My good friend – and currently #7 on my list of Top 10 man crushes – David Otey was in town to teach the course.
It was lovely to spend time with my friend whom I hadn’t seen in several months. But too, after an equal gap in absence, it was downright biblical to finally be amongst a group of fitness professionals in a learning environment. I didn’t realize how much I missed in-person continuing education until I was marinating in it for a few hours.
I took home a bounty of insights and ideas in the few hours I was there, however there was one analogy in particular David used that really resonated with me
Do Not Cross Doesn’t Really Mean You Can’t Cross: Fitness in a Nutshell
Anyone who lives in a large city is familiar with the throng of “Do Not Cross” signs peppering the sidewalks and streets.
Pedestrian life is controlled by their never-ending playlist counting down when it’s safe to cross a street and when it’s not.
They’re there for a reason; for our safety and the public good.
Not surprisingly, most people ignore them and cross the street anyway.1
And 99.9999% of the time…it’s fine. We survive. Not a scratch.
…but your head better be on swivel.
The same theme applies to lifting weights. As David noted during his talk on squat assessment and squat technique, people can back squat with a straight bar (often considered at the top of the pyramid in terms of most advanced squat variations), but it only takes that one time using too much load or being too overzealous where something goes awry.
Likewise, think about the conventional deadlift.
I’d argue the conventional deadlift – particularly when performed from the floor – is the most advanced variation of deadlift one can perform:
Axis of rotation is further away from the barbell.
More shear load on the spine.
More likely your soul will leave your body.
It requires a fair amount of mobility (access to requisite hip flexion, thoracic extension, ankle dorsiflexion) as well as picking the right parents (short torso, long arms) to be able to get into and maintain the proper spine position to perform safely.
NOTE: I believe Dr. Stuart McGill has noted in his research that something like 93% of the people he’s assessed during his career could not perform a conventional deadlift from the floor without compensating through their lumbar spine in some fashion (I.e., loaded spinal flexion).
NOTE II: Maybe it’s 91%. No, wait, 87%. Either way, it’s a lot…;o)
All of this to say: Yes, back squatting is fine. As are conventional deadlifts. But they’re both examples where the bulk of trainees are crossing the street when the “do not cross” sign is flashing.
Most can do them.
And most will probably be fine.
However, this is why it’s imperative to assess your clients/athletes and be more cognizant of “fitting” any program to THEM – and their injury history, their goals, their ability level, and yes, their anthropometry – rather than the other way around.
We can vastly reduce the risk of injury with most trainees by utilizing safer alternatives that tend to be a better fit across the board anyway – like the Trap Bar Deadlift, Front Squat, or even a SSB Bar Squat.
It’s still squatting and deadlifting…
…you’re just, you know, less likely to be taken out by a moped.
You’ve heard these before: Chest up. Extend your T-spine. Create torque in your hips.
Those are cues which work well for some, but can sound like Elvish to many trainees, particularly when they’re new to deadlifting. Instead, get more acquainted with external cues which, contrast to their internal counterparts (which speak to what the body is doing in space), imply intent or direction.
These can be game changers when it comes to helping people better understand what you’re asking them to do as a coach.
It’s funny: During Gerry’s introduction to this episode he mentioned how when he and I first started stalking one another connected on social media he was a little giddy that I reached out first to say how much I enjoyed his content.
It meant a lot to him as a young coach that someone with a bit more “career capital”2 in the same profession offered a few words of affirmation.
Gerry’s a talented coach and part of the “new guard” that I remember being part of back in the mid-2000’s (along with Eric Cressey, Mike Robertson, Cassandra Forsythe, and John Romaniello, to name a few). It’s pretty neat to be able to pay it forward and to observe how the industry is constantly coming full circle.
Did I just use the word “neat” in a sentence?
God, I’m getting old.
GET OFF MY LAWN.
Nevertheless, you can check out the episode on Apple Podcasts HERE.
It’s one thing to get a client on board with lifting heavy things on a somewhat regular basis and how it can have positive effects on their overall health and well-being.
