One Size Doesn't Fit All

There are thousands of different approaches in the world of fitness and nutrition. And for each outcome you are trying to achieve, there are many roads to success. But unfortunately, this idea can often get lost. 

In this episode, an interesting story about a course I did and the surprising prevalence of coaches falling into a 'one size fits all' mindset. 

​Episode Transcript:

[0:00] There are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of coaches out there, and there are thousands of different approaches and systems and philosophies when it comes to training, nutrition,

[0:12] coaching, and pretty much anything else that goes under those umbrellas. And one thing that can be very, very, very hard is telling, who should I listen to? Who is right? Who is wrong? And who has a big question mark around them? This can be really, really, really tricky to figure out. So today we're going to be exploring a little bit of this. And we've touched on different areas of this in previous podcasts before, but today we're going to be covering another facet of this. Now, this episode was inspired by just a recent memory which popped up just the other day. I don't know what sparked the memory, but it was good inspiration.

[0:52] Now, this memory was about seven years ago, maybe eight years ago, I did a nutrition course. At that time, you know, I had some pretty decent nutrition knowledge. I had some foundational nutrition knowledge through my time at university doing sport and exercise science. We did a bit of nutrition there for my own personal just upskilling and learning and also my own experience. At that stage, I've been coaching and personal training for quite a while. So, you know, I had some decent nutrition knowledge. But one thing that I typically did, you know, and I still do these days, is most of the clients that sort of came to me and they were like, hey, I want help with my training. I'd be like, sweet, I'll help you with your training. and they were like, well, I want to help with my nutrition. And most of my clients in those situations, I typically referred out to a dietician because I was like, you know what? I went to university. I did a bit of nutrition at university, but it's not really my thing. I'd much prefer to say, hey, go see this person. They'll sort you out. They're the specialist. And that's typically how I used to approach nutrition and still a lot of what I do these days.

[1:52] But on top of that, I also did have a lot of people just in the sessions who just asked me basic questions and they wanted basic advice and basic direction. They didn't want to go sit down with a dietician, but they just wanted some basic help. So I was like, you know what? This is probably an area I want to upskill in a bit more. This is an area I want to invest in myself a little bit more and I want to develop myself a little bit. So I signed up for a nutrition course. Now this course, I'm not going to say the name, but it was highly, highly, highly respected. It was a big name in the fitness industry and it had this reputation of just being a really, really comprehensive course, which was...

[2:28] Just good nutrition principles. And in the world of nutrition, there's so many things that are like a little bit crazy, a little bit hardcore, and they're like, hey, go do this crazy fat diet or whatever it may be. But this wasn't like that. This was a foundational, comprehensive nutrition course. And it had tens of thousands of coaches signed up for it who'd gone through it over the years. And essentially had a lot of people who were coaches, who were upskilling like myself. And we also, a lot of people were entering that as a first point in the industry. So they were like, you know what, actually, I want to get into nutrition coaching. I'm going to do this qualification to begin my own coaching journey. So, they had a lot of people like that as well.

[3:03] And the course itself, it definitely lived up to the reputation. It was fantastic. You know, the way they approached things, I thought, was really, really, really good. They gave a really solid foundational knowledge about nutrition and just general basic science around food groups and this and that and stuff that sometimes a lot of people are just not aware of. Sometimes a lot of people have forgotten.

[3:25] A lot of the stuff we went through university, they covered in the science parts. It was really, really, really good. And they covered a really nice foundational thing there. And then once they got all the basics out of the way and taught you those basic foundational principles and the basic science, then they taught you their coaching process. And they had a really nice layered system where the first sort of layer sort of gave you some really foundational habit based coaching principles, which, you know, for 90% of clients coming to see you, this could be work really well. And just trying to help people get into habits of doing some healthy eating, of doing certain things, which will bit by bit by bit build up and develop them nutritionally.

