[00:00:00] James Breese: Strength Matters Media. Video. Print. Podcasts.
[00:00:05] Josh Kennedy: So today's topic is a case study using data to shed 20 kilograms and eliminate pain. We're going to talk about, all about a former client of ours called Jerome Westra. Um, if you are listening on Spotify or Apple podcasts or wherever you stream your podcasts, you're probably not going to get the full effect.
[00:00:24] Josh Kennedy: Um, so if you want the full, uh, full shebang, I would recommend going to our YouTube channel and watching this on YouTube, because James, you are doing some slide sharing. Uh, do you want to introduce... Uh, Jerome
[00:00:35] James Breese: and the case study. Yeah, it's kind of exciting sharing this new case study. I think hopefully it comes across well and we'll probably do lots more of it in the future if everyone likes it.
[00:00:42] James Breese: So there you go. The power
[00:00:43] Josh Kennedy: of YouTube, power of video and visual media, eh?
[00:00:45] James Breese: Great, and technology. Wonderful, wonderful. No, so like Jerome came to me, came to Restraint Matters. He'd been following all our blog posts. He said it spoke to him. He's a CrossFit box owner who was struggling with crippling back pain and was [00:01:00] overweight and was struggling to perform exercises in front of his clients to demonstrate.
[00:01:04] James Breese: He wasn't as fit, he wasn't able to do BJJ, he was in a bit of a rut, and he needed help, and he wanted to learn more about what we were doing, and if we could potentially help out. So, as I said to everyone, well, we can't do anything until we assess, because otherwise we're just guessing. So I said, look, maybe the coaching program was right for you.
[00:01:22] James Breese: So we started working with him. And that's kind of what we're going to talk about today is the thought process, the journey, this transformation. Because a lot of people focus on the external transformation, the visual effects of the transformation. But what we want to show with you guys behind the scenes is the data analysis that we use to make better and more informed decisions and how you can potentially use it to, to work with your clients and showcase to them that they are getting results.
[00:01:48] James Breese: Because sometimes the visuals don't show everything and clients can get demotivated because they think they're not getting anywhere. Yeah.
[00:01:54] Josh Kennedy: Well, I think it's also important to point out that Jerome, he was... He was struggling a little bit mentally. He got to that point. It [00:02:00] kind of was almost at rock bottom, really, because as a trainer, as a CrossFit box owner, he was, you know, he was embarrassed at the not being able to, to demonstrate exercises for his clients anymore.
[00:02:13] Josh Kennedy: And obviously he was in really crippling pain and it was, it was weighing heavily on him, uh, from a, from a mental point of
[00:02:19] James Breese: view. Yeah, it was. And it's, it's also to say, I think Jerome was really happy for us to share this. Story with everybody. It's a great story. He's one of our HCP coaches. He's done a coaching course now about this and it's, uh, everyone does this wow effect when they see it.
[00:02:33] James Breese: So I think without further ado, let's just dive in and show the pictures. Let's do the, let's do the visual first. Listen, listen for the wow. Exactly. Wow. There we go. So I love this and it wasn't until we were in Germany that somebody actually quoted and said this that he actually gets smaller in height, he goes from being a giant, he gets shorter as you go along, but the best highlight of this, if you can see, if you're watching on YouTube, is his, we not only teach him how to get fitter, stronger, and out of pain, we teach him how to [00:03:00] improve his cleaning habits as well.
[00:03:01] James Breese: So if you look in the background of this photo, look how clean his room now gets. It's
[00:03:07] Josh Kennedy: so funny because obviously he shared these photos on our journey as I was training him. I never noticed it until someone pointed it out in Germany when we were doing the HCP. I was like, oh my god, yeah, taught him how to clean as well.
[00:03:19] James Breese: It's like that dancing gorilla video, isn't it? Where you look and see what's in the background. Where there's a dancing gorilla no one ever sees. It's that type of video if you're not looking at the peripherals. It's exactly like that. So, look, here's the web. Right. He lost over 20 kilos out of pain. He's doing stuff.
