No Way Out
Welcome to the No Way Out podcast where we examine the variety of domains and disciplines behind John R. Boyd’s OODA sketch and why, today, more than ever, it is an imperative to understand Boyd’s axiomatic sketch of how organisms, individuals, teams, corporations, and governments comprehend, shape, and adapt in our VUCA world.
No Way Out
Strong Orientation: How Strength Improves Our Capacity For Free and Independent Action with Nick Delgadillo
What if the key to maintaining your fitness goals during the chaotic holiday season lies in the simplicity of strength training? In this episode of No Way Out, we’re joined by Nick Delgadillo, CEO of Starting Strength Gyms (www.startingstrength.com), to explore how foundational movements not only bring structure and stability to your routine but also reshape your orientation—the lens through which you shape perceptions, decisions, actions and learning. Strength training becomes a critical part of our orientation, improving our capacity for free and independent action, even when life outside the gym feels unpredictable.
Together, we reveal how seasoned gym-goers leverage this time of year to fine-tune their fitness objectives, staying on track despite festive indulgences. Nick shares the profound impact of barbell training on both physical fitness and sports performance, emphasizing a holistic approach that extends beyond the gym to include nutrition, recovery, and mindset. Reflecting on personal insights and paradigm-shifting revelations, Nick explains how this methodology could have revolutionized athletic experiences in high school and the military. We challenge listeners to reevaluate their routines, highlighting effective strength-building practices that drive significant improvements in performance across all areas of life.
This episode also takes an in-depth look at the Starting Strength program, celebrated for delivering rapid fitness improvements through consistent, disciplined effort. Nick discusses how strength training integrates seamlessly into military institutions, the rigorous process of evaluating and certifying Starting Strength coaches, and the challenges and successes encountered along the way.
We close with a heartfelt tribute to the mentors and supporters who have shaped Starting Strength Gyms and a call to action for listeners to explore resources that empower a healthier, more capable future. Tune in to discover how reorienting your approach to fitness through strength training can unlock your potential for free and independent action, enabling you to thrive both in and out of the gym.
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Recent podcasts where you’ll also find Mark and Ponch:
Nick, I think it's a great time of year to be talking with you, especially after you know, Thanksgiving and Christmas. People are probably loaded up on things that they shouldn't be eating, shouldn't be drinking, and they're probably not hitting the gym or the pool or other things that they should be doing, and I'm sure this is a busy time of year for you guys that that impact is not so bad, right, um, you know, people have this idea of being quote-unquote good, you know, or being bad on whatever it is that they're doing diet, eating, you know, behavior and stuff like that.
Nick Delgadillo:But, um, you know, it's one of the cool things about about strength training is that that impact, if you sort of like go overboard a little bit, isn't that, isn't that big if you're consistent and actually sometimes you end up having some some pretty great workouts, like around thanksgiving, christmas stuff, right, the thing that people mess up the most I think this time of year is just not, is just not going to the gym. Yeah, you know, it's like the traditional like you know, I overdid it on on thanksgiving isn't too much of an issue with lifters, with people who are lifting heavy. You know what I'm saying well, you need.
Mark McGrath:You certainly need the calories to uh, to get the weight up right, to push the push, the push the pounds up on your on your barbells. When you're uh, you gotta have the caloric intake. That's one of the lessons I've learned in strength training. If you don't eat, really doesn't work so well for sure. So that, yeah, so there's. So there's some gray areas. I guess you know you can't eat to a point, but I'm thinking too, with the descent of 2025 coming so fast, that this is probably the time where I hope you guys would see a nice bump. So we're going to try to do our part on the show here.
Nick Delgadillo:Yeah, it's awesome, yeah, everybody's. You know everybody's thinking of New Year's resolutions, what they're going to do for 2025 and stuff like that. You know, honestly, in my experience we don't have. We don't have necessarily the same like big, big, just like influx of people coming in, right. I mean it always it does go up, right for sure. But you know, I think, I think a lot of times, um, I mean, I've been in commercial gyms, I've worked in commercial gyms and then you see, like that first week of january, it's like just packed. Every monday, every wednesday, it's just you can't get a rack, you can't get a piece of equipment for it. It probably lasts about a month, month and a half, right.
Nick Delgadillo:So of course we definitely have, we definitely have a little bit of bump coming into the new year, but a lot of times it's more of like people who are already training, you know, and they kind of just refocus a little bit, start thinking about goals, goals, and it's actually like it's really cool, because it's not. You don't have a lot of the brand new people who are just like feeling things out and are only going to be around for a little bit, a little bit, and then disappear. A lot of times it's like people who have been training a while and they kind of refocus on their goals. They get new goals. You know, maybe I want to lose some weight, gain some weight, try a new sport, whatever it is, and then you can. It's a great time to kind of revisit all the stuff with your clients and it's great for retention and just getting people refocused and excited again. Because you know, I mean, what we do is not sexy, it's just it's strength training, it's hard work, it's hard work.
Nick Delgadillo:It's barbells. You're doing the same things almost all the time, with some slight variation. In and of itself, it's not super, super exciting. It's a lot of hard work. Oh so the kind of person that that gravitates towards this kind of stuff is a little bit different, in that they don't get easily distracted and they have actual goals right. So they have like they're not, they're not like these nebulous sort of things. It's like they have actual performance, health or longevity goals that they're looking towards.
Mark McGrath:I started the program in 2020, right about when COVID hit the path that I took, when everybody, I think, went to go have a relationship with Jim Beam and Netflix, I was, too stuck on the book. I got to the point where I was able to rebuild myself physically, and then I have my sons doing it and others were catching on. Because I think this is one thing you haven't said yet, and we're going to go in a lot of directions, but you haven't said this yet. It's hard and it's simple. It's only a handful of movements. It's not anything's not anything. It's not anything fancy you don't need. You don't need fancy equipment, except for barbells and some plates exactly right?
Nick Delgadillo:yeah, it's, it's super simple and a lot of people, a lot of people think that's, that's a sort of a downside, and I've come to find I mean, I've been at this for a long time I've come to find that it's not, I think. I think people's lives are generally so chaotic and there's so many things going on. I think that people like the stability and they like the predictability of what they're doing. There's only a couple of variables that you have to worry about, and most of them are what's happening outside of the gym, which is what makes things so difficult for us. Right? It's like you can't just show up.
Nick Delgadillo:I mean, there's all kinds of exercise programs and products and stuff you can do, and most of them are predicated on the concept or the idea that if you show up and you put in the work for that day, the acute benefits of that workout whether they're actually productive towards your goals or not are just are it right? So, in other words, you show up to your CrossFit class and you do a CrossFit class. It's a hard workout, you sweat, you know, maybe you bleed a little bit, and then you have a good time with your friends in the CrossFit class and then you're good, like that's it. You know, and of course, some people are going to be a little bit more focused on nutrition and recovery and all that kind of stuff. That's all great, but with barbell training, you know you're going to come in, you're going to do probably squat or deadlift, you're going to do some upper body, heavy upper body lifts, maybe a couple of assistance exercises, maybe not, and that's it.
Nick Delgadillo:And then the rest of the thing is up to you. What do you do outside of the gym to make sure that the next time you come in, that you're able to add more weight to the bar, that you're recovered and that you're able to keep making progress? So it's a much more like, it's much more involved and for us as coaches, it's like you have to be involved in some way, either either through a conversation or or through some follow-up or stuff or any or things. After the people leave your gym, they have to still be thinking about the process that they're involved in. It's like you can't just go, punch the clock and then leave and forget about it, right? So yeah, it's super simple, but it's also pretty intrusive in terms of the things that are required of you once you're involved in this process of getting strong.
