Hello and welcome back to the show.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I am Patrick.
Ben is not here, but it's going to be okay, everybody.
I've got some friends joining me this time around.
We're going to have a great conversation.
First up, we've got Jameson Price.
You know Jameson if you've been listening for a little bit.
He's on the show every now and again.
Co-owner of Elysium Health in Tennessee. as well as on the team at Comptrain alongside Ben.
We are joined as well by somebody new here on the show, but I am excited to have you on for the first time.
Spencer Nix, founder of the Behavior and Performance Research Institute in Dallas, Texas.
How are you gentlemen doing?
Good, man.
I'm excited to be here.
Excited to hear from Spencer.
Honored, honored to be here.
Long time, long time listener, first time participant.
First time caller?
I think that's what it is.
We're excited to have you.
We're excited to have you on.
Real quick because I think it will lay a decent bit of context for the conversation we're going to have Spencer.
Can you tell us about what BPR is?
And for folks who want to check out more, bpr.institute is the place to go.
But give us a little bit of context.
What is it?
Where did it come from?
What are you guys trying to do there?
It does sound like a 1970s secret research lab, but it's just a gym in Dallas, Texas.
So we do have a bricks and mortar location.
We partner with everyone that comes in and therefore everybody does a combination of one-on-one coaching And then, based on their goals and a lot of other factors, they may train with us in person, they may participate in some of the groups that we run, or they may keep it just one-on-one with the coach.
But I think the terms, behavior, and performance Man, those can go a lot of different directions.
I had some guy stop me on the side of the road and asked if I worked with people that had learning differences.
I was like, what are you talking about?
And I thought he was making a joke.
And I realized the word behavior has a lot of different definitions.
But for us, you could say it's synonymous with lifestyle.
So we do a lot of lifestyle coaching.
And I have a whole...
Theory around that that I can get into, but basically we want to figure out how someone's life could sustain fitness and performance and then we figure out how to customize that for the individual.
All right, we've just lost Jameson.
He's gonna try to come, I don't know if he's gonna come back.
He's gonna try to come back.
So real quick, before we move on to other subjects you have on your website BPR, you have this line it's right at the bottom that I love available online to all coaches willing to rebel against the norm.
Talk to me just a second about what that means and who you're trying to reach with that idea.
Well, I think there's always been for me a slight enjoyment from trying to see what's really popular and then just doing something slightly different.
So that just makes me feel really good to say that.
But if we think of what is normal, the world has figured out how to do exercise, the world has figured out how to package it, and then I think the individual has a tendency to want to go overboard.
So I think there's a misconception that oh, you just need to want it more, or you need more motivation, you need more willpower.
I mean, we've heard that a million times.
I actually think that most people have a totally adequate amount of those traits, But they've gone too far, too quickly and it's unsustainable.
So I think a break from the norm can be taken in lots of different contexts, but it's not trying to impress somebody.
I no longer try to give somebody the hardest workout that I can give them.
I tell them I'm no longer the hardest workout in town because I don't care about that.
It's not to say that intensity isn't important, but it's just not.
What I'm trying to coach is to see how impressed you can be by my exercise selection.
So a break from the norm, a radical approach to coaching, is to really distill it down to, I think, what it was originally supposed to be, which is how to listen and pay really close attention to what's going on with somebody, how to talk to them, not in a way where you could control them, because that doesn't happen, but in a way where you might influence the change that they really came to you for in the first place.
And so even just that little sentence, I think, is as basic as it is be like wait.
So you're just saying it's about talking to people.
It's like, well...
I was never taught that.
I was taught all of these ancillary things how to run a great group, how to program design from a business standpoint sales, marketing operations, how to be a leader.
But there's not a lot of really basic information on how to have a conversation with somebody that they lead and you partner with them to get to a point where they actually do change.
That's a whole topic in and of itself that I think exists in other, but I don't find it attached to coaching very often.
I don't even know if that answered your question.
It did.
And I think it does lead us into what I wanted to talk to you about.
So you recently, oh, it looks like Jameson's back.
Jameson, you're back?
Can you hear us?
Sorry, guys.
I just unplugged and restarted everything five times.
And that's how time travel is possible.
That's basically how it is.
James is back, which is good timing.
We're about to jump into this.
So you were just Spencer, you were just you just joined us on the consistency project with EC.
So that was a great conversation.
And as I was reviewing that episode, I wasn't there for that recording.
But I had like three or seven follow up questions that I wish EC asked.
So this is my opportunity to ask all the questions that she didn't.
So I want to talk to you about systems thinking.
I want to talk to you about what you've called the six territories of health.
And then, if we have time, I'd love to talk to you about the difference, the benefits, the pros and cons of self-coaching versus external coaching, which is something I think the two of you both have a lot to.
You've thought about a lot and you have a lot to say.
Let's start with that first one, which is systems thinking.
In that conversation with EC, you mentioned causal loops and delays in effect.
Can you just give us a sense of what those terms mean?
And then zoom out a little bit.
When I say systems thinking as it relates to health, where does your mind go?
Yeah, I think when I first started in fitness one, I was really young, so my whole life revolved around exercise, truly.
My whole day and my whole existence revolved around that.
And so essentially what I did was I created a very simple system that I operated in.
Everything revolved around one variable.
And I think whenever somebody makes fitness work, especially at a young age, they have done some things to streamline a system without them probably really even knowing that they did it.
When we talk about health versus fitness.
It's a much more complicated system, because that means that there are multiple parts of it and they all work together.
That is by definition what a system is.
There are these different and an easy analogy is just a car, right?
