Ep52: Mastering Training Cues: Maximize Client Gains with Clear Cues & Proper Form

What's going on? Team Matt here from the PT Profit, Leverage and Lifestyle Show. I have got Mr. Jack the Blacksmith Fitness on again for the second time. His first episode is going absolutely bonkers. So thank you again for tuning in. So how are you this morning, Jack?

Doing well, mate. Doing well out by the sea.

Awesome stuff. We were just talking before we started recording that you've had a couple of weeks off, which is always nice and refreshing. Did you end up going anywhere by the way, or were you just hanging out?

Oh, yeah, yeah, we, we went up the coast just to have a little getaway. We, we had to go up, up there anyway and see some family for some family stuff. But we, we, we stopped in Atara, had a little mini holiday there and gar. And like Bundy and whatnot. Saw the turtles and few other things in Bundy and whatnot. But yeah, no, it was really good. Just a couple days, me and the Mrs. To ourselves, just to unwind and sort of take away from the daily yearly stress and all that sort of stuff. So it was quite nice.

Nice.

But yeah, came back a week later and then just been chilling, going through the Christmas stuff and yeah, awesome.

Happy days. So we, we pre organized this conversation well before Christmas. You know, I think it's going to be very valuable to a lot of personal trainers, whether they're beginner or even a bit more advanced, because when we caught up, we went out for dinner with another client of mine. You were talking a lot about different cues that you use for clients and it got me thinking. I was like, this stuff that you're talking about, I don't even know this stuff. Well, I thought it'd be really good to, you know, obviously pick your brain a little bit about the cues because you've obviously done a lot of development with your PT knowledge and stuff as well. So we'll start off relatively basic, I suppose, and then we'll get into some more advanced stuff. But I suppose your, your point of view. What's the. What is, what is a cue? For those who don't know, we'll start super basic. What is a cue for a personal trainer when talking with clients?

What is like a training cue? Yeah, okay. Yeah, I guess Q is just. Yeah. Instructing someone to do something a certain way. So like say you could be doing like a bodyweight squat or something. And you know, as, as they start the movement, it's like, all right, well push your hips back so you can sit into your squat rather than bending forward and trying to do some thing.

Perfect. Love It. Okay, let's actually start with a squat, since you gave that example. What's. What's a couple of cues that you would use for. Let's just say like a back squat, for example.

Squat. Like dog and barbell squats?

Yeah.

You can go into so many levels.

Of advancedness with this. Obviously, like myself, I'm. I'm just starting to coach people through power and whatnot. So I'm starting to get into some more intermediate, like, lifting cues and all.

That sort of stuff.

So you can obviously go all the way up to, like, a competitive environment where you're actually trying to, like, get a specific result. Or you can start, like, a few grassroots, like anyone, like someone that's just gotten under a barbell for, like, the first time, for example. And like, if you're talking as a coach to that person who's never touched a barbell and is wanting to get under a barbell to do, like a barbell spot, for example, I, I have a few interesting, like, methods of how I go about it myself because I have a teaching background in this, so I have a few different ways I like to go about it. There's a couple ways, like, you can obviously go through and just like, show them exactly how to do it. Get out of the barbell, explain yourself. You know, line up your. Line up your hands so you got under it nice and evenly. Step back out of the rack. So you feed up, you know, hip width, shoulder width apart, toes flared, sort.

Of thing.

Injuring your hips back sitting into your squat, all that, some stuff, and like, literally go step by step and tell them how to. How to do a squat. Or you can go a different approach where you can sort of see where they're at first and then sort of coax them along the right direction. I do this with a lot of people. It's essentially just like throwing them into the deep end and being like, all right, I'm going to show it to you like, once or twice. Not going to explain it too much. And then I want to see you do it so we can sort of build around that. Yeah, I, I like doing that because it's learning by experience, and they sort of experience what's wrong and what's right.

Yeah, 100. That resonates a lot with me because when I do. Not so much recently, but when I first started doing personal training, I used to take people onto the gym floor during consultations and go through a few exercises, and a lot of people would freak out because, you know, obviously people aren't too confident Especially with the PT watching, they're not too confident in doing the specific exercise. So a lot of the time, you know, as you said, you throw them in the deep end, but so you can obviously coach them a specific way so they can feel the movement or feel what they're doing wrong, perhaps. Yes, as well. So you obviously have a teaching background, which obviously helps because obviously everyone learns a different way as well. Just.

