ELITE COACH LIVE: Forget Strength, Let’s Build Power

Elite Coach Live: Forget Strength, Let’s Build Power with Ste Gordon and Brendan Chaplin.

Ste and Brendan went live as part of our Elite Coach Live series to discuss building power in athletes and what that really means. Keep reading to read the full conversation, or head over to YouTube to watch the full webinar! 

Introduction

Ste: So, a topic that I absolutely love chatting about, and I know you do as well and it’s Power Training, and so let’s kind of dig into it. So kind of the forget strength, let’s build power. And I don’t know about yourself mate, but I think I’ve found myself in the time of chasing kilos on the bar whilst trying to build maximal strength. But I’ve just found out, I’ve just become slower, I’m not aggressive under the bar as much as I used to be and stuff like that as well. So let’s kind of chat into that little blend of building power and stuff. And I think because there’s a lot of context. I think a lot of people are going to be looking what…You need one value, you do, but there’s a lot of context and there’s a lot to unpack there.

So first and foremost, mate, let’s dig into the context around power. When do you sort of transition that maximal strength into the power and everything else, mate?

When do you Transition Maximal Strength into Power?

Brendan: Yeah. So let’s just lay down some key points here. So I think first and foremost, what we are talking about with power is explosiveness. It’s, you know, looking at the defining moments that typically win sporting contests, such as breaking the line in rugby or, finishing a fight in boxing and whatnot. Those things are typically definitive moments and bursts of explosive energy and power, but bringing it right back to home, power is really relevant to general population too for things like slips, trips and falls; that’s where the older population really struggle with those sorts of things, they’re just done and there’s not the explosiveness or the agility reflex to respond to those things.

What we also know about the relationship between strength and power is that power and I’m encompassing speed, agility, and general explosiveness, but those qualities of power is lost really quickly. It’s very much a quality that if you don’t use it, you absolutely lose it. Whereas strength; you do lose strength, but you lose it a lot slower than power. So power, speed, explosiveness training has to be in the program on a regular basis. And in my eyes for everybody in some context, now I’m not saying you’re going to get 75 year-old Barbara doing, you know, snatches off the floor with their own body weight. That’s not the goal here. It’s relative to where they’re at now.

And the final point, the key point here is strength and power relationship. We know within reason, the stronger you are, the more power reserve you’re going to have. So we’re not saying forget strength, let’s build power in the way that the title suggests here, we’re saying for the discussion here, we’re going to look at power, but actually strength lends itself to power very, very reliably. They are essentially a married couple off the bat.

Ste: Yeah, you can one without the other.

Brendan: No, no.  And to your points, Ste, about when do you blend it to path? I actually think most programs that, and people that I work with will have a combination of both those qualities in there. Be it maximal strength, basic strength, just strength training and explosiveness training. So, you might have your… Well, you would normally have your power training at the start of the session and then you’d move into your strength training off the back of that. It doesn’t have to be that way, but typically that’s probably a good practice. So, for me, they intertwine logically on a weekly, fortnightly basis. You’re going to touch both qualities. But generally speaking, I would say, unless you are really a powerlifter or somebody that is just pure strength, ironically that they call powerlifters because it is the lives of strength. You know, it’s probably a mistake to not touch strength training and lifting heavy things and moving things fast and exclusively on a weekly or fortnightly basis because you do need to keep them both in the program. And as I say, raising your strength will mean that you can train with faster, lighter loads more and get better results, won’t it?

Ste: Yeah, absolutely. And I think where a lot of it gets lost in… Well, not lost in translation, I think it’s distilling down what type of power you also need, right; because obviously we were saying at the beginning, everything’s very context specific. So as we start to get closer to an event, or there’s a specific quality that you are looking to build with your athlete, you’ve got to decide what type of power or what type of power training if you will, you’re going to implement. So what is going to be best for your athletes? And, this is why you come back to the strength curve time and time again, because it makes sure that you’re ticking the boxes and you’re actually getting out.

So obviously ballistic movements, obviously typically a movement will continue after that ballistic explosiveness has occurred. So if you think of like a med ball throw, the body keeps on moving as you’ve accelerated past the object and throwing it, et cetera, et cetera. But you also can build power by non-ballistic movements; your traditional squats, your presses, when you’re just moving a bat

Brendan: Yeah.