A car is a system.
Our human body is a system.
If for one reason or another one thing doesn't work, It doesn't matter how great something else is.
So in the example of exercise, we could have a totally adequate amount of exercise and it would look like it was ineffective, because there are so many other things that are actually limiting our progress.
Does that make sense?
So this is a great term for New England.
There's a term for these types of problems.
If you have a complex system, it's called a wicked problem.
And it's wicked because there's a delay.
So you could do something and it could absolutely be working, but because all of these other parts of the system are affected by it.
Nutrition's a great example.
You could be doing everything that's right.
Truly everything that's right for six weeks and not notice that anything is changing.
And then you stop only to realize later, that it just took time for everything to recalibrate.
So it's the same way that if you have an air conditioning unit and you bump it up a couple of degrees, that may register that it's changed, but it takes some amount of time for each part of the house to actually acclimate to a new temperature.
And so our bodies work the same way, and health as a system works the same way.
And so it's the reason that you could have somebody come into the gym And they would say you know what?
I've tried every gym in town and just nothing seems to stick.
I really hope yours is the one.
And you're like, shit, man, I do too.
But you know that it has nothing to do with exercise.
You know that there's something else going on in their life that actually is limiting them from getting the same results that maybe you or I did.
Mm-hmm.
So unfortunately, I'm introducing something that's more complex.
But it is real life.
I think for a long time, us in fitness, we just wanted to... I mean, I even said things like this.
You know what?
If you just come in and work hard, anything you want, put it in that envelope.
And if we just work hard...
We'll get it.
You know what?
Real life doesn't actually work like that.
Like if there's things that you're not addressing, you actually have to address those things.
And so the difference is and maybe here's how we can tie some of these concepts together things take time, the body keeps score.
These are, these are cliches that are so true they almost become rules.
And so anyone that thinks well yeah, but check out the great results that I'm getting right now because I have simplified my life and my system to just be about workouts, I say well, just give it time.
Hmm, Because there's some things that and systems theory has been around for a long, long time started in biology, it's gone to sociology.
Psychologists are picking up on it.
But one of the things that makes a system a system is that there is always not maybe there's always something that's in limited supply.
There is always one part of it that is the crux.
It is the bottleneck.
By definition, a system has to have that.
So that can be a little disheartening, but at the same time it's kinda cool because you know that that's a constant.
So, as humans who want to be healthy, not just perform well in the gym, but like, want to live a life that doesn't suck as much, then you're constantly looking for the thing that you've been avoiding, which is probably the thing that you don't have the skill for, which is probably the thing that if you were to improve that, it would make everything better, because everything is connected.
Okay, I'll stop there.
I think, doing some digging into a handful of stuff that you've written and that you've published obviously, like it has a very adjacent feel to the five factors in terms of the components and the different aspects of the systems.
And so it definitely resonates with with us.
Man, I think you know one of the big learnings for us is whenever we tried to start a nutrition coaching program at the gym, seven different ways.
And it always ends the same, which is I can't coach nutrition without coaching holistically the rest of your life.
And It really is that.
I mean, it's everything that you're saying is like systemically, there is an issue of one thing that is creating weakness for the rest of these, and you're then compensating, likely because you're unwilling to deal with the part that you really need to deal with.
So you're actually trying to compensate or over-index this focus on.
Well, maybe I can just out-train it or maybe I can out-discipline it regarding my nutrition.
Yeah.
So I I'm all in and I'm so interested to hear more about the actionable way that you implement the systems theory in terms of coaching, the coaching practices, in terms of how you guide somebody through what to me is actually can be a quite painful revelation for some people of like oh I realize there's something deeper going on here.
I realize there's something more insidious at play.
That is actually dismantling progress across the span of my entire life.
Not just why I can't lose weight or stick to a nutrition plan or add muscle mass or whatever.
Oh, I'm experiencing this because of the broken narrative in my head, or I'm experiencing because of whatever's happening over here in this system.
And I don't want to deal with that.
And so I'm very curious as to like how you guide people through that process and also just get buy in at the front end.
Because I think IQ, like you said, most people do come into gyms and are looking for the solution.
And while the rest of them didn't work, so I hope yours works.
It's like well, That's going to depend on your compliance first of all, but then it's also going to bend very heavily on your willingness to do the interior work, to stick to the system.
So yeah, I'm excited just to hear like how you put these things into practice.
It's almost like pointing out to them like, what's the common denominator between every effort prior to this and the one that you think you're about to engage in.
And it's you.
It's not the six gyms.
It's not the seven coaches.
It's actually it's the one person who keeps walking into every one of those gyms hoping that what's going to happen in that gym will be different.
Yeah.
It is a different approach with us as coaches, because I don't know about you guys, but for the first 15 years of me being a coach, I intentionally tried to set myself apart as an expert on a ton of different subject matters as it related to fitness.
And I'll take that one step further.
I thought that what it meant to be a coach was really to have the answers.
I think there's probably a lot of professionals that can relate to that too.
Man, if I'm gonna help people, I better be really equipped with every possible scenario.
But this thing that we're talking about is a different relationship.
And look, when we're on the training floor and someone's doing a back squat, we're not gonna co-collaborate with them on the depth.
We're just gonna say, hey, Jameson, it looks like you get two inches lower.
And so it can come across like, I'm the expert, you're an idiot, here's the information you need.
If we were to say that in the worst way possible.
But this thing that we're talking about.
To answer your question, I think one of the first things that I want to communicate is I can't be an expert in all of these areas of someone's life.
And I want them to tell me exactly what they want.
