i think online coaching seems to work there's
many ways you can do it i think finding what
works best for you and what works best for your
client is going to be a very important thing
that you need to understand so think about it
Hi, Jason. It's my pleasure to have you on Evidence
Strong Show. If you could briefly introduce yourself.
Thank you for having me. My name is Jason Clark.
I am an online powerlifting coach, so coach for
the New Zealand team. I've been online coaching
for about eight years now. I've been within the
fitness industry since I was 21, so about 12
years. I also have studied at the Auckland University
of Technology and I've just recently completed
my master's and had my manuscript published in
the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.
I did that alongside my supervisors and co -authors,
Eric Helms and Alyssa Joyce -Bentz. All right,
so we're talking coaching, online coaching specifically.
Do we need some kind of definition to start with?
Yeah, I mean, I think where the lines potentially
get... blurred with online coaching is it can
often be referred to as remote coaching but i
think just in the current world that we live
in it's generally like online coaching just means
uh delivering whatever coaching method and however
you do through the internet usually via means
of sending something through over email spreadsheet
a lot of people like to utilize whatsapp a lot
But, you know, anything that basically involves
SenseNet and, you know, with the removal of any
sort of face -to -face contact outside of like,
in paletting specifically, outside of like competition
days where most people will interact with their
coaches in person. Why did you study? So obviously
you are using this method to deliver your coaching,
but why to study it? that is a great question
i think for me it's a case of it's a selfish
reason really more than anything because i as
i kind of mentioned have been delivering online
coaching for a reasonable amount of time now
so i think there's a way that things are done
but my sort of critical analytical mind is like
why are we doing it like this is there a better
way to do this because obviously it's a very
i mean in the grand schemes of like coaching
as a practice delivering it online is like very
new right it's only really gained popularity
probably over the last 10 years and like probably
only really started in the last like 14 years
so for me i'm like okay well this is how we're
doing it what does this mean like and what can
we sort of what sort of correlations can we draw
based off of what we're doing and probably more
importantly what i wanted to know is like i had
an idea of what people were doing is this actually
what people are doing so i wanted just to gather
some data on like what current practices are
primarily and then just compare them to you know
specific outcomes all right so how what were
the questions how many how did you structure
the survey and i think the survey was about 24
to 27 questions, something around that. So we
wanted to find out basically whether they were
receiving their coaching via like verbal communication
or written communication. And then on top of
that, we wanted to know like at what sort of
frequency they were receiving that communication.
So whether that was, I think the categories were
like once every session, once per week. once
every two weeks once a month and then like uh
less than once a month and then just kind of
getting a gauge of where their total was at before
they started coaching and where their total was
at at their most recent competition and they
had to have done like i think it was just at
least two competitions so we could have a comparison
some people obviously had competed for you know
a decent amount of time but we've got there before
coaching or their first and then their most recent
also just kind of finding out how long they've
been receiving coaching for so yeah those were
pretty much main questions also just getting
a gauge how strong they were so like we asked
for what's called a good lift points which is
basically a body weight coefficient score so
it gives us a generalized idea of how strong
everyone is irrespective of their body weight
awesome and in terms of satisfaction or how did
you measure that yes of course yeah so we also
another key one was asking how satisfied they
were with their whole coaching process it was
a really easy scale number like one was just
like extremely dissatisfied and then five was
like extremely satisfied so yeah as i kind of
spoke about for important variable just to kind
of understand whether people were enjoying it
or not because it seems like something that would
be important when you're paying for a service
yes all right how many people and who did you
get just so we kind of understanding yeah was
the the population who actually took the survey
and yeah so we had 113 data points that we used
in the end. I think we scratched about 20 or
so, something like 130 or something. We actually
had like 250 people fill it out, but there was
a whole bunch of bad ones for whatever reason.