It’s another thing altogether to get them to commit to the nutrition & recovery side of the equation and how that too plays a significant role in the grand scheme of things. I’ve often joked that I’d rather wash my face with broken glass than attempt to get a client to try some kale.
That being said, it behooves any trainer/coach/fitness professional to have a system in place to address their clients’ nutritional & recovery needs. My good friend, Dr. Mike T Nelson, has opened up his Flex Diet Certificationto my readers only this week. It includes 30 hours of continuing education and covers anything and everything as it relates to nutrition coaching
You can click HERE to sign up for a FREE 1-hour webinar and to learn more about the certification and whether or not it’s a good fit for you.
(Ahem: you should also check out his guest post below)
Top 2 Mistakes Trainers Make With Nutrition & Recovery…and How to Fix Them
The old saying is true. . . at best you are only with a client for one hour a day and they have the other 23 hours to hose it all up.
This is reality.
You are not going to follow them around to their workplace and bat the doughnut that coworker Betty brought into work out of their hand.
What you do with clients in the gym and online for programming matters tons, but what are you providing them for the time when they are not with you?
Here are the top 2 mistakes I see trainers making in this area. A big reason I know this is that I’ve made these two mistakes in the past and wish someone would have grabbed me by my undies, dragged me to the curb and showed me how to do it better.
Mistake #1: Prioritizing the Wrong Items
I know you.
You love to spend time working on getting better at your craft. That is commendable and kudos to you. The fitness world needs more people like you, and Tony G will even give you a virtual high five.
Note From TG: Better yet, I’ll toss over a “bearded Robert Redford playing a lumberjack (?)” head nod of approval.
The downside is that everyone is pushing the latest and greatest nutrition/ recovery item you should have your clients do.
“No way Bro, you have to be doing keto esters between every meal to recover and get ripped.”
“What, you don’t need any veggies. Don’t you know they have these nasty ass compounds in them to prevent other animals from eating them, so they are bad for you. Just eat more meat you, wimp.”
“You are missing out Bro-ette since this corset is what you really need to get toned in your abZ.”
You get the idea.
Much of what you read is walking BS on a stick and easy to spot. But even legitimate items can be overwhelming from veggie intake to protein to breathing techniques to sleep.
How do you know where to start with a client?
Here is where the concept of leverage can be helpful to figure out what interventions may be best for your clients.
You remember the concept of leverage from Physics class right? In case you slept through it, leverage allows you to amplify a small input for a much bigger output. It was also a semi-ok now defunct TV series . . .
If you have a big enough lever, you can move huge amounts of load with less effort.
Think of the concept of the kingpin.
If you’ve ever looked at logs going down a river all jammed up. It looks like a mess, and you would need massive effort to get them flowing again. Then, suddenly some crazy ass lumberjack removes just one log and instead of being all jammed up, all of the logs seem to flow much better.
That one log had a lot more leverage than the other logs around it.
This concept can also be applied to when you’re working with clients to determine what kind of intervention should you do on the recovery side on nutrition and different aspects related to that.
In regards to your client’s other 23 hours, sleep is something that’s trending now, which is great, but most conversations about sleep with clients does not end well.
We know that sleep is an absolute requirement for survival. We know that if you don’t sleep for several days, you’re going to have a whole bunch of physiologic changes that are not going to be good, right?
All sorts of things that kind of go offline with sleep on the physiology side. I can make a huge argument that sleep may be near the top.
I did a lot of discussion about sleep and why I think they should get more sleep. And the short answer is, and again, if you’re a trainer, you’ve run into this, I absolutely guarantee it was excruciatingly hard to get clients to make large changes in sleep.
Most client’s response when you tell them to sleep more
The reality is at the end of the day, having someone who only sleeps five to six hours and trying to get them up to maybe a seven to eight hours of sleep was very difficult. I felt like I was beating my head against the wall because I had all this data, all this research to show how important sleep actually is.
But the mistake that I made was I was only rating that on the physiology.
And as you know, when you work with clients or even yourself, I rarely find that physiology is the main rate limiter. It’s definitely a factor for sure, but I find the psychological ability to change as the biggest thing that will limit your results.