Yeah, there's. There's a very. There's a lot of different ways people learn. A lot of people, I find if they're movement inclined, they feel they. They move, but they learn better by, like physically doing something rather than someone else who, like, much rather is like, seeing it happen.

Yeah.

For example. So.

Completely agree. And what do you use, like, in. In your experience? What do people usually. Or how do people usually learn the best in terms of learning a movement or a technique in the gym?

Typically. And I could be completely wrong with this. I could be completely wrong with a lot of things that I'm about to say. I do want to preface. Like, I'm. I'm no expert, by no means. There are a lot more people in this industry that have, that have tens of years, tens of 20 years more experience than me, but from what I've seen visual. Visual cues and like, looking at something visually, they learn a lot better that way. And then I've also got a lot of people that learn a lot better by doing it or having something done to them. So, like, physical cues, there's a few different examples you can have. And speaking specifically to a pt, one movement, that is every PT has their gripes about trying to teach an rdl. I think you can probably attest to this as well, 100%. And getting some. Someone's knees to stay in the same spot and not move, arguably quite annoying. And this is coming from someone that has never done an RDL before. Everyone's bent over and picked up something before, and that's what you're trying to emulate through an rdl. It's just structured, but a really good physical cue. Just like an example is putting something, putting like a rule or like a game in place where they have to abide by it, which puts them into the, like, what you're trying to get them to do. So, for example, like, say with an rdl, if they're struggling keeping their knees back and they keep pushing their knees forward to go as they go down, what you can do is you can put a bench behind them, behind their calves, and say, all right, I don't want your calves, the back of your calves to leave this bench as you go down. And then either they'll. Their calves will move off the bench and they'll be like, oh. Or they'll do it right. Yeah. Nine times out of 10.

Yeah. And it also makes it quite fun as well if you make a bit of. A. Bit of a game. And, you know, because I was talking to another client this morning, one of my online clients, and she was saying that she just feels stupid sometimes doing some of the exercises. She feels like she's got the wrong technique. And, like, making a fun game like this is gonna, you know, make a lot more people feel a lot more comfortable in the gym environment, which is therefore going to get them in the gym more. You're gonna get them better results, gonna make you look a lot better as the personal trainer, and you're probably gonna get referrals. So there's a really good way of looking at it is to have, you know, that fun mindset. Do you have any other examples that you get? Like some games, I suppose you could. You could use.

I wouldn't say games, but, like, I've shared this with you, the tricep extension.

I was going to bring this up because I remember it's a good one. You should. You should tell.

Yeah, it's, it's. It's a really good one. Um, and like, whenever I'm with a client, if I can make them laugh whilst doing exercise and then have them understand exactly what I'm trying to tell them, it just adds so much value to that point and follows onto that point where, like, you know, you build that rapport, you get more rapport with that client, they get a better result and then you get more referrals from that. So the more you can build rapport with people through this sort of teaching approach, you know, the better it is. But it's not specifically for just like, getting referrals or anything, you know, it's making the client feel more comfortable and feeling like they're not stupid and feeling like they're not, you know, being judged or anything. Like they're just joking around with, like, someone who's actually teaching them how to do something properly. You can always bring it back to that point. But, like, yeah, so trust extension and this. Yeah, a lot of people do struggle. Like, actually it's the hinging element into it. Because when you do a tricep extension. Yes. You can stand dead straight, locking the hips out with your knees, like, dead straight. And you will get some sort of a tricep pump doing that. But it's ultimately like, you don't get a good lockout. You don't. You can't balance and stabilize the weight, so it makes it really tricky to get any sort of load. So the second you do start to do heavy load, you start to round your back, and you're doing this really.

Big, like, big hunching movement to try.

And get it down. It's really not good, as most PTs should know. So a good way to get someone to hinge into a tricep extension. And most people have done this because most people have an inner child. You tell them, imagine you're like, 10 years old and you're pretending to be a T Rex, and then everyone does this and sticks their ass out because they're trying to get the big tail. And then they're just laughing if they're actually in the right position.

Yeah, I love the analogy. And it makes you laugh every time.

It does.

Yeah.

I remember doing that.

And then they do it and they're like, that's actually.