But it ended up being like 113 dart points. It
was like... pretty close 50 50 ish was like 59
male 54 female so pretty even split which is
actually really good it's quite representative
of the powerlifting demographic as a whole probably
higher amount of females than what you would
get in just like a general split in powerlifting
but i think that's a good thing so pretty 50
50 strength wise people were actually pretty
strong just find it real quick yeah so the average
totals were for the men 621 kilos which is uh
pretty decent and if we were to put that in good
lift points it's 81 which is like above average
just to kind of say so like like a decent amount
above average and then for the feet huge part
of my audience are olympic weightlifting as an
athlete so 81 points is it like a national level
athlete let's just say like 81 points for me
as a 93 kilo lifter that's about 650 total so
we're looking at like roughly like a 225 kilo
squat 150 kilo bench press and then like a 275
kilo deadlift so i would say above Well, definitely
well above average. So the strength of people
that were filling the form out were definitely
more than you would usually get at like a normal
level powerlifting competition. I think it would
actually be also important to mention that I
had a whole bunch of posters to recruit people
up at, like we hosted Commonwealth in Auckland.
So I had posters up with the QR code on it that
I got people to fill out whilst they were there.
So these are international level lifters that
are filling it out, which I think probably skewed
it. higher so just in general pretty strong people
like yeah stronger than your average palate let's
just say you had really really strong lifters
why do you think they chose to have online coaching
they are international level lifters wouldn't
it be better to if if you are an international
level athlete wouldn't it be better to have a
coach in person would it matter more maybe would
it matter less this is kind of the age old question
powerlifting and uh to be honest one that i get
every time i tell someone i coach powerlifting
online because they always go why do you do it
online shouldn't you do it in person essentially
we don't really know because not many people
coach in person in person and i would say Probably
99 % of the world champions in powerlifting are
all coached online. Yeah. Honestly, it's just
common practice. I think it's due to the simplicity
of the sport. But this is kind of why I wanted
to dive into it, right? Because I'm like, you
know, online coaching is very new, but it's so
prevalent within powerlifting. Like, again, probably
99 % of people receive their coaching online.
So I'm like, okay, well, is this, like, what
does it look like? You know, I didn't really
go into comparing. to in -person coaching because
it wasn't really the idea of what I wanted to
do because at the end of the day it's so embedded
within powerlifting I just don't see that being
very relevant so I'd rather understand like different
characteristics of online coaching as opposed
to comparing it to in -person but Obviously,
part of my literature review, everything was
comparing or finding literature that compares
online to in -person. And for the most part,
the literature that I found was more within health
outcomes. We're talking about people for weight
loss coaching or diabetes coaching, things like
this. And for the most part, online coaching
does tend to hold its own. But again, these aren't
performance outcomes. So it's kind of hard to
say because you're not sitting there trying to
push someone harder. critique technique it seems
to work and what we can see people are getting
stronger that's kind of what my research showed
as well if anything but it potentially like something
that we found in the uh the research was that
uh people in the survey should say that there
was a correlation between the amount of time
spent with the coach and increase in powerlifting
total so basically the longer people worked with
coaches the stronger that they got and we did
kind of like wonder whether that would be quicker
if you're working with someone in person because
it takes longer to get to know someone if you
don't speak to them as frequently which is also
kind of like part of the reason why i was like
i think you know i hypothesized in the manuscript
like i thought verbal communication would be
better because you know you can call someone
you can chat talk about things so i thought that
might that might lead to better outcomes but
it didn't really show anything there was no association
there so what what are the common practices of
the coaches and then how it influences satisfaction
or how it's correlated with participation and
to the performance? So firstly, like what we
observed was that basically all coaches communicated
either every session or they communicated like
once per week. So there was only like eight data
points outside of that that were every two weeks,
once per month or more. So everyone was basically
receiving feedback once a week or after every
session. So those were the most common ones.