[00:03:32] James Breese: He's looking great. I think it was from 94 kilos or something like that down to 74. So there you go. Right. So he's, he's done really, really well and you can see his transformation here, but let's take you behind the scenes of how we established this and got these results and how we do it all the time with all our clients specifically.
[00:03:48] James Breese: So for those who aren't aware of our athletic performance pyramid, we think of athleticism as 10 components. So you got Layer 1, Layer 2, Layer 3. You've got to have the foundations in place to earn the right to go to Layer [00:04:00] 3. Layer 1 is all about mobility, stability, balance and coordination. Layer 2 is strength and aerobic capacity.
[00:04:06] James Breese: And that sets the foundation for all the fun stuff. Layer 3, which is power, speed, agility and anaerobic capacity with an overarching theme of mental resilience, right? Now, that's all well and good. However, data is useless without visualisation, so we have to break all this data and these assessments down into scores.
[00:04:23] James Breese: So we score these things in four key areas, health, movement, strength, and cardio, with no overall score of 100%. No idea why my screen's gone completely black right now, but hey.
[00:04:32] Josh Kennedy: I was going to say, isn't that supposed to be white? That's a bit weird. It is.
[00:04:36] James Breese: But it's kind of like saying, the point is now is like, we need to visualise this data for people to understand it, so we can make better decisions, because data without visualisation is useless, in our opinion.
[00:04:47] James Breese: So, that's the data from the assessments. Now, if you're looking at this on YouTube, there's lots of random numbers, right? Basically. So, I'm not going to stay on here for too long. But, as you can see here now, there's lots of random numbers, and it doesn't really make much sense for most [00:05:00] people, unless you're really looking for it.
[00:05:01] James Breese: That's what we find with us as coaches doing this too, right? So, we have to transform this into an idea of visually appealing for us as coaches and as clients. So, they get an overall score of 100%, which is in white this time, thank God for that. I mean, that's... That's really good news. But then we break each individual component down into individual scores.
[00:05:21] James Breese: Now the scores you're seeing here are not Jerome's. This is what the average score from around the world is based on different regions. So the average score of health is 63 percent. Average score set of movement is 70%, 51 percent and 28 percent of cardio. Cardio for most people sucks, right? For all that in house data, and then we average score 54 percent globally.
[00:05:40] James Breese: So that's all well and good for us as just as a coach to see it visually and also for the clients to see it. But it doesn't really help us make better decisions, right Josh? Yeah. In helping creating programs effectively. So what about coaches? We have this traffic light system to help us understand it a lot better.
[00:05:58] James Breese: So with a traffic light system, we've taken [00:06:00] the 10 components of athleticism, right? Broken it down into simple ways to understand it like this. So what we're doing is we take the data. We put it into our spreadsheets, and then we can see visually what's going well and what's working well, right? What's going well and what's not working well.
[00:06:17] James Breese: Sorry, sorry, let me repeat that. So, again, this is, this is not Jerome's data, but you can see very quickly here now that straight away your eyes are drawn on the camera, if you're watching this on YouTube, to the red markers, right? You kind of gloss over the greens, you're looking straight for the red, but that's what we want.
[00:06:33] James Breese: We're looking for the gaps in their training to make them improve and focus on what they need to be doing, not what they think they need to be doing. Okay, so that's really important. Anything to add to that, Josh? I
[00:06:44] Josh Kennedy: was just going to say, we, uh, before we came up with the traffic light system and visualizing the data like this, we, we used to do it, uh, that, that first one you showed with just all the results, we haven't, we haven't changed any of the metrics.
[00:06:56] Josh Kennedy: We just used to have to troll through it and go, Oh God, is that good? Is that bad? [00:07:00] What, what's, you know, what, what are our categories for saying yes, we can carry on or no, we've got to stop. And then obviously once we got that traffic light system, it's all about. Simplifying things and making decisions more efficient, um, in, in terms of how you program.
[00:07:16] Josh Kennedy: It's all about, all about efficiency, streamlining.
[00:07:19] James Breese: Efficiency and, and consistency as well. Yeah. Right. And consistency. That's the most important thing. So I always use the example of a McDonald's Big Mac. It's the most consistently shitty burger in the world. Yet people buy it over and over again.