[4:03] Then on top of that, they were like, well, that'll work for a lot of people, but they were like, some people need a little bit more structure. Some people need a little bit more direction. So they gave another layer to their coaching where you gave a little bit more complicated principles, which is really cool. And then they were like, you know what, there are some people out there who really need everything honed in and everything dialed in. So they gave another layer where they were like, okay, for those people, you may take this approach. So they kind of gave like a different step by step by step, depending on the complexity of needs for each client. It was a really, really, really good system. And I really liked it. And I still use a lot of what they taught, you know, to this day.

[4:38] And throughout all the education and all the course and all of that, one of the tenants that they had, one of the things they really, really pushed through the entire course was was there was no one best diet out there for nutrition because that's what they were fighting against. There were so many people out in the world that were saying, hey, you should go vegan. Hey, you should go low carb. Hey, you should go paleo, whatever it may be. And they were kind of trying to be a bit resistant against that. And what they were promoting as opposed to saying, hey, you have to go on this diet, they were promoting what they called a client-centric approach. In the sense, you met the client, you chat with them, you found out their needs, you found out their preferences, you found out their situation, and then you tailor your recommendations around them. So it wasn't a case of you saying, hey, you have to do this diet, but you know what? Actually, this person doesn't eat meat. They want to improve their energy. They want to improve this. So we will give them these recommendations, which will fit around their preferences, which is awesome.

[5:35] And throughout all of their education, they gave loads and loads and loads of different examples of how this may apply. So in that example, as a vegetarian, or in another situation, someone has keto or this, or their doctors told them to avoid this or whatever it may be. And they gave a lot of case studies and examples around these things, which was awesome. And ultimately, I came out of this course having learned a lot. You know, I filled definitely a few gaps in my knowledge. It definitely reminded me a lot of the things I'd forgotten about from university. And I definitely developed a cool system on regards to coaching people and helping people. And I still was referring out to a dietician for the most part, but definitely upskilled me a lot.

[6:13] But beyond all that, when I came out the other end, I noticed a really, really interesting thing.

[6:18] Now, as an ongoing support thing from this course, what they did is they had this really cool community group where there were probably tens of thousands of people who had gone through this course, who were qualified through this course, who were in this community group, where ultimately you could connect, you could share advice and help each other out. And I thought that was really cool. That's a nice way of sort of fostering a nice community. There's a nice way of people helping each other out. And I thought it was really cool. And one of the things that would often come up was people would ask for advice in there. And they will basically sort of say, hey, you know, I'm working with this particular client. They're facing these particular issues. We've tried X, Y, and Z. We're at this point where, you know, we're kind of stuck. I sort of need help. And you know what? That's, you know, personally a bit of a question mark. Should people be paying you money if you don't really know what to do in these situations and have to public crowdsource advice, but that's not neither here nor there. That's the point of this. This is where the interesting thing came out because in these posts, sometimes dozens of people would give advice, sometimes hundreds would comment and comment and comment and comment and comment. And do you know what? Something was really funny.

[7:26] A lot of the advice in there was wildly different from each other. And a lot of the advice in there was in complete contradiction of what we had learned through that course. And even though every single person who was in this group, who was giving advice here, had gone through the exact same certification, had gone through the exact same lessons, the exact same exams, the exact same test, we had all gone through the same knowledge, there were people in there and they'll give advice and they'll say, hey, this client should just go keto or this client should just cut out carbs or this client should just reduce fat or this client needs to start counting their calories or this client needs to do this or that or this or that. And all of these really, really, really particular things, which was completely against the whole ethos of the course where it was saying, hey, meet the client where it is, apply these nutritional habits apply these things and make the change there and i used to ask myself i was like look at these things i was like did these people do a completely different course to me like how have they come out of this incredibly comprehensive course which is all about finding that right course of action for the individual and taking all of these different approaches and deciding how are we going to apply this into that person's situation and these people were still just giving these one size fits all answers, which weren't even relevant for a lot of the questions. It just used to absolutely blow my mind.

