The Berman Method
The Berman Method
Episode #178: Top Secret The Pros Know That You Ignore
Unlock the secret to achieving peak performance both on and off the field with our latest episode of the Berman Method podcast. We challenge the traditional notions of success and delve into the transformative power of consistent coaching, beyond just genetics and discipline. Learn how elite athletes distinguish themselves from weekend warriors through the guidance of expert coaches, and why proactive coaching can be a game-changer in personal relationships, such as marriages. We also question conventional strategies in managing chronic diseases, advocating for alternative paths that lead to long-term health and fulfillment.
Join us as we share inspiring personal stories, like the remarkable impact of working with virtual personal trainer Seth Wickstrom and engaging in fitness communities like Burn Boot Camp. Discover the importance of breaking through fitness plateaus by embracing expert guidance that offers structure and accountability. We draw fascinating parallels with historical journeys, highlighting how knowledgeable leadership can ensure success across fitness, nutrition, and wellness landscapes. As we explore the limitations of AI-generated fitness plans, we emphasize the irreplaceable value that human coaching brings in achieving specific health and fitness goals.
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This is the Berman Method podcast, featuring Dr Jake Berman and physician assistant Jenny Berman. We are here to treat problems and not symptoms. Disclaimer this podcast is for entertainment purposes only and not to treat anyone or to give medical advice. If you are interested in any information that we are giving and would like to use this for yourself, we recommend that you contact your primary care physician or reach out to us and ask us questions about yourself specifically. Enjoy.
Speaker 2:And we're rolling baby on the Berman Method Podcast with a baby in Jenny's lap.
Speaker 1:Yes, he's in my lap today.
Speaker 2:Here we are, the Berman Method podcast, focused on treating problems, not symptoms. Dr Jake Berman, here with my beautiful co-host.
Speaker 1:Jenny Berman, physician assistant.
Speaker 2:And our ride or die. Walker Ryan, what's happening, Walker?
Speaker 1:What's up bud Any smiles.
Speaker 2:No smiles.
Speaker 1:Not yet.
Speaker 2:No smiles, it's Monday All right bud.
Speaker 1:Do you have a case of the Mondays? I think we all might today, but here we are.
Speaker 2:Yes, fun weekend, lots of fun in the sun, and here we are, the Berman Method podcast, focused on treating problems, not symptoms. We're getting louder, or we're actually getting more ears hearing what we're saying, so the word is spreading. We're getting more and more people that are randomly finding us through this podcast, through our social media channels and resonating with our message that there is another way. Question everything Question Western medicine. Western medicine is great at treating acute injuries or saving lives. It's great at these acute things, but when it comes to chronic disease, it is the worst, absolutely the worst.
Speaker 1:Right. Chronic and autoimmune disease, pain management, irritable bowel syndrome, gut health issues, blood pressure, cholesterol things that are happening over time and we're just being handed prescription medications to treat them. It's probably not the best route, and by probably I mean it's not the best route.
Speaker 2:It's not not even close. So one of the things that I wanted to go over today is the biggest difference between elite level athletes and weekend warriors. The biggest difference between those athletes that you see performing on TV, whether it's golf, tennis, pickleball, cornhole, exercise, weightlifting, fitness those people that you see on TV, the biggest difference between them and everybody else. There's just one thing really the drugs. Just kidding. I thought you were going to say the genetics, the genetics.
Speaker 1:That's a good one, yeah.
Speaker 2:They're genetically predispositioned to be better than I am.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good one. A lot of people think that.
Speaker 2:How many times have we heard that excuse?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I just got bad genetics Right, or you just got good genetics.
Speaker 1:Right, you just got lucky.
Speaker 2:I was actually told that my whole entire life, through high school and through college, from random people and my friends included. I'll humbly say that I was very lean, very fit, and everybody said, oh, it's just your genetics, it's just your genetics. What they didn't see was I actually worked my ass off in the gym. I actually very rarely missed a day. I started working out when I was in eighth grade and I never, ever, stopped Like never. There was never a time where I was not working out. There was never a time where I missed a month. There might be a time where I missed a week because of traveling or illness or something, but I never missed a month. I never went through phases of not working out.
Speaker 1:And I think we still hear that today. I think I still hear it and patients will even say, well, you just have the body type for it. And I'm like, well, no, I practice what I preach. I work really hard to keep what I you know, to keep myself where I am.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's discipline, but that's not the thing that I'm talking about here. That's not the biggest difference between the average Joe and the people that you see on TV. Your average Joe and the high-performing athletes that you see on TV. It's not discipline. There's actually something more to it, and it's way simpler than discipline.
Speaker 1:It's not discipline, it's not genetics, it's not the drugs. So tell us.
Speaker 2:Coaching.
Speaker 1:Coaching.
