.jpeg)
Saying it outloud!
Saying it outloud!
Car Chronicles EP 5: From Cynicism To Coaching: How Beliefs Shape Fitness And Life
Ever watch a room full of people choose each other and feel your faith in humanity click back into place? That’s where we start—on the way to a wedding—using that surge of hope to tackle the bigger engine behind real transformation: beliefs. We trace how early conditioning, social feeds, and lived identity create lenses that can either unlock progress or trap us in outdated scripts. When your beliefs define you, change feels like loss; when they guide you, change becomes a skill.
From there, we take a scalpel to fitness myths. Cardio is a tool, not a fat-loss plan. Sweat suits do not burn fat. Cutting entire food groups often breaks adherence more than it breaks plateaus. We talk caloric deficit basics, sustainable nutrition, and why occasional high-sugar meals don’t ruin a consistent week. You’ll hear how targeted programming turned a weak point into a strength, plus a client who dropped 50 pounds in three months by following a clear, phased plan. The thread through it all is simple: accurate beliefs predict consistent behavior, and consistent behavior compounds.
Choosing guidance in a noisy industry can feel impossible, so we show you what to look for. Seek coaches who live the method, explain trade-offs, and tailor the plan to your context. Authenticity isn’t a tagline—it’s visible in sleep, training logs, recovery habits, and the willingness to update when better evidence shows up. We also draw a firm line between personalized coaching and predatory pricing, explaining why fair structure, education, and access beat shiny packages and handoffs to assistants.
If you’re ready to upgrade the beliefs that hold you back and build a foundation you can trust, hit play. Subscribe for more straight talk on mindset, nutrition, and training, share this with a friend who needs clarity, and drop a review to tell us which belief you’re rewriting next.
Follow us on IG:
@leos_ftiness_adventure
@Stephmoralessfit
@teamvalhallaathletics
Apply for 1:1 coaching and get the results you are looking for: https://www.valhalla-athletics.com
Join our free Facebook group:
https://m.facebook.com/groups/804195770472212/?ref=group_browse
Yes sir. You know what that means. Back on the road. It's been a while. I'll be honest with you. I've been doing a lot of work in the background, so I haven't been taking as many gigs. And I'm okay with that. But off to a wedding today, which are my favorite things to work. And simply because it helps me heal internally. Why? Because weddings are a time where you get to see humanity in its pierced form. With all the stuff going on in the world, people still chose to together and to celebrate one another. And everybody's happy, smiling, joy, no negativity, no violence, just happiness. And it really helps with the cynicism coursing through my veins. Believing that everybody's in it for themselves. So I'm grateful when I have an opportunity to work security at a wedding because it helps keep me grounded and look at the bigger picture that you know, mainly just made me not everybody's in it for themselves. So that's why I like working at weddings. So I try to take those when I can. Now outside of that, the business has been picking up. Okay. The business has been picking up. And my clients are making amazing changes. If you haven't seen on Instagram, check out my Instagram and check out Ashman, who lost 50 pounds. Okay. 50 pounds in three months. Guys, the progress is insane. He looks like a completely different person. And we're getting down to the nitty-gritty with his spiritualities. Spirituality slash. Why is that word so hard to say? Slash mindset. And now that's what we're honing in on in the second half of phase one. So well actually he's moving into phase two. So there's that. But he's killing it. So I want to say uh congrats to him. And with that, let's get into this episode today. Because this is a very important episode. And I know I probably said that about literally every single episode because I feel like everything I talk about is pretty important. And that is beliefs. I touched on this in the podcast before. But I want to touch on it here and go a little bit deeper. Because I think that this is the foundational thing that keeps people from changing. And that's their beliefs. So when you're a child, most of your beliefs are from your family and how you're raised. And then what you experience when you go to school and stuff, you know. Not very many of your beliefs come from a worldview. And then as you grow older, and through social media, well, I guess now through social media, children are exposed to worldviews, and they form a worldview very early based off of whatever they're consuming. So whatever your family may be, so say your family, I'm just going to use Republican and Democrat as an example. Say your family is a Republican, and then their child is probably going to consume more Republican sources. And vice versa, if they're a Democrat, they're going to