[00:07:32] Josh Kennedy: Our system is not consistently shitty.
[00:07:34] Josh Kennedy: It's consistently
[00:07:35] James Breese: good. I hope so. Yeah, that's the idea. But that's the point. It's like consistency is so important to so many different things as shown by Big Mac. So, right, let's just dive into the case and see the numbers that we did with Jerome. So, this is Jerome with his smiley CrossFit box face, right?
[00:07:49] James Breese: So, and that's him in phase 1 with his messy background behind him, right? So, look at, look at, look at Jerome, don't look at the background. So here we go, here's Jerome phase 1. So what did we [00:08:00] see? That's his score. That was his score. He scored 36%. 52 percent health, movement is 35%, cardio 17%, strength 33%. Now, caveat this, he didn't do all the assessments because we didn't let him go all the way up.
[00:08:16] James Breese: Because when we do the assessments we have health, layer 1, layer 2. 1, and layer 2. 2. We held him back to doing layer 2. 2 tests. Because he didn't own his movement, basically.
[00:08:29] Josh Kennedy: So I was just going to say, so yeah, just, just the caveat, the, the cardio and strength aren't true scores really. He could, he definitely could do better than that.
[00:08:37] Josh Kennedy: And as you'll see, as we go through the podcast, he does do better than that. But in our system, if there's too many red flags, you know, if you don't own layer one, you're building a house on weak foundations and it's all just going to crumble, come crumbling down and he was already in pain. So that is the last thing we want.
[00:08:52] Josh Kennedy: Our number one goal with, with Jerome. Get him out of pain.
[00:08:56] James Breese: Exactly. So let's look at more in depth. Let's look at the health section here [00:09:00] now. So if you're watching on the phone, it may be hard to see it. So I highly recommend blowing up the screen so you can see all the data and stats here. But again, straight away, we see a screen under health of a few reds, a few yellows and a few greens.
[00:09:13] James Breese: But we're drawn straight away to the reds. So what do we see on reds here? We see red is his weight for his height. We have a formula based on his height and weight. He's in the red zone here. His body fat is high. His BMI is also high at 30. That should be in red as well. You know, this was the old spreadsheet we were using.
[00:09:31] James Breese: So there's a lot of reds here. I actually think, I don't think,
[00:09:34] Josh Kennedy: uh, waste should be in green. Actually, I think that's a mistake on the calculation there as well. So that should either be red or yellow.
[00:09:41] James Breese: No, the waste is right, actually, because anything over 40, that's the stat data. The waste is okay. But you take it into consideration with everything else.
[00:09:49] James Breese: That's the most important thing. But his waste to height ratio is quite high too. So there's lots of things going on here. So. So, straight away we now know that he is a fat loss client, straight [00:10:00] away, because the numbers and the metrics are showing and proving to us that he is that case. But he's got some lifestyle stuff in check.
[00:10:06] James Breese: Resting heart rate is a little bit higher than we like to see. So far, so good, right? Mm hmm. How is it? So, leading to layer one in the movement, it's a sea of red. Ouch. It's a sea of red, is what we see here. He's in pain. Why? His movement sucks. He has no shoulder movement, mobility or rotation. He has no hip and motor control, essentially.
[00:10:32] James Breese: External, um, internal, standing toe touches and no active straight leg raise tests from those, no the FMSs and no, it's just... No rotary stability. Exactly. So it's a big mess here, I think is the best way to say it. Now we take it into layer 2. 1, which is the basic strength levels. We knew he was strong, he's a CrossFit athlete, right?
[00:10:53] James Breese: He's at the basic strength. But his cardio sucked on the 10 minute assault bike test. Again, not a true aerobic capacity test, it's [00:11:00] just a snapshot. But we get an idea why his cardio pretty much sucks. So what we know is we have a weight loss client, Josh, weight loss client who has poor movement capabilities and is in pain.
[00:11:14] James Breese: So our number one priority became Josh, cause you did his programming.
