their lives by experiencing strength. And it's synergistic. It's because you gain the reps and experience as a coach. And so they're helping you because you're getting the reps and experience and you're helping them by helping them change their lives by experiencing strength. So the question is not, should I become a coach? But rather, am I willing to do what it takes to become a great coach? Coaching is a skill trade just like anything else. It's not a vibe, it's not a feel. It's not just an obsession. You're not born with it. I wasn't. I was a terrible coach when I started. So it must be intentionally pursued and nurtured. A passion is not, does not equal a profession. Right? Loving lifting doesn't mean that you're going to love coaching. There are a lot of people that love to lift, but they don't like to coach. And so the questions that I have for you to think about this week are, do you actually enjoy watching other people lift? Do you enjoy solving other people's problems? Can you handle slow progress, both financially as you're trying to build a business? PRs don't always come as easily as you want them to come for your clients because life gets in the way. Can you handle that? And can you detach your ego from the results? Because coaching is A service. This is a, we're a people company, we serve, right? It's not just about writing programs and sending out Google spreadsheets or even writing programs on an amazing software like Turnkey Coach. It's actually interacting with like what makes a wonderful piece of software and platform so amazing is that it makes me incredibly efficient at the programming, at the filling in the sets, reps and weights so that I can spend my time focused on my clients, building that human relationship and interaction, building trust. And so this is what I'm trying to do as a coach. Coaching is patience. Coaching is communication, effective communication. Coaching is leadership. Listen to communication. I think it's great to train your wife or your husband, your spouse, your boyfriend, girlfriend, your kids. But you'll find out a lot about how well you, you communicate when you start coaching people who've seen you at your worst. And a lot of people say, don't coach those people. But I think it's great practice because if you can do this and do it well and you can make your spouse happy or you can get your spouse stronger and help them reach their goals, it's easy to do it with any normal soccer mom or dad. And so what it's not is posting PR videos. It's not arguing about form on X or Instagram. It's not living your lifting career through others trying to, you know, I could have thrown that football over them there mountains had coaches put me in the fourth quarter. It's not that, right. It is really genuinely caring about people and trying to move them along and move them towards their goals. And so you shouldn't do this if you just want fitness freedom, if you hate admin or systems, which you have to have to grow a business if you don't like people, if you're not likable, some people are just, you know, you've got to have an infectious personality if you don't train seriously yourself and if you want fast money, this is not the place to get into, I don't know, go put it in, put money in something else. Coaching changed my life. Not because it made me money, but because it made me useful. And so that's why I think about or how I think about if I should become a coach or how I can be a better coach and how you should become a coach or if you should become a coach coach. So hopefully that gives you some things to chew on this week. So with that, let's turn to some questions and I will watch. John wants to have a beard like me. I have earned a Pretty good beard over the last 20 years. All right, any questions open, you can ask them here on YouTube or on Instagram. Dan's checking stuff out and will feed questions to me about anything. So it doesn't have to be about if you should become a coach or how you get started. Certainly those things are fine. You can ask about your own training, nutrition, business, family, any of that stuff. Happy to answer this as an AMA for a reason. You can ask me anything. A question I got is what's my least favorite type of client to coach from, a strength gym, from strong gym, or what we've done in the past. I think it's really similar. The best clients in person often make the best clients online. But there's a newfound freedom, not just for you as a coach or for me as a coach. And being able to do it online where you can do it when you want, where you want, anytime you want, on your own schedule. They can. Your clients can train anywhere they want, anytime they want, on their own schedule. And so the problem that I saw in the gym, and I'm not trying to get you out of coaching in the gym, I think those are valuable reps that you need to have. If I could do it all over again, I would start the hybrid model right now. I would coach in person and online at the same time for several different reasons. One, I live in Springfield, Missouri. It's not a massive metropolitan city, and so it expands my client pool to the whole