Right.

That's awesome. No, I packed up laughing when you told me that.

No one's probably my favorite. And, like, whenever, like, I see someone doing well, they, they, like, they're not sure what they're supposed to be doing with, like, technique, and I'm just like, rar. And then they get it straight away. I'm like, yeah.

That'S awesome. Okay, cool. So that's obviously a couple of ones that we talked about. So the tricep. Tricep one, obviously some squats. What's some other exercises that you, I suppose, commonly see people get wrong? And then we can go through a few cues, help out those.

I mean, deadlifts are always very average. Yeah. You could spend an entire episode on a deadlift. Yeah, I guess we could talk about deadlifts briefly.

Don't go too advanced. Just. I know it's hard because it's. There's a lot of different elements.

There's. There's so many different elements you can pick from a deadlift. Like, I, I, I think one of the biggest ones, two, two big ones, is bracing and, like, what that does to the lift and your back. And then the other one is the difference between push and pull. I think a lot of people get those mixed up all the time. A lot of, like, a lot of pts, from what I understand, do know how to teach a deadlift to some degree or to a basic degree, but actually taking it beyond that and, you know, putting weight on the bar is Pretty tricky. And like, those two things are pretty key to that. So, like, going, going to the brace, because, like, bracing is quintessential for any sort of heavy lift. If you don't have a brace where you're doing like a bent over row, for example, your back tends to ache a shit ton. Yep. And then you turn it off. That exercise in a squat, for example, again, your back is the one that has to stabilize your trunk because there's no layer of core bracing. There will be a little bit of bracing naturally, but there's not like an active, like, brace that's creating pressure to help stabilize his spine, for example. So like bracing in a deadlift. Yeah, you need to know how to brace.

Can you. Can you tell us how to brace? Is that something you can.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, I usually, I usually teach people how to brace when they're doing a squat because it's sort of the easiest way to visualize it, I guess, because when you, when you're in a deadlift, you have to start from the bottom, going up. So you're already in, like a compressed position. So it's a little harder to, like, visualize and, like, teach it. So, like, I usually start teaching people how to brace. Yeah, Squat. You know what a V squat machine is?

We don't really have them at jets, but I think.

So you know what it is? Yeah, a lot of gyms have them.

Yeah, you'd have them at most, like, anytime Fitness gyms, World and cartel stuff would have them.

Yeah, it's hammer string. It's a hammer strength piece of kit. But yeah, like, I always get people on that initially. So get them up, stand them up.

Sweet.

All right, I'm gonna teach you how to brace. Imagine like someone's about to punch you in the gut and you tense up. And then I can like, sort of visually be like. It's like, that's the feeling you gotta get. And like, another, like, good example of that is like, you're trying to, like that you take a big breath in and you try to, like, blow out a sneeze, for example. That's another really good one that, like, remnants with some people. A funnier one is take a big breath in and then imagine you're trying to push out a shift. Everyone knows how to do that. So, like, those are a couple, like, the ways you can sort of teach a bracelet. But the crux of it is for people that don't know what an actual brace is, you take a big breath into your diaphragm so you.

The guy.

Who runs Squat University does a really good analogy of this. So you essentially take your hands around your rib cage, press into your rib cage, and you're breathing into your hands. So you're expanding outwards.

That's diaphragmatic breathing.

And you're essentially trying to put like. Think of it like you're filling up the tank there, so big breath in and then you bear down on it, which creates a brace, which essentially is just. It's called IAP intra abdominal pressure, which is just pressure around your torso, which creates stability for your spine. Yeah, that's, that's the crux of the brace.

Well said. Well said.

Yeah.

Okay. And then what? That was the first test tip for the deadlift. What about the second one? What's your next biggest thing for deadlift?

Deadlift. The biggest thing is the difference between pull and push. The difference between pull and push, everyone.

Like, this goes back to like the.

