Weck Method, Kettlebells, Steel Mace Flow and the Language of Movement
Michael Hughes
Okay welcome back to the Gymnazo podcast where I am your host, Michael Hughes, we’re diving into coachmen ship, which is pretty much a made up word, which we’d like to do often. And what it really means to be a good coach in terms of our communication in terms of our intent of our practice, and in terms of all the different methodologies out there. So we’re going to dive into kind of our intent as a coach and what it means to have a great coach and ship. This one is a little bit more off the cuff just be quite frank with you, we’re got some fresh brewskis here. It is beautiful Friday in Central Coast, California. And we’re about to dive in deep. So hold on your hats. Make sure you’re in a good drive, and point and let’s go for it. Welcome to the Gymnazo podcast where you get to peek behind the curtains of what it takes to create and run a seven figure fitness facility that ranks in the top 5% of boutique fitness studios for revenue. But to be honest, that’s the least important thing about us. Founded by me, Michael Hughes Gymnazo has created an ecosystem of services that blend performance with restoration techniques, and attracts top coaches to its facility hosted by its owners, Paden, and myself and our top coaches, this podcast shares our best practices on everything, from how to build a sustainable fitness business, to how to program for maximum results to how to build a hybrid training module that’s online. And in person. We have marketing secrets, movement, innovation, and breaking down trends in the industry. If you’re a fitness professional or fitness business owner, this is where you learn how to sharpen your skills and to see maximum results. All right, so talking about coachmen ship, we look at it as like how was the quality of your skill set in terms of applying it to people? And that’s what we do, right? We take knowledge, we get taught it, we can talk about you know, what kind of coach Are you are you training? Are you are you know, are you a coach? Are you a trainee? Are you mentor, you know, is how do you kind of look at that? And how do you take your knowledge set and give it to people and say, Gee, I’ve been talking about this for a long time, is that we have a common way of talking to each other. And that’s kind of in the formality of really our relationship as professional movement practitioners. So when you first started as a movement practitioner, a trainer, a coach, whether you got your eyes to say your nasem, your AC, what are the cases? Where are you now in terms of where you thought you would be then in terms of this term called coachmen ship.
CJ
I’m happy you made a bunch of words and just said a bunch of mumbo jumbo words, because that’s kind of what this is really all about. Putting all the words into the same pot and saying how do we find a common ground? How do we understand each other and understand ourselves? And how do we relay our understanding of what we’re seeing in terms of people’s movement in terms of their actions in terms of their goals, and help them discover how to communicate with their body and communicate with other practitioners and therapists. So, I mean, starting out, I had no idea this is where I would be in the sense that I have a much wider vocabulary when it comes to movement and training and intent than I ever thought I would have wasn’t something words are tough for me. Big words are even tougher, you know. But I think that there’s a lot of ways to get messages across and what I’ve found the past decade of individual coaching, group coaching, working with Gymnazo. Specifically, it’s enhanced my understanding of how to communicate more effectively with not only my athletes and my clients, but other coaches. And really going from a competitive environment. I’ve just myself versus other coaches, and I have my language and they have theirs. And they have their practices. I have my practices, my methodologies, they have theirs, too. How can we all essentially be one larger mind and every day, every week, every month? Continue to enhance our vocabulary? I see. So I think where I am now is trying to find ways to help others collaborate with what they know what others know and find a common ground so that we can continue to enhance this field of fitness and health and talk about it from a wider from a wider lens or from a wider perspective rather, you know, like when a steel mace flow coach can coach steel mace flow and talk that but when it comes to the kettlebell does that terminology that they use in the mace carry over to the kettlebell and the answer is yes, but somebody who started with the kettlebell then wants to go to the mace may have a different way of talking about the mace. Also, we think about joint mobility and active range of motion and all these mobility courses out there, show you how to do this Since you know cars like get your your ankles to move in all three under 60 degrees in all directions and your knees and your hips and all these pieces and kind of individualize it, where another mobility practice may be talking about it in an entirely different word set, notice the different matrix of words and terminology that they’re gonna use, in reference to what they’ve learned. And so it was really tough starting out coaching, because I felt like I had to, like almost pick a pick a spell a space, in this fitness and health field, and I had to learn the language and Okay, that was it. But then I learned another technique or another methodology, and they would say something similar, but with different words, and maybe a different intention behind it. So then it almost becomes this game of like, well, who is right, who is who’s not right. But I think we can step one layer beyond that, and say that they’re both right. And they both came to the conclusion to create their course, or to create their certification or create their method. From a very honest and humbling place, I think, which is just that it’s more of a discovery. And then you discover those words along the way you feel the movements, you send somebody do some research, you start to apply them to other people, and try to communicate what you did with this equipment to and get somebody else to do it for a specific reason. So there’s a lot of confusion, I think, right now in this industry, when it comes to how do we speak about certain things, and not be afraid to be wrong, because we’re all right, we just have a different background of learning these words, right? Somebody who speaks Spanish, and then there’s Lauren’s English is going to speak differently than somebody who learns English. And that’s their first language. And then they go learn Spanish, they’re gonna sound completely different, but they may be using the same words or different sentence structure. So I think where I was starting out, I had no idea that this is what I’d be reflecting on. I was just learning it and absorbing the words absorbing the language, and then I’d use that language. But I often found myself getting into ruts or getting stuck somewhere when I couldn’t get through to somebody what I was trying to tell them. And so I would search out another way to say it, maybe through analogy, the metaphor, or really just through more research and more science of understanding and having a just a wider range of words to access that somebody else may be able to use.
Michael Hughes
With so many changes, so many things that you just described, there is not just this fact that we don’t have the language, it’s deeper than that. When we don’t have a language, we don’t have the confidence. And that is the biggest thing after coaching. Other coaches in this industry, it comes down to I want more confidence, because you want to direct somebody, we’re here to help them guide. That’s what we do. As coaches, I don’t care if it’s on the basketball court, on a carpet, it’s a counselor in a high school, the rock rock coaches here to prove here to provide not just advice, but it’s kind of direction, because we may not have been there. I’ve never played professional football. I’ve never driven an IndyCar before. But I know how to train both of them. Why because I understand the language of the human body. That’s the first part. But I have the confidence to be able to say like, I know where to go find that information and relate it to you as an athlete, you as a person. And then I most importantly, I think I have the confidence within myself to distill those different thought processes, even if it’s from someone who’s done yoga, and they’ve are literally like the F ones or IndyCars like go to yoga person or a chiropractor who works on Broadway shows. I can take that language that they use, understand it, compress it into my mind and then regurgitate it out to that athlete via metaphors, whatever the case case is. And it’s that confidence that I’ve been seeing that we can basically our multilingual, great coachman ship is being multilingual, through different methodologies. Which brings me to a question because I don’t think we’ve ever really talked about this, like in this form, how many different methodologies have you learned from and I think most importantly, made, the better story is how many people who are those people? And what’s the third question? And tell me something personal about that person? Or that what do you have a relationship with that person cuz I think we have a few of them. That would be kind of fun to chat about.
CJ
Yeah, I was actually reflecting on this quite a bit this week and had the opportunity to chat with some others that are going to be on this podcast too. So super fun opportunity to kind of dive into that a little bit. There’s a lot of methodologies and a lot of just techniques that I follow or will watch and then try to integrate into my practice. But there’s a handful of individuals that I’ve met either in person or we’ve had a live chat over the phone or FaceTime or zoom or something and I consider these individuals, my coaches
Michael Hughes
all on pause. Listeners, every coach should have a coach. I want to say that again, every coach should have a coach if you don’t have a coach, you need to go hire a coach.