world when I'm able to offer online coaching. But two, for your clients in Springfield, Missouri, or for whatever city you live in, they travel. They often the types of clients who can pay personal training type money are the types of clients who travel for business, who travel for pleasure, you know, go on vacations. You can then take them and put them in a hybrid model so that you're coaching them in person most of the time, or maybe coaching them in person once or twice a week. And then when they travel business pleasure, if they're in a hotel gym, if they're in a nice resort gym, if they go find another big box gym, you have an opportunity to continue to coach them. So one of the things I love about the online side, much better than the in person side, is that I've noticed that my consistency or my compliance from my clients is much higher. On the online side. You still get the accountability, you still get the feedback. But because they don't have to make the 6am time slot in the specific city, but they can train when they need to, then it makes it much easier. I'm traveling. I'm taking my daughter for a daddy daughter time up in Kansas City this coming weekend. And I picked a hotel that's got a great gym for that very reason. So I'm not going to get to train in my home gym, which I love, but I found a hotel with a great gym that was the option. Or find a hotel that doesn't have a great gym and find a gym relatively close to the hotel I was staying at. And so that gives me opportunity to continue to, to coach and train for me. All right. Last week I mentioned watching HRV and a few other health statistics. Can you give more information on those? Sure. So I really watch several things. I watch resting heart rate is a big one for me and it's because it tends to be a little higher when I'm stressed. When my nutrition is not locked in, I would often have resting heart rates in the low 90s at night, which is not probably good. And so I'm constantly watching that because it tells me it often is sort of the precursor, the leading metric into what my sleep is going to be like. And so I also track my sleep. And so as my resting heart rate got in the low 70s and now in the high 60s and you know, Nikki Sims is in sometimes like 38 to 42, it's crazy low. I know that I'm much more relaxed. It's easier for me to get in that parasympathetic tone. And then I track my sleep, which I really like and I'm really worried about or I care about HRV during sleep. So how, you know, what's, what's my ability for my heart to essentially make changes quickly in the midst of being at rest. And so that's really, so it's heart rate variability training. So it's the ability for your heart to make changes in its beat profile like how, how much it can change over a short period of time to be able to give your body what it needs. So HRV, I like VO2 max, which is rated is decent on like on an Apple watch or Garmin or something like that, which I like. I track that a lot. I love doing test, doing labs, blood work every six months and running those as well. So I'm kind of constantly looking at those health metrics, certainly things like weight waste. I was talking about the smart scale that I have that measures body fat, lean mass and not just overall body fat, but what my percentage of body fat is on my each arm, each leg, torso hydration. I know I can see, I'm at 56% or I was at 56% yesterday, I'm at 60.1% today. And it also tells you what I like about that is there's times for those of you who've been nutrition clients or really track that sort of stuff, you'll gain £2 in one day. You'll be like, I ate really well yesterday, what's going on? And with a scale like that, it tells you, well, it was hydration. You're just more hydrated today. Like, oh, okay, I didn't gain fat or even gain muscle, I just gained water. And most of that water goes in the muscle anyways. Glycogen, creatine, the carbs, electrolytes and water. And so if I'm better hydrated, my contractile force in my muscles is probably significantly better as well. Carl Shute. What's up, sir? What's your favorite coaching triumph? It's probably Ms. Sybil. And for those of you guys following me, you'll know Ms. Sybil, she's 90 now, but she's this really great story about being able to help change somebody's life. But the reality is she's also just, she's not the exception to the rule. I mean, she is because there's not a lot of 90 year olds that have done this, but she shouldn't be. And so any client that I've ever been able to work with, and of course they're doing the work, I'm doing the coaching. So I don't want to take credit for their work. But any client that's dramatically changed their life, change their health, change their longevity metrics, those sort of things are, that's to me, that's the stuff that really matters. I coached competitive lifters for years, powerlifters, strongman. I didn't get a lot of joy out of it, honestly. They didn't love to train. When you're a, a professional athlete, training kind of sucks. It's your whole life. And so to take a normal person and not make their life not normal, like allow them to train three hours a