What's up guys? Shaun Kober here of the Live Train Perform podcast.
Over the next two weeks while I launch this podcast, I'm going to be dropping one episode per day, then I'm going to drop back to one episode per week.
The first episode is an "Introductory episode" explaining who I am, my background, my knowledge, and my experience. The second episode is all about "Goal setting". That's going to be followed up by "Progress tracking", then "Building habits", doing the "Things that you enjoy doing", "Consistency", "Restricting temptation and meal preparation", "Accountability", "CRAP foods", "Getting started and building momentum", along with "Hierarchy of value", "Motivation direction", and "The effect of your environment".
Now, if you go back and listen to each one of those topics again, they are all relevant for optimizing your performance and your everyday life, it's not just to do with health and fitness. Yes, I am a strength and conditioning coach, that is my background, that is my specialization, however, I'm a coach first and foremost, and I need to optimize the other 23 hours of the day, so that I can get the most out of my clients for that one hour that I'm with them.

I'll also be answering some of my followers questions that have posted questions on my Q and A memes, and I'm going to incorporate those answers into the pertinent episodes. Yo yo what is up guys? Welcome to the Live Train Perform podcast, I'm your host Shaun Kober. During this first episode, I'm gonna be taking you guys through who I am, what I want to achieve with this podcast, what my coaching philosophy is, what my training philosophy is, what my background is and how I got to this point to where I'm at right now, where I'm giving you guys advice via a podcast.
I've been a personal trainer since 2012 and a strength and conditioning coach since 2013. It was always my goal to work with professional athletes at the elite level. I'm currently doing that now, working at the world renowned Tiger Muay Thai and MMA training facility based in Phuket Thailand, where I get to work with both high level fighters from all over the world in multiple fight organizations, as well as general population clients. As a professional in the fitness industry for the last eight years, I've coached hundreds of clients from general population right through to world class athletes.

I've invested tens of thousands of dollars into my education as well as investing hundreds, maybe even thousands of hours into my education through books and podcasts and online courses, and definitely thousands of hours of training myself, training my friends, training clients, training colleagues and training my athletes prior to kicking off in the fitness industry. In 2012, I was a soldier of the Australian Army for six years, where I completed three deployments. I went to Iraq, East timor and Afghanistan. I joined the army as an infantry soldier and then specialised and became a sniper. So I did six years full time in the Australian Army, and a lot of the lessons that I learned and standard operating procedures... and just really, all round life lessons that I learned, I'm going to be sharing through this podcast
Prior to joining the Army in 2006 as a 20 year old. I'd already been living out of home for six years. I came from a poor family, my step dad was abusive, I was friends with people that weren't really serving me, that were taking me down the wrong path, and I quite soon realized that I needed to escape, and I needed to go out and forge my own path.

I left home when I was 14. I've now been out of home for 20 years. This podcast is all about bringing you the lessons that I've learned during that time.
I've been training pretty consistently for about 20 years. When I was 14 years old, I was playing rugby and I joined the gym with a couple of mates, and we got after it. So my focus was always improving my speed, power, strength, and putting on a little bit of size when I was a young lad so that I could compete better at rugby. Then I was in the army for six years, so my focus was on preparation of myself both mentally and physically, as well as other soldiers around me for the rigors of deployments, particularly through war torn countries. Then I transitioned into becoming a personal trainer and strength and conditioning coach, once I discharged from the Army. So I've been in and around the gym, weight lifting, and training for roughly 20 years. This podcast is all about bringing you the lessons that I've learned over that time.

I wish I had someone that had been in the game for 20 odd years, that actually pulled me aside and said, "Hey look mate, don't focus on these things, focus on these things. This is where you're going to get the majority of your results. 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts, so make sure that you're focusing on the correct 20%."
I'm a coach first and foremost, so it doesn't matter what situation or circumstances are going on in your life, it's my job as a coach to be able to help you through this regardless.
My coaching philosophy is: "If I'm not affecting my clients outside of that one hour of training time, then I'm not doing my job." My coaching philosophy is really based around the big picture, taking an objective view and being able to see clearly all of the different elements that go on in life. It's not just about training. If someone has a shitty night sleep, then I might need to adjust their training session. If someone's really stressed out through financial problems or relationship issues, then we're going to need to adjust the training session. All this other stress and all this other stuff that goes on in your life plays a massive part on how well you can train, and also affects your ability to recover.

I take a very holistic approach which allows me to have a closer look at the 11 different systems of the body. Now, it's important to note here that the systems are integrated, not isolated. So if you drive or up-regulate or down-regulate one system, that's going to have an effect on the other systems. An example of this is if you're under a little bit of stress... and it doesn't have to be high amounts of stress, it might be low level stressors that add up over time... but if your body is under stress, that might affect your ability to then digest, absorb and assimilate nutrients - the digestive system essentially breaks down and provides us with the raw materials to support every other function. Now, if your digestive system is not doing its job, that's going to have an impact on the health of your neuro transmitters, that's going to impact your energy levels throughout the day, that's going to impact your sex drive, how you sleep, your ability to perform, your ability to recover, and the health of your hair, skin, and nails etcetera.

It's going to affect the health of every single cell in your body. So we need to look at all of the systems as complementary, and synergistic, rather than isolated systems.
That brings me to my training philosophy, which is: "Give people a lot of what they need, and a little bit of what they want." A lot of people don't really understand how training can benefit and impact the other 23 hours of their day.
I want to focus on the other 23 hours of the day so that when you come into the gym, then we can train hard and we can train smart so that we can actually impact the other 23 hours of the day, and vice versa There is an inverse relationship, these things work together. As a strength and conditioning coach, I need to do just enough work to elicit the correct response, but not so much that I end up flooring someone.
So my main man in the UFC, Petr Yan, I've been working with him for about two years. He's currently ranked number four in the UFC bantamweight division. Before the closure of the gym due to coronavirus, I would train him Tuesday and Thursday mornings. In the afternoon, he'd go to his sparring and wrestling classes.

