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Brianna Battles  00:01

Welcome to the Practice Brave Podcast. I am the host Brianna Battles, founder of pregnancy and postpartum athleticism, and CEO of Everyday Battles. I’m a career strength and conditioning coach, entrepreneur, mom of two wild little boys and a lifelong athlete. I believe that athleticism does not end when motherhood begins, and this podcast is dedicated to coaching you by providing meaningful conversations, insights and interview topics related to fitness, mindset, parenting and of course, all the nuances of pregnancy and postpartum, from expert interviews to engaging conversations and reflections. This podcast is your trustworthy, relatable resource for learning how to practice brave through every season in your life. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Practice Brave Podcast. Today, I’m here with Jason Brown, and we’re going to be talking about training fundamentals that are really helpful for both athletes and coaches. To keep in mind, I’m going to let Jason formally introduce himself, because he is a very experienced coach and has a lot going on in what he does and what he’s pursuing, still, even as a student. So Jason, thank you for being here.

Jason Brown  01:15

Yes, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. It’s it’s great to connect with more like minded people in this online world we’re living in today,

Brianna Battles  01:23

absolutely or just talking about the value of getting connected and having conversations and just going beyond just basically just following people online and further having conversations. And that’s what I love, having this podcast and this platform for. So give us a little bit of your background as a coach, but even like, what preceded getting into coaching?

Jason Brown  01:45

Yeah, so I’ve been involved with strength and conditioning from a very young age. I was exposed to it real early because my mother was into power lifting, and that kind of was the catalyst for strength training and muscles and bodybuilding and all the great stuff that you know, I was exposed to early on. And for me, it was always a way to build my my skills with athletics. And I was lucky, really, really lucky to have access to a great facility locally that had strength of the conditioning coaches that you know later went on to be division one strength coaches, and one of my main coaches interned with Paula Quinn for a couple years. So I had exposure to a lot of things early on that I think, kind of set me up for the direction I went with strength training, with conditioning, with the conjugate system, learning about Louis Simmons and West Side barbell and all these great training systems. And for me, it was kind of always, I always was really enamored by program design early, even early on, I think this like creative outlet of, like writing training programs, even though I wasn’t really writing programs yet as a as a young coach, that was kind of the the thing for me that I always really kind of geeked out on and wanted to go deeper with and when I started out, I don’t Brianna, I don’t know how old you are, but when I started I’m 42 so when I started out, I was reading teenation. Like Teen nation was like the hub of all the great coaches of the of like 2000 early 2000s Yes. And I think just from that experience, and then reading those articles, and then doing those programs, and going through, you know, the who’s who, of training programs on teenation, and doing those programs on myself, and being like, wow, this, I like this, or I don’t like this, really, kind of, like, opened up my mind to a lot of different possibilities. And I always was very much interested in the strength and conditioning, but I think a lot of my family members thought that there wasn’t really a whole lot of of future in being a trainer, right? Like, you’re not going to have benefits, you’re not going to, you know, you’re going to work a lot of hours, not make a lot of money, and, you know, you’re not going to have health care and all that stuff. And I’m like, yeah, that that may be true, but this is really what I love. And it, it ended up, obviously, being the thing that I, I did full time and pursued. And it’s, you know, we weren’t living in a time where there was online. There was an online world. Was training people in person. So, long story short, I later, you know, decided going the military after college. You know, did my undergrad, went into the military, got exposed to CrossFit before the military, and that kind of opened my mind up to this whole world of endurance training. And when I was coming up in the strength and conditioning world, it was like endurance training was over here. Strength and Conditioning was over here. And like, they didn’t exist together. They were they were very separate and very different. And molecularly, if we look at just physiologically how these things work, they were very different things. You didn’t mix the two. And so I was like, Well, you can’t do endurance training because that’ll make you slow, weak and fat, and that doesn’t do what we want, you know, in terms of athletics. And of course, you know, if you’re training people just for body composition, it didn’t make sense. But. So I realized through CrossFit, actually, that there was more to this, and that was kind of the catalyst for going deeper with the aerobic system. And, you know, going to graduate school, getting a master’s degree in Exercise Science and looking really deep in cardiac physiology, and then obviously, later pursuing a PhD in these very topics was really something that I knew there was more there, and I didn’t necessarily know how these things interacted, but I wanted to know more. And what I was kind of late, later would discover was that all of these things do mix really very well, and not only do they mix very well, but they complement each other, where we can improve someone’s longevity, their recovery, and all of the underlying support systems that help us get more from our strength in hypertrophy work. And when you do it correctly, it opens the kind of the doors to this I always say, like the Holy Grail of training. For me, the holy grail of training was like, How do I get these things to communicate strength training, and how can I get someone better results, have better longevity, and get more from what I’m delivering to them? And that was it for me. That was the concurrent model of training, conjugate plus aerobic training. Was it so present day? I think that was, you know, really the thing that allowed me to be successful is I was able to to write articles for sites like T nation and Elite FTS, and 500 articles later, I had a lot of people in the online space that trusted me. So that helped me, you know, do online training. It helped me launch a training, a low ticket training subscription, and have 1000s of people that train with me on a day to day basis. But kind of like to take a step back, which is interesting about this journey for me. I initially started online programming for CrossFit gyms, writing programs for 200 plus CrossFit gyms. And when you have 20,000 people a day doing your training, you learn a lot. Real quick. You learn a lot about what works and what doesn’t, and how can we get people to to do the stuff that we know we need them to do, which maybe isn’t as sexy as strength training, but we know it’s equally as important. So I got very good at tricking people into doing aerobic training, into doing non sexy training, into pushing and pulling sleds. And, you know, people joke with me now. People that were clients back 10 years ago were like, Hey, you should have been you should have invented higher rocks. We were doing this stuff like, I know, but you know, it’s like one of those things. I don’t want to toot my own horn, but we are toot my own horn, but we were pushing and pulling slides and doing loaded carries, you know, at 200 plus CrossFit gyms, and those were the things that made the biggest dent for people in terms of their their sustainability and the results that they got long term. So this journey for me has been really, really unique. It has been kind of this, I guess, like, really multifaceted journey, where I’ve learned about a lot of different things on the way. But one thing, I think, if I had to, like, kind of summarize this all in one thing, it would be programming is is art and it’s science. It’s not one or the other. You know, you got the science community that’s, like, science based, science based, right? But guess what? If someone doesn’t do the program because it’s too plain or too boring, science basis doesn’t mean anything. It means nothing if someone can’t comply to the program long term. So I got really, really good at being able to blend these worlds, and I think that knowing that how things play out in the real world, in the trenches, having the experience myself, having, you know, gone deep on my own training journey, which is obviously it’s still evolving. At 42 years of age, I’m still learning new things. These are the things that really move the needle for me and allow me to to get people great results across across the globe.

