Ep. 4 - Stop Waiting for 'Ready'

I'll be real with you: I showed up to record this one feeling like I had off-brand Flex Tape holding me together. 

But I recorded this episode anyway because someone has to go first.

This one is for the coach or clinician who knows they need to make a change. Who has known for a while, if they're being real about it. And keeps finding reasons why right now isn't quite the time.

I'm going to call those reasons out, as someone who's said almost every one of them.

We talk about:

• Why "I need to be more consistent first" is the most well-intentioned trap you can fall into
• How the fear of wasting someone's time is really the fear of being seen failing
• Why your exhaustion is real and also isn't getting better on its own
• The Trust Trinity
• And what nearly a hundred of my own client responses actually say about what changes when people stop waiting and take the step anyway.

If you're in the shit right now, this one's for you.

Links:

Book a free consult call with me: https://calendly.com/unbreakablestrengthonline/firestarter-call-1

Trying to get consistent with your own training? Get a free copy of the Consistency Catalyst guide: https://unbreakablestrength.kit.com/cac1abf5af

Wanna be more confident working with athletes in your practice? Get a free copy of the Confident Sports Clinician's Checklist: https://unbreakablestrength.kit.com/35c376acac

Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jared.unbreakable/

Follow me on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@jared.unbreakable

Follow me on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@unbreakablestrength1

