-: Continuing on our last discussion,
where we ended with what a client should track.
There's a big difference between guessing, (chuckles)
assessing and obsessing.
Now, we can kinda look at this as like a scale,
and guessing's over here, obsessing's over here.
Assessing is in the middle,
and that's where we want to be.
Because if we're not tracking things well
then we're guessing,
or if we don't track at all, we're guessing,
but if we're tracking everything possible,
we're probably being a little too obsessive
and we're probably tracking things
that either aren't providing a lot of value
or the value is disproportionate to what we get from them,
and that can lead to its own negative consequences.
So, we only wanna interpret and apply
what you and your client can track consistently,
accurately, conveniently enough,
and when I say conveniently enough that means
that the effort in doing so
does not end up having a negative impact.
So an example of that
may be
doing morning fasted blood sugars.
That's a bit extreme, so you'd only do that
if there was a lot of value from that information.
So there would have to be a specific scenario
where you needed those fasting blood glucose numbers
to make some decisions.
That's likely not gonna be the case with the majority
of the people you work for.
So the one below that, it's convenient enough
that the work, or the juice is worth the squeeze,
'cause it has to be meaningful.
Whatever we track,
whatever data we get has to be meaningful.
As we go through this process,
consistency is going to be a big factor in that whole,
well, okay, how much effort, convenient this is,
and how meaningful it is,
'cause consistency can buffer accuracy.
So, when we're looking at the things
that we can track as coaches and trainers,
and even that technology stuff
that I was talking about in the previous unit,
of where you have all these devices now,
their accuracy is low.
But what they do offer is a way
to get information consistency.
And things done consistently over a long period
of time can bring up their accuracy
just purely by the power of numbers.
So if things are a little bit off,
but I can track it consistently enough over a period
of time, that I can get a trend,
that kind of buffers the fact
that maybe on the individual daily basis,
it wasn't quite as accurate.
So you could look at that same thing as like a skin fold
or a circumference test for,
as something to help you track body composition.
There's gonna be lots of fluctuations in that.
Same thing for the scale weight.
Those are all things that, on the day,
their accuracy relative to
what information you're taking from that isn't very good.
But that data collected consistency,
consistently provides us useful,
accurate information over time.
So your weight may do this over the course of a week,
but if we start to see
that the trend is going in the right direction,
that may be a positive outcome.
That may be accurate data, when we add time.
So oftentimes consistency can buffer inaccuracy
in some of these things, and it also will improve it.
So if you have a client and they're taking circumferences
or you're doing skin fold tests,
you actually get more accurate just by doing that.
Same thing with some of the biofeedback measures
and things like that.
People will just get more accurate at their ability
to assess their quality of sleep, their morning energy,
how they feel emotionally,
how they feel after their workouts et cetera.
As they evaluate that stuff, over, and over, and over again,
their accuracy in those evaluations tends to improve.
So even though it's not a super tangible system,
maybe if you're using a lot of these questions
for biofeedback, the consistency of doing them allows you
to get trends in accuracy over time.
The last one on here.
Some habits can positively impact adherence,
regardless of the data's relevance.
So, sometimes the scale is a really good example here,
'cause for some people,
jumping on the scale in the morning helps them adhere.
For other people it may stress them out.
So, what we wanna look at is,
what habits can we instill in somebody's life
that may actually improve their adherence to the program.
And this is where kind of having some
of those short-term goals
or consistent goals with certain things,
so simply tracking hours of sleep can help with adherence,
'cause if somebody knows that,
"Well, I'm supposed to be getting this much sleep".
Well, if they're tracking that and reporting that,
maybe they are gonna go to bed
that hour earlier instead of staying up, et cetera,
because they have to track it.
So there is going to be an adherence improvement with that.
So sometimes we get kind of a benefit
that isn't necessarily directly relevant to the actual data
that we're collecting,
just because the collection process promotes adherence.
Obsession, the other side here.
So, being not just too consistent, but it's very easy to get
to a little neurotic about some of these things,
especially if you train people
that have done a lot of crash dieting
and have a lot of psychological issues.
Happens a lot with competitors and stuff like that.
So, a client can not track a piece of data
without it having a conscious effect.
So basically, if you take your weight in the morning,
that's gonna have an effect, whether it was up or down.
We can coach people on trying to say,
"Hey, it doesn't matter what it is.
"We're looking for trends over time".