Brianna Battles  08:35

And I love that. I feel like there’s so much here to talk about. And thank you for sharing like, such a detailed background info. And I love that you’ve been in the game this long, and you have also grown up, so to speak, professionally in the era of being able to start online and also be coaching in person. Bridge the two kind of have that hybrid training approach or coaching approach, I should say, because a lot of people are coming in now and just focusing on the online, but I don’t, I personally don’t feel like you can be very successful online until you have a lot of reps of working in person. And I just, I just love that the era that you came up in, I think speaks a lot to overall success and longevity in the coaching industry.

Jason Brown  09:21

I think you’re 100% right. I do think that there’s something to be gained from in person and seeing how people move, and seeing how people even people’s disposition to to the training. Like I said, I think that science, this whole science based movement, which, you know, someone being a in a PhD program. People probably think I’m more science based, but I I do think that it’s equal parts. I don’t think that it’s I think that the pendulum swings both ways. I don’t think we should be so rigid in all science base and resting three minutes between every exercise and so on and so forth, and going for mechanical tension. All these great things we know about, there is something to be said about getting some. And lit up to do the training too, and being able to even the art of what it looks like, right, right? It’s very much an important piece to getting people to do this training. And I think that’s one of the things I took from CrossFit, which, you know, I don’t know if other people took that from it, but for me, it was like, hey, there’s something sexy here that makes people want to do the training

Brianna Battles  10:21

exactly you get. It’s like that psychological buy in which could be, which was still is so hard in the fitness industry with attrition rate and whatnot. And having that community having, like, you said, like, almost like the sexy side of fitness, but then making that sustainable

Jason Brown  10:37

Exactly, exactly.

Brianna Battles  10:38

So before we dive into details, because I do want to talk about programming. I feel like that is such an elusive topic for so many, both athletes and coaches. Can we like pause for a second and talk about your mom? Because if you’re 42 years old and your mom was power lifting and that’s what you grew up with, feel like that was very, very rare and very special. Like, what an OG athlete mom,

Jason Brown  11:04

yeah, it’s, I mean, it’s funny, like, my all my friends growing up, my mom had muscles, and I, you know, was lucky to have, like, a really, really good genetics as far as gaining lean tissue. And, you know, my mom always joked that she had abs when she was pregnant, yeah. And my friends were always, like, scared that my mom could beat them in arm wrestling, which she could, which she could. She usually arm wrestle my friends and beat all them, but, um, but, but, yeah, that that certainly helps, kind of, I mean, my kids are growing up seeing I have a home gym, extensive home gym, and my wife and I are always training, and my kids are out there training. And, you know, it’s funny, my I’ve got three kids, nine, seven and six, and they can all do dead hang, pull ups, pull ups, not chin ups, pull ups. You know, we went to a thing where there was a Marine Corps recruiting, recruiting thing. In the Marine Corps, they, they’re, like, famous for having the pull up bar and like, hey, how many pull ups can do? And all of my kids get up, I boost them up, and they’re, they’re knocking out. They knocked out. Each of them knocked out three pull ups. And all the people are like, look what the heck like these kids are doing, dead, hanging pull ups, strict pull ups. So I do think that, you know, it’s really, really the kids are sponges. I’m probably was the same way I was going to the she would take me to the commercial gym, which I’m, you know, probably wasn’t a big deal back then. But, you know, those are things that are probably harder to do now, yeah, I would always go and see these people working on and lifting weights and, and I always thought it was super cool. And, you know, it was kind of one of those things for me that I, I remember I had my first, like, easy bar, and I would like, roll it into my mom’s car and, like, take it. We go, like, on vacation somewhere I’d like take it and and do floor presses on the ground and just various things. And I knew how to I do just kind of organically. So it definitely was a catalyst for a lot.