week, lock in their nutrition, develop good nutrition habits, not eat like a bodybuilder, not eat boiled chicken breasts and broccoli all day, but to eat relatively normal, but have a good relationship with food, a good relationship with activity and strength training, and then dramatically change their life. And look at those metrics, look at their waist come down 6, 7, 10 inches. Watch their body weight and their body composition completely change. These are the things I love to do as a Coach. And then of course with that, and we talk about this a lot, is it's what it does not just to them physically, but what it does to them socially, emotionally, relationally, spiritually. All of those things are at play because of doing the hard work, the voluntary hardship of barbell training. And so that's what I love to do as a coach. All right, question from Caleb on ig. Trying to help a petite female friend gain weight. I've never tried to help anyone with this. What's the best approach to helping this person? It's really similar for, believe it or not, if it's a petite female or a 250 pound guy that's trying to go up to the 275 pound weight class, the strategy is really the same. And so there are numerous ways to do this. But for me, because I'm a metrics guy, I really like macros. I don't weigh food, I've never weighed food. It's a pain. Understanding what, 4 ounces of meat, 6 ounces of meat, 8 ounces of meat, things like that, a cup of rice, a half cup, a cup of potatoes, whatever. Being able to get close on that and not perfect. I don't need perfection. I just need close knowing what I'm eating. All you have to do is try to find, which only takes a couple weeks, what their kind of basal metabolic rate is and make sure you have them eat slightly above that. I would start probably 250 calories above that. 200. 250. For a big guy, maybe it's 500 calories. That's the big difference. But it's just, it's a titrated amount above their metabolic rate and they'll start to gain weight. Now what I want to look at for both gaining weight and losing weight is any more than about a pound a week gained or a pound a week lost is going to be too much. So if you're trying to gain weight and you're gaining about a pound a week, you can know that that's probably mostly muscle if you're keeping your protein very high. For a female, I want Most females eating 150 grams of protein a day. Even if they weigh 120, that's probably a lot. But it's fine. Most guys, 200 grams of protein and above. And so I make sure they get the protein and then I just take the carbs and the fat and make sure that those two combined line up to be just in excess of their metabolic rate. If they're trying to gain Just below their metabolic rate. If they're trying to lose and we ride that out, we see how close they are and how compliant and consistent they are to that. After a few weeks, if it starts to plateau and stop, then we make another bump up another couple hundred calories that they're trying to gain down maybe 100 calories that they're trying to lose, depending on whether you're going to pull. But you're, you're going to keep protein high and you're going to pull or add carbs or fat. Right. To get there. And so, and then I've got the kind of general, this is a very broad statement, but I think most people starting with like a 33% of your calories coming from protein, 33% from carbs, 33% from fat is a pretty good place to start. I'm closer to 40% of my calories come from protein, 30% from carbs, 30% from fat. So it hasn't shifted a ton, but it's a fair amount. And I'm trying to lose. And so I keep my protein high and keep kind of dropping some of those, some of that energy inputs with the carbs and the fat. And that's the best way to do it. And then it's literally just stay in the course finding the things that will make the biggest difference. I talked I think a little bit last week. I haven't had alcohol in three months. Well, that to me it was, it wasn't about being a slave to alcohol. It was the amount of calories that it counted for worthless calories. If I could replace those calories, I really have replace those calories. And what I was drinking in alcohol with protein, it made an enormous difference in my body composition immediately. So finding those places where your clients tend to fall off the wagon a little bit, whether they're trying to gain or trying to lose, those are the places you then try to attack really with habits. So it's about developing those habits over two and three weeks first and then turning it into a true habit over the course of 8 to 12 weeks. And then it's just part of who they are and it's how they eat. So. All right, okay, I got a double question there other questions. I've got one coming in right here. How does a 350 pound guy, was a former powerlifter who has gotten into endurance cycling, find a balance between losing weight while getting enough, enough calories to ride 30 to 70 miles? Okay, this is actually a great question. So 350 pound guy who was a competitive power lifter who's now into endurance cycling. That's obviously a massive change, but, you know, you're probably going to