Speaker 2:It's that simple. It's coaching. It's the people that are willing to accept and request consistent, regular coaching, and the easiest example I can give you is so in Berman Golf, we specialize in helping older golfers move better so they can hit the ball further and strike the ball more consistently. And I cannot tell you how many times. I'm working with somebody and I'll ask them okay, when's the last time you took a lesson? And it'll be months, years Some of them. I've never taken a lesson. I've just been trying to figure it out on my own and I'm going golf is the hardest sport. I don't know that there's any sport harder than golf.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and especially because you can't see yourself. It's an individual sport where you can't see yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's nuts, and the harder you try, the worse the result gets. So my analogy is this You'll never see a professional golfer playing on Sunday on TV playing for the money playing on Sunday on TV playing for the money. You'll never see them on the driving range before their tee time without their coach. Right, you're not going to see it. Every single one of the best golfers in the world who are playing on Sundays to win the tournament, every single one of them has their coaches on the range with them before their tea time.
Speaker 1:As does a football team, a gymnast, a soccer player yeah, everybody has their coach, and the same goes with even things like marriages. The best marriages I say this, I guess, is an opinion, but the best marriages out there are the ones who are using lifestyle coaches and marriage counselors and coaching through personalized care are going to have the best marriages out there too. And it's proactive coaching, not retroactive coaching.
Speaker 2:Let's not wait until there's a problem and then try to fix it. It's proactive. So this is the way I like to put it. Using golf as an analogy again, you would think that the number one player in the world Scotty Scheffler, jason Day, whoever it is, at whatever point in time that you're listening to this podcast whoever the number one golfer in the world is, you would think that they know how to make a putt. You would think that they know how to make a putt Right.
Speaker 2:You would think that they know how to hit a golf ball.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So why would they need to have coaching? Why would they need to have a coach every single day?
Speaker 1:Mental shift. It's a big aspect of it is the mental side of the coaching.
Speaker 2:Mental's crucial. It's huge. The biggest thing is you cannot see yourself. What you think you're doing and what is actually happening are so often very, very different, and I see it every single day when I'm working with a golfer the vast majority of golfers when I take a video of their swing and I show it to them, they go oh my gosh, I cannot believe I'm doing that. I can't believe I'm folding that elbow. I can't believe I'm reverse pivoting. I can't believe I'm swaying so much. I can't believe I'm pitching at it or flipping at it. They think that they're doing it perfectly and just swinging like a pro on TV, and the reality is you're not. So the same thing is true with life. The same thing is true with exercise. How many people go to the gym, myself included, for years, and never have somebody coaching them?
Speaker 1:And getting stuck in the same realm of workouts and exercises. But it even comes down to nutrition aspect too is we can't continue to fuel our body the same years in and years out. So if you don't have a nutrition coach, as your body is changing, as you're aging, as metabolism is changing, as you're aging, as metabolism is changing, as hormones are changing, that's what the coaching there is for too, so that you have the professional to guide you. Because again, we get stuck in our ways or we stop tracking our food and then we finally go back months later to tracking and realizing. And then we finally go back months later to tracking and realizing oh man, my carbohydrates have really snuck in, my protein is really down. So that's part of coaching too, is the tracking aspect of things.
Speaker 2:Yep, the tracking, the accountability of it and exercise. So I just said earlier I've been exercising weight training since eighth grade, so we're talking 30 years that I've been exercising consistently, every single week. You would think that I know how to do it, but just this week I signed up with a personal trainer, paying him 500 bucks a month so that he can tell me what to do Because normally or pre-kids I used to work out with you, jenny.
Speaker 2:We used to work out every single day and Jenny is an amazing she does an amazing job at pre-determining the workout, so writing the workouts the day before, so that when we got into the gym we knew exactly what to do, we know what our time limitation was and what we had to accomplish, and it was a very productive workout. Since, having kids, I go to the gym, she works out at home in our home gym. The next day we switch. I work out at the home gym, she goes to the other gym and we don't work out together, so I'm essentially working out by myself. For the past five years, and these past five years, I've slowly started to see and feel that I'm just getting stagnant, like it's just not. I'm not progressing, I'm not really doing anything, I'm not regressing, I'm just. It's just kind of boring. Nothing's really happening right now. Right, right.
Speaker 2:So I was like okay, let's sign up with a personal trainer, virtual Seth Wickstrom. Shout out to Seth, check him out. Been working with him for an entire day now.