CJ
Yet seriously, I it was one of those things it was almost like a hidden my ego. I should know these things. But, but then I started to dive into some of them if it doesn’t meet the individuals behind them, and the heart, the passion, the excitement and the vulnerability even, to just have an open conversation about what they’ve discovered, and I’ve had conversations with some people that it’s like, they kind of push something on me. And I don’t really consider them my coaches, I just consider them somebody I might learn from. Yeah, but I think my coaches, I mean, first and foremost, I gotta give credit to every single coach that’s come through Gymnazo stores, because that’s where I’ve learned the fastest the most and felt the deepest kind of within myself is exploring different methodologies and practices that we’ve learned from the outside and brought those techniques or those strategies and even moreso the principles into our training, talked about them, and then watch every coach, apply them differently and find success. And that was like, that was such an inspiring moment. And set of moments for me is like being able to bring something from another coach that I’ve learned from bringing it to our space to a group of coaches collaborating and working together with hundreds of members on a weekly basis, and then continuing to evolve our practice to better serve our clientele. So every single coach that’s come through, and especially the current team that we’ve got, right now, it’s just it’s amazing the things we’re able to apply and understand the more we just put it into research and development, we, I mean, really treat this facility and our people like each their individual protocols, they’re each individual case study. Yeah. And so that being said, as I go into each of these coaches, and this certainly is not all of them, but I think it’s it’s they’re the handful that mean the most to me right now. And in my practice, and in my consistent development of my emotions.
Michael Hughes
Yeah. And then real quick before we get on the list, like another definition of coachmen show, is like, my dad always told me, you tell me your five best friends, I’m gonna tell you what kind of man you’re gonna be. Oh my god. That was like, Cool. It makes sense, though, right? You tell me the people that you surround yourself with, especially as a coach your bid your bid on your own island, you know, is off save that that topic. But you know, coachmen ship is the ability to bring people around you that maybe don’t speak the same language, in fact, maybe speak the opposing language, but they can still be your ally.
CJ
Ya know, that’s awesome. We there’s so many things that you write down in this podcast, that’s great. Most recently, I just completed the steel mace flow. Level one with Leo savage. And I’m going to be honest, when I first started pickup, I bought a mace, I saw some of the mace stuff. And I was like, that’s pretty cool. And that picked it up. And I was like, this sucks. Like, I felt really vulnerable with the mace. But I went to the course I was like, I’m just gonna, I’m gonna get through this. And I’m gonna feel it and try to understand it more, because I see a lot of people throwing the mace around, but I’m looking at it from more of a biomechanical chain reaction, and how it applies to gravity granted extra force mass momentum. I was like, this kind of cool like tool to, to understand but Leo brought me see pulled me into like the epitome of the expression of steel mace flow, not just the movements in the art techniques. Yeah, the art of it really, and the heart behind it, the heart of the art, basically. And minute, it blew my understanding of my practice, or just into bits. I was like, Okay, what have I been doing, you know, I’ve been practicing movements and these things, but he helped me understand that there’s a story with every movement that we do. And sometimes that story is just to get a sweat just to work out just to be aggressive. Sometimes it’s to slow down, be meditative. And other times it’s, it’s a whole string together of different emotions and parts of our day and parts of our life. That means something a lot, mean a lot to us, that we put into expression through movement. And we use that tool or that movement to show what’s going on internally. And I’m still piecing this together, but essentially his, it boils down to a masterclass flow that you learn at the throughout the course that’s like basically eight pieces put together. That tells a story essentially, of and I’m gonna butcher this but basically is March are a step forward in life. And then you step backwards, sometimes you get knocked back and then there’s a squat and you have sometimes gets you low. And then essentially, it goes into you have to be a warrior. And sometimes when you get knocked back, you got to fight forward, and then you’ve got to reestablish your center. And then once you’ve got your center again, you start to branch out in different directions in these steps. And then you go into this diamond flow that’s very structured and beautiful. And then it goes into a Gosh, a knight’s shield and you hold your mace up like a shield, and then you put it into this power Archer that goes into these other motions, essentially, and when you finish that, knowing that story, it feels so much different than just completing the route. But you have to put the reps in to be able to tell the story. Otherwise, you’re so focused on telling a story and your body is not able to communicate and coordinate. So I give a lot of props to Leo to bring the depth into that practice. And really the heart of the art, like we said, pull you into what you’re doing every step of the way, because it always means something. And you don’t need to get so caught up in that. I mean, that’s a good part of the practice, I think, to visit. But it’s also overwhelming for a lot of individuals. So Leo, as a coach for me was, was powerful and is powerful currently, because now I’m able to carry that into other athletes and share that story. And when I see them excelling in their motion, now I can start to bring in more depth to their practice that wow, this means so much now it becomes less work to do it now. It’s like a part of your life. So thanks, Leo. And then I had to share with you guys Yeah,
Michael Hughes
Honestly, I was one step behind you and your description because I felt that eight step flow I’ve done it certainly not the quality that Leah would say good job. Well, he would say good effort. I’m sure he would. But not from from a master level. But it’s really cool to like, you look at amazing athletes, high level professional athletes, their job is essentially almost effortless. Yeah, I’m really actually studying drivers. At this particular point. I’m just something I’m just really interested in. To watch a driver take a Formula One car. Schumacher is the new thing on Netflix, but I’ve been watching it, the dude takes cores out 150 miles an hour. Like the reaction time that just the flow, and I notice turning a wheel, but it’s way more than that. And like these dudes are fit, they’re mentally fit the stress for two hours non stop doing that kind of stuff. But then looking at that, that runningback just like literally Jukun people out of out of their shoes, and it looked effortless. It’s the kind of the heart of the art like they know motion so well. They could just it’s like pulling, it’s like pulling a wallet out of their pockets. Like no, I got that. So really cool when I when I can see like a flow that is more than just the mechanics. It’s more than that. It isn’t mechanics, of course. But it’s the art. It’s the art art form.
CJ
And that’s great. Speaking of art, I another coach of mine, Jared Cardona from Orlando or from I think Orlando, Florida. Got a training spot out there on the gym. Crazy trainer crazy trainer got sheet he came out here the west coast and first time meeting him in person and you could feel the energy as like this guy. This guy carries a presence. That is very I get chills even talking about like just he’s such a good dude and has a whole backstory and I hope you guys go check him out. But I consider him one of my great coaches because he showed me kind of what’s possible with a kettlebell. And there’s a ton of kettlebell people out there. I don’t want to put Jared in the spot that he’s the kettlebell guy. But he’s kind of the kettlebell guy. He’s he’s getting flips cannibal round is he’s the crazy trainer, you know, and just watching him throw this 40 pound kettlebell around, I’m like, Dude, I can swing it, I can swing kettlebell pretty good. But this thing’s flipping around in the air three or four times and he grabs it. And then does it again and again. And again and Nick, two minutes, we’re like that thing never hit the floor, he caught a perfect catch every single time while turning his body taking the steps, closing his eyes, winking and smiling at the camera, and then coming back and like what is going on, and then not just being able to do that, but then being able to share with others how to get there. Obviously, it’s 1000s and 1000s of reps and intentional reps, but he just created a step by step, kind of beta testing of flow. It’s called the crazy eight. And it’s eight pieces as well, but with a kettlebell. And it’s more of a story of moving through a tree, he came here and we kind of told him the movement matrix, he applied that in a way that made sense to him, based on what he knows about steel mace, and then created the Krazy, eight flow, and involve lunges and swings and presses and got cool names to like the helix and the AC DC accelerate, decelerate and the the reverse like it just it’s like just these things that make sense when you’re doing this. So this motion feels very beautiful. But starting out, it’s very rough. And so he kind of helps to piece those parts of the flow together so that when you practice, it’s now eight exercises, right? You practice one exercise, that’s gonna be a full body one, practice exercise two, it’s a full body when you practice exercise three, you get good at each of these, and you kind of know the names of them and how to flow through them. So now he’s using a language so that you can communicate to your body and basically the download. Here’s the name of this motion. Here’s the parts of that motion. Now go practice it. This one’s called the helix. Just keep doing the helix and it’s basically rotation, press drop, rotation, press drop, and so you get multiple reps and an understanding of where you’re going with it, but then attaches it to another directional swing. So it starts to move in the matrix and in the grid. And matrix size is a kettlebell swing. And it’s something that we do in group training, but we don’t actually put it into a flow. So we kind of that we coached him, he coached us, in a sense, we collaborated together. And man, he created a really cool flow, I could have created that. But that’s again, that’s the coach’s mindset you kind of create with what you know, and what you’re learning. And you continue to put r&d out into the universe, he posts that now somebody else thinks of something entirely different. It creates a whole nother pathway. And I think that’s what we do as coaches is. You know, Coach, Mitch says the bridge has two sides, it’s built from two sides, you know, you got to have one side of a bridge on the other side of the bridge. But as one side is better than the other, you just got to know how to cross you got to get there. And so sometimes coaches sitting here and the athletes sitting here, and there’s just no bridge built, because you’ve been doing this for years, but you don’t know how to communicate it. And the bridge is the language, the bridge is the sentence structure that bridges the pieces to get to that stage. And everybody can walk across the bridge differently. Some are gonna run across it, some are gonna walk cross it, some will crawl across it, some are afraid of heights, but they’ll still get across that bridge. And I think just giving props to Jared on that, that it really up my kettlebell game and brought me a lot more joy in my practice, because I let go of the kettlebell like getting that first kettlebell flip. I was like, oh, there’s such a rush. And then he’s like, oh, yeah, you could do a double seals like a double. I barely get the single, flat. He’s like, Oh, show us your thumb. And like, oh my gosh, it’s like these little cues, these little pieces that by coaching others and sharing with others, we learn together. And now the cues that he gave me, I’m giving them and not even kettlebell stuff, I’m giving them in Viper stuff, and mace, and may stuff and like, I was taught these things, I didn’t just absorb it. It’s a coach sharing with me what they know and what they’ve learned, and boiling it down to a couple words. And then I can use those words to share an intent of what my body’s supposed to experience.