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

My name is Jared Maynard. I'm a physical therapist, strength coach, and in 2023 I was lying in an ICU bed on a ventilator with a 50-50 chance of making it out alive. I made it out. And what I learned on the other side of that changed everything about how I live, how I coach, and what I believe is possible for the people who keep showing up. This show is for the coaches and clinicians. The people who give their all to everybody else and don't have much left over for themselves. On this show we talk about training and rehab, as well as mental health, identity, and what it costs to be the kind of person who keeps showing up when they're going to get. This show is meant to be your competitive. So come along. This is unbreakable. I'm gonna be real honest with y'all. It's been a hard week. It's been a hard week mentally, energetically, and it's one of those weeks where it feels like I'm barely holding it together, and I'm not showing up here on the microphone, uh, feeling like I have it all together. Rather, I feel like I've stuck it together with some off-brand flex tape and spit and hopes and dreams. And here we are. So I don't really know everything that's going to come out of my mouth here. Um, but I think it's important to start with that because what I keep coming back to is the reason that I started this show in the first place for you, especially if you're a coach or clinician or healthcare provider or somebody who's giving your all to everybody else. Somebody has to go first. And somebody has to be willing to make mistakes, uh, take chances, make mistakes, get messy. Shout out Miss Frizzle for all my millennial peeps, um, to make other people feel safe enough to do the same. So that's what we're doing. With that, not out of the way, because that's you're gonna hear me make make mistakes and all that. But now that you know what you're in for, I want to talk to somebody specific today. I want to talk to the person who knows that they need to make a change in their training, in their health, in the things that maybe qualify as self-care. And who has known that a change has been needed for a long time, if they're really honest, but always seems to find reasons why now is not the right time. This was spurred on by a conversation that I had this week, which I'm gonna avoid specifics out of trust and honor to the conversation and the person it was with. Um, it is simply the most recent conversation, as my kids stomp upstairs. Uh, most recent example of conversations that I have over and over with coaches and clinicians. So if you see yourself in this, know that you're in the right place. And my encouragement would be sit with what is coming up, especially if it's uncomfortable. Because the pattern that came up in this conversation with this person who is a physical therapist is that uh I'm gonna say he. He hasn't felt good for years. He is working really hard at a clinic, both as a provider and a clinic director. Um, there's pressure to obviously care for patients. There's the double pressure of needing to meet these performance metrics that the clinic and the ownership, the higher-ups want. Um, and when he comes home at the end of the day, he is exhausted. Now, this is somebody who has made space and found value in training for years. Competitive power lifter, uh, competed earlier this year. But since then, especially after having some changes in terms of how they were doing their programming and who was doing coaching and such, they they shifted, they fell off of their frequency. And now he's lucky to get two days of training in per week. And it's not a lack of caring. It's just the tank feels empty after all the day, and all the days' worries of caring for people. Trying to wake up early to train is hard to do when you're constantly running on empty. Any of that sound familiar for you? Maybe some of the details are a little different, but maybe the theme is is consistent enough, yeah. Um this person, he had a great routine in the past. He used to feel really strong with his training. He used to be really proud of how he looked and what he could do. He used to have much more in the tank to give to his spouse, to his patients, to the people in his life. And that also creates a lot more pain now. Not strictly physical pain, but emotional and identity pain, excuse me, because there's that comparison. Maybe you know what I'm talking about. I sure know what that's like. Where you can't help but have that part of you say, Man, how the fuck did we get here? We used to be crushing it, we used to lift this much, we used to weigh this much, we used to be this lean, we used to look amazing in photos, we used to get these comments and compliments all the time. Now look at us. I had that inner conversation over and over again over the years. When I was stepping into the gym for the first time after HLH, at various points in the journey, some really not long ago, with regards to my body image compared to the holdovers of my time spent bodybuilding and being very lean and having my self-worth tied to how I looked, how lean I was. And I am not over that. Um, I'm I'm further along than I used to be, but that voice still gets really loud, especially when I am exhausted. Especially when I do not feel good. And this person that I was speaking to, he definitely didn't feel good either. You know. And when we were talking about where he was at, he he knew he needed to change. He had said as much. No, I don't, I don't want to continue like this. I also don't know what to change, I don't know if I'm ready. I also don't want to invest in coaching if I'm not gonna follow through on it. And I don't want to waste anybody's time, don't want to waste my money. And the tricky part about being in this place is that it's not all bullshit. Some of it is, not all of it. And I need you to understand, as you're listening to me right now, that I say this as somebody who has who has lived this for a long time. The greatest gifts that I've been given as far as coaching and as far as these shifts go is having somebody who cared about me enough and who I knew cared about me enough to tell me the hard thing from a place of love, even though it hurt at the time. So I don't know if this hurts for you if we're talking about this. I don't know if you're feeling that tension kind of rise in your chest or noticing that your shoulders