The Secret to Creating an Elite Level Workout Program
To watch the full video, click here: https://youtu.be/vrbUBaqk9f0
What’s up coaches and athletes Michael Hughes here movement specialist and CEO of Gymnazo Edu In this video, I’m going to talk to you about the biggest opportunity that has missed in trainers programming, we were all taught by basic personal training standards and certifications, how to program and it basically looks something like this, do the warm up, throw on some complex compound movements, then do some isolated maybe some unilateral movements right after that, throw some core instability, and then add a throw some cardio just to kind of wear him out, then cool it down. That’s pretty much what it comes down to. Now, while that is the basic structure, it works, right. But if I was a teacher, I would give it a key at best, because there are some more important components to a programming that are missing from the structure that I’d really like, you know, so you can take it to the next level. So in this video, I’m gonna talk about what you need to do to bring up your programming to a B, if not even an A plus. But before I get into that, please make sure to like and subscribe to our channel so you can stay up to date. As we continue to shine a spotlight on all the things that we see that either aren’t working anymore in the fitness industry, or that we could frankly just be doing a lot better with was a simple shift in perspective. Thanks for doing that I really appreciate you guys support. Now someone who owns a seven figure fitness facility, I’ve learned the hard way about how important it is to have a seamless and efficient process for programming. Our ability to collect data and actually apply that data in our programming is one of the secrets to our success. And the opposite of that aka, the lack of ability to apply data can be the demise of a trainer. So first, I want to talk about how you should be collecting data, the two most important ways to collect data is one doing a client intake process. And I mean an actual designated session to sit down and to listen and to really know who is in front of you. Super important. And one thing I actually didn’t do, in the beginning part of my career, I just thought I would learn about them as I go, you do. But that means a programming is lacking from the beginning. The second most important thing is implementing a proper movement assessment. Now, you may all do movement assessments, but you’re probably doing a performance assessment, meaning how many push ups pull ups how fast they can go, right? Basically, the performance of their physiological systems were in terms of movement, but I’m talking about a movement assessment. So I’ll dive into that. But let’s first talk about a real amazing intake process. So why is it important to do an intake process? Well, first, we have to know what data we want to collect. Right? The most important things is what are their wants? What is their movement history? Meaning, are they accustomed to doing athletic endeavors? Or did they grew up in the more of the arts in a sense, you know, acting and playing kind of more activities that weren’t movement esque, or where they have a huge history of soccer, right? You will, if you know those things, you know that their bodies aren’t going to be hardwired, in terms of how to actually move on a soccer field. Or if they do a lot of acting or a lot of kind of instead the arts and so drawing and kind of graphics, you know that their mind thinks like that a little bit more start to kind of collect that reference to how to speak to them. So knowing their movement history, or lack thereof, super important. You also need to know, their physical demands or limitations that they have. What axes have they have they been in, you know, car accidents falling out of a tree, all these things that really start to play into the long term movement perspective, or lack thereof, of their joints and of their bones. You also have to understand and collect their mood, their mental limitations, you have to understand like, what are their roadblocks in here? Not here. But do they believe that they can actually get better? We actually asked that question in our intake, do you actually want our help? Seems like a silly question to ask. But we’re enticing them to start thinking about, we’re here to guide them. Also really think think about what are their life or self imposed belief limitations, maybe they don’t have good transportation, maybe they don’t have the financials, maybe they don’t have this concept that I can actually put two hours per week, three hours per week into my training, things you should know about from the very beginning. And of course, those self imposed, maybe they think my knees always been this way. I don’t think it can get really get better. So they’re not even believing you can even help with us with this process, or I’ve always just been overweight. And that’s just my genetics. And I’m like, Well, wait a minute. I think there’s many things, other ways to think about these things. But it’s really about how do we use that data, right? Our job is really to connect the dots between their mind, their body and their soul, as I mean all those three things, even though we are hired as physical trainers, we know that that physical part is connected to the other two words that I’ve used. This all starts with being a good listener. Remember, they have lived in their bodies their entire life. And all the answers are in that body that you will be training. Now they and you have the awareness to see what their body, their mindset and their beliefs are telling you. Well, it really comes down to your ability to listen, to analyze, and to problem solve, and connect to your intuition. Putting all of these things together makes you a practitioner that can kick it off from the right foot from session number one. And it all starts with a good proper intake questionnaire and listening process that you develop and provide. I know why it’s so important to use a movement assessment. Well, we all know that we have to start from the right point, it’s really important actually write any road trip, right? where you started from, that’s kind of the most important thing, where are you going, and can you come back home. So we have to know what they’re already successful at, it’s really be a huge waste of time, if we only knew what they couldn’t do, then we’d have to spend all of our programming time basically doing trial by air and say, Oh, I can’t do that. Let’s do this, try and do that. And so a good movement assessment is really fine finding out where they are already successful. So you can start your programming based upon those movement patterns and those situations, because we