That will help some people more than others.
A really good example
of this is something like the HRV, for instance.
So, with the HRV, it's a very general marker,
and what can happen is that score can go up or down,
and depending on what that is,
that kinda ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy,
meaning that if their watch, or whatever it may be,
says like, "Oh, today is not a really good day.
"Your recovery is not very good", they go,
"Oo, my recovery's not very good".
And they're gonna be stressed
because their recovery's not very good,
and then if they go train,
their performance is not gonna be very good,
blah, blah, blah.
So, it's not that those tools aren't valuable,
but sometimes it is the actual collection of those things
that can then have a conscious effect,
and so the stress of seeing that data,
and maybe misinterpreting it,
can actually have a net negative effect
that's worse than what benefit we would have got
from having the data.
I really wish, for a lot of these things,
there was a way to blindly collect that data.
It would be so cool if there was a scale
that somebody could jump on in the morning
that would get their weight and their morning heart rate,
and we could maybe measure some HRV and all these things,
but the client would never see the numbers.
It would just get logged, it would go to the coach,
or they could only see them at the end of the week,
or, I don't know.
Wishlist for what I would like to have.
But you can try and play with that with your practice
and stuff like that.
You're training somebody at the same time of the day,
everyday or whatever,
and you want to actually have them jump on the scale there,
but you cover it up, you don't let them see it,
and that's just like, "Hey, I'm gonna log this up,
"and I will give you a report at the end of the week,
"or the end of the month, for how this goes.
"I'm just gonna use this information
"to make adjustments for you".
So, there's things that you can do logistically,
within your coaching process,
if you want to make some of that data blind,
and this is not exactly the most convenient
and some people might be like,
"Well, he's being really sneaky", or whatever,
but if you explain to them the reasoning behind,
most people will be okay with that,
and I think it's a really good way of doing things.
If you can find a way where you're at to make it convenient
and just logistically make sense.
The other thing is,
is that sometimes you can start stacking up
what you're tracking so much
that it just becomes overwhelming.
It just becomes like, you don't wanna become that person,
quote, unquote, like the biohacker groups or whatever,
where it's like, okay, I get up and I put 15 devices on me
and then I do, it's like a three hour process
before I can actually do or function
for any part of the day,
and then I do the same thing when lying down.
That's the extremes of like, okay, wait.
We're spending so much time tracking the things in our life
that we're actually not living.
And the people that actually adhere and stick to that,
usually they start to develop a very unhealthy relationship
with those numbers, and so then if they don't have them,
then they're even more stressed about it.
Like, "Oh crap, I forgot to measure this today",
or whatever.
So we wanna make sure that we don't allow people
to become obsessed with that data.
So it's just, we're using all this stuff as tools,
and so that's the thing.
If somebody's coming and they wanna lose weight,
and they're gonna go through a period
where they're tracking calories in macros,
the goal is not for them to have to weigh their food
for the rest of their life.
Our goal is eventually to get them to a point
where they can have a more relaxed lifestyle
and still be able to maintain a healthy level
of fitness and physique.
So, we wanna make sure we don't instill any bad habits,
we wanna make sure we don't overwhelm a client,
so that then they just don't adhere
because they don't wanna do it.
So, adherence is best when the routine is going
to be productive, and rewarding,
and not inconvenient and annoying.
So that means they need to track stuff that is meaningful,
and you're the person that probably makes that meaningful,
so if you do a good job of taking that report,
interpreting it and then explaining back to them
either what that information means
or how you're making training decisions
and adjustments on that,
and how that's helping you improve their program,
that's where it becomes productive and rewarding to them,
especially if it is someone correlated to,
it's a measurement of their progress,
and it can't be overly time-consuming,
it can't be something
where if it doesn't move in the right direction today
that's gonna have a negative connotation to it.
So that's where it becomes annoying.
This is an emotional equation.
It's gonna be on an individual basis
of what a person can do, how much a person can do,
and how that is going to affect them.
Some people are fine weighing themself every day,
some people are fine weighing themselves once a week,
some people can't get on a scale, period.
So, you have to figure out for that individual
what's logistically going to be best,
and then it goes back to that having real conversations
with people and getting down to some of this information,
beyond just the numbers,
understanding what their emotional response is
to these numbers and whether or not tracking them is going
to have a positive or a negative effect on them emotionally
and their adherence,
and just overall enjoyment with your protocol.