Arnie days and I. Yeah, like, a lot of those old school bodybuilders would always train deadlifts in their pull workouts because it follows along sort of pull movements. And a lot of people will deadlift, just like trying to pull the weight off the ground. And that's how you get this big arch in your back. It's a bit hard to explain without like a visual to sort of like, like, yeah, this is what's going on. But, yeah, the difference between Paul and Porsche, the pull element of a deadlift is when you're trying to brace and pull. We call it pulling the slack out of the bar. It's essentially you going through setting your brace, setting your lats and setting tension through the bar. So when you go to stand up with it, you don't have any dead weight on the ground. So you'll always know when someone hasn't pulled the slack out of the bar, if when they go to start the lift, the, the bar sort of jerks them back down. And you've probably seen that in, like, a lot of, like, foul videos and whatnot. You'll see someone, like, you know, squat down into it and, like, really, like, jerk up with it so they haven't taken any of the tension out of the bar. That's, that's usually when they've, they've just gone and been like, all right, let's pull this fucking thing off the ground.

Go.

Let's go. Next minute.

Yeah, well, I've seen that so many times. These are young, young, young guys. Just, they go all the way down and they're like, they're Trying to lift it up really fast.

Yeah. And yeah, lo and behold, they.

They do the back.

So. Yeah, that's why deadlifts get a really bad rap.

Yeah. So many people will say, oh, I don't want to do deadlifts because I don't want to hurt my back. I'm like, well, look, I get that if you actually do it correctly and safely, then it's actually a really good exercise.

Deadlifts are like one of the best bang for buck exercises. Like, they don't do much hypertrophily, hypertrophically, but the strength adaptations and the CNS adaptations that it does for you if you do it correctly, so valuable.

What's cns? What's that?

It's nervous system. So it's just how much essentially how much force your body can produce. Yeah. Okay. So you can think of it like power essentially. Yeah, explosivity. That's why you will always see sports, sport athletes doing some sort of trap bar deadlift. Yeah, heavy trap bar deadlifts. Not for many reps, like maybe, you know, two to five reps max. But then they overlay it with like, plyometric exercises to develop that power further. So it's more specific to whatever the. The athlete is requiring. It's quite interesting.

Yeah. Speaking of, speaking of deadlifts, what. What do you get people on the trap bar first or go straight onto the normal barbell?

Ironically, I don't even touch the trap bar most of the time.

Okay.

I think that's more a personal preference for me. I've just always found a very, very. It's a very different lift because you don't get a her physical feedback with the bar. So obviously with the, with the trap bar, you have to stand in a hexagonal, like, circle thing.

Yeah.

You stand in it. So when you're pulling the slack out of the bar, you have to bring your. Your legs and your hips down towards what would normally be a bar. So it's very easy to slack sit a lot further down into it, which then can cause issues as you. As you go through the lift, because your hips then have to go back to a certain point so they reach alignment with the. With the lift. Yeah. I've just always found it, like, really awkward unless it's for someone who specifically needs some variety in their training or it's for a specific reason, like someone who has back issues and is very sensitive to, like, take someone who's like a bigger person, for example, who like, doesn't have a lot to move with. They might need something that's a bit bigger and a bit easier to. To get down to so they can actually get through the crux of the lift. So I only ever use it as like a specialty tool. Yeah. Or for like, variety.

Yeah, I just, I don't really use it that much either. But I found some people that struggled with the deadlift movement could progress easier with a trap bar first and then.

Go back onto barbell.

But most people just barbell whole way, to be honest.

Yeah, barbell's easy enough to teach. It's just having good fundamentals.

Yeah.

But yeah, just before we move on, going back to the push pull thing, because we didn't get to the push. So, like, going back to like what I was saying about pulling the slack out of the bar, for example. So once you've set your back and you've set the tension, you've pulled the tension out of the bar. What produces the force down to actually lift the bar up is what we consider the push. So a really, really good cue for someone who struggles with, like, connecting the deadlift to their legs is think of it like you're trying to push the world away from you. So you're trying to get between the bar and the ground by pushing the world away, which really helps people who struggle with leg drive on a deadlift. And it's just queuing that over and over and over and over again. Yeah, Okay.

I just put the. Just to confirm with the bracing between every lift, like each. Each rep. So you have like a mini break type of thing and then brace again. Or you just keep racing for like 3 reps, 6 reps.

So this is where specificity comes into it. So in my brain, it's every rep you brace. But that's because I come from a power thing background and I coach and teach people how to do it properly. When I said properly, it's in the standards of like powerlifting, for example. So in powerlifting, our objective is to lift the most amount of weight for one rep and that's it. So the way you train that is because you don't always train one rep maxes. That would be stupid and you'd be injury prone. Yeah, you, you treat every. So say you've got like a, a set of five, for example. Like every rep, you're treating it like it's like five, one rep maxes.