Brianna Battles  12:52

I just think it’s great because, you know, I think so many people are like, almost thinking that being an athlete mom, or training during pregnancy, or having that be a big part of your life isn’t is like new. And while it is, in some ways, it’s I just love hearing examples like that, where it’s like, no like women have been lifting and pursuing this for a long time. It’s just there’s so much more attention on it now. And I just, I like seeing the influence it had on you, because you are sort of a great example of what we are all trying to instill in our own children and our families and our local communities, when, you know, trying to be that example for our kids, and not just preach about it, but share it. So it sounds like your mama was ahead of was ahead of the times in a lot of ways for women being involved in strength training and having muscle and not being in the like skinny small aerobics era.

Jason Brown  13:43

Yeah, totally. I mean, yeah. And this was in the, you know, the early 90s, so, which is a completely different time, as you probably know.

Brianna Battles  13:51

Oh, totally. That was so awesome. So let’s talk a little bit about programming in my coach certification course. That always tends to be something where coaches get stuck and they have either a lot of insecurity around, like, is this right? Is this good? Are they going to like it? Are they going to get bored and just again, kind of wanting this? Is this right? Question, regardless of their background, you know, it’s like, I have really experienced coaches that have, they know their exercise science degree. They have their master’s degree. They’ve been coaching for a long time, but they also feel like when it comes to the the science part of programming, they’re winging it, and it’s confusing to know if they’re doing it right. So now that I’ve like proceeded with all of that, give me some insight.

Jason Brown  14:39

Yeah, so this is a great this is a great jump off point, because I think that in the in academia, even at graduate level, even at a PhD level, they’re not teaching program design Well, and what they are teaching is not practical CSCs. Same deal. You can take your CSCS, which is the goal. Old standard with strength conditioning, and still not know how to write a program. I got out of graduate school, and I had people that were kids that were going to division one programs that said, Hey, I’m training basketball players. How do you think I should train them? Should I really, like, focus on training their their calves and their ability to jump? And I’m like, if that’s what think Danny, then there’s a disconnect here we there’s a lot of things that we need to unpack. So I do think that coaches overthink it. But in their own defense, I don’t think that they’re well prepared with all of these certifications and all of these things that they go through.

Brianna Battles  15:34

Yeah, then and still. I mean, I don’t feel like that area of strength conditioning has an exercise science has evolved much from when you and I kind of came into the scene,

Jason Brown  15:45

no, and it hasn’t. And I think, you know, it’s always interesting to me, because I came from the world of, like, being in the trenches, and got exposed to, like, Louie Simmons and West Side barbell, yeah. So I scoured a lot of these texts. I read a lot of I read all of Louis’ books, and I read science of practice, strength training, and all the books for his certification a special strength coach, which is really hands on, and like write programming and get graded on programming. And I see this commonality in the power lifting world. Power Lifting coaches, they might have no formal education, are great for all intents and purposes. I think, like most power lifting coaches, people that are power lifters are great programmers, because they’ve been in the trenches. They know it’s practical. They’ve strained under weight. And I tended to like when I was looking at all these texts, I saw this commonality of like, exercise selection, exercise order, how many exercises are in a session, usually it was like four to six exercises per session. So really like trimming the fat and like getting to, like, what is the most beneficial in terms of return on investment. And I just saw that these coaches had such a great grasp on what to put in and what to leave out, like, their discretion of what to put in a program and what to leave out of a program. I think that restraint is a hallmark of a great coach. So I think that when you have just one side of it, where maybe you spent the time you got a PhD and you went deep with all these different certifications, but you didn’t get in the trenches and train yourself and strain underweight, there’s oftentimes a disconnect there. So I think that, you know, and kind of going back to what you initially said about, you know, the experience before going online, you got to do this stuff yourself. You got to be a guinea pig yourself. If you go into the gym and you do 12 exercises and you realize, Wow, I actually don’t feel great. I didn’t get a whole lot from that. I felt like I was just kind of going through the motions. My intensity wasn’t super high. Then usually those coaches see that like, Hey, maybe I should try less exercises and see if I can put in a higher level of intention and thus have a higher level of intensity and get more from the training, as opposed to just going through, you know, the kitchen sink of training, if you will, right? So I think that that is the piece that you can’t you can’t read in the textbook you can’t make up. The experience, the in the trenches, experience the being underweight, the feeling that what these sessions feel like, you can’t replace that. So all the education the world can’t save. You got to do it yourself.

Brianna Battles  18:13

No, absolutely, I 1,000% agree with that. And when you can sort of marry those two worlds of like, having the training and knowledge and background where you’re learning beyond the gym, but then you’re also implementing and experimenting and saying, well, that like doesn’t make sense, or I do get bored, or I won’t, or I’m not getting stronger because I know I didn’t repeat, I didn’t do this enough, or didn’t like progress this enough over time. I do think that CrossFit was really pivotal in kind of teaching people aspects of structuring a workout depending on what kind of CrossFit gym you are in. I have, like, a lot of CrossFit coaches that come into my world, but at the same time, there’s aspects of that programming that misses the mark in a lot of ways, too, where people don’t really have the right understanding of what a, quote, good workout looks like, or what a somewhat proper, like macro cycle looks like.