[8:56] Ultimately, after just battling this for a while, I kind of came to the conclusion, whether it's right or not, but this is kind of what I decided on, was the reason why this happened was people had just come in with their own biases. And instead of coming into this course where they were like, hey, I'm an open plate to learn. I'm an open cup or an open canvas to learn is what I'm trying to say, where I'm going to take this knowledge in and learn all of this stuff, they kind of came to the course with, I've already made up my mind. I'm already all about low-carb eating, and I'm just here to confirm things. I'm just here to get the certification, and then I can go out and tell people, yeah, low-carb's a way. Or I'm already 100% keto. I know in my mind this is the best thing in the world, and so I'm just getting this certification to confirm things so I can tell people to do this. So I assume when they went through this course, and again, this is me assuming, who knows whether it's right or not, but when they went through this course, you know, they would probably jump on the sentences and the sections where it kind of confirmed their particular bias. If something said, hey, you know, low carb does X, Y, and Z, and they were like, oh my gosh, yes, amazing. But then ignore the multitudes of other sections, which offered a broader context to this and saying, maybe in this situation, you don't want to do this, or you can get this same result by doing something else and yada, yada, yada. I honestly think that was it. And ultimately, in the end, I left the group because it just made me sad about the state of the industry. I used to go in there and just finish up being sad.

[10:26] But talking about all of this, it is a good lesson. And I'm kind of coming back to the original point.

[10:31] Because in the world of fitness and nutrition, there are a million approaches and a million coaches. And sometimes it can be just really, really, really hard to filter the good from the bad.

[10:42] And sometimes we will see people who sort of cater to our own particular approach and that's fine. If you love low carb and you see someone out there who's promoting low carb and you're like, I get along with this person, that is great. You'd go do you and that's absolutely fine. But if you don't have a specific way if you're not 100% honed in on something and you're just trying to find an approach which will work for you to get you fit to get you strong to change body composition whatever may be then this can be a really really really good filter, essentially just ask yourself when you're looking at someone's ideas when you're looking at someone's approaches when you're chatting with someone or whatever may be just ask yourself is this person just trying to push one way of things on me? Or are they giving me a bit of a broader approach? Now, what I mean by that is, you know, if you are going to see someone and you're asking about nutrition, let's use a nutrition example. Are you seeing a dietician, nutritionist, nutrition coach? All these people are different. But are you seeing anyone like this?

[11:44] Are they trying to push a specific diet down your throats? Are they saying if you want to achieve your goals, you need to go keto. Or if you want to achieve your goals, you have to cut out fat or you have to go paleo, whatever it may be. And they've never actually chatted with you about alternative options, or they've never actually chatted you about a broader context and saying, okay, the way we want to get you to here is we need to accomplish X, Y, and Z. And we can take this by doing this, by doing this, or doing this. Are they just trying to push one thing down your throat? If so, there's a bit of a question mark there. If that one thing is something you want to do, cool, that's fine, you can do it but if you're unsure, hmm.

[12:26] Maybe consider a different conversation. Or are they trying to force a training schedule on you? So this is a funny one going into the training thing. You know, quite often people will sort of say like, hey, I want to get fit for this. And then someone will say, hey, you need to train five days a week. You need to do this, this, this, and this. In some situations, that may be relevant. But in a lot, and probably 90% of the situations, there's a lot of flexibility in regards to training schedules. So are they trying to force a training schedule on you without even asking you what may fit into your life and your schedule? Are they pressuring something into you, even though you know that's probably not going to work for you? If so, bit of a question mark. Or are they adamant about just doing one style of training? They are like 100% hit. That is all you need to do to do absolutely everything. Or low-intensity endurance work or zone two stuff. That's all you need to do, like throwing that down your throat. Or circuit training or everyone needs to be running or whatever it may be? Are they just adamant about one thing and they're like, that is the holy grail, you have to be doing that? Or again, are they giving you options? Are they giving you broader context? Are they giving you a way to build out

[13:34] a bit of variety or whatever it may be? Because ultimately, when it comes down to any outcome in the training world, any outcome in the nutrition world, there are probably going to be multiple approaches you can take to get there.