Michael Hughes
So yeah, you’re building really cool. And just the whole concept of of just bridge like Mitch said, a great job. He’s like, it’s really true. We have knowledge that we’ve acquired. But it’s it’s nothing inside of our head, it’s good for our personal practice. But if we’re here to train and to guide people, as trainers of of a movement, we have to share it. So how do we make that bridge happen? How do we, how do we do that? analogies, metaphors, different life scenario, stories, little hands on application, no, move your hips this way, or do that way, or little tips of thumbs and flips and wrists like RMT ropes, like, don’t throw up your arms. That’s the only way I know how to throw up like no throw with your feet. It’s like what I can do with my
CJ
feet, don’t move your arms move without moving.
Michael Hughes
And so all these things are very abstract. But it’s really the quintessential definition of movement movement is abstract. And for those kettlebell throws out there who are very dominant hip hinge errs, and that’s how you throw a kettlebell. Yes, that’s how you can throw a kettlebell. But there are 1000s of unlimited ways you can also throw a kettlebell that shouldn’t be said no to. And that’s obviously causing injury or screwing up that person, right. And, you know, there’s,
CJ
that argument is like, this tool is designed to do this, like, Well, okay, it was designed to do that. But look what it can also do that thing, you can do so many more pieces, and I totally get like how you’re shaming the kettlebell, you’re shaming the practice of it, but understand, there’s so much variety and variability out there. And that’s how the mace or the kettlebell or the sandbag was created was a lot of just research and development and then like, Okay, this is what we’re gonna go with this, this worked. And then create a program around it so people can understand how to use it, but then giving permission to explore beyond that. I mean, it really isn’t about the equipment, the equipment, just stuff and hands slash says this, actually, yesterday she she posted something and it was like, I’m learning how to use my body and not have to rely on the equipment or something along those lines. And it’s, it’s so true. You know, Gary Gray, I think in in dt, say, you know, the best trainers don’t need any equipment. They just need a room with four walls.
Michael Hughes
said the exact line today actually, I was training a guy in a squash court. Yeah, no, it was it. That’s all I can do this.
CJ
That’s awesome. That and that is so powerful to like, during that pandemic, last year, virtually to virtually let me say that no, nobody had their home gym set up at all. And so we still had to program full body movements that involved lunges, squats, push ups, Poles, reaches lifts, locomotion jumps, all that good stuff, with no equipment, or maybe just finds me around the house. But I felt very confident programming for because I want to share this about two other individuals that I really admire because they learned they taught me how to communicate with my body in such a deep level with tension that it helped me position people and then cue them into specific tension that you could get stronger and feel like you’re lifting weights without using a pound. Well your body so using your body weight Using mass momentum and using different verticality and different horizontal so it’s like combining grids, toots, 3d maps and just spherical awareness, and Jim nozzles, program structure. And then using someone to shout out Chris Chamberlain and DJ Mikami. Strong kampsen In savage protocols, they created a course called cheat torque. Yep. And it was all body. But holy shit. Like, it felt like I was in the show like Dragonball Z and reversing Dragon was even it’s like, I feel like I was getting super charged and like my muscles were firing off, my body was shaking, and I was like, What is going on, I feel it would explode. But it was just this intense rush of energy that I was delivering through the coils and through different reaches in my hands. And then like you can reach your hand out in front of you. But you can reach your hand out in front of you open your palm and try to push your palm forward. And I feel that totally against reach there. But then there and it was like a change fascial integration. And I was like I’m sold on this. So I went to their chi torque course. And it’s certainly very different from any like movement course, because it kind of pulls in the fun stuff from Dragonball Z, they got cool little graphics and stuff to show you like these different positions, and they named the motions, but the biggest thing I got from it was like fire and ice. And what Fire and Ice really means in is kind of an it’s a, it’s a landmark on your body or landmarks. So like fire, I like to think it expand the front. And it’s like the back, your shoulders, the back of your hands, the the top of your outer glutes, your hamstrings, out of your knees out of your feet, and you’re pulling those lines back into a center point behind you. So it expands everything in front, and you just keep going. And then you try to transfer that tension to ice, which I think is more compression in front. So think about all those dots. But now the front of your chest, the front of your palms inside of your elbows inside of your core, the inside of your thigh inside of your knees it inside of your toes. So you’re flowing with this tension that is basically going from lordosis to kyphosis. Since you’re taking it from a flexion to extension, but you’re taking your entire body through an expression of extension, and your entire body through an expression of flexion. But at the same time, you’re integrating deeper intense and you’re accessing parts of your muscles and your your bones. And essentially your nerves that you maybe you’re probably receptors to that you’re just you’ve never communicated with and sharing that practice throughout the pandemic, using the cues that they gave me through this course. It was it was great. And in terms of the response that I got back from people, it was confusing and complex, because they didn’t have that language set downloaded. But we could start to instill it in them. And we did it as coaches like with anything that we learn as a group we share as a group. And it’s not every single thing, but it’s kind of the big takeaways. I don’t say it’s a lot of it, though. It’s a lot of it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, anytime we go out for a course go drop out, we come back and it’s like a it’s an hour, a week, maybe two or three weeks of just collaborating on that piece and maybe even longer, like so that she torque ever since I learned it I’ve I’ve always thought it every single time I move now like it’s almost like it’s always a feedback language that he’s communicating back to me like, Hey, okay, you’re in a lunge, ourself our eyes. It’s like, my body’s whispering to me, like, what are you trying to do? There’s no wrong answer. It’s just Are you aware of what you’re doing? I started to lift heavier weights with with more ease. I don’t wanna say I got stronger, I got smarter. And I like that. And then that’s what made me stronger. Now I’m incorporating more my body parts.
Michael Hughes
And that’s really cool. It’s like a download. Like, let’s take ourselves as Lily, computers and cell phones that we use. Now. You download a software, we can do that as as a human. We can’t do like The Matrix Neo status. Yeah, I get that one day. Maybe we’re getting there, I think I actually think we’re actually going there. But we can, but it may be a little bit different. But so now it’s like, I cannot walk the same anymore. My gait cycle has been forever changed because I’ve done enough rope clothes as an example. I’ve done enough. I’ve done enough a Matadors on a moped stick, which forces motion, which way more than, than rope rope does, I just can’t not walk with that swagger, I scan. Or if I’m not, I immediately notice it. And like, Okay, throw it in, let’s put put the gears in motion, and let’s make it happen. It’s really fascinating. It’s really good. It’s awesome. It’s awesome.