And probably what surprised us there was the
prevalence of every session. feedback it was
like 30 37 of the respondents just because like
i mentioned prior a lot of what was more common
practice was week to week so we were like oh
okay we didn't realize that many people were
receiving communication that frequently and to
be honest i think that would be even higher now
most people were receiving receiving written
feedback so 60 40 were verbal most people were
pretty happy with their coaching so either extremely
satisfied or somewhat and then most people were
like their coach because of another thing i don't
know if we spoke about it yet but another thing
that we uh asked was like the level of education
from the coach because we thought that that might
be quite important yeah so one of the things
we wanted to know was like because again it's
a bit of a cowboy sort of industry you know there's
no you don't need to apply or anything you just
start your own business so what we wanted to
know was like okay do these people have formal
education and that formal education was relevant
to the field of like sport science kinesiology
anything like that so 30 people coaches i should
say had 30 had uh undergraduate degree at least
10 post -grad and then um the other highest one
was 30 didn't know what their coach had for uh
education which i also find interesting because
it means that people know 30 of people don't
know it means they probably don't care or they
can't remember um so yeah that was like what
was going on as for what we found we found that
frequency of communication had no effect on a
lifter satisfaction or a increase in powerlifting
total and we found the same thing for the way
that it was delivered so didn't matter whether
you delivered it written or verbal it didn't
seem to have an effect on uh well nothing significant
on uh how satisfied the person was or um how
much their total increased which surprised me
i had an inkling that i thought verbal feedback
would at least lead to a bit more satisfaction
just because it seems more personable but it's
all sort so outside of that another kind of key
variable we looked at was like the length of
coaching relationships so something we found
there was that longer like this is probably the
strongest thing that we found was that longer
relationships were associated with a higher increase
in power lifting total which is pretty intuitive
basically the longer you work with someone the
more you know about them the better your relationship
gets and the better of work that the coach can
do and also it's just more time training um so
it kind of makes sense there but i think it's
like it's it might be intuitive but i do think
that that is a big takeaway for people because
a common practice in powerlifting i shouldn't
say common practice but a thing that happens
in powerlifting is people coach hop whereas this
kind of says the opposite like you should spend
time with your coach figure it out you know communicate
so that you guys can kind of like figure it out
together and that way is more likely to increase
your outcomes especially when it comes to your
total what we did find was that there was a relationship
between education and increasing total so we
did actually find that lifters who were working
with coaches who had a higher education actually
tended to increase their total more so get stronger
as a well i'm not going to say as a byproduct
of that because it's all correlational but like
there was a relationship there which i thought
was interesting what was also really interesting
is that we found that with lifter satisfaction
we kind of use a different ordinal scale for
figuring out these relationships it's quite confusing
to read but the crux of it is and if everyone
actually reads this they probably get confused
by this section because the stats we had to do
was just a bit complex but what we found was
that the satisfaction with the coaching got to
a certain point in education which was up to
undergraduate degree and then once the person
had a postgraduate degree and the actual satisfaction
dropped off which was an interesting one because
we kind of hypothesized that perhaps like someone
who is partaking in postgraduate education might
actually not have the resources to potentially
give as much time to coaching as someone would
who maybe has an undergraduate degree and perhaps
they're spending more time coaching because they're
not having to continue their studies. Also, we
thought maybe a specific type of person who tends
to dive into postgraduate studies might have
less soft skills, more programming skills, things
like this. I mean, maybe that's kind of what's
going on there. But again, you know, it's all...
very correlational not causative what was correlated
to to lift the satisfaction so possibly may influence
lifter satisfaction and what is correlated with
the performance yes for also with performance
because it's probably a bit more fun and there's
a bit more correlations going on there but with
the performance the the main thing like i said
was working with someone for a longer period
of time which i thought was great i think it
kind of somewhat like vindicating you know like
hey look we're actually we're not making mistakes
here we're actually managing to get people stronger
over time which i think is good and i think it's
intuitive but it's not to see it studied and
you know portrayed so yeah that and then like
we spoke about with the uh coach education so
obviously that was linked to improvement and
performance too which again very interesting
and then for satisfaction yeah there was like
a wasn't really much going on with the satisfaction
people who were with their coach longer had slightly
more non -significant relationship with the satisfaction
so again kind of what you expect i would have
actually expected it to be significant just because
you think if you're going to spend a long time
with someone you're probably a bit more satisfied
but didn't quite see that and then yeah the the
other thing i mean i spoke about how education
had that drop off which i think is interesting
and then the other thing with satisfaction was
that uh lifters who had higher body weight coefficient
score generally tended to have higher levels
of satisfaction so basically stronger people
were happier which is Not surprising because
obviously, you know, they're getting more out
of their training, I think. So those are kind
of the main things. It's very natural. If everything
goes well, it's working. So it is pretty obvious
that it's working. The problem is to recognize
what is going wrong when the things are not going.