Jason Brown  19:09

Yeah, exactly. And it’s, it’s hit or miss. Some people might know that you need to have some structure to your training. And that was one of the things that I tried to when I, when I started programming for CrossFit gyms. You know, I the core, the key element of my training was conjugate style training. So we did it was mixed modality, form of training, but we would repeat some of the same things on a regular basis. We would do accessory exercises on a regular basis. And those things help really move the needle for people. However, people would see the same exercise and often think like, I need more variability. It’s like, well, actually, no, you just need to get better at this basic squat hinge, push, pull, carry patterns. You don’t really need to be doing a full snatch all the time. You could benefit from just improving your squat pattern. So you have to really, and I think for coaches, you have to really be able to build value in those things. Build value and repetition, and you can still have variation. But, you know, doing a front squat once every 12 weeks, how are you going to get better at it?

Brianna Battles  20:09

Yes, 1,000% Yeah, it’s funny. I talked to my mom, she does CrossFit, and she was like, I don’t know why I can’t hit this number that I used to be able to do. And I’m like, That’s because you haven’t done it in like eight weeks. Mom, like, you got to do this every week if you want to get stronger and but you know, she doesn’t always want to listen to her daughter. It’s fine.

Jason Brown  20:30

No, no, they don’t, but they’ll listen to the coach. And do you know whatever they have them doing?

Brianna Battles  20:35

No, absolutely. So Okay, for those that are not familiar, what do you mean when you say conjugate.

Jason Brown  20:42

So the conjugate system was popularized by Louis Simmons, and conjugate as a whole, means joined together. So when you join together different styles of training, ie endurance, work, strength work in the same program. Now there are a lot of different ways that it can be done, and really it’s kind of up to interpretation. You can do it in the same session, like CrossFit does, where CrossFit gym is typically like you do a strength piece and then a Metcon, metabolic conditioning, short for metabolic conditions. You’ll do some strength piece, and you’ll follow that up with a Metcon. And then the CrossFit open and different, you know, competitive CrossFit will mix in these elements within the same competition, which is a test. It’s not, I don’t look at that as training. I look at that as a test. So if you’re testing your fitness, that’s one thing. You’re training your fitness, that’s another. So conjugate was popularized by Louis Simmons from infamous West Side barbell, and he had some of the strongest power lifters in the world. And this system was built on training, heavy training, for speed training, repetitively accessory based exercises to bring up limitations. Training base of your fitness, which is things like general physical preparedness, which CrossFit probably made more popular than Louie did, which is like pulling sleds and doing loaded carries and kind of like unconventional things. All of these things serve a purpose, but at the at the whole of this, if we just kind of break this down in its simplest form, it’s concurrent training. We’re working on different qualities of fitness at the same time. Now, again, it’s very nuanced. You can do it a number of ways, and there’s a lot of research on different styles of concurrent training, doing strength, first doing endurance, first doing them in separate sessions. How can we, you know, manage the molecular pathways that exist of endurance training and hypertrophy? So there are all these different nuances to this, which is really, really cool for me. It’s really, really cool when you break it down. But I think just for like anyone that might be new to it, training strength on one day, training endurance on the other Right. And how do those things work together when we can have dissimilar modes of training within the same week? That is the question, and that’s what I’ve been trying to maximize now for the better part of a decade. And there’s a lot of ways to skin the cat. I mean, CrossFit gyms like your mom is going to they’re probably doing it how I mentioned, where they’re doing a strength piece followed by a Mechon. The question is, is, whether or not, is that the best way for most people? I would say it’s numb. But if you just like her gym, if they just started doing a strength piece on one day and then a conditioning piece on one day, you’d probably lose a lot of members.

Brianna Battles  23:13

Yeah, that’s why there’s, like, that art and that science of like, how are we, how are we best serving and coaching, but also progressing and keeping people safe and healthy in their training. It’s like a weird word published,

Jason Brown  23:26

sort Yeah, because someone that’s not on the program, like, for instance, if someone’s on my training subscription, and let’s just say they want more variance, they want to do different training all the time, they’re probably not going to last with me, because I’m going to ask them to do the same training for four weeks. Yep, and there might be micro progressions in there across four weeks. But progression, this is, this is a that’s, I think, a really important point. Progression is simply doing the training repeatedly so you might move better with so if you think about this, I always tell people this, and I think this and I think this is a really important for people to be able to look at this through the lens of just like, how does this look across four weeks? So week one, you get exposed to training. Maybe you’ve never seen it before. Maybe it’s exercises you’ve never done before. So that’s just learning. I’m not training. I’m just learning. I’m learning how to move. I’m looking at my app. Oh, I got to do this. I gotta rest this long. I’m learning I’m watching demo videos. Week two, now I’ve done that training one, so it’s familiar, right? So maybe I push a little bit harder, maybe I watch a little bit less demo videos, and I’m focusing more on the actual training session. Week Three, now I know the training I’m probably not even looking at my phone, because I’ve done it now for two weeks. Week four. Now I’m really pushing. So week four, the intensity is the highest. Week four, I’m not fumbling with my phone. Week four, I’m not overthinking. I’m not second guessing, loading. How am I progressing in weight? Am I progressing away? Maybe I feel like it’s an off week or I’ve had a poor night of sleep. Do. All of these things you can take into consideration. Now on the other end of the spectrum, let’s just say I do week one is training, CrossFit style training, where it’s like wads. Week two are new wads. Week three are new wads. Where’s where? How am I getting better at the squat, the hinge, the push, the pull? How am I getting better at my foundational movement patterns? How do I know how to push I don’t know, because it’s new training. So I’m constantly in the cycle of learning.