CJ
It’s almost like the the tool becomes your coach to in a sense, Oh, I like that. So there’s the coach who’s used the tool to help you and coach you through it. But once you have downloaded what they’ve taught you, that tool has more to teach you. You just were taught what this person used it for this coach to use it for me you see it with all different types of tools and people in different ways or might say it was wrong ways. It’s like, well, it’s just different than how you use it. And in some cases, yeah, there might be a lack of intent and action and alignment. Somebody may be intending to do something and get a really good hip hinge but there’s no hip hinge. It’s like okay, well now we’ve got to we’ve got to align your intent and your action, right. But I think as a coach, that’s what our job is to do is understand, what is somebody’s intent? And how are they acting. And that’s what we do as coaches at Gymnazo was we analyze a, we do a 3d movement assessment, and look at their entire sphere. And then we integrate a lot of like maybe type one type two swings, look at how the thoracic spine move and we want to do gait. Maybe they’re riding horses, so we’re going to put them in a position. But what we’re looking at is their action. But what’s already what’s going on first is their intent inside. So we’ve cued them, now they’ve got to cue themselves. So the language kind of has three parts of separation, right? From what we were told, then what we tell them, and then what they tell their body. And then what their body’s telling us, right, this constant feedback was so cool.
Michael Hughes
That again, and again, so what we have been told
CJ
is we’ve been taught from another coach woman, we tell ourselves, oh, even more, right? Because it’s all how we talk to ourselves, right?
Michael Hughes
Because we were taught, we were taught, we heard that, then what we tell ourselves, then how we tell it to others, how they tell it to themselves.
CJ
And then what we see, and then what we see, we see. So then we reflect on that. And now something goose coach goose came up with. It’s feel it No, it Viki fit I feel it, no it. And so what are we trying to feel? And what are we trying to know? What what’s always we’re always learning like, there’s, but when you when you feel it, you know, if if you know what I’m talking about? Yeah, I use the ropes, for example, you just figure out like, I feel it, I know it, but then you do it. And you do it again. And you do it again, you keep drilling like, Oh, now I feel it. Now I know it. But then two months down the road, you’re like, oh my gosh, now I feel like I thought I felt it those other two times. But now I feel it. And what is it, it is just your intent and your action becoming so aligned and in in sync and coherent, that you recognize the pureness of what is happening, which is just you moving in environment, and the environment is kind of moving through you. You’re not throwing the rope anymore, the rope isn’t throwing you, you’re throwing each other You’re dancing. And I think that’s kind of the the example for training. So what I always shoot for is I want to feel like I’m dancing. Sometimes I want to like I just want to get beat up. Like I just want to throw some heavy weight and have to grunt it out and feel defeated, but also worked. Sometimes I just want to be like that was effortless, and I moved today. That’s what I feel most the time, I just want to get to that point. I want to feel like I can just go dance with my body. And I feel like I’m doing a mace or a rope or whatever. But I have no equipment. And I walked into a joke about this, but I walked to the grocery store like I’m doing an underhand sneak. If you’re like What’s this dude? What’s this guy doing? frolicking through the desert aisle? Like I’m gonna get some ice cream?
Michael Hughes
I do I put your shopping cart. Yeah, I do.
CJ
I hope they think like what the hell’s going on? Because raising questions. And that’s that’s how you start to recognize it.
Michael Hughes
Yeah. That’s so classic. Using Costco, actually. Because as long straightaways
CJ
Oh yeah. Those cards little bit too tall for me. I really think it is about that kind of feedback loop of language and understanding that what we’re trying to do as coaches is to help the individual in front of us understand their intent, because there’s no wrong intent. It’s just not what you’re trying to do. Are you trying to make it easy? Are you trying to make it hard? Are you trying to feel like, are you trying to simulate gait? And I think it’s a big one is like, well, what goes into gait? We get into the principles. And if you know the principles of whatever you’re trying to do it, let’s say it’s just gait like you’re trying to move forward. You’re trying to have one foot landing one foots pushing or pulling, you know,
Michael Hughes
go somewhere with efficiency and effectiveness. I guess it really comes down to you know, a data point. Yeah, that’s your goal for most most people, but most people do it very poorly. very inefficiently? Yes. Right?
CJ
They’re effective. They got from A to B. Yes. Thank you. They walk in the building, but they’re hurting, walking. So how can What do they intend to do? Do they intend to walk better? Like that’s also a goal, I think intentions are better is a better word for than a goal? Because it goes like, oh, there’s an endpoint, where an intent is like, now you’ve got a pillar that you’ll continue to travel along for the rest of your life. And you’ll continue to refine it. What’s your intention here? Why are you training here? I want to lose weight. Okay, cool. What’s why you should start diving deeper into that goal. And then now you can use that as your starting point moving forward in any exercise. And that’s what’s most important is that now you have the intent moving into any exercise. You’ve now not just helped them get the reps but intentional reps, you know, what’s the difference between 10,000 reps and 10,000? Intentional reps? The effort? Yeah. The the, the mindset, the awareness, the focus.
Michael Hughes
It’s good practice versus bad practice. Both are practice. But I hate I would hate to have you 10,000 Bad reps, or in or lackluster reps.
CJ
Yeah, I think unintentional reps, you know, No, I mean sometimes just want to do something and come back to the ropes. But But yeah, but to me
Michael Hughes
that’s it’s like, you can be think you’re doing a good movement pattern but you’re not right like people like I’m gonna go for a run how many runners right but I love running I do my weekend runs, man but like mile 789 I got some pain, but I keep on running. Yeah, because you don’t have good movement and then it catches up to you around mile 789. Right? And that’s yeah, so that’s bad practice I’m sorry to say it. So let’s see if we can change into good practice. Now yes, mile 1011 12 before it happens and then 13, then your half marathon in it, you know, the body will get the job done right? We’re always going to get to where we want to go if you want to. But as a trainer as a coach, can we help bring that kind of coach worship to each other? Do we like wait a minute, what’s your intent, which are to the heart to say the right heart of the heart of the art?
CJ
Or the man hands?
Michael Hughes
But also like all these things, like how are you understanding that there’s so many different lenses that we can look through. And as a new trainer, at least for myself, I only knew how to look through one lens. And that’s what I say taught me. And that was a pretty shallow depth of field. Just saying right now it sounds shallow depth of field.
CJ
If you’re trying to go the deep end, you got it. I mean, you could you just jumped in the deep end but that’s like kind of like watching a bunch of Instagram videos and going like Oh, I know this stuff. Like if you know how to like walk from the shallow into the deep end, submerge and then get out and get back in. You have a lot of play a lot of room to move. And I
Michael Hughes
want to say this Instagram for the fitness person. You know, there’s a lot of injuries on on Instagram. I think people need to start realize that Instagram is really just people expressing their r&d. It’s not principles. I’m it’s not you’re you’re looking at a real you’re looking at a snapshot and live. It’s just r&d. And let’s not shame someone’s r&d, because they’re trying. They may they may be saying some bad stuff. I get it. I’m not saying everyone has great intentions. But it’s let’s just have that. I think we should all in this business and just that someone’s r&d. You may not like that brand. Okay, that’s fine.