[00:11:17] Josh Kennedy: Getting him out of pain was our, was our number one priority. Obviously, as you say, he is a fat loss client, but. He's not ready for a true fat loss program. He simply couldn't do it. So we had to start off Much more basic work on a heck of a lot of mobility whilst of course trying to help him lose some fat But it's not it's not the number one priority and maybe people listening will say well If you helped him lose a bit of weight as well, then, you know, he might have got out of pain quicker, easier.
[00:11:46] Josh Kennedy: The problem is, he could only handle so much at one, one time. He tried to stack, again, trying to stack too many things on top of him and say, Jerome, I want you to track your calories. I want you to do this, that, and the other. He's not going to be able to do it. He won't have the [00:12:00] mental capacity to do it.
[00:12:01] Josh Kennedy: He's in a lot of pain, struggling to move. He can only handle so much. So we focused on getting him out of pain and the movement and mobility first. So we had a lot of mobility mixed within his strength because he did still do some strength training, but mixed within it. Um, so that was the main premise of, of his first program.
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[00:12:56] James Breese: Don't wonder? Act now, book your free strategy call at [00:13:00] strengthmatters. com forward slash website today. So then that leads to phase two. So again, if you're watching along here now, you can see. Has a bit of body recomposition gone on. He looks a bit better. He's shrunk in size. That's the, that's the running joke.
[00:13:14] James Breese: But yeah, so there's a bit of body recomp gone on, but if we look at the numbers in terms of his score, it's now jumped up to 72%. 'cause he was able to go through to the layer 2.2 testing and do all the tests accordingly. So numbers have gone up, health has stayed the same. Uh, give or take, movement's definitely improved and that's the big factor we were trying to work on.
[00:13:34] James Breese: Right. So that was the big thing here. Obviously, strength and cardio have gone up because we've allowed him to go to the next layer of testing. So, look at health. Again, we're seeing a few reds. Okay, that's the key thing. BMI's down 0. 3, but the point is it wasn't a weight loss program. It was a get out of pain program, improve movement here, right?
[00:13:56] James Breese: That was the main focus to allow us To do a proper fat loss [00:14:00] phase because fat loss sucks And we want to do fat loss properly We need to earn the right to be in that place to get out of as fast as we possibly
[00:14:06] Josh Kennedy: can Yeah, so on that his resting heart rate has improved, uh down from 60 as well So although the the color hasn't changed he's still in the in the amber, uh, you know Oh good to go, but could be improved category It has got better as you say his weight has dropped a little bit his body fat's dropped a little bit um, but essentially because we've you know Got him out of pain.
[00:14:27] Josh Kennedy: He's in a much better place, which you'll see when we go to layer
[00:14:29] James Breese: one. Layer one. So yeah, so there's a lot less reds. So, we've got two greens on the shoulder, um, abilities and the Zenith Twist. He's able to rotate a lot better. He's passed the Active Straight Leg Race, funnily enough, which is great. But, he's lacking external hip rotation and the Standing Toe Touch is still a no go.
[00:14:48] James Breese: But... Rotary stability has magically improved as well. So the program for us is working, so we can see less reds. The scores have gone up, even though he's not looking that different, right, there's a little [00:15:00] bit of visualization he can, he can see himself. But when we show and go back into consults with our clients, we can show the data.
[00:15:06] James Breese: Hey, look, you can do this now. This is the data, see how your score's improved. And that's what we'd like to show is, I mean, compared
[00:15:12] Josh Kennedy: to the sea of reds on the initial one, that's massively different.
[00:15:14] James Breese: Exactly. So we're on layer 2. 1. There's no reds. There's just a yellow. So his, look at his assault bike score.
[00:15:20] James Breese: It's gone from 124 to 150. It's an amber, which is great, right? So we've gone massively up here. So we need, we need, we then have to make a decision. Normally, if there's a sea of reds on layer one, we don't tend to go to layer 2. 2. But. With an experience and a bit of like professional judgment, Josh, we allowed him to go to 2.