Yeah.

Okay.

So you reset every time. For the average gym goer, it should be like either every rep or every couple reps. So, and this is always going to depend on the intensity of the lift if it's closer to like, you know, 80% 1 RM. So say your 1 rep max is like 100 kilos, for example, and then you're out there doing like a set of six at like 80 kilos. That's going to be relatively intense for that individual. So they shouldn't really go more than two reps without a breath. Yeah, that's not like a general rule. It's always going to be up to the individual. But they should like general rule of thumb, you shouldn't do a lift if you're not confident in your brace because that puts you at a higher degree for injury or higher currentness for injury. That's what you always want to try and avoid with any sort of compound lift. Yeah. Okay, good points.

Okay, let's go through a couple of other cues up to you. If you want to go more basic or intermediate or advanced, what other exercises do you think are good, good cues for personal trainers to know about.

Really popular exercises?

Well, you mentioned a couple before you could do. Oh, bench press. Let's stick. Let's finish off the powerlifting. Yeah. Bench press.

Sorry, it's starting to rain. Oh, no.

Hope you're undercover.

I am, but it's quite windy.

I can still hear you. Okay. But I can. I can tell it's quite windy there.

You can edit as a drought.

I can, but it's. It'll be fine. It'll be sweet. Can you still hear me?

Yeah.

Oh, okay. That's right. It must be very windy if you're getting wet under there.

It's quite windy.

The joys. The outside podcast.

Yeah. The risks.

Do you want to sit in the car or you. You think you're good there?

I'm reasonably far away from the car.

Okay.

Give me two secs.

Yeah, all good. All good. I'll just pause it. We're back, team. Had a bit of a. Bit of a storm there that good old Jack got caught in. So we're back. Yeah, back in his car.

The joys of wanting to be out in the outdoors. Something you have to factor in is the weather. That was not.

Yeah, we're just saying it was pretty funny because, like, I'm only probably 20 or 30 minutes away from you and it's beautiful, beautiful blue skies out here.

But it's blue skies now.

Yeah.

That was very fast, wasn't it? Very.

It was very fast. I had a look at it on the bottom and I'm like, ah, I could probably just sit here and just.

It'll go straight over us.

And it was like hissing down.

All is good. I think we're talking. I'm not sure if you got into that. Oh, bench press. We'll talk. We're going to be press about cues for bench press.

What sort of cues would you like? Because there's a few.

Well, maybe we'll go. Go. The setup. The setup is set up.

Setup's really different for everyone. It does really depend on, like, what your goals are, because there's two different approaches to bench and it sort of stems from like, powerlifting and bodybuilding. It's like, what are you trying to do? You know, that's, that's, that's the first thing you ask yourself because, like, if you're trying to build muscle, the setup isn't that different. It's just more closer to.

Like 1.

1/2 times shoulder width. So as you bring the bar down, you should have a right angle or a slightly less than right. Slightly more than right angle.

No.

So like, if that's your angle, should be more on that side than that side.

Yeah. Okay.

Just because you want to emphasize more.

Of the stretch, you want to take.

Those muscle fibers through a deeper range of movement. Bench press isn't the best exercise to do that on. If you go down the bodybuilding hierarchy of eliteness for chest, bench press actually doesn't rank super, super high. That will be argued to the end of time by everyone, though.

I think it's all right.

But yeah, there are definitely some better exercises for building a bigger chest because of the stretch element. But, you know, if you're setting up for like, powerlifting and you want to get like more strength out of your bench press, for example, you're on the wider side because the less range of movement that you have to take the bar through, the better shot you have of putting up a bigger number, for example. Yeah, there's two different thought processes to it. Yeah.

Okay. And then what about. Because I obviously see a lot of powerlifters, and I think you do it as well. You have the arch in your back. Yes. Do you want to explain why people do that? Because I've seen both arguments for it. I don't know really the reason of this benefits and the drawbacks. But can you explain why?

So the, the main reason. And, and you should always have some sort of an arch. It's, it comes down to like, just grassroots. You need stability for a lift. So like bench press, obviously it's a compound movement. The way it's compound is because of the way you stabilize the lift. So a lot of people just treat it as an upper body movement, which. Yes, it is. But you need your legs to be able to create stability and producing force, which is why you see a lot of people set up in a really big arch, because there's a few ways of creating that force. That's what people call leg drive. So there's.

