If you ask anyone who’s worked with me, they’ll probably tell you I don’t pussyfoot around when it comes to coaching.
That doesn’t mean I think coaching is about making somebody feel like shit. I actually think that’s lazy coaching. Anybody can yell at you, make you feel guilty about what you ate last weekend and send you home with a meal plan you’re going to follow for nine days.
Good coaching requires knowing when somebody needs support and when they need to hear something they probably already know but have been avoiding.
I’ve been on the other side of this myself. I know what it’s like to be unhappy with how you look, frustrated with yourself and aware that your habits don’t match the person you keep saying you want to be. Having someone tell you everything is fine doesn’t fix that.
So if you were my client, here are five things we’d probably talk about.
1. I’d Pay Attention to Who You Spend Your Time With
“You don’t see a lot of fit dudes in a group of fat ones.”
Your environment influences you. Think about how much of your behavior is considered normal because everyone around you does the same thing. If your friends drink four nights a week, drinking four nights a week doesn’t seem excessive. If everyone orders takeout after work, takeout becomes dinner. If nobody around you trains, skipping the gym doesn’t feel particularly strange.
The opposite happens too. Spend enough time around people who train regularly and eventually training on a Tuesday is just what people do. You start talking about what you’re cooking, what you’re working on in the gym and what you’re doing this weekend that involves leaving the couch.
I’m not telling you to dump your friends because they don’t have abs. I am telling you to look at whether your environment makes the person you want to become easier or harder to be.
2. I’d Tell You to Stop Looking for a Hack
There’s a point where learning more about fitness becomes another way of procrastinating.
You can research the perfect training split, compare supplements, watch videos about morning routines, argue about carbs, buy a wearable and spend six hours learning about Zone 2. Meanwhile, you’ve trained twice this month.
Most people I coach don’t have an information problem. They know vegetables are probably a better choice than fries most of the time. They know protein matters. They know they should sleep more. They know sitting at a desk all day and doing nothing afterward isn’t helping.
The hard part is doing those things often enough for them to elicit results.
There are absolutely smarter and less-smart ways to train and eat, and part of my job as a coach is making sure your effort is pointed in the right direction. But eventually the research has to stop and the reps have to start.
You don’t need another hack. You need to do the work long enough to find out whether the plan actually works.
3. I’d Probably Tell You That You Don’t Need to Add a Drug
There are people for whom medication is medically appropriate, and that conversation belongs between them and their healthcare provider.
What I’m talking about is the tendency to jump straight to the most aggressive solution while skipping over the habits that are going to matter regardless.
If you don’t know how much you eat, you rarely hit a reasonable protein target, your weekends undo everything you did Monday through Thursday and most of your meals come through your front door in a paper bag, we have a pretty obvious place to start.
Learn how to eat in a way that supports what you’re trying to accomplish.
That doesn’t mean chicken, broccoli and sadness for the rest of your life. It means understanding portions, protein, hunger, food quality and how to make decisions when you’re eating somewhere other than your own kitchen. Those skills continue to matter whether your goal is losing 15 pounds, adding muscle or maintaining the progress you’ve already made.
That’s why nutrition coaching at Velocity is about teaching you how to eat in your actual life rather than handing you a temporary diet and hoping you never get invited to dinner again.
4. I’d Tell You to Go on the Damn Date Night
Please go eat the lobster roll. Have the fries. Have a drink if you want one. Order dessert with your wife. Enjoy it.
A plan that requires you to stop doing everything you enjoy is a shitty plan, and you’re eventually going to stop following it anyway.
But we also need to be adults about what counts as an occasion.
Dinner out with your wife on Saturday night is date night. DoorDash because you didn’t plan dinner on Wednesday isn’t date night. Neither is the leftover pizza in the office, the drive-thru because you were running late or the handful of your kid’s snacks you ate while standing in the kitchen.
You can make room for food you enjoy without pretending every impulsive food decision is “balance.”
That’s a distinction we spend a lot of time teaching at Velocity. Your plan should have room for a life. It should also be structured enough that every night doesn’t somehow become a special occasion.
5. If You Have Kids, I’d Remind You They’re Watching
One of the easiest things to do when you become a parent is put yourself at the bottom of the list and call it being responsible.
Your kids need something, work needs something, the house needs something, and training starts feeling selfish because there are 47 other things you could be doing with that hour.
I don’t buy that.
Your kids are watching and learning to see what adulthood looks like. They’re watching how you eat, whether you move your body, how you talk about yourself and whether taking care of yourself disappears the second life gets busy.
And beyond setting an example, being in shape lets you actually participate in their lives. Run with them. Play with them. Coach the team. Go hiking. Spend an afternoon outside without needing three business days to recover.
Same goes for your dog, by the way. That lunatic would happily walk another two miles.
At Velocity, we want you training for more than what happens inside the gym. Being stronger and fitter should make you more capable everywhere else.
I’m Always Going to Shoot You Straight
I’ve seen what happens when people spend years pretending they don’t care about something that bothers them deeply.
They avoid pictures. They make jokes about themselves before anybody else can. They hide under clothes they don’t particularly like wearing and get increasingly frustrated because they know they’re capable of feeling better than they do.
I’ve been there. I’ve lived it.
So I’m never going to tell a client something just because it feels good to hear. I’ll tell you when I think you’re overcomplicating things, when your expectations are ridiculous, when you’re doing better than you think and when the thing holding you back is a behavior you need to own.
But I’m also going to help you do something about it.
That’s the deal at Velocity. We’ll meet you where you are, build the plan around the life you actually have and coach you through the parts that get hard. I’ll shoot you straight because I’m in your corner, and those two things should go together.
Want to learn more? Visit our training page here.
