#30 BEWARE of Shit Coaches in The Fitness Industry

This conversation is a SUPER important one for anyone who is thinking about getting an online coach - we say this all the time but coaching is SO powerful - and coaches have the power to literally change a life for the better or the worse

You need to do your research before choosing a coach - and obviously if you want a GREAT coach - you can reach out to Emily or Tash ;)

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Emily

Tash

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi guys, welcome back to Mindset Meets Muscle. Okay, so I want to talk about something because I think, and so does Tash, that it's been building for a long, long while. And we see it more and more. And I think it needs to be said out loud because the barrier to entry in the online coaching space is so fucking low, it's pretty much non-existent. And that creates a situation basically where literally anyone with an Instagram account or anyone with a social media account and maybe a half decent physique can have a template. And one day they can just decide they wake up and that they are a coach without any real depth of education, of experience, or understanding what coachly really involves with any understanding and education around biomechanics or fitness. And I think it's quite scary because I think online coaching is actually going to eventually take over the fitness space in general. So we are kind of gonna dig deeper into this subject.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

It's something that a lot of people don't really clock, I think, when they're choosing who to work with. Because they're like someone's Instagram bio can look like a really not bio, Instagram grid. Someone's Instagram grid can look like a really fancy, beautiful shop window that lures you in, but it's a bit like okay, stay with me. What's that what's that fairy tale? Um, I mean, there's a lot of things. You know the one you know the one I'm thinking of. Hansel and Grethel as they're like the amazing candy, house, like everything's edible, and it's like they're like, oh my god, we've literally landed in heaven, and then they get cooked alive and eaten by a witch. And horrific coach, right? That is my analogy of like what some coaches in the industry are like, okay, right? It can look amazing from the outside. They have millions of followers, their content is incredible, but content does not equal you are a really good coach. And we say this all the time. It's so easy to absolutely destroy someone's relationship with food, but it takes forever to build it back. And you need to be so careful when you're choosing someone who's literally you're you're putting your life in their hands, you're putting your health in their hands. And just because someone has good content, good marketing, they have a couple of great before and after photos on their page. It can give the impression of credibility, but there's no substance behind it.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Yeah, and I think if I'm honest, there is an element of frustration from our part as well, because we see it and we know how much time and energy and money that we have put into our education. It's like a literally buying a house. And I would never change it. Don't get me wrong. I feel like, you know, I know what I'm talking about. I'm very aware of my level of education when it comes to this subject. But it's not just the physical aspect as well, it's the psychological aspect. And I think I don't mean to sound superior when I say it, but you are taking care of someone else's progress. And that isn't just their physical aspects or what you see on paper, it's their mental health. And it's your duty without fail to be well equipped to be able to deal with that and be able to not affect it in a negative manner.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

Yeah, that's why both you and I decided, because we saw this so much with our clients that we were actually like most of what we were doing was mindset, hence the name of our bloody podcast, Mindset Meets Muscle. That's why we decided to go and do our life coaching qualification. So we got more of a deeper understanding of how we can really help on the behavior change side of things without destroying someone's relationship with themselves and actually empowering them to become their best selves. And it's like there's so much more to it than just writing a workout plan and giving someone their calories. Like, honestly, good old mate ChatGPT can do that for you now, right? Like, you don't actually need anyone to do that for you. But we're dealing with actually application and seeing someone through and dealing with their habits, their confidence, their relationship with food, how they see themselves day to day. And that is what coaching is. Like it's actually us applying what we have learned through years and years and years and years of doing this and working with hundreds of women and men to someone specific situation. And someone that just comes off, like just literally decides to open an Instagram account and call themselves a coach, they've had no experience. They probably don't really even stay up to date with what works, the evidence, the research. They probably just think, okay, this worked for me. I'm gonna now use that with everyone else, and I'm probably gonna use AI to do 99% of my work and give zero fucks and just get money.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

It's also worth stating, and I and I say this with love, but not all PTs are gonna be good at coaching. Like just because you have a qualification, I mean, my qualification for my PT course was fucking dire. It was awful. And I think that you should, I'm not saying that you need to spend your life in books when you're working in the fitness space. I think a lot of it it also comes down to actually the fact that me and Tash both have worked face to face with clients has been massively beneficial for us online. But I think it's also down to the fact that we didn't just stop an exam of training for your PT qualification. We carried on that investment and we carried on with member like mentorships as well. Um because I think that if you just do your PT qualification, you learn very little. Um, you obviously learn on the job, but not all PTs will make good coaches because you need stuff outside of a gym floor as well. And I think what's interesting to think about is that coaching isn't a generic thing, it's not for for a whole group of people. That's group coaching, potentially, or you've got maybe an app, for example. But when you are coaching, you are coaching bespoke. It is one-to-one, it is to get to know that individual.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

