Author: joshpuregrittraining

Working on your health and fitness is such an intense, sometimes painful, sometimes joyful journey of self.

Some workouts are cathartic. The sweat, the exertion, the gasping at the end of some sets acts as a hole bored to the deepest portions of your soul, allowing whatever troubles you to vent away, like spirits waiting to be freed. They’re brutal, and that’s the best part about the day.

There’s an element of trying to understand the true reasoning why you do what you do. Where your eating habits came from, why they persist, why you’re deciding to skip the gym and go home, why your inner voice says the things they do. Your mental state becomes the most important of all.

There are breakthrough moments. You figure out a piece of exercise technique that allows everything to feel fluid, you hit a new personal best, you have your first workout in days without any pain from an injury.

What I’m getting at is, what you’re struggling with, the pieces that aren’t working, sometimes are and sometimes aren’t a simple fix.

I’ve got a 3-strike rule. If I do something that takes me away from what I planned (maybe it was macros, maybe it was a workout, maybe it’s hitting a specific weight) 3 times, I need to reflect on that. Most of the time it calls for a conversation with self or a larger change in terms of how I’m going after what I want.
Does that mean there’s an immediate fix? Likely not. But what it DOES mean is that something is going on I’m not aware of quite yet. In the past the major changes have come into my eating habits, how I run my day, how I prioritize sleep and recover within my life.

These are not easy conversations to have with yourself. It’s coming to yourself and saying, “The effort is there, but our system is faulty. What do we need to change to incorporate this move into our life with less resistance?” There is no purpose to beating yourself up. You’re human, remember that. The importance of this conversation is not recognizing you failed, it is admitting things could be done differently for more success, and you’re willing to work to determine those methods.

Hello folks! Let’s give an update on Aaron’s training, shall we?

His weights continue to rise, as well as his repetitions and his execution of each movement. We look for and find personal records in all forms, whether that be weight, reps, or technical mastery of the movement. My favorite result of working with him for the past few months has been his eventual enjoyment of our lower body training days. We started off with low sets just to get a couple of consistent leg days into the mix – there was whining, there was frustration. But eventually, we hit a point of choosing movements he didn’t mind, and he’s seen the pay off in a big way to the weights on the bar rising, and his 3-km run time getting faster by the week.

I saw a post earlier this week that reinforced that even when things get hard, a client needs to trust their trainer, and I’m not sure that’s something I really agree with. At least, not without further explanation.

Does a client need to trust their coach? Yes. BUT, when things get hard, it falls on the coach to understand the client’s struggle and adjust. And if the work has been done to understand where their road blocks might be and adjust well before they exist, that trust is present and the road block becomes more of a small pothole. The responsibility doesn’t rely on the client to trust the trainer, it sits with the trainer to create that trust well before.

So, how did I build this trust with Aaron?

1. Let’s be honest. He’s my brother – which gives me a huge step up with letting him know I’m in it to make him better (but this doesn’t give me full buy-in).
2. I’ve paid attention to every gripe, every comment during a program, and made changes immediately when things weren’t working (within reason).
3. When he didn’t like something, if it needed to stay, I explained where the pay off was and asked him to stick it out for a bit longer. It was never a command, and always a conversation.
4. If a cue didn’t work, or a position felt off, I stepped in and checked in for myself. I’m not all-knowing, I may have made a mistake with an instruction.
5. I’m constantly checking if what I’m asking him to do is because I want him to do it, or if it’s because it will make HIM better at what HE wants to progress at. His goals are what matters most.

Trust with a client is built by understanding your client, and understanding humans as a whole. At the start of the session, can I pick a movement that’s hard, and requires a lot of coordination?

Yes. He’s full of energy, and it may not be lovely, but it won’t be terrible. But at the end? When he’s sweaty and tired – that’s a recipe for failure (we humans generally hate failure).

So, what’s the overarching lesson here?

Trust is a relationship, and it starts from the very first conversation between a trainer and client. I not only have to understand your goals, I have to understand you as a human, and continue to ask questions and put pieces together. We ain’t about white-knucklin’ this journey, we will always be about mindset shift to get you to a healthy life. And when you look back, it shouldn’t be a, “Oh man, that was really tough”, I want to hear, “Huh, one day I looked back and realized, everything was different.”