Brianna Battles  25:25

Now, I love that you said all this. I think it summarizes it really well, because I mean, similar to you, when you have like, online programs, you’re getting people in there, but then you’re also getting feedback from people, and you’re watching, like, the trends with, I guess what you put out there and then, like, what, what their behavior is. And I can tell you with my postpartum program, which I feel as if, if there was ever a need for true progressive overload and trusting a frickin process, it is postpartum where it really frickin matters, in terms of, like building upon a foundation, or creating a foundation, having that neuromuscular connection again, and then building upon that with load, intensity, volume, all of that, right? And one of the number one complaints I get is like, Well, why do the like two weeks repeat? And it’s exactly for the reasons you say. But I think that we’ve been culturally as a fitness industry so conditioned of like, we need variety, and doing the same thing back to back. Does it means I’m is it like as hard, or is not challenging? But like, you just beautifully said, like there is, you are getting better because you’re doing it, because you’ve had that familiarity, you have that foundation, you’re building upon a foundation, and that will give you the best results long term,

Jason Brown  26:41

100% and I have experimented with this extensively over the years. And it’s funny, for a long time on my training subscription, we would do three week blocks of training, so the same variations for three weeks. You know, we do things like speed training. So there’s a progression in there where we’re going up incrementally week to week. But even doing like we’re going to do a heavy front squat, it might be like a heavy three on week one, a heavy two on week two, and a heavy one on week three. So we’re culminating on the highest level of intensity. So again, just basic progressive overload and basic periodization. It’s not overly sexy, but what I found was that the clients I was working with one on one, which are it’s kind of a different business for me, my one on one clients got better results for four weeks. Like by and large, it was just unanimous. They got better results from being exposed the same training a fourth week. So I actually recently, this was probably three or four months ago, I switched all my online training, which is, you know, about 1000 people to a lot of people to potentially upset. I said, Listen, my clients are getting better results on that fourth week, you guys will get better results too. I am 100% certain of it, because when we do a method like cluster sets or wave loading, you need that fourth week to know where to go with the desired load or the desired intensity you need that fourth week. That fourth week is when the magic really happens? Lo and behold, that’s what happened. And I literally have 1000s of testimonials from people that have been on my training over the years of, you know, getting more results from doing less, getting more results from focusing on quality, less exercises, more intention. And now, you know, I would, I would, I would think that the results are going to be even better, because they’re being exposed to the same training in additional week. That additional week doesn’t seem like much, but it really is, because, again, people are not fumbling or not second guessing, and people tend to second guess everything. Well, how should I build? What? You know, what stance should I use? What barbell should I use? Should I use? Bands should I use? I mean, all these different things come into the frame where they like, they’re overthinking, and just like, preventing themselves from actually getting better.

Brianna Battles  28:43

Oh, absolutely. I used like Wendler, like 531 for a long time with clients, because I found that the simplicity of it allowed them to make and myself, like substantial gains and like consistently, you know, like, there you weren’t, you weren’t, like, peaking too early. And similarly, so many people were like, This doesn’t feel like it’s enough. It doesn’t feel like it’s enough. Yet, they were getting stronger and they were being consistent, like, so they were actually, like, there was almost no excuse to not train. Because they’re like, well, it’s not that many exercises. It’s like not that many days of having to do this, and I feel like that was where there was a lot of aha moments, but also a lot of people that just really struggled to trust the process, because it didn’t seem like enough to get the results that they were wanting, and not just in strength, but also in, like, body composition, kind of everything. And I think we’ve been sold a message, and especially online, we see a lot of fancy exercises. We see so many different exercises when it’s like, come work out with me, and it’s like, so many movements that these influencers, yeah, so many. And it’s just like, first of all, that’s not practical for I don’t know anybody with a life outside of the gym. And. You and I both have lives that are attached to the gym, but even still, like, we probably don’t have the capacity to be running a business, being involved with our families, and just like having, again, like life and interest outside of training, to be in the gym that long, with that much volume, and even, like, that much load, which takes more time of training. And so I think it becomes really confusing for people to navigate when that’s what they’re shown. When you and I could both attest to like, quality is going to outlast the quantity,

Jason Brown  30:32

yeah, and it’s, you know, it’s become such a double edged sword, because social media is predicated upon like, going viral and how many followers you have. And you know, interestingly enough, I’ve talked to so many coaches there I’m in I use the train heroic app for my training subscription. There’s 10, over 10,000 coaches in there. And you know, out of 10,000 coaches, I’m in the top 10 for number of subscribers, yeah. And there are, there are coaches in there, have 500,000 subscribers, far more than I do. Yeah. But again, result, you know, results obviously are king. Results are king, and trust is important. And being able to convey this message of like, hey, we we shouldn’t do all these novel exercises. You don’t need them. You can’t even do the basic goblet Swat. Well, why are we doing you know, it’s like the people are that asked the questions about, is this enough? Walk 3000 steps a day, have garbage nutrition. Are sleeping five hours a night or on their screens all day, and they’re worried about the volume they’re doing. It’s like, dude, how about we just get you walking a little bit more, eating a little bit better, and just focusing on some basic movement patterns. Yeah, now consistently for four weeks, hit all the training for four weeks. And then get back to

Brianna Battles  31:41

me, absolutely, I hear you on that, and think we’re fighting the good fight. And honestly conversations like this, where people are like, okay, like, I got it, like, you know, where you just they don’t really know what they don’t know, because they’re only consuming almost one side of things, versus having a little bit more scope and knowledge on there being another way to kind of drive the results that they’re actually looking for.

