All right, so I wanted to throw this bonus unit in here for you guys. It's not,
it's kind of indirectly business related. Um,
but I think there's probably some helpful things in here, especially for, uh,
people who are kind of just starting out or getting into the, uh,
client management sphere. So first thing is progress, right?
Progress is more than just a massive visual transformation looking like you can,
you know, go on the photo of a magazine or, you know,
win some kind of contest@bodybuilding.com, right?
We have people that, you know,
just seeing a big improvement in their daily energy,
or not being bloated after every meal, sleeping through the night, uh,
being able to fall asleep on time. Uh,
other things that they may not see massive changes in the mirrors could be just
the way their clothes fit, right? You might not see a massive drop on the scale,
but if your clothes are, oh,
if my pants are feeling a little looser or something,
that can be a good progress marker for someone. And then in addition to that,
the kind of easier things, especially if you're more in like the,
the power lifting side of things where people are tracking stuff, you know,
very diligently is gonna be your strength and performance metrics, right?
Another good reason to have people like log their workouts,
even if they're not sending it to you every week. Um,
maybe taking a look at those every once in a while and see kind of like,
are we seeing some trending progress across the board, right?
Another one, easy one could be,
can they know walk up a flight of stairs without huffing and puffing, right?
Do they have more energy during the day to spend time, uh,
with their friends and family?
So these can be good things to kind of remind people of or bring up to people
who may not be paying as much attention to them if they're hyper focused on
a specific goal, and maybe they're, you know,
getting a little demotivated because their expectation of the rate of progress
was higher.
But if we're seeing all of these things kind of trending in the right direction,
that's not only a good indicator that, hey, we're making some massive, like,
foundational improvements that are gonna improve your quality of life.
But once these are all up to, you know, a certain level,
we could start to see overall progress of those other visual things or weight
scale or whatever really start to take off.
So for people who are having trouble,
maybe sticking to the plan could be because they're not feeling as motivated or
they don't see that progress happening right off the bat, right?
If we see progress happening, it's easy to stay motivated cuz I'm like, oh,
I'm being, I'm,
I'm getting the reward of my hard work when progress is a little slower.
Maybe that's where people start to kind of waiver in their compliance cuz they
don't feel the payoff is there quite yet. So this could be, um,
for the next one, celebrating, you know, small victories. Um,
obviously you're gonna have smaller improvements happen more frequently than
larger ones. Um, so this can be for people who are, you know,
kind of mentally tough on themselves,
which can work well sometimes they can really, um,
that can work in their favor to really push and work hard, but at the same time,
uh, it can kind of, you know, have a deleterious effect on their mental health.
So for those type of people,
and this is really more on the psychology side of coaching, um, again,
I'm not a psychologist,
but finding those little things they do do throughout the week.
Maybe they were having, you know, trouble, uh,
getting in all their meals and this week they got all of their meals in,
be like, Hey, great job sticking to this or that. Um, you know,
keeping an eye out for those things that we can use as kind of some motivation
to help with, you know, compliance and, you know,
overall happiness with the experience, right?
Cause we want people to enjoy this. Um,
so pointing out those progress markers that they might not see, right?
So that could come back to, uh, the sleep or digestion stuff.
Like they're filling that out in their check-in and you're like, Hey, over,
you know, the past month we've seen these positive changes in these areas.
You know, great job, we're doing something right here. Keep up the good work.
And then like, oh yeah,
I guess we did make some progress in that area even if the scale didn't move
right? Or, you know, perhaps the scale didn't move and, you know,
but they noted, oh, hey look, your measurements went down.
You don't look much different,
but your measurements didn't went down and your weight's the same. Like, Hey,
maybe that's a good indication that we're losing some fat, but you know,
we kept your glycogen stores full so that's good for your performance. You know,
finding those ways, uh, to look for the positive side of things, right?
But the important part is these are genuine praises, right?
We don't want this to be, you know, excessive, um, or like, you know,
cheerleader over the top, um, because it does kind of,
it wears out the effect, right? It starts to feel forced and they,
they don't receive it the same way. It can actually, you know,
work against you in that case.
