Principles of Program Design: The Checklists Every Coach Needs

Most coaches learn to assign sets and reps but never master the systems behind truly effective program design.

Today on the “Strength Coach Collective” podcast, Mike Perry and Eric D’Agati, co-founders of Principles of Program Design, explain how fitness coaches can use scalable systems and proven checklists to deliver personalized results without chaos.

Mike and Eric break down how to create high-value training without overcomplicating things and earn forever clients who never want to leave.

Their unique belt system helps coaches assess client readiness and progression more accurately, and their checklists can be used to streamline intake, track progress and improve decision-making in real time.

The pair also explain how to avoid common mistakes that hold coaches back, why most training plans fall apart over time and how better systems can help you develop a more sustainable coaching career.

This episode will help you tighten your programming, simplify your process and deliver better results.

Links

Strength Coach Collective

0:42 - Principles of Program Design

18:40 - Progression with a belt system 

27:20 - Checklists for coaches

36:53 - How to gain confidence

50:25 - Main coaching takeaways

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Welcome to the Strength Coach Collective, a podcast brought to you by Two Brain Business. Mike, Eric, thanks for doing this. This is awesome. Appreciate you guys jumping on. Absolutely. Thanks for having us, Kenny. Yeah, so with principles of program design, let's kind of talk. I'd love to hear the backstory, how you guys got to where you are now. You guys have been doing this for a while, so I'd love to hear a bit about that before we get deeper into what you guys specifically do and how we can help everybody.

SPEAKER_02: 0:56

Mike, you want to take the lead? We'll see if our stories match like the dating game. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00: 1:00

it started with a romantic evening in Jersey. No. That's not how I remember it. So I've been in this game for 21 years, Eric a little bit longer than I, and throughout that time. You know, I've done a lot of stuff, made a lot of mistakes. I've been fortunate enough to work with FMS as a lead instructor, also to work with Strong First as a barbell kettlebell instructor as well. In addition to that, I've been running my own gym called Skill of Strength. We're located in Chelmford, Mass. And we've been doing that for 14 years. And at the very beginning of my career, I was a pretty good coach. I was a pretty good coach. But what I realized is that being a pretty good coach doesn't mean that you're going to be a pretty good business owner. And I learned relatively quickly that I wasn't scalable and I needed to create systems that would allow me to do my best to make the gym repeatable, scalable, and sustainable. So it wasn't me trying to please everybody all the time. And, uh, you know, that was a big part of it. And then Eric and I, through the years we're teaching for FMS and we, we, we started to get all these questions about like, guys, what about this? What do I do with this? And there was always these questions about what's next, what's next. And we're like, well, it's kind of two directions here. One is getting people to understand how to implement and do exercise technique, but programming is the biggest one where people just didn't know where things went. Even worse than we thought, literally they just took a bunch of exercises, threw it in a pot and said, here's your program, and that is no way to do it. One of the things we realized early was if we just gave people a simple template to follow, it would make them better. That's really the origin story of PPD and what we're trying to do here is is trying to honestly help young coaches expedite the process and being great. And hopefully they don't make as many mistakes as we did along the year. So that's my side of the story. We'll see what Eric has to say.

SPEAKER_02: 3:02

Yeah. Just to pick up where Mike left off, it started with programming, but we always had this vision that it had to be more than sets and reps. There's a lot of sets of reps guys out there with templates. It had to be more than that. And then looking into it, seeing, okay, where is the weak link with a lot of people? And one is that we saw the six to 24 epidemic, which I always talk about. What's the six to 24 is kind of the average lifespan in our industry, six to 24 months. And then they go back to whatever it is as another career. There's a a lot of people who at one point were really passionate about helping people and about this industry that we lose because we don't give them any kind of career path or even teach them how to be a professional and it was it's kind of like you know in like stepbrothers like what do we do with my hair in the morning like they don't know like what to do and so it's like all right let's lead you through this client journey like here's what you're going to think about before they even walk in the door and then once they walk in the door these are the questions that you should be asking and then from there here's the data you should collect and then based on that data here's how you start to form some thoughts and here's how programs start together but then realize that these are human beings that are going to change and here's how you need to adjust to those changes and then basically letting you go through this whole journey to build this relationship with another human being that's going to trust you with their health and so that that comes with a certain amount of responsibility and we believe that to earn that responsibility you have to be able to to meet certain marks and read a certain level of professionalism, almost like we were kind of joking before we went live here and saying people should expect more from you. And so because of that, you can then be able to expect more from yourself and from this as a profession and a real career.

SPEAKER_01: 4:45

Yeah, totally. I agree on all counts. And I think, yeah, as we were talking before we went live, like the respect that coaches get is underappreciated. I guess they don't get as much respect as they should. And like, I dream of a day where somebody looks at it like they call somebody coach, like they would call somebody doctor. And I think, and that sounds so like grandiose, but I feel like we have such a, and this is coming more to the forefront currently, but I think that the health and wellness, like we have so much, we have so much power over somebody's life to extend their lifespan, improve their healthspan as a coach. But so many of us come in under equipped, make a lot of mistakes, burn through some bodies, do things inefficiently. And then a lot of people, unfortunately, wash out and go do something else that is a little bit more financially or financially rewarding or just more productive for them. So, yeah, same page. And I think that what we're going to get into here in a second is hopefully making people do this better in this window. Yeah. What does that look like? What we're going to get into today is the efficiency within program design, but I think that what you just opened up is how to do this better, and then we can talk about how to do it maybe faster or more efficiently. Yeah,

SPEAKER_02: 5:57

I would say first, the bad rap is rightfully owned for a lot of us, and I'm not going to say that I wasn't guilty of it early on, but the visual I give people is this, is that if you went into a restaurant and they had no menus... And the kitchen had no recipes. What would that be? It'd be chaos. But that's what you walk into when you walk in and you hear a trainer go, what do you want to do today? And then they scramble and say, oh, let's try this. Oh, let's go try this. I saw this on YouTube today. Let's try this. Why would you have any respect for that? If your doctor did that and you said, hey, try this one. Somebody gave me this one today. Try this. You would never go back to that doctor again. And so if you want to earn that professionalism, you need to have some systems and checklists in place that that meet people where they're at and to do that. you're going to have to do a little homework before that person walks in the door. You can't just have no recipe and no menu and expect to have a smooth running machine. But that's unfortunately how a lot of businesses and professions are ran in the fitness industry.