[00:15:41] James Breese: 2, right? Yeah,
[00:15:42] Josh Kennedy: because if he was just, uh, you know, an average, an average everyday athlete who wasn't a trainer themselves, and there was that many, still that many reds on layer one, I wouldn't, probably wouldn't have progressed him. But. You know, Jerome, he was far more experienced. He was CrossFit box [00:16:00] owner.
[00:16:00] Josh Kennedy: He done everything I asked him to do, which some of which is very basic on his first program. And I wanted to keep him happy as a client as well. We wanted to keep him as a client. So we had to make a slight compromise and send him onto layer two, two. And as you can see, he is pretty strong, pretty strong.
[00:16:18] Josh Kennedy: He's
[00:16:18] James Breese: very strong. And also he managed because we did a lot of aerobic work with him in that first period. So he's rowed, you know, our goal is to get to 15, 000 meters on a Concept 2 rower in 60 minutes. So he's done that test and he's actually passed it, which is really good. But there's a couple of things here, so front squat, 50 percent bodyweight front squat for bodyweight you struggle with.
[00:16:37] James Breese: Airborne lunge, which is, which is tying in nicely to the fact that he hasn't got any external or internal hip rotation. Uh, or any good control with that. So that's all tying in nicely. So we're seeing, yes, okay, we're on the right tracks, we're making improvements. But we need to up the game a little bit. I think that's what we try to focus on didn't we josh?
[00:16:55] James Breese: Yeah, definitely.
[00:16:56] Josh Kennedy: So we when you focus on we we went he was now ready He was out of [00:17:00] pain and he was ready for a more traditional style fat loss program and proper fat loss program We've got to do Uh, we've talked about this on previous podcast from many years ago the four horsemen of the apocalypse Which is heavy strength training lactate work aerobic and anaerobic work.
[00:17:16] Josh Kennedy: So it's a very Intense program, which is what we went into next. Plus we now introduced nutritional Programming as well and on that front Jerome tracked his calories did again nailed it did everything I asked him to do and as you will see he got the results From
[00:17:35] James Breese: it. That's what it looks like. So that's what he looks like afterwards 20 kilos.
[00:17:41] James Breese: So the 20 kilos he dropped was in the final phase over the course of four months Right? I mean, that's important. So it was the 12 month program, the first six to eight months were all about getting him ready for the fat loss stage. When he was ready and he was willing and he was in a better place mentally as well as physically, we then introduced nutrition, [00:18:00] put the program together, and then boom.
[00:18:02] James Breese: Then we had this. 20 kilos in four months, done healthfully and sustainably, and he's able to maintain ever since then. So that's the key thing. So phase three, what do the scores look like at the end of it? Well, he's gone up to a whopping 92%. That's huge. Right? And these scores are not elite level training scores.
[00:18:20] James Breese: They're what we call benchmarks for the everyday athlete, right? Scores that we should think everybody could easily hit, right? We'll give them a better quality of life and set them up for layer three training to go and do all their crazy stuff after that. And they are,
[00:18:33] Josh Kennedy: they are based. These are not just random stuff.
[00:18:35] Josh Kennedy: We've made, they are based on data that is out there. If you want to find it by the way. So it's not just like we've decided what these standards are. It's all based on data. Yeah,
[00:18:44] James Breese: we pulled it all together and it's been great. So, again, Sea of Greens, look at that! Right? His body comp is in a better place, everything's good, just a couple of yellows, his breathing, and his body fat percentage, which we'd love to have brought down a little bit more, but, you know, it's a starting point, it's a great [00:19:00] starting point to where we want to get to.
[00:19:01] James Breese: So, super happy with that, well done Jerome for doing all the hard work.
[00:19:03] Josh Kennedy: Well, look at his, look at his waist! Look at his waist. From 37, I think, on the last one it was, down to 30 inches. Waist
[00:19:09] James Breese: height ratio is from 0. 55 down to 0. 44. Really important, okay? Again, layer one movement, if you can see on YouTube now.
[00:19:17] James Breese: Only the one red, and that was his left shoulder, which is actually his, uh, right side, internal rotation. We're talking about things there. He'd had an injury on that side. That was common. Uh, all the, all the great people did. Maybe, maybe
[00:19:29] Josh Kennedy: never. Yeah, maybe never gonna get that better to be honest, but you know, we
[00:19:33] James Breese: can look at that It's you know, you can see visually now how much it's improved.