are a little bit tenser or you're gripping the steering wheel a little bit harder. Yeah, that's right. I see you. I see you. Um but if if you're noticing those things, just recognize that number one, you are not alone. And number two, most importantly, it's a signal. It's giving you a message. Pay attention to it. So of those things, what is what is the bullshit part? One of the things that came up in that conversation was, hey, I want to see myself be a little bit more consistent before I I work with another coach. This comes from a fear of failure, which is understandable. Ain't nobody is excited to fail or to commit to something and then erode trust in themselves further or in the person that they're bringing on for support. But here's what I need you to understand, and what I actually wish I had brought up in the conversation. The part that absolutely makes no sense about that idea of I need to see myself be more consistent first, is you are waiting for consistency to show up before creating the conditions that lead to consistency. That's not how that works. How would you respond if somebody came into the physical therapy clinic or the hospital and needed help, which they could receive there, but said, I think I need to get a little better first before I work with a physical therapist or a doctor or chiropractor or a coach. It's the same logic. Now, again, I'm not sitting here saying, toss it out. It's completely bullshit. Uh, you should feel bad for saying that. Clearly, I'm not saying that. I've been the person to say this and I understand where it comes from. It is most important that we do understand that the logic does not follow. And what's also important to cut through the noise in the smoke screen and really get to what's behind that fear is that we need to meet that with something specific. And I'll talk about what that something specific is in a moment. As for the worry that I don't want to waste somebody's time or my own time or money if I don't follow through, some of that comes from integrity and a good, honorable place, wanting to respect people. The thing about it though, is that that thinking keeps people stuck for a long time? Because again, are things changing? Fair enough that you don't want to waste somebody else's time. How much of that is coming from a place of fear of rejection from the person that you're bringing into the circle of trust? How much of that is coming from fear of failure of yourself? Again, I don't want this to be another thing that I try and fail. And again, this is not passing judgment on that fear. That fear is universal. The more that I talk to people and the more that you talk to people, the more you see this fear come up. It is wired in us as humans. We do not want to be rejected. We do not want to fail. Uh, that's evolutionarily tied to our survival. If you failed, if you were rejected, you died. That doesn't happen the same way in modern society, but still it hasn't come out of our conditioning, you know. So if you are the person who knows that you need a change, who in your heart of hearts, you know that you probably need some help. And you probably have people close to you or through the internet that you're connected to who could help, but you don't want to waste their time. You don't want to let them down. Don't let yourself down. It's a yes and situation. Throw back to episode two with Dr. Susie Spurlock. Yes, you are wanting to honor them and yourself. And if you let that thought win here, you will stay stuck, almost certainly, and certainly longer than you need to. And time is the one resource out of all of the resources that you cannot create more of. We all think we've got plenty. Shit. I certainly did before I wound up in the hospital almost dying. And on the other side of that, you know what's crazy? On the other side of that, I still take time for granted. I have to work to catch myself and try to change that. But I still do it. It's wrong. It's wrong. When it comes to another fear or objection that you may have, and certainly this person did, is I'm too tired. I'm exhausted. I'm running on fumes. I've got this fatigue in my bones. I don't think I can add another thing to my plate. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that you are not tired or that your tiredness does not count. I will do the opposite. That fatigue is real. The question you have to ask yourself is is that tiredness getting better? Or is it staying the same or getting worse? Because nothing changes if nothing changes. And it's again a yes and situation where we go through periods, myself absolutely included, where we have to be okay with being in a season of life in training and rehab and whatever, where the gains aren't coming as rapidly as possible or as they used to. We don't have as much to put into it as we want to. And that will last for a time, you know, for all things a season. The tricky part, the pitfall, where we can shoot ourselves in the foot is by lulling ourselves into this idea that, you know, this is just going to be for a season and I have to be okay with it with where I'm at. But we don't actually take ownership of the things that are ours to take ownership of. It's weird grammar. In the moment, in that season. And that season lasts instead of weeks or months. Sometimes it lasts years. For some of you, it's lasted months and years. It's been months and years since you actually felt good. And I'm not talking about just having like a good day or a couple of good days, but consistently, your baseline being one that is good. Where you feel like you're making progress, you have more lightness to you, you have more to give. This person I was talking to, for him, it had been a couple years. How long has it been for you? Probably the most damaging or painful half-truth that we tell ourselves ourselves is I should be able to do this myself. I program for people all day long in the clinic or for my own clients. I studied this in school. I have a degree. I have multiple degrees and certifications in this stuff. Why can't I do my own training? Why can't I be consistent with my own training? Why can't I manage my own rehab? It is not a knowledge problem. All of those certificates and letters after your name and degrees and happy clients and glowing reputation tells you it is not a knowledge problem. It's an objectivity problem. It is always different when it's you. You don't need more