SPEAKER_01: 7:06

Yeah, totally. It's one of the biggest downfalls, I think, of it is the low barrier of entry. I mean, you can do it in an hour over a weekend and call yourself out. a coach and then, you know, be on the same playing field as somebody who's may have spent 20 years in this industry like you guys have. So, yeah, I agree. Where does somebody start with that? Like, what's that look like? As far as the client journey and what the homework you should be doing for somebody professionalize this?

SPEAKER_00: 7:31

Well, you know, I think one of the things that we always try to encourage is capturing as much data as prior to actually meeting the person in person, right? Because you want to be as efficient as possible. So there's different ways that you can do an intake, park you, et cetera. But for us, when the client walks through the doors, and this is obviously brick and mortar, we want it to be an experience. And we actually teach the coaches how to talk to someone, how to greet someone, how to say hello, how to ask better questions, not, hey, how was Saturday? You know, how is your daughter's recital on Sunday night? That must have been such an amazing experience, right? How to connect because what we're realizing is that there's this gap in communication. And a lot of coaches just don't know how to converse in a way that is normal and natural and flowing. So what we've done is we've literally provided like these key questions where it's like, hey, like here's how you make the pizza just and just eat the pizza. I mean, make the pizza, right? Just follow these questions. And what we've realized is that By asking better questions, we can instantaneously make you a better coach just by following the script. And again, it's not robotic. You can put your own spin and flavor on it, but a big part of it just comes with your ability to gather really quality information from the people that you're working with. And that just starts with really good questions and what we call the key questions.

SPEAKER_01: 8:57

Nice. Could you give some examples? Eric, you want to take

SPEAKER_02: 9:00

this? Yeah, so one of the biggest flaws you see in any service industry is I always say they don't ask the second question, right? They have their head down on their clipboard and they say, okay, what's your goal? Oh, you want to lose weight? Great. Next question. What's this? And without going a little bit further, I say you need to be like a two-year-old. What's a two-year-old love to ask? Why? Why? Because the first answer they give is never why they're really there, right? Why are you really here? And if you don't get to that second, third, fourth answer, you're never going to get the root of what the real driver is while they're there. And that's going to be the thing you need to kind of remind them on because there's going to be days they're not going to want to work there there's going to be days they're going to want to skip sessions and you need to remind them like this isn't you know you told me that this was about something bigger than you that this was about being someone that your kids could look up to this was about doing something that everybody said you couldn't do whatever that true driver is you're never getting to that in the first question so you need to ask the second question so okay let's just say oh i want to lose weight okay well why do you want to lose weight oh well you know i don't like the way i look in the mirror okay so if you like the way you look in the mirror but you didn't lose any weight, would you care? I guess not. Okay, so then weight's not the real issue here. It's really a look. Okay. So then how are you going to know when you look the way you want to look? Oh, well, I have this pair of jeans if I could fit. Okay. Now we're starting to get to some real answers. And then what is ultimately you're looking to have? And then you start to get a little bit deeper and it's like, this isn't about a number on a scale. This is about your identity. And you're trying to either gain a new identity or reclaim an old one. And so that's really the essence of why you're here. When you can get to that, that's when you're going to build what we call forever clients, forever clients of the clients that don't leave. Like I have clients I literally have had for 20 plus years, some almost 25. They aren't going anywhere. And it's because you tap into that next layer. We do this in a live exercise game where we have, we pull people up out of the crowd in our live course and we have someone who's the client, someone who's the new, or who's the trainer or coach. And we ask them just to go through and ask questions. they don't ask the second question. And I remember one instance that stood out in my mind, there was a woman and she started talking and she identified herself as a runner. And she said, but she had knee problems, so she doesn't run anymore. So the person just kind of said, oh, you have a knee issue? Oh, okay, great, keep going. Oh, and then just kind of glide it over. And then without asking deeper questions and then say, well, you used to be a runner, would you like to run again? And the woman started to get emotional. And they said, I can't promise you anything, but if we can figure out what's going on with his knee and you can start running again, what would that mean to you? She got choked up. She's like, I would have you at my house for Thanksgiving dinner. And it's like, that's the magic spot. Now you've gotten her hooked. Now you've tapped into who she is and why she's really here. Not because of a name, not because of running, not because you want to lose weight. Because when she originally said what her goal was, it was like, I want to do my first chin-up. It's like that had nothing to do with why she was really there. And if you can tap into that and be masterful at asking the right questions and then shut up and listen, you're going to set yourself apart from everybody else in the industry.

SPEAKER_01: 12:17

Yeah, totally. I mean, We do consults at our gym. A lot of, a lot of gyms don't like they do free trials or whatever. And you know, the worst case scenario, this is they try and just smash somebody with some trial workout and assume that that's going to be there that, you know, they're going to sell them on abuse, but we'll spend, I'll spend 30 to 45, even an hour sometimes with just getting into deeper stuff with people. And I find people are often like really surprised by that. the experience and what we're the things that we're talking through the work. Cause we do get really deep. And also we're talking about their grandkids and their future and what they want to do in 30 years. And like you said, I've got people I've worked with forever for all the same reasons, but I think that coaches tend to tend to want to just, you know, it's whatever's on display in the beginning and that's what they do. And it's, it's it's quite unfortunate. And so I thought, yeah, I love what you just said. That's awesome.

UNKNOWN: 13:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 13:07

That's

SPEAKER_01: 13:07

the difference between... This is not a lot. Yeah, totally. Exactly. But this is not a lot. They're not coming and they're not trialing and you're not trying to pepper them while they're doing 150 burpees or whatever. This is a...

SPEAKER_02: 13:23

This is whenever your first interaction is with them, when you have to gain their trust and rapport. And like Mike said, it's like your first date. You're not going in for the kill in the first five minutes. You have to figure out, do a little dance first and figure out, is this the right place for you? And also to understand that they write for you. I've had many people say, you're probably not the right fit for my type of coaching. I'm going to find you someone who is, because I'd rather do that than have you come on board with me and fail, because that's the worst advertisement I can have.

SPEAKER_01: 13:57

Yeah. That's again, I, I just, I've said this before, but I love what you just said. And it is like a, the help first, like we're just trying to help people. And I think again, people assume there's going to be some slimy sales process. They probably had an experience with that or another, another gym, but saying, yeah, I just want to be able to tell you what's best for you. And if that's me, great. And if it's not like, that's great too.

