June 2026

Teaching involves putting across concepts and information to another person in a manner that they can understand. There is an old saying: "If you really want to learn how to do something, teach it." Try it sometime, and you'll be amazed at how much you have to absorb and grasp before you can communicate it to someone else. I think you will also find that breaking concepts down and making them simple will produce a faster rate of absorption on the part of the person you are teaching. I gain a tremendous amount of satisfaction from both instructing exercise and coaching high school football. While the settings in which each takes place are very different, the two entities are a lot more alike than one might think. Whether you are coaching a sport or instructing high-intensity exercise, it all comes down to one's ability to be an effective teacher.

At my core, I have always considered myself a teacher. Whether I am coaching a 16 year old quarterback or instructing a 60 year old entrepreneur, at the heart of it I am building relationships. We are in the people business. It is important to connect with the person that I am working with on more than just a superficial level, and they need to know that I have their best interest at heart. I must not simply demonstrate my competence, skill, and knowledge, but also earn their trust. This means that I must do what I say I'm going to do, every time, and also acknowledge mistakes when they inevitably occur. It is also critical to communicate expectations with both client and player right at the beginning of the relationship; this way there are no surprises. I do this with clients during an initial consultation and with players at the beginning of every season. There must be a buy-in on the part of the client and player; in order for success to occur they have to want it just as much as I do. Whether you are in the exercise studio or on the football field, you must have focus; if you are distracted it will not work. All of this is explained at the beginning of the relationship.

One of my coaching mentors, Al Thomas (who won eight high school state championships as a head coach and multiple conference championships as a collegiate defensive coordinator,) was fond of saying, "It's not what you teach, it's what you emphasize." I disagree slightly with Coach Thomas; there are certain things that should be emphasized above others, but what you teach needs to be strongly rooted in the fundamentals. When I instruct exercise, the first several sessions are all about establishing a good foundation in fundamental technique, speed of movement, proper breathing, and working to keep your emotions in check as intensity of effort increases. I utilize a cadence count to help clients develop a feel for proper speed of movement in each exercise. During individual periods with quarterbacks, you will often hear me count, "1, 2, 3, and throw" as they take their drops and prepare to throw. I always emphasize the significance of making quick decisions and throwing the ball on time. The importance of repetition cannot be underestimated; in fact, my high school coach Terry Changuris often said, "Repetition, repetition, repetition!" Whether in exercise or football, teaching points must be repeated over and over before mastery can occur. Sure, saying the same things over and over can become a little monotonous (I often wonder how many times I say the phrase "breathe freely" during the course of a normal workday), but it is an essential component of teaching and learning.

As I mentioned in my last article, simple is always better. This is as true in football as it is in exercise. When I coach football, I am working with 14 to 17 year old young men whose brains are still developing. At Total Results most of our clients are adults, but nearly all of them are relative novices when it comes to high-intensity exercise. In either endeavor I am not working with experts, so I need to break things down in simple terms that are easily understood. When I first became certified as a Super Slow instructor over 20 years ago, the practical portion of the exam involved memorizing long scripts for introducing and teaching exercises to new clients. For years, I would recite these scripts verbatim as I put clients on machines for the first time. While this was useful in theory, in practice I found that trainees had a difficult time following along and their attention began to waver. Eventually, I shortened the introduction for each exercise and found that clients learned better by doing than by simply listening to me talk. Initial consultations now take less time than they used to; what once lasted nearly 90 minutes now typically takes less than one hour. It is important not to overwhelm the client with information. Yes, certain key points (like preliminary considerations) need to be explained before the sample workout can commence, but prospective clients should not feel like they will be tested on all this information at the end of the consultation. When teaching throwing mechanics to quarterbacks, I have found it effective to break the skill down into smaller components (establishing your base, stepping toward your target/separating your front hand from the football, rotating the back hip/trunk, leading with the elbow, releasing the ball, and following through) and then put them all together. Quizzing the kids on certain plays and formations, as well as occasionally having them teach a skill back to me are potent strategies to gauge learning.

I will say that an exercise studio and a football field are very different settings. As such, my presence and personality are in contrast with one another when I have a stopwatch around my neck as opposed to a whistle. When I instruct exercise I have a clinical demeanor. This is because exercise is something that should be taken very seriously, but also because I do not want to distract the client while they are in the middle of a session. A clinical demeanor also helps me to preserve energy over the course of a twelve hour workday. The nature of football is different; while I am also enthusiastic about exercise I must be a little more muted so that I do not lose proper perspective. With football I am a bit more demonstrative, and emotions play a large role in the character of the sport. Practices last no more than two hours, so it's more of a sprint than a marathon. Don't get me wrong, I take football incredibly seriously. However, at the end of the day it is supposed to be fun for both players and coaches alike. I have even found slight differences in my personality depending on what position I am coaching. I coached the offensive line for the previous three seasons, and found myself to be a little more vocal and fiery than when coaching quarterbacks. When coaching signal callers I am usually more even keeled and cerebral. Either way, all the yelling and screaming in the world is not a substitute for effective teaching.