And there are some people who are just naturally really good at finding these
little victories and pointing out progress in things. Um,
this is probably more for, for people like me who are, you know, maybe not, uh,
as you know, cheerleader, like, but reminding us to, uh,
to keep an eye on these things cuz it does help our clients when we look at, uh,
bigger things from managing compliance overall, starting with the big rocks is,
is going to be what we want to focus on. Not the little, uh, minutiae of, oh,
you know, you waited too long to have your post-workout meals. Like, well,
did you get your meal in or get a shake in or get all of your meals for the day,
right? So for people who have a lot going on, or maybe they're, you know,
not as versed in the fitness industry,
if you're starting with someone with a younger training age or just, you know,
newer in this area, um, starting with the, uh, the 80 20 rule, right?
What are those 20% of things that are gonna give you 80% of your results focus
there first? Once we have those nailed,
like you're getting in all of your calories,
you're executing your movements well, you're getting in all your workouts,
you're, you know, working to an appropriate degree of effort,
you're sleeping regularly through the night, all of those things,
then we can start worrying about, you know, the smaller things, right?
So a common example of kind of working on this on a gradient scale for
nutrition, uh, is something I kind of worked up here.
I broke it into like kind of five stages of how I would look at working with,
uh, someone on a nutrition level, right? So stage one is just food quality.
Are you no longer eating, you know,
as many packaged foods you're trying to eat some, you know,
some single ingredient foods as they say, right? You know,
a vegetable and a meat or a rice or a potato or something like that.
Something that you don't actually have to read 20 ingredients on the back of a
box.
Making the change to higher food quality is relatively low effort on their part.
It's virtually no effort on your part. Um,
other than maybe telling them what types of foods to choose and some things to
avoid,
possibly the next level up is getting them obviously to start some type of
portioning, right? That could be, you know, the, the palm method, uh,
the stuff that precision nutrition does really well. Um,
they have some great resources on getting people used to using nutrition as far
as the change in effort from, you know, just picking food quality and measuring.
It's about a,
I would say a medium level of change in effort because now they have to be
conscious of, you know, measuring things out. Not necessarily weighing them,
but being cognizant of the amounts of things that they're eating on your
side. If you're trying to write them a portion based plan,
it's kind of a medium to higher level effort because you have to kind of get
averages of, you know,
how many calories or grams of this or that are in certain foods in certain
sizes, you know, um, rough ballpark. Um,
but it's not terribly complicated.
Next level up is gonna be weighing and measuring.
This is probably one of the higher level jumps for clients, right?
Cuz now they actually have to start weighing stuff cuz you know,
just off the top of your head, you, nobody can eyeball and be like,
oh that's 4.5 ounces or 175 grams of whatever.
So they have to get a scale, they have to do it for every meal.
They have to do it for all their foods. It can be a bigger tier level jump. Um,
but once they get there, um,
we're in a really good spot to actually kind of start having a lot more control
or fine tuning over the nutrition stuff, which can really work in our favor, um,
in some of those cases for pushing for, you know,
let's say more elite levels of transformation beyond like the beginner level.
Of course next step up will be macros. Um, that's where it gets, I would say,
a little bit higher,
but maybe not that high of a change in effort for the client if they're using
already using something like a,
a MyFitness Pal or some kind of other food database tracker. Um,
so that can work really well for them.
And then obviously once they get to that level,
the ability for you to write meal plans is really easy.
You can use some calculations or distribute the grams of protein, carbs,
and fats you want per meal and send it out.
Much less time consuming than having to, you know,
pick a food or figure out how much of, uh,
how many calories are in this thing. Uh,
and I think one and a half portions of that should be good and stuff like that.
Um, so the macros really makes things easier for you.
And then timing kind of goes right in line with the macro stuff and the timing's
a tricky one cuz you could actually throw this in at almost any level from the
portions onward. And when I say timing, I don't just mean three meals a day,
morning, evening, night, I'm talking about, you know, you know,
are we getting a post-workout shake? Are we having a post-workout meal hour,
hour and a half later? Are we eating, you know, at least two hours before bed?