consume more Democratic. Or if they're liberals, then they're going to consume more liberal sources. And being exposed to that early on, you develop your worldview and your belief system. And from that belief system, it's going to influence how you interact with people. And it's going to have an influence on your personality. Now, the issue with this, and why a lot of people have trouble changing is because you've grown with these beliefs for years. Like this has been what you have believed for years. And say someone exposes your belief to be a lie and it's not the truth. Well, most people are going to be combative and defensive about that because they have literally believed it for so long that they can't possibly imagine a reality where their belief isn't true. And now they are resistant to changing because without that belief, they lose a core part of their identity of who they are. Like I said, it influences your personality. And so they think if they no longer have that belief or beliefs that they will no longer be the same person. So it's hard for people to change. Now, we can talk about the same thing with your belief system when it comes over to the fitness side, okay? Take me, for example. I was born in the 90s. So I grew up during the time of bro science. And when there wasn't TikTok or there wasn't YouTube, there was bondak forms where we had to get all sources of information from. And it was literally jam-packed full of bro science. Now, come to find out, but 30 35 years later, that some of the bro science was correct. But a lot of it was just people just talking about their lived experience and what worked for them and having people try it. So in that era, one of the biggest core beliefs was cardio is the best way to lose, to burn fat. And now we all know, well, most of us know, unless you still believe this, that cardio is not the best way to burn fat. Cardio is just a tool to help assist in burning calories. And a lot of people don't want to accept that as fact. So they continue to incorporate hours of cardio when they are overweight or trying to lose weight to lose weight. In reality, we know that you need to be in a caloric deficit to lose weight. That is bottom line. Cardio has nothing to do with it. Being in a caloric deficit has everything to do with it. Not true. So wearing a freaking trash bag to run in, or wearing a hoodie to run in, or wearing a hoodie to the gym, or wearing a hoodie to the sauna, you're not doing anything. There's no reason to do that stuff. People believe that in order to lose weight, you need to cut out whole food groups. So carbs, proteins, or fats. Most people say that you got to eliminate all carbs, or people will say that you got to stop eating all sugar to lose weight. And we know that that is not true. Because I promise you, I have a cheat day every weekend, either Saturday or Sunday. Like today, we're having it tomorrow because I'm working, obviously, right now. And on my cheat day, my wife and I consume easily 200 to 300 grams of sugar easily. And I've had no issues going from 230 pounds to 200 pounds and currently sitting at 214 pounds from 228 pounds. So I have no issues with losing weight. And my normal, my normal meals have about, I'm gonna say, based off of my fitness pal, have about, I think it's 50 or 60 grams of sugar. So you don't need to be cutting all this stuff out. The issue is, and here's the issue, okay? There's so much noise in the fitness industry that people get overwhelmed and don't know who to believe. And when you don't know who to believe, you cannot form a good belief system. Because your information needs to be uh trustworthy in order to form a good belief system. Because you don't want to form your beliefs based on lies. So when everybody is saying something online, at the end of the day, who do you go to for your information? And the people you go to are the ones who are authentic. And how do you how can you tell? Okay, look at the ones who preach something and live it. Those are the ones that you want to get your information from. Okay, you I get it. Everybody will post pictures of their clients and manipulate the pictures or do whatever they whatever they're doing to the check-in pictures and put the dates and put whatever. You know, it could be true, it couldn't be true. So you can't just base how good the coach is based off their transformations. You need to look at their life. What does their life look like? Because I'm a I'm a firm believer in if you can't apply it to your life, you shouldn't be trying to teach others how to apply it to theirs. And my client, the greatest compliment that I could possibly receive as a coach was from him. And he said, I chose you because you're the same person online that you are offline. And to me, that is the greatest accomplishment accomplishment, compliment that I could possibly receive because it shows that I'm authentic, that I'm not just spewing stuff and doing something different behind the scenes, that what I'm telling you guys, I'm living it day in and day out. So I know that it