Mark McGrath:I'm a big reader and we encourage reading and Ponch is a huge reader.
Mark McGrath:I mean we're constantly, constantly digesting books.
Mark McGrath:I have to say I told you before we recorded and I've told Pete Yeh this who we've had on the show and my friend Jim Reed, that got me into starting strength, I have to say, of all the books I've ever read and that's a lot and it's a lot of different categories, it's a lot of different topics, Certainly in the physical fitness realm, this book was paradigm shattering for me, to the point where I was so upset that I encountered this book for the first time at age 44 and wish that I had had that book at age 14 because I believe you know all through playing high school sports, you know I was in Naval, ROTC and in the Marine Corps.
Mark McGrath:Physically it would have been a different experience. It was a great experience. But strength, really understanding strength, full body strength, and that it actually comes from only five compound barbell movements was so mind-blowing but at the same time so paradigm shattering for me, was so mind-blowing but at the same time so paradigm shattering for me. It rattled my orientation to the point that once I started doing it, I can never look at people in the gym the same way, that are not doing this because I say well, they're just spinning their wheels, right, you know?
Nick Delgadillo:no, absolutely yeah, and everybody goes through that kind of same uh, that same mental process, because it was the same for me.
Nick Delgadillo:But even though, like, even though I had exposure to barbells really early in life, I started barbell training through football at the age of 12 or 13. And I made a lot of progress and I saw direct benefits to my performance at practice and in games through barbell training as a kid, in high school, but I still, like it didn't stick. You know, like after high school I played rugby and I did a bunch of other stuff and then never really touched a barbell again until like 2008 or so 2007, when I got into CrossFit. So that's a long time. I mean that was almost, you know, 10 years of not messing with barbells, even though I very clearly what, uh, what barbells could, could, do for performance. But I hope, you know, as a kid you just kind of like, I guess I just like connected this is like how you train football and then I just never, just never, mess with barbells again how did you get back into it?
Mark McGrath:how did you get in the starting string um?
Nick Delgadillo:basically through um I was. I was teaching self-defense and fighting stuff for a long time. I started that in my early 20s. Through various conditioning classes and stuff that I was running at our schools. I had gotten interested in finding some kind of a certification At some point.
Nick Delgadillo:I found CrossFit. I'd heard about it, I found it and this was this was early days like 07, 08 crossfit and then kind of became obsessed with, with, uh, with everything crossfit was putting out at the time because it was really good. It was really good stuff in terms of in the fitness industry. It was um, you know, I think. I think they were kind of pushing, blazing the path for just you, bringing in various subject matter experts ripito be rip being one of them and just putting out the best information that they can find. They lost their way shortly after that, right, but but at the time, you know, all the best information you can get was, in my opinion, was there. I was in an exercise science program at the same time and everything I was learning in my exercise science stuff was just like I mean it was. It just felt wrong and antiquated compared to what I was just reading in the CrossFit journal from like Rip it Toe and Rob Wolf and and uh, you know, mike Bergner, all these Bill Starr, all these different people on the uh, on videos in CrossFit, and it was just like you said, right, it was paradigm shifting, kind of mind-blowing, how simple and clear his explanation and his instructions were on how to do things.
Nick Delgadillo:And me, being a coach already and really appreciating principle-based, you know, fundamental teaching and coaching, like helping people understand what we're doing. I figured that out a long time ago as a young dude learning how to coach normal people, right. So I was like, you know, it's like technique is one thing. You know, technique should come from principles. And then it's like here comes Ripito and he's explaining things exactly the way I want to hear that. So I was like, man, this guy knows what he's doing.
Nick Delgadillo:So, yeah, from there I just, you know, read the book. It was the, it was the second edition at the time. So I read the book, started consuming anything I could, and then around that time is when they is when they split off CrossFit and started doing their own seminars and stuff. Around 2011, I had been coaching long enough that I was ready to go do the certification and I went and did it and passed it the first time and then by 2012, I was, I was helping out with seminars, um, and doing camps myself, and then that was it, man. 2015, I moved here to Texas and did a starting strength full time since since about 2015.
Mark McGrath:And now you're the CEO of the gyms starting strength gyms which are emerging all across the country with, I'm sure, I'm sure, more on the way. And you know what I always thought too. You know, if the beauty of the program is, if you live close to a gym, you can go to a gym. There are starting strength coaches that may or may not be around the gym, that you could interact with elsewhere. Right. And then for the autodidact, for the self-learners, the self-teachers, the books are unbelievable. I mean, they really are. They are so good and so well-written and so, to your point, driven on concepts and principles that once you accept those, you can't forget these things. Once you see this, you can't see it. And I would say that we're talking offline. There's no get-fit-quick scheme, but the closest thing you could find to a get-quick-fit scheme, in my opinion, is starting strength, because the results come almost immediately opinion is starting strength, because the results come almost immediately.
Nick Delgadillo:Yes, I totally agree with that, and it's not only I mean, it depends how you're, how you're defining or how the individual person is defining getting getting fit right, because the standard kind of kind of thing that occurs is that someone decides they want to lose weight, you know, get more fit, whatever and then they go see a personal trainer, they start going to the gym and just the simple fact that they have changed their habits in a more positive direction in terms of health and fitness will produce results. Because it doesn't matter what you do initially, right, especially the more untrained, the more sedentary you are, anything you do is going to start pushing the needle very, very quickly, right, but in terms of, like, real fitness, real health, things that are going to make a substantial impact, I 100% agree with you. Right, if you get under a barbell, everything comes on faster, and that includes, you know, not only your strength, because that's obvious, right, but also just conditioning, even flexibility, just all the things that generally you should be caring about are going to come along much, much quicker.
Mark McGrath:Balance right Like balance For sure, for sure.
Nick Delgadillo:And not only that, but at the end of six weeks, eight weeks, 12 weeks, 16 weeks, you can potentially change your physical condition such that your overall fitness level is just at a much higher capacity than if you had done anything else. So, like when you say, when you say like a get fit quick scheme, this is actual fitness. I mean it's actual, that it's actual capability, because in that amount of time you can, you can probably nearly double your strength if you do it right, and and it just makes you a much more capable person across the board, no matter what you decide to do afterwards.
Mark McGrath:And let's be perfectly frank, it's not a pill, it's not a thing I just do. It is like you have to actually do the work. The work is hard. It always gets harder, right? Because one of the concepts is to gradually increase the amount of weight, the amount you know, the load that you're squatting or pressing or benching or deadlifting or power cleaning, and that's how you get the consistent progress. So maybe a better way to say is like yeah, you get fit quick, but you get fit quick consistently the right way, versus something that's a fad. There's nothing about starting strength. To me, that's a fad.
Nick Delgadillo:Well, yeah, because it's just well. Here's the thing. Reason it is what it is is because your ability to produce force, your, your strength is is the foundation of all of your physical attributes, right? The only one that you can kind of set aside completely is like sort of like the the more specialized endurance side of things. But even endurance athletes will like I'm talking about ultra marathon runners, marathon runners who know who, know what they're doing, still understand the force production aspect of things and still train, or should train, for strength at least a little bit, right, but ultimately those are going to be competing. Adaptations like maximal strength and maximal endurance capability are on the opposite ends of the spectrum. But what people don't realize is, like, here's a little spectrum with my fingers right. So here's force production and here's maximal endurance. We're talking, you know, marathon beyond. Most of the things that we care about as humans, that we need to do in terms of capability, occur, like, on this end of the spectrum.
