Managing Client Ego and Facades

it depends on what my relationship with him is like like you and i can have a pretty honest conversation you can be like hey man like i feel like a bag of dicks today yeah like as much as i'm in the back in which case ben says well i'll just pop down to the dick store and get you a bag of them oh but i went shopping today yeah um but like i've got like other clients that will come in and they're like oh no no like i have to train today i feel like i have to thrash myself and again going back to what luke was talking about you know people have their coping mechanisms yeah um now like training's the addiction and oh it can be training and food is a huge addiction especially in the fitness industry I don't think anyone who's done a sport or any kind of training, like training for specific goals, generally starts to correlate how fucked and fatigued you are to it being a productive training session. Exactly. And that's a common fallacy. Yeah. So like with some of the people I train, like they'll come in and like I can just like, again, you train someone for long enough, like you pick up on their little tells, you can pick up on little intricacies and be like there something going on today I have some clients they come in like oh how are you today It literally always the first question I ask them And they be like oh yeah I good I'm like, oh God, I can smell bullshit from a mile away. Usually in that session, it's like, all right, cool. We're going to have a technique day where we're going to really dial in, like really, like you make it seem like, oh, we're actually going to be like doing technique work here so that like down the track, there's more payoff. And you just explain to them, like, look, we're going to do some technique work at around about X percent. you give them some arbitrary number and you just, you find a weight where it's like, cool, this isn't moving how it should be. And then when it's not moving how it should be, like, cool, what's going on? This isn't moving how it should be. There's going to be something more to the picture than this. And that's usually when they'll open up and be like, oh, well I've got this going on, I've got that going on, this, this, this, and this. And it's like, okay, cool. Training for us today is maybe not going to be the most beneficial. Let's do some breathing work. Let's down-regulate your nervous system. Let's get you back into a good state. And then they do that and they're like, oh, oh, fuck, I needed that. Yeah. Again. I was just going to say, like, you'll get the A-types and the alphas who won't say it, but when you suggest that, there'll be that part inside their own mind where they'll go, oh, holy fuck, thank God. But even half the time with those people, you have to fucking fight them for it. Yeah. And it's only until you put them in. Well, that's what we talked about with the fight-flight-freezer facade, okay? You put that facade. Yeah, exactly. So it's like they put the facade that I'm the alpha male. Well, fuck you. If you come in the training with me, I'm daddy in the gym, and you're going to do what I say. And you have to set that precedence, the first conversation, so that they know if you come in, I'm going to tell you what you need to do. That's what you're hiring for. But then a lot of people put the facade on where it's like, I'm okay. And you're looking at them going, no, you're not. And they'll come in and they'll come in to see Ben and he'll go, hey, how's it going? Oh, I'm okay. And he can immediately say, something's not right. You're not okay. That's what they're doing. They're protecting themselves by putting up that facade. And then a good coach like Ben will watch their warm-ups and go, those warm-ups don't look crisp. they don't they're kind of slow and then he knows like all right let's watch that first set okay all right look let's back it off we're gonna we're gonna pull some weight off and let's do some positional drills maybe hold the bottom for a few seconds and you know i'm gonna move your technique around and then they're like okay because you know what you're doing that for is to limit that neural load they don't need to know that they don't need to the other fun thing is as well like you put them in positions that like it should be easy for them to hold like in a poor squat in the bottom and they can't. And you're like, okay, cool. There's obviously some struggle here. What happened over the weekend? Any number of factors could be influencing that. My ex-partner contacted me and sent me into a spiral. And it's like, okay, cool. And as you were saying earlier, sometimes the time that they have with you is literally the only time that someone will actually listen and give a fuck about them. As much as people come into the gym like, oh, I'm here to improve myself, half the time people just want someone to fucking listen to them. That's right. They're paying for someone's time for 60 minutes to listen to them. And as you said, improvement isn't just putting 10 kilos on the bar. Exactly. It can literally just be a matter of being like, cool, I've walked out of here feeling better than I walked in. That can be enough for someone to be like, fuck, this person's amazing. So you guys are putting the person back in personal trainer. It should be personal. That's the exact thing I said yesterday. And Isaac's over here laughing because I looked at those guys and I said, listen the way we teach what we do isn't easy it takes it's emotionally i can imagine it's emotionally draining it is but it's also it's like i'm asking these people to understand exercise metabolism and biochemistry and personal relationships and all this stuff but that's professional personal training and we've got to put the personal back in personal training so that's exactly what we say and that's the thing like the end this needs to be a movement where the industry gets this and that needs to be the mantra for every fucking personal trainer going forward is I'm going to get personal, not I'm going to bang on my clients, which is what most trainers think is personal training. Well, I'm going to fuck all my clients. That's different. And that can be another revenue stream for you. Fine. I get that. But the thing is like, we can't give people can things and not look and work on their own physiology because that's professional training, right? You know, from a, from a, from a, a powerlifting perspective to that autonomic tone, if your sympathetic drive is really high, it's going to make you really fucking tight, right? Because you're guarded. Yeah. And then when you look at somebody and they're trying to squat and they can't get the depth and it feels like they're a duckers are going to rip off the pubis that you're looking at. I'm going, okay, maybe we do some, maybe we do a little bit of submaximal work and maybe we work off the blocks. And there was a time last time I had, I had been actually watched my sumo deadlifts and I was like having a really hard time. And he goes, okay, we're going to pull off blocks. And I was pulling off blocks and it felt like my my fricking hips were going to explode. And I didn't realize at the time it's because I was going through a lot of shit, right? He saw that in me, not, we didn't talk about any of that. He, as a coach, he saw that and said, maybe you should pull short range today. And I went, okay, fine. And then it took me months later to be like, wow, I was going through some shit Like he immediately picked up on that And that amazing And that what a good coach does Everything an assessment from the time they walk in the door you watching them walk in to the first tone of their voice When you say, how are you doing to the warmups, then to the first work set. And he picked that up and altered the workout based on how I was feeling emotionally that day. But I think the coaches are, man. But the other thing is about like to be a good coach, like you need to have empathy. If you don't like you're in the wrong fucking business. That's exactly right. You're dealing with people. Well, exactly. Like if you deal with people, like you have to have empathy. If you're one of those people who are like, oh, I fucking hate people, but you're in personal training, like get the fuck out. You're ruining our industry. You're in it for the wrong reasons. Yeah, you're in it for money and you're trying to capitalize on people's insecurities and fears.