If you live in or around a populated area, there’s probably no shortage of general gyms or CrossFit boxes you could join. If you’re a beginner, the different programs offered by these gyms may look about the same to you. But after a year of consistent training, you may see your progress stall. Then you have to decide if you’re going to stick with the programs and coaching at your gym, or if you need a change. If your goal is long-term strength development, you may need to be more selective in where you choose to train and who you let coach you.

The problem you face as you transition from beginner to intermediate lifter is that non-structured strength training no longer provides adequate stimulus to force strength adaptations. Instead, you need a structured progression, even if it’s very basic, to cause a sufficient overload. If you take the average CrossFit class, for example, anyone participating may see great improvements for a while due to the novelty and intensity. But because many boxes focus their programming for beginners, workouts are not necessarily repeated and built upon. This poses a problem for the intermediate athlete who needs this focus.

If you are serious about becoming a strong as possible, you need to be very selective in choosing a gym and in choosing a coach to help guide you. Here are some things to consider when shopping around.

Look for Experience

Whether you’re beginning a strength program at a CrossFit gym with a new coach, or looking for a personal trainer at a health club, you need to make sure this person is worth listening to and that what they are selling is worth your time.

Your coach does not need to be a record-holding powerlifter, but they do need to have the right experience. Make sure to find a coach who has been dedicated to the pursuit of strength for a substantial length of time. Without the right set of experiences, the coach cannot create the culture you need to succeed.

Exclusivity Helps Community

If you’re like most, you want to feel as if you’re a part of something exclusive. Why does everyone want to train at Westside Barbell? Because so few really can. A dedicated strength program or gym will really push you if it’s filled with like-minded individuals. Before you join, check out the community and train with them a couple of times. See if this is a group that really pushes one another with a positive attitude or if they’re just happy to go through the motions.

Strength programs that have a member cap tend to have the best community because the athletes take pride in being a part of this exclusive group. Finding something like this will undoubtedly help you achieve your goals.

If the community isn’t a good fit for you, it won’t help your progress. [Photo credit: Jeff Nguyen]

Basic Is Effective

When starting out, make sure the program, gym, or coach places an emphasis on the basics. Learning the Olympic lifts is great, but if you haven’t mastered the squat, press, and pull, you may not want to join an Olympic weightlifting class. You will see the greatest level of success if you stick with training the basic powerlifts and work to develop general strength for a while.

Check into the programming being offered by the gym or coach as well. You don’t need to start with anything too complex. Programs that focus on establishing and refining proper movements and simple progressive overload will set you up for long-term success. Cutting-edge methods look cool on Instagram, but building a base that can be built upon for years will bring you lasting results.

Learn the Why

Make sure that the coaches at your gym aren’t happy with making you a mindless drone. The mark of a great coach is that they teach you enough that you no longer need him or her. Be sure that your coach has some sort of educational component as a part of the training process. Although you may always have a coach and a group to train with, you will continually develop by eventually taking some control of your own training. Make sure your coach explains to you why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Progress Must Be Measurable

The program you’re on should have benchmarks to let you know what to expect from each week. If your coach has no planned testing period, plan a powerlifting competition for yourself at the end of a training cycle. Many trainees never set a physical goal for themselves, so they never make much progress, because they have nothing to compare themselves to or anything to track. Give yourself a goal to work towards and make sure you pick a coach and gym that will support this. If competitions aren’t for you, make sure there are still tangible goals for you to reach for within the strength program.

Before joining a gym or hiring a coach, make sure to be as selective as possible. Use these criteria to help make sure you don’t find yourself spinning your wheels. You’ll save yourself a lot of grief and make much more progress.

What’s the difference between a good coach and a great one?

8 Subtle Attributes of a Great Coach

The post Find the Right Strength Program for You appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Successful coaches share several key characteristics. Among other strengths, they have a deep understanding of health and fitness principles and do not ascribe too much value to any individual method or movement. Finding a coach who embodies these characteristics can help ensure your athletic success.

Anybody can push you through a workout, but a good coach will teach principles, not just methods. [Photo courtesy CrossFit Empirical]

Principles vs. Methods

Distinguishing principles from methods will help you find the right coach for you.

• Principles can be thought of as laws of nature. Health and fitness principles are physiological processes, such as how the cardiovascular system responds to stresses of different durations and intensities, the anatomy of proper alignment during archetypal positions and movement patterns, and how the body responds to different macro and micronutrients. Principles define methods, not the other way around. If you simply follow a program or prescription, these are methods. You might see a positive change, but the methods represent only the surface of a given field of mastery.
• Methods are practices that define a program. They include specific movements and exercises, the rep and time schemes, macronutrient prescriptions, and any other behavior that a coach or trainer might prescribe. Methods are like letters and words. They hold little significance individually, but combine together in unique ways to communicate the author’s meaning and values. Methods are the tools a coach uses to express a given principle.