Mark McGrath:On the strength end.
Nick Delgadillo:Strength to endurance spectrum.
Nick Delgadillo:Yeah, it's all over here and then things drop off very quickly as you move closer and closer to high endurance. Like, very few people need extremely high levels of endurance and chasing. That is actually detrimental to high force production, right? So I mean, you just look at what people look like who run ultra marathons and run, you know, do Ironman and stuff. It's a catabolicabolic, inherently catabolic thing in terms of in terms of force production and muscle mass and stuff like that, right? So so if we, if we could, if you can wrap your head around that, then you'll understand that force production strength forms a foundation of all your most useful physical attributes. So if you increase strength, everything else comes up along with it. Like there's this concept of work capacity, or you know that that people throw around, there's all these different words, capacity, or you know that people throw around there's all these different words and really they're just like, they're just proxy words for overall fitness. And then if you tie strength to overall fitness, it makes the situation really clear. If you have a higher force production capability, you can condition more effectively, your conditioning workouts can be more effective.
Nick Delgadillo:Take whatever protocol you want to do. You want to get on an echo bike or a fan bike? You want to get on a rower, you want to push a sled, you want to do sprints. Whatever thing you want to do, if you can produce more force, you can either stress yourself harder, thereby producing a greater conditioning adaptation, or you can go longer. So when people think about conditioning, it means like being able to do something over and over and over again without gassing out. So increased force production, increased strength, means you can do something at a submaximal level for a longer period of time without wearing yourself out, or, if you do, wanna like, just max yourself out from a cardiorespiratory standpoint. If you're stronger, you can do it more effectively because you can load the sled heavier, you can put more watts into the bike, you can put more power into the rower, you can sprint, you can sprint faster, you can sprint a quicker time, and then all the other things are kind of obvious to me, right? So balance is just, you know, being able to manage your center of mass over your base of support. So you're stronger, you're more, you're able to balance better here. Better here's kind of the last point on this.
Nick Delgadillo:For all of those physical attributes, the other confounding factor here is that they're all going to be specific to your individual needs and the activities that you do. So another thing that's important for people to understand is that if you're going to train something just to increase your overall capability, there's strength and there's conditioning. Strength is going to be the most general, meaning that you don't have to make your strength training look like anything that you do. It can just be your normal loaded human movement, right. So your squats, presses, pulls If you just do those things, your entire body gets stronger and you don't have to specialize the movements that you're doing, loaded, into making them look like the activities that you're doing.
Nick Delgadillo:Conditioning kind of follows that same thing, but usually activities that require conditioning are conditioning in and of themselves, right, until you're very good at them. So like, let's take something like boxing, for example. If you're just starting boxing, you move inefficiently, you throw your punches inefficiently and you gas out, right, you get really tired, really fast. And then if you add another person to that who's also trying to hit you, you're gonna, you're gonna feel like you're gonna die, right.
Nick Delgadillo:but a lot of that is just being inefficient. So it's a skill problem and and, and then it's an inefficiency problem, meaning you don't know how to move well, and then there's also a conditioning aspect to it as well. But there's no point like going out or running to build that conditioning when you're just starting out, because just doing boxing makes you tired enough to give you a conditioning adaptation, right? So you're not going to get any strength adaptation from boxing. If you do, you are really, really weak to begin with. But if you're going to build your capability up beyond what just like throwing some punches is going to give you, you're going to have to use a barbell, you're going to have to get into a gym.
Nick Delgadillo:Conditioning is going to come from boxing. Once you you're at a high level, like once your skill level is high, once you don't get a conditioning adaptation from just practicing the sport, that's where conditioning makes sense. That's where adding in some conditioning makes sense. Because the alternative is how do I get more conditioned for something like boxing or MMA? Well, you can either do more rounds or go harder, which has a downside in terms of injury and wear and tear, and so on Wear and tear yeah.
Nick Delgadillo:Exactly. Or you could just add in some more conditioning, but your skill level is already so high that the conditioning is necessary and appropriate. A beginner, somebody within the first year of doing anything, probably doesn't need any conditioning. They just need to get strong, you know. So it's simple, but it's complicated because people make it complicated.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, personally, like you know, I got into it at the end of 19. I went to a very sad and scary funeral of a guy in his early 50s. That just wasn't. You know, he was on paper great, I mean, you know I had a great living and everything, and then he dropped dead on christmas eve because, wow, he wasn't, he wasn't taking care of himself or whatever, and I it was one of those kind of wake-up calls, you're like. You know, I was, uh, you know, corporate guy and doing a lot of travel, a lot of wear and tear on shoulders, back and neck, and I said to myself, okay, but uh, that's gonna happen to me. You know, at the time I was 44. I'm like, if that's gonna happen to me, then they're gonna say what the the swimmer? You know, like that guy, you know, stopped drinking, started distance swimming again but then dropped like 50 pounds and it looks sick and people are like you can't not be like this. You know you look really sick, yeah right.
Mark McGrath:Right. So what it was was my buddy that I worked with, jim Reed. He said, you know, get into starting strength, start lifting, again, start lifting. I was like, yeah, but I go to the gym and I lift and I do pull downs and I do. You know, I do high endurance benching and I do. He's like, no, no, no, you got to do starting strength, you got to do that style. And I get the book. And then, uh, see what you think and I tell you, man, I got, like I was telling you, I got that book, completely broke your correspondence from everything that you've thought, from the fitness industry, which is a term you guys use a lot, which is a sales culture, everything you thought you knew, from high school, sports, the military, literally, you could throw it all out and start over with a very simple track.
Mark McGrath:And what I found? That I packed on. I was able to pack on after age 40, pack on a lot of muscle, but at the same time all of my issues of like shoulders, neck, lower, back out the window. Stop taking motrin. I haven't taken a motrin. I might take motrin maybe once a year now I hardly ever.
Mark McGrath:I was taking it all the time. No more Motrin, no more shoulder pain after swimming. I used to just get like I can't swim for two or three days because my shoulders are just killing me. All that gone and I found that my endurance in swimming elevated the more that I strength trained but also too as you guys underscore in the books and the coaching everything like fueling yourself correctly to make sure that you can rebuild your body. Now there is a dilemma. If you're doing a sport like swimming, you do come to a crossroads. Or I'm just going to be strong, or I'm going to swim, or I'm going to try to balance both, and I'm still kind of in that paradigm of you know, always trying to balance both, but I will say that I'm not nearly.
Mark McGrath:I. I'm a better swimmer because of the, the strength training that I do with starting strength and following that. Uh, following that plan, yeah yeah, that's, uh, that that's.
Nick Delgadillo:That's not a unique experience, you know, because, um, people, people do this all the time and they have the same exact experience that you had. It's just, it's kind of you you're a guy who who gave it a chance and did it and then came back to your, to your sport, came back to your swimming. You're like, wow, this is like this is, this is making a difference. And most people well, not most people, a lot of people are really hesitant to to, to do that like to just kind of, and not that you set anything aside, but just like spend some time getting stronger. And your point about about like building and forcing, forcing yourself to grow, is a really important one because, like all these things especially people who, people who are doing things at a relatively high level, so like, maybe it's swimming for you, you know, maybe it's Brazilian jujitsu for me, or for me or friends of mine, all those things are wear and tear and they're breaking you down constantly, right, I mean, it's putting mileage on your body.
Nick Delgadillo:Barbell training does that but at the same time, it requires that you recover, otherwise you're not doing it right. So it's like a targeted breaking down in a forced production environment and as a byproduct of that, like you, going into this process, you're forcing yourself to have to eat well, otherwise this doesn't work. You're forcing yourself to pay attention to your sleep, otherwise it doesn't work as well. Right, so it's almost like a driver for optimization, and people can get there also from other avenues. Right, so like they can do it.
