Strength Coach Collective

Behind the Scenes With an Elite Coach: Jason Leydon’s Top Lessons

• twobrainbusiness@gmail.com • Season 1 • Episode 14

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In this episode of the “Strength Coach Collective” podcast, host Chris Guerrero talks with veteran coach Jason Leydon, founder of CrossFit Milford and Conquer Athlete.

Jason has coached a number of elite athletes throughout his career, including CrossFit Games podium finishers, international record-holding powerlifters, USA Weightlifting national-team members, All-American wrestlers and state-champion basketball players.

Today, Jason dives into what truly sets great coaches apart—no matter who their clients are: a deep understanding of training principles, the ability to adapt to the individual, and a commitment to community and connection.

He explains why chasing methods before mastering the basics can limit a coach’s potential, and he shares tips for building a strong coaching career and avoiding burnout.

Whether you’re working with competitive athletes or the general public, this episode will challenge you to reflect on how you can help your clients best.

Links

Strength Coach Collective

1:32 - Tailoring training for diverse athletes

13:21 - Lessons from coaching elite athletes 

26:56 - Avoiding burnout as a coach

38:37 - Most common coaching mistakes

42:30 - The future of strength & conditioning

UNKNOWN:

Music.

SPEAKER_01:

What's up, everyone? This is Chris Guerrero, and you're listening to the Strength Coach Collective podcast. Our mission is to help coaches refine their craft, elevate their coaching skills, and ultimately deliver better results for their clients. You can connect with us at strengthcoachcollective.com or join our free Strength Coach Collective group on Facebook to engage with like-minded coaches. Today, I'm excited to welcome a friend, Jason Layton, to the show. Jason is the founder of CrossFit Milford in Milford, Connecticut, a gym that has made it to the CrossFit Games 10 times. and produced 15 years of games athletes. His team, CrossFit Milford, with some of my friends on the team, finished second in the world in 2015. He's coached over 12 podium finishers throughout his career. Since opening his gym in 2008, Jason has expanded his impact beyond CrossFit, developing seminars for athlete development and coaching education. His athletes range from international record-holding powerlifters and USA weightlifting national team members to All-American wrestlers, state champion basketball players, Thank you so much for taking the time. Welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm pumped to be on here, pumped to connect with you and catch up. I'm

SPEAKER_00:

excited.

SPEAKER_01:

Awesome, man. Well, let's dive in. I'm just going to jump right into this. So you've coached elite level CrossFit athletes, powerlifters, and weightlifters. How do you tailor your approach when working with such a diverse range of athletes?

SPEAKER_00:

That is a great question to open up with and a very, very deep one. I'm someone who always loved sports. I've always loved programming. I've always loved geeking out about programming and trying to understand how to formulate these equations, these answers to questions. And the questions being, how can we get this athlete from point A to point Z and all the different intricacies that pop up along the way. And that question has always... intrigued me from a college standpoint where, you know, in college I went to school for exercise science and I went into phys ed and health. And the biggest question I had in college was around myself being a basketball player and trying to figure out how I could become more athletic, how I could increase my vertical lead, become quicker, become faster, increase my capacity to be at enough court longer to play harder defense. That was the first question. For me, it was from a selfish standpoint. It was one that I couldn't stop going down rabbit holes with. Back then, it was a lot different if I were to date myself. I'm 45 years old. Back then, it was about muscle fitness. Whatever split they're putting in there that so-and-so did, which was just for reading material, is what you did. Or it's going to the library and pulling up plyometric books and pulling up whatever you could find and dive into. And I kept going down that path more and more. And it's something that always intrigued me. And back then, there weren't the microgyms. So it was always, you're going to go the college strength route, or you're going to go the global gym route. Having a microgym wasn't even really in the equation back then. So at the end of college, or my senior year, My professor for exercise physiology, he was from Ohio State. So I was talking to him and I was at a crossroads where I was going to go back to Ohio State or not go back, I was going to go to Ohio State to try to get my master's in exercise science and run the route of strength and conditioning inside the college world or I was going to try to continue to play basketball. So I said, all right, I'm going to give myself two chances to play basketball, two agency tryouts. If they don't work, then I'm going to go get my master's. First one, I bombed. Second one, I did well. So I ended up playing basketball. And I'm going to kind of get to your question. I know I'm kind of going a long route. So I went down that route, and that route really opened up my eyes more about what's needed in training because social media wasn't out there. So my experience was what was around me. Teams I was playing against, kids I played against, where I traveled to. So I go out to Utah for my first camp and I get destroyed, right? Kids are bigger than me, faster than me, stronger than me, more athletic than me. I'm like, wow. I'm like, I thought I was training hard and doing the right stuff and I'm not even close to where I need to be to reach my goal. So I went back to the drawing board for like another year of just programming for myself and training and trying to figure out how I could become bigger, faster, stronger, right? And like I said, it's a different world back then because Nowadays, you can hit up a coach on social media. You can post a video. There's 8 million ways to reach out and get guidance on something. Back then, there was none, right? I was kind of tied into the strength coach that I had and what they knew and what I could read in libraries and what I knew just from my courses. Went out to the second camp in Boston. Same thing. I was like, I play better, but... The athletes there were just like insane to me. It's kind of broadening now my tree of experience. And then I got to Europe. And when I was in Europe, now my tree of experience has gotten bigger. Now these guys, okay, well, one of the guys on my team was a 6'9 Dutch guy that played at Wake Forest with Glenn Robinson. If you guys are familiar with basketball, big dog Glenn Robinson, he was his teammate. And this guy was a monster, dude, a monster. And I'm like, I got to compete against these guys. So now I'm... 19 years old, I'm in Holland, and now I'm going against 24, 25-year-old men from Europe, right? And I'm like, just manhandling me, you know? So then my question gets even broader and bigger. I'm like, man, like, you know, it's the evolution of a strength coach. Like, you do something, and you're entrenched in it, and you think you're doing what's right. And then I get to this next stage, and I'm like, fuck, I'm not even close to where I need to be. Everything I'm doing was that completely wrong, right? Because Back then, it was back and bys, chest and tris, leg day, formulations like that. I was trying to dive and apply metrics and speed work, but French contrast theory and power cleans, power snatches, and the usage of athletic events versus Olympic weightlifters, and how to formulate the strength, the hypertrophy, the power continuum, and converting that into power. All these concepts were never touched upon back then, not in any exercise physiology classes. And I'm like, I don't have the power that these guys have. I don't have the strength that these guys have. I don't have the endurance these guys have. I'm like, what do I, how can I formulate all this stuff? So I started diving deeper and deeper, deeper into strength training. And that all those experiences are what kind of led my philosophy around programming and training with the question you asked from CrossFitters into weightlifters into powerlifters, where to really hone in and be able to get someone's full potential and full capacity and full strength and get them to that full level they need to be at, it was always this mathematical question to me of how to do that, right? How can we blend, how can we get the sciences of strength and conditioning, blend it with the individual differences and the individual needs of a person and get them to where they need to be? So I always came at it from a very individualistic approach, right? You know, very different from a GPP format of gym programming and building GPP, right? And making it tailored around a vast avatar inside of a gym. So formulating this stuff for individuals to reach a high level or to get specific with a goal, to me, it was always this individualistic question, this individualistic problem that I was trying to solve or I try to solve with people, right? And that's how kind of how I went about it. bringing it down from individualized perspective, seeing what the problem is and seeing how you could get them to where they need to be.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think so. I think you touched on something really interesting and I have a... Similar background in the sense that your passion, it sounds like what I heard you say was, hey, what led me down this rabbit hole of programming, opening a gym, training all these clients, and having success at all these different levels kind of started with you. It was almost like an individual quest to try and figure out how you could be the best you can be, and then your life experiences shaped that. So a follow-up to that is, Do you think that, in your expert opinion, does a coach have to be fully entrenched in the work that they're trying to do in order to deliver better client outcomes? Is that absolutely necessary? I would just love to hear your opinion on that a little bit.

SPEAKER_00:

So let me ask that question again so I can make sure I understand it. Does a coach need to be fully entrenched in what they're doing? to get the best outcomes from the athletes. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So like for just CrossFit example, like does someone have to be training? I don't want to say competitive CrossFit, but like CrossFit style movements in order to get people to understand what they're dealing with to get them to that next level. Is that necessary?

SPEAKER_00:

That's a great question. I feel like this is a question that I can– go down two different roads with. A coach needs to have, in the sport of CrossFit, if you're training CrossFit, if you're training with inside of a CrossFit gym, there's gotta be this continuum that a coach goes through. And they do need to have an experience of what CrossFit is in order to deliver the best CrossFit product at first. And I say that because CrossFit is way more than snatches and burpees, right? And thrusts and pull-ups, as we know. And in order to deliver the best CrossFit experience, they have to understand that. They have to understand the community aspect. They have to understand the... the excitement and the engagement with inside of a class. They have to understand proper classroom management. They have to understand proper classroom organization. When I say classroom, I'm referring to running a group class. They have to understand the highs that people get with doing a CrossFit style workout. And they have to understand the exposure on the body of doing it and doing it too much or doing it improperly or doing it correctly. And they have to know all these things in order to in my opinion, deliver a great CrossFit product for the class. Now, does that mean that a coach needs to stay in that area to deliver a great product? No, I don't think that's necessary. Meaning, myself, by traditional CrossFit sense, I don't do that anymore. Meaning, am I going to do 21-15-9 of thrusters and pull-ups? and one day and do CrossFit main site program. And I say, no, you know, I think based around my age and my body type, I do really well with different styles of program, but that doesn't mean that I can't deliver an amazing CrossFit experience inside my facility. But I think that's because I spent so many years in CrossFit, involved in CrossFit, doing CrossFit, being part of CrossFit communities, growing CrossFit communities. You know, we've had coaches come into my facility who have come in from, a great background in strength and conditioning, a great background in understanding the science of movement, the art of communication, a great background in being a breakdown in cue movements. And they weren't able to deliver as good of an experience in the class as someone that had less of a background, but spent more time and had a great personality inside the world of CrossFit. So I think there's always a give and a take, but I think for someone, for a coach to be extremely successful and confident with inside of a CrossFit class setting, they need to be involved in CrossFit at some point in their lives.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I mean, I would generally concur with that to understand like the ethos and, and, and what makes the, these gyms operate since we're specifically talking to strength coaches, the strength coach collective, a lot of the coaches in there happen to work at CrossFit micro gyms. It's, it's, it's important to hear that. So yeah, So transitioning, I want to talk to you a little bit about your coaching when you're coaching people at a high level, right? And how it might apply to the everyday person. So you've obviously been to the games yourself. You've coached athletes to the games. I mean, hell, you were one of my first coaches, even at regionals. You've had so much experience training people. What are the biggest lessons? If you had to pick like two or three from coaching high level athletes that everyday coaches can apply to, the everyday person?

SPEAKER_00:

Biggest lessons for the everyday person to apply. Number one, these will be out of order. So don't take these as the first one I say, I think is the most important, but there's no one exact way to get someone to where they need to be. When you're training with people, we got to understand that there's multiple ways to get people to their goal, depending on that person, depending on the background, depending on their lifestyle, their stressors, their nutrition, their sleep, depending upon their goals, depending on the training age, depending on the biological age. Everybody's different, right? And even the same person at different points of their lives can require different stuff to get them to where they need to be. And I think in the beginning part of my career, I would get so locked in the science behind programming that I didn't blend it enough with the art of coaching, which comes down into communication and human connection blended with the science. And I do think that that had a negative effect on some athletes that I worked with trying to like hit Put somebody in something that wasn't right for them just because this is what the science told me was right or what I viewed as worthwhile for other people. And taking that into the everyday person, I think, is so important because people come in with all different exposures and experiences, not just in their lives, but from their days. Whether someone has problems at home, they're getting divorced, they're not getting divorced, whether someone has financial issues, whether someone has issues with their boss, whether someone's coming in and they're just having a terrible fucking day or a great day, whether someone's coming in and this is the only thing they're looking forward to, or someone's coming in and they're just dragging themselves to get in for the day because they know that's what they need to do. Everybody has some different occurrence happening. And what they need to get to a certain point can be different today than it was yesterday, can be different with different people. And the more coaches can gravitate and understand that, the more that we have the ability to see what is the workout of the day, the program of the day, or whatever that person is doing, if they're doing an individualized program or what have you, and make the proper adjustments. for those people just to keep getting them to where they need to be right and that's from a generalized class perspective being able to be a good host being able to deliver the five-star experience being able to truly make it like the best hour of the day where they leave better than when they feel when they came in and being able to blend that that human connection into the science and the programming is what really constitutes and makes a phenomenal coach. It's really what, in my opinion, sets coaches apart from the other people. Because yeah, people can understand how to write a program, how to put together across a program, how to deliver a good class. But if you can't do that all the same, then you're going to be just pigeonholed like every other coach. So that's my first lesson. So I'll just say that not everybody's the same. There's no one way to get people to a certain place. For instance, you know, some people will say, you should never back squat. Well, No, some people need to back squat and back squat is great for them. Other people don't need to back squat. Doesn't mean you don't say nobody should ever back squat, right? Or bench press or kipping pull-ups or what have you, right? Second lesson, I would say, understand the art of communication. When you're a coach, you go through different stages, just like with anything in life where your first stage is communication. you're just kind of like a worker. Like you're working your ass off just to kind of get a job, get into where you need to be, coach as many classes, as many clients as you can. Your second stage, you turn into a craftsman. That's where you understand the basis of principles. You're starting to understand methods, but now you're diving deeper into various methods around the principles. And you're starting to understand how these different methods can really apply to your niche, to who you are as a coach, to where you want to be as a coach. You know, it's like you start off in the first stage, go into as many seminars as you can. Then your second stage, you don't really go too much because you realize that there's not too much to gain because they're all entry-level seminars, but you like to learn some more things and you're able to take what you learn and apply it in a different concept and context into who you are as a coach and where you're trying to be as a coach. And then you get to that third stage of no matter what it is, and that's always closer to that mastery stage. And in that stage, you realize that you can know everything in the world. But as a coach, if you can't communicate well, you're going to have a hard time creating buy-in. And when you have a hard time creating buy-in, you have a hard time creating trust, which leads to a downfall with you and the athlete relationship. Because the most important thing is, with being a coach isn't having the best program in the world. The most important thing is having trust with your athlete or athletes, depending on if you work with one person or a 15 person class. The more people can trust and connect with you, the more effective the program's gonna be, the more enjoyment they're gonna have, the more they're gonna stay in the game and stay with you, and the more success they're gonna have. And I believe that in the beginning of coaches development we spend so much time on the worker and the craftsman stage which we need to do that we often forget about that human piece right the communication piece and you see the greatest coaches in the world you know no matter what sport you look at crossfit basketball baseball mma whatever their athletes fucking love them right they're always going back to them they're always talking to them they know everything about their kids their family their lives and I understand that that can get challenging when there's too close of a connection because their lines can get skewed. But the point is, is the greatest coaches in the world are also the greatest communicators, whether they need to say one word to an athlete that clicks or say a couple words, put a simple hand on their shoulder to let them know it's okay, no matter what it might be. So that would be my second lesson. My third one, I'll probably wrap it up with this one. would be making a mistake isn't the end of the world as a coach you know i think that too often we get so wrapped up of having to have the right answer of having to be this like gestapo of knowledge for every single person and we get so It's very challenging and it's hard on our ego to understand that what we did didn't work or is wrong. The only way you can make progress is to fail correctly a couple times. And I say fail correctly because all failure isn't good, right? If I assume I can... fucking fly and I jump off a bridge trying to fly. Well, if I fail, that's a pretty bad failure, right? I'm going to be dead. So we got to make sure that we can fail correctly. And I think oftentimes when you're working with elite level athletes and normal day people, like you're going to be wrong. You're going to make mistakes. You're not going to have all the right answers. And that's okay. You know, and I think that's okay. And the more that you can continually understand that and accept that, I actually think that the smarter that makes you, because it understands that, you need to go to other professionals to get the right answer. You need to unravel a couple, peel back a couple onions to figure out what you need to do for these people, for them to have their goals. And you go about it from a truly, you go about that situation, that clientele, that scenario with the truest passion of doing what's right for them versus doing what's right because you think you need to be that certain way to be a successful coach, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01:

It does. It does. And you touched on two really important things about the art of communication and I guess being able to make mistakes. So in my world, in my business, I encourage mistakes, but you have to learn from the mistake. You shouldn't make the same mistake twice, right? And in terms of coaching, I've always said this, like if we were taking two extremes, if I could have the best technical coach that has a shit personality versus a coach with an amazing personality that can connect to people with no technical skill, I'll take the latter because I can help teach them. It might be a process, but that trust and connection that you build with your clients and that rapport is what will keep it's what will keep people coming back long-term, especially when we're specifically talking about the day-to-day person, Sally, who's 55 and has 45 pounds to lose. She doesn't care how well I can teach her to snatch. She cares that she feels comfortable knowing like, Hey, I know you could jump on that 10 inch box today. So I think, I think that's such a, an important lesson. The three that you mentioned, there's no perfect way to get someone to their goal. The art of communication is so powerful and learning to be able to build rapport with clients and then not being scared to make a mistake and actually learning from your failure. And to further the point that you made, it's almost as if coaches that feel like they have it all figured out, in my opinion, once you kind of feel like you have everything figured out and you know everything, yeah. I don't know how much I trust that person going forward because they're not a constant student of the game. So

SPEAKER_00:

those are awesome, man. 100%, man. Yeah, and I think the biggest thing for people to understand is when you're putting together a program and you're writing out the weeks, don't overthink it, but always question. All right. You know, question without over-question. Because I know some people, you know, if you take someone that's extremely analytical, they're going to look at a program they put together or they're going to look at data from a week of programming that someone did, and they might start overthinking and over-analyzing. And I've actually seen coaches who are extremely analytical overthink something so much that it almost like paralyzes them, where it takes them like an hour to put together like a week of programming, right? And it can be challenging, right? So you have to understand who you are as a person and how you best respond. But you do need to question your stuff regularly. Like, okay, is this right for the person? How are we doing? How are we responding over the week? Are we seeing progress? So I give myself like a couple key questions, right? I always ask, is the athlete progressing? Cool. Am I seeing unnecessary fatigue on a day-to-day basis? And am I seeing any changes happening? with inside their mood or patterns. And if all those three things give me a green light, then I know I'm on the right track. If one of those things is a red light, I make sure I note it, I check it down, I keep monitoring it. If I have two out of the three with red lights, I'm like, all right, I'm doing something that's not right for this person at this point, right? So my point is, is coaches out there, have your own data points, your own check-ins for yourself on what you're doing. And that's how you, because I think that ties into the point where it's like, it's okay to fail because that ties into that where you're checking up on it routinely. You're not just going through like a six, eight week cycle and then being like, oh, well, This person is completely fucking overtrained. Their cortisol is to the roof. Their testosterone is at 300 and they're fucking injured. Well, now it's too late to fail, right? That's like failing wrong as a coach. Give yourself these checkpoints routinely where you can continually go back to something to track yourself, to track the person, to see if you're making changes, right? And the checkpoints I give, I talk a lot about my coaches when they're coaching group classes is take a step back and ask yourself, would you want to be in this class right now? And that's what I started doing for myself when I started coaching was I'd take a step back at different points of the class, whether it was like 10 minutes in, 30 minutes in, 50 minutes in, and I would say, would I be engaged right now? Would I be enjoying what I'm doing, what is happening in this class? And would I want to be in this class right now? And if I pause or hesitate, I'm like, fuck, I got to change something. Like I'm dragging ass as a coach, which is going to happen, right? We're human. Like we are going to drag ass from time to time. I remember this in some points, Chris, where I finished coaching a class and I was like, fuck, that was the worst group class I ever coached in my life. But it goes back to what you're saying. You got to learn from it. You got to learn from it and make sure you don't repeat it again. And I got to figure out why was I off? What occurred before? What have you that can change to fix and adjust? And I think that's important for coaches to have is their own checkpoints to keep checking in and hold themselves accountable and keep score.

