Self-Coaching vs Hiring a Coach When Going Enhanced - Should You Do Steroids? Maybe! Here's Why

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🎓 ABOUT THIS VIDEO 
In this episode, we explore the two primary pathways for those considering steroids or enhancement: self-coaching versus trusting a qualified coach. We break down the key requirements for each path, common pitfalls, and how to recognize a truly competent guide in a complex landscape.

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🧠 TIMESTAMPS 
00:00 - The cultural myths around coaching and self-management

00:20 - The truth about pathways for enhancement: knowledge or trust

00:50 - Risks when ignorance is paired with self-direction

01:19 - What does it mean to be self-directed: skills and discipline involved

02:12 - The importance of genuine literacy in self-coaching

02:35 - The role of a competent coach: breadth of experience and pattern recognition

03:14 - The signature qualities of a good coach: explanation, questions, trust

04:48 - Common misunderstandings about coaching and personal use

05:46 - The significance of trust: informed vs blind

06:32 - Building a collaborative relationship with a coach

08:32 - Emotional regulation as a crucial part of coaching

10:14 - Accountability and how coaches keep you on track

11:55 - quality in coaching: spotting the good from the bad

12:49 - Challenges in accessing good coaching and what to do if it's unavailable

15:07 - The responsibility always remains with you

16:25 - The non-negotiable need for personal responsibility in outcomes

17:25 - Key takeaways: paths, qualities, and the importance of humility

18:51 - Final thoughts: expertise vs responsibility, and the danger of pretending to know