Guiding Questions for Choosing Your Experts

There is some value in every school of thought in the health, fitness, and movement culture. But there is no magic bullet. You do not need to be extremely knowledgeable about health and fitness to be wise in choosing a trainer, teacher, or coach. Use your intuition and the following five questions to discern the principled “experts” from those who are simply defined by methods.

1. Do they speak more than listen? Trainers who speak more than they listen express a greater priority for demonstrating their knowledge than understanding your needs. Especially during early stages of working together, your trainer should try to understand you, your needs, your goals, and any past issues you have experienced. Trainers cannot design an effective protocol until they have a clear vision of you and your direction. Those who quickly launch into offering you best practices have not taken the necessary time to know what you need.
2. Do they address your needs or give you an extension of theirs? Many trainers fall victim to confirmation bias and the overconfidence effect, an extremely harmful combination of cognitive biases. They believe that because they are in great shape, the methods they used to achieve their condition are the methods to success. That bias causes them to place too much value in their personal methods, rather than seeing the underlying principles that defined their success.

This fallacy plays out as trainers offering their clients a scaled-down version of their own training, rather than a program that specifically addresses the client’s personal needs and goals. The best trainers constantly seek new principles to test on themselves and eventually on clients. A client’s program should never fall victim to the whims of their trainers.

• Do they only have one program? Are the programs of your trainer’s other clients eerily similar to your own? Discern whether your program is completely unique or just a tweaked version of what your trainer offers to all of his or her clients. The latter can be okay, if you simply want a great workout with the attention and connection that comes from a one-on-one relationship. But meeting specific goals or conquering specific deficiencies requires a coach that can offer personalized guidance. Use the next question to help discern the difference.
• Can they give you the “why?” It is perfectly acceptable to act like a curious two-year-old, constantly asking “why?” Those persistent toddlers personify a commitment to principles over methods. Inquire about specific movements and program elements. Try to understand the principles that define your program. True teachers relish the opportunity to expound on the reasons beneath their methods. If your trainer takes the route of so many frustrated parents and offers a “because it’s good for you” or a “because that’s the way it is,” consider seeking a new expert.
• Do they speak your language? Perhaps an even better question to ask is “How many languages do they speak?” The best trainer for you will demonstrate fluency in many different fitness “languages.” They have immersed themselves deeply in many different aspects of the health, fitness, movement, and nutrition world. It is impossible to learn and master everything, but look for someone whose background has breadth and depth.

The road to mastery follows a progression from collection, to curation, to creation. True teachers have collected ideas widely, curated their collected experience into a set of highly effective tools, and now use those tools to define a unique perspective and create unique offerings. Your ideal coach should connect with you and communicate back their principles in a way that aligns with you and your values.

Be an Expert on Choosing Experts

Not everyone can or should develop a professional level of understanding of health, fitness, and movement principles, just as it is not necessary to design and build your own car. You only need to purchase a quality vehicle and then understand how to drive it. Avoid coaches who can teach only a singular method. Seek trainers and teachers who move well and understand the principles behind movement and fitness. Look to those who have sought, explored, experimented, and studied widely. These trainers are best equipped to use their experience and knowledge to help you optimize your individual system.

So you’ve found a great coach for yourself. What about your kids?

Breaking Up With Your Child’s Coach: It’s Not You, It’s Me

Coaches: Are you talking at your athletes, or with them?

Put Your Athlete First: How to Build Rapport

The post How to Choose Your Coach appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

So why don’t they? Why is it America is getting fatter, getting unhealthier, and continuing to go in the wrong direction day by day, year by year? It is the choices we make.

We all start out in life the exact same: naked, scared, and ignorant. Where we are today is a collection of all the choices we have made leading up to now. Choices are the root of every result we have created for ourselves.

So how can we make better choices? You don’t just all of a sudden begin to make better choices. It begins with what you are feeding your brain on a daily basis. If it is not moving you in the direction of your goals, what can you do about it?

Believe it or not you can train your brain in a similar way you train your body. By implementing the mental training tools below you can begin to train your brain, and ultimately your body, to achieve any result you want out of your lives.

#1 – Hire a Coach: Everyone Needs a Mentor

“A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be.” – Tom Landry

Isn’t it interesting that the top performers in any field have the best coaches? Why is that? A coach is there to lead and teach you how to be successful. Having people who push you to excel is critical, regardless of how successful you are. Great coaches will give you the advantage of the shortcuts they’ve discovered with their experience over the years. Their hard-earned wisdom can help you accelerate your growth and make wise choices.

On the contrary, it is easy to make choices from an emotional level. When we let our emotions decide we usually choose to go with how we are feeling “in the moment” and take the path of least resistance. When given the choice between going to the gym and watching a movie with your friends, you’ll choose the movie. Stretch to work out that tightness in your low back or surf the web? Mindless surfing here you come.