Yeah, I I think that also there is this massive misconception between like a group coaching or like a fitness app model and actually one-to-one coaching, like they are completely different, like completely different. Like group coaching is very, very self-sufficient. Like you're not actually like you've got your your program there, right? But everything is on you when it's coaching, it's very collaborative. And it's 50-50. I always say, like, if you give me 50%, I will give you 150% back. Yeah. But if you give me 10%, I can only give you 20% back. And that's like nothing. I'm always gonna go out of my way to give you more than you give me, but I can only give what you give me, essentially. And I don't really know where I'm going with this.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

No, I think you're exactly right. I think it's it's nothing particularly wrong with any of these group coachings and these apps. And you know, they've helped people massively, but they're not marketed the right way. Like I feel like they're marketed as coaching and ultimately um needs to have that distinction between them both because it changes the level of support and the personalization someone should expect.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Yeah, and I think the issue with this kind of stuff not being very clear is that it's all under the umbrella of online coaching, right? Yeah. So if someone can think, I've tried online coaching, but it hasn't worked for me. They've done bloody Sally's $2.99 per month subscription app. That's not online coaching, right? And it kind of gives the whole industry or like it gives what we do a bad, a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths when actually, like, we could not be further from that. Like, could not be further from that, could not be more different.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

Should we also bring up the fact that obviously we work in on social media and and we do get a lot of like, you know, clientele we have to promote on social media? And we said this before in a podcast episode where most people that are really good coaches aren't always posting on social media or they're not getting the best content because they are actually coaching. But I think there is a big thing about people think, oh, you've got more followers, you're definitely a better coach. That person is an influencer. There you go. Like they are that's an influencer. They actually aren't fully coaching one-to-one clients. I can tell you that for fucking free. They might have a coaching platform, bet you they don't coach.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Yeah, they they they don't coach. I mean, we've we've been on the other side because we've been coaches or people like that. And if someone has a big following, they're good at marketing, right? Marketing. They're just great. They're good at business, they're good at marketing, they're creative. They are, that's not coaching, right? Marketing and coaching are two completely different things. And this is why actually that you have a lot of coaches in the industry that do go and work for other companies and like coach for other companies because they just bloody love coaching. They don't want to build a business, and I totally respect that. Yeah, if someone has a big following, it's because they're good at marketing and they're good at business, right? They're not good at coaching, and you're probably not even gonna have them coaching you. They will have coaches that work underneath them that, like, I'm gonna be honest, are probably very green. They have maybe this might be their first job in sort of like the online space because like the pay, the pay is not good. The pay is the pay is shit. Like anyone, anyone that is going to be working for another coach, they're gonna be just straight out the bat. They're probably you're like one of their first clients, and there's there's no experience there. So you might be paying a lot of money for to potentially be coached by this person that has a lot of followers, you're not getting coached by them. And I would actually, honestly, if someone wants one-to-one coaching and they really want to get in depth and they really want to work with their coach in a lot of detail, I would really encourage you to go to someone that has a smaller following because you are going to get 10 times more attention and care and application than you would if you go to someone that's got a large following. Because I promise you they've got way too much on and you're just a number to them.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

Yeah, I think that's that's really true. And I think it's really interesting because I think people could be like, oh yeah, I've signed up with so-and-so who's got, you know, fucking, I don't know, 800k followers. And that isn't that person. You aren't signing up for them. And they might not even write the programming, they might not even write your they're very unlikely if they do write your programming, if it's definitely if it's like an app platform. I think it's really important to also understand is that we are all beautifully unique and we all actually need different approaches. It is not one size fits all, it's not a cookie-cutter approach. You might have a client that is more into or a different level, you know, and mentally as well, a different journey on her on her life, and that she can maybe look at her habits are really embedded already in her lifestyle. But then you'll have someone who literally is starting from ground zero, they need a different approach, and it's really important that we do identify that. And I think that's what one-to-one coaching does bring in. Another thing that I really must touch base on, because it's really prominent and it's really uh we've touched base on it just a little bit a minute ago, but it's the effects that you have on mental health and it's the effects that both Tash and myself have dealt with other girls coming from other coaches and then moving over to us. And you can fuck with people's heads big time. Like you can absolutely be creating eating disorders for your clients if you are not careful. And I cannot stress this enough. I know that I have a an amazing client and she has shared with me that her um old coach told her to brush her teeth when she was hungry. I'm not being funny. When I was 14 years old, that was a pro-anorexic tip. We would that was the tips they give on pro-anorexic websites. And I remember in the 90s, like in magazines used to do things like this. This is not okay. You cannot be following rules from a coach that says shit like this.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

I remember the exact same thing at school. We'd be like, we would go to dinner and not eat, come back and brush our teeth. Because we just didn't want to, we didn't want to eat and we didn't want to be hungry and we wanted to do everything we could to stop ourselves from eating. What, like, in what world is that okay to promote as a health behaviour from a coach who should fucking know better? Like, genuinely, that actually makes me angry. It makes me it makes my blood boil.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

Yeah. Because they are at the end of the day, that client will not get results, they will fuck her head up. Then that life is fucked. That period of her life, whether she comes up the other side or not, has been tarnished by one individual. And then you get her moving on to another coach potentially, or she goes down a bad, bad route and develops disordered eating.