SPEAKER_01:

Awesome. So this is like a perfect segue to the next thing I wanted to ask, which was many strength coaches, they burn out early in their careers. So- And you could kind of give this piece of advice to your younger self. What advice would you give to a younger coach on staying passionate and building a long-term career in this industry? Like if you were giving yourself, Jason at 21, a piece of advice from now, what would you tell yourself?

SPEAKER_00:

That's good. That's hard for me, Chris, because I love coaching so much. And I love strength and conditioning so much that I've been fucking running hard for like, what am I, 45? For like 23 years, I've been running hard. And I don't... I've never felt where I was like burning out. I think for me where burnout would occur is if you're pushing hard and... It's getting challenging to do other things in your life, meaning like your gym isn't successful. You're not making money. You're working 12, 14, 15 hours a day and you're broke, which is pulling on your family life and pulling a lot of other things. Right. I think that that can create burnout for a lot of people. For me, it's like I still train one on one, but I still have a bunch of one on one clients that still coach classes. And I'm kind of like rambling right now, but I'll get around the point, I promise. So preventing burnout, I think what you really have to do is, a key thing for me if I was 21 years old is I would hire a strategist, someone that can strategically help me with the growth of what I need to do to be successful in a gym. And this isn't a plug for two-way business. two brain business at all either, but it's a company like that because I came into it strength and conditioning with zero business background. Like I didn't take one business course in high school or college at all. I knew nothing about running a business. I knew nothing about operating procedures. I knew nothing about business setup or format. Thankfully, I got into it at the right time. And it was like the wild, wild west, right? And you know, Chris, because you were at the same time. It's just like you wake up, I'm coaching every single class, I'm training, whatever. We're having fun with it. Zero business development. And I think if I was able to, and I was lucky enough to have some mentors that were able to help me along the way. So what I'm trying to get at is you're a new coach, you're a business owner, you own a gym. Get with a good mindset. company that can provide proper plans and strategies for you to establish a good business background if you don't have a business background that's number one number two to help prevent burnout understand other things that bring you joy and make sure you devote time to them so make sure you fill those cups right i've always said that i think balance is an improper word because there's really no such thing as balance i think there's always counterbalance meaning If I sway too much on the business side, I have my wife and kids that bring me back. She doesn't let me go that far. So understanding the proper counterbalance between all the things that bring you joy and give yourself times in your lives where you can fill those cups. And you might go through a quarter where it's heavily business focused. And so you know coming out of that quarter, you got to make sure you put some time and to fill in other areas of your life. So you're able to have that joy and not feel like you're just on a hamster wheel your whole life. So that'd be my second one is understand, excuse me, the different components of the life that bring you joy and give yourself time to fill those cups. And then lastly, for preventing burnout is put yourself on a, on the right plan to get to where you want to be in three to five years. Meaning it's very easy when you come into the game to get wrapped up and just trying to coach as much as you can, right? You're coaching, I don't know, five to six classes a day. You're picking up, you're trying to pick up PT clients. You're doing on-ramps. Next thing you know, you're doing eight to 10 hours of just pure emotional coaching because coaching a class of PT clients, that's emotionally a lot. on somebody. It is. It's way more taxing doing eight hours of classes and one-on-ones than eight hours of desk work or other stuff, right? But if that's all you do, then before you know it, you're going to be one, two, three years in with zero plan of how to get to where you want to be as a coach, whether that's coaching less, having a higher price point, doing only PTs, whatever your trajectory or path is you want to go. So, you really need to put those wheels in place. And I look at it just like programming, to build that basement of what can create the legs for where you wanna be to stand upon. Just like with programming, you wanna be an elite in CrossFit, you have to first build your GPP. If you don't build your GPP, your ability to sustain volume intensity diminishes drastically. So you have to put the time in there, and that's gonna create that. And that goes with coaching. If you see yourself as, being with inside like this specific bucket here, well, you got to start doing the small things now to put yourself in a position to do that in one, two, three, four, five years down the road. If you don't, then you need to get to three years out and be doing the same thing. And I think that's when you feel like you're just drained, you're exhausted, you don't want to do anymore, but you don't see the light at the end of the tunnel because you haven't done the necessary things to get that established for yourself, right? So those would be the three things that I would say.