works. Like I know that my programming works. And for example, um, just recently, one of the guys in the gym never met this guy. He comes up to me one day, and I was doing the machine uh lateral flies, and he's like, bro, you're huge. He's like, your delts are crazy big. And that was a shocker to me because my lateral delts is one of the weakest areas of my body that I've been trying to bring up for a while. And I recently changed my programming to focus more on bringing up my lateral delts. And the fact that he complimented them told gave me all the feedback I needed to know that what I'm doing is working. So it's it's it's it's it's really, really simple when I'm doing what I'm telling you guys to do. Like, I don't just tell you to do something and then I'm not following it myself or haven't followed it before. Like, with all the protocols, the gut protocol, the flush, the hormonal protocol, I've been through them. My wife has put me through them. I did the three months gut protocol. I did the two-week flush. I have done what I'm asking my clients to do. I can get the seven or nine hours of sleep every night. I got proof of that. You look at my whoop score, my sleep. Bro, nobody on this planet is beating me in the sleep score, okay? I get my gallon of water every day. I get my macros in every day because I eat the same thing every day, which is what I ask my clients to do to make it more sustainable. And then you don't have to worry about the headache of actually tracking everything. I do this. So, what am I getting at? Authentic. I don't just preach, I do what I'm telling you to do. That's what you want to look for when you're choosing somebody to build your belief system off of. Because if you find a person like that, that means they're rooted in their beliefs, and they are willing to defend those beliefs. Now, granted, if something pops up where one of my beliefs are wrong, then I'm 100% open-minded to updating that and changing that. But you need to prove without a shadow of a doubt that I'm wrong. And when it comes to certain things uh in my coaching, like my training and how to diet and all that stuff, it works. So I have no reason to believe that my belief in how to correctly diet someone and how to build muscle and strength is wrong. Because I can do it in my life, therefore, I know I can apply it to someone else's life. So, as someone who is trying to get into fitness and who just is overwhelmed by all the chaos going on online, all the noise, all the information, and you just want to find somebody who you can listen to. I recommend finding one person to get your information from. Just start with one person, build a foundation of understanding of how certain things work, and then once you have an understanding, you can branch out and take in more information from different sources. But until then, you need to focus on building a foundation. You need to focus on building a foundation in training, building a foundation in nutrition, and building a foundation in spirituality and mentality. Because without a foundation, you're always gonna keep falling down into darkness. Okay? That's not what you want. You want to be able to fall down and be like, oh, I know how to do this, and then you can get back up. But without a foundation, you fall down, you can't get back up. Which is why shameless plug, Valhalla Athletics, our online fitness coaching is structured in phases, okay? We we we lay it out so simple so simple for you guys, and it's broken down into phases, so you don't have to struggle with anything. You're never left in the dark, you're gonna know what's next. We're gonna give you the we're gonna give you the steps on how to do everything. All you have to do is simply follow our guidance, and we will lead you to where you want to be. Like I said, my client lost 50 pounds in three months. How did he do this? By listening. He's currently right now eating 2400 calories, sitting at 214 pounds, and still losing weight. His goal was to get to 215, 215 in your system. He hit that in literally three months. So when you have a coach like myself with a belief system that is rooted in lived experience and being able to apply it to my own life, therefore, I can coach it correctly, then you get progress. It really is that simple because I can articulate the program, I can articulate how it's supposed to go down because I live it every single day. Therefore, I can literally step by step walk you through how it's supposed to go. When you sign up with these other coaches, you might not always get the coach that's the head coach with all the knowledge. You might be passed off to an assistant coach that has less knowledge, who's not able to articulate the program, who's not able to walk you through it step by step because they themselves do not live it every single day. Because it is not their program, it is someone else's program that they're just trying to coach you through it. You see the difference there? When you come to Valhalla Athletics, you get myself or my wife. We are the only two that are part of our