Well hello again friends! It’s been a bit, but Aaron and I have both still be training hard as ever in our basement. I’d like to let you know a few improvements I’ve seen in Aaron’s physique and training since we started:

• His shoulders are starting to pull back into better positioning due to stretching out his chest, strengthening his mid-back, and reinforcing good posture/positioning on EVERY movement
• His squat-style movements have gained great strength and coordination, which has translated to better running times
• He’s gained substantial muscle mass, especially in his legs and back

If you’ll remember from my last post, one of his goals was a 225 lb bench. But for the bulk of quarantine, we didn’t have a squat rack, or any real form of doing any sort of bench work. So, how did we prepare him for this goal (we did have a squat rack incoming)?

• Tempo push ups, moving from body weight to weighted
• Floor press, with a pause – teaching control and making the pause feel more natural
• Modified height pendlay rows with a slight pause at the top – this will translate to pausing a bench press but NOT losing tightness

Most importantly, I’ve learned how to work with Aaron to help him achieve his goals. Every athlete is different in their mentality, what drives them, and what will halt them in their tracks. So, here’s a few keys I’ve learned about him as an athlete:

• Failure is not a reasonable rep range. Give him a number, and ask him to beat it on each set.
• Include elements that he enjoys. That means arms on leg days, and sometimes ‘cardio breaks’ during longer sessions.
• Things can be tough, but not brutal. RPE 8 is generally where we cap most exercises, unless we’re going for as many reps as possible.
• Pick 4 exercises, the best bang for your buck, and prioritize those, with extra added on to the end if energy is still present.

Not everything he wants to do in his programming is ‘ideal’ from a physical and training standpoint. Cardio breaks takes energy from large compound movements. Arms on leg day diverts attention and energy away from lower body that we’re prioritizing. That being said, there’s an element to this that’s very important: his buy-in, and his willingness to work hard BECAUSE those ‘rewards’ exist in his program.

In the short term, there may have been some negative effects of adding these things in, but the long-term has led to massive success in training, commitment to working hard each session, and better communication between him and I as a client and coach relationship. For someone that hated leg day when we started and now has not complained about it in 3 months, that’s a success story I’m happy to tell.

Hello there! My name is Josh Kelly, I’m a certified personal trainer and online lifestyle coach. And if you’re here, you’re likely checking out the updates on my brother Aaron Kelly’s fitness journey.

At the start of the COVID-19 healthcare crisis, both Aaron and I realized we had a very special opportunity. Impressive fitness results and consistent change are about a few key things:

• Time
• Effort
• Properly progressed exercise routines
• Proper recover (food, sleep) to account for those exercise routines
• Consistency with these factors

And as much as this healthcare crisis has been a burden on the physical and mental health of all humans, this situation also gave us control over all of these things (and a serious lack of anything else to do).

No fitness regime can start without some sort of goals to work towards. His goals were a mix of specific numbers, and quality-of-life improvements:

• A 225 lb bench press (once we had the equipment to do so)
• A faster 3 km run time
• Physically get leaner (requires a drop in bodyweight)
• Correct his rounded forward shoulders

These are all fantastic goals, and they developed as we began working together. First, we started with the low hanging fruit:

• Increase water intake (hydration keeps him less hungry, and ready to workout)
• Choosing lean proteins (chicken, turkey, eggs, etc.) at every meal (protein helps build muscle, more muscle is like a bigger engine in a car, it burns more gas!)
• Keeping his workouts in a reasonable time frame (NOT 3 hours), and NOT training to failure with most exercises
• Lots of movements that strengthen his middle back, and stretch out his chest muscles

From here, it’s about simple progression of reps, sets, and weight, and continuing to make choices that reinforce our above goals.

Above all else, it is about adapting the plan for him to the life that he has already created by making small changes that add up over time. If any part of this plan could not be kept for the rest of his life, it would not be something worth implementing.

I’ll be posting more of his plan as time progresses, keep up with us here, and on my instagram (http://www.instagram.com/puregrittraining) to watch the madness unfold.

Come for the great fitness advice, and stay for the entertainment of two brothers arguing over weights. Feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions – mailto:[email protected]