Speaker 1:I keep asking. So what are they going to do? Where's your meal plan? What's happening? Where are your workouts? I have no information yet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'll talk more about it as I go through this. Today was my first workout, though, and it was a completely different routine than what I normally do, because Mondays I usually work out just back stuff. Today was chest, shoulders and triceps, and by the end of it I'm going oh wow, the guns are really feeling it. It just felt different. It was same thing that Tony Horton got famous for with P90X 20 years ago. It was muscle confusion. You've got to change it up. You've got to have somebody else telling you what to do, telling you you're not doing it good enough, telling you you're doing it too good. Whatever it is, you've got to have feedback.
Speaker 1:Right, right, and that's where I've also just this at the beginning of this year joined Burn Boot Camp for the first time as an actual member. I've dropped into burn boot camp for years and years. My sister's a member there. I have lots of friends that are members there, so I've always dropped in for classes and enjoyed it when I've done it, but then had always just continued to work out on my own and write my own workouts and, as Jake said, I I write my workouts the night before. So my workouts are, 95% of the time, very efficient and well organized and I have the discipline to finish them.
Speaker 1:But it is always nice to do something different, to have somebody else tell you what to do, to write the workout for you, to tell you how to mod up, so how to make it a little bit more challenging for yourself, how to push yourself, to have people around you, pushing you and encouraging you. It's just different, and so it's nice to be able to do that sometimes. And the coach aspect is so important and that was one thing I've recognized over the last six weeks of joining Burn Bootcamp is how different it is to actually have somebody around me, pushing me, telling me what to do, as opposed to just myself.
Speaker 2:That part. Right. There is what I'm paying money for. I'm paying $500 a month for this guy to tell me exactly what to do. I know what to do. I can go on YouTube and find exercise after exercise. I could find years and years worth of exercises to do but I want somebody to tell me what to do. That's the value, because then he's going to tell me what to do and then I have to follow up and say that I actually did it. So not only am I getting told what to do, then there's this whole accountability aspect where I'm paying this money and I have to meet with this guy regularly, on a weekly basis, if not a daily basis. So there's this whole aspect of it that I'm really excited for.
Speaker 2:The same thing that you're talking about with burn. This is the same thing that our clients have been telling us for years in the physical therapy. Golf performance and health and wellness side is in general, we know what to do, right. But being told exactly what to do gives you a whole different level of confidence, knowing that you're on the right path.
Speaker 1:Right, right, and it's not. It's the guidance, it's the knowledge, it's the accountability and it's the ability to modify and adjust and continue pushing. That's where the coaching comes in.
Speaker 2:That's the important part is when you have a coach that's already been where you want to be. Think about it in the old days. Think about it 200 years ago. There were no highways, there were no satellites, there were no pictures. We're talking about horses. Your mode of travel was horses.
Speaker 2:If you wanted to go explore, let's say you're in Florida and you wanted to go to Georgia and you've never been there before and you've never had anybody you're not traveling with anybody that's been there before how do you know if you're on the right path? How do you know that you're not about to run into Lake Okeechobee and have this huge detour versus taking this other route and you're going to save three days? Think about it simply like that. Compared to somebody else that's been from Florida to Georgia 73 times and lived to tell the tale about it, that's the person that I want to go on my first trip. You know we're talking 200 years ago on a horse. How long does it take to get from Florida to Georgia? Like two weeks a month, I don't know. Like I have no idea.
Speaker 1:Especially down here in Florida this far south.
Speaker 2:What I do know is that I really would be more comfortable going with somebody else for the first time that's already done it. The same thing is true in the fitness world. The same thing is true in the diet, the health and wellness, the gut health world. The same thing is true in golf performance world. Same thing is true in physical therapy world. You just go somewhere, pay somebody who has already been where you want to be Right or has taken a thousand other people to the place that you want to be.
Speaker 1:Right. That's even more of a testimonial, for sure is the transformations that people have had utilizing this coach. And ChatGPT is not your coach. No, I've had so many people be like, well, I could just get meal plans off of ChatGPT. Well, that's great, but does ChatGPT know exactly what kind of macros your body needs, exactly what your food sensitivities are, exactly how to hold you accountable?
Speaker 2:exactly how to hold you accountable. No, yeah, no, there's no shortage of information, especially in this day and age. Knowing what is the right information not necessarily true, but the right information, that's really important. More importantly, having somebody that has done it consistently over and over again why would you want to do it the hard way? Why would you want to try to figure it out the hard way? Why do you think that you are better than the best athletes in the world? I mean, every time one of my golfers says, no, I'm good, I'll be okay, think about it this way.
Speaker 2:When I first start with a golfer, they ask okay, so what are we going to do? Are we going to do this once a week, once every other week, once a month? And I say absolutely not. We're going to start out five days a week. And they always look at me shocked what? Five days a week? I've got to have some time to practice in between, and my answer is always the same. My answer is no, you don't. You don't need to practice in between. And here's the reason why Practice makes permanent and there's about 0.0000% chance that you're going to be practicing perfectly in between this session and the next session, because it's so different from what you've ever been used to. You're moving your body so differently than what you've ever moved it in the past, so we can't do one session. And then I say all right, bob, go practice this for a week and then you come back a week later. You are not any better. You might have been practicing 20 hours a day, but you're not any better. You're probably even worse, right?