Understanding Power Training

Ste: As quickly as you possibly can. So I think the key thing with all of the power chain is an understanding is when you’re building out your progressions in your power training model, where are you going? The days of saying, well, we’re going to do box jumps and jumps and all this kind of stuff, because it’s fast so I must be power training,  is just not the case. You’re doing yourself a bit of a disservice there. You need to really dig down into the, what type of power do we need to do? Does our athlete need to be able to produce power under load? So if you think of a grappler, they’re not chucking a 5 kilo med ball off their chest, they’ve got typically the weight of an opponent, which might be 70, 80 kilos. So actually they need to train power with load, heavy load because that’s what the body’s going to be required to do during that. So, I think it’s understanding what’s the output that’s needed for the athlete, but also where are you going with it? So having a really good understanding of your progressions and the end point’s really important.

Brendan: Yeah. I think when we look at power, we’ve got to be a little bit mindful of the specificity trap because you take, say a sprinter or a shot-putter, you know that the shot-puts not a particularly heavy implement discus throw. High jump, but when you look at the forces those guys experience running up to jump and driving through the floor, there’s multi body weight forces there. So, you know, we need to replicate that in training.  And this is the classic trap where people get misled or sort of fall into the kinematics and not thinking about the kinetics, look at the disc throw and you think it’s, you know, a light implement that rotates. So the next minute you throw a med ball, you know, lateral med ball throws, they have their place, absolutely have their place, but you are absolutely undeserving your client, your athlete, if you are not putting heavy load strength training in that program, to give them an accommodation towards 6, 8, 10 times body weight that will undoubtedly go through their body.

So when we look at power and when we look at any sports training, it’s critical, we look at both the kinematics and the movement patterns and the kinetics, the forces that person or sport experiences. So with that in mind, ultimately speed training, running, throwing med balls is power training.

Ste: Yes.

What is Power Training?

Brendan: But so to our jump squats, so to our trap bar jumps, snatches, Olympic weightlift, and so too is squats, deadlifts, presses, and pools. The key thing that we hammer home, Ste on our programs and in general, and it’s an absolute critical coaching cue for any S&C coach to drive home in the people they work with is one word—Intent; intent to move the bar quickly because you are right, squats, deadlifts, whatever we want to use as a heavy load strength movement is power training provided the intention to move that bar quickly exists. Then we can activate those high threshold motor units. Then we can tap into that neuromuscular system. And then we can actually get power and really good strength training adaptations off the back of that. Can’t we?

Ste: Yeah, absolutely it is, and I think that’s the key thing we’ve got all, because if you look at what is power training, what’s happening on a physiological level and cellular level, it is all about that recruitment. So you’ve got that in your rationale when your athlete goes to explode in their sport and you need to tap into that in the gym. And arguably, if you don’t, you’re actually putting your athlete at more risk. If you’re not getting the intent during the sessions at the gym; a gym session and a coaching session is actually a safe space of where you can learn to really massively go at it a hundred percent, you know, in a controlled environment. And by getting your athlete to experience that and understand that the body gets the adaptations, there’s less variables happening in terms of they might get tackled when they’re going to a sprint and all of these kinds of things. So then that transference effects does help massively, you know. So it’s a massive, massive topic. It’s a massive subject; there’s lots of variables, but I wouldn’t…What I would say for coaches, it’s easy to end up down a rabbit hole with that, but just make sure you’ve got your progressions in order and have a greater understanding of what is strength, what is power and what are those progressions?

Brendan: Yeah, I think with power training and the blend of strength training, I think if in doubt it’s always about…And if you want to go, if you want to train people in a rounded way I think it’s always going to be defaulting to surfing the curve where you’ve got heavy load strength training in there, you’ve got explosive strength training. So I would define that as still quite heavy loads, but you are jumping, you’re moving; so heavy jump squats cleans, you’ve got max power in the middle there of lighter loaded. So you could say cleans for—cleans and snatches and max power stuff in there with not heavy loads. And then you’ve got repetitive ballistic stuff in there, med ball throws biometrics, and then you’ve actually got fully unloaded speed, agility, maximal effort training. If you are hitting those qualities in there across a two-three week phase in some way, you’ve got a good balance in your program there. But Ste, what are your thoughts on…What do you see as the biggest mistakes coaches make with power training in general, do you think?

What do You See as the Biggest Mistakes Coaches Make with Power Training?