knowledge by and large. You do very likely understand the principles that don't change when it comes to training and rehab, which exist on the same spectrum, by the way. The fact that you can do this for everybody else means that you're not an idiot. It just means that you are human and hate to break it to you. But for us as humans, for us as especially care providers, coaches, clinicians, people who care, you cannot bring the same objectivity and the same groundedness to yourself that you do for other people. So what's the solution there? You need someone to do for you what you do for everybody else. It took me a long time to hammer that through my thick, bald skull. It wasn't bald the whole time, but thick nonetheless. Um I remember when I had first strained my hamstring. I had tried to self-rehabit for over a year. I was working with a powerlifting coach at the time. And this was when I'd made the decision that I wanted to compete in powerlifting. I thought that was awesome. I want to be as competitive and as strong as I could. And then this injury happened, you know, out of the blue. Looking back, it wasn't entirely out of the blue. I've just come back from a trip. I was also underfueled. Uh, I was programming, I'm trying different programming styles. My technique needed improvement, a whole bunch of stuff. And when I got hurt, I thought, I'm a newly minted PT. I went to school for this. I should do it on my own. Because if I don't, I am a fraud. If I can't do it for myself, how do I do it for other people? You ever said that to yourself? Or is that just me? Don't lie. Don't lie. And you can imagine if that was the logic that I brought to myself constantly, that made me lose a year of time. How much more painful do you think it was when I had to confront the reality that I was not getting better? That I would make progress for a few weeks or a month or two because we intentionally pulled back on training volume. But there was still a gap that had to be closed. I was not going to be competitive in powerlifting if I couldn't handle one rep max attempts. I couldn't get there on my own. How much of a fraud do you think I felt like? How much of a fraud do you feel like right now? I'm here to tell you that you're not a fraud for not being able to do this for yourself the way you do for everybody else. As far as I know, doctors don't treat themselves, or at least they're not supposed to. Um I live in the powerlifting world a lot, so you look at any of the top-level, top-level lifters at IPF Worlds, Sheffield, take your pick of any of the competitions. Many of them are coaches. And they have their own coach. Give me, I'll give you one guess as to why you think that is. I know I'm coming at you, possibly a little intense. Man, Jared, I thought Canadians are supposed to be chill. Joke's on you. Oh, sorry there, eh, bud. No, we are. We're very polite. But we also say what we have to say when we need to say it. You know what I mean? There's this concept in public speaking that comes from people like Tony Robbins and Eli Wilde called the trust trinity. You ever heard of that? It uh is not religious. It just signifies that when it comes to making a change in your life, whatever the change is, whether it's making a decision for training, rehab, some other lifestyle change, there needs to be trust in three places. First is in the person that you're trusting. This would be the coach, this would be the healthcare provider, the doctor, you know, whomever. There needs to be trust in the process itself that it'll give you what you want and need. So the coaching approach, the kind of support that you'll get, all of that stuff. I'll give you a sec to guess what that third one is. Trust in yourself. When we drill down deep, that's often where the trust is lacking the most. It was in this conversation. I know it was because I asked him in this framing, does it feel like you're you don't trust yourself to follow through? And he said, Yeah. And that's honest. It's important to recognize. How does that change though? Do you build more trust in yourself by waiting? Or by trying to continue to do it yourself when you've been trying to do it yourself for months or years, and it's gotten you here, which is not where you want to be. Or is it possible that the consistency that you're yearning to see in yourself actually happens when you create the structure and support that makes it easier to be consistent and to build the trust in yourself? That's my one regret from this conversation that I had with this person. That I didn't ask that. You know, coaching, excuse me. Coaching, whether it happens in a medical setting, a rehab setting, or a strength and conditioning or performance setting, it needs to be something that makes it easier for you to show up and take the action that leads to your goals, which usually isn't rocket science. It's usually stuff you know exactly, or you know about exactly. And again, you get in your own way, the environment gets in your way, the schedule gets in your way, the amount of energy that you have to spare gets in your way. Many of these are legitimate. All of these are legitimate, actually. I'll go on the record and say that. I mentioned earlier that if you are that person who says, I am so tired, man. I hear what you're saying, Jared. I don't know that I have it in me to commit to something else right now. I hear you. And I told you I was not going to argue that point. Excuse me. Although apparently my burps are going to argue with me here and now, and so are my allergies. Back to the point. Um I told you I wasn't going to argue with your fatigue and with your exhaustion, because that's real. Instead, what coaching needs to do, what support, however it looks, needs to do is something very important. This is that thing. It needs to not ask or answer the question, am I ready yet? It instead needs to answer the question: what is the smallest thing that I can commit to right now? I hope you understand that answering that question is actually a lot more difficult than it might seem to hear it, particularly if you are like me, or if you are like the person I spoke to, or like most of the people that I work with that we work with at Unbreakable Strength, if you are a high achiever, a perfectionist or recovering perfectionist, if you are somebody who enjoys excellence, who feels the best when you do things excellently to the best of your