SPEAKER_00: 14:20

You know, it's interesting. I've taken sales courses and I've done all the sales stuff. I know all the tactics. You know, I think when you go into the consultation with brutal honesty and a skill set, knowing that you can help someone, it makes the selling process that much easier because, you know, when people come in and they do a consultation with us, same thing, we get to know them. But you know what? One piece of advice that I always give them, and this seems to be something that has been a relative game changer for us, is that I said, hey, look, We'd love to have you here. Regardless of where you choose, make sure that they go through your injury history, medical history, look at your aches and pains, see how well you move, take you through some sort of assessment so they know where to start. Because I said, if they don't do that, that's not really a good decision for you. I said, I won't give you any other advice but that. But I would say 90% of the time, when I just educate them and say, hey, look, there's some standards that we believe people should be hitting when it comes to service in the personal training industry. And you'd be amazed at how well just educating people on like what's out there from a standard and a quality standpoint has been, has been tremendous for us because people realize that, wow, these guys aren't just your fly by night, you know, trainers because it's popular. Like they've been doing this for, for a very, very long time. And I always, people say kill them with kindness and I, and I agree with that, but I say kill them with education as well.

SPEAKER_01: 15:41

Yeah, for sure. And I, I have a lot of coaches that will be, they'll pull back from the idea of doing sales when I rename it and just call it a consult. Like when I say, hey, look, I just want you to listen to what they have to say, ask good questions, and then tell me what you think they should do. And they're like, oh, I can do that. And it really works. Like that's the extent of like how we intro the process to them. And they're like, oh, yeah, I can totally do that. And they can obviously get better with some of their questions as they go along. But like if they just go do that, like that's awesome. I'm thrilled.

UNKNOWN: 16:10

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 16:11

what happens next? Like, so in terms of program design, in terms of where you take a client next on their journey, like what's, what do you see is next, next best step for them?

SPEAKER_02: 16:21

It really kind of depends on your setting. Um, Because you may or may not have the ability to do some level of assessment because maybe they're working in a group setting and it doesn't allow for that type of thing. But there needs to be something to kind of know where they're at on day one. And so with that, you need to have some level of scaling. And then if it's a group situation, you need to have your coaches on point to know, okay, well, here's today's generic workout, but I need to be ready for whatever walks in that door. And how am I going to scale it? scale this either down or up for that individual. So one of our key tenants within training is that you need to be just basically two things. We know you need to be challenged because if you're not challenged, you won't change, you won't create a result, but you also need to be successful. And the sweet spot is right there. Like you said, you're just going to smash them. I can get that anywhere. I could get that for free on YouTube. Why am I paying you? But if it's not challenging enough, it's because maybe they just don't know how to scale it. And so we have, you know, a belt system like the martial arts, like, and that's how we program exercises in terms of exercise selection. is to say, okay, well, if you went to a martial arts dojo, you don't just walk in and start sparring with the black belts and figure it out because you're going to get your ass kicked. But at the same time, the black belt's getting nothing out of it either. So you need to figure out where to meet these people where they're at. And so scaling is important in terms of exercise selection. And then also in terms of choosing your volume and your reps and sets and so forth. So the more information I have with you, the better I can have. So I always say that, you know, my decisions are based on three things. One is access. Are you in a group? Are you individual or semi-private? Second is information. How much information can I gather in the intake process as well as through some level evaluation and then the most important thing is safety to make sure that i'm going to put you in a safe situation which sounds insane like why would you not be safe there's people who are going into fitness centers all the time who are just getting hurt so just being the fitness center that doesn't hurt people you've set yourself above the rest uh and and having a system which is crazy to me but that's actually the fact so those are the decision makers and then as much of that as i can gather and put into one pile the more i can dial it in for you

SPEAKER_01: 18:35

Yeah, I love it. The hyper individualization of the experience for somebody. What is the belt system? Is that so facility dependent? Does that change? Like what the what the what the what the designed outcome is? Or is that a is that a generic? Here's fitness on a belt system? Or how does that look?

SPEAKER_02: 18:53

Look, we're all doing the same nine patterns. I have a great friend who's a former NFL strength coach. He's like, I don't know what they do. at this team or that team, but I can pretty much tell you they're pushing, they're pulling, they're squatting, they're lunging, they're hinging, right? So if we know that those are the nine patterns, well, if the three of us sat down with a whiteboard, we can come up with 9,000 variations of the hinge. So which one are you gonna pick? Well, we try to classify it as objectively as possible into a belt system. So start off with just a simple white belt. Can you even get to the position and range of motion required and maintain that? If you can't maintain that for 30 seconds without any load and with support, well, there's no point loading it at this point, right? And only bad things are going to happen. So let's just start there. And if that's easy, then we can give you an unsupported version. And if you can do that, well, let's see if you can do a certain amount relative to your body weight. And then from there, well, then now the progression is going to get a little bit more thoughtful and artful, but you got to go through your basic ABCs before you can get into some of the more advanced stuff. And so it's a very simple, just guardrail system to make sure that you're not jumping somebody ahead of where they should be. Now, once you get there and you've kind of, The whole thing I want to have is if I have this thing that I talk about, if I was the czar of exercise, like if there was a person in charge of all exercise and I was in quality control of all exercise in the world, if I walked into your facility and I said, okay, well, why is this person doing this? You should have a nice progression and cogent answer to say, well, they've earned this and they got it to here and now that's why they're here. Great. Awesome. Go about your doing. Because at that point, we really don't care what you do. Right. Whether you do your split squat with a kettlebell or sandbag or a dumbbell or foot elevated or football, it doesn't matter as long as you're in and putting them in a place where they're successful and challenged. And that's all we're looking to do is give you some guardrails. I'm not trying to take away the artistic ability or take away your skill set that you already have. I'm just organizing it.