Is it just we have to adjust things? Is it? I'm
as a lifter doing things wrong or coaches doing
things wrong. Like, you know. Yeah, exactly.
I think, you know, an interesting one which kind
of falls under what you're saying with regards
like communicating these things is the fact that
there wasn't a relationship between modes or
frequencies of communication. You know, basically
what I came away with thinking is like, okay,
well, it doesn't matter if I do it verbally or
do it via written feedback or I do a recession
or I do it once per week from the relationships
that I'm looking at. It doesn't seem to really
matter. So, okay, what can I do with that? Okay,
I've got more tools in my toolkit. So I can...
use more frequent communication when it suits
the lifter or i can use written feedback when
it suits the lifter bearing in mind i want to
maintain some sort of consistency among my practice
just to help me be able to consistently conduct
my business but there's other ways to do it and
and like it just seems from what we could tell
from these correlations these relationships that
you know if you have or even if just you as a
coach want to communicate in a certain way you
know, you've got a few options there that tend
to be okay, at least from what we can gather,
which I think is important because it's important
to know how I want to communicate with you and
how you want to communicate with me. So we can
kind of like find a medium, middle ground. I
think that's a great news because it gives options
and, you know, it's a big chunk of literature
on that people learn differently. Some people
need to see it. Some people need to listen to
it. And if you have these options, you can either
adjust to your style or to your lifter style
or both. and it works equally good if performed
to, I expect, to a certain level. Yeah, it's
definitely made me consider it a lot more, just
kind of seeing that middle of flexibility. Because
I think even just as a coach, sometimes it can
get a bit monotonous doing the same thing over
and over in the way that you communicate with
someone. If I'm sending you a five, 10 -minute
voice video message every week, which is generally
how I do things, sometimes I want to break it
up and I want to speak a little bit more throughout
the week. And especially in a, let's say we're
in a phase where... i know there's a lot of stress
around training and you you know i want to know
kind of what's happening a little bit earlier
i think it's valuable to be able to kind of tap
into that when you need it if you need to do
it it's got it made me think a lot more about
like what do i want to be doing here because
i kind of fell into the weekly thing because
that was just what i like you know i had a coach
before that that's what he did and that was kind
of common practice at the time so yeah i'm interested
to see how things develop because like i said
if i was to survey people now especially with
like knowing more people i think the high highest
count would 100 % be the more frequent communication.
But I could pick flaws in each kind of methodology
or each method of communicating, right? So it's
interesting. It's something that I continually
think about. I think it's important just for
people to understand that this is just like,
it's something. I just wanted to put something
out there in the online powerlifting, very specific
niche coaching area, because I think these are
things that people aren't really thinking about
and they're not studying. And I think it's important.
There's so many online coaches now in powerlifting,
yet we don't really know what is good practice.
So I just wanted to be like, look, this is just,
I want to just get an idea of what's going on.
So I think it's good for people just to think
about how they are conducting their coaching
and what works for them, what works for their
client, and just kind of understanding what is
going on. And then I think on top of that, honestly,
I would love for someone to take this and run
with it and do some control trials and actually
like potentially compare it to... person coaching.
No, not me. I'm done. I'm tapped out. Eric would
say otherwise, but yeah, I want someone to run
with it and I want someone to do some control
trials and just see like, okay, you know, we've
got one group that is doing their feedback every
session. And then, I mean, to be honest, a good
place would start would be one group would be
in coach online and then the other group just
being coached in person and then just seeing
like, okay, well, we've got the online characteristics.