Ste: So I think the biggest mistake is respecting the rest period because if you say for example, I’m going through a hand clean protocol as it’s starting to get into specific preparation. And my volume of training in my sports-specific stuff is increasing. So reducing some of the stuff, so I’m doing a lot of hand-clean stuff; when I’m on my kind of speed strength day, so loads that are really low you recover really quick or aerobically you cover really quick, you do three reps and then you’re like, I could go again. Yeah, but actually that’s not what’s needed, it’s that maximum explosive, so moving that bar as quick as you possibly can and then giving your body sufficient rest, because it’s not just a… It’s a new role adaptation that you’re trying to get as well.
It’s not like the legs are going to be burning, your forearms and your heart rate’s going to be through the roof, it’s about pure recruitment. And if you don’t respect the rest period enough, and that’s why sometimes I just say to my athletes, “Listen, this little block where we’re emphasizing power chain, we’ve still got our strength training in there, don’t get me wrong. But the volume of sets and reps, while we’re doing our hand cleans, or the pouch gets a bit boring because you won’t feel like you are working hard enough as such in terms of you won’t be gassed. And when you’ve done a heavy strength set of squats, you kind of feel that it takes you about three, four minutes to recover; you put that on the power training, you don’t get that feedback. You’re like, I’m good to go again. And the need to really respect the rest periods for me, because that’s, when you notice velocity just really does drop very, very quickly and you can’t actually complete the session. And if, as Brendan said, if you’re not getting the intent, when you’re doing power training, you’re probably not doing power training, or you’re actually just doing a bastardized version of it, which is not going to lead to the allocation you want.

Brendan: Yeah. I agree with that. I mean, it’s how often I’ve seen basically power training, but it’s really a metabolic cycle, and that’s a trap that…We think that these movements are overloaded and you know, you pair them up, you put them into a circuit and suddenly you’re doing, you know, 30 seconds of med ball slams, sprint up and down the gym, some plyo, pushups and then box jumps, and, you know, five minutes of that is not power training. That’s circuit training. So that’s not what we’re talking about here. There is a place for power endurance and obviously metabolic training. The training is not wrong; no training is not wrong, it’s just the prescription of the training that’s incorrect.

But no doubt about it, respecting the work to rest ratios, which, you know, depended on which source you look at could be as high as 20 times work to rest. But in reality, that’s not a lot, if you do a sec, if you do some plyometric bounding you know it could literally be five to 10 seconds of activity if that, so, you know, 20 times that, so only it’s two or three minutes rest. But the temptation is to turn round and do it again in on a 30 second because it’s not hard enough. But it’s got to have quality to it as well. I think that’s the other mistakes Ste, that I see a lot is the intent and the work to rest. But the other side of it is the quality of the movement has got to be there because you’re not actually training the system; the bio-mechanic movement pattern that you are looking for. You’ve got, unless the quality of the movement is there, the right muscles working at the right time, in the right order. As soon as fatigue gets in, then the weakest link will collapse, and you find a way to compensate.

The other mistake I think it’s really…What I see a lot is getting too specific with power training and doing that too early. And so, you know, big global power based movements, explosive training, generally speaking will always trump local, basic really finickity movements. Again, there is a place for that, but I see weighted tennis rockets, boxes or combat athletes doing the punching, you sort of think like what value are you really getting from that? Yeah. And as a coach, again, those movements might fall into a box of engagement form. So I’m not saying that, again there’s no bad exercises, but it’s unlikely they will fall into a power development box. It’s more likely they’ll fall into an athlete engagement box in my eyes, you know?

Explosive Strength

Ste: Yeah, and it’s something I’ve been challenging a lot of students with, in terms of going back to what is the stimulus and the physiological change you are looking to make. And if you’re saying right, I want to build power and I want the athletes to be really explosive. So go back to, well, what is explosive strength? Explosive strength is achieved with weights of kind of round about 75, 80% of one RM, you know. It isn’t happening with a weighted tennis racket or a light implement. If you want the athlete to be really explosive and to go a bit, a lot, like even further than that, it’s okay. Well, my athlete needs to be able to sprint really well. Okay, well, what’s the determinants of that? Ratio of force, rate of force development and reduce ground contact time.

So if we’re looking at the first couple points there, so ratio of force and rate force development, it’s like, well, actually I want my athlete to be able to produce a lot of force very quickly, rapidly and lots of it. So the need to overcome a large amount of resistance to do, if you want to train that physical quality outside of a sprint setting, if you want to work in making…I always look at the sports sits in the middle and we are looking at the ceiling here, and we’re looking at the ground. The base level here is we want to try and separate that down. So the max strength, which then leads itself to the power and surf and the curve raises. So it trickles down, so the athletes got more pace to go, and then we want to make sure their general physical qualities, I either base health, wellbeing, flexibility, all that is massive. So then that supports everything they’re doing in the sport as well.