I took my physiologic rankings, and I put them on just an arbitrary one to 10 scale, kind of based on the research and what I had found.
Next, I took the same interventions, and I ranked them on the client’s ability to change (psychology). This was primarily based on my own experience, from talking to a lot of other trainers and polling trainers at seminars and education.
Coaching Leverage = Physiology Effect x Client’s Ability to Change
Back to topic of sleep, the psychologic ability to change with sleep is very low despite a very high physiologic effect; thus, our coaching leverage score for sleep turns out to be crazy low.
The concept of coaching leverage is a cool way to then rate all the different interventions that you can do.
When I set up the Flex Diet Cert, that’s exactly what I did . . . I ranked all eight possible interventions in order with the highest coaching leverage being the first one to focus on and the lowest one being last.
My recommendation is to start with the higher ranked items first.
Here is a clue, eating more dietary protein ranked as #1.
Rig the system in your client’s favor.
Allow them to see some change, some positive wins, and try to do the things that are easier for them to change and have an also bigger physiologic change.
This allows them to see results with less effort.
Mistake #2: Not Using a System
You use a system for training right?
What system do you use for the other 23 hours a day for your clients?
Many trainers don’t have a system and just lob 30-day challenges at clients with a dash of “hope and pray.”
There are lots of great systems out there, and of course I am biased to the one I created (cough… Flex Diet Cert…cough cough).
Heck, even if you opt to not use my system (you crazy person), please pick one and implement it. Your clients will get better results, which makes you look even better.
Summary
Above you have two mistakes that many trainers are making and two solutions to fix them.
To make your life even easier, I have opened up the Flex Diet Cert for only 7 days exclusively for fans of my buddy Tony G.
Go to the link below to learn more today and implement solutions to your clients other 23 hours a day for better results.
Mike T. Nelson, PhD, MSME, CSCS, CISSN, is a research fanatic who specializes in metabolic flexibility and heart rate variability, as well as an online trainer, adjunct professor, faculty member at the Carrick Institute, presenter, creator of the Flex Diet Cert, kiteboarder, and (somewhat incongruously) heavy-metal enthusiast.
The techniques he’s developed, and the results Mike gets for his clients have been featured in international magazines, in scientific publications, and on websites across the globe.
In his free time, he enjoys spending time with his wife, lifting odd objects, reading research, and kiteboarding as much as possible.
1. You can now purchase CORE @ Home for whatever it is you want to pay.
During quarantine I started a platform where I’d deliver 20-40 minute workouts that could be performed in everyone’s living room using minimal equipment.
In all I curated 36 workouts using nothing but bodyweight, bands, and kettlebells and/or dumbbells. With many people still reticent to head back to their regular gyms (not to mention the scarcity of gym equipment out there to purchase) I figured this would be a nice opportunity to help.
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To me, the conventional deadlift (feet closer together, hands outside knees) is the most advanced variation of the deadlift and likely not the best starting point for most lifters.
Yet, purists out there would prefer passing a kidney stone through their eyeballs than ever consider reverting to a sumo style.
Whether it’s someone’s anatomy (short arms and/or long torso) or mobility deficits (hip flexion ROM, thoracic spine extension, or even ankle dorsiflexion) the conventional style deadlift might not be a great choice…for now.
A sumo-style deadlift (wider stance, hands inside the knees) may be the better option. It allows for a more upright torso, decreasing shearing forces on the spine, which can make things infinitely friendlier.
Stop being a slave to your ego and realize you don’t have to pull conventional all the time (or ever) despite what that dude at the YMCA who competed in one powerlifting meet back in 1998 told you.
You can’t go more than a few clicks on the internet before you inevitably come across some coach or trainer discussing the merits of positional breathing and how it can help improve performance in the weight room (and on the field).
(👆👆👆 I guess this depends on what part of the internet you peruse…BOM, CHICKA, BOM BOM 😉 😉 😉 )
Nevertheless, if you’re someone who geeks out over the human body and movement in general “positional breathing” is a term you’ve definitely come across.
And you likely still aren’t understanding it’s relevance.