Nick Delgadillo:Like if you're, if you're a swimmer and you're like man, I need to start getting recovered. You might end up there too, but barbell training is like it's. It's pretty cut and dry, like you're either going to do what you need to do to recover in between workouts, or you're going to hit a wall and it's very clear, you know. So it's like forcing. In a lot of ways. It's's also forcing these positive habits, especially for people who are involved in other athletic endeavors. Right, because you have to learn this balancing act and it's it's it's not a negative thing, like it's a good thing.
Mark McGrath:So what's interesting is that I remember this quote it was either in the book or maybe on one of Rip's podcasts or one of the videos on the YouTube channel where he says you don't get strong barbell lifting, you get strong recovering from barbell lifting, and to your point that recovery time is huge.
Mark McGrath:And once you start to understand that, once you start to do it, you start to feel it. We talk a lot about John Boyd and Sun Tzu and the moral, mental and physical aspects of warfare in business, and starting strength satisfies all those. You're going to see physical results. There's a lot of physical things that you do, but there's a mental requirement that you have to do to tell yourself that I'm going to do this, I'm going to commit to this, I'm going to do this two or three times a week, and then the moral aspect of it is that I think the biggest thing is like I choose to do this, to be different from literally everybody else, because every time I go to the gym, it's just obvious that you can just see people that are on something that you know is not working or they're. It's just going to basically send them on a hamster wheel of of never getting the not so much the results that they want per se, but really like achieving the health that you need to just function as a human.
Nick Delgadillo:Yeah, the thing is like I think I think we see ourselves in those people Right. So like cause we were there, we were there doing those silly ass things.
Mark McGrath:You have to have a lot of empathy.
Nick Delgadillo:Yeah, yeah, I mean there, there there's definitely the people who are just like seeing what's going on and like and like really getting upset about it because everybody's so stupid and they're dumb. But the truth is like we all, we all did a lot of unnecessary and things wasted a lot of time. So I think part of it is like there's this thing inside of you that you want to like tell people and you want to kind of give everybody your. You know you want to. You want to testify and tell everybody how great the thing that you're doing is. You want to testify and tell everybody how great the thing that you're doing is. Some people have like the ego aspect of it and they just want to be right about things right.
Mark McGrath:But but anyway, I think, what do you? What do you think of this? So, like I felt like you know, at first you're like holy shit, this is working, like wow, this is working, like I'm getting strong and I'm and I'm swimming better, and like, on one hand, you want to be an evangelist. But then you're like you're running, running into so many people that are like, well, I do it my way or I didn't learn it that way, and you just say you know what?
Mark McGrath:I'm just sticking to this because I know it works. And then you end up modeling and then people say what are you doing? I'm like, ah, starting strength, just go get the book and if you have any questions let me know. You know, or?
Nick Delgadillo:no-transcript, that those results aren't good enough. And then, kind of moving on to the next thing, the message actually is a little bit more powerful, I think, when somebody has some experience and they can compare right. So they say, okay, I know that I did this other thing for two years and these are the results that I got. And now, within six months of doing this, I've surpassed everything that I've done before. That happens all the time, like you know. I've got people who who tell me that they've been wanting to squat 315 and they've been doing something like CrossFit for two years or three years Like man. The most I've ever squatted is like 275. And I'll tell a dude man, you'll be squatting 315 within two months and they don't believe you right, and then it's like put them on the program.
Nick Delgadillo:They squat 315. I mean, you've already got a 275 squat, you're right there. I mean we can get this done pretty quick. So, like they hit 315 and then they realize, like man, 315 is not a big deal, like I'm there already. And then, and then they, you know, maybe some of these people will go back to doing, to doing CrossFit or something, and then they realize how much easier everything just became. And then, and then that's like a huge. I mean that's like the convert story, right Cause now that's a huge thing. You have this experience that you've gone through yourself, um, doing it both ways. And now you're, you're, you understand it's like man, I like I've wasted a lot of time, but you know, it is what it is, I think. I think that's, um, I think the worst thing to do is to walk up to somebody and tell them hey, you're doing things wrong and implying that they're not smart or something. Yeah, people get defensive and then it turns them off.
Mark McGrath:So that's the other beauty of the program that I think is very consistent with what we talk about all the time is the coaching, teaching nature of things. That you know it is modeling, it's setting the example, it's it's being empathetic, understanding that people to your point are coming from. You know they're coming from a fitness culture that in general is anti-strength or is anti-anti-barbell, that is more product-focused or diet-focused or something like that. So it really does connect on sort of like this is the moral, mental, physical part. It really does connect at the moral level where you are able to philosophically bond to something and say now I see it in a much bigger picture and everything else is going to fall into place.
Nick Delgadillo:Yeah, modeling. Modeling is the perfect word for it. I mean, that's um, that that's the best way to convince somebody other than their own experience, right? So, somebody who isn't necessarily convinced. Now, if you, if you aren't, if you aren't like living it and making and putting your results, making your results known yourself, and that could just be like loading up the bar and squatting four plates. Right, if you squat four plates in a commercial gym, people notice, you know, and all of a sudden, your opinion and the things that you say become much more valuable to anybody who's kind of leaning in that direction, right? So it's like, yeah, that's the whole thing about modeling is, is you have to be the the?
Nick Delgadillo:The best way to be a spokesperson is to do it yourself and and achieve a fairly high level. You don't have to be like like a strength, you don't have to specialize in strength, be a power lifter, but you know just results, a guy, a guy who's, who's at the gym. You're kind of always seeing the same guys at the gym, right? I mean, they're always there at the same times, you are right. So if they see you, and you know, six months ago you were squatting 200 pounds less and you weighed 30 less pounds and all of a sudden you look like a completely different human being. People notice it, right. If you're swimming with your buddies, maybe you're a little bit competitive, or you're going to jujitsu class, or uh, or you're playing pickleball, and people like, all of a sudden, you're, you're performing better People. People notice, like what have you? Like, what have you been doing? It's like I've been squatting, pressing, benching and deadlifting. I've been doing starting strength. Like oh, you're, you're powerlifting now. Like no, I'm just strength training, right?
Nick Delgadillo:so then then that like starts like yeah, it just starts a conversation and then now people it kind of opens people's eyes are like man, like this was just a regular dude who I used to play with and you know we were kind of on the same level and six months later he's a different dude, like he's. He's a.
Mark McGrath:He's like a different, different human being from a performance standpoint I mean the trust, the transformation is pretty quick and if you stick with it you get to the point where you can't not do it Exactly. I find that when you take you know sometimes you take a break, you just do you start to feel mentally unhealthy, you start to not feel like yourself, and we warned everybody at the beginning. We go in so many directions. But I also think too, in our time pressed culture where people are so worried about time, having a programmatic three exercise workout with with the beautiful app there's a starting strength app that I use. It saves time. Like it, I don't. I don't waste time in the gym. You start, you have a good idea of when you're going to finish. You you calculate the time that you're going to take between, uh, between sets and you just go right into it. And the next thing, you know you're done.
Mark McGrath:And all the people that are still holding court. You know they're still in the gym, maybe on their first or second thing, but you're to your point. I mean people do come up and I say powerlifting, or yeah, I would never do that. But then they start to explore that they take the risk because they're going to see the mismatch. We talk about mismatches all the time. They're going to see the mismatch and they're either going to get give into it and say not for me, or they're going to say I want to learn more. And then that's that's kind of where I was when when jim told me about this. Jim reed, I remember saying, like really, bar, like I don't want to look like. You know, I don't know. Yeah, I don't want to look like.