SPEAKER_00 13:31

And then her relationship with coaching is like it's it's a negative one. It's ruined because of her one bad experience. And maybe she'll go and then like, well, thank goodness she's come, she's come to you now. Thank gosh. Because she could have maybe then gone down the route of going on a GLP and actually like not eating anything and like breeding a new kind of eating disorder through that. Like, it's just the things that can happen if you use the wrong language when it comes to the body that you want to build. It's scary. It's like when Hattie came on the other day, she said language is a weapon of love, a tool of love or a weapon of destruction, depending on how we use it. Like it is so powerful. And I think that kind of brings into another thing that I think we see as well with coaching to be aware of is like the toxic tough love phenomenon. Phenomenon. Phenomenon. Phenomenolum, phenomenon of like if a client has come and check-in and is like, I have not been able to stick to this this week, not been able to do this, and coaches just respond like, oh, you're not disciplined enough, like you don't want it enough, like you need to work harder. Like that is, yeah, obviously, we need an element of like you've got to do the work if you want the results. Like we know that. We know we have to put in effort if we want reward. But it's if someone's had an incredibly tough week at work, they're caring for a sick parent, they are not sleeping, their mental health is in the bin, they struggle to get out of bed. You can't just say, Oh, you need to be more disciplined. Like, that is not okay. That's not what they need. And I think this is where we see maybe coaches coming into the industry that just haven't really had any sort of face-to-face time with like real humans and like real human interaction and dealing with real people and real problems, which is what you easily see when you work with someone face to face. It's hard to deal with, and you're not going to be able to deal with that. And we we do see that a lot at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

We see it a lot with with new people in into in the coaching space, but also I think we see it a little bit with the bodybuilding coaching style as well. I think that general population don't need to go on a meal plan and feel shit and guilt if they go off the meal plan. Because I think that's what coaches this is really it's a really hard situation for me like to touch base on because I've not been coached by a pro-bodybuilder, but I see it in a sense where that maybe they are coaching general population that they want to stick to like a bodybuilding regime and they aren't bodybuilders, so their lifestyle doesn't quite interlace with that. They might want to go out for a drink on a Friday night, you know?

SPEAKER_00 16:16

Yeah, and I think that's it's kind of like stay within your niche, you know. Like coach people that you know how to coach. And I think, yes, a bodybuilder absolutely needs that approach. And there's some coaches.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

I wouldn't personally coach someone that's gonna go on stage.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

No, me ne me neither. Never never. There's never there's never any way that I would do that because there are so many people more qualified out there to do that. Yeah. But I think the issue comes is that then maybe these these people that have been coaching bodybuilders, and obviously you get phenomenal results because their physique is never gonna have like they're peaking for that one day. Their physique is gonna look so impressive that then the general population will come to these coaches and be like, coach me. Yeah. But actually, they don't really realise what goes what goes into that, and that's not sustainable, that's just for one day. And like these girls, bodybuilding, like even bikini athletes, they live 90% of their year in a surplus, gaining body fat and gaining muscle because they need to, because they spend such a significant amount of time aggressively dieting for that one day. Like, not general population doesn't want to live in a per a surplus nine months out of the year.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

And like, I was reading a post on uh a bodybuilder that I follow that I think she's amazing. She's fucking she looks incredible, but she's in she's it like in her prep at the moment, and she is consuming about 800 calories. Now, general population, you aren't gonna be consuming 800 calories. Like, I can tell you that for free. She's also training incredibly hard, like five times per week. She's doing a shitload of cardio, sets her at 15,000 plus. Like, you aren't going to be doing that, okay? There's no way that you could then go and run a business, work at that's her life. That's all she consumes. You can't go to work, you wouldn't be able to run with your children. Like, it's just not gonna happen, right? We're not gonna have the energy to participate in our general functioning life. But also, you're not gonna be able to sustain it because unless your head is in that tapped position, you're not. But also think about if you did. Think about what happens after. The after effects. When you come out of the other side, how is your mental health gonna be? You're gonna start to feel panic when you start to eat. You're gonna feel like fuck, I'm getting bigger, you know, because you can't sustain that long term. No one fucking can. Not even people that are bodybuilders.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