CJ
Yeah. Well, you’re going to that but yeah, it’s subjective. And it’s it’s a it’s a lens into their experience and never as the full picture. Even if your intent is to share principles and stuff, which a lot of people do share some goldmines of stuff. Again, it’s only a piece of it because you’re limited by time and you’re limited by the size and by its it’s just a video or picture, right? You can start putting gifts and stuff on there and start putting subliminal things in there, which is pretty cool. But yeah, it’s r&d. Its r&d, you got to really go to a place and communicate face to face or have a live conversation have
Michael Hughes
these talks, like you’re talking about was savage with with Jared will always seems like you got to have that conversation because there are so many little hidden things, hence this word and hence this podcast is coachmen ship, what does that really really mean? It’s, it’s the community that we all work in. And it’s not you against me? Not CJ and Michael, but like you, you listen to me speak to you right now. It’s never it’s never that it was that in my mind. But I’ve grown out of that. I want to say that I’ve matured out of that. Now, I’m not saying those of you who still think that aren’t mature. But I think there’s an awareness piece that we need to share is that we are all trying to achieve the same thing. Human harmony in movement, say 1000 different ways you want. But that’s what it boils down to. We want to be healthier. And there’s now 7 billion people on this planet. How many of those 7 billion people work out regularly? Not as having been a gym? But do does healthy movement practice daily? And I say less than half, maybe a quarter? I don’t know it’s a it’s a poor number. And so, we have plenty of room to spare. There is a this rule of abundancy Abundance is the answer not scarcity. So if we can learn from each other, we can spread that news if you can join into this coachmen ship type of mentality, hire a coach learn from another coach Express maybe like to me, I’m much more of a science person, CJ, you’re much more of an arts person. Like I wouldn’t go and seek out. Cheaters torque. I love it. But I wouldn’t be what I would go to first. Right? You know, yeah, so that’s fine. That’s okay,
CJ
if we’re just got their own path, but we’re all walking a path. You know, like, there’s a path it’s got, it’s got its own principles, too. And if we’re on a path, we are limited to our path, right? But we can start to share other people’s pads and start to like, oh, you saw that little thorny bush, like what happened when you’re that one because I saw one of those over here too. AKA there’s the same injury that you’re dealing with. But it was a different scenario or different. It’s just different case study, but we can all learn from each other. I think there’s a lot of hiding of that information too and not wanting to deliver
Michael Hughes
it. That’s critical. Let’s dive into that one. Yeah, well, I
CJ
think a part of it is that we’re all afraid to be wrong. And we really prideful to be right. And when we find something that is a goldmine, and we’ve discovered something, we want to share it, because this was like, wow, so great. But what tends to happen when I see happen is an image, people start to follow that, like, that’s this is really working right? And it’s like, that’s the truth. That’s the answer. It’s like, no, no, this person discovered something that worked, and now sharing it with you. But there’s a lot of other discoveries out there that also work, but also for the same exact thing, but depends on the person you’re working with. And also, how’s that person feeling that day? Also, what’s the story they’ve been telling themselves before they saw you? Who have they seen that may have been another practitioner was really brilliant on a different path. But they were so stuck in what they were doing, that it wasn’t helping this person, because they just wanted to show what they were doing? Versus like, what is this person? That I mean, that’s the toughest question is to ask, what does this person need? And I think people are, I think, when we’ve discovered something, it’s also tough to say that I’ve discovered this, and this is how it works, because we just learned it. So now we start applying it in our own practice, and either we start sharing and then other people start exploring it too, and then it’s kind of takes off like wildfire, and doing all this is just the new thing to do. Or then somebody tries to steal somebody’s intellectual property, right. And now it’s like, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta frame it for my people, while this person is gonna frame it for their people. And we see that so much in this fitness industry. I mean, because we’re dealing with a lot of the same issues. And there’s a lot of ways to attack it. And there’s a lot of right ways. But we’re all speaking a different language, about the same things. And so it’s always gonna seem like somebody’s writing somebody’s wrong, because that language is gonna apply to specific people based on what they know or do not know. And so it’s important that I think I think we’re doing a really good job here at Gymnazo, with our ability to communicate what it is that we’re seeing that is true, what is really happening. We don’t need an MRI or an x ray, to tell us that, because what we’re looking at as a body moving through space, so if we didn’t have all this technology, could we help? Can we use our eyes differently, in our mind differently, to experience what the person is experiencing with their movement at a more thorough and holistic level than just our lens of what we know? Because if we’re, if we’re looking for something, we’ll find it, and then we’ll think that’s the answer. But it may just be that we’re, we’re kind of beating around the bush, and it’s like, oh, we’re not actually finding the root source of somebody’s pain, or maybe the root and maybe we may never find the root source, but we might be working in so many different routes, that that just creates a deeper experience of understanding,
Michael Hughes
right? Like, there is a problem. And that problem is a chain, we may we found the link to be found the beginning of the link, the end of the link, do we find the middle half, you know, like we have to like that’s how I was looking at it if I find and I can replicate someone’s movement, discomfort, their problem, what they’re coming in for their inefficiency, which is what I love about what I love about the body’s feedback source, it’s its own communication, language, pain is a language to each person, it’s thrown, somebody will have high pain tolerance, low pain tolerance for the cases, but it’s still their own language that they listen to. And and it’s not just pain to it could be just know that the motion just didn’t feel smooth. Because there could be from the performance side of things, things too. It’s like, Nah, I just didn’t get enough power. The ball didn’t sound the way it did in the mitt, when the catch or whatever the case is, you know, we all have our own language. But if we can replicate that pattern, then we know we can reverse engineer it we know is like okay, what does that pattern look like? And what are the all the different components of all the different joints in the human body broken down to three planes of motion, and it’s really cool. It’s really cool to have those eyes to see. Okay, that’s what I saw. Here’s what was happening too much. Maybe here’s what happened too little. And then here’s this fancy word that we’re trying to say I’m going to try to do it without butchering it. What is the neural fascial muscular skeletal system doing in that process? To I think, I think I got it.
CJ
Yeah, we use those words in the direction we want musculoskeletal neural fascial network. Yeah,
Michael Hughes
it’s a it’s like, what is that system doing? And is it doing it efficiently effectively loading and exploding and providing that person with the not just the physical, but the mental feedback that allows him say, yeah, that was that was good. And then how are we to say good or bad? It’s like, well, it’s just a huge spectrum. And that’s what I love about Mitch his comment. It’s it’s a bridge. Yes, spectrum is just a bridge. Where are you on that bridge? Either ends all right, maybe limited experience, because you have this whole span all the way across be called the kind of check, check it out. And if we can train someone through that spectrum, and snow how the body literally does that physically? I don’t know. It’s pretty. It’s pretty sweet. That’s why I love the mace I’ve, I’ve never taken a mace course. Do I practice the mace daily? No, weekly? No. Two. I highly respect it. Yes. Because I know what it does to the human body. And it’s really, really cool. It’s really cool.
CJ
It’s just a game of massive momentum.
Michael Hughes
Exactly. Yeah. Right, because
CJ
play with physics, yes,
Michael Hughes
it just all boils down to the principles of movement. And no matter what tool you use, if it doesn’t follow those principles, then I probably would call it not that good of a tool. But isn’t that what we’re supposed to here to do to figure out to build that better houses? Doesn’t matter if we use a hammer or a screwdriver.
CJ
I mean, we just we’re here to build more tools. We do as humans build more tools. We’re learning how the tools teach us and, and they shape us as much as we shape them. It’s kind of this kumbaya of like, Earth is here has all these rules and limitations, but within them, the possibilities are endless.
Michael Hughes
Yes, and tools are not a given. We’ve created those tools because we saw a problem. Like that’s the big thing. Like there are tool makers out there. We know a few of them personally. In fact, I think if we go further and your list cost Yeah.
CJ
Next I was gonna go through with David wack, I think it’s a good time because he he really dives deep into the principles of locomotion and throwing and kind of thinking about like the hunter gatherer motion like think you got to be able to run you got to be able to attack. So it’s kind of fight or flight. And wherever we got from David, I watched a lot of his videos before I went and did the walk method qualification. I was like this guy. Hi. I have no idea what he’s gonna give me but it’s always entertaining. And like, I don’t know where he’s gonna go. And I have no idea what he’s like in person. Like maybe it’s just a character. He’s playing online, because I’m seeing very different versions of him because also
Michael Hughes
the time that you were you watching him too.