Uh, how are far apart are our meals, are we distributing, you know,
macros at different times of day? Like all of those type of things. Again,
not really that much harder for you from a meal planning perspective,
but it's just kind of another layer, um, of, you know,
skill I guess you might say that the client has to have. So we're,
I would just focus on working them kind of down this thing gradually. Again,
it doesn't have to happen every week or month or even every six months. Um,
but this just kind of to give you an idea of hey, they're at portion level now.
How much is it gonna take for them to get to, you know,
weighing and measuring stuff?
Do they have a lot of life stress right now and a lot of things on their plate
to deal with. Can they handle this extra, you know, mental task, yes or no?
So that's kind of where I would use this is weighing in like when is it
appropriate to try and bump someone up to the next, you know,
quote unquote stage. So again,
on the compliance side of things, meal plans. And I'm gonna kind of summarize,
uh, an article on the training site here, which goes through this in detail,
which will be linked in the resources below this video if you wanna check that
out. Um, and when I say meal plans, I'm talking like having, you know,
150 grams of this and four asparagus and an ounce
and a half of almonds or actually picking the foods,
giving the measurement and so on. Now I will say like we've talked about in the,
the kind of scope and the license topics earlier,
this might be out of scope or you might run into like some gray areas here. Um,
if you're not a registered dietician or anything like that.
So this is probably not something that I would say I can
recommend most people do unless you have one of those licenses or it's,
you know, legal in your area. People do it anyway. So I'm gonna outline it here.
It does simplify meal prep and it's easier to fine tune nutrition, right?
Cuz you can just change the measurements of this food.
You know exactly what they're getting.
They're measuring that exact food and it's very easy to fine tune stuff.
That's why a lot of uh, you know,
companies or coaches will use this in prep cuz they can be super specific with
their athletes.
The con to meal plans is from a mental perspective they're very restrictive,
you don't have any flexibility,
they're kind of boring unless you're writing out like three different variations
of meals and giving that to your client. And then that's again,
a little bit more work on your end and you know, a little bit, um,
more challenging overall. They're not learning,
they're not learning to manage their own foods. They're just like,
I follow this, this, this and I don't think about anything else.
Sometimes again, like in prep,
that can be great cuz your brain don't want to be using that, uh,
more than you have to when you're in a, uh, severe caloric deficit.
It may create poor habits or relationships with food.
And this is when I've seen, and it's very unfortunate,
it can create some kind of eating disorders potentially for some people.
So we have to be careful of that.
And then of course it is more time consuming to make these as opposed to just a
macro plan. Macro plans, basically the reverse.
Much more flexibility. If they're good at basically choosing quality foods,
they know how to weigh and measure,
they can pick whatever food they want and kind of mix and match. Again,
making sure it's quality food.
We're not just picking a poptart cuz if it fits my macros, um,
but it is faster to prepare and adjust from a coaching side, right?
You can just flip a couple numbers, move a couple grams, uh, you know,
drop calories, raise calories, whatever. It's pretty quick.
You don't have to completely rebuild, um, an entire, uh,
food plan when we're using a macro plan. The con,
I mean if you want to call it a con,
they do have to have knowledge of the food choices, right?
They have to know what those food sources are. They have to know, uh,
what the macros are. They have to track it or measure it or weigh it. Uh,
it's a little more time consuming for them at least until they get efficient at
it or unless they're meal prepping and they're really good at that and just
making a bunch of meals at once and then they don't have to think about it the
rest of the week over overall.
And back to the compliance thing, generally, um,
encouraging stuff is gonna be what we're or encouraging is gonna be where we're
leaning for trying to maintain that compliance. Uh,
rather than demanding unless you have that one client that they're just like,
I just need you to stay on my case, tell me what to do, no excuses.
And then it's like, hey, n of one man, if that's what you need,
I will be your task master. When we have some, uh, situations,
we have to be problem solvers. So if you have a client,
maybe you don't think they're quite giving the level of effort that you need
them to be on that last set to failure.
We have to get a little creative and we can use programming to solve problems
like that. So if you don't, if you think they're stopping at, you know,
two or three reps in reserve on what you want to be a zero rep in reserve set,
well we can kind of play some games there and you know,
you write zero rep in reserve anyway.