Jason Brown  32:05

Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting. We I started doing YouTube videos, reviewing other programs on the internet, and it, it took off really fast. My channel grew really, really fast. And I, I didn’t really love doing it, but I, I don’t really, really like, like, poking fun at other people, but some of the programs out there are negligent, and I mean that they’re negligent, they’re they could kill people. That’s how bad some of them are. And just by and large, what I tend to see on the internet of all the programs that I reviewed was that, number one, there’s no command of Programming Fundamentals. So exercise order, exercise selection, sets, reps and restaurants are just like that doesn’t even exist, right? So, so those coaches didn’t even like even open a CSCs textbook or any exercise fizz that has any program design textbook. So that’s number one. Number two, the volume is an inordinate amount of volume. So give you an example, a pattern like a dip, a bar dip, which, as we know, is a pattern that stresses local musculature, and it puts the pecs in a stretch position. And obviously there’s a lot of of activity in the pectorals, triceps and front deltoids. Okay? We know that to be true. It’s a movement that you’re probably not going to ask someone to do five sets of 20, 100 total reps with but I would see stuff. I would see volume like that. So volume was just a complete mismatch for the movement pattern. And then asking people to do 1012, exercises per session, you know, two plus hour training session with just insane volume across those exercises. And again, this is just for me. Yuri vershansky. He’s a famous Russian sports scientist. Famously said any idiot can make any idiot tired. And I always say that when I go speak live to coaches, I always, I always have that quote in my talk, because any coach can make you tired. They can have you do a do 1000 burpees. You’ll be tired, you’ll sweat, you’ll be tired, you’ll be sore. But the question is, is whether or not that’s going to allow you to have long term results. Is that going to allow you to feel better, look better, perform better, live longer? And the unequivocal answer is, no. You need a training plan for that. You need to be able to support all these systems in the human body. And coaches, you know, like yourself, know how to do that, and that is what makes the difference between working out and training.

Brianna Battles  34:28

Yeah, no. I mean, I think it’s been interesting to see just that, almost like, different dogmatic camps within the fitness industry over the last especially, I could say, like, last 15 years, again, as social media has grown, you know, we have, like, Vault body builders and then power lifters and then CrossFitters, but then we have our endurance athletes. So the runners, triathletes, who they do, they don’t want to lift at all. But I think as coaches, we know that there’s value from sprinkling in a lot of that training into one strength conditioning program. That is going to help you be athletic across the lifespan. You and I, I think both talk a lot about being athletic basically after 22 that you can still move and perform and like that is the goal for health, like overall health and wellness, you know. And it’s just been interesting to see that. I think we’re moving away from some of that dogmatic messaging around, why on power lifter, which means I never do cardio, but I still think there’s a little bit of like, I almost like identity politics attached to, you know, fitness choice.

Jason Brown  35:35

Yeah, the whole, the whole cardio thing, is an interesting one, too. I think, you know, hey, if I want to gain lean tissue, I don’t do cardio. Well, there’s a lot to that too to unpack, which we can certainly do, because I think that there’s a lot that’s just not known. And to be honest, it’s not it’s not simple physiologically, it’s not simple to understand it. I have people all the time that will say like, Well, when I do my strength training, I’m, you know, my Apple Watch has me at zone two, and they don’t understand that zone two doing a strength session and zone two during a cardio session are two very different things, just how it plays out physiologically and how the heart adapts, and even things like muscular contraction influence the results and level of cardiac output. So physiologically, there’s a lot to be known. But again, it’s not simple, and I wouldn’t expect someone, even coaches, to really grasp that, unless they’ve done their homework on it.

Brianna Battles  36:29

Yeah, no, it’s, it is just interesting to see. Because, you know, now we’re seeing more attention around hybrid training, which obviously you’ve been doing for like, a long time. But now there’s, there’s, like, a word for it. It’s kind of trendy, like you had mentioned with, with high rocks and whatnot, and it’s good. And, I mean, that’s just, I feel pretty like well rounded training.

Jason Brown  36:55

Well, it’s, and it’s, it’s more, it’s such great marketing, yeah, and I’m, and I, you know, admittedly, I’m not great at marketing. I’m not great at hooks and social media. And, you know, I’ve got C plus social media, and it’s like, I’m not great at hooking those people in and getting them to absorb the information. And that’s where, you know, as a coach, it’s like, we’ve kind of had to evolve and become more influencer ish, if you will, because if you can’t get someone to consume the information, then you can’t have an impact on a lot of people. And that’s I think the challenge for people like us is that you have to figure out how to market this stuff in a way where people will say, like, Hey, maybe I should look a little deeper, or maybe I should look into Rihanna’s program, because maybe I’m training too hard and I’m not doing the right things that are going to help support me long term, right?