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So when you're sitting there weighing whether to do steroids or not, one one of the questions underneath all of the other ones is whether you should do it alone or whether you should have help. And uh the culture pushes you in both directions depending on who's in the room. One side of the culture treats like getting a coach as it's gonna be a weakness, like you're outsourcing something that you should just be doing yourself, like it's a sign that you haven't done the work to understand your own body, so you're just paying for someone else to do it for you. And from that side, the self-directed guy is gonna be the serious one, and the coach guy is gonna be the lazy one who couldn't be bothered to actually fucking learn. So the the other side of the culture, it treats not getting a coach like it's reckless and naive, right? The the predictable arrogance of some guy who thinks that he's just gonna figure out endocrinology of his own, right? From from that side, the coach guy is the responsible one, and the self-directed guy is basically a cowboy heading straight for disaster. And the thing is, like both of those are halfway right, right? And and maybe they're like half right in near ways. The truth is neither one, and and that's the shit that no one wants to say aloud, is actually is right. The the truth is that there's two valid pathways that come with this decision, and both of them can produce good outcomes. And the failure isn't which path you pick, the failure is in walking either path without the thing that the path actually requires from you. So this episode is about what each path requires, the self-coach or the coach path when it comes to enhancement, what each one looks like when it's done right, and how to spot the third path, the one that doesn't work, the that that a ton of people end up on uh without even noticing. So, let me uh name the principle here first. There's two valid paths. Uh that these are the ones, okay? Either you're gonna carry the knowledge yourself, or you're gonna trust someone competent who carries it for you. So one of those has to be true, man. That what's not valid is the setup where neither one is true, where the guy is self-directed and he's also clueless at the same damn time. So I've I've circled back to this a few times across the series, and I'm gonna hate it again right here because it's the single most important structural rule in this whole space, right? Ignorance is only allowed when it's paired with trust and real expertise. So self-direction is only allowed when it's paired with real literacy. Ignorance plus self-direction is the combination that gets you hurt, and it's dangerous every single time, no matter how disciplined the guy is about everything else. So, look, the the choice isn't whether to know shit. Both paths need somebody in the system to know shit, you know? The choice is just where the knowing lives, in you or in someone that you've decided to trust. So let me start with the self-directed path because that's the one that the culture loves to celebrate. And it's uh it's worth being cleared eye about what it actually costs you. The the self-directed guy, he he takes on the job of learning his own physiology in real depth. He's reading papers, he studies the mechanism, he learns what the compounds do, how they interact, you know, how his body responds, what to watch for, what to test for, when to adjust, right? So he builds over years the pattern recognition that a competent coach builds across hundreds of clients, except he's building it across one client, which is himself. So that's a slower path. Not there's there's no way around it, right? Because the sample size is always just n equals one. But it's also a real path, it's available, and uh some people walk it really, really well. Now, what that path demands is genuine, sustain curiosity, not the lazy curiosity of watching a few YouTube videos or scamming some Reddit threads, right? Sustain the the willingness to keep learning for years, to read primary literature, even when it's dry as hell, to track your own data carefully, to notice patterns in your body and yourself over time, to update your model of how you know your body when the data tells you that you're wrong. It also uh takes honesty with yourself, right? The the willingness to admit when you're out of your depth on something specifically and go find a fucking answer instead of just winging it. And it takes a lot of discipline for the self-coaching here because the the self-directed guy, he has zero external accountability. So nobody's gonna check that you ran your blood work, right? Nobody's asking why the fuck you skipped it. The the structure has to come from inside you. And look, a lot of guys who think they're on this path, they're not. Like they think they're on this path simply because they've got opinions. That's not the path, right? The path is the years of deliberate structured learning plus the data that you gathered on your own physiology, plus the discipline to use both, right? So people who walk it well, you you can tell like when you meet them. They're precise. They they talk in trends and patterns. They don't overclaim, they're they open about uh being wrong, right? There's a quality to the literacy, you know, that's really, really hard fake. And most of these internet experts just don't fucking have it. Now, let me describe the other path, the the path when you decide to go with a coach, right? Because the the culture straight up misrepresents what a good version of this looks like. A good coach, in my opinion, is not some just guy who's like used to himself, right? Look, like this is the most important sentence in the whole episode. A coach isn't qualified by personal use. Personal use is just one experience on one body with one fight on one psychology. And plenty of guys have run on a shitload of gear and they learn damn near nothing past their own narrow lane. So they know what works for them. They don't know what works in general across a range of different bodies that other people are walking around on. Uh, a a competent coach is going to be someone who's watched a lot of different bodies respond to enhancement. Uh, dozens, you know, ideally, like more. Like he's seen the range, he's he's seen what's typical, like what's weird, what's uh what's a problem starting versus what's just normal variation, right? What what what corrections work for which patterns? His his pattern recognition is broad in a way that no self-experimenters can be, right? Because the self-experimenter has a simple size of one. So the coach has a simple size of however many bodies he's actually paid real attention to over the years. And here's the thing, that that that that difference matters, right? The the the coach who used himself and never trained anybody else is basically an amateur who happened to be his own damn guinea pig. The the coach who's uh worked with a lot of people and watched them closely has something the amateur just can't have, which is the the the map of where any individual body sits inside the bigger picture range of how this stuff plays out. So that map is the actual thing that the coach is selling. The the map is the whole fucking