ability, and there is nothing wrong with that, but your perfectionist gets really loud when you can't. When your energy and your schedule prevents you from showing up now like you used to a year ago, when your injury stops you from training the way that you used to. When you look at where you are now versus where you were, or where you want to be, or like your friends are, or like people on social media are, and you think, damn, what is wrong with me? Why am I broken? Why am I the odd one out? Why can't I do this? Everyone else is doing it. I'm behind. Sound familiar? It's difficult to answer the question of what can I commit to right now because it involves accepting that things will not be perfect. It also involves accepting the reality that consistency follows when you create the structure for it to follow. It does not come before that. And it can't. Because, again, you're tired and you're scared to fail. And I get that. I get it because I am you. I can tell you honestly that every time that I've chosen to trust somebody who is worthy of that trust. And take that step forward despite my fear, despite my hesitation, not impulsively, mind you, but when every other sign pointed towards this being something that got me closer to where I wanted to be, despite my hesitations and my failings and weaknesses. And I said yes anyway, and did not need it to be perfect. Because, like I said at the start of this episode, today is not perfect. This week is not perfect. My training has sucked this week for a variety of reasons. And my perfectionist internally is very loud. I'm not coming at you as somebody who's conquered this and is the monk on the mountaintop. I'm in the fucking valley with you. And I can tell you that every time I've said yes to that support, things have gotten easier. As we wrap this up, I actually spent quite a bit of time last night uh going through all of the client responses that I've gotten over the last year. And I used AI to help me analyze it. Took all of my clients' words. Uh I think it was over, it was it was shy of a hundred responses. Oh, sorry, from shy of a hundred people. It was more than a hundred responses at different parts of their journeys. And I used AI to help me run analysis, analyses, and it confirmed a lot of things that I already knew. That when people come to work with us at Unbreakable, um, they they come usually with goals in mind, whether it's getting stronger, whether it's a particular performance goal, like, hey, I want to do my first powerlifting meet, or I want to qualify for the women's pro singles in HyROX. Um, or I want to stop having my hip hurt when I do BJJ and when I play soccer. All real examples that just came to mind. Um the biggest changes that people say they get while they work with us, surprisingly, are not the physical. Don't get me wrong. Like people get stronger, people feel better, and that is absolutely something that came up and comes up often. But what surprised me was that far and away, the biggest change that people say they get when they work with us at Unbreakable is the mental side. They are consistent for the first time in a long time, and sometimes ever. There was a response that I read in the past and I reread last night, where the person said, I've been consistent for 16 weeks and showing up for myself. I haven't done that for anything. What change do you think that made for that person in how they saw themselves? What kind of person do you think that person now gets to say, I am the kind of person who, blank. I am the kind of person who keeps going even when it's hard. I'm the kind of person who works out and doesn't feel like a fraud. Because I'm telling my patients to work out and train. And now I actually am doing it. Beyond consistency, it was confidence. It was trust in their body again. It was how they show up in the gym and on the court and in their work and for their own patients and clients, for their spouses, for their partners, for their kids. One of the responses said, I am so much more confident now, and that confidence bleeds into every other area of my life. It's confidence, it's consistency, it's better mental health for many. It's reclaiming and restructuring identity. And the key thing, how does this relate, Jared? I mean, that's all great. I mean, objectively, it is great. Like I'm freaking pumped, dude, because I care about these people and I want to make unbreakable better for everybody that we do work with and will work with. But Jared, how does that relate to the client or the person you spoke to? Absolutely, positively, a grand total of zero of those responses ever would have been recorded had those people not taken the scary step forward when they didn't feel ready. Not a single one would have gotten to that place where they have greater trust in their bodies, where they're not thinking about their pain every second of the day, where they feel hopeless and stuck in like this is all there is, if they needed themselves to be more consistent or to do it right before they accept help. If they thought they had to do it by themselves, if they thought that they needed life to slow down first. So why are you? I want you to finish by hearing me say this. If you are in the shit right now, if you are exhausted, if you're hurting physically, mentally, if you just want to feel good again, I need you to know that you are not alone. And I need you to know that it is possible. You don't need to be, quote unquote, ready first. Life doesn't need to slow down first. All you need to do is start where you are. Start with the smallest thing possible and stop expecting yourself to do it all on your own. Because I don't believe any of us were meant to. Keep going. If it's messy, if it's scary, if it hurts, I get it. And I am with you. Keep going. Because you're not done yet. If any of what we talked about today hit home, you are who Unbreakable Strength Serves. And you are who I want to help if you're open to it. The link to book a call with me is in the show notes. Go get that a link, book some time. If we're the fit, I'll tell you. If we're not the fit, I'll tell you that too, and we'll find who is. I got other stuff in the show notes too. If you're trying to be more consistent, there is a free resource that I created called the consistency catalyst. You can snag that for yourself. You can find me on Instagram. Until then, take care. I'll catch you in the next one.