Mark McGrath:I'm trying to think Lou Ferrigno, I'm not, you know I'm not, I'm not trying to look like Lou Ferrigno or Arnold, like no, no, it's strength training, that's not barbell training. And then you ask the questions, and then you see the mismatch, and then you just keep exploring it and then you realize that wow, there's a whole nother world and I've been sold a bill of goods and I wish I could go back and give this to my 13-year-old self, because it is Exactly right, it is really good, go ahead.
Nick Delgadillo:Yeah, I was going to just a funny thing. It's like a lot of people say that the statement you just made it's like I don't want to look like whatever, I don't want to get bulky thing. But it's so funny, man, because sometimes this either even comes from people who are in gyms. But the thing that just comes to my mind that I'll tell people is like, looked bodybuilder on accident. That's very intentional and it's very difficult to do. Most important, right, it's like there are guys, and we all know guys who go to the gym every day, spend multiple hours in the gym every day and they look exactly the same. So like, if that individual can't do it, it's not an accidental thing, right, and that's not going to happen to you.
Nick Delgadillo:You're not going to become muscle bound. You're not going to be so jacked that you can't wipe your own butt. And women, women like you're not going to turn into a dude, it's like it just does not happen.
Nick Delgadillo:So it's kind of like this. It's kind of like this weird, weird disconnect, and you could just point to so many people who try like actively try to get bigger and jacked and huge and it's like a very, very difficult thing to do. So it's like a really funny. It's a really funny thing about the way people think about things.
Mark McGrath:So I've tried to encourage boomer parents to do barbell lifting and one of the videos that I used was on the Starting Strength channel of a 95 year old woman barbell lifting. Yeah right, talk about aging. I mean, this is like, this is like not that it's anti-aging, but as you age, strength becomes more and more important and everybody listening knows someone that's that's frail or frail too early, and know I see those videos on on starting strength of, of, you know, women over 90, women over 75, men over 75, really is. It really is a wake up call, I think, for a lot of people. Um, you know, talk, talk about strength training and aging.
Nick Delgadillo:Yeah, those stories are all really really great, super interesting. In a lot of those instances those, those folks, are in a lot of pain using walkers um independence very rapidly and then as they start barbell training they get a lot of that back. So less pain. I can't say that they're not in pain anymore, but less pain for sure. All the 90 plus folks that I can think of who have been involved with starting strength get rid of a walker at some point.
Nick Delgadillo:They fall down less right, which is super important for your balance yeah of course, yeah, you, everybody can kind of, uh has a story of a 80, 75, 80 plus year old uh, grandmother, mother, who's fallen down, broken a hip, broken a femur, and, uh, and just a downward spiral after that, right, um, aside from all the other things, right, you controlling blood sugar, the mental health aspect of it, right, just being more independent, being able to do things, so, yeah, all that stuff is phenomenal, all that stuff is great, I think, I think, an important thing to talk about and, by the way, like that, that demographic, probably more than anybody, definitely more than, like, the 25 year old kid, appreciates what we do and appreciates the results, because it has a immediate, direct impact on their quality of life.
Nick Delgadillo:Right, for, like you, me, younger folks, it's like, yeah, there there's all that stuff, but it's more like down the line in terms of what's really, really important For us right now. It's more like about feeling good, looking good, for sure, like looking good and also being better at our hobbies in our day-to-day life. The point is, though, that, like, you have to make sure you're not waiting until you're 75, 80, 90 years old to start doing this, cause it's like it's not that it's too late, but it's like's like you could. You could be living a better life up to that point, right? In other words, let's not wait until we get to the point where it's like I have no other option, like, okay, here's a thing, and then now this is starting to help me, because, yeah, it's going to help them. But, um, but it would have helped them more if they started 20 years ago. Right, for sure, for sure.
Mark McGrath:I mean, we're all, we're all going to die still, I mean anybody we're all still going to die and while you're here, you can. You can enjoy more independence by the, I think, strength training.
Nick Delgadillo:What you're it sounds like what you're saying is that while you're here, you can have yourself more more independence, movement and be as capable as possible, yeah, as capable as possible for as long as possible. So there's a concept and I don't remember if this came from rip or from, uh, dr sullivan, who wrote the barbell prescription barbell prescription, yeah. So there's a. The concept is the compression morbidity, right. So you think of like a timeline for somebody's life. It's like you know you're young and then you're going up, up, up, up, and then things start to slowly, steadily decline.
Nick Delgadillo:And then you know, we've had grandparents, parents who, just, you know, have these 10, 20, 25 year declines and they're just, you just watch them deteriorate, you know, over time, to the point where they've, they've completely lost their independence and then life is just, it's just a drag. So the idea of compression morbidity means like let's, let's like keep the up as long as possible and make that period of decline like, not 20 years, like six months, right. So it's like, let's go, let's go hard, let's go fast, let's enjoy life, let's be capable until the last possible moment. I think that's a really powerful thing that is within everybody's reach If you do it right, right you, you have to be ahead of it. The problem is that as you get older, things hurt, so it's. It's not the same like the 90 year old woman, the 75 year old guy going to the gym. It's not like us going to the gym.
Mark McGrath:I mean we're in pain.
Nick Delgadillo:You know we're, we're, we're achy stuff like that. Just imagine yourself 20 years from now, or myself 20, 20, 25 years from now, like what I feel like right now going into the gym. It's not fun anymore.
Nick Delgadillo:Right, it hurts. I got to warm up, I've got to stretch, I've got to do things to like make it so that I'm not achy. So, fast forward, 20, 25 years. What's that going to feel like man? It's going's gonna suck. It's like hard, it's hard work. It's probably harder work for them that, even though they're doing really, really light weights, it's probably harder work for them because they got to get out of bed. They've got to decide to go do this while in pain, you know, with, with maybe new knees, maybe new hips or whatever. So, like, hats off to those folks, because they're, they're, they're, they're living a much different experience than you and I. I guess my point is that, to the extent that we can hold that off for as long as possible, that's what we want to do, right? So and again, strength training is the best way to do that.
Mark McGrath:So John Boyd, who we talk about a lot here and the podcast is dedicated to his memory and developing his theories. You're probably familiar with the OODA loop, you know, which is a website. The basis for John Boyd's work was a paper called Destruction and Creation and the goal of it was to improve our capacity for free and independent action. And basically, we have to destroy and revise. Destroy and revise because the concepts and understanding that we have in the world have to change, because the world is always changing. Well, this is where it ties into starting strength.
Mark McGrath:Your body is a complex adaptive system. Complex adaptive systems are always changing. They're subject to time, like anything else, and the human body specifically, is aging and you have to make adaptations, because what worked for you when you were 15 didn't work when you were 25, if you're 45, 65, 85, et cetera. So you constantly have to be revising and updating your conception of reality. You have to destroy your previous models and create new ones in order to improve your capacity for free and independent action and if you don't do that, you become obsolete, irrelevant, defeated, et cetera. If you don't do that, you become obsolete, irrelevant, defeated, etc. No-transcript a physical depiction for somebody's personal fitness on how to follow along exactly what John Boyd is saying. You have to destroy your old models of what you think fitness is, or what you think strength is, or what you think barbells are, and you have to create new models, and the benefit is that, as you do that, you're going to create your capacity for free and independent action, even as you age.