So going back to those, what is the stimulus I’m looking to make here? And if you’re trying to build explosives, Brendan, why you want your athlete to be more explosive or produce these physical qualities that they need for the sport, then how are you getting that? And if you are using a box jump, and if you’re using a med ball slam, you know, when you’re thinking that’s going to do it, it’s probably not. You’re probably doing yourself a bit of a disservice or your athlete, a bit of a disservice there.

Brendan: Agreed, yeah, you know, so…

Ste: I think the key thing that… Guys, obviously there’s so much context to this and me and Brendan could go back and forth all the time and we could probably stay on this call for another hour and come back full circle and then say, yeah, but actually, there is a point when that’s useful. And like Brendan says that it might tick the box there, and it ticks the box there. But if you are struggling with understanding strength and power training, you want to get to grips with it. And I know I need to get my athletes lifting weights and stuff, and I know I need my athletes to get powerful for their sport, but you’re struggling how to break it down, then we got two CPD products that are great for you. 

Advance your Power Training Skills

We’ve got Power Training Progressions and the Strength and Power Coach. So these are just fantastic resources to go to, and we’ll just unlock a lot for you if you are struggling to think about what does power training look like? What does that journey from starting at small, low-level plyometrics, all the way into the heavy velocity-based stuff as well. 

Brendan: Yeah. I think while you do that, Ste, I think for me, what’s really important as a coach is to have good frameworks and good structures to build your programs around. And as I mentioned there is literally no bad exercise. I’m sure somebody will challenge me, if you think there’s a bad exercise that nobody should ever do type it in and let’s get your thoughts. But I’m sure I could find a way to say that that might be practical, but it’s having a framework and a decision making process to take your clients and athletes on the right journey. And really well that’s what these products are. The Strength and Power Coach Course is a genuine coaching course that brings your level of structural implementation of power training up and the Power Training Progressions add to that immeasurably with your training knowledge and giving you more options to add into that structure. So they complement each other really, really well.  And the people you’re learning from are real, real-world leaders; people like Dan Baker’s influenced me a lot, president of the Australian Association and you know, all-round legend in the field of power training. So, you know, you want to have those structures in place and ultimately that’s what you can get off the back of this.

Ste: Yeah, absolutely. And we go back to, I think it was a good few months back we were talking about systems and coaching systems and having that in place. So just adding to that and getting it, developing that even further these resources will add to that and power training progressions is probably a go-to resource still now, even after seeing it many, many times, but it’s still something I go to time and time again because it’s a one it’s a balance check, but two, sometimes you just start to see things through a different lens, right. You know, in the beginning, you might say, all right, I do this, this, this, this, and this, but as you had more context, you start working with different athletes, in different environments. You start to go back and go, oh, hang on, that’s why that’s going to transfer a lot better to this person now. Or that’s why I possibly won’t stick the person on that path and I’ll keep them on this path, you know? And that’s really, really important as well.

So really do check those out guys, because they’re fantastic resources to go to time and time again. So if you are struggling now, guys just make that bit of commitment back to yourself and go grab them because there’ll be massive things for your toolbox for sure. You know?

Power Endurance Training

Ste: And that last little thing I always want to touch, pick your brains about Brendan, because in terms of power training is that power endurance. We talked about it before in terms of that circuit and that metabolic thing. And I think that’s where power endurance is such an interesting one because you need that metabolic stress and when does it…So what’s your favourite way of measuring power endurance in terms of a session, if you want to say right, I want to build power endurance? I think the key thing for me is you’ve got to be able to measure it. So have you got any examples that you’ve used in the past for measuring those?