Speaker 1:because you're implementing the wrong things.
Speaker 2:Yes, practice makes permanent. So you better be practicing 100% perfectly. So that's why I say get in here five days a week, because I really don't want you practicing in between sessions if you're not going to practice perfectly. If you come here five days in a row, that gives me five hours in a week to really train your brain what it feels like to be in certain positions. The amount of progress that we can get in one week is exponentially greater than what anybody else is getting in six months or a year. Going once a month to lessons. Oh, we got a smile there, oh, Walker you're smiling.
Speaker 2:See, he liked what I just said.
Speaker 1:That's right. Five days a week, practicing perfectly with your coach. It's the same thing. We practice on the Peloton a couple times a week. Whenever we're working at home, we're working out at home, we are riding our Peloton bike in addition to doing our strength training. And even the coaches on there have their own coaches and I've been following them all on social media just seeing you know what kind of lifestyle they're living outside of Peloton. And Robin, one of the coaches on Peloton. She's now done two high rocks competitions. She has a coach, she has a nutritionist, she has a fitness instructor, a mental health coach. She has all these resources to help her be the athlete that she's being, and she's doing it every single day.
Speaker 2:If Robin has 10 coaches, what makes you think that you don't need any?
Speaker 1:Right, and she's a type 1 diabetic, so she definitely has, you know, these nutrition coaches. And guess what? She probably talks to her nutritionist every single day instead of once a week. So that's where our clients that are like, well, I need time to make adjustments, so I'm I'm going to come only once a week rather than coming twice a week. The twice a week increases your accountability. Yes, we're not going to put you on the scale twice a week, because that's absolutely ridiculous and we don't need to be weighing more than once a week for sure. But we need to have that checkpoint, that accountability, the chance to make quicker adjustments so that you can be successful. That's why seeing coaches more frequently is so beneficial.
Speaker 2:It has to be in real time. It has to be Even our business coach running multiple multi-million dollar businesses. He has a coach. He doesn't have one coach, he's got multiple coaches.
Speaker 1:Right, he was just telling us the last time we were with him the newest mastermind that he had joined in Tennessee.
Speaker 2:And yeah, yeah, and that one was just. That was an unofficial one. This is just a bunch of people from other masterminds. They were getting together informally to meet. So the point of this is why the hell are you doing this alone? This game called life is hard enough. Why do you make it harder doing it by yourself, especially in this day and age where you can be on the other side of the world and we can have a really valuable, beneficial conversation through Zoom, FaceTime, Skype, whatever.
Speaker 1:I was just going to say that time is not the excuse anymore, because of the telehealth abilities that we have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, time or location, it doesn't matter, just jump on a call. The amount of times that I've jumped on a call, just a regular call, a five minute call, no video or anything with one of the worst rounds of his past five years the day before, and I go why didn't you text me? This was a really simple fix, because the first thing that I looked at was one of his basic fundamentals and he wasn't doing it. I'm like you could have just texted me and I could have texted you back and the whole thing would have been over in 90 seconds and it could have completely transformed how bad the round was. So I think that that's a good stopping point. There is this game called life is hard enough. Why do you want to do it alone?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Utilize your resources pay some money, get some accountability, pay somebody else that has been there themselves or has taken thousands of other people to where you want to be, and enjoy the ride that's right, good take the hard work out of it.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, it's still work.
Speaker 2:But yeah, you're not taking the hard work out of it.
Speaker 1:Take the guess work, the guess work out that's a better way to put it take the guess work out of it perfect the guesswork out. The guesswork out. That's a better way to put it. Take the guesswork out of it, All right. Well, happy Monday everybody. Walker's first day of school today.
Speaker 2:Ooh, this is exciting.
Speaker 1:I'm going to go try it out. 10 weeks old, going to go try out the school thing.
Speaker 2:Cool. This is exciting. Like, subscribe, share and.
Speaker 1:Ciao for now. Share and ciao for now. Thank you for subscribing on your social media and podcast platforms to the Berman Method Dr Jake Berman with Berman Physical Therapy and Jenny Berman, physician Assistant, with Berman Health and Wellness. You can find more information on our website wwwbermanptcom for physical therapy. Wwwbermanptcom forward slash wellness for the health and wellness. You can also find us on social media Facebook, instagram and on your podcast platform, so be sure to follow us, like us, subscribe to us and, if you would like any further information, definitely visit our website and reach out to us. You may also find our free reports on the websites as well, where you can download this free information for yourself. Have a great day.