Nick Delgadillo:Yeah, I agree. Look, the truth is, man, any process. Let me say a couple things. So any process that becomes optimized is going to start from basic first principles, so things that are generally irreducible right, so things that are difficult to argue against. And then it's going to be, it's going to go from a simple process and it's going to increase in complexity based on where the process takes you right and that applies. And this is one of the things that appealed to me so much about starting strength. This wasn't necessarily said outright at the beginning, like, I think this is one of the things that I've sort of injected into.
Nick Delgadillo:Starting strength is this idea of first principle-based, process-based, like let's think about optimization, you know, not necessarily like right versus wrong, it's like optimal versus suboptimal, and because in all kinds of domains, areas, industries, people end up with right, and by right meaning like, whatever measure of success you have, they end up with right, but not necessarily optimally right. So so you kind of you kind of end up, for whatever reason, whatever, whatever mix of talent, drive, determination and self-reflection gets you there, you end up with this thing, that's, that's uh thing, that's just doing really, really great. But when you look back on it. I think if you reflect and you ask yourself, was that the best way? In almost every instance you'll say no, I made a ton of mistakes along the way. I did things wrong along the way. I wouldn't do it like that if I had it to do again along the way. I wouldn't do it like that if I had it to do again.
Nick Delgadillo:So one of the things that Starting Strength has done that Rip did before I or anyone else came along and then that we've kind of just carried along with it as the years have passed is this idea of simplifying and refinement right. So it's like how do we make this more simple? How do we make it? How do we help people understand it more? How do we help people understand it more? How do we help people learn this more? How do we help people teach others how to do this? And especially the teaching others part is where it really makes you focus on what's important, what are the principles and how do they apply it, how do they integrate?
Nick Delgadillo:I think that that process thing, anything that's done really really well, top to bottom, fully integrated, from beginning to end teaching other people, like passing it on mentoring I think it follows kind of the same, the same trajectory in the fitness world. I don't see it, by the way, like that's. That's incredibly rare, right, I've only been involved in a couple of things in my entire life that have followed that path, and anything that I'm involved in now I try to strip it down and make it do that. So I want to like what are the most important things? What are the things to understand? How would I teach this to somebody else? And then it forces you to orient your thinking in a specific way to make things as optimal as possible. So that's incredibly rare.
Nick Delgadillo:I think in business, in sports, in training, in almost everything I can think of, it's very rare. But occasionally you'll come across something that is structured that way and it's really, really effective and really, really powerful. It's like starting strength has done that because of just the nature of the way Rip communicates in the books and the way that he explains things. It's just kind of a natural progression for this to be the way that it is. So my point is that it's not unique to starting strength. It is rare. But, to your point, the way that we approach this barbell training and fitness and strength thing is like almost a template that you can take and apply it to anything.
Nick Delgadillo:But it's not because of anything.
Mark McGrath:And it evolves too. Yeah, but it's not because of and it evolves too.
Nick Delgadillo:Yeah, yeah, but it's not because of anything having to do with barbell specifically. It's just on top of this, like barbell training stuff, there's this kind of way of thinking about things where it's like where, what are the principles, how do we integrate the principles, and then how do we show it to other people? Right, the whole, the whole beginning of this thing was you got guys in the gym, you got Ripito in his gym doing things and then, just the way that he is, he wants to be able to explain it to other people. So, as a result of that, if you're honest with yourself and you don't start believing your own BS, you're refining those explanations, you're refining those concepts and then you come out with this product that just looks really really smooth and really really well explained and really really well presented, and there you go right. So that's a thing that can be man, that's a thing that can just be. It's like almost a template that you can plug into anything you do and you know, novice to intermediate to advance.
Nick Delgadillo:It's like all these concepts make so much sense because you're forced to think about them in this physical, physical realm, in this like training realm, and you have this constant feedback loop, which is really important, right. So you have this feedback loop of like here's a workout, here's the weight that I did, next time I have to go up, or a week from now I have to go up. So the cycle, the feedback loop, is very clear and it's fairly predictable and you have this like constant. You know process application, did it work? Did it not work? What do I need to tweak to make it work? So it's like the OODA loop thing is like very applicable there, right? That's why people who think about it like really gravitate towards this, because it's it's kind of like really really clear and it gives you a way to approach a lot of things in your life and controls how you make observations, decisions, actions and learning that through the feedback loops, which is John Boyd's OODA loop sketch.
Mark McGrath:And that is, you know again, starting strength is one of the Ponch has used this quote before on the show where he says so you know everything about John Boyd without knowing anything about John Boyd. And starting strength really is that, because ultimately, what it's doing is it's changing thinking, right, it's disrupting me to the point where I can identify the mismatch and I realize that I have to change my models and my understanding of the way things are, in this case fitness and how my body functions. And as I do, that reorientation that you're describing that implicitly guides and controls or shapes how I observe, which in turn shapes how I decide, how I act and how I learn via the feedback loops. And that's where we would add on to Gwynn's article, which is a great starting point on OODA loop for strength training, that the orientation is really what starting strength is making me do.
Nick Delgadillo:Once.
Mark McGrath:I have that as part of my repertoire. That affects directly how I'm going to see things, how I'm going to test things, try them out, learn and then ultimately I'm going to be able to improve my capacity for free and independent action. And again, fitness wise, I've yet to run into anything that remotely approaches it conceptually, but also in practice. And the other thing is that we've said this a couple of times you have to do the work, we tell. We tell this to clients all the time. We don't we're not showing up to your firm with a magic pill. We don't have. We don't have a magic drug that you can just take and everything's going to be fine. You actually have to do the work. So there is a, there is a lot of learning that comes with starting strength, and that's great, because you can't adapt unless you're learning. If you're not learning, you can't adapt Right. And you guys, I know that's a big part of your mission there.
Nick Delgadillo:Yeah, it's interesting my prior life, before full-time, starting strength, was in customer service and then in the logistics world, and a lot of times acting as I was involved in third-party logistics, which I don't know if you know what that is, but it's like you know it's outsourced logistics, right? So warehousing, fulfillment, customer service for companies who don't have the infrastructure or the finances to be able to do it themselves. So it's a really cool business growing, growing like very, very rapidly and it's very fast paced. And I think, fundamentally, my job was to educate and teach people, clients how logistics works and how we act as the interface between them and their customers, right. So, you know, I think about it in terms of being being like a consultant, right, and when you're so, I kind of kind of came with that experience plus my years of coaching experience. And then, you know, now, now with starting strength, it's like I made the connection immediately.
Nick Delgadillo:It's like this is this is this is a template for consulting that works really really well and good consult.
Nick Delgadillo:It kind of goes both ways, right? You kind of depending on on how you come at it, but it's like good consulting looks like this it's like you have a problem right, here is a process and it's a simple process because we have to start at the most simple process because we don't know what. We don't know like, we don't know how well you can implement things. We don't know like if, if you can even do this right, if if you're like maybe you need to rethink everything, and it's like let's just start a process and let's see what happens, and then the coach's job or the consultant's job is to guide somebody along this process that they own themselves right. So it's like it's just kind of like this, like again, I keep saying this idea of like this template, but you can just apply it to so many things in life. It's like here's a simple process. This is our starting point. The starting strength novice linear progression, the starting strength program is your starting point for strength training for the rest of your life.
Nick Delgadillo:It's not a program you're going to do forever. It's the starting point, it's our, it's our initiation into a process that is going to take now you through the rest of your life of training. But that program covers so many variables. It takes care of all of the physiological, psychological, logistical necessities of a good program, all packaged really, really neatly and we could just start there. And it gives us so much information, it gives us so much feedback and it's also effective right, because it covers all the bases from a physiological and biological standpoint.