I have a treat for you today. Dr. Michelle Boland (a Boston based strength & conditioning coach and one of the smartest people I’ve ever met) was kind enough to offer to write on the topic for this website.
Positional Breathing: The Implementation of Training Principles
Note From TG: For a bit of an “amuse bouche” on the topic of positional breathing I’d encourage you to check out two posts I wrote on the topic HERE and HERE.
Identify
Our role as fitness professionals is to determine what is important for our clients. In order to do so, we need to identify what is important, formulate principles, and then follow through with implementation.
A way to identify and formulate what is important to us as trainers, is to create principles. Principles are simply what you believe in and what you teach your clients. Principles serve as a hierarchy of reasoning for your training methods, which include your choice of exercises, organization of training sessions, program design decisions, and communication strategies.
In this article, I am going to review my first two training principles:
Training Principle 1: All movement is shape change (influence from Bill Hartman)
Training Principle 2: Proximal position influences distal movement abilities
Formulate
Movement is about shape change.
We change shapes by expanding and compressing areas of the body.
Movement will occur in areas of the body that we are able to expand and movement will be limited in areas of the body that, for some reason, we have compressed. The ability of an athlete to transition from expanded positions to compressed positions informs their ability to change shape and express movement.
Movement occurs in a multitude of directions depending on both position and respiration. Certain positions will bias certain parts of the body to be able to expand more freely, allowing increased movement availability. Respiration can further support the ability to expand and compress areas of the body, as an inhalation emphasizes expansion and an exhalation emphasizes compression.
(👇👇👇 Just a small, teeny-tiny taste of importance of positional breathing 👇👇👇)
Position selection is my foundation of exercise selection.
Positions such as supine, prone, side lying, tall kneeling, half kneeling, staggered stance, lateral stance, and standing can magnify which areas of the body that will be expanded or compressed. Additional components of positions can include reaching one arm forward, reaching arms overhead, elevating a heel, or elevating a toe. Furthermore, pairing phases of respiration within these positions will further support where movement will be limited or enhanced.
The position of the proximal bony structures of the body, such as the rib cage and pelvis, can greatly enable or restrict movement. Positional stacking of the thorax and pelvis provides an anchor for movement. Respiration then provides the ability to create expansion in the thorax and pelvis, thus providing expansion areas of the body, within joint spaces, allowing our limbs to express pain-free movement.
Lifting heavy weights can often compress areas of our body and reduce our ability to expand and rotate through our trunk and hips, limiting movement, and negatively affecting our ability to perform. Remember, expansion begets movement freedom, so adding positional breathing work or pairing movement with respiration can create opportunities for expansion.
Implement
Where is a good place to start with positional breathing work?
Start by thinking about what you already do.
Then, apply your new lens of where you want movement to occur.
Finally, label the positions of the exercises and pair respiration within those movements. Pair an inhalation when you want to enhance expansion and an exhalation when you want to enhance compression. Here are a few examples of how I implement my two training principles into exercise selection. Movement within each example can be supported or limited with changes in position, respiration, or execution.
1. Supine Reach
The supine position is combined with a bilateral arm reach forward with the intention to expand the upper thorax during inhalation. The position can also be used as a tool to teach stacking the thorax over the pelvis by cueing a hip tuck and soft exhale to move the front side of the ribcage downward. Our “stack” IS the set-up position for your main loaded, lift exercises (squat, deadlift, etc).
Check out how the inhalation expands the upper thorax and the exhalation creates compression.
Now you will not be able to take your eyes away from those two movement strategies.
2. Staggered Stance “Camporini” Deadlift
The staggered stance position is going to magnify the expansive capabilities of the lower, posterior hip of the back leg. The staggered stance position allows you to use the front leg to push back to the side of the back leg and align the pelvis and thorax back and to the side of the back leg.
The opposite arm reach allows you to transition the weight to the back leg. The expansive capabilities can be enhanced in the posterior hip with an inhale during the hip movement backwards (hinging).
3. Low Cable Step-Up
The staggered stance position puts the hip of the elevated leg in flexion (expansive) and the hip of the leg on the ground in an extension (compressive) biased position.