live a lot longer. Endurance cycling, if it's truly long, is very aerobic. It's got certainly some anaerobic components to it. But at £350, if you're still 350, you've got enough body fat that your aerobic system can oxidize that fatty acid for training, for exercise, for the endurance cycling. And so you can continue to do that. So I would tell you to do the same thing that I'm saying with a lot of these others, which is I would keep your protein about 200 grams a day. I would keep your calories just below maintenance, and that's just below maintenance while taking into consideration how many calories you're burning on the, on the ride. So it depends on, you know, if you're burning 500 calories or 400 calories on a ride or sometimes a really long ride. When you burn a thousand calories, you want to make sure you eat slightly below that and your body fat stores will make up the excess and it'll, it'll help give you the energy you need. You'll be just fine for a long time. It's much harder when someone wants to move from 205 to 175 for an endurance sport, rock climbing, things like that, and they're already very lean and they're trying to get performance improve while they're reducing weight. That's much more difficult. So 350 is not as difficult. Okay, one more question. Almost four. Would you comment on nicotine benefits and drawbacks? Oh, Lord, here we go. Mia. I'll pop a new Zen in for this question. Not for you kids. Nicotine. So nicotine by itself has shown to have dramatic improvements in cognitive function, energy reduction in Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, neurological disease. And so I think it's probably a great thing to have. I like it in the mornings with coffee or for AMAs and just fine. The problem comes in with. Some of the other things are attached. So there's two pieces that I see. One, when you, when you smoke tobacco, the amount of tar and carcinogens that come in are, they're not healthy. There's nothing you can do to make it healthy. If you want to enjoy a pipe or a cigar or something with buddies on a Friday night, that's, I think it's fine. You know, it's not going to be any worse than eating a big Piece of chocolate cake. But I think that's it's not the nicotine that's the problem, it's the other stuff that's attached to. Likewise. I have real problems in general with like vapes and even the whole culture that it surrounds. I don't want my kids using them. It's a constant struggle with teenagers right now with that kind of stuff. They're a cesspool to depravity. These vape shops. I like to see every one of them closed down. And so if we can separate ourselves of to have just the nicotine, which is why I like the pouches or a gum, a lozenge gum or a patch, I think you can get the benefits that you want out of it without all of the nasty side effects that you get from the carcinogens. The other piece is this nicotine's addictive and it can become a problem just like anything else can. If you find yourself doing a can of Zen a day, that's way too much. And so being able to. I've had times where I'm like, I just want to keep popping zins. I just set an alarm on my phone and don't let myself have one until the alarm goes off. And make sure I keep it titrated because over time you'll want more. You know, you used to have three and now like it takes five or six to feel the same way. And so you've got to be really careful with that stuff. So. Okay, it's about 4 o'. Clock. We'll probably wrap it up. Thank you so much for joining. Got a bunch of people on Instagram as well as on YouTube. Thank you guys for coming again to the Monday with Matt. We'll continue our discussion on coaching next week. And little CTA for you guys here. Coming back to the opening point of I was obsessed with knowledge. If you've ever thought I'd love to coach, but I have no idea where to start, this is where to start. Get this coaching Kickstarter ebook. It's 100% free. It's a practical roadmap for how to get started. If you are somebody who wants to pursue knowledge and are obsessed with this thing, this is a no brainer. Like you should. You should download it and get it for free. There's not a sales pitch. We're not trying to make money off of you. Just get the book because we want you to be better coaches. The world needs better coaches to change people's lives. So download that coaching Kickstarter ebook. It's free at barbelllogic.com matkickstarter Let me do it again. Barbelllogic.com matKickstarter get the coaching Kickstarter ebook today. Obviously, we have things like the Academy, wonderful educational pipelines. We'll talk more about that in the coming weeks. That's a great place to start. And just read everything you can get your hands on. There's so much great information out there. YouTube videos. It's a great thing if you're driving in your car. I've kind of stopped listening to music. I'm listening to YouTube videos, podcasts, Audible, things like that. And there's so much great stuff out there. But man, YouTube right now is just crushing it on outstanding education. So thank you so much again for another great week, and I'll see you guys next Monday. Sam.