A coach is important because he/she can motivate, teach and hold you accountable to make the choices to get you to your goals. A coach has your best interest at heart. A coach brings an objective approach to helping you achieve your goals and pushes you to achieve more than you thought you could. Making choices on an emotional level can lead to us making an incorrect decision because we allow our history or self-doubt to come into the process. A coach can keep you on course and help you do the things you are supposed to do, when you don’t want to.

#2 – Friends/Associations: It’s More Important Than You Think!

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great ones make you feel that you, too, can become great.” – Mark Twain.

Have you ever noticed that fit people hang around with other fit people? Millionaires hang around with other millionaires? Your friends and associations are a powerful force in the choices you make. We will naturally adapt to our associations (good or bad).

Why? The people we spend our time with determine what conversations dominate our attention, and what observations, attitudes, and opinions we are repeatedly exposed to. Eventually, we start to eat what they eat, read what they read, watch what they watch, and think like they think. All the while we might not even be conscious of it.

If you are really committed to changing yourself for the greater good you will need to re-evaluate and reprioritize the people you surround yourself with. A technique I learned from Jim Rohn is you can evaluate and organize your friends into three categories: disassociations, limited associations, and expanded associations.

• Disassociations – These are the people you might need to break away from completely. This will probably be a difficult step for you, but it’s critical. You have to decide if keeping this relationship is more important than improving your quality of life.
• Limited Associations – These are the types of people you can either spend three days, three hours, or three minutes with. Remember you will get a deposit of the dominant attitudes, actions and behaviors of the people you spend your time with. This is a matter of deciding how much you can afford to be influenced by this person.
• Expanded Associations – Based on the last two types of friends this one seems obvious. You want to be around this people. Find those who represent where you want to go. Do what they do. Join the organizations, businesses, and health clubs where these people are and make friends with them. Create your circle of influence by purposefully selecting those with whom you surround yourself.

If you are serious about taking your results to a higher level its time to take a step back and ask yourself: Who do I spend my time with? What am I talking about when I hang around them? Who am I becoming as a result of being around these people? When you step away and you look at the lives of those people, is it everything you want?

#3 – Pre-Plan Your Day: Plan to Fail or Fail to Plan

“Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now” – Alan Lakein

All of our lives moves at a very fast pace. I have read we have up to 61,000 thoughts every day. Everyone has goals, priorities, relationships, and work we want to accomplish every day. But do we get it all accomplished? Because our lives move at such a fast pace it can be easy to get distracted. When something doesn’t go our way or according to plan how do we usually react? How can we fit everything in and move forward with our goals?

Have a plan for everyday and pre-plan your day the night before.

We currently have built in routines that are either moving us closer to our goals or further away from them. We can drastically increase our ability to get things done by mapping out a plan for our day in advance. A lot of our problem with making the right or the wrong decisions is the amount of energy it takes to decide. When we create a plan in advance it frees us up, allowing us to use all of our energy on completing the tasks.

Our mind and emotions gravitate to what we know and we only know what our past experiences have provided us. John Maxwell said, “The greatest obstacle to your future success is your current success.” Our future is unknown and unfamiliar. When we focus on changing ourselves for the greater good our current self is going to naturally what to gravitate back to our history of choices. We must out-think our old self to create our future self with pre-planning. Up to this point in our lives we have made repetitive choices and turned them into automatic habits. What do you do every day without thinking about it? Brushing your teeth, going to work, eating breakfast (or not), tying your shoes. When we write a plan in advance we can tell ourselves exactly what we must accomplish in order to get closer to our goals each day.

There are two great opportunities to plan out your day called “the bookends.” The bookends are either the first thing you do in the morning when you arise or the last thing you do before you go to bed. Either of those times you can control, no matter how out of control your day was.

Here is an example from my own life:

Morning Routine

• 5:30AM: Arise Put on gym clothes, contacts, and stumble to kitchen. Drink a glass of ice cold water and protein shake
• 5:40AM: Out the door for workout (Monday/Wednesday/Friday: Weights; Tuesday/Thursday: Interval Cardio; Saturday/Sunday: Walk)
• 6:40AM: Return home and shower, brush teeth, etc.
• 6:55AM: 20 minutes of meditation, prayer, and scripture study
• 7:15-ish AM: Review my goals and day’s schedule

Evening Routine

My goal is to have lights out at 11:00PM. With that as my deadline, here’s what I like to get done before then:

• 9:30PM: Review day’s work, review goals (long term and short term), plan tomorrow’s schedule
• 10:00PM: Get ready for bed; take vitamins.
• 10:15PM: Write in journal
• 10:30PM: Read a book
• 11:00PM: Lights out

We have total control of the choices we make to create the life we have always wanted. By adopting these three specific actions you can start to move yourself forward everyday to becoming the person you desire to be.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

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