Brendan: Tons, yeah. I mean power endurance is probably worth doing a session on itself really because it’s a big, big area. And it’s an important area as well. So let’s do the full session, but yeah, you know, power endurance is not 40 minutes of power. If power is five seconds, power endurance might be 10 seconds. But some simple ways would be things like hurdle hops, how many hurdle hops you can…lateral hurdle hops, you can do say in 20 seconds. How many bench presses with 50% of your body weight you can do in 10 seconds. And you can be as creative as you…You are limited to your creativity when it comes to power endurance, and also looking at the sport to see what is relevant for that sport; because power endurance really does get sort of more specific by nature. Power endurance for mixed martial arts is very different to power endurance for tennis. So there are a couple of examples there. I think I’ve always used heavy, medium, and light triceps quite successfully. They’re quite competitive. You can create a tricep, for example, five cleans with, you know, 80% of your max on there, into five jump squats and then into five box jumps, for example, and you can set a timer on that, get you group doing it. And they go through that really, really nice that because ultimately, you are doing 30, 40 seconds of activity there, but it’s all power-based movement. And this is where it’s dangerous, you see because you could look at that and say, well, that’s…If you did that over and over and over, it’s a metabolic circuit and it is, but there is a process behind this and even five sets of five cleans is power endurance, you know, done in the right context.

If you do five sets of five cleans, let’s say let’s take an arbitrary weight, a 100 kilograms or 50 kilograms, and the weight stays the same, and your rest period in that is three minutes. And then you do that for four weeks, and then next week you cut the rest period, 90 seconds, that’s power endurance. But it’s different to a heavy, medium, like tricep, it’s different to a 20 seconds repetitive interval. And ultimately what you’re trying to do is move closer to the end position of what the sport looks like. So I think it’s well worth the follow-up on power endurance training, building your power endurance program because on the face of it, it may well look like some kind of cross fit session if you judge it on one session, but you should never judge your program on one session. That’s like looking at a photo and saying, that’s not…I don’t like the photo. You need to see the video, which is the prime frame, so yeah, big area that one.

Ste: Yeah, it is. It is. And I’m looking forward to getting stuck into that. I think the last point you made there, there was some real strange stuff happening on social media. There’s always strange stuff happening on social media, but there’s quite a lot of people getting high-profile coaches, calling people out during a whiteboard session or a picture of a whiteboard session, you know, saying it was a terrible program and all of that. And it’s like, guys if you find yourself judging a coach through a snapshot, a training video, a session that they’ve posted or whatever it may be, then you need to take a step back and just say… Because on the surface, it does look rubbish, and this is a tangent by the way, might look rubbish, but remember coaches do things in context. There’s always something that’s preceded and there’s always something come off the back of it.

So if you ever look at social media and go, that’s terrible, that’s the worst thing… Just stop yourself right there, and remember I could walk into the gym while you are coaching someone and go ‘that is awful’, but you would then explain to me and say, actually, well, we’ve done this, this, this and this, and this is where it’s led up to. So a little tangent there, I just wanted to get that in while you’re there. You touched on that a little bit there as well anyways.

Brendan: Yeah, no I agree.

Setting Power Training Goals

Ste: So guys, we’re going to sort of change tact a little bit now. Last week we talked about goal setting and Brendan was doing his goal setting after it and I’ve done mine previously and stuff like that. So what we’re going to kind of chat about now is what comes next. Because goal setting itself is a very, very…It’s a big task, it’s a worthwhile task it needs doing. But I think what a lot of people do, I’ve been guilty of it in the past is do it, and then it goes into a book and then goes at the back of the cupboard or down the side and stuff like that. So what’s the action sets that you have once you’ve done your goal set make because obviously these are mammoth of sessions, right, and lots of stuff comes off the back of it. But what’s your go to make sure, I’m going to get these goals smashed?

Brendan: So I like to properly write what I’ve done up into something and you know, PowerPoint slide or something like that, so that I’ve got something to refer to. And I do recommend that, whatever that looks like for you guys, listening here, when you’re writing up your goals or when you’re doing your goals, create something that you can refer to at the end. So don’t leave it on the whiteboard. And even to be honest, even taking a photo of the whiteboard is not great for me; like it’s important, you want to take a photo for example, but how often do you look back at photos? And I think there is a process then in taking what you’ve done on the whiteboard and writing it up into something, you kind of own that a little bit more for me. You know exactly what you’ve done, you think through how taking it from a whiteboard or taking it from a piece of paper that you’ve just gone nuts on like that dis distilling that down into something that is meaningful to you is a good first step.