really have a fundamental tension network within our entire body, meaning we have patterns of how our body actually moves. So if we have this fascial sling going from one hip to the other shoulder, or from one side of our body, down the entire point to our heel, we should probably know those things and test whether they have the ability to move through them. Because essentially, what we’re going to be doing is rewiring neural pathways to produce better movement. Remember that we talked about, like the software hardware, someone’s previous movement history, if we don’t understand those hardware software pieces, then we’re probably well training some inefficient movement patterns, that may actually dig into poor movement patterns, as we put more load more weight, and more time into those patterns, which is basically just going to damage the joints more and create a unsustainable practice, which therefore takes them away from your service. So we need to find the dysfunctions, we need to find where their body has limitations in joint patterns. And that’s really, really important to do in all three planes of motion. I’ll talk about that a little bit later. And then really, constantly to find out, Is there too much tension in some parts of the body, or too little tension in some parts of the body? Now people may see that as strength and weaknesses, right? I think it’s much deeper than that, such as how strong or how weak you are. It’s a tension network of those different connective tissues. The most important part of an entire programming process is the assessment part, because we have to think about this one phrase, the test is the exercise. And the exercise is the test. This was given to me by a mentor of Gary Gray, who really broke it down kind of like this. If we do a test, let’s call, oh, maybe an overhead squat, right? I’m just getting on down, coming on up. Right. And that’s a really good movement assessment. Some people out there F. And I don’t know why it was costing like that, you know, this is a really good thing. Let’s test that. But then we do all these exercises to make that better. Why? Why is that important? If the test is the exercise, and we start doing exercises that kind of look like this kind of Valentine, let’s just do a little reach. Oh, that looks good. Oh, yeah,
that’s a good move right there, oh, I can really see what’s going on in that shoulder, or that hip, we’re really not getting a lot of extension there. And we start doing exercises to make that test better. Or we start doing drills that have nothing to do with that test than why are we doing them? What does it really telling us? Or we’re just putting someone through a pseudo way of moving to make us feel better, that we know what’s going on with their body. Those motion patterns have to be connected to a greater purpose, a greater understanding of what they want. Not saying that those moves are bad. They’re not bad. But the question is, why are you doing them? And is your programming actually going towards them? Or is your testing actually going towards your programming? Just a question I want everyone to think about. Because we have some interesting movement systems out there that are probably misleading us from other processes. And this is why a movement assessment if you’re not applying it, what you’re doing, then what’s the greater point? So we think about a movement assessment like this, we actually use 3d maps. And in this movement assessment, we really love it because It goes after fundamental movement patterns from an upright position, that test mobility, and all of our 66 vital joints, and all the stability and all of our 66 vital joints. And this is kind of way we can think about it, I want to see how well someone can access the tension of all the anterior aspects of their connective tissue. And I want to see how they can do that from a decelerating standpoint, to an accelerated standpoint, or from an E centric to a con centric muscle contraction. So if I have someone do a big, big a lunge, and I take their hands and read your way on back, I am really testing my posterior, or my back leg and the front part of that back leg compared to my front leg. And I’m seeing how well can it go through an extension phase and come back to neutral? All right, fair enough. There’s another way I can do that, too. I can take it off to the adductor and through the lateral cord, and I will see how much motion I can have. And bring it back home.
Alright, what am I testing? I’m testing that angulation line, and all the muscles that go with it. angulation line? Fair enough. What about a stability standpoint? Well, I can take an open up and see how much external rotation I can hold through my hip joint, through my knee through my foot and how much rotation I can get through my thoracic spine while holding that stability. Well, okay. Why is that important? Well, because I actually rotate through my thoracic spine while standing on one foot or loading on one foot all the time. So it makes sense, why would test something that is that general, but has that much purpose behind it. So it’s really important that we think about all these different things. And I really hope that makes some some sense to you. And if it didn’t drop a comment below with your questions, because I’m here to help shed some light on how we can be better trainers and better serve our clients and not also running ourselves or themselves into the ground. Because we don’t have the right systems in place to be successful. When you when your clients win, and the ripple effects really go out to the entire world. So remember, you being your best self can make a big difference in this world. It is by basic inspirational speech of the day. So let’s get back to the programming process. Okay, so you’ve done your movement assessment. Now, how do you apply it to your programming? Well, this is how we use the data from our boom assessments. And our programming specifically for one on one and semi private clients where they all have individualized programming. In the movement assessment, we’d have found that they had either had too much stability, or too much tightness in certain systems or turn or turn joints, or they had too much mobility or too much slack in their muscles. Now you can simply say this as strength and weakness, but I think it’s deeper than that. But similar to the idea of phasing, here’s how we will build a program outline for those two different scenarios. Now get in terms of phasing, our initial intention is that we want to start them off by getting them back to efficient and or pain free movement. Not everyone is in pain. But certainly everyone has inefficient movement patterns. Before we have to get before that we get them into strength training, power, cardio, etc. That’s