And we're going to ask a series of questions to truly get them excited about that.
But I also have an agenda and it's to make their life suck less.
And so we we will collaborate on whatever it is specifically they want.
But the process with which I'll do that is to be constantly, constantly listening to the tune of the orchestra.
And whereas they want to lose weight.
Oh, you know what?
We're off.
We're off in the tubas over here.
So, even though you're a piccolo player like I'm just thinking like man, what is, what is the the harmony in in the overall game orchestra doing?
So i think just we have an agreement with everybody that we have them sign before they start, and the agreement has nothing to do with like hey, if you can't, if you cancel you, don't give us a heads up.
It says this don't try to fool me and don't try to fool yourself.
If we can be honest with each other, I'm gonna be one of the best friends you've ever had in your life.
Now what does that mean?
It means I'm gonna listen without interrupting you.
I'm not gonna show up as a know-it-all.
I'm only gonna give you information that I really have lots of experience with that you have asked for, and I'm gonna hold you accountable like no one has ever done before in your life.
So systems probably never even comes into the conversation.
Limiting factor and causal loops.
Those are fun coaching terms, but for us, it's really simple.
First conversation we have.
We need to come away with something that you are so emotional about that we really know.
That's the thing.
So when psychologists use the term motivational interviewing, it's like, oh, what is it?
It's all these acronyms.
Okay, it's open.
It's simply having a conversation with somebody until they get really excited, really scared afraid hesitant frustrated, anything.
I don't care.
I don't care what they say.
I don't care what emotion, but I'm not going anywhere until we get to that point.
And so I'm asking these questions that aren't like, I mean, I'm guilty of this as well.
Hey, what do you want to do here?
I just want to lose weight.
Great.
Well, let's hit the gym floor and get started.
But it's like losing weight. is like the most boring answer of all time.
You know what?
It turns out that every time I lean over to grab my kid, I feel my belly up against my thighs, and I would rather sit there and let my wife play with them on the weekends than get up and do anything at all.
That's a much different story.
It's a much more interesting story.
To get that, you got to ask, well, why do you want to lose weight?
Well, because, you know, I'm tired.
Well, tired how?
With whom?
What context?
And you know you arrive at this point where it's a much more detailed, much more interesting story.
And then you're just constantly reflecting back what it is that you heard them say.
So you care about playing with your kids.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay, so, you know, and then you finish with like a reframe.
So, six months from now, you really care about playing with your kids.
What would it look like for this to be a really good outcome?
Bare minimum.
Bare minimum, what has to happen?
Well, if I lost 10 pounds and I had better energy, I think that would be a real win.
Hmm.
Okay.
That's a, that's a lot different place for us to go.
So, so step one is we need something that's really real to them.
I know why somebody wants to lose weight.
You guys do too.
And so I think if we put our know it all hat on, it's like you want to lose weight.
Okay.
Got it.
I'll take it from here, pros will take it from here.
But this whole conversation isn't for me, it's for them.
It's for them to get to this point where it's like man, he's right.
I didn't realize like, how upset i am about this.
So that context takes talking and that talking takes us shutting up and just letting them riff and letting them go.
And here's something that took me a long time to be okay with, to be all right with tears and to be all right with somebody directing their anger that has nothing to do with me towards me.
But I'm at a point in my coaching career where I can handle all that shit.
Because I want something for them that doesn't currently exist.
So again, I'm willing to take a lot of stuff.
But at the same time, I have very high standards for these guys.
So that's step one.
Step two is just explaining that all of these things are related.
Instead of saying limiting factor systems...
We just say, hey, look, your health is like a tire.
We'll say it's like a six-sided tire.
And if one of these things isn't where it should be, it's going to be like there's this bump.
No matter where we want to get to, it's just going to be like we have this constant bump.
So the very next step for you and I is to determine the one thing That is the crux.
And we explain it like a rock climber.
If we're doing a route, the crux is the hardest part.
This is supposed to be hard.
You're not supposed to be good at this.
This is going to be something that you may have avoided.
And look even and we do a pretty exhaustive assessment where we're probably, like you guys do, asking a ton of questions across these six territories of health.
And it's pretty obvious what is the thing.
But still, I can make some observations.
I can say, you know what?
It looks like this is something that's come up a lot.
But they have to be the one that says, yeah, well, let's go for it.
I can't be more excited about dealing with whatever than they are.
And so I still just kind of have to sit back and be like, so is this what we're going to do?
And we can talk about stages of change and readiness and certain things that you want to listen to for people to indicate that they are ready.
But what's great about systems is if we pick something, it probably will have a positive effect.
And I think to your point, Jameson there's people that aren't ready to go scuba diving day one.
Right, we just need to kind of get our toes wet and and wait in the water, and that's totally cool, but they're under no illusion of what it is that we're doing here.
Yeah, So step one, set something really clear.
Step two, figure out what is the crux.
If we're so lucky to have something to come out of that and we typically do, it may not be the ultimate thing, but it's probably pretty adjacent to that then I think another mistake that people make is now we have this person pretty keyed up.
Like they're pretty motivated.
It's been my experience that when we get to the step, it's not like someone's like well yeah, maybe they're like dude.
Okay, you want me to sleep more?
I'm going to sleep like 15 hours every night just for like the rest of my life.
And so in this next step, because we are dealing with something that's in limited supply, it's probably something, like I said before, that they're not very good at.
And so the world tells us, well, let's just go as aggressive as we can.
But we like to do the minimum effective dose.
What's the minimum thing that if we set this up, the person's like, that's it?