And then for me off the back of that it’s then the last part of your goals is, what am I doing now? What does the next 30, 60, 90 days look like? Let’s say you’ve done your goals in January, you’ve recalibrated your— say your five year plan. You’ve had a 2021, doesn’t matter what it looks like; good, bad, indifferent, doesn’t matter. But now, it’s cast a light on the next five years and you’re thinking now I want a mega yacht in five years, or I literally just want to have a fully booked client base in a certain amount of time, it doesn’t matter at all. What that means is then you can break that down, and your 30, 60, 90 day project is very simply a question of what do I need to do to move towards that goal now? What is going to move that forward? And it’s the difference that makes the difference. You know, you might have loads of things on there, but what is the one or very few things that I need to do right now to move that forward in the next 30 days. And for me, Ste, this is all about simplicity and making it brutally achievable that first 30, 60, 90 days, you cannot miss that one. So even if you are already posting on social media three times a week at the moment, maybe that goal should be to continue to post three times a week. It shouldn’t be to double it or triple it. It just is I want to continue that momentum and you need to win that first 30, 60, 90 days in some way. And really what we’re talking about here is habits. It’s habit formation; but the habits will always fail if the clarity of your goal is not clear, clarity is a habit. Clarity is the key habit here. And then your actual daily habits will fall out of that.

So I think for me, it’s making that first hurdle so low that you will step over that successfully with your eyes shut, frankly, and that’s the game. If you set that hurdle too high, you don’t step over it and then you don’t go any further, do you?

Ste: No. And I think that’s the key thing. I think it’s distilling it down. So you’ve got your vision and your big vision should be something that you really want and it stirs some inspiration and challenge and gets that curiosity flowing. And you should be excited by your goal, if something’s not exciting; you’re probably not going to work hard to get to it. But rather than just saying, right, that’s what I want to achieve, and then not having anything else working towards that. That’s where things start to fall down. So I think it’s exactly what Brendan says; you’ve got your big vision of whatever it is that you’re trying to do then off the back of it, it’s the smaller objectives come out the back of it, you know. And when you’ve done goal setting, and this is why we talked about it quite a lot last week, is this is why you’ve got to spend some time because clear goal, like a clear objective will probably give you the roadmap to how you need to do it anyway.

So if you are really specific, it’s challenging and inspirational, there’s time on it, and it ticks all of the boxes to smart goals if you want to look at that, et cetera, et cetera. And it’s all part of that vision. It’ll give you probably 80% of a roadmap of how to get there. So I was chatting about this last night. So say if I want to take 1.7 kilo, bodyweight squat, sorry, so it’s one…I’m currently at 1.7 times body weight, and I want to get to two times body weight by the end of the year; I’ve set the time, it’s inspiration. I’d say actually double body weight is something that I really want to get to it. It kind of writes a roadmap anyway. So I think with all of that, you’ve got your goals, look at the objectives and then distil them down into those 30, 60, 90 day pieces. But whilst you’re doing that, forget the how for a time being, just spend some time on the strategy, what do I need to build in? And I think that’s something that I always look into there. We’ve gone through the vision, gone through the dreams and everything else, what I want to achieve, then the objectives fall up the back end of it. And again, you make it super, super simple.

Some objectives might take you seven days or it might be a day; an objective, what you need to get set up might be a day, you know, and it might be something is right… I want to build an eCommerce online marketing business or online coaching. One of the objectives, part of your strategy is I want to get a new email marketing software. So your objective is sign up for the best one for you. As simple as that, isn’t it, you know, that’s the first step and that’s a win. And then the more you win, the more you build your confidence and the more it starts to settle in. And like you said, becomes a habit. Winning is a habit just is losing, losing is a habit. So we need to make sure that we’re constantly, constantly winning and building that as well. So, that’s kind of the way that I look at it as well, mate.

Brendan: Yeah, I think so. And yeah, those steps are really is…The simplicity of this is the key. And if you set a goal that say the two times bodyweight squat, you know, that’s a really clear goal, isn’t it? You either succeed in that or you don’t. And say, if you want to be able to do that in 2022. You know if you do it on January 1st, you haven’t hit that goal, but I wouldn’t sort of call it a failure. But the point here is that that’s a really clear goal, and from that you can then create other process-based goals to achieve that. Such as, well, I’m not going to do that if I don’t get in the gym. So I need to train three times a week or I need to average 12 sessions a month or something like that. And I need to be training in and around my current 80%, moving that up, blah, blah, blah…