Nick Delgadillo:But you also you learn about how you respond, you as a coach. You learn about how good somebody is at moving and receiving coaching. You learn about the person's compliance, like how can they stick to a program. You learn about how hard they're willing to work very, very quickly. So you're just, you're just getting all of this information very, very quickly, both as a coach and as a lifter, and it's just setting you up for a much smoother process down the line, because everything should just evolve off of that process, just like with good consulting right, yeah, that's so.
Mark McGrath:When you use the word template, I would augment that and say not to the point where something is formulaic or or linear, because bodies are all different, psychologies are all different, the age that somebody's training, that the template, as you say, is augmented by the fact that the entire program is built on learning and adaptation, so it becomes a.
Mark McGrath:It's a, it's a living process that you, as a complex adaptive system, can benefit from as time advances, in order to prove your capacity for free and independent action. I mean, I would tell any listener that's listening to the show and anybody that you know that we work with, you know this is something to take a look at, because this is essentially what you're trying to do in every aspect of your life. You're trying to improve who you are, what you do from a, from an organizational standpoint, from an individual standpoint, and to do that you have to change the way you think and you have to make, make concrete steps to do the hard work, and it helps with coaching and guidance. Now let's talk that and we'll start to wind down here. The starting strength coaching designation is not something that you just hand out, that I can do online and do a certificate and boom, I'm in. Walk through that process of how you make coaches in starting strength.
Nick Delgadillo:Yeah well, the simple answer is the coaching evaluation is very simple. The preparation is what takes time, right? So basically, in order to become a certified starting strength coach, you have to pass a coaching evaluation, which happens at the seminars here in Wichita Falls. So what happens at the seminar is anybody can sign up for the seminar. The seminar is a full presentation of the starting strength method. So we have lectures. You know, it's basically the book and the programming book delivered live, right? So you have.
Nick Delgadillo:We have lectures on all the background material on the first day. So anatomy, physiology, mechanics, and then a coaching lecture and then a basic overview on like strength training on Friday night and then the whole rest of the weekend and it kind of builds, you know, just in the same way that we've been talking. It builds day one is is all of your first principles, and then day two it's a two and a half hour lecture on the squat. Then we do a squat platform where everybody learns how to squat, takes turns, coaching each other, do a squat platform where everybody learns how to squat, takes turns, coaching each other, because we understand that one of the best way to learn something is to actually teach it to somebody else. So everybody takes turns coaching each other, teaching each other the lifts, and we do that for all the lifts throughout the weekend and then the weekend ends with a programming lecture and then a Q&A. So basically you get the entire kind of starting strength method within a weekend. And let's say there's 25 people that come to this. Out of those 25 people there's going to be a small handful who are there to be evaluated. So when we run the platform sessions, everybody takes turns teaching and coaching each other on the lifts with a coach like myself, a staff coach, who's overseeing and kind of helping, right? So my job that weekend is to make sure that everybody leaves lifting better and understanding how the lifts work.
Nick Delgadillo:So when we're going through the platform, like if you were there and you were coaching somebody and you were just there as an attendee, I would help you with a teaching method, right. So like we show you how to do it and then your job is to just do it with somebody else, and then you know whenever you need help, I'll step in and help you out, make sure you don't mess anybody up. And then whenever the lifter is lifting you know you may try coaching a little bit You'll say a couple things. I may point some things out to you, but I'm making sure that the lifter is doing what they need to do and that they're having a good experience and learning what they need to learn Because of that structure, because you'll be in a group with five people who you've never met before and everybody's learning from each other. That's a great way to evaluate new coaches. So let's say you're there now and you're wanting to be evaluated. So what I will do then is you will take over my job and make sure that that lifter is learning how to do the lift properly. So you're coaching that lifter for that session and then I'm acting as an evaluator rather than as the coach. So I'm evaluating you and then stepping in whenever I need to step in, helping you out whenever you need help out.
Nick Delgadillo:But we have kind of a structure for our evaluation. We want to see how well you do with the teaching method. We want to see how well you communicate and control the lifter, whether through verbal means or tactile means or whatever. And then just general coaching, like are you seeing the deviations from the model? And then, are you correcting them, are you cuing effectively, and stuff like that. So that's how the evaluation works.
Nick Delgadillo:If you pass that, then you do. An oral board gets scheduled and that's a two hour. Just three experienced starting strength coaches on a video call with you just firing questions at you for two hours about the background, like all the first principles, all the integration, all that stuff. So that's the evaluation process. The challenge is that when you show up to that evaluation, it's 100%, it's just pass, fail and you have to prepare yourself in order to pass that evaluation. So it's not a thing you can just go to and get everything you need in that weekend. I've been to certification courses for various things where it's like you do the course and then there's some kind of a certification at the end, basically to validate that the things you learned that weekend you're able to do and execute right. That's not the way this works. You have to come already prepared. So people are not yeah, yeah.
Nick Delgadillo:So it's, it's out, it's the hours on the platform, it's just getting repetition, getting experience, coaching, and what we're trying, what we're really trying to evaluate for, is that this person is already a coach and that we're just giving kind of like the stamp of approval on that day, right, so, so, yeah, um, so, along those lines. There's all kinds of material to prepare people for that evaluation. We've got a coach prep course through Starting Strength, through the Asgard company. Our gyms serve as an apprenticeship and preparation program for the certification too, but it comes down to just experience. So you have to be experienced to pass.
Mark McGrath:How many gyms across the country are there now?
Nick Delgadillo:There are 25 open right now. There are 40 sold and then more to come.
Mark McGrath:Excellent, and then how many would you estimate certified starting strength coaches are there?
Nick Delgadillo:Around the world. There's around 150 or so 150. Wow.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, so it's an elite group.
Nick Delgadillo:Yeah, I hate to call it elite. I mean we have affiliates all over the world.
Mark McGrath:It's a distinguished group.
Nick Delgadillo:It's a distinguished group, but there's not a lot of people. It's hard to say elite because there's not a lot of people going for it right, because it's not well known. Yeah, say elite because there's not a lot of people going for it, right Because it's not well known. So like, for example, if we had 50 people trying to certify and we only certified five out of those 50 every month, yeah, you could say it's not that hard to do. Now I will say that the people who pass our certification are excellent coaches. I would put any of them up against anybody anywhere, including at professional and Division I barbell training levels. Right, I mean they can teach people how to move, they can teach people how to do barbells and they understand strength training. So for sure, in that regard, yes, they're very, very high-quality coaches. Anybody who is looking to learn the barbell train you should not hesitate to pay somebody whatever they want to charge you to learn how to do barbell training from a Starting Strength certified coach. They are very, very good.
Nick Delgadillo:But Starting Strength is still like even though we've been around for a long, so to speak potentially put a limit on how fast this can grow, because the standard for achieving that certification is very high. The starting strength gyms do a really good job of preparing people because you just have lots and lots of reps and they're only doing starting strength in those gyms, right. So the timeline has compressed quite a bit for how quickly we can get somebody certified. We can do it in seven to nine months now, where typically it was like a two-year process of self-learning and self-coaching Me myself. It took me over a year because I had to hustle for clients, people to see people to coach. I had to learn all the material myself, read the website, read the books, read the articles and stuff like that, and then lots of trial and error.
Nick Delgadillo:When you're in a gym doing starting strength under the mentorship of a starting strength coach, it happens much, much quicker and I think we can get that down even faster. But again, it takes time. It's not a thing that we can just put out and have people certified in a short amount of time, because you have to gain the experience that that will always be the standard. It will always be a coaching certification. It'll never be just a, a certification just to like add to your, to your letters after your name. You know what.