Be like, yeah, dude, that's it.
Man, maybe it's so easy you could do it every day.
And so we run really short little experiments with a minimum effective dose.
And then from there, it's just slow iterations.
Slow iterations until...
To them it feels like something they've baked into their life and it's not something that.
And here's a misconception about minimum effective dose.
I think for people that have a high-intensity background, it's like oh, you're just watering it down.
It's like, no.
We want to get to a place where it's very impressive.
There's a great movie called The Princess Bride where he gives poison to Vassini.
And he was like, how did you survive that?
It's like, well, I've been building up this resistance to this poison for the last several years.
This thing that I'm talking about actually gets you long term to the place that's like exemplary.
It's in a league of your own, but it just takes time.
And so nothing here is watered down, or maybe it's unimpressive in the short term, but long term it's how anybody who's 60-year-old becomes like the biggest badass of his entire group.
So I'll stop there.
I hope that answered at least some of the steps that we go through.
We're brought to you by Mizzen and Main, who makes classic menswear with performance fabrics.
So it's effortless to look sharp and feel great.
Get 20% off your first purchase at mizzenandmain.com when you use the code EXCELLENCE20.
You know the saying, look good, feel good.
The problem is most dress clothes only check one of those boxes.
Sure, they can look sharp, but they're stiff hot, high maintenance, which makes it hard to actually feel comfortable.
I just got a new batch of shirts from them and I spent an hour over the weekend getting rid of all the old shirts that don't stand a chance, next to these new ones.
It's honestly kind of ridiculous how much better they feel.
Their shirts and pants look refined, yet they're stretchy lightweight moisture-wicking, wrinkle-resistant and completely machine-washable.
No ironing or dry cleaning, and you could bust into back squats at any moment of the day, just in case that ever happens.
That's why thousands of dudes swear by Mizzen and Main when they want to look great without the hassle.
Get yourself some M-I-Z-Z-E-N and M-A-I-N.com.
Use the code EXCELLENCE20 for 20% off.
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp, the world's largest online therapy platform, connecting you with over 30000 licensed therapists.
Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com slash excellence.
We've all been there.
Turning to our group chat barista or even that overly chatty person in line at the grocery store.
We just need to work through something.
And look, sometimes a good vent sesh with a friend is perfect.
But when you're dealing with anxiety, relationship issues, depression or other clinical concerns, that buddy you have at the gym, as amazing as they might be, probably doesn't have the training to give you the guidance that you really need.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's completely online, so you can fit sessions into your life instead of the other way around.
Find your match with BetterHelp.
Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com slash excellence.
We're brought to you by Function Health, the only health platform giving you access to over 100 biomarker tests to understand what's really happening inside your body.
Get 100 credit towards your membership at functionhealthcom.
Slash excellence or just use the code excellence100 at signup.
We chose Function because it's the only health platform that gives us data most people never see and the insights to start doing something about it.
There's nothing the voice in our head obsesses over quite like our health.
And why am I so tired all the time?
How can I get some better sleep?
Should I be taking supplements?
What supplements?
How do I even know if my heart is healthy?
Function is the key to getting some answers and understanding your body better.
It's a near 360 degree view to better see what's happening in your body.
Getting tests offered by Function is the first step toward finding out what we're made of, helping you understand what it takes to live a healthier, longer life.
We use this product here.
We recommend that you do as well.
Our first thousand listeners get 100 credit toward their membership just by going to functionhealthcom, slash excellence or using the code excellence100 at sign up.
This concept of minimal effective dose is, I think, very resonant for the training community.
And you can call that the CrossFit community, but I think that we are in an era where it is more comprehensive than that.
And I think people are exploring a lot of different iterations and versions of training.
And so I would just say it's like the community of people who see training as a tool to live the lives that they want.
Inside of that, I feel that the reason people are so off put by people inside of the training community is because the picture that we paint of what is necessary is so far beyond what is actually necessary.
Necessary, in terms of minimal effective dose, for the type of results that the person actually wants, and so it's become this extremist, like polarizing all or nothing industry, where it's like you're you're either healthy and healthy and fit and capable is essentially your identity and your personality, or you're none of those things, and you don't get to have any dose of those things unless you have it in its entirety, And it in its entirety looks like this this this, this and this.
And it's all these like arbitrary performance metrics that have something to do with how much weight you can lift and how much distance you can run without stopping, and what your zone two heart rate is and your lactate threshold and whatever.
And all things worth measuring.
No doubt.
I think that we exist in this interesting place right now where, to your point, people are looking at likely guys like you, people like me, and i don't have a platform, so it's not that many people looking at people like me, but i think they are looking at people like us who have been in the high intensity space for so long and going oh well, you've just gone soft and soft is not quite the word i would ever use to describe my approach to anything, and so i think that i have.
I have evolved personally and i'm interested to hear your story and also a very practical example of what minimum effective dose means to you like, and pick one of your categories or systems Training is probably the easiest one maybe nutrition.
But I am interested to hear from you what's a version, what is an example of minimum effective dose?
Because I think people are so eager and hungry for something that's actually authentic, something that's actually actionable and maybe, as a final word functional, legitimately functional.
For so long.
Our functional approach to fitness is actually extremely not functional for the average person's life.
It is one of extremes.
It's not one that actually functions inside of the holistic nature of their life and in the totality of their complete existence.
So I'm just so curious to hear from you.
What's an example?
Like what is minimum effective dose training in nutrition?
Just like pick one.
Because I think people would be shocked to hear the things that actually work.
Because they're wholly unimpressive.
Yeah, those are really great words there altogether.