But maybe we add another set to make sure we're getting in, you know,
the amount of, you know, effective reps or stimulatory reps,
however you would like to term that throughout the course of the workout.
Other options we have, we can use drop sets, super sets, uh,
rest pauses is a really, another great way to do this without adding, you know,
necessarily the same level of fatigue is adding a whole nother set. Um,
so adding some rest pause methods in there can be good for this type of client.
If they have coordination limitations on certain exercises, whether that's, uh,
you know, like compound exercise, like a, a squat or something, um,
they're not able to get the level of output of fatigue because they're not as
confident or skilled in that movement,
well then maybe we still train those movements for the practice and we can still
get some decent work done.
But then we move to our more stable options for output, right?
So we do our squat and you know, we do four or five sets of that,
but we're maybe stopping it like a three r a r or something so that we're not,
you know, having anything, you know, possibly wrong, go wrong.
And then we just throw 'em in a leg extension,
smash the quads for one or two sets. Quads are good.
If you wanna get some glutes in there,
maybe throw 'em in a leg press or something like that.
We don't necessarily have to completely neglect
And exercise just because it's challenging.
We need to still train that if we want them to get better at it.
And then the last one, which is never the fun one,
is knowing when to fire a client or just when to terminate their
relationship, shall we say. Um, you might not be a good, you know,
match to work with every person. Like everyone's personality doesn't just click,
right?
So we have to have some self-awareness and recognize when that might be the
case. And maybe we again, use our kind of referral network of, you know, hey,
I think this coach over here that I know would really work well with you.
I think you would get along great and maybe you pass them off or find some way
to do that in like an amicable manner.
Or maybe you have the client that just doesn't put in the level of effort
necessary to adhere to the plan. Maybe you have someone who's, you know,
going out and binging food on the weekend or they're binge drinking or just
drinking a lot throughout the weekend. You're like, you know,
I need you to do X, Y, and Z so we can accomplish this goal.
And if they're not willing to do it,
you're just basically wasting both of your time, right?
It's the more time you spend with them not getting results,
even if it's because they're not sticking to the plan,
it doesn't necessarily look good on you, right?
And perhaps eventually they walk away and be like, oh,
well I've been with this person for x number of months and I didn't get results
and they're just a bad coach. As opposed to you, you know,
a couple months in being like, Hey, if you aren't able to stick to this plan,
I'm not able to help you. We should probably part ways, right?
So kind of managing that so you don't end up, you know,
having someone walk away with, uh, the the bad experience of, you know,
I gave you all this money and time and nothing happened,
even if it wasn't necessarily 100% your fault.
And then the final one would be like an excessively, let's say, uh,
handholding type of client or a more needy type of client.
They have a lot of questions and time demands and, uh,
or demanding a lot of your time where maybe that's just tons and tons of
questions. Um, or they're, again, maybe not sticking to the plan. Um,
maybe they're kind of breaching those communication boundaries, but usually, uh,
this is kind of a result of not setting or sticking to those boundaries,
I think I would say. Uh, but what we need to try and figure out is,
is it taking up excess time and either not paying off in results for that
client, or it's just really, you know, devaluing our time, right?
If you're spending two or three times as much, uh, on this one client,
you're making half or a third is less per hour for your time from a business
perspective. So you could also look at that well if, you know,
maybe again this comes back to it's not a good personality fit,
find someone else who's better at dealing or communicating with this particular
or type of client.
And maybe now you could help two or even three people in the same amount of time
every week or every month, that's gonna be a better use of your time.
Um, so, but you could also look at
It as, well, I really want to help this client,
so I'm gonna give them my time to do that.
So this is where if we go way back to setting our prices,
we have to kind of account that not everyone's gonna have the same time demand.
So we gotta set those prices appropriately for, uh, you know, if we have,
you know,
a quarter or a fifth of our clients are gonna demand a little more of our time,
we're still kind of averaging out to, you know, what our services are worth.
So that's not the fun one to talk about, but it is a reality.
So I wanted to cover that and hopefully some of these, uh,
overviews for the compliance stuff is helpful.