[00:19:37] James Breese: He's passed it again You know, the calories have dropped. This is an amber for the assault bike test, but his weight has dropped considerably That's such a good score In fact that actually will be a green now Because we did this when we did the assessments a long time ago. We've updated the scoring calculation, haven't we?
[00:19:51] James Breese: We were being a little
[00:19:52] Josh Kennedy: too harsh on this one. Yeah So we updated
[00:19:54] James Breese: that 2. 2. It's a it's a sea of green. Look at that [00:20:00] That's what it is. Now, what we did the, um, where was it? No, we haven't got here. He went to layer three, didn't he, after this and he did the 60 minute Turkish get up test. So it's not on this here now.
[00:20:10] James Breese: Again, that's another podcast. Again, why we do a 60 minute get up test. But, you know, he got a hundred and sixty reps in 60 minutes, right, using a 24 kilo kettlebell, just to put that in perspective, at 74 kilos, right? Pretty badass.
[00:20:26] Josh Kennedy: Exactly. And I saw, and he sent me video evidence of, uh, of his, uh, technique as well.
[00:20:31] Josh Kennedy: Exactly.
[00:20:31] James Breese: Which was very good. Really good. That's no mean feat. You need to have technique, mental resilience, and the strength and work capacity to be able to do it. It's a phenomenal
[00:20:39] Josh Kennedy: test. Strength, strength endurance, muscular endurance,
[00:20:42] James Breese: everything. All right. So, visually YouTube. That's the visual look. But you've seen a little sneak peek behind the scenes of the data and the way we approach assessing and working with every single client that we work with.
[00:20:56] James Breese: I hope that has been useful. Uh, [00:21:00] informative to say the least, but that's what we do with everyone. I think, I think Josh, I think we should do this with more, most of our other clients, right? We haven't got the same, we've got some visuals. We've got Amit as well. He's a good person to work with visually.
[00:21:09] James Breese: Yeah. On a different scale because that's how we wanted to bulk up and build the muscle mass. But I think there's other other athletes out there and other everyday people we can show the results with like this and show how we used and improved it.
[00:21:22] Josh Kennedy: Yeah, I just think it's important, you know, for other coaches to see how we use our, how we put our assessments together, how we use the assessments and how we use all the data to make good informed decisions about programming.
[00:21:33] Josh Kennedy: It's not like I am some sort of programming genius or anything. There are many ways to skin a cat. You know, about, you could do the program completely different for Jerome about how I did it. But it's important that you've got that initial information. You can see in the traffic lights exactly what needs fixing first, and then you can make good informed decisions on how you put the program together.
[00:21:53] James Breese: Exactly. And it's, it's made our life so much easier. It's allowed us to scale it up with all our [00:22:00] coaches that we're always talking the same language. And like I said, it's got a more predictable system of getting results for clients. Which is something that we're always looking for, that predictability, that we always want to have predictable success with every single one of our clients.
[00:22:12] James Breese: So this is just an intro into how we're doing things. Um, now if you do want to learn more about it, we have a whole coaching program called the HCP, the Hybrid Coaching Program, which teaches our whole system of working with clients in person and online. You get all these assessments, basically. And a lot of our coaches already have them and they're using them to great effect.
[00:22:28] James Breese: Not only to helping them make even better decisions for assessing their clients. But also in getting new business because all their clients are talking about it. So there you go. That is it. Exactly. strengthmanners. com forward slash hcp. If you want to learn more and have a free strategy call with me and discuss about it.
[00:22:45] James Breese: No obligation. Just if you want to learn more about it, see if it's appropriate for you and your business. How about that? There
[00:22:49] Josh Kennedy: we go. Fantastic. That is it for today. Hope you enjoyed this one. Please don't forget to rate, review and subscribe. And if you want to find out more about our system of training, go to strengthmanners.[00:23:00]
[00:23:00] Josh Kennedy: com forward slash system and get our free ebook.