SPEAKER_01: 20:50

Yeah. And again, it's just in terms of some of the fears I hear is that coaches tend to be reticent to pull things away from people or scale them down. But I think a lot of the times that's based on a, I think it's based on a lack of an education or confidence in what they're going to be able to tell somebody and why. Like I find that I can, I don't have a problem with it and say, Hey, look, This is where you performed in this, so we're going to do this. Like, okay, cool. Like, it means you're a little bit more involved in that, but you get the point. And I think that that belt system or some sort of a progression can easily demonstrate to somebody, hey, look, like this is where you're at. That's awesome. We're going to fix that. And then we're going to move you along, but you like for you to do something over here in this, in black and a black belt level of fitness, like that's probably irresponsible. And we're going to get you there if that's your goal. But for right now, that doesn't, that doesn't really pertain. So are you guys evaluating somebody as they, before they begin, or is it a moving target? Like not a moving target, but are they, is it a, as they flow through the program, are they getting evaluated?

SPEAKER_00: 21:51

Well, so where we sort of take things off is we, you know, we have the belt system is more about sort of looking at, yes, there is a qualitative component and there's a competency sort of component. But really what we're trying to see is, hey, can they get into these positions? And once they get into these positions, how long can they can hold these positions? So there is some qualitative stuff built in, but what it does based off of the way that we've put our algorithm together based off of these assessments, it's going to shoot us in a direction of what load to choose, whether it's, you know, assisted body weight, body weight, or some sort of external. So what we've done, and Eric is like the guru with this stuff. He looked at all the top strength coaches in the world and looked at their data and standards for athletes and analyzed all this data and said, well, you know, based off of what all the smartest people in the world are saying and our own experience, here's some guidelines and some rails that, you know, if most people could follow these basic systems and algorithms and templates, they're going to do really, really well. And that's how sort of the belt system was really born was Eric just compiling data and just kind of saying, wow, look at all these similarities. There's got to be something here. And then we put our heads together and started saying, well, what about this? And it's been pretty cool because we've tested it because we always like to try to poke holes in what we do. Anything we put together, we're like, all right, let's try to blow it up now. Let's try to pick it apart. And the belt system is something that we're like, man, this is... This is pretty rock solid and it works really well. And that's something that we are always looking to fine tune. But it really checks a lot of boxes and it can make, you talk about scaling, there's no need for scaling or progressing and regressing when you have this assessment built in. It kind of spits it right out for you. And that's the beauty of it. It kind of tells you where to start. And if you can do a good movement assessment and then use our belt assessment, I mean, the rest is just good coaching and not hurt them.

SPEAKER_01: 23:46

Cool. Eric, you got anything to add? You're the nerd on this one, it sounds like.

SPEAKER_02: 23:51

Yeah, well, as nerdy as it is, Kenny, it basically comes back to– and this is kind of– and Mike talks a lot about– I think he just had a post yesterday about the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Like knowledge is all the stuff I tried to convince you about in the first five years of my training and try to press through the Latin terms that I knew. And then wisdom is the more I just sit back and don't say anything now. And wisdom is when it comes to programming is the reality is I don't really care what's in your program. And when I say don't care, it's not meaning I care about the outcome, but whether I give you a deadlift or whether I give you a thoracic mobilization or whether I give you a yoga pose, I really don't care. It doesn't like I have an incentive. I get a special kickback on every deadlift I do, you know, program. It doesn't matter to me. It's whatever is going to get you there the fastest. And so I'm very, and one of the things we really wanted to do when we put this whole thing together was be agnostic to So whatever system it is. So if you like wanting to do more movement stuff, whether it's Alexander, Feldenkrais, FRC, great. Here's where it plugs in. You want to do 5-3-1, Westside, whatever method you want from that standpoint, great. Here's where it plugs in. You want to do kettlebell? Awesome. We don't really care. It's just you just have a rhyme and a reason and have a system and a series of checklists. And that's really the biggest thing that everything keeps boiling back to is checklists. I don't know who does the food shop in your house. I do the food shop in my house because I end up doing most of the cooking. And so if you don't go with a checklist... You end up buying a bunch of, you know, like we always joke, me and Mike joke, you end up with two bags of kale that you throw out next week because you didn't really need it. You had no plan to cook it. You had nothing, you know, no system for using it. So you need to have a checklist and okay, here's what I need and here's all the ingredients that are going to take that to make it happen. And so checklists are the key to really being effective and checklists are the foundation of your systems. And then once you have systems, systems are just repeatable things like Mike said, that you just keep testing and trying to break And then when you can break it, figure out why it broke, and then just make that slight tweak so it changes. And, you know, something I know we're going to get into is then the system of actually programming itself. Like, it shouldn't be taking hours and hours to do this. It sounds really complex, but it shouldn't be.

SPEAKER_00: 26:24

No. Not at all. So, so one other thing that I just want to add about, you know, that, that sort of, you know, to dovetail or sort of add onto what Eric was saying is, you know, programming is, is only, is only necessary. I mean, programming is only complicated when you, you aren't starting with a solid template. It just, it literally becomes sort of a, like a stew of just exercise and stretches and you just throw it in and hope it tastes good at the end. And, and it just doesn't work. Sometimes it might, But again, if you want to scale, if you want to grow, you just simply can't guess. It won't work. I don't care how good you are. You can be a healer and touch people on the head, but you can only touch so many heads, right? So at the end of the day, the systems and pressure testing your systems are what will allow you to scale your business.

SPEAKER_01: 27:17

Yeah, for sure. What's the broad scope of the series of checklists? Not going one way doesn't make a lot of sense, but we've talked about it a couple times. So intake, testing, where are we going?