Now it was a good gauge for me, that if he couldn't hold his hands up in that class and he was getting punched in the face by other high level fighters, or getting taken down or was a little bit tired, then I hadn't done my job... I'd done way too much.
Now, here's the thing; Coaches need to adjust the training session depending on the client and their circumstances, and how they walk into the gym. I might have a plan, but as soon as he walks in and I can see that he's dragging his heels, his head's down, his body language tells me he's just not in the right mindset, then I know I need to adjust the session. Of course sometimes I'm going to kick him up the arse and really push him hard, but then there's gonna be other times where I'm going, "Hey man, how did you sleep last night? What did you eat this morning? How's the family? What's going on?"
I could grab any single person in the gym and say put me through a workout, and almost every single person will be able to write 10 exercises on the board, 10 sets through, 10 reps of each exercise, set a timer for 30 minutes and go hard. Will you get a good workout?

Yeah, you're gonna be tired. You're gonna be sore. You're going to be sweaty. You're gonna be a mess afterwards. You're gonna feel like you've worked hard. Okay. But is that actually making you better? That is the difference between a trainer and coach. The coach cares about the other 23 hours of the day. Are you walking out of the gym feeling refreshed, feeling sharp, feeling like you can get after anything that's going to be coming your way throughout the day? Or are you walking out the gym feeling fucked? Feeling tired, not feeling like doing anything and needing an extra 2 to 3 coffees to get through the rest of your day?
That was always one of the most rewarding things that would occur running my own business and working with clients. People would come in after a hard day at work, they'd be stressed out and I would adjust their training session. We'd have a program to follow, but would be fairly flexible with it. We'd start playing games and have a little bit of fun with the work out, and they would always walk out and be like, "Thank you so much, I feel so much better walking out than when I walked in." That is my job as a coach.

This goes back to my training philosophy of "Give people a lot of what they need and a little bit of what they want."
There's going to be times where you're going to be pushing hard and chasing gains, and there's gonna be other times where you need to pull back to balance out your autonomic nervous system. I'll discuss the autonomic nervous system in an upcoming episode, but essentially, this is the system that controls 80-90% of our body's physiological processes, all of those things that happen behind the scenes to keep your heart beating, your lungs breathing, your hormones regulated, your brain ticking over, your digestive system doing its thing, breaking down foods to the raw materials to provide to the other systems of the body. So this is essentially all of the things that you don't even think about. If your autonomic nervous system is out of whack, that's going to affect every other system in the body. As a strength and conditioning coach, I need to have a thorough understanding across a broad spectrum of modalities. So I need to understand lifestyle.

I ask questions about sleep quality, sleep duration, stress management, training programs, recovery techniques. I'm looking at nutrition. I'm looking at hydration. I need to have an understanding of corrective exercise, rehabilitation, different training modalities and protocols for eliciting strength gains, hypertrophy gains, speed, power, conditioning of the energy systems, et cetera. But there's really no point in knowing all that stuff unless you can get people to recover correctly, because at the end of the day, you don't make gains in the gym, but you do provide a stimulus for adaptation. Now here's the thing we go to the gym. We up regulate the fight or flight, or sympathetic nervous system and that essentially tells your body that it is under threat. It's only when you rest, recover, drive the parasympathetic nervous system, which is our rest and digest state, that we actually recover and adapt. So essentially the sympathetic nervous system is important for short term survival.

The parasympathetic nervous system is essential for long term survival.
And that brings me to my final points for this introductory episode. Why have I started this podcast? Well, it's because I want to help as many people as possible. I quite often get people coming up to me after a class or sending me messages via social media platforms, asking me vague questions and expecting a black and white answer. Questions like:
What's the best diet for me? What training program should I follow?
At the end of the day, I know nothing about these people. So a good coach is always going to ask five questions for every question that you ask. That's then going to give them the information required to then make an educated decision on what direction you should be going. So the whole point of this is to redirect people to these episodes. They can go back and listen to them and have an understanding of where I'm coming from. There's so many things that come into play with every single individual. Every single person is different. We all have a different fingerprint.

We all have different gut microbiome. We all have different processes and habits and things that are ingrained with us that I need to work with. My job as a coach is to work with people on the psychological component and the behavioral component of not just training, but all of those other things that they've got going on in their life. If all I'm doing is addressing that one hour of training time, then I'm really not doing my job and I'm not helping these people get the most out of their investment and the training time.
The only thing that I want out of this podcast is to help people cut through the bullshit in the health and fitness industry. There's so many snake oil salesman and magicians that promise everything for barely doing anything. Well I'm here to tell you that that's bullshit. And if you want to make changes, you need to make changes. If you enjoy the message that I'm delivering, please help me spread the word and like, share, save and subscribe to my social media platforms. Instagram is at @coach_kobes. My Facebook business page is at Performance Functional Training.

You'll also find Performance Functional Training on Youtube. Go and check that out and please pass this on to your friends, family, anyone else who would benefit from hearing this message. If you could also leave me a five star rating and review, that would be much appreciated. Anybody who does leave me a five star rating and review will have precedence when it comes to my Q and A sessions. You guys ask the questions, I will answer them on a podcast episode. That's it from me today guys, hopefully you enjoyed this episode, and I look forward to bringing you some awesome content moving forward. Peace.