SPEAKER_01:

It's interesting because what you just said reminds me of the constant question between like motivation and discipline, right? Where people do stuff when they're motivated. And as a young coach, one of the things that you mentioned was seeking out some kind of guidance or mentorship or coach to kind of help guide your path. And I agree with you. When I first opened the gym, I was like, wake up. coach four hours, go home, take a nap for two hours, come back, work out for three hours, coach the evening classes, be the accountant, the janitor, the salesperson. One of the first things I would do if I was myself back then is hire one other person to help you with something, right? To look at that as an investment versus an expense. But further along, what you said about burning out, which I found interesting was almost like, starting with the end in mind first. So like, hey, three years from now, because this exercise I learned in one of my groups, like a thousand day exercise was like, hey, where do I want to be a thousand days from now? And that's scary for people to think about. Some people don't even know what they want to do a week from now. And that could be like, we could probably talk about that for hours. So I don't want to go down that rabbit hole. But I agree with you that starting in some way, shape or form with the end in mind of what you wanna do. Like, let's say you're working at a gym. You're like, hey, I know that I wanna open a gym and I wanna open a gym in three or four years. If I'm looking at myself as a business owner, how do I work backwards from there to where I am now in order to get myself there? It might be hiring a coach, establishing a presence on social media, starting to deliver client results, getting testimonials, et cetera. But I think that's really important to mention for those of you out there that are coaching at a gym that maybe are working part-time, but want to turn this into a career, this is, this is kind of the path that I would take if I was giving myself that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. So I,

SPEAKER_01:

I

SPEAKER_00:

did it with two things. I did it with, as a coach, like probably like 16 years ago, I was like, where do I want to be as a coach in three years? Who do I want to be coaching? How do I want to be coaching them? You know, and I started, doing the things I needed to do to get there with learning, educating myself, being around certain people. And then before COVID hit, I did an exercise because, you know, COVID wasn't even a thought, but gym was successful. You know, my coaching career is successful in regards to where I wanted to be. I was kind of hitting all my target points. And they made me write down like what my gravesite would say. You know what I'm saying? Like, if you died, what would your eulogy say? And that was fucking hard because I realized that if I was going to continue to go down the path where I was, what I wanted to be said for my eulogy had very little to do with what I was actually doing. Right? Like I was working my ass off. I was still married. Well, I've been married. I've never been divorced when I was married. We had like two kids at that point. We have three now. And I was traveling a lot. I was traveling a lot of weekends. I was... traveling the world, doing my own seminars. You know, I was at the gym from like, I don't know, seven to like six, seven still. I was there on the Saturdays all fucking day with the competitors. And when I thought about if I died, what I wanted people to say, nothing had to do with how successful I was as a coach. Nothing had to do with how much I worked or how hard of a workout I was. Everything had to do with the husband and father. I wanted to be. So that was like the first, for me as a business owner, a kick in the dick to try to be like, all right, well, that posed my next major question for myself was, well, how can I be successful in regards to how I define success as a coach and a business owner, but make sure I'm doing the things that I need to do, where I need to be, for what really matters to me, right? Which is my family. So that was like a hard one for me at that point. And that brought upon a lot of changes too, of trying to work in a certain hours of the day, you know, making sure I'm home at certain times, making sure I go home, I'm not working at home, being there on the weekends, especially when the kids age and doing sporting events, right? So yeah, I've always worked backwards, almost like with programming too, where, like with periodization, I'd be like, all right, well, the person's here and they want to be here. So from a phase potentiation standpoint, what do I need to do to get them here? And how can I reverse engineer that and break it down? And I decided to take that same approach with my coaching and my life, be like, well, if I'm here now, but this is where I want to be, or I want to be known as, what the fuck do I need to do to get there? Because I'm not there, right? And that's always how I went about it.

SPEAKER_01:

That's awesome, man. I think it's just a powerful lesson for people, right? Because some of my coaches I speak with, or just people I speak with, I understand living in the present moment and then looking into the future might give you some anxiety. But if you're just completely oblivious to where you want to be a year, three years, five years, 10 years from now, I just feel that you're living a life where you're not going to be able to reach your full potential. Now, you... I don't know how much you've shifted your focus, but I know you have shifted your focus somewhat to educating other coaches through seminars. I know you work with Power Monkey Fitness. You have your Conquer Athlete mentorship program. So if you had to pick like one, what are some of the most common or the most common coaching mistake you see people making and how can we avoid those or improve those?