CJ
Yeah. Oh, man. And so I wouldn’t recommend the qualification got to meet him and Chris, and Alex actually Alex from landmine university, so onto him too. But that crew very respectable human beings, you can see that they’re, they’re very innovative. And they’ve definitely thought through and practice a lot of what they thought about specifically, David, just getting reps doing what David was doing reps of what he’s talking about, Chris applying it directly to strengthen power, and even Alex as well strengthen power like traditional methods, but apply them with the coiling core, the limit force elastic, the double down pulse, like these, these tools, like the pulsars, the rope and elastic band, I now see them completely different. Because I’ve, I’ve experienced the difference of not knowing what was going on with it. Three days later, having an idea and coming back and knocking off five minutes off of a trail run. without ever doing the outs just three days was like a week difference. I cut off five minutes off my max speed. And that kind of like opened my eyes going okay, what? What did they teach me? Like, what was it that they’re sharing with me, and it was a lot of simple cues. And like little rhymes and stuff here and there that that stuck with me that I use every single day when I’m coaching somebody, and it happens almost instantaneously, because it’s almost along the lines of feeling it knowing it, like I had to go feel it from them, coaching me through the rope and teaching me how to understand directions of North and South, East and West. And then that gave me like this. This. I don’t know what what a cartographer uses, but maybe like a map maker, I felt like I was missing making a map of my body in reference to my intent of where I was trying to get my body to go. And there’s a lot of metaphor and conceptual things I couldn’t quite understand. But having practice, what they were preaching, I have come away with a lot more gains in my coaching. And now I’ve completely expanded how I can coach using different tools and use those tools to help people other things that they’re struggling with. Like okay, I put a rope in somebody’s hands like I don’t want to do the rope stuff. It’s like okay, but listen, I just need to see where you’re moving. And I need to, and almost like the rope helped me see how they’re left and right sides were communicating. Yeah. And because they coached me to using my right and left sides and just breaking down the pieces of each technique to where it felt like I was learning the alphabet. And then I was forming words and then learning how to say those words. And then I could make sentences based off of those words. And then the sentence is turned into a paragraph. And now it is I can write it in cursive. And I could write it in all capitals. And I can write it in slow motion, I can write it in fast motion. That’s like what it is with the rope. But that’s now what it is with every other piece of equipment. So it wasn’t just like learning the rope. It wasn’t just learning limit force elastic, it was just learning to pulsars. It was learning a principle and then being able to carry that over into there. So use these things for whatever you already do. Just now apply these tools to what you are currently doing. And it was like permission to go. We’re going to teach you everything. We’re going to teach you the foundations and then want to know more we can go that
Michael Hughes
is to me some of the best stuff out there is we need to not be saying here’s how to use a tool. Here’s the principles of what the tool shows the human body. Now go use it that. And that’s why I’m not a big fan of like, oh, let’s go to No, I’m sorry for saying this one, because I’m just using it as an example. But let’s go learn, let’s go to a TRX. One, they’re gonna show him how to use the TRX. Net. And I want to know how the body works with the TRX. And vice versa. Now, they may say, that’s what we do do to great, I haven’t been to a terrorist, and I’m sorry, to as an example, I don’t want to learn how just use this tool. Tell me how the human body functions with this tool, how this body can relate to other aspects of other tools. Versus just as again, I’m gonna say the word that’s narrow scope of like, This is it.
CJ
But and then it’s like, if we only went the Y route to the will never have anything tangible to attach it to right like that. So it’s like, where it’s almost recognizing where you are as a coach to do you gravitate towards more the logic and the reasoning, and the XYZ, and the 123. And ABC? Or do you go to the artsy, show me something cool. And I’m going to try to do it right now like that. Yeah. And then I’ll learn along the way, right, and we have two sides, like it says, left brain, right brain kind of mentality for the sake of a better way of describing it. But when we can merge those two, that’s Eastern Western philosophy put together, that is the unknown, with a whole bunch of knowns, it’s like reduction versus expansion. And then where can we meet in the middle, and the supplies your right and left sides applies the top and bottom. And I feel like that’s what what that has done very well. Very good job of doing is putting it giving you a center pulling you out of it, pulling you forward, pulling you back, pulling you right pulling you left, pulling you up, pulling you down, recognize kind of where you’re at. And here’s the technique, just keep practicing and drilling the technique until you’ve you until you understand it. I think it goes with like martial arts to like, you go into any learning any kind of patterning or a certain technique, you do 1000s of reps of that, now you’re able to put expression into that. Now you’re able to feel your body pushing and pulling versus just reaching a hand forward and back, you’re actually pushing a hand and pulling an arm, and you feel like you actually have an invisible enemy on you, right. I think we all just need to put more reps in. Some of us are trying to figure stuff out too fast. And I was there. I was like trying to analyze everything. And like, I just want to put the reps in, I just I got to do the squats, I got to do the lunges. And that’s what I learned with steel mace flow is just do the do the fucking apps, get them done. And then once I did the reps was like, Oh, I can stop thinking about the rep, I can now start thinking about the rep like I can feel the rep, I can be the rep, the mace is now not an is not separate from me. It’s an extremity. It’s one that you can really you remove and then come back, you can let go of it, letting the kettlebell letting go the kettlebell was crazy, because I thought of it as separate from me. But now as I’m throwing, I’m learning new things. And I’m like, Okay, it’s separate from me still. But now there’s things that I’m doing that I can be looking over here and flip it around, I don’t have to think as much about what I’m doing, I can now pull myself deeper into my experience of what I’m what I’m doing. So there’s two ends of it, you got to put the reps in. But then you’ve also got it you got to reflect on the reps. The next day, you’re probably gonna feel pretty beat up. But what’s that? What’s that narrative that you’re telling yourself? Oh, man, that was a shitty workout. Oh, man, that was a really good workout, it beat me up. Or did like I learned a lot from that workout. What did I learn? Well, I did a lot more reps, my glutes, my glutes are a little bit beat up. I mean, I did a lot more lunges than I normally do. And you start to play around with these things. And I think that’s also the job of the coach is to help frame that narrative. In a way that’s the most beneficial to the person writing that story. Because that that mindset can shift everything in your in your experience when you’re training. And it can also take you out of a out of a plateau, or it can put you into a plateau, because you’re just doing the same thing again and again. And again. Well, you got to get bored a little bit to start to expand outward. But if you’re always doing crazy stuff, and you’re never just you’re never bored, you’re just like always on, you’re gonna get overwhelmed, you’re gonna get overheated, you’re gonna get beat up. So you have to play that fine line that yin and yang of attack and sit back. And then if you can, you can notice where you are in that, well, maybe you’ve spent a week kicking back. Now you gotta go get some, maybe you’ve done too much yin yoga, maybe you need to go push some weight, but you’re probably afraid of pushing weight. Or if you’ve been pushing weight, you’re probably afraid to go sit in a yoga because you’re gonna get bored. You need something to keep it active. And I think we my mindset is we’re always playing with this balance of that what that center of whatever spectrum we’re looking at is, right, we’re looking at 3d maps or a lunge, forward and back, and so on about the center. It’s about going through center, how far forward how far back, side to side. It’s going through that center and then settling in that center. But knowing you can always go away you’re, you’re always ready. You’re always prepared, but you’re never like super on edge. You’re just ready.
Michael Hughes
Can’t drive a car neutral
CJ
was downhill
Michael Hughes
can propeller car for you? Sorry, I had to do that. How are we doing? timewise
CJ
I think we got a good 10 more minutes. Cool. Awesome.
Michael Hughes
So this is this is somebody who kind of the more I look into this and just kind of absorb this conversation is a few kind of key key points. There is a there’s an artsy fartsy and there’s an engineer with a pencil sharpener. You know, like there’s these different types of coaches, right? There’s the separate different methodologies that may have different languages, different description words, different slang words. That may some may be threatening, because you’re doing a warrior one, but you were taught at Olympic weightlifting and use different terms like what’s a warrior one? That sounds sounds too weird, you know, let’s do it. But listen, hang clean and jerk, you know, just even the even the the vibration of me saying those words are different. And then you have these different terms that like that are really like, Oh, what is your tensor fascia Lata? That’s a totally different language. There’s Latin and Greek terms about muscles. Don’t even talk about the pacinian corpuscle and the Golgi, Manzoni I mean, come on, like, jeez, Louise, those are
CJ
pieces of fatty.