Growing your business

In other areas of life, such as growing your business, that’s the level of clarity that you need on the goal there. What is your two times body weight, squat in your business? It can’t just be I need to make more money because how much more is going to work for you. So again, get that number on it. If it’s a grand a month, two grand a month, it doesn’t matter what it is, because the point here is what we really need to get to is so what leads to two grand month then? How many clients is that? What would my fee structure be for that? And when you start thinking in that way, really what you doing is just you write in a business plan there, just like you write in a training plan. And so at the start, I talked about get it written down into some kind of working document, but you need to keep going back to that. And that ultimately is your business plan or the start of it, because then you can sort of say, well, actually if I charge 25 quid a session, then it’s this many hours a week that I need to work. But if I charge 40 quid a session, it’s this. So what do I need to do to charge 40? And you can start really having those smart conversations either with yourself or with somebody that you trust. And ultimately then you could say, well, if I need 10 40 quid sessions a week, then that’s four clients, an average of four clients. And to get four clients, I need to then speak to 12 people, you know. How am I going to speak to those 12 people? And who will those 12 people be? How am I going to speak to them? What am I going to say? You know, I need an offer. And that’s everything of this, like there’s lots of little mini things, but as you said, Ste, some of this, you do it less than a day, 20 minutes, make a decision, you know.

And then you go back to that document later, you say, well, actually, no, I’m happy with, I would rather do it in small groups where they pay me 20 quid on average than one to one where they pay me 40 quid or 50 quid, for example, and just keep…You have all of us here watching this, we are absolutely in control of our own outcomes here. So try different stuff, but bottom line is when you distill this down, let’s go back to the training one for a second; two times bodyweight squat. We know we have to lift heavy weights regularly to get that. That is really the crux of this. Whether we are pushing and pulling, we’re doing posterior chain, knee dominant, hip dominant it, you know, ultimately it falls into the mantra of; we must lift heavy stuff regularly.

If you want to sign up more clients, the mantra’s very simple; is I need to speak with people regularly to position my services to them. I need to be in contact with human beings regularly to do that; in person, online, it doesn’t matter, but don’t kid yourself and complexify it to a point that you actually do absolutely nothing. You’ve got to have that. What is that mantra for growth here? You know, if you want to have a better relationship with somebody in your life, then your mantra would probably be a need to create time for this person every week. You know, it’s not that difficult, whether you go out to Pizza Express, or whether you sit in and have a coffee is irrelevant, if there’s no time carved out, do you know what I mean, Ste, on that?

Ste: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, and I think it leads on type, the final bit guys, obviously appreciate. We don’t want to take up too much of your time, but it’s something really powerful, and it’s something that you’ve said to me time and time again. Once you’ve done your goals, once you’ve got your objectives and once everything’s come out of the back end of it, it’s like Brendan says, it’s what’s going to get you to the £2000 pound. Is it raising your prices? Is it adding more clients? What’s going to get you to the two times bodyweight squat? Is it more frequency in the gym? Do you just need to bus through some plateaus? How are you going to do that? Because ultimately when you set goals, you’ve got to reflect on, well, what have I done so far to get us there? And this saying, here is what got you here won’t get you there necessarily. Because if you find yourself in a position where I’ve been stuck on 1.7 times body weights, and you don’t change anything, why would you expect a different outcome? And if you have currently sat £2000 pound a month income from your coaching and you don’t change your offering, you don’t change your marketing approach. You don’t change your working in habits. Why would you expect anything different? You know, it’s the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.

So sometimes when you’ve got to look at that, you’ve got to look at the gaps and go, “Right, actually, that was great. It served me really, really well. And it’s got me to this position now, which is good, but I need to understand what’s going to get me there.” How am I going to bridge the gap of right, this is where I need to be now, this is my goals. What am I going to do to get there? Do you know?

Brendan: Yeah, I think that’s… That key point with this is actually being honest with yourself on what that goal is, because if you play down your goals and you’re not actually up for it, or you’re not prepared to sort of see it really and accept it, then nothing will change, will it? Because you just crack on doing the same as you always done, so it won’t get you there; well, what is there? What’s the honesty of that? And I think you’ve got to…First and foremost here, you you’ve got to have the courage to set the goal that you really want before you start thinking about how you’re going to get there. So there’s an honesty and the courage piece here to really think about this. I think we touched on this last week. I think the key thing for me with that is thinking about if everything goes to plan, where could you be in five years for argument’s sake from now?