SPEAKER_00:

To me, it's, it's chasing methods versus before understanding principles you know because and i don't really think that's coach's fault i think it's because that's what we're inundated with every single day with pop-up social media here's how you get 12-week program for stronger squat right a 12-week program for ring muscle-ups a 12-week program to improve your 2k row time etc etc it's like method method method method right and then you go to a lot of seminars And a lot of seminars are based on that person's method too, because methods are what sell. And when coaches continually chase methods or only understand methods, then their ability to pivot, make adjustments, do the right thing for a certain person, they're constantly lowering their ceiling, right? Their tree experience is very small because they don't understand what that method is tied to or how to pivot if that method doesn't work because methods at some point won't work. So the more you understand principles, the more you understand that these governing principles apply to anything, right? Whether I'm trying to build strength or power, hypertrophy, conditioning, improve someone's VO2 max, improve their anaerobic or aerobic threshold, try to Diminish the interference effect between concurrent programming if I'm mixing in mixed modal work with some form of strength program. How to go through various cycles from strength to power to speed or power, strength, endurance. I'm blabbering all these things, but the more coaches tie into principles, the more they can take anything I just said and be able to apply the proper methods for the person that they're working with if that is necessary. applicable for that person where they are. So I think the most important thing that new coaches can do is really tie into true principles of strength conditioning. So like, individual differences, talking about genetic build, strength versus power versus endurance athletes, talking about progressive overload, understanding phase potentiation, periodization, understanding intensity and volume, understanding this, all those different exercise selection, all those different components. And the more that fatigue management, the more they can do that, the more they can take anything, any method, make pivots and make the proper adjustments for the athletes to be successful, whether you're in a group setting or whether you're in an individual one-on-one setting, right? Because you understand, you know, the principle of progressive overload, then you understand if you're running a group class, all right, well, this is what we did last week, this is what we're doing this week, and you were here last week, well, this is what you should be doing now to gain more adaptation to drive a stimulus, right? If you tell me in a group setting, hey, you're just not feeling strong on your back squats, well... The principle of progressive overload states this, so this is what we can do over the next six weeks to get you to where you want to be, rather than saying, oh, well, let's try this 5-3-1 method, or let's try this 5-by-5 method, right? Well, it's why do you want to put that stuff in there? And the more they understand the whys, the more effective of a coach they'll be across really anything.

SPEAKER_01:

One of my favorite quotes, man, the man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles is sure to have trouble. So

SPEAKER_00:

yeah,

SPEAKER_01:

it's, it's, it's, you're, you're one of my, you're one of my many coaches throughout my career and in athletics. And you're like the third or fourth person who, who, who mentions that, that it's, and like you said, it's very difficult because we're inundated so much on social media with get, get, my abs in six weeks or this strength program. But that is really powerful. One final question for you. I want to wrap it up with this. So you've been involved in strength and conditioning for so long. Where do you see the future of strength and conditioning heading? And what should coaches be doing now to stay ahead of the curve?

SPEAKER_00:

Great question. Based around where this world is going, I think with the future of strength conditioning, we're gonna start locking into more AI pieces, right? You know, I know this isn't out yet, but I had a conversation with one of my mentors and they were talking about, they were a conditioning expert, and they were talking about a wearable threshold tracker. So if you're doing a lactate tracker, so if you're doing like a lactate test, Generally speaking, you got to have someone with the proper equipment and they're going to pinprick you, grab your blood and do that in between intervals. Well, they have a wearable that can automatically track that without ever grabbing blood from you, right? So I feel like there's going to be this crazy state where there's going to be this amazing data points coming out. And I feel like there's going to be two schools, right? One school where some coaches are going to get over in a day with data and AI and kind of go down deep rabbit holes. Other coaches are going to kind of shy away from me like, oh, fuck that. I never think AI will replace coaching. I think that's simply because of the art of communication and true coaching comes down to that blend. However, I do think the more coaches that you can understand how to utilize data in a positive way for yourself and your athletes and not have data use you, the more effective you can be with these amazing tools that we're going to have. Right. And when I say by data using you, I remember one time, I think you're with me at this point, Chris, I'm not sure, but it's when like, you know, HRV monitors first came out. Um, and I had all of our athletes on HRV and I was tracking on data sheets and, um, you'd have half the athletes who would be so afraid to train if it was red or orange, right? If their color was like, oh, I'm over-trained, I can't train today, what's going on? And start questioning everything, right? Where for some people, I had to completely get rid of it because the data was using them. They couldn't look at it and just be like, okay, let me auto-regulate and make some adjustments. It turned into red flags, like the sink is fucking shipping, right? The ship is sinking, right? So I think what's gonna be key for new coaches is to understand, the AI that's going to be coming out and how we can continually use that to be effective with what we're doing and with the populations that we're in. Like, you know, if you're coaching CrossFit classes, are you going to need fucking force plates and tendo units and lactate testing? No, not at all, right? But you might need other things, right? You might be able to have HRV trackers that can help assess people's stress levels, that can give them a better class experience. Who knows, right? And who knows the availability and the easiness that it's going to have But I just think don't be scared of it, rather embrace it and understand how to use it effectively with inside the clientele of who you're working with.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, man, I think that's super powerful. Bonus question, is there any current gadget, wearable, or any technology that you see being beneficial to the mass population right now that could help coaches? better understand their clients. Look, I wear a whoop. I've worn one for eight years. I was one of the first users. I wear a Garmin. I know a lot of the data on these is wildly inaccurate. And I think it almost sets people up to think, oh, I burned 900 calories in your workouts. And I'm like, the hell you did. You probably burned 200. But is there anything that you see right now that people could be utilizing that's actually accurate or beneficial at this current juncture in time or not really?