No, and especially, especially girls that come out of like first, second comps or like more new to the sport. It's so hard to control your appetite post. And I don't think I know a single person, I would say I would put myself in this category, who has gone into bodybuilding and hasn't really struggled to control their appetite coming out of a diet. Because that is just what happens. Um if you go that aggressive, the rebound is going to be really, really hard to manage. And that unfortunately is what we see like coaches pushing this style of getting someone a physique, but then actually then maintaining that becomes 10 times harder because they're doing it in a way that is not designed to be maintainable for long term.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

Don't get me wrong, I am gonna give clients sometimes a bit of tough love, right? We are both gonna do that. There is gonna be an element where we say it how it is, because we wouldn't be doing our job if we didn't. But there's no way we would do it at a detriment to someone's mental health. Um, there's no way we would do it in a manner that would make you feel shit about yourself, okay? You've got to find that fine balance. And it's you're not going into prep. You are living a life, okay? You're dieting potentially, or you're maintaining, or you're building, or whatever you're doing, you know, you are going to have to live a life alongside with it. And yeah, sometimes you might need to up the ante, but it's done with fucking love. What do you always say?

SPEAKER_02 20:10

A bow, pink bow. I can't remember.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

I can't remember tough love, tough love wrapped up in a pretty pink bone.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Yeah, that's it. Exactly. Might as well go with it. It'll do. But it's true though, because if we constantly give also, it's also noting the time and the place to say certain things. Because if someone is struggling, like you mentioned, they've had a really shit day at work or they've had a shit week at work. If someone is struggling with their mental health themselves, uh us buttering down someone is bullying.

SPEAKER_02 20:46

That's it.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

It's not coaching, it's bullying.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

And I think that's something that we probably do see a lot of in the coaching industry as well. It's like coaching, like bullying disguised as coaching. I think that's there's a lot of that. And I think this is where it's so important for us to know our clients because as you say, like sometimes we do, sometimes we are tough. And sometimes we do need to be, but it's it's so person dependent. Like just this week, I've had a client who I called her out on her bullshit a little bit because she was just like, she was falling to her own excuses that I knew she was, and I was tough with her, and she was like, I this is what I needed. Like, I'm not doing these things. I need to be doing these things. Thank you for calling me out. I have another client who like could barely get out of bed on the weekend just because her mental health was so low. That is not a place for me to be like, you need to follow the fucking plan over your feelings. No, you need to just do what feels capable for you in that moment and not beat yourself up for not being able to get out of bed because sometimes life is so tough, and sometimes we feel things more than we want to feel them, and we just have to do what we're able to do. And if that is Literally just like getting out of bed, having a shower, and getting back into bed, you're fine, you've you've won the day.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

And it's also important to note we all go through different phases of this, right? So there might be times where you feel on top of the world, babe. I'm a boss ass queen. I will rock the shit out of this training session. I'm gonna be amazing. And then there are be times where you feel a little bit challenged and you're pushing and you're grinding. And that's like exactly like Tish said, it's getting to know your client. Like I can see rhythms within clientele sometimes, especially when their cycle is due, when their their drive kind of drops a little bit and it's it's a bit more of a challenge. I'm not gonna be like, babe, you are not trying hard enough. Like, do you even want this? That's not fucking appropriate, right? That's a lot going on with what's going on in their lifestyle, but also their hormones. And just pushing someone to the brinking point for what? For them to lose an extra half a pound. Like, don't do that.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

So, just to sort of summarize for this episode, I guess, like we just want you to be aware that coaching and maybe like someone's app is very, very different. Like one-to-one coaching versus group coaching versus training in an app subscription, completely different things. And when it does come to one-to-one coaching, just be very careful with who you trust on social media. There's a lot of toxic, tough love out there. There's a lot of, as Emily said, like people pushing pro-anorexic behavior, which is just not okay. There's a lot of bullying dressed up as coaching, and the barriers to entry are incredibly low. So just make sure that you choose someone who you trust and who you know knows what they're talking about, has been in the industry for a long time, and ideally someone that follows the evidence over just like they did this for themselves and that worked. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

I know this has been a big one and it's probably a bit of a call out on certain coaches, but there we go. If it comes from a place of wanting people to have the best experience, because coaching when it's done well is the most powerful life changing thing that you can do. Um, it's amazing for growth, and we are incredibly proud of our clients for that.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

That's it.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

Um so, guys, if you've enjoyed this episode, please make sure that you like and subscribe.

SPEAKER_00 24:25

And we will see you in the next one. Thank you for listening.