And I agree with... I'm picking up everything you're putting down.
You know, back to where we started the conversation.
I think, for for a lot of us that go overboard with fitness, we think that's what you're supposed to do, right?
I still have to fight that programming in myself.
And I think it's because it's how we were.
This is going to sound really dorky, but it's.
It's how we were taught.
Time works.
I have my schooling era.
I have my young adult phase.
I have my getting in really good shape phase.
And it's, it's basically like you can picture we're running this, this linear race, just one after the other, after the other.
It's very common.
We even say things like, oh, yeah, it's just a busy season for me.
Right.
It's embedded in our language.
There's a few great resources out there.
One pretty recent book, Sahil Bloom's book, The Five Pillars of Wealth.
He has a concept in there that says of health, maybe wealth health, something like that, that there's more than one score board, that for a lot of us as working adults it's like hey, how much money can I make?
And that scoreboard is good, but it doesn't mean much if you're willing to compromise your marriage, your family, your health and your sanity in the process.
And so even there is a great resource of how, man, things actually still have to be balanced.
Back to the systems theory.
There's a book...
I can't remember exactly what it's called time and psychological explanation.
It's a real dorky read.
I wouldn't necessarily recommend it.
It's by a guy named Brent Slife, but he, he offers an alternative model of time and it's holistic.
And this is me backing into answering your question.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's a certain amount of exercise that if I do that it will make everything else that happens in that day better.
And I've done experiments with this.
If I sit here at the computer all day and then my family shows up at the end of the day and I haven't gone outside, I haven't moved blood around, I haven't done the minimum amount of movement, I will be a worse father and a worse husband for them.
It will negatively impact.
But at the same time I can go work out so hard that when they get home it would basically be the same thing.
I could be a worse version of myself.
Yeah.
And so let's use, and here's why it's so hard.
These strategies, in the short term work.
But for them to work, I do have to selectively ignore one of the scoreboards.
I have to say that I'm willing to compromise here so that I can have this here.
And so the way that you can evaluate if it is truly an effective dose is in real time.
How does it interact with the other things that I care about?
Now, step one, if you don't care about anything besides exercise, we got a real problem.
That's so good.
Yeah.
I don't care if you're Michael Jordan, right?
Oh, well, that guy had to be miserable in order to get the results that he got.
I mean, think about that sentence.
It's a real problem for anybody if you're completely forsaking everything that you say you care about for this one thing.
So the answer to that is one, figure out what you do care about.
Two in one day operate with everything that you care about in a dose that is sufficient, but it doesn't negatively impact anything else that you have going on.
That's so good.
We can do that with nutrition.
We can do that with anything.
There's a maximum lethal dose of sleep, and then there's not enough.
There's a way to eat that I could lose weight, but it would also give me diarrhea.
We all know.
Hey, bro, you want to lose 30 pounds?
I can get you there in 48 hours.
You know, there's there's something that we can do with all this stuff that's that's extreme.
But at the end of the day, I think we can pay attention to what's going on.
And everything that I have to do is just like well, how did how did this thing affect this thing?
Affect this thing, affect this thing.
So good.
I don't know how to not just keep having this conversation for like six hours.
So Patrick is probably the best of you.
Let's do one thing because I think we can continue it.
But I did want to bring in because we've teased it a couple of times.
This idea, Spencer, that you have the six territories of health.
Jameson, you already gave a nod to the five factors of health, which is what Ben and I talk about all the time.
Training, eating, sleeping, thinking and connecting.
I think I got all of them there.
So give us a sense of what are these six territories?
How do they fit into this broader conversation about systems?
How do they fit into the broader conversation around helping somebody figure out where the minimum viable dose of these things are?
Maybe start with just giving us what the six territories are and we'll go from there.
Sure, man.
I think any type of framework like this, any type of mental model, is a way to make sense of something that is complicated.
It is complex.
When you say, I don't just care about how fit I am.
I do want my life to be healthy across several different areas.
It helps to...
Come up with something, even though it's a reduction in what is reality.
To come up with something that you can see.
That just makes sense of that.
And so what you guys do is awesome.
There's a ton of different wellness wheels.
They're typically called that's where we drew inspiration from.
For us, it's performance, it's psychology, it's sleep sustenance, which is just how we fuel ourselves.
Social relationships and then stress management.
I think about this a lot and certainly we could expand it.
Certainly we could add a lot of different other components and there's probably ways that you could also simplify it.
There's a strong argument that you could connect stress management with performance.
You could throw that into psychology in lots of ways, but for us it's just a reference to make sure that collectively we're not missing anything.
A lot of times though, we won't even introduce it.
And this isn't always the case, but if somebody comes to us and they know what the crux is, great.
We don't have to redirect them to something else if they already know what it is.
You know what I mean.
But for a lot of people this is a new concept to have this expansive view on how we might treat health.
And so we found it to be a really great tool.
And for each one of those areas, we've broken it down into a few different things.
So, for example, I'm sitting with you and be like, hey, so, you know, here's a tool that we use.
Anything jump out at you?
Like, you know what?
I've never really thought about sleep.
How could we break that down?
Then we could go a little deeper and you know, just like the rabbit hole, there's these varying degrees of detail that we will provide only when it makes sense for that person.
Mm-hmm, and when you had mentioned earlier the crux right, finding the crux, finding the hard part.
Perhaps the thing you've been avoiding is one of these six territories, often where you're trying to get people's attention to like, let me figure out, inside of psychology sustenance, social performance, sleep and stress, like there's one of these here.