product. That's what you're paying for when you hire a real one when it comes to the choice of whether you should do enhancement or not. So working with the coach, it takes a lot of trust and the kind of trust matters a lot, right? Not blind trust, informed trust. Blind trust is what the dependent guy has, right? He hands the whole thing over, follow instructions without understanding any of it, and it doesn't ask questions because he doesn't feel qualified to ask. That posture sounds pretty humble. It's actually fragile as hell because the guy has no way of checking whether the coach actually knows what he's doing, no, no way to catch a problem himself, no way to course correct if the coach is wrong or checked out or just not paying attention to you this month. Now, informed trust is a completely different animal. It's gonna be the trust that says, look, you've seen more bodies than I have, you've built a pattern recognition that takes years, and I'm gonna lean on that, and I'm gonna keep paying attention to the data myself, ask questions when I don't get it, and report my data honestly, and also speak up if things stop making sense. So informed trust is collaborative. This is how we work at OptLab. The the guy's still inside of the decision. The coach is interpreting and guiding, the users participating, and both of them are working the problem together. So that kind of relationship, it needs something specific from both sides. From the coach, it needs the willingness to explain and the willingness to get questioned, the whisk, the willingness to teach, to admit when he's not sure, right? To share the reasoning instead of just barking instructions. And that is very, very hard to find for my opinion. But what it's it's also why I create so many resources for my clients and I'm so available to my clients because I want to give them this informed trust. Now, from the user end, it needs the discipline to report what is actually happening, the patience to wait for the coach uh read instead of uh panicking and changing things on his own, and the maturity to take guidance that isn't what he wanted to hear. So both sides, they have to be in it. A coach who uh you know won't explain himself is not a partner. A user who won't listen is not coachable. Now, there's a specific thing that coaches uh do that almost nobody talks about enough, and it's one of the most valuable parts of having a coach. Um the coach regulates your emotions. So for a lot of users, especially newer users, they react to their bodies like the sky's fucking falling, man. They panic over tiny changes, they catastrophize over some shrinkage they think they see. They they assume something's wrong when it's just a normal adjustment. That that reactivity, it drives bad decisions. And the bad decisions, they create their own set of problems, and the whole fucking thing compounds on each other. So I hit this on the in the somatic awareness episode. The the reactive guy, he reads nose as uh noise as a signal, and he keeps intervening. And the and the constant uh intervention is the fucking damage. So a coach can break that loop, he can say, This is expected, so don't touch anything, or this is fine, give it a couple more weeks, or this is worth watching, let's run a panel and see, right? So, or uh, or he he might say, like, this needs attention right now. Here, here's what we're doing. So, the coach is the counterweight to your emotional volatility. He he brings a perspective that you can't have because you're stuck inside your own experience and he's standing outside of it. So that's not a small thing, right? Uh, a lot of the worst outcomes in this space, they come straight from impulsive self-adjustment where the uh the guy fell off, he panicked, and you know, he changed something that he should have left fucking alone. The coach stops that when the relationship is working by being the calm voice in the room when you're not calm. So, for a lot of guys, that alone is worth more than the technical knowledge that the coach says have that they hired him for. That the technical knowledge is is very important and the emotional regulation is real too. And honestly, the the emotional regulation is often the thing that decides whether the cycle goes well or goes to shit. Now, the coach also gives you accountability, which is the other thing the self-directed guy just usually doesn't have. A guy left to his own devices might skip blood work, a coach might make him running. A guy might neglect sleep, a coach sees the effects on the markers and reports and makes him prioritize it. A guy might blow off his hydration or micronutrients, a coach is gonna ask some very specific questions and is gonna find the gaps. The coach turns vague intention into structured action because he's asking for actual data on a schedule and you've got to be able to actually produce it. So that accountability matters because almost nobody's as disciplined alone as they are when someone is watching. So that's not a character flaw, regardless of how people act. That's just being human. Having an observer, especially one whose opinion you respect, changes your behavior in ways that are really, really hard to fake on your own. This is one of the reasons why I hired a coach, right? The self-directed guy, he has to manufacture his own accountability, usually through tracking systems and schedules and reminders. The coach guy, he gets it built into the relationship by default. Now, both can work. The default accountability of the coach pass is just the one that's easier to keep up with. Now, not every coach is a good coach, right? The coaching world is all over the place on quality, and you've got to be able to tell the difference. You know, some some coaches they push drug recklessly, they treat clients like raw material for transformation photos, they chase the dramatic before and afters, right? They ramp up doses way faster than they fucking should. They take on guys who aren't ready and then they run them aggressively because a good visible outcome looks great on the coach's portfolio. It's gross shit, man. Some coaches, they understand the risks like shit. They've got personal experience and not much broader literacy. They don't run blood work carefully, they don't know how to track patterns across clients. They they're they're running on intuition and confidence, and intuition and confidence are just not the same thing as competence. Some coaches, they are just psychologically wrong for the role. They don't handle uncertainty well, they don't handle being questioned well, they don't handle a client who pushes back well, they want compliance, they do not want collaboration. That that guy isn't a partner, he's a manager, and you're become the his project. And the project loses the central role that you're supposed to be playing in your own decision making, which is why in the OptiLab, whenever we're working together, I always frame this coaching as a coaching mentorship, right? Because it is a collaborative environment. The way to spot a good coach in here when you're sizing up one, uh, it's to look for some specific things. So he's willing to say no, right? He turns guys who turns down guys who are not ready. He also has questions that show that he's actually