Beyond Strength: The Psychology of Drive and Coaching w/ Paul Oneid

Transcript

Tony Montgomery: All right. Joining me today, we have Paul O'Neill, a personal friend, but also a world-class strength athlete. And I don't say that often about Paul, but he is.

Paul Oneid: Wow.

Tony Montgomery: He is. He's accomplished powerlifter, bodybuilder, and highly respected performance coach. I think the latter is probably what he hangs his hat on the most. Yeah. More than 15 years in strength and conditioning field, maybe 20 by now.

Tony Montgomery: He has his elite level competitive experience mixed with you know athlete development and just focusing on how can he get the best for the people that he works with. He's the founder of um MAPS and he's the founder of Coaches Corner University, where provides mentorship and education platform for coaches.

Tony Montgomery: um So he's ah he's a very smart guy, mixes the evidence with anecdotal real-world experiences, and I'm just happy to have him on the podcast and also happy to have him as a friend. Thanks for coming on, man.

Paul Oneid: It's my pleasure, man. this is ah this is Honestly, it's been great, especially, you know i don't know if the listeners know, but you and I started Coaches Corner together. And then when you started your PhD, I kind of took it in ah in a bit of a different direction. But I've always considered to you one of my closest friends, and it's been a pleasure to see you grow and and expand your knowledge and find something that you're so passionate about.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah, well, I appreciate that. And as I get on this job market search that I've been doing for the last week, I'm hoping to be able to take that to the to the next level with some of these cool jobs that are out there.

Tony Montgomery: So it'll be fun.

Paul Oneid: Hell yeah.

Tony Montgomery: So just to just to start off, um you know we we talked about this a lot before, how having that competitive drive to always achieve, um you know,

Tony Montgomery: What do you feel like has been bat driving force, that deep driving force behind that pursuit of like always wanting to do more and always wanting to achieve more and has that changed over the years?

Paul Oneid: It's actually been something that's been on my mind a lot lately, especially over the last year. Um, so that drive has absolutely changed. It's evolved. Um, when I was competing at the highest level of powerlifting for me, that drive was very external.

Paul Oneid: I was a younger man, you know, between that, the ages of when I was competing at the highest level 25 to um it was very much to prove myself to others. It was very much for external validation.

Paul Oneid: And it was driven by this inherent feeling that I wasn't enough. And so if I could continue to achieve and continue to ah you know seek higher levels of performance or achievement or records, that somehow that would make me of value.

Paul Oneid: What I came to realize over the years is that identification with this younger self, you know, I've done a lot of therapy, a lot of inner child work, and it's shown me that this is just young Paul trying to show the world that he is enough. He's good enough.

Paul Oneid: And it was just powerlifting was the vehicle in which I did that. As I grew and as i accumulated more awareness over my own psychology, it definitely shifted internally and it shifted internally by virtue of not being able to powerlift anymore.

Paul Oneid: because I accumulated a number of injuries, decided that, okay, I needed to pursue something else. So I looked into bodybuilding. That's when I did my first show. That first show was purely for me because I knew that I couldn't, I shouldn't say I couldn't.

Paul Oneid: I knew that the likelihood of me achieving something great was probably very low because in terms of bodybuilding, I didn't have the shape. I didn't have the symmetry. I didn't have the overall development. There were some imbalances here and there.

Paul Oneid: And I could really only bring my effort to the table, right? So in bodybuilding, they rate you on your shape, symmetry, condition, muscularity.

Paul Oneid: Well, I was very muscular and I could get very conditioned, but I didn't have good shape or good symmetry. So was like, okay, I can control what I can control. I can put in the most effort possible.

Paul Oneid: And that was the hardest thing I had ever done physically up until that point. And so that was the first time I ever tried to pursue athletic growth simply for myself because the the expectation of victory wasn't there. The expectation of achievement wasn't there.

Paul Oneid: Then i was a I got to a point where I could do powerlifting again, but it again, it was different. I wanted to prove to myself that I could still compete at a high level, still be strong.

Paul Oneid: I had rehabbed my injuries. I was feeling good. And unfortunately, a year ago on July thirteen of 2024, i did it I did a tune-up meet to try to shake the cobwebs off, and I lost my balance with 750 and ended up rupturing both my quads.

Paul Oneid: At that point, my entire reason for pursuing excellence changed entirely. And it was purely self-directed. It was purely intrinsic. I refused to accept that I would be immobile. I refused to accept that I couldn't do the things that I love doing.

Paul Oneid: And I use that rehab process as an opportunity to galvanize my identity as somebody who truly