SPEAKER_00:

You know, Prince, if I think about this from a general population standpoint, right? If we're talking about the masses, I think like I do just the Garmin. You know, I love how I open up my Garmin and it tracks my sleep, my HRV, my energy expenditure, my body battery, my recovery, like all that stuff, right? To me, that's super convenient. I'm never someone that gets worried about data for myself, but it's something I can look at and be like, all right, well, damn, I fucking slept like shit. My body says it's not fully recovered. Maybe I'll take it a little bit easy today, right? But I also look at it like, wow, it says I slept like shit and I recovered, but I feel like a fucking gladiator right now. So I don't even care what it says. I'm just getting after it. My wife has an aura ring, which she lives and dies by with her sleep. I think, honestly, for the mass population, anything that's simple, meaning they don't have to go through extreme ways to kind of get information, that can track sleep and recovery. And you don't need to tie deep down into HRV, but I think if you do, HRV is really effective and quick with the way it can be measured out, understanding just your recovery level and where you're at. So to round it out in a long way, way. I love just a simple Garmin or I guess Whoop. I don't really have a lot of experience with the Whoop, but anything that can give you a reading of your sleep, your recovery, I think is really beneficial for a lot of people because I don't think a lot of people are recovered as well as I think they are. People probably don't sleep as well as they think they sleep. And if your sleep sleeps everything, right? You want to aesthetically change, you got to get good sleep. You want to improve your performance, you got to get good sleep. Your sleep's shit, everything else is going to be shit.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I was recently listening to a podcast with Matthew Walker where he was talking about people grossly overestimate their sleep because the time it takes to go to sleep is so long. So someone might be in bed for eight hours, but they're only actually sleeping six hours. So he sets up some cues to, he measures sleep efficiency, which is actually the time it takes to go to sleep. And he's like, if someone's sleep efficiency is below 85%, what I'll actually have them do is not go lay in bed too early and try to train them to only go to bed when they're going to actually go to sleep. But that's, again, I just found it interesting and I couldn't agree more that the basis of the pyramid is like stress management, sleep, and all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, the more they track that, just the better. I look at things, I know I'm kind of rambling, I'm sorry, but I look at things for sleep like, all right, if I stop eating at this time, do I sleep better? So they are, let me try it for a week, right? Or if it's like, if I sauna at this time, am I going to sleep better? Because I always thought I slept great. Chris. And then I, once I started tracking it more and more, I'm like, man, my sleep efficiency, like really not that good. Like I might average like a fucking 70 and I'm over here thinking I sleep really good. Right. And I'm like, I'm like, I gotta fix this. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. A lot of what you're saying though, too, has to do with the fact that it's introducing something. Hey, I'm going to eat three hours before bedtime. do it for two to three weeks and see how I feel. A lot of this is also just based on how self-aware we are and kind of building that intuition with not introducing so many variables all at once. Like I'm going to wear a sleep mask. I'm going to take a nice bath. I'm going to take a sauna. I'm going to do this. Just like introduce one thing and then measure and track. So man, we did an hour and I feel like we, we could, I could have asked you like a hundred more questions. Yeah, this is great. This is fun. where can our coaches follow you and learn more from you?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Um, so Instagram, Jason Lydon or conquer athlete, um, website. How do you spell

SPEAKER_01:

that?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh, your, your last name for our viewers. L E Y D O N. Awesome. Jason Lydon. Yep. I put a lot of information there. They could also just email me Jason at conquer athlete.com. Um, I love talking. So just shoot me an email with any questions they have.

SPEAKER_01:

Awesome. Well, Jason, thank you so much again, guys. This is the Strength Coach Collective podcast. You can join our free Facebook group at strengthcoachcollective.com or find us at strengthcoachcollective.com. Thank you so much. And we'll see you guys next time.