thinking about you individually instead of just uh handing you a generic cycle. He explains his reasoning behind his choices. He'll admit when he's not sure. He's got a real system for tracking client data, he's got references and actual history of the people that you can talk to, right? He's not selling you the same protocol everybody sells to everybody. He's paying attention to you specifically. A bad coach is the opposite. He's always willing to take on a new client. He's confident about every damn thing. He never says I'm not sure. He gives everybody the same approach with some little cosmetic variation. He can't tell you why he made the calls he made. He doesn't explain, he just instructs. So you see that pattern, you walk away. It's as simple as that. A good coach is willing to say fucking no, man. A bad coach is always willing to say yes. That's the single sharpest signal that you've got, and that's genuinely how it works in practice. Now, what is the objection to everything that I've been saying thus far? You know, Nathan, all of this uh, you know, find a good coach stuff, it assumes good coaches are findable. And most of the time they're not, right? The coaching world is full of grifters, and and a few good ones are expensive and they have a lot of wait lists. And the the average guy considering this, he can't actually get a quality coach. So the real options aren't self-directed or hire a competent coach. The real options available in the real world are self-direct or hire whatever coach you can afford, which is usually a coach who isn't actually competent. So you're setting a bar that most people can't clear, and then you're telling them that they gotta clear it. And I want to give it what it's due, right? Because if it fucking hits, right? The the market is flooded with garbage coaching. It's a shit show. It's one of the reasons why I started the coaching. Good coaches, they're not abundant, they are not cheap, and the average guy just doesn't have access to one. Pretending the choices between the two is like equally available as a path, that would be dishonest. They're not equally available. The coach path done right is rarer than the framing makes it sound. But here's what the objection misses, and the miss is the whole reason this principle still holds. If a good coach is not findable for you right now, it doesn't mean the coach path is closed forever. It just means it's not open right now, which means for now, if you've got to make this decision, you better be on the self-directed path with no bullshit in the real sense, with some real literacy, not the pretend version where you watch some videos, the real version where you actually done the years' worth of work. And if you can't find a competent coach and you haven't done the years of work, then neither path is open to you yet. Should you do steroids? No, in that case. Which which means the answer for you right now is don't fucking start. The answer is to whichever version of the work you can do, building literacy on your own or saving up for a real coach whenever it becomes findable, which is what I did, or both, uh, which is what I did, as a matter of fact, until one of the two paths is actually open. So the principle isn't you must coach or you must self-direct, right? The principle is you must not walk this blind. If both paths are blocked, the honest move is to wait, man. So the objection is right that the bar is very high, but it's wrong that it's the wrong bar. The bar is the bar because the cost of clearing neither is one fucking huge and the weight, uncomfortable as it is, is the responsible thing. Now, there's one more piece that I want to put on the table before I close, and that's the part that's gonna anchor the whole episode, right? You can't outsource responsibility for your own body. You can't outsource knowledge, you can't outsource expertise, you can outsource pattern recognition, you can't outsource the fact that this is happening to you in your body with your consequences that you're gonna have to live with, which means even the best coach relationship, you keep the central role, at least in my philosophy. The coach can interpret, he can guide, he can caution, he can advise, but the decision still belongs to you. You still have to want to understand at least one thing dead clearly, which is that your body is your responsibility. The coach is a guide, not an owner. The guy who's handed total agency over to a coach has done something the relationship was never built for. He's asked the coach to be responsible for outcomes that he has to live with. That's way too much fucking weights to hang on a coach, and that's the wrong place to hang it. So look, the partnership is real and it's got a shape. The coach holds expertise that you don't have, you hold the responsibility no one else can hold. Both of those are lopsided, both of them are non-negotiable, and a healthy relationship between a coach and a user respects both at the same time. So let me bring this home. There are two valid paths for this decision of whether you should do steroids or not. You should carry the knowledge yourself, or you should trust somebody competent who's gonna do the carrying for you. One of those has to be true, okay? The setup just doesn't work for where for ignorance plus self-direction. That's the setup where most bad uh outcomes come from. The self-directed path, it's gonna take real literacy built over years with sustainable curiosity and honest self-tracking. It's available, it's slower, and some people walk it well. The coach path takes a real fucking coach, not some guy who used himself, right? Somebody who's watched a lot of bodies respond to enhancement, who's got the pattern recognition that only comes from breath, who's willing to explain himself, willing to get questioned, willing to say no. A good coach is rare, and a good coach is worth every damn dollar he fucking costs. The kind of trust it takes is informed trust, right? Not blind trust. You report honestly, you ask questions, you stay engaged, the coach interprets it, guides it, regulates your reactivity, holds you accountable, and both of you work the problem together. A good coach is willing to say no, a bad coach is always willing to say yes. That sentence is the cleanest signal that you've got. And no matter which path you walk, the responsibility for your body stays in your hands. Expertise, you can outsource. Responsibility, you cannot. The mature guy on either path, he holds the line clearly the whole way through. The book this series is built on has a line that I want to live you with. It says, There's no shame in not knowing, there's only danger in pretending to know. The mature user is gonna be the guy who's gonna look at himself and say, hey, I know my limits, and for the rest, I'll go find somebody who knows better. That humility is not weakness, it's the entire structure that makes this path work. So, next episode is gonna be the one of the most important ones of the whole series, and it's gonna be the natural counterweight to a lot of what we covered so far. What steroids cannot do. The list of things that people quietly hope these compounds will fix and the work no chemistry can do for you. I'll catch you in the next episode. Peace out.