Mark McGrath:I'm saying, yeah, I feel like doing I mean doing the program at any level. You know, whether you're coaching or whether you're just doing it, it's going to, in a good way, infect other things that you're doing. It's going to have a positive impact on literally everything you're doing personally and professionally. So I can't recommend it enough. One thing before we close I wanted to ask you about. You know I had mentioned how you know I wish I would have had this at high school sports college, marine Corps, and I wish that the Starry strength books were on the Commandant's reading list and the CNO's reading list and the other service chiefs, because the fitness gained you would think that war fighters would, we know, would greatly benefit from this. Are there any institutions? Have you seen any institutional embrace of starting strength? Have coaches been able to get into organizations or teams or whatever that are having an impact and sort of growing it that way?
Nick Delgadillo:I think at a fairly low level. I think the most yes. So the answer is yes. Whenever you're talking about institutional training, there's always so many competing incentives and variables that it's very, very difficult to get anything accomplished. I mean, being a Marine, I think you kind of understand what I'm talking about, right. It's difficult to change a giant bureaucratic structure. It works far better at the individual level and this is a thing that CrossFit did really well is it basically infected all the lower level guys and then it went up.
Nick Delgadillo:Yeah, usually things in a military or government setting or large institution go from the top down right, so so there's that aspect of it means, which usually means that they're not very ineffective.
Mark McGrath:There's probably yeah, there's probably more effective stuff out there right, exactly, exactly so.
Nick Delgadillo:So there's a couple things. I think strength training is becoming more. I don't know if accepted is the right word, but I think people are understanding how important strength training is. So there's always going to be this like generational deal where, like the kids right now who are in the gym squatting, pressing, benching, deadlifting, trying to hit PRs and trying to get big, eventually will become the leaders and then that will filter down right. To answer your question, probably the major one that I know of is at West Point.
Nick Delgadillo:So Matt Larson, the director of combatives there, is a big fan of starting strength. We've had him on the starting strength podcast Awesome guy. He's a huge proponent, you know, in his combatives university certification belt program, strength training is a component. So there's like a shooting component, there's a fighting component and there's a medical first aid component and then there's a lifting component in terms of the fitness. So there's strength standards associated with that and then he always recommends starting strength to people wanting to learn and do strength training.
Nick Delgadillo:But there's a couple of folks at West Point who are running courses based on starting strength. So my understanding is that all those know all those, all those lieutenants coming out of there have had some exposure to starting strength, which is huge. It's a, it's a big deal. You know these are, these are people coming out of the most prestigious military academy in the army, of having been exposed to the idea that strength training is important. So so, yeah, I would say that's probably the the the biggest one. On a smaller level, yeah, there's people all over the place doing this, but nothing like no, no, no big structure it would work, great man.
Mark McGrath:It would, it would work really really well.
Nick Delgadillo:I mean, you know Rip always talks about this and he gets super frustrated, you know. But it's like you know you got. You got six months basic training for these guys going into infantry or more. Right, maybe it's more than six months, but you have them all at one place, from basic all the way through their individual training for infantry, and that's a perfect opportunity to get somebody pretty damn capable, you know, in terms of strength training, and you could do the same thing in the Marine Corps, you know. But my thing is always like, as soon as you hand it to an institution at that size, they're going to screw it up. I would much rather, I would much rather like take the bottom up approach, like get people excited and get people thinking like hey, hey, you know, boss, I think that you're doing this wrong. I think that's much more healthy than trying to force it down some institutions because they're going to do it wrong.
Mark McGrath:I would think, as a Marine, for a Marine officer, the place where it would have made the most sense would have been at the basic school, where all those second lieutenant that have made it through OCS Maybe like instead of like the core you started at, say, the basic school, and get officers to really understand fitness this way and also get started, because every single base has barbells, every single base has barbells and barbells, and young guys like to lift weights. Yeah, and it's cheap too. Right, it's cheaper than machines and they actually work. That would be interesting. All right, so bring us home with this. We're on the cusp of 2025. Somebody's listening to this and thinking I need some inspiration to get off my ass and to do something to get my life back, to work on my own capacity for free and independent action from a physical fitness standpoint, and this looks appealing. I see that Nicholas Nassim Taleb has written the foreword of the barbell prescription. Okay, I'm into it, nick Delgadillo. What do I have to do to get started?
Nick Delgadillo:Well, there's a couple. There's a few things you can do. If you're a self-learner, tinker like you, want to get into this and learn it yourself. Startastrengthcom is the largest library of articles and videos on strength training in existence. You can't find anything else bigger than that, so startandstrengthcom might be your starting point. There's a YouTube channel that has like learn to lift videos, learn how to squat, learn how to deadlift, you know all that stuff in a very nicely packaged, easy to follow format. And then, obviously, the book. The book is great, right.
Nick Delgadillo:So it's uh, it's technical, but Ripito has a has a skill of making technical, technical things very readable, so much so that people read the book and think they understand what's going on and they actually don't. Right, so you can actually read it three or four times or come back to it a year later and pick up more stuff. So it excellent, Really, really good. So that's for kind of the. I want to try to figure this out on my own kind of guy. If you're near a starting strength gym or a starting strength affiliate, totally worth the time. It'll cost you 150, 200 bucks or whatever to get a session with a coach. Go in, do it. It'll put you on the path. You'll learn all the lifts right from the beginning. Maybe talk about programming a little bit. Start training on your own if you want to do that and that's probably the best way to do it If you're near a gym and can be a member, obviously like having a relationship with a coach if you want to do it.
Nick Delgadillo:That way is the most optimized version of this thing. Just have somebody help guide you through it. If you're not near a coach, if you're not near a gym, a lot of our coaches offer online coaching so you can do a remote coaching situation as well. We've got coaches and gyms all over the world. Franchise gyms are just in the US, but we've got affiliate gyms all over the world. Franchise gyms are just in the US, but we've got affiliate gyms all over the place. Brussels, just all over the place, but here in the States.
Mark McGrath:You also have franchise and affiliated. We have both. Yes, yeah, you have both. Yeah, so it's 25 franchises. How many affiliated? If you add the affiliated numbers, what's the number up to? It's around 20, around 20 affiliates worldwide, I say, and then most of them in the us. So you say you had 40 franchises sold. Is that in addition to the 25 open now uh, 40 total, yeah, so okay, another 15 on the way, yeah coming online and those are a combination of, like current owners who have agreements for multiple gyms and then,
Mark McGrath:also gyms that are in the works, that are that are in pre-opening right I see, and then are you going to open it up at some point for more on top of 40, or what do you guys think it's? We're open for more yeah, okay so if you're listening, you want to franchise.
Nick Delgadillo:there you go, yeah, go to gymscom yeah, you'll be talking to me, so give me a call.
Mark McGrath:That's right. You're going to go right to the CEO. I again, personally I highly. First of all, I want to thank Jim Reed, my friend, getting me into this. I want to thank Pete Yeh for getting me started, introducing us personally when we met. I want to highly encourage everybody to get the books, but also to. Rip's podcast is phenomenal. It's colorful. The videos are you mentioned. There's the Learn the Lift playlist, but there's also additional videos. There's really no excuses. So I guess what we're saying for 2025, that the resources are all there for everyone to take advantage of and improve their own capacity for freedom and action, destroying your old uh models of what you think fitness is uh and creating new ones with starting strength, which we highly recommend now. Thank you, uh. Thank you so much for joining us on no way out right thank you.