SPEAKER_02: 27:32

Okay, so the first thing is we need to get people to understand, and again, this sounds crazy, but you need to understand the difference between a program and a workout. They're not necessarily the same thing, right? Workouts are within a program, but workouts are just that. A program is, okay, these are going to be the steps. Here's the end goal over here, and here's where we're starting. The program is all the steps to get us there, and the workouts are one of those vehicles within that program. Now, understanding that, we have simple checklists. We have 10 things that are the checklist of things for your program. Number one, what's your goal? Number two, how much time do we have? Number three, a little bit about the individual. Number four, what movements are we going to pick? That's just kind of our checklist. And then say, okay, how are we then going to disperse this into a program or into a workout? Okay, and how are we going to spread those workouts out? Well, we have a separate checklist for that. That's our five Fs to say, okay, here's the things that should be in each workout, right? You should have... you know, something to make sure that we're, if not improving, at least maintaining function. Do we have some sort of, you know, the basic foundations in there? Do we have certain fillers where we can get in the work that maybe we couldn't get otherwise? So we have these simple checklists that we go through and to say, make sure I don't miss anything. That's the whole point of the checklist there. And then once you have that and say, okay, well, now I know Well, go back to our patterns. We have those basic patterns we need to hit. Well, now everything is already kind of in this nice little template. Now it's just a matter of adjustment. So from a time perspective, right? I started off, you know, just like everybody else does. You sit down at Starbucks, a blank white sheet of paper, and I got to write Kenny's program, right? And you realize like three hours later, you're like, shit, I just lost$25 probably, you know, training Kenny here. How does this make sense as a business? But if you know, like, As special as Kenny is, there's a lot of people that are kind of like Kenny. So if I have a basic template that's the Kenny template, then it's just a matter of when the next Kenny comes in with a slight alteration, I just have to make the slight alteration. I don't have to start from scratch again. So if someone came up to you in that coffee shop and said, hey, could you write me a fitness program? You could easily, any of us could get out a napkin and scratch it down and hand it back to them and say, oh, this is great. But then they're going to turn to you and they're going to say, yeah, this is great. But, uh, and that, but is going to be a limitation that, but as well, I have this, this shoulder issue or I have this knee issue or that, but is, I don't have, time to do four days a week, or I don't have all this equipment, or I don't know how to do all these things, or I don't have this or that. There's basically eight or nine limitations that encompass just about every limitation you're going to have. And so if you now hit that ahead of time, well, now I have a template for each limitation. That's a variation of the Kennedy program. Now all I have to do is swipe that one out, swipe this one in, and then maybe make one more slight tweak because maybe that lower body restriction for you is a knee and for somebody else is an ankle. But now that process took me five, 10 minutes, as opposed to taking three hours. And then from there, all the adjustments are just progressions and regressions. And we've had this philosophical conversation about if someone's just training for general fitness, the changes from that point are really more for entertainment and engagement value more than they are for you know, for physiological purposes. So you just have to do enough to keep them engaged and moving forward while still maintaining within the same guardrails of all those checklists that we set up in the beginning.

SPEAKER_01: 31:16

Yeah. Love it. And it's so, so true. And all of you just said, I mean, I, I was the guy I hated program. I love program principles of programs. I like, I literally, like I've taken so many courses learned as much as I could. And then I found myself hating it because of something we talked about before we got online is like, you would just, like, it would just be overwhelming. And you'd just spend so much time trying to do the thing. And you'd leave these things, these educational things, without practical to-dos. And what you just outlined, by understanding the, like, trickle-down, you kind of start at the top, goal, and then limitations, what they can do, time frame. Like, it really becomes... it's so much less overwhelming and so much less complicated by just kind of like following the data into a thing. And it's like, oh, wow, my recipe turned into a beautiful meal that is a part of this whole plan, right?

SPEAKER_02: 32:04

Yeah, just like I said with the restaurant. They have the same menu, but people go in and say, hey, can I get that? And can you leave the onions off? Can I get that? Can I get that with, you know, well done, right? You still have the ability to customize it, but you have to have some framework or it's chaos.

SPEAKER_00: 32:21

No, I was just going to say, we always talk about the Chipotle analogy, right? You know, when Chipotle sort of launched in, I think it was 2013, they claimed they had over 65,000 different combinations based off of their sort of what they ordered, sort of what they served rather on their initial menu. Now they said they have the, I think it's over 6 million combinations of potential meals based off of their ingredients at Chipotle. And honestly, the ingredients at Chipotle are tortillas, proteins, rice, beans, salsas, meats, kind of it. You get your drinks. But point is, there are so many combinations, but they're still pulling from the same bins. They're still pulling from the same bins. And that's the analogy that we use is we can make anybody a custom burrito, but is it really that custom? You're still going to have rice. You're still going to have beans, but it's still the similar stuff. And once people look at the fact that a squat pattern is a squat pattern, we're just going to give you advice on what pattern's the best for that individual. But it's really about trying to simplify, but also making sure that the big rocks are taking care of because far too many people go down these rabbit holes where, you know, they end up chasing things that really don't matter. And they try to be pseudo healers and pseudo physical therapists and this and that. And, you know, people aren't sleeping and people aren't, you know, doing, you know, they move like crap, but they're worried about a winging scapula, you know, and what miniband to use when they don't know how to squat, touch their toes, or they don't even drink water. So for us too, it's just about telling people, Hey, like, these are the big rocks. These are the important things. Like, don't worry if, you know, someone blinked as they did their squat assessment or don't worry if you know someone's towing out a little bit like these aren't huge huge details right focus on the big rocks first and then if you want to go down the rabbit hole you know later cool but you can't major in the minors when it comes to program design

SPEAKER_01: 34:13

yeah totally and I think that sometimes like there's two ways to take to this sometimes like sometimes it's over boring or Like I've shown my coaches templates. I'm like, here, just use this. I'm like, well, that's boring. Like I got to use this. I'm like, well, no, but this, this, this is where it becomes the magic happens is the individualization to, again, to go through those checklists, to understand their why, where they're, what they're limited. Like there's so much more magic to that. Like mastery is a, as a chef rather than a cook. Once you understand the basics of, of preparing the food. We're going to get off the restaurant analogy at one point maybe, but maybe not. Maybe it's just a second

SPEAKER_02: 34:47

state. Not with a guy with an I at the end of his last name. Everything comes back to food. So the big mistake is that they– to your point, Kenny, is that they jump too quickly into specific training, right? And so if– Guy walks in and he's 45 years old and he's a weekend warrior golfer and we latch on to that and think, okay, I'm going to give this guy every rotational exercise and golf clubs hooked up with bands and everything golf related. The guy stinks at golf because he can't touch his toes, because he's 30 pounds overweight, because he's terribly out of shape and because he just doesn't produce any force. He doesn't need specific golf training. You don't have, okay... a master's level golfer in your hand. You have a person who's unfit. So, and that's one of the things that like, and I know you get a lot of CrossFit population. That's one of the elegances of CrossFit is that they're really good at just general physical preparation, right? It's not necessarily getting you good for something specific. It's getting you really physically prepared for any environment that you're going to walk into. And so I think we think that that's not sexy, but really good general physical preparation is if you just got everybody just a an exceptional level of gpp right general physical preparation you're you're going to make so many people better at whatever they venture out to do then you can worry about dabbling getting specific specific is sexy it's it makes for good you know uh uh short reels on on instagram but it doesn't move the needle for most people because there's and that's really what the belt system also kind of keeps reels you in to say, you, you don't earn, you haven't earned the right to be specific yet. You're trying to do some high level purple belt stuff. You still haven't earned your basic belts yet. And so that's really why it is. And it's trying to keep you in the guardrails. Now, once you get there, that's where we have a lot more freedom to do stuff, but only if you've kind of earned those, those stripes.