The addition of an opposite arm cable hold expands the backside of the upper back (avoid resisting the cable). The posterior hip of the elevated leg will compress as the individual pushes their foot into the ground and moves against gravity to perform the step-up.
At the bottom position, expansion can be enhanced in the posterior side of the flexed hip and posterior side of the arm holding the cable during an inhalation. Coaching cues may magnify expansion and compression within areas of the body by pairing respiration within phases of the exercise. Try inhaling at the bottom position and exhaling during the movement/step-up.
4. High Hip Reverse Bear Crawl
The bear crawl exercise is performed in a prone position. The additional component of the high hips and reverse direction promotes expansion in the upper thorax and posterior hips. You can coach continuous breathing through the movement or pause at certain points to inhale.
This is a fantastic warm-up exercise!
5. Tempo Squat Paired with Respiration
The squat starts in a standing position.
The assisted squat will also include a positional component of both arms reaching forward (same as goblet squat, zercher squat, or safety bar squat) which encourages the ‘stack’ position of the thorax and pelvis. The assisted squat is an example of turning positional breathing work into fitness. The squat movement requires both expansive and compressive capabilities within various phases of the movement in order to be able to descend and ascend against gravity.
The exercise can be used to teach people to change levels with a stacked, vertical torso. As a general notion, inhale down and exhale up.
6. Medicine Ball Lateral Stance Weight Shift Load and Release Throw
The exercise is performed in a lateral stance position.
Here, we are adding fitness with an emphasis on power, to positional breathing work!
Pair an inhalation with pulling the medicine ball across the body (transitioning weight from inside to outside leg) to bias expansion of the posterior hip of the outside leg. Then pair an exhalation with the throw to bias compression, exiting the hip of the outside leg.
This exercise also encourages rotational abilities and power through creating expansion and compression in specific areas of the body. For example, if you want to promote right rotation, you will need right anterior compression, right posterior expansion, left posterior compression and left anterior expansion abilities.
Conclusion
The use of positional breathing activities can improve our abilities to move with speed, free up range of motion at the shoulders and hips, rotate powerfully, and move up and down efficiently. My training principles are derived from this concept. My specific strategies are implemented through exercise selection, cueing, teaching, and pairing respiration with movement phases.
The ‘stacked’ position emphasizes a congruent relationship between the rib cage and pelvis (thoracic and pelvic diaphragm) and I believe it can serve as a foundational position to support movement. I want to thank Bill Hartman for exposing me to this lens of movement.
Implement these strategies with your clients and you’ll discover that positional breathing work WILL help your clients squat, hinge, run, rotate, and move better.
Principle Based Coaching
A strategy such as positional breathing work for better client movement is only as good as your ability to implement and communicate it with your clients. We become better at implementation and communication through analysis and development of our PRINCIPLES.
In this webinar, we will take a step back and learn the skills to formulate principles, make new information useful, AND IMPLEMENT information. At the end of the webinar you will know how training principles can be used to:
Make new information useful to YOU, YOUR clients, and YOUR business
Clarify your coaching decisions
Develop a more pinpointed coaching eye
Plan more effectively to get your client results
Gain confidence in your abilities and formulate your own coaching identity
2020 has not been a favorable year for the masses.
In particular for fitness industry which has been decimated due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Many brick and mortar gyms (as well as commercial gyms) were forced to shut down indefinitely for several months – some, unfortunately, forever – due to the crisis. And as a result many fitness professionals have been forced to face a stark reality…
…that there’s an integral if not imperative impetus to adapt.
In short: It behooves every fit pro to consider adopting (or at least leaning into) a more “hybrid” approach to the services they offer and how they go about scaling and growing their business.
For those who want to skip the foreplay click HERE. <— You can try the Online Trainer Academy FOR FREE for 30 days and become a Certified Online Trainer.
The harsh reality is most people are not going back to the gym anytime soon. Certainly the bulk of that is due to the fact many don’t have a gym to go back to anyway, but also because there’s been a mad dash of everyone beginning to pimp out their respective at home gyms.
If there’s anything this dumpster fire of year has taught the fitness industry it’s that having the ability to provide a competent and streamlined ONLINE service to your current and prospective clients has never been more important.