At the end of the day, it is about teaching. No matter what you are teaching, success is dependent upon one's ability to connect, communicate, and demonstrate competence. Different people, young and old, learn in different ways, so you must be able to modify and adapt your methods based on whom you are teaching. Expectations should be mutually understood at the beginning of the relationship so that there are no surprises, and there must be a clear methodology that is in line with the desired outcomes. The teacher and student must be on the same page. As Hall of Fame coach Nick Saban famously once said, "If you're not teaching it that way, you must be allowing it to happen that way."

Effective exercise doesn't mean that you have to reinvent the wheel. Even in high-intensity training circles, there is considerable debate as to how to construct a workout regimen. People in our profession often spend a large portion of their day on message boards or going back and forth on social media about the structure of their workouts. It sounds to me that these folks have entirely too much time on their hands. I would rather spend my day instructing clients than waste time debating minutiae. Most Total Results clients are new to weight training and have never trained with a protocol that resembles ours. Why would we want to overcomplicate things? In my opinion, simple is always better than complex.

There is beauty in simplicity, and this is especially true whenever you are teaching something to someone else. Yet, for a variety of reasons unknown to me, some folks have a tendency to make life more complicated than it needs to be. I see this quite often in football. Many coaches try to have a play in their playbook for every situation or contingency. It is great to be prepared, but some people take this mindset a little too far. What they fail to understand is that not only do you have a limited amount of practice time per week, the players still need to be able to absorb the concepts that you are teaching. Instead of just executing and playing fast, the players have to think their way through their assignments. It is always better to run a smaller number of plays from multiple formations and execute them well than it is to have a million plays that are mediocre. Football is a much more simple game than most people realize.

By the same token, effective exercise is not particularly complex either. In order to stimulate physical improvements of any kind, you must create a significant stimulus. There are a couple of concepts that should be understood at the beginning. First, exercise must be of a high enough intensity for the body to mobilize its limited resources to make physical improvements. This is why we utilize a slow speed of movement; it enables us to recruit a greater amount of motor units (because momentum is minimized), which will result in a greater depth of fatigue (inroad). There is something in physiology that is referred to as the "All or Nothing" principle. A motor unit is a nerve cell and all the muscle fibers it innervates. When a motor unit is recruited, all of the individual fibers of that unit will contract, or none of them will. There are no half measures. Taking each exercise to muscular failure ensures that we have recruited and fatigued as many motor units as possible and given a maximum effort. That is the stimulus that we seek.

The second thing we must understand is that we are working with a few limitations. Exercise has a narrow therapeutic window; this means that we need to find the right dosage. Just like with medication, too much can have a toxic effect, and not enough does not bring about the desired change. One needs far less exercise than they realize, and it is very easy to overtrain. This is why our workouts are so brief and infrequent; we want to stimulate improvements without causing injury or illness along the way. One or two sessions per week for twenty minutes is not just something that we can get away with; it is a biological necessity. The body typically requires between 48 to 72 hours to recover from a workout, which is why we train no more than twice per week. Because we have these constraints, exercise routines should be fairly simple. We perform full-body workouts that typically consist of five to seven exercises of one set each. There is an equal emphasis on pushing and pulling exercises, as well as a balance between upper body and lower body exercises. Cervical, thoracic, and lumbar muscles are engaged in the course of our workouts, and clients typically rotate between only two different workouts. Because clients only come once or twice per week, there simply isn't enough time to master more than two routines. Some fitness professionals espouse the idea of "muscle confusion" and change up their workouts frequently. This is a mistake, as it does not allow you to master the basics and help your body to recruit muscle in established motor pathways. Split routines are a waste of time; not only do they lead to stagnation of progress and overtraining, they fly in the face of logic. Your body functions as a unit, it is not just the sum of its parts. Since it is a unit, it should be trained as such. Compound exercises are more efficient for engaging a greater amount of muscle, and they are the easiest movements for a novice client to master.

None of the above ideas are particularly original; these are principles that have been understood for over a half century. Some people want to be complex because it gives them a greater sense of self-importance. We just want to help people get stronger and fitter in a safe and efficient manner so that they can squeeze more out of life. A simple, balanced, and brief exercise program will provide the stimulation that you need without overtraining. Total Results can help you do just that.