Brianna Battles  37:46

Yeah, it really is. It’s, I think, what I like about your approach with coaching, and where I think we’re really in alignment, is creating this, like, what is going to be sustainable, what is going to drive results, what is also going to keep you, like, healthy, feeling good, looking good, and long term, not just for a short season, not just for a six week block or a 30 day challenge or whatever other stuff exists out there, but truly, like this longevity of being late 30s, early 40s, perimenopausal, like training into like your elderly years, what is going to be The thing that allows you to do that, and most of the time, it’s not just one rigid, dogmatic way of training, because life will always throw a curve ball. Right? Like, you might be a power lifter and you might want to lift really heavy, but there might be something that creates a setback, so now you got to evolve your training. You might be an endurance athlete, but something happens, whether it’s an injury or whatever it might be, time capacity, where you don’t have hours and hours to train like that. Now you have to adjust your training like there’s so much value into, I guess, coming out of your one way and introducing a few different ways that will make you a better, well rounded athlete.

Jason Brown  38:57

No, I mean 100% I mean that’s, I think, how I got to this point is being open minded, to look at different forms of training, and even coming from like strength and conditioning to CrossFit was very unorthodox, and there were a lot of things that I didn’t necessarily agree with. And, you know, when I opened a gym, I was wanting to do things a little bit more systematic and but I think that there is something I always thought there was something really great with CrossFit, with the community and with the camaraderie that going through pain of these workouts. But I also think that we have to consider people’s what people really need, like, what is the greatest good for most people? And unfortunately, it’s not doing a snatch, it’s not doing high skill gymnastics or anything that involves something that’s maybe outside of their ability. It’s about giving them what they need for the long term. And you know, we’re not living in a world that is low stress. People are stressed out. People are stress levels are going up. They’re not going down, if we know that to be true, and then we know people are just chronically stressed out or in their. Weak in certain regions of their body, then there are certain things that we can do to address that and bias those things and make sure that they’re getting what they need to be successful long term.

Brianna Battles  40:09

Yeah, absolutely. May I say a lot is like, your training should complement your life, or at least your season of life. It should not further complicate it, you know, so like, what? How do we, like, find that balance? And I think that’s like a constant reassessment, and why having different blocks of training focuses and being adaptable is really going to be the key, whether you are the athlete yourself, or you’re working with somebody and, like, that’s where, you know you mentioned earlier, like, the art of it is being able to read the room and, like, read to the person, and not just stay so rigid and committed to, well, this is the right way. This is what you have to do.

Jason Brown  40:44

Yeah, I’m always weary of anyone that says that. And I think this, you know, like you said, you’ve got on social media, the camps that are just going back and forth, fighting about, you know, you got kettlebells, you got science base, you got Functional Patterns. I mean, all these people are just saying, you know, you’re stupid and but I really do believe that there’s something to be to be gained from being open minded and learning about what someone else is doing. I don’t have all the answers, and I want to continue to grow and learn, but you got to evolve and be willing to hear someone’s point of view and not just fight with people about what’s the right way. There’s no The right way is what is aligned with you right now in your current, like you said, season of life, my season of life right now is very different than it was 10 years ago, you know, prior to kids. I’m sure you know it prior to kids. I mean, it was that was very different, different season of life where I did, I had a different split of training back then. There are certain things I don’t do anymore for the very reason that I just can’t, you know, incur any type of setbacks, like, I can’t be injured, can’t take the risk of being injured now at this, at this age of my life. So I think being receptive to that is very

Brianna Battles  41:52

important, absolutely. So speaking of evolved, you mentioned that you are getting your PhD currently. So tell us what it’s about and like, what inspired that next, that next path of education and and growth as a coach.

Jason Brown  42:06

Yeah, so when I was in graduate school, I went to graduate school years after my undergrad, it was actually during when I was having kids, which was challenging in and of itself. But I was lucky that there was a where I lived at the time, there was a university real close, like 20 minutes from my house that had a, you know, a really reputable exercise science program. So I went and got my master’s degree in Exercise Science. And I had always planned to get a PhD, but then covid hit, so it was like, Oh, okay. Well, this is probably going to be put on hold, or maybe I won’t be able to do it. Maybe it’s just not in the cards for me. Well, interestingly enough, covid was the catalyst for a lot of online programs. A lot of online programs started coming out, and before this, getting a PhD online, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t even possible to do that because of labs and various aspects to it, but long story short, I mean, what was it two years ago now, over a little over two years ago, I started researching PhD programs, exercise based PhD programs online, and I found a few that I liked, and I ended up deciding on one, and applied and got in and started the PhD process, and initially I was expecting a level of coursework to be around eight hours a week, and it ended up being about almost triple that. So I got into it, and I’m like, this is I’m biting off way more than I can chew with being a dad and being a business owner and and having just already a lot on my plate. But I’m the kind of person when I tell someone I’m going to do something, and I told people on purpose that I was going to do this. I even told people online, I’m going to do this, and I put myself in a position where I couldn’t go back. So there was a lot of a lot of obscenities, a lot of F bombs dropped, like, Why? Why did I put myself out there and commit to this? But needless to say, I’m two and a half years into it. Now. I’m more than halfway done, and I’m almost done with my coursework, so I ended up just going and doing what I had to do to comply with the demands of it. But I really love learning, so I it’s funny. Out of everything I do in my business, the PhD is the volume work is high, but I really enjoy it probably more than anything else I do right now, because I do love learning. I love geeking out. I love going deeper. And I thought I had a pretty good command of exercise physiology, and I really realized that I didn’t. It really exposed me to thinking. I was like, Oh, wow. I yeah, I know the Krebs cycle, and I know the sliding filament theory, but do I really know it? And I really didn’t know, and it has opened up already. It’s, it’s kind of almost been a cheat code with understanding like cardiac physiology and being able to go deeper with concurrent training. It’s. So, long story short, my my PhD is, my dissertation is a quantitative analysis of concurrent training, kind of what we’ve been talking about. And I’m going to look at two different styles of concurrent training within my own training world, and my training subscription, having two cohorts of people that are going through two different styles of concurrent training, and again, the inclusion of things like aerobic work, strength training, power work, all in the same program has been researched, and it’s been researched extensively, but it’s been researched very different ways than I’m going to research it. So it’s really exciting that I’m going to be able to actually conduct a study on my own training and be able to, you know, be one of the foremost authorities on concurrent training is something that it’s been a goal for me. So I, I do think the work itself will be worth it. I have never thought for one minute this is not going to be worth it in the long run for me. I thought that, you know, I will walk away from this and thinking like, Well, I’m glad I did that. I went through the pain of doing this, amongst all these other things that I’m currently doing.