I’ve long championed the idea that having a HYBRID fitness business – one that allows you to work with people both in person & online – is wise.
My first online client was back in 2005-2006.
Smart phones weren’t really that smart yet.
I used a carrier pigeon an Excel spreadsheet to deliver my programs.
Even more dumbfounding: My clients paid me via check through the regular mail.
The online space as come a looooooong ways since I first started.
More to the point: While there are a number of websites and resources out there that will help you get started, The Online Trainer Academy has had a several year head start on ALL of them and is really the only one I trust (not to mentions offers all the tools you’ll need to be successful).
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Smoke, smoke bomb, mic drop, exit stage left.)
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ANSWER: Equal parts I picked the right parents, never missing a universal bench day (every Monday) through the 90’s, and lastly…watching and rewinding incessantly the “Arnie gets tooled up” montage from the movie Commando.
Pecs by proxy.
2️⃣ “Tony, why don’t you start your own podcast?”
ANSWER: Because I’d rather jump into a shark’s mouth.
The only way I’d fathom starting my own podcast is if I could spend half of it talking about how to make people stronger than Mack trucks and the other half discussing geeky movie shenanigans like my favorite movie tracking shots (Copacabana nightclub scene from Goodfellas or the car attack/chase scene from Children of Men), or why it is J-Lo’s derriere hasn’t been given it’s own movie trilogy.
Come on Hollywood!
The truth, however, is that I don’t feel I’d be able to drum up enough interesting content to warrant a podcast. I’m a rather dull person.
As it happens, though, I’m invited onto 1-2 podcasts per month anyway…so I kinda already do have a podcast.
First up is the Total Fitheads Podcast hosted by Ali Spagnola and MaxNoSleeves (<– I honestly couldn’t find Max’s last name…haha).
(But, let’s be real: NoSleeves is baller and I can think of nothing cooler than putting some sort of moniker next to one’s name. Hmmm, I’m thinking TonyGiveMeAllTheCreatine might work. Yes, no, maybe so?).
Ali and Max are two meatheads who just like to invite cool & interesting people onto their show to talk shop. I had a blast recording this episode and really appreciated their spontaneity and spunk.
Next up I was able to catch up with my friend Andrew Coates on his brand spankin new podcast. It’s so shiny and glorious and delicious (which doesn’t make any sense).
Andrew has very easy-going interview style and honestly believe he and I could have kept talking for another hour. But unless your name is Joe Rogen (or Space Ghost) no one listens to 2+ hour podcasts…;o)
There’s no shortage of “debates” in the health/fitness space. Ideal neck position during a deadlift is also a hotly debated topic and I can appreciate both sides of the argument. Here’s my take and what has worked well for me and my clients.
Maintaining a “neutral” spine during a deadlift is paramount.
It’s the first commandment of deadlifting.
Neutral in this sense means “maintaining the spine’s natural lordotic (lower back) and kyphotic (upper back) curvature.”
Coaches will start hyperventilating into a paper bag if they see an athlete round his or her back during a deadlift. Okay, so why do we not hold the same standard to the cervical spine or neck? Is the neck not part of the spine?
I prefer people adopt a chin tucked or “packed” neck position:
👉 It reinforces the neutral spine, which the neck is part of. I understand the other side of the argument. There are many examples of people extending their head back during a deadlift (i.e. a not-packed neck) and they’ve been fine.
👉 But in the beginning stages, a packed neck is my preference. Then as someone grows more proficient with the movement they’re allotted more leeway. Besides, what often happens during a max effort attempt – extended neck, and yes, sometimes a rounded back – should not be held to the same standard as a sub-maximal attempt or to someone just learning the lift.
👉 In terms of how to cue the proper neck position, I like to have lifters stare at a target 10-15 feet in front of them on the floor. This helps with better neck position and actually helps increase full-body tension.
Mike T. Nelson, PhD, MSME, CSCS, CISSN, is a research fanatic who specializes in metabolic flexibility and heart rate variability, as well as an online trainer, adjunct professor, faculty member at the Carrick Institute, presenter, creator of the 