Michael Hughes
It’s an intimidating space of language. And what I get a lot of is that like, I need to differentiate myself. In the coaching calls that I do with our amazing MDMC, it’s coming up a lot is like how do I differentiate myself from others? And you and I kind of look at that as like, well, let’s No, don’t do that. Let’s come together. Let’s be let’s be a collective training force. Because there’s going to be the pots is going to be the cliques. It’s kind of like we’re all back in high school, there’s going to be these different cliques in this industry. And they’ve been there for a long time. A long time used to be kind of bodybuilders in the Jane Fonda is like those are two clicks. You know, in fitness right now, there’s all athletes and sports like that. Now, it’s really branching out a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. And it seems like there’s more division than anything else, like I need to be able to be on the bar person on the person does yoga with a little bit of a kind of vinyasa flow, but I don’t get into the handstands. That’s to, you know, whatever the case is, what I love is I would I want to help people out, it’s like, I think we need to come together collectively. And because we can all learn each other’s craft, we’re not going to be perfect everything, we’re going to have our own passion. And the last coaching call I had is like, I want you to know, pretty much everything. So you are never intimidated by anything. But your passion is going to direct you into where you go. Versus you only know this one thing. And now it’s forced to be your passion. That’s not enjoyed. That’s not a joyful job. That’s why I believe there’s so much happiness in fitness versus career. Because like, Oh, I did Zumba for a while. It was fun. I loved it. But now I hate it. Or because that’s all you did. Versus understanding. There’s so much more what have you Zumba with with the RMT rope? Like, come on? Like I would do that. I would really do that. And those are fads. You know, we’re talking about more about methodologies versus fads, well, I guess are kind of the same thing, but in a little different, different different way. So like, I want to express to people that like it’s important that we can speak a combination of these languages. Now we have a language that we use that we learned from the gray Institute. And it’s a nomenclature. Now, I’m not saying it’s incense, it’s a way to define movement. In this space, like most universal Yeah, like medical people have their own language. It’s very important. You go to a hospital doctor speak to other doctors and same language. I think it’s very important that we take upon that ourselves, too. We need to have a language is universal. So I can talk to different people. And what I really loved about taking like mace flows or or kettlebell swings, and more certain baseless is like, wait a minute, let’s use that term, that terminology, but let’s convert it to how we speak. So the cool thing is you brought a new language, but you spoke to it in our language, or in our universal language, as we like to call it right. And we all we all pretty much instantly got it. And it was really, really cool. It was really cool. So I want to invite coaches to kind of have that collaborative and it’s we’re not in competition with each other. There’s way too many customers out there for us to be in competition. Just wait. It’s just no way. And the one thing that we can do and what I really like about here’s me geeking out on the auto business is that you go to an auto mall, they’re all next to each other. Every single car manufacturer is next to each other. Don’t don’t build a business next to mine. No man can make it easy for people to come to. Like honestly, I would mind building a spot that had yoga urine SARS there and some CrossFit here in Gymnazo. Here, great, bring it on in. Because it’s cool to do CrossFit once a week and yoga once a week and Shimon also 3d movements, that one’s like that. That’s cool. That’s called variety of movement patterns. And so there’s so much out there, take this combination of different methodologies, please understand them. hire a coach within that field, I am curious if you have any more coaches that you really want to speak on. And then understand that there if we can all come to a commonality of our of our gains and our passions and our intent, we’re going to get more clients, we’re gonna get more prosperity in our movement culture, and our businesses will thrive more, because we’re not always trying to steal from one another because he’s the only one who does that. It’s like nananana, we have so much more to gain, just the general population doesn’t know. They only think through science out there, they only think there’s physique building out there, the only thing bars the only thing that they can do, when they can really do a lot more than that, but they get a little older. And then they have friends that that do bar, when really they can actually do a a 10 pound may slow. Like, I don’t know, that’s to me. That’s where my whole mind mindset goes is that we need to be a coachman ship community.
CJ
Yeah, I mean, I want to touch on that real universal language before I pop out today. Because I think that’s something that it’s hard to grasp what that means. Especially if you are more of a flow artists, because you have names for your movements. And you get to know the movement pattern, and which I think is brilliant. And it’s something that I’ve been incorporating more into my own practice and trying to come up with names of stuff like, Oh, what did I just do it that felt really cool coming to do some stuff in the rope course, you’ll see the dance of the Dow, like, what does that mean? We’ll go check out the rope course. But essentially, it’s opening up if you are in a process of thought that is like, Oh, I, I’m doing this wrong, or that’s the wrong way to do something. And you see somebody do Animal Flow and, and you’re an animal flow practitioner, but someone else is doing something similar to your animal flow, but you’re looking at how they’re not quite doing it. Right. I challenge you to have a second thought that goes, Are they intending to do what I was doing? Or what I think they were doing are they trying to do something entirely different, very similar to like somebody doing a toes out squat versus a toe in squat, if you are a max squatter, Mad max out your weight, you probably want to toe out a little bit a heel lift, like, like your shoes are a little wedge or Anita. And then you see someone else who’s doing pretty heavy weight, but their toes are slightly in and their feet are narrow. And you’re like, oh, you know, you could definitely go heavier. If you go toe out wide feet. It’s like what were they trying to go max load on their squat, or where they tried to inter rotate their hips and preload their glutes so that when they squat, they won’t be going as low and not as heavy, but they’re intentionally loading up parts of their body that they weren’t loading up on there to toe out. If that thought blows your mind, go do the MDMC course seriously, to blow your mind even further, like you just fried be in all the best ways. But the language that that we use, and from grades to that is a living document. That’s what I think, in this place. It’s a living document, it’s a living language, it continues to expand and we’ve added it started out as like one and a half pages. I think we’re at like four pages of nomenclature now of the things that we’re able to communicate as coaches, these are much quicker. And these are just acronyms, by the way, acronyms. And but also like we now have a steel mace flow language, there’s a standard set that comes from SMF that we use, like something like a march step like what is that? Okay? Well, the March step is actually, if we had to break it down into our nomenclature, it’d be mace at hip under overgrip. And to same side and to your lunge, to ballistic curl up, opposite side foot posterior tap squat to ballistic curl squat. It’s like once you just say March step, right. But if we wanted to break it down and teach somebody, those things we don’t just say marched up and do this, you can learn it that way. And some people learn much faster that way, which is awesome. But if you want to be able to expand that out beyond just that step, and you want to say I want to I want to do it this person is capable of it’s not, I want to see if this person is capable of steel mace flow, Master Class flow. I maybe want them to go there because it’s a cool progressive overload route or progressive route of more and more complex things. But maybe that’s not what this person needs. Maybe this person needs to continue to do that March step in multiple dimensions. So now you can extrapolate beyond that and say in seven ante and post your step, we’re going to take a common frontal plane lunge to an uncommon frontal plane tap. And what does that mean? Well, we have the nomenclature and the basis to say that and it’s exactly what it is. It’s in the frontal plane and it’s a step and in the frontal plane can go left or right. And each foot can do left or right. And so we’re taking the truths of what our bodies are capable of. And this is why the the sheet continues to expand is because we learning that we’re more and more capable of more and more things. And things were never been thought of, and never been done before or never been written down. And we but we want to remember what it was Well, what if you don’t film it? How would you write it? Everybody’s gonna read it differently. But if you have a common nomenclature, you understand your 3d space. So now we’re taking, we’re talking about the observational essentials, we start with the environment. What’s your environment? What equipment are you using? Is it a box near you? Are you near a wall? Are you on sand? Well, there’s a common, we can’t deny those things. Its ultimate truth. What is the environment? What position are they in? Or they’re in Warrior? What the hell does that mean, in different practices? That could be a different position, literally. If we say, Okay, well, what are their foot? Was their foot doing? Do we have a common language that anybody who reads that word? Or that acronym could put themselves in that position? Where version of it
Michael Hughes
right? And even in a real or relative space? Yes. Which is orthotics huge,
CJ
real meaning actual numbers, relative meaning their choice, the clients choice? So we think about position and all the positions you could be in as a human? Like, how the hell do we organize this? Well, let’s talk about the basics, right? This is one of the podcasts and we’ve talked about it before. And it’s also in the course, but you could be seated, standing, kneeling, prone, supine, sideline, hanging, and then any version of those things, right. Anything else? No, I think that’s pretty much it. But there’s versions of that. So then we start talking about triangulation, like okay, well, how far their feet spread, spread apart? Or how far apart? Are their hands spread apart? Or how far are they going to step? which direction they’re gonna go? How high? Are they going to do it? So they have coordinates triangulation? Right? I mean, we know these things. But in terms of our listeners, understanding that nomenclature, it’s, we’re trying, we’re attempting to put together all the possibilities in a very efficient way of communicating so that you can always find them, find it, find the foundations, and then go beyond it right. Without the foundation, you have nothing. But art, your art,
Michael Hughes
it’s being able to define, if you can define it, then you can almost create it in a different way. It’s like you have to get down to physics to the level of the equation. And that’s the science piece, right? That’s not art by any means.
CJ
It definitely is a reductionist side of it. Yeah, it is one side of it.
Michael Hughes
But exactly, yeah, but that’s the point. There is the western side, there is the eastern side, both are great. Both are limited in their singularity approach. That’s the way I look at it. Some people may say You’re completely wrong about that one. Great. We’re going to agree to disagree. But I think there’s more to be had. And this is the this is kind of the really cool thing is like, in the 60s, it took us a decade to get to the moon. Literally one decade to get to get the moon. What if we stopped there? Done? Like we had to figure that shit out. So hard, massive science, massive technology, massive r&d. Fitness is no different. We’ve maybe got to the moon in our respective way. What if we stop there? Like, no, there’s so much more that we could do the human if we have said to ourselves that we figured out the human body, and all the ways that it can train. I’m gonna hang up my hat. Like what else? What else do you want me to do?