business. Therefore, you get our experience, 15 years for me, and you get her experience. Well, it's like a combined total of freaking 22 years of experience, and you get us. That allows us to cut myze the program specifically to you guys, because our belief is to actually help people heal and to leave our coaching and no longer ever need to hire a coach again because you have learned the foundational habits of how to build your own training program and how nutrition works, and you have the mindset and spirituality tools needed in order to overcome any obstacle that you might run into in life. We are not trying to scale our business to make a million dollars a month, we're not trying to scale our business and hire 15 different assistant coaches. We want to keep it small and personalized to each client so they actually get the customized part of the program for each one of our clients. And if you have 150 clients, guess what you're not doing? Spending time with those people, customizing everything like you say you are, and you're not giving them the attention that a lot of people need when they first start because they are lost, confused, and overwhelmed. Like, bro, none none of this, none of this stuff is rocket science, okay? And a lot of people are too busy being taken advantage of emotionally and being lured into predatory practices by these coaches that they don't even see that they're just being robbed. There's a coach that we know. She charges five hundred dollars just to read your blood work that you had to buy. Okay, so that's seven hundred dollars already. On top of charging a thousand a month, so you are 1700 in the hole. Isn't that beautiful? That we do the same thing, but we read your blood work for free. And we buy your first blood work for you because we know the expenses can rack up when you're going through a health phase. And the last thing we want for you to be is financially stressed, along with physically and mentally stressed. I don't know what sounds better to you, free blood work and free blood work red panel or$1,700. And that is exactly what I'm talking about when I say predatory. They're just trying to extract money out of people. Bro, it does not take nothing but 20 minutes, sometimes a little bit longer, to decipher and read the blood work and get back to you. Just morally, I couldn't I couldn't charge somebody for that. It's not, it's it's not it's not hard work. And it's crazy that people still want to grope, whine, and complain about it. But I understand because it's hard to see the value in something when you are drowning from all the chaos going on in your life, and that's what it really boils down to. Do you believe that signing up for this program can help you get to where you want to be? And if you don't believe that, then you're never going to get to where you want to be, and you're never gonna try to put 100% effort in to the program because you already don't believe that it's gonna work. And therefore, it slows progress, stalls progress, and prevents you from changing. And without a willingness to change, you're never gonna get anywhere in life. Okay, so when you see our pricing, when we tell you our pricing, just remember our pricing is based off of our experience as coaches, the transformations that we've had over the past years, the amount of people that we've helped, and the amount and energy that we take out of our lives to put into yours to make sure that you can live a healthier and better lifestyle. So when you look at our price and you're like, oh, that's too much, you you need to understand how disrespectful it is to say that our time and energy that we are going to invest in you isn't worth the last 15 years and tens of thousands of dollars that we put into our business helping others. So just remember that when we give you our pricing, don't be selfish just because you don't think that our pricing is, just because you think that our pricing is too high, okay? So just remember that. We could be out here preying on people, charging$1,700 to get you to sign up, or we can be charging what we charge to get you to sign up, and it ain't$1,700. And it's crazy because people want to go with the$1,700. When a$1,700 person does the same thing that we do. Well, I would say they do the same thing that we do, but we do more than a$1,700 person. And then you don't even get the person who is charging the$1,700. You get passed off to an assistant coach because they have five assistant coaches, probably more now. So at the end of the day, wrap this up here. Your beliefs can make or break everything. So what you need to do is be open to updating your beliefs and changing them when your old beliefs are outdated and no longer true. If you can't do that, then you're not ready to sign up for coaching. Because, like I said, without the willingness to change, you would never change. And I think that is enough for today. So, with that, if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to like, comment, and share. And leave that five star review. And until next time, see ya!