That is the, call it the challenge, and your job, or at least sort of our job as individuals, your job is perhaps the coach working us through this.
It's like can we move ourselves to an understanding of which of these six it is?
And then from there, we can come up with tactics and strategies and et cetera.
But the real work, at least at the front end of that is, what is it here?
Is it sustenance?
Is it psychology?
Is it stress?
Is that sort of the step one that you were talking about?
Yeah, and I think what most of us feel is, oh, man, I got 24 bottlenecks.
This could be anything.
And so the challenge, but I think a necessary challenge is to decide what is the thing that if I apply leverage, it would produce the biggest delta.
It would make the biggest change.
So good.
Yeah.
And it's not perfect, but, God, it's so much better than what I once did.
And at least – and this is the thing I remind myself.
Man, this is going to be the first of, like, hopefully several conversations we have.
So it's a great start.
But the end of this is not, so they could become reliant on me, but they have – all of these new heuristics and rules of thumbs and simple habits and patterns that support whatever they want to train for and at some point, to be like dude, I'm good, like I'm trying to be Mary Poppins for him.
I'm trying to be like hey, so you know, see you instead of well, I can only do this if Spencer's breathing down my neck.
So a big part of this is autonomy and a big part of this is responsibility for these things.
So it moves a little slower in that way, but ultimately I do think it's more effective.
We're brought to you by Momentous, the nutrition company that's setting the gold standard for science-backed supplements that support your physical and mental freedom.
Visit livemomentouscom and use the code excellence for 35 off your first subscription to the Momentous 3 your foundation for lasting health.
What truly matters.
That's exactly why we personally use the Momentous 3 every single day.
They're high quality protein, creatine, and omega-3s.
Whey protein helps with muscle recovery and immune function.
Their pharmaceutical grade creatine supports both physical performance and cognitive function.
And their pure omega-3s are sourced from low mercury fish to support brain health.
What I love most is their commitment to quality.
Every product is NSF or informed sport certified with zero artificial ingredients or fillers.
Head to live momentous.com.
Use the code excellence for that 35% off your first subscription to the momentous three.
We are brought to you by gusto, the online payroll and benefit software built specifically for small businesses like yours and mine.
Try gusto today at gustocom.
Slash excellence and get three months free when you run your first payroll.
Let's be real.
No one starts a business for the joy of calculating tax withholdings.
If you do, I have questions.
That's exactly why we use Gusto here at the show to take the stress out of payroll and HR, so we can focus on what we actually started this thing for.
When you're running a lien operation, the last thing you want to worry about is whether you're filing payroll taxes correctly or if everyone's getting paid on time.
Important, but, you know, time consuming.
Gusto handles all of that automatically.
It's an all-in-one, remote-friendly and incredibly easy to use, so you can pay, hire onboard and support your team from anywhere.
What we love most is the unlimited payroll runs for one monthly price.
No hidden fees, no surprises.
Plus, you get direct access to certified HR experts to help support you through any tough HR situation.
And if you're thinking about making the switch, it's quick and simple to transfer your existing data and get up and running super-duper fast.
You don't pay a cent until you run your first payroll.
That's three months of free payroll when you go to gusto.com slash excellence.
It sounds so aligned with this like identity approach to transformation of you know I don't want your identity to become the gym guy and for you to lose an aspect of who you are as a person to your pursuit of weight loss.
You know, maybe you're coming in and you lack significant self-esteem and confidence and we get a little bit of body transformation and add some skeletal muscle mass to you.
Like that's going to come with time.
But I don't want your personality.
I don't want to help you make your personality fitness.
And I love what you're talking about because it feels like it leans so heavily into this identity based approach to health, wellness and life as a whole, to where you, as a coach, are not creating or holding space for somebody to walk down a path that, like they may not even understand.
They're headed down when they start and or begin to pursue transformation when it comes to health and wellness.
So man, i think the intentionality you guys approach it with is so valuable, because i don't think that what we're trying to preach is the gospel of fitness.
I think we recognize that fitness is a way, fitness is a tool, training is a tool, But the point of the gym is not the gym.
It's what it awards you outside of the gym.
And I think we recognize that about all components and aspects of health and wellness is that like it's an ecosystem of health that all comes together to create your life.
So I love the approach you guys are taking.
I'm interested if you were to identify the crux for one of your clients and let's say it's psychology and that's like they're coming in and it's I'm just going to assume, like a component of psychology, is kind of like internal narrative or their interior disposition regarding the way that they view themselves, the way that they view the world.
Maybe it's like a victim mindset versus one that's agentic or something along those lines.
And you identify that for them personally.
What is the next step?
Is it like, as I've sat, I have sat with people.
I imagine I can just visualize people sitting with you and you pop in the hood on that and then helping them recognize that it's their issue.
And there's like this deep sense of relief that this person experiences because they're like oh like okay, i'm beginning to.
That is, that is the door that is now open for me to walk through to to actually understand myself, and that's so relieving for like half a second until it becomes overwhelming.
So is there like a what's the next step?
For that you're like hey, you got a victim mindset.
Check my job's done here.
Is it?
Protocols practices principles, habits?
What's the actual process look like for you to guide somebody through recognizing the crux and then leading to behavior change and transformation from that point.
So there was a point where I was like, I want all the smoke.
I'm going to figure out how to do this.
I want to coach more than just exercise.
I think my transformation happened adjacent to fitness, but fitness was this portal into developing.
Yeah.
And so there was a point in time where I have, and I still have it.
It's just this Google doc.
That's like, it's like a hundred pages of like.