Now, what does that look like in comparison to
in -person coaching and does one outperform?
the other and then i think you know along along
the way it's not just about performance outcomes
it's like how much is the lifter getting out
of this as well i think that's so important to
me to know like this is why satisfaction was
such a big part of this survey is because like
i think that bleeds into so many positive outcomes
if they're enjoying themselves plus like you
know these are this is a hobby for a lot of people
you want to make sure they're enjoying it it's
not all about just uh getting stronger a lot
of it is but you know a lot of it's just like
am i enjoying what i'm getting here so yeah i'd
love for someone to run with it if they could
if they want to reach out to me and we can ideate
but uh yeah it's probably not gonna be me we
shall wait we will let you breathe a little bit
and did you did you change anything in your coaching
after running this study and having these results
i would say i have been open to speaking with
people more frequently now but i think that's
not just a byproduct of my own research but also
just like talking to people and asking them questions
about how they do their coaching when they get
more frequent feedback something that i would
like to do which i haven't really said to anyone
would be to because i'm i'm very intrigued by
this higher frequency contact point and i would
like to kind of trial it with some of my clients
and just see a if they like it and b if i like
it and just kind of put it out to all of my clients
and be like hey does some do some people think
that they would benefit more from this which
i think to me like in an idea world i think that
would be good just to kind of let them choose
which way they want to be communicated with and
obviously you have to make a decision on like
whether you think that's good for them as well
because some people will say oh yeah week two
weeks good and then they just never talk to you
but i think i'd like to just have them somewhat
choose, but then I also need to consider how
that affects me in the way that I conduct my
business. Because if I'm jumping back and forth
between different communication methods, it's
less easy for me to get into a workflow if my
days are a bit disjointed. So yeah, I think to
answer your question, come back to that somewhat
now, but it's opened up some doors for the future.
All right. So you have more questions and more
things to think about. Yeah. That's such as life
really, isn't it? Always more to think about.
Very point. All right. Let's bring it. together
your takeaways for coaches. It doesn't have to
be powerlifting coaches. It can be in general
your three cents to everyone who's listening.
I think online coaching seems to work. There's
many ways you can do it. I think finding what
works best for you and what works best for your
client is going to be a very important thing
that you need to understand. So think about it.
And then I think from a coaching and a lifter
standpoint, there is a lot to be said with sticking
it out with a coach and figuring. these things
out before you just jump ship i think it's always
a case of the grass is green with a lot of people
but i think you know there's some associations
here to suggest and also just like from my own
practice that hashing it out together and working
together on potentially the problems that you're
having could be more valuable than just going
elsewhere because if you start again with someone
else you've got to build that whole relationship
back up and that doesn't happen overnight All
right. Two short questions to finish. The first
one is what is your favorite lift? Oh, it's not
the bench press. That's for sure. Nothing I hate
more. It's going to be the squat. I'm always
most excited to squat. It's like it invokes far
more anxiety because it's just a little bit more,
you know, you got weight on your back. It seems
to be a little bit more at stake. I kind of suck
at squatting. So to me, it's a puzzle and figuring
out how to like do it well and how to program
it. It sets the tone for the competition. It's
the tone for the day. I love it. You know, if
I could. If I could do it more, I would, but
my body won't really allow for it. So yeah, definitely
a squat. I think a lot of people would say the
squat. It's exciting. I'm better at deadlifting,
but it's easy. You just pick it up. Good job.
All right. And if people want to contact you
or see what you're up to, where should they go
online? Probably best place would just be my
Instagram, JasonVClark underscore NSBB. If they're
wanting to reach out about online coaching, there's
a form there that they can fill out. They can
literally just send me a message. I also run
a gym in Auckland, North Shore. barbell. It's
more of a club than anything. So if they wanted
to sign up and get into palleting and happen
to be listening on the North Shore of Auckland,
then feel free to ask about that as well. But
yeah, that's kind of the main medium that I use.
Awesome, Jason. Thank you so much for today.
It was a pleasure. No problem at all. Thank you
for having me.