So, if you launch your business and it really works and then something else now; maybe you want to get another one, you want to open up another gym and that really works realistically. What could that look like in five years? Where might you be? If everything goes to plan with your health and fitness, what would that look like? What could you achieve in that realm? So I do think that there’s lots and lots of really, really relevant parts here that come back from being honest with yourself and having the courage to actually set the right goal for you.  And then you’re absolutely right then it’s like, well, what behaviors, what approach to life will get me there? Because, you know, I’m not there right now, ultimately.

Ste: Yeah, absolutely. I’d to mute meself there because the dogs were going absolutely mental. But no it is, it is once you have that honesty of understanding where you’re going…And acceptance; sometimes you’ve got to accept that you’re just not good enough to get to where you want to be right now. Like where you want to go, sorry, you just don’t have the skillset or you don’t have enough knowledge to move the needle. And that’s sometimes difficult. It’s tough to say, “Actually I’m not good enough, yet.” It’s having that “yet” on the end of it. Because the thing is if you did have all of the skill set, you did have all of the knowledge you’d already be there, right? So when you’re setting your goals, it goes back to these; it should be challenging, they should be inspirational because if they’re not, you’re already there, you’re not going to work to something that you’ve already got. You’re not going to work to say, right, Brendan, you like watches and you like cars and stuff like that, but you’re not going to say right, I’m going to work really hard so I can trade in my car to get exactly the same car back.
You know, it’s like, no, I want like a better car. So I’m going to have to push myself and raise my standards to get there. So when you have those knowledge gaps, it all starts with you, you’ve got to have those uncomfortable conversations and understand where the gaps are, because if you don’t have that, how will you know what you need to work on? You know?

Brendan: Yeah, any step change that you want to introduce into your life, without whatever area of your life it is; be it you want to double your body weight, double your squat, you want to generate lots more clients, requires this equation here in front of you to be solved. What got you here, won’t get you there. And it looks at what behaviors and things do you need to leave behind now, and what’s actually served you quite well and you need to keep hold of them, and that reconciling that equation is the answer. But it really does start with where you want to be, because I agree with you on your point about you’re not good…You might not be good enough, but I think behind that is, do you actually want it enough to get good at it? You know, and are you driven enough? Is it important enough to you?  

And so it’s finding that that’s critical here. It’s finding what, what is it that you really want? And what’s just going to make a big difference to you? And it doesn’t have to be some sort of life changing mission. It could literally just be, I just could do with another grand month in my bank account, or I would just like to be working with more athletic clients than less athletic clients for argument sake, doesn’t need to be an all singing, all dancing mission, Ste, does it?

Ste: No, no, not at, not at all, not at all. And that’s the beauty of everything we do. It’s like go back to training time because it’s all scalable, right? It’s all depending on where you are, you’ve got your level one exercises, and you’ve got your level 10 exercises. Every exercise’s got its own merit, it’s just right for the individual. You know, Brendan’s goals and visions are going to look a lot different to mine. Mine are going to look a lot different to somebody just starting out in the fitness industry. There’s no right or wrong. It’s whatever suits you.

So if you are wanting to get stuck into building better habits this year, guys, and looking at enhancing your communication skills, and your coaching skills, and you feel like that’s where one of your gaps are just to go with the power training CPD we’ve got to help you.

Summary

Ste: So mate, I think we’ve covered a lot there and I think there’s got to be about five different ECLs, which will come off the back of what we’ve chatted about. I think we’ve got power endurance in there, we’ve got doing your roadmap, goal setting even more so.

Brendan: Yeah.

Ste: Yeah, I think we’ve got it, guys drop the comments. What would you like us to discuss next week or in the next coming ones and stuff? That’d be really…

Brendan: Yeah, definitely do that. And if you want to come on the show or if you’ve got questions, if you’ve got a challenge, let us know because these sessions are to serve you guys and help make you get where you want to be. So yeah, give us what we need to help you.

Ste: Absolutely. So on that guys go out there, use what we’ve discussed today. Go make it happen, implemented it in your day-to-day lives, within your coaching business, your coaching sessions. As always, if you need anything, please do reach out to us, reach out to me and the Elite Coach Mentorship. Reach out in the Elite Coach Network as well, which is a thriving community of coaches. So if you just want to start getting surrounded by other like-minded coaches who are keen to progress themselves, then get yourself over into the Elite Coach Network.

So until next time guys, have a fantastic weekend. I’m looking forward to seeing all of the quick wins that everybody’s having over the next seven days. Brendan, been a pleasure as always mate…

Brendan: As well…

Ste: …And we’ll catch up again within a couple of days as well, mate.

Brendan: Thanks everyone