Oh you know, if somebody, if somebody asked me this, I got to have the answer for this.
And Oh man, if it's a victim mentality, then I've got to give shadow work and we've got to do expressive writing.
And maybe, maybe it's, maybe it's the three, two, one exercise.
Yeah.
And at this point I go through three steps.
Cool.
Let's say we're at that point you just described.
Tell me how you feel about that.
Tell me what you're thinking that that's the thing that you think that we should work on.
All I'm looking for is to hear what's really hard for you, some of the fears frustrations, hangups and all I'm thinking at the end of this conversation.
How can I reduce that for you?
I'm not thinking of some book I've read.
I'm not trying to go into the rolodex of my brain of tools and protocols.
I'm just trying to deeply listen to what it is that if we don't acknowledge these things, it's not gonna work.
From there, whatever you say, I'm just gonna make sure you know that I know what you said.
And you know, reflections is a concept of psychology and there's different ways to do it.
So I can do a simple reflection.
Maybe you didn't say these words, but I think this is what you're getting at.
Is that true?
And we can get really clear on what it is, the thing that really has.
Why has this been in the woodshed for so long?
Right.
Why have we been avoiding that?
That's step one.
Step two is because this is a cool collab.
I get to bring my concerns, I get to offer anything that's coming up for me, because I have a part in this as well.
Now, that's not spitting game at him, that's not letting them know what a know-it-all I am about this thing.
But it may just be highlighting a few blind spots that they may not be aware of.
Anything that I'm concerned about, I have permission to say that.
And I'll typically say, so my concern is this.
And I'll share that.
And then the last step is just to collaborate on what we think is a good solution.
And I have found that people know what they need to do.
It's not that they are nincompoops and I possess all of this knowledge and they don't.
Yeah, yeah. but they lack the regression necessary for them to gain that skill.
When I connected the dots that that's no different than somebody wants to squat 400 pounds, but we're going to start with a seated box, squat with a PVC pipe I realized this is all the same thing.
All of this is just a linear progression with progressive overload, starting at something that feels totally doable.
Yeah.
And so once we get to that last step, it's like hey, what would it look like for this, to feel like you're making some progress?
And I found that most of the time, people have a pretty good answer.
Well, if I don't wanna be a victim, then I probably need to.
And who knows what they'll say.
I probably need to count my blessings.
And then we're off.
And then it's like, okay, how do I make that really easy for them?
How do I make that that?
We know is a hard skill for them, or we wouldn't be talking about this, something that's totally doable.
And so we're just right back into the thing that we were at in the beginning. and i tell you what jameson sometimes though and i give myself permission to say i need to think about this you know what i don't i don't know if we really come up with the answer just yet yeah and so with this stuff you know it's it's cool to plead ignorance when you need to and i i think this way of coaching is is saying hey i don't know where we're going But dude, I'm like ride or die for you.
So I'm gonna come back, we're gonna think about it, you think about it too.
And sometimes stuff just needs to bake a little bit.
I had a guy last week talk about a lot of this stuff that we're talking about right now how he talks to himself in a way that he would never talk to his wife.
And I was like, well, what do you want to do with that?
And we were just kind of stuck.
And then we came back a week later and it was like it was better than Freud himself could have analyzed what he needed to do.
And all I did was go, well, that sounds good.
You want to do that?
I mean, he had done it all himself.
That's so good.
Spencer, I've got one more question for you.
Jameson, do you got a jump though?
No, I'm going to hang on.
OK, I'm going to hang on.
OK, cool.
Last question.
We've been talking a lot about and I'm glad Jameson because I'd love your take on this, too.
One of the things I want to talk to you about, because you're both experienced coaches, I would imagine I know I know both of you.
I don't know both of you super well, but I imagine you're also really good at turning things around back onto yourself in the sense of like all right, I talk to people about these things, but I also I'm not a superhero.
I've got issues.
I've got bottlenecks.
I've got cruxes.
So being able to turn that around back on ourselves.
And so what I wanted to ask you guys is, you know, we've talked about bottlenecks and cruxes.
We've talked about systems and all these other things.
If somebody out there listening is like, okay, well, I don't have a Spencer.
I can't sit down with Spencer.
I can't sit down with Jameson.
I can't sit down with Ben.
How do I start to do some of this work in absence of that?
Because obviously what we're not saying as well, you're shit out of luck too bad.
You should either move to Tennessee or Natick or or Dallas.
Otherwise, you're screwed, because obviously, that's not the case.
So where would you advise somebody begin to think about these things that we've been talking about today systems bottlenecks cruxes, these six territories or the five factors, whichever one resonates with you like?
What's the best place to start to unpack some of these things in absence of somebody sitting across from us and saying well, tell me how you feel about that thing you just said.
Yeah, I don't think you need a coach for this.
I mean it's helpful because you have somebody besides yourself beside yourself that just has like a different vantage point.
And so you know stuff.
That's like I've heard Mark England say.
You know, when something's like right here, it's just kind of hard to see.
But a friend, a roommate, a partner, even having somebody else that you can bounce ideas off of is great.
And going to somebody who lives with you and saying Hey, you think there's anything I could work on.
And I'm okay for you to answer that honestly.
Oh, man.
Be careful what you wish for.
But I think there's ways.
Let's say you don't have somebody you're in cahoots with.
There's guys way smarter than me that says even at a gut level, even at the deep recesses of our brain, there's these indications of things that we've been avoiding.
Avoidance, something that feels like it's in a deep, dark cave.
Typically, if I give myself enough time to think about it, it's not that I won't come up with anything.