SPEAKER_01: 36:52

Totally. Do you have any insights on how to gain that confidence as a coach to be able to again, confidently tell somebody like you, you, I wouldn't word it this way, but you haven't earned the right to do this. Because that's a hard thing, I think, for younger coaches or less experienced coaches because they feel like they want to, like, the client comes in with something that they want and it's like, well, I'm going to give them what they want. They just asked for this. But as a more mature coach, the right answer is, again, asking more questions, clarifying some more things, and then saying, look, I hear what you say, but this is actually what you need. Like, what's your insight on how to develop that confidence?

SPEAKER_00: 37:28

I think a big part of sort of the process is you got to write things down, right? For me, writing things down and gathering metrics on my client's progress is a simple way to know that I'm moving the needle in the right direction. So, you know, for me, I've always found that that's just a very, very simple metric to be like, hey, look, here's where you started and look at where you are now. I think that's really important because what it does is it takes the, I don't want to say the emotion, but, you know, Result to result. If you do a good job and you consistently deliver a good product, eventually people aren't going to care about sort of your age or your experience. So I think the big part is just finding ways to capture success and recognize your successes early on, but also realize that, man, it's a tough industry and it's a tough industry. It's a tough environment because you're dealing with human beings and you could do everything right and they could just come in and have a bad morning or didn't sleep and everything that you thought that was true is completely off now. So, you know, I think... It's important to gather data. I think it's important to be a permanent beginner and continue to learn. But I think it's also important to be graceful with yourself because you're going to make mistakes because you're human. But the fact that you're dealing with human beings who are evolving and changing day to day, that's the hardest part about coaching is trying to be agile with humans. So I think it's a consistency of trying to get better, paying attention, and also simultaneously giving yourself a little bit of grace to know that, hey, you're new at this and you are going to mess up and that's okay. But as long as you keep on, you know, keeping the hammer down and learning. I think the other point

SPEAKER_02: 39:17

is it's very hard for us to be objective and to step back from ourselves and understand that a lot of these expectations and biases are ones that we brought on ourselves. If you ask 10 people on the street right now, what's a good workout? What are they going to tell you 99% of the time? Nine out of 10 people, what are they going to tell you? It was really hard. I sweat a lot. It was challenging. And I was sore afterwards. That's what they are expecting. So we know that. And as much as we can try to give them rationalizations, they're still in the reptilian brain expecting and wanting that. So let's give you a practical example since we've been talking a bunch about the belt system. Look at a vertical pull. You want to get your client doing chin-ups. So you have two options. You have them go up there. They get maybe two or three of the crappiest chin-ups you've ever seen. And most people's answer is, well, we just got to keep doing it, all right? Where I'm going to take a step back and say, okay, well, let's back off a little bit. Can you even do a straight arm hang? Straight arm hang, see how long you can go for. If you can't even do a minute of a straight arm hang, well, guess what? We're going to start there. And for somebody who can't do a minute, 50 seconds of straight arm hang is really hard. And they're going to tell all their friends how sore they were and how difficult it was, and they're going to get super excited when 45 seconds turns into 55 seconds turns into a minute. Well, can you do now a bent arm hang? Can you work the top end of that range? Can you hold that for 30 seconds? Okay, well, now that you can do that, well, now let's start adding some eccentric champs. Now, this process may take a couple weeks, depending on the learning curve of the individual. But now, guess what? Down the road, now I'm doing three, four, five, six, really good chin-ups. Whereas if I took the first path, you know what I'm doing a couple months down the road? The same crappy three chin-ups that I did on day one, right? Just with maybe some shoulder pain mixed into them. Yeah, right. Because I've been doing crappy chin-ups for the last three months, right? So understanding just the checks and balances and going where As long as you're challenged but successful, the client doesn't care. That's our own biases because we want to have our clients doing chin-ups because we don't know anything else, right? When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But if you understand there's more to it than that, then it's just a matter of, okay, I'm going to go where I'm going to really challenge you, but you're just successful enough that it's going to create an effect that we want. And then as soon as you get good at that, then I'll go to the next thing.

SPEAKER_01: 41:51

Yeah. I think there's the demonstration of the progress is such an important aspect that gets left behind to you. Even if it's my new, like agreeing on the goal and then demonstrating the progress from week to week, I think it gets so much buy-in from folks rather than the, like, here's the sexiest new thing with percentages and drop sets and this and that and the other. It's like, Hey, you added this much to that from last week. Like, that's awesome. High five. Like I find that gets so much buy-in from, from people. Like it doesn't, it's not always the sexiest thing in the world as far as like the program design aspect, but the progress aspect, very sexy.

UNKNOWN: 42:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 42:24

Does that play into that belt? I mean, assuming that like, are people continuously testing and then you're showing them on the belt system, like, hey, this is where you've gone, like as a reassessment.

SPEAKER_02: 42:33

Some people, I never even, a lot of people, I never even tell them that there's a belt system or exists. It's running in the background. It's running the software in my head, but it's not even so much that as it is getting them to understand the steps where they're constantly challenged. And then also, I think stepping back Two big things I would say that are huge game changers is getting people to understand, one, is that training is cumulative. Of all the people I've worked with, the jerseys I have hanging up behind me, no one ever said to me, you know, that one workout I did in 2009, That was the one that won me the Super Bowl. That was it, that one workout on Thursday in March in 2009. It's a cumulative process. You're planting seeds and working the soil and looking for a harvest down the road. This is not a one-shot deal. We get so wrapped up into this one magical workout that there's a lot of champions out there built on stacking up some crappy workouts in the process. Being cumulative and understanding this is a cumulative process is important for you to express. Number two is part of that cumulative process is the biggest checklist that's been a game changer for us. And I'm sure Mike will agree. I don't want to get him to add on to it. Is sitting down with your client day one with a weekly plan and say, okay, here's what your goal is. You just told me you want to get very good general fitness to do that. Here's what it's going to take. It's going to take a certain amount of strength training, which means a minimum of twice a week. And as much as four days a week. So let's look at a calendar. When's that getting done with your life? Okay, here and here, Monday and Thursday. For how much time? Where are you going to go? Is that all factoring your days? After work? Is it before work? This has to be factored in. We can't just hope for it and just expect you to get all the magic to happen in our sessions because it's not going to happen. Because you know what else we need? We need to do some cardio. And within cardio, there's different levels within cardio. I made you do some low-level zone two work. Don't pay me to stand next to you while you're going for an uphill walk. So you're going to have to figure out where are we going to put that. in your program throughout the day. Is that going to be at lunch? Is that going to be at night? Is that going to be on Tuesdays? Where's that going? Okay, well, now he gets a little bit of interval work. Now we need to get a little bit of movement or mobility work because you don't move so well. Where's that going to fit in? And now you start to look at their week and say, okay, this is what's going to be expected of you. Can you do this? And Now there's a level of expectation that I am your general contractor. I am the architect of this project. But you ultimately are hanging up the walls. You're the one painting. You're the one laying the cement. And so I'm just telling you when and where and how and what materials to use. So getting them to understand that gets the buy-in. It gets them to understand there's personal responsibility. It's not I show up, be with my trainer for an hour, and then hope for magic. Because when that happens and they don't get results, guess what? They're going someplace else. Where now, here's what it's gonna take. Now, after two weeks, if you say, okay, you're getting all the things in your checklist and they're not getting it, we need to change the checklist. But that's because I have a checklist for the checklist. And that's where we make sure that we're moving forward, but looking at it on a holistic global scale first that meets them where they're at, as opposed to thinking it's gonna be these magical workouts twice a week for 45 minutes is not going to move the needle if they don't have all those other pieces in place, including their nutrition, including their lifestyle, their stress management, their sleep, and all those other factors. You don't have to be an expert in those, but if you don't consider those and you think it's just your two workouts a week, you're being blind and you're a complete narcissist to think that you're going to be the person that's going to change this person's life twice a week in 45 minutes.

SPEAKER_01: 46:22

I love it. sums a lot of it up but like principles of program design i think people think sets and reps we said this in the beginning but it's what you just said is effective program design right like the whole program everything all the aspects but i think most people miss that yes go sets and reps perfect okay cool this will be great

SPEAKER_00: 46:44

well you know what we realize is that again it's The sets and reps are important, but they're not. Once you learn the basics of like, hey, for hypertrophy, here's your sweet spot. For strength, here's your sweet spot. I mean, there's science that's been around forever, sets and reps. And obviously, there's an art and a science to it, but it doesn't have to be that complicated once you understand the basic science and understand what... what the adaptations are that you're looking for, because that's what we say. We care about adaptations. We don't care what modality you use or what method you use. or what implement you use, right? The adaptation is the goal. And that's how we look at everything is we just try to step back and say, what is the best way to get there? What is the best tool? What is the best environment? What is the best set rep range? And then again, we bounce everything off of our checklist to make sure that we're not missing everything. But I think it just comes down to, again, just checking your work, doing our due diligence and using the old saying, measure twice, cut once, right? I'll speak for myself. I've made so many poor decisions over my career just by not asking better questions. So for me, I had the sets and reps down, but it was the other stuff that made me that much better. So what we're doing is just really sharing a lot of the big impactful things that we've learned throughout our careers and then trying to pass that on to the coaches and the business owners that we are fortunate enough to work and grow with.

SPEAKER_02: 48:12

The other thing too, Kenny, is that you have to meet us where we're at in terms of what you read in your textbook and what you see on social media may be great, but it doesn't apply to your situation, right? So I worked in performance for a lot of years. And so I would see these really detailed, incredible programs that strength coaches would post. But okay, the reality is I have a high school football team in a weight room with three racks. I have 40 kids in there at once. 20% of them have never touched a weight before in their life. I have 45 minutes to get them in it now and on the practice field. How am I going to get this done without killing somebody, right? And so understanding that there's this perfect world that you read about in your textbook. But then you have real people and you have real situations. And you realize, okay, I put together this intricate circuit for this person to do because it's the perfect Metcon circuit that I've read up about. But then you realize this person works out at a Planet Fitness on Monday night. And as soon as they walk away from the kettlebell, they use an exercise one, somebody stole it and put it in the group fitness room. And now they go back to do their second exercise and the cable's not available. So they're standing there and your whole Metcon just blew up two exercises in because you didn't understand your own limitations in terms of logistics, in terms of space, in terms of equipment, in terms of exercise skill that you have to meet with people where they're at. And so the reality of what programming is, is just as much for that, right? Everybody can be a hero if you're at the Olympic Training Center with unlimited access to athletes and unlimited space and time and equipment and budget. The reality is, is okay, I'm in a CrossFit box. I'm in a personal training studio with five other trainers and I need to make this work as successfully as possible. And as Mike said, give this person an experience every time they walk in the door. And so that means there needs to be some logistics that are mapped out ahead of time in my program that account for all these limitations that I'm gonna encounter.

SPEAKER_01: 50:22

Yeah, smart. Okay, so we've talked about a lot. Let's talk about big rocks and takeaways. So we talked about how people learn a lot and then don't do anything with it. What are your big rocks and takeaways for coaches out there?

SPEAKER_00: 50:36

So, you know, I think when you look at the systems that you try to employ, everybody follows the similar recipe. And, you know, one is the warm-up. That's prepare the body for what's coming up next. Depending on the athlete, some sort of speed, power, balance, etc. very important for force production, but also for foot speed, catching yourself. Strength training is really important. And then you're going to finish with some energy system development, some conditioning, nice little cool down and send them on their way. That's guys, that's pretty much it. Like, you know, there doesn't have to be 37 different blocks. You can have, you know, four to six blocks in a training session, and that's going to cover everything you need. So, you know, look at your training programs. If you're seeing 15, 16, 17 different exercises on your training program, it's probably a bit too much. And that can very easily be trimmed down to probably under 10. So follow the systems, guys. Just follow the basic template of getting them to move well, getting them stronger, and getting them in good shape. And that's a really good recipe to just get you started.

SPEAKER_02: 51:38

Here's a revelation that I've had most recently, Kenny, is that the fitness industry that Mike and I came up in 20, 25 years ago is not the same one post-COVID that it is now. There's some things, unfortunately, that have been lost that we're looking to try to correct. Then there's some things that I think are going in the right direction. I One of the things we kind of dance around a little bit here is like it used to be fitness education was you got a flyer in the mail or in your email. You went, took this course for three days. And then what happened was on Monday, everybody in your client list was doing that thing for the next two weeks. And then you realized after a couple of weeks, like, well, this doesn't work for everybody and everybody's kind of sick of this. And so now I'm going to look for the next thing and I'm going to try that. And then that's, that's not a system. You don't have a brand. You don't have, really anything that makes you special or stand out that people are going to drive past other coaches or trainers to find you if that's what you do. Now, to the coach's defense, trainer's defense, you know what I realized? Because I taught a lot of those weekend workshops. Even if I did my damnedest to teach you as much as possible, I understand you probably forgot 50% of it by the time you left on Monday, and you're going to misinterpret possibly the other 50%. And so that's why one of the things I love is what you guys are doing with mentorships and what we're doing with mentorships is to say, okay, we'll still give you that three-day experience or that one-day or two-day experience live. But you need to back that up with some accountability. You need to back that up with actually, I need to see you do this in practice. So we have a mentorship where you have to submit case studies and show us that you can actually do this, right, with real people that are your clients. And then continually reinforce these principles because there's no way you're going to get it all. And it's just not how learning works, right? How many times you took an exam in college and you forgot half of it by Thursday? Because it's just not how we learn. learn through a slow drip. That's much better. And so that's one of the things that I do like in the direction that we're heading is that you're, you know, and Charlie Weingraf had a great post about that this week. It's like, if you think you've mastered something in a weekend, you're sadly, sadly mistaken. You just got introduced to a new concept and way of thinking, and now it's on you to take take it and carry it out and try to figure out how to make it work for you. And so I think for young coaches and trainers is figuring out how something, you know, whatever it is that you're learning is going to not only make you better, better, but make you more importantly, be able to serve your people better. Cause that's really the biggest thing we need to be going back to the first thing we said, we're here to be of service, right. And help people. And, and so if the end of your weekend course, you learned all these fancy tools to create better internal hip rotation, but if you can't use it practically with, you know, your client on Monday, then, okay, you learn a lot of cool tricks that it's ego stroking for you in your inner circle, but it's not applicable to you being a better coach. Like I said, our ideal is to make people the top 1% of the industry, that people will drive past 10 other coaches to find you, which means you can charge more, which means you can be more selective with who you train, and people never leave you. And that's ultimately when you've hit the kind of Kwan of what you want to be as a coach or a trainer is you've created that level of mastery, which is an ongoing, never-ending process.

SPEAKER_01: 55:13

Beautiful. And so you guys do that through mentorship. You also have a bunch of courses on the Principles of Program Design website. Could you want to go over? There's warm-ups, there's program design, there's groups, there's a lot of stuff. Can you give us an overview of what's on there?

SPEAKER_02: 55:28

Sure. So the Nuts and Bolts is our foundations course, and that's where we just take you through like we said, the client journey, everything from philosophy to key questions, to all those checklists, to all our programming algorithms and templates and all those sorts of things, even how to adjust for daily readiness and so forth. That's all in there. Then the supplemental courses is we have the exercise coach course, which is our belt system, right? And laying out all nine patterns, how to coach each one of them, how to progress or egress, where they all fall and why. Then you have the 244, which is the next two are kind of Mike's babies. The 244 is our prime warmup, how to program warmups thoughtfully. And it's something that Mike's been doing with his adult group fitness for years. And now we've taken that and applied it in the performance and youth level. and how to program warmups. And then the group mastery, well, that's, again, we've always just basically shared, here's how we do it, right? There's no top secret thing where we have a lot of these people who are these gurus who teach you something, but then they do something else. This is exactly what we do. Like this is Mike's, literally his templates. He uses it as facility that has one of the most successful group training facilities in the country. That's what group mastery is. And so then all those set the backdrop for they all come together in our live course where we just basically give you a live experience of all those things smashed together in a soup. And then the mentorship is the continuation of that. That's where it's a weekly coaching call where we reinforce those things where half the call is us teaching you in-depth concepts. And then the other half of the call is our members submitted case studies and then us working as a team to say, well, here's where you could have done that better. Well, here's where you missed this. Did you think of this? Here's where this doesn't matter. match this. Here's where I'd go next with this. Here's where I'd ask them this and getting them. And it's been a really an amazing process to see how far our coaches have come and how much better they've gotten. And even the results have gotten in, in, in some of the facility owners that we've worked with that are like, this has been game changing. It's gotten me off the floor. It's gotten to where our coaches are figuring stuff out on their own. It's gotten to where our, our retention rates and our, and our new, you know, client acquisition rates are through the roof because we're distinguishing ourselves from everybody else that is in town, just because we're asking that second question, because we have a system, because we're not a beat down on the first intro session, right? That there's some thought behind it. And so that kind of encompasses everything that we're doing now. Plus we're adding, constantly adding new stuff. We were never short on content. We have more online courses we're working on. We have a day two that we're doing a special beta course for, for just our mentorship people that is eventually going to get added some months down the road. So we're We have lots of stuff that we got in our heads that we got to dump out while it's still in there.

SPEAKER_01: 58:16

That's awesome. Well, thanks, guys, for doing this. I mean, how we started the conversation in terms of like the professionalization of coaches and providing for a professionalized experience for the client and allowing coaches to do this for the rest of their lives so they can change as many lives as humanly possible like you guys are doing today. that and uh thanks from the industry so thanks for doing this with me today and thanks for all the things you guys are doing and uh people can find you at principles of program design.com uh social media handles what are the where can we find you on instagram

SPEAKER_02: 58:46

Principles of Program Design. You'll find all our stuff there. We have postings of all sorts of clips that we have. You get to see little glimpses of some of our mentorship calls. You get to see whatever rambling thoughts Mike or I have in the course of a week that we'll throw up there, as well as clips from our own podcast where we'll interview some of our mentors that we've had throughout the way.

SPEAKER_01: 59:08

Beautiful. All right. Thanks again, you guys. Talk soon. Thanks for having us. Appreciate the opportunity. As always, thanks for joining us. Don't forget, you can join our group at strengthcoachcollective.com.