the big piece of this puzzle that I want you to add to it, we have to find efficient movement patterns first. If we don’t, then with our strength with our cardio with our compound lifts with the isometric with our core with our cardio, we’re only training and then into a worse of a dysfunction. Now, that’s super important, because that’s why you’re moving assessment is so important, why you need to find where there are. And that’s why we use three maps with a few other things attached along that which I’ll talk about in a bit. Now, here’s an example of a program that weird, right from an outline standpoint, if a dysfunction that I found was stemmed from too much stability, too much tension in a greater part of their body, and a greater part of their movement patterns, such as taking this motion pattern, right there is basically taking that motion, right. And that is a move from 3d maps. What am I really testing with Alan? Well, I’ll dive into that in a quick second. But our programming outline would say, Okay, we probably need to play some soft tissue, if they can’t get through this range of motion efficiently or with or without pain, probably supply some soft tissue, we probably need to then go and stretch out that chain, right that movement pattern chain, and then provide some stability progressions per joint or per muscle system to tie it all back in and make it stable, right, so they’re too stable. We can’t move enough. Let’s lengthen out through soft tissue through stretching. And then restabilize into a to a new software movement program. Right? We’re rewiring those nervous systems. So example if someone can’t get through this pattern here, they just get locked up to the thoracic spine. They have good hip motion, but they just can’t you just can’t get that one. But from over here, they just kind of whip all the way through. But they kind of get locked up through the trunk. And you have to have eyes to see that, then what we’re going to want to do is think about, well, why is that important? Well, that rotation into the thoracic spine to the right, is the exact same thoracic spine rotation that they would use when they go into gait. And it’s super important that we understand that when our right foot comes in front, our trunk must rotate to the right, because our pelvis is going left, and our trunk is going right. So if we don’t have good elasticity through our left side, that allows that rotation to the right, then we’re gonna have any efficient movement patterns. And that could stem all kinds of problems from lower back pain, to knee pain, to neck pain, or just from a lack of performance as they get higher and higher and higher up your periodization programming. So it’s kind of a thing that we need to break down. First and foremost. Alright, what about another example? What if dysfunctions show up from a stem have too much mobility, too much slack, or weakness? If you want to call a call it that? What would our outline look like? What’s three phases, first, we want to go to isometric priming, right, we want to bring tension back to that area. Or then we want to do kind of localize ISO tonic tension building isotonix, the fancy word basing our normal movement patterns, but it’s localized to that joint. And then we want to bring it into the greater system, full body isotonic, or dynamic flows, or movement pattern drills. Some examples of that would be, well, let’s say, we don’t know if someone’s pelvic core is tight or not, right. But that’s a lot of issues that come up with with people is that when they go through, let’s say, a forward lunge, they’re first forward lunge, and they do a big ol hand raise over top. And when they do that lunge, their knee just kind of goes like, Ooh, a little bit of wobble, I’m making it pretty dramatic here. But you can kind of see that, you know, they gotta have that. And when they do that, gosh, my lower back kind of bugs me a little bit and, you know, doesn’t really bug me going into it. But it kind of kind of gets me when I push back out, you know, that kind of explode phase. All right. So we say well, what some possibilities here and as we dive into it, and we say that someone doesn’t really have the ability to load appropriately through their front, or posterior hip, front leg, but back hip of that front leg, and they get too much kind of knee diving in. And it’s just excessive, right? We want to have a little bit right, but not too much. And they don’t get that that glute to have enough tension. Well, then that tension is basically being shot from the foot through the knee, in the femur through the pelvis and into the lumbar spine as a probability so they don’t have enough tension. So this muscle is basically the glue, saying, I’m bypassing my job, hope the lumbar spine takes that lumbar spine says what cash I guess I’ll have to take it because something needs to find stability. Long story short, if we can bring some tension into that zone, and start to kind of even get some basic localized motion patterns, and then start to build to more dynamic, more progressive patterns, that glute starts to say I’m involved with I took a lot of leaps on different drills, they’re in RAM paths, a lot of scenarios, but Just following on that one, then we can start to say, Ooh, wait a minute, I need more tension here. So long story short, we can flow from the other side of things. So being a phenomenal workout program that comes with time and experience. But you can cut down on a good chunk of that learning time by understanding how to intertwine your different tools to turn them into high functioning machines, right. They both deliver life changing results for your clients and also makes you some money. Applying the data you’ve collected from your movement assessments to your programming is one of the biggest areas of opportunity I see for trainers, I just give a pretty high level overview of how our process works. So if you want to get actually more into the weeds with this, click on the link in the description to check out our MCMC program where we give you the science, the outlines and the application and the systems. They’ll take your program to a place that you didn’t even know can go you could even have the next seven figure fitness business. Who else right? Again if you’re interested in diving deeper and want to replicate our process with your own business, click on the link in description below to book a call with one of our members of our team. And the last thing Don’t forget to like this video please and subscribe to our channel for more eye opening perspectives on how you can get past all the BS out there. Base your training on timeless principles and really reach your potential as a movement coach. Thanks for watching. Cheers.
Leave a Reply