I'll come up with so many things, and it's just a matter of figuring out which is the one that I really do think that I could take some ground with.
Again, having somebody else that's a shareholder in your health is great.
You know, it's the reason that Alcoholics Anonymous is a group.
It's great to have support.
It's great to have somebody that you say hey, this is something that I'm going to work on and I just wanted to let you know.
Just that right there is life-changing.
So in summary...
I think, one, it takes some time.
It takes a process walking writing thinking, to go through some different layers, to be like man.
What is the thing that does feel like is the bottleneck.
Identify what that is.
Share it with somebody.
Figure out how to reduce it down for yourself.
And then back to the minimum effective dose.
If you were to do the smallest, seemingly unimpressive step in that direction, how would it affect that day today?
And if you're paying attention, there's probably going to be some, some really great indication that it went better for you.
And so I think that's a process that you can do with a coach, and it obviously just accelerates a little quicker, but it's something that you can do by yourself for sure.
Yeah, it's so good.
I, um, Yeah, I'll give my feedback on this, which is very aligned.
And then I'll hop into this as you guys finish up.
But I would love to connect on this many times more.
It's going to be part one of a longer conversation.
Part one of 30.
I like it.
So I think...
I was chatting with a strength and conditioning coach a while back and we were just talking about like is there a singular performance point of performance or a singular pattern of movement or performance metric that it feels like it is kind of the crux of, or the singular thing that you could look at for performance enhancement, athletic performance, things along those lines?
And so, like, when we came to the conclusion, his conclusion was, yeah, it's hip extension.
If an athlete knows how to use their hips, they're going to be a more effective athlete.
If they can manage hip extension effectively and then also like handle, rotational hip, explosive power and movement, they're going to be a good athlete.
I was like, okay, interesting.
So it was just like...
A fun conversation for absolutely no reason, but it had me thinking like, all right, cool.
Then like, we should, we should focus a lot on hip extension.
We should focus on teaching people core to extremely movement, all of that kind of stuff.
Um which we are, things we know as coaches, but it had me thinking that self-awareness is the hip extension to personal progress outside of training.
So what hip extension is to training efficacy, self-awareness is to personal growth.
But to Spencer's point, like.
We do not live in society or a culture that challenges much to any self-awareness.
And so we have to have those trusted people that that help us become more self-aware, making us more aware of ourselves.
And the end of self-awareness is actually to be like to lack self-awareness, to lack self-obsession.
But in order to not like live within your own ego, you have to be aware enough of it to address it.
And I think other people are the path to that because we can just be so blind to it.
And so I think, if I think step one is, if you have those trusted people who I think similar to Spencer's client, who will talk to you the way that they talk to a friend and not maybe with the, with the coach and the and not the critic approach, then that's the step one man is, is there something I can work on?
What do you see that's in my blind spot?
I don't think I'm living an aligned life, with doing the type of things I feel I'm supposed to do or being the type of person I feel I'm supposed to be.
But to be honest, I have no idea why or why, where I'm missing it.
And so I think if you've got that trusted relationship, absolutely.
That's a starting point.
And Patrick, I don't know if you caught this, but Spencer referencing like something's in the cave.
That's a starting point.
And, just over the weekend, send something I had written to Patrick about step one, the personal transformation being like the slaying of your dragon.
And like, there's always the dragons guarding the thing that you want.
But I think me personally, and as a coach, I sent people into the cave.
I went into the cave before I was ready to face it, before I was equipped to face it.
And I think I have sent people into the cave and I was like, hey, we figured it out.
That's your crux.
Your dragon's there.
Go ahead.
They're not ready yet.
And I think after you develop the self-awareness, it's how can I become equipped to over time with this like minimal effective dose.
So I have the sword and the shield and the armor and everything necessary to actually get into that cave and face that dragon.
And then man, like it snowballs, it compounds your progress, compounds from there in a way that is just like people take a step back and go.
I don't even really recognize myself.
But it all started with the ability to be aware enough of yourself to know that something needed to change and then to work alongside people so that you can become equipped to actually get into that cave and face that thing.
So that resonates with me for sure.
Man is like find the trusted people and be vulnerable enough and trust them enough to receive the honest feedback and don't make excuses when they give you the feedback as well.
So yeah i'm, i'm gonna hop enter.
That was awesome man.
I would love to pleasure man.
So yeah, let's do it.
Thank you, buddy man, i love what he said.
I think they're.
If you're paying attention, there are clues that people will tell us to let us know how ready they are.
And readiness is synonymous with resolution.
Resolution like a television screen.
If we can see it really clearly, we'll just do it.
When you suggest something and somebody says If you suggest something and somebody's combative, it's not that they're trying to be a jerk.
They truly can't see what it is that you're saying.
It means they're not even at a place where they can visualize any part of what you just described.
And so when somebody's at that stage versus somebody who's like yeah, let me finish your sentence for you.
This is exactly what we're going to do.
I actually already started.
Man, that's a much different place and a much different client.
And so it is something that's definitely a factor there.
But I liked a lot of what he had to say, especially the self-awareness part.
Mm-hmm.
Thank you.
All right.
We'll have to continue this conversation at a future date.
Spencer, thanks so much.
I appreciate it.
It was great to catch up with you.
Folks, if you want to learn more about what Spencer is up to, find the Behavior and Performance Research Institute at bprinstitute.
Jump in there, especially if you are a coach and this stuff resonates with you.
So thank you, Spencer, so very much.
We're going to talk to you again soon.
Thank you, man.
Until next time, keep building health, finding freedom, and living with your heart on fire.