CJ
I guess we just have to train anymore. There’s nothing else.
Michael Hughes
Yeah, let’s put it to a robot and the robot can go do it. Now. I’m gonna go on vacation. Yeah, no, there’s for continuous, the Everly flowing. That’s why it’s a living document. And that’s why it seemed like but if we can get to the grass roots, if at all the definitions, right. So I totally took where you’re going with that. So we have the position, the next step is going to be the action.
CJ
You got, you got action, you got drivers. And then we have the stuff that people go into, or the trainers go into almost immediately, which is great for fitness gains in terms of progressive overload and getting stronger and breaking through plateaus. But it’s certainly not all of it. Like there’s the training side. And there’s the movement side, I think the training side goes rate, duration time, how fast can you go? Or slow? Can you go? How long can you do it for? And how much can you load up? Well, there’s a limit there too. But also, if we just keep stacking limit on that, we’re going to approach that limit and it’s going to hurt or we’re gonna hit a plateau that just I’m not passionate at this anymore. I’m not making the gains. I was ones Megan. But if we start going other routes, like we change the triangulation of those things, we’re hitting a plateau and we change up those observational essentials.
Michael Hughes
That’s what started with squats was to ask cost because there’s a different limit. There’s a different max to be to be reached.
CJ
In everybody’s, I think the people doing strength training are saying, you know, like, it’s about strength, and it’s about the foundations and the pieces and it’s yes, but there are so many foundational pieces that are unaddressed. Because it’s too foundational. It’s too ridet reduced. Yeah, I’m going to be I want to go enjoy a very cat myself, I want to join a very chaotic life. I want to go jump around on rocks and sprint downhill as fast as possible and slip around and almost die and catch myself and live life on the edge. How am I going to prepare yourself for that just doing those things? Or can I be in a safer environment, push the threshold, then go out the crazy chaotic environment and come back. And I think not everyone wants to go that route. But many people are in the very limited route of now. I can’t go do these things. And then my trainers telling me I need to do it this way, this way, this way. And that hurts. I’m just not going to go training anymore obviously can’t train. It’s like, no, there’s always a success threshold. But if you’re going just strictly foundations of strength and not foundations of this individual and where their mind is, where their heart is, where their words are, and you can’t align with that, you’re probably going to run out of clients, or you’re gonna be too specialized that, okay, now I only do this, this this, okay, you’re gonna attract clients, but are you attracting enough? I’m sure at some point, you become a master of it, where you like, Okay, you own that. So like, there’s certainly a place for that. Right? Like, Leo, you crushed it, the mace right, you do great stuff, but you may not want to do other stuff. But he also does like kettlebell stuff. And he also branching out the great artists are also doing other things, the great masters are also doing other things, there’s never an end,
Michael Hughes
we got to bring in music, how many different artists how many musical artists change their sound a little bit per album, and I got to look at, you know, queen, you know, the very popular band because of Bohemian Rhapsody, they change their sound. And like they kept evolving with the time and there’s so many amazing, great hits, because they have that we are no different. We are no different. There are musical chords and scales, and instruments that play science. But then there’s the art to it. How do you blend those things together?
CJ
And help the person that is seeking you out? Find that for themselves? Right? Maybe they want to do what you do. But at a certain point, they’re going to be like, now I want to kind of do this? And then if you’re not that person, are you going to refer them to to another great person? Or you’re gonna have to be forced with the dilemma of saying no, no, we’re gonna do we’re gonna do this actually. And then you lose, your client will usually use your athlete, it’s not about gaining or losing athletes, I think that’s secondary, it’s more so about continuing to help others express themselves through movement. And it is a language it is an art. And yeah, we just continue to talk in, I think a similar way, or at least have the foundation of of that movement speak, we can all branch out much further. It’s like if you if you learn the AFS, nomenclature, the MCMC nomenclature, it will only make your practice that much deeper, that much more thorough, that much more effective and expressive, because you’ve, you’ve opened the box, and now it’s a giant sphere, and other spirits keeps expanding, the box is compressing, and you keep getting better, you’re really good. But can we keep keep keep getting that sphere to expand, compress, expand practice, now, you’ve practiced these these skills, and these reps, now your sphere is at a resting state much larger. And then you start to hone in on some new skills and like that streak gets bigger, and then you start to really practice it on a few skills, and that that sphere comes back and compresses, but it’s larger than what it once was. And we just keep expanding that out. I think that’s how we all grow much more effectively together in this industry.
Michael Hughes
And I want to hit it from a different angle is that as as all coaches right, we are really into this, this concept of a collective right? We have a discord on if you want to go check out the movement collective. But really, as a coach is like we there’s seven of us in this building. And we are a collective of coaches, we all learn from each other, we literally have different skill sets each one of us, but we can, but we’re all kind of learning handstands at this particular point. Why? Because one of coaches doesn’t every day. And I’ve seen enough reps of it, that I can actually be better at it, I guarantee it. I guarantee it. And I’ve even even tried one in 25 years, I don’t know. But the cool thing is that like if you’re by yourself as a coach, you don’t have anyone else to really connect with besides like a YouTube video that you’re watching or this podcast, by the way for in this podcast, this long, URL kind of people, I’m just gonna say that. And if you want someone to chat with just even get a repetition idea of what it’s like to have other people that you can just vibe with, connect with ask questions to dive in deep deep with you. Please reach out to us. Go to gymnazo.edu. Find us on on Discord, find us on Facebook, find us on YouTube, with cases we are eager to talk to more coaches to say let’s come together. We’re not going to necessarily, you know, say here’s a client for you. That’s not what we do. But we’re going to give each other the right the means and the resources and the understanding to really push this box out. Because we’re going to Mars, we’re going to go to Mars, that’s going to happen this industry is gonna go further and the word has been I’m not saying I don’t think we’re the pioneers that we are we we hire the pioneers. We’ve hired the wax we’ve hired the Gary Grays, we’ve hired these people that the lemme Pacino’s, these people that are masters of their trade, who are kind of on their own island, unfortunately, but they would say they’ve learned from people before them. And we’re just refining, refining, refining, pilling, better technology, better technology. I’m not talking I’m not gonna get there on my own CG is just going to do it. He can do and you’re going to do what you’re going to do. I would really like to us to work together. Just sayin. That’s what coachmen ships all about to me. Yeah, hi vibes. Well, cheers. Another podcast done. Enjoy it. We’ll see you guys next time peace pay off I hope you guys enjoyed today’s episode. And if you did, please share it with your fitness obsessed friends and peers who are also navigating this world of fitness and trying to succeed the trends and misinformation. As you guys can see this podcast is basically a masterclass for trainers wanting to level up in their coaching skills and their fitness business model. We launched this in 2020. Because you and your fitness tribe deserve to see an unfiltered look at all the aspects of what it takes to stand out as a next generation coach, and build a successful fitness business sell, share far and wide. And please, when you do do me a favor, take a screenshot of this screen and share it to your social media accounts and use the hashtag Gymnazo podcast that’s hashtag Gymnazo podcast that way we can see you and share your posts with our audience. And finally, when you’re ready, go to the next level as a coach or in your business. And to reach more people, please go check out gymnazoedu.com. We have put together the best 90 Day coaching program on the market for trainers wanting to become a masterful practitioner and build a business that gives them the freedom and impact. So let us help you do just that. We have online training and one on one coaching to guide you through a full 90 Day certification. We even get you training our clients live because it’s always better to work out your kinks on someone else’s clients than yours. But we promise you this, your clients will be blown away by the transformation our program will help you make you’ll be masterful at a whole new level and part of an incredible community of coaches worldwide, taking their skills to the next level. So if you thought this episode had some fire to it, and inspired you to take action, wait until you see what we deliver on this program. So just go to gymnazoedu.com. And we’ll see you on the other side. Remember that turning your passion for fitness into transformation and sustainable business is critical to reaching the people and lives you were put on earth to help it matters and truly can make an impact in other people’s lives. So hope you do that. Keep sharing a passion and we’ll talk to you soon.
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