You know, you get power.

Lifters who don't have a huge, huge arch, but their leg drive is really, really solid. And then you have other power lifters who have a huge arch, and their leg drive isn't as great, but the tension's higher. Going into the specifics of, like, why each work better for different people, that's a bit more advanced. But the general premises is you have. I think it's three or four or five.

That's a lot of numbers. You have a few points of stability.

So you've got your upper back, your glutes, and then your legs.

Yes, yeah. Three, yeah.

So if you were to take your legs out and put them, like, up on the bench or, like, just kick them out, your bench becomes very. For someone who has trained like that.

It becomes very weak because you lose a point of stability.

It's like losing your brace in a squat, for example, or like putting the bar on your shoulders rather than your back because the stability is different.

Yeah.

That's essentially why you have an arch in a bed press.

Yeah. Okay, cool. All right, well, let's go through. Let's go through one more cue and choose a different exercise. I'm going to give you a couple exercises, and you pick which one you want to do.

Okay.

So let's do barbell rows. We'll do lat pull down. We can do seated row.

We got to do that pull down, lap pull down.

All right, let's go.

Lap pull down. I see so many people doing lap pull downs wrong.

Beautiful. Let's go.

Yeah.

I mean, I want to say eight or nine times out of ten, you generally see people doing a lap pull down wrong if they haven't done lap pull downs for, like, a decent amount of time.

Yeah.

A lot of people try and, like, heave the bar down, and they try to pull it down as far as they can, and they round their shoulders up and over trying to get the bar all the way down. So sometimes they're even getting the bar down towards, like, their. Their rib line. Like, that's how bad I've seen it sometimes. That is obviously not good. That is a rotator pull down.

I guess you could call it.

Yeah, I was gonna Say you're making up names here, but yeah.

Oh, I am.

Yeah.

No, the, the main function of your lats is to bring the elbow closer.

To midline and retract.

No, depress the shoulder blade. So in order to do that, a lot of the time your, your range is only ever going to finish just under your chin or closer to your collarbone. So like a really good cue and sometimes what I'll do with people because sometimes telling them the cue doesn't quite work, you change the bar. So you change it from like a lat pull down bar, for example, to like either a close grip or a neutral grip attachment. You can teach them how to engage their lights a lot better.

To get.

The exercise, get, get out of the.

Exercise what you want.

So like a really good cue for that is like you just imagine like you're trying to twist your elbow in towards your ribs as you're pulling it down. Or another one I've heard is like, you know, pull your elbows into your side whilst thinking that your like chest is being pulled up to the roof to get that big puff in the chest. Yeah, those, those are a few good cues. I'm drawing a blank on the rest of them, but there are a few other good cues for it.

Yeah. So in, in summary, like I see it all the time as well. Like you should really only be going to the top of your chest and then bringing your elbows in.

Correct.

Beautiful.

Yeah.

Awesome. Is there any other cues for lap pull down or is there any ones that we missed that pretty common that you got that you kind of.

Yeah, I don't think there's any others that are like super, super obvious. Yeah, like that. The main one's just. Yeah. Not pulling it down further than your chest because it then turns like if you like a lot of people when they're pulling it down towards their chest. If you like take a screenshot or like a, take a photo and then you rotate it, you'll actually see a lot of the time they're doing more of a seated row in terms of like line on the pull of the muscle. So yeah, no getting them to pull it under their chin or just, just to. There is a lot better because you get a lot more contraction through your lats and you avoid that like rolling issue because a lot of beginners struggle with that.

Yeah.

Awesome. Love your work. Awesome, mate. Thank you again for jumping on second time. Dive a bit more into the mechanics and the cues of personal training. Obviously last time was more about your own personal journey, which is, which is awesome. So you obviously post a. I think you post a fair bit about PC knowledge itself or the biomechanics as well. I know you're quite passionate about that. So, again, if people want to follow you and your journey, where do people find you?

It's at Jack Underscore, Blackfoot Blacksmith Fitness on Instagram.

That's where I'm at.

Happy Days. All right, my friend, have an awesome day.

Likewise, man.