Brianna Battles  46:02

Yeah. I mean, what an incredible, like, I guess, full circle, like, pathway that you’re on with starting, like, back in the teenation days, and like, reading so much about that, right? Like, just the OG days of Strength Conditioning, of programming, of all of that. And then full circle, doing that yourself, and really like contributing in such a high level. I think that’s really incredible.

Jason Brown  46:25

Thank you. You know, I appreciate that. It’s, it’s definitely been humbling. And I’m, like, I said I love learning, so it’s, it’s, it’s a really, it’s a lot of fun. And even I’m, actually, I’m in a nutrition course right now, and I haven’t done nutrition for me is not an era I spent a lot of time on over the years, I purposely took this course because I have not spent a lot of time going deep with nutrition, like I, you know, probably should have. I’ve really gone deep with exercise, fizz and and things like that. So it’s, it’s really cool. I enjoy it. And I, I think that people always ask, like, would you recommend that other people do it? I think it’s just like a training program, like To each his own. You know, what works for me might not work for you. You might not be into the same things. For me, it makes sense and it works. You know, I can fit it into my lifestyle, but like, the long end of it is, I think that you need to have practical experience. So, you know, take anything from this episode. It would be if you don’t have practical knowledge, you’re not in the trenches, or you’re not training. You have never trained people in person. Start there before you get another certification, or you, you know, go back to school for, you know, a degree.

Brianna Battles  47:37

Yeah, no, absolutely. So tell us where people can, like, how can people work with you?

Jason Brown  47:42

Essentially, I think you probably have the same challenge where, where you work with coaches and you work with athletes. So it’s, it’s always tricky. So Jason Brown coaching.com, is my website. I do educate coaches, but admittedly, I am going to spend 2026, focusing more on training people, and more people into my training world. I do have a certification that we open once a quarter, which is pretty extensive, and so it’s about 12 hours of video and very, very practical hands on, less science pace, believe it or not, and more onboarding clients and putting people into the right training program, and making decisions and writing training programs on a level that is very different than just like getting your CSCs. So I do that, and, you know, I do content on YouTube as well as Instagram and all the major platforms. Jason Brown coaching, but my major, my main piece is functional conjugate training is what I provide, which is, again, in alignment with everything we talked about, you know, concurrent, small training, where aerobic training is a very important element to what I prescribe to people, because it manages stress and it builds all the underlying support systems that help us get better with every quality of fitness there is. So you know, if you’re not doing any cardio, you should be doing cardio because it supports everything. Supports everything, and it supports your life and helps you live longer and do things that, that that we need to do to be successful as human beings.

Brianna Battles  49:09

I love it. You keep it real and practical, and I think that’s what coaches and athletes need. Is like doesn’t have to be fancy. We can know the fancy, but like keeping it practical and helping people find longevity, both in their coaching careers but also in their training approach. So thank you so much for sharing. Appreciate it.

Jason Brown  49:27

Awesome. Well, thanks for having me, Brianna, appreciate it. Thank you.

Brianna Battles  49:35

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Practice Brave podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please leave a review and help us spread the work we are doing to improve the overall information and messaging in the fitness industry and beyond. Now, if you are pregnant and you are looking for a trustworthy exercise program to follow, I have you covered. The pregnant athlete training program is a well rounded program for pregnancy with workouts for. Each week that are appropriate for your changing body. That’s 36 weeks of workouts, three to four workouts each week, and tons of guidance on exercise strategy. We also have an at home version of that program if you are postpartum and you’re looking for an exercise program to follow. The eight week postpartum athlete training program would be a really great way to help bridge the gap between rehab and the fitness you actually want to do. From there, we have the practice brave fitness program, which is an ongoing strength conditioning program where you get new workouts each week and have a lot of guidance for myself and my co coach, Heather Ozzy, this is the only way that I’m really offering ongoing coaching at this point in time. If you have ever considered becoming a certified pregnancy and postpartum athleticism coach, I would love to have you join us. Pregnancy and postpartum athleticism is a self paced online certification course that will up level your coaching skills and help connect the dots between pelvic health and long term athletic performance, especially during pregnancy and postpartum, become who you needed and become who your online and local community needs by becoming a certified pregnancy and postpartum athleticism Coach, thank you again for listening to the practice brave podcast. I appreciate you, and please help me continue spreading this messaging, this information and this work.