[13:47] And yes, most coaches will have their own methods and their own systems and their own preferences, and that's fine. I'm the same. But if it ends up being ultimately just a one-size-fits-all approach, and you're saying it's my way or the highway, or it's this way or nothing, you know, that is a bit of a red flag. You know, for me, I really, really, really personally just try to steer away with this. You know, for example, on the nutrition front, because we were talking about that before, you know what? I have personal things I try to move my clients towards. Foods i personally try to get them to eat more i personally try to get them to eat more carbohydrates on the trail i personally try to um get them to eat more veggies and drink more water and a bunch of things however you know we have people who are vegetarian we have people who are vegan keto low carb low fat um fodmap pescetarian and a dozen other things and people who just have different preferences people who want to be 100 whole food and people who really really hate veggies or whatever it may be.

[14:45] And what we need to do when we are taking a nutrition approach is go, okay, this is what you do. I'm not trying to change that, but we are going to try to get a good outcome for you working around your preferences. We don't tell people they need to change what they're doing. We don't tell vegetarians they need to start eating meat. We don't tell low carb people or keto people that you 100% need to change. We fit our advice around their approach. Some people may be opening to change because they don't actually enjoy what they're doing. They may be like, I'm doing keto because someone told me to do it, but I hate it. And in that situation, yeah, maybe we'll foster the change.

[15:20] But we're never just trying to improve our weight.

[15:24] Or, you know what, like when it comes down to scheduling, you know, in our programs, like for me, perfect world, if someone said, hey, I want to train Kilimanjaro, I've got Kilimanjaro in 16 weeks and I want to get ready for that. Yeah, in my head, I could probably come up with the perfect training program and say, you know what, on this amount of days, we want to do this much time and this much hiking and yada, yada, yada.

[15:46] But it doesn't work like that. We ask all of our clients, how much can you fit into your week? How much time? And then we build our recommendations around it. Again, sometimes we might need to say, you know what, actually, you've got this massive hike coming up and you can only train 10 minutes a day. Yeah, we need to change things around here. But it's never a one size fits all.

[16:09] Or, you know, again, like in our training, like we know that certain things we need to emphasize for best performance for hiking. You know we know that lower intensity cardio is always going to be a necessity but we also know there's a lot of ways to approach that we don't have to have everyone running we don't have to have everyone walking we don't have to have everyone swimming or cycling or whatever may be there are so many different approaches we can take to do that and on top of that there's many different ways we can mix up those sessions give variation it's not like this one size fits all, and we also know you know there's a lot of room for other things as well it's not a case of saying oh, you know what, you have to do all your training at low intensity, or even like, you know what, you have to do 80% of your training at low intensity, because I know a lot of coaches out there stress that 80-20 rule, where they're like, 80% of your training has to be low intensity. There's a lot of flexibility around things.

[16:57] Ultimately, you know, coming out of this, I don't know, I just wanted to, in all honesty, just rant about that story, because I don't think I had before, and I felt like it was good getting that off my chest. But ultimately, what I'm trying to say today is when it comes down to training, one science fits all approaches are just not good. They can help some people and, you know, for the people that that approach is fit to. And there will be people that naturally gravitate towards these approaches. As I said, you know, if you personally prefer eating keto and there's a coach out there who's promoting keto, well, yeah, that makes sense. Maybe work with them. Absolutely.

[17:32] But if you are in the situation where you are literally just trying to get to an outcome, you're trying to get fit, you're trying to get strong, you're trying to put on muscle or lose weight or one of the dozen other things you can do with your training, and you're unsure about what you should be doing, just know there's multiple roads there and you don't have to go down one path. The same thing is if you're right now and you're doing something and you're taking a nutrition approach or you're doing a training approach and you're just feeling like, this just is not working for me, or I hate this, or I don't enjoy this, just know there's always a different way. One size fits all, it doesn't belong in the fitness industry as much as you see it all the time. There is always a different way. So, have a think about that. Hopefully, I got my point across here, and hopefully, you know, you don't fall into this situation too much. So, with that being said, I think I've said enough on this subject today. Hopefully, it opens a few people's eyes. Hopefully, it helps a few people out, and maybe, potentially lets people explore some areas or some approaches which may be slightly better for them.

[18:34] So that being said, thank you for listening today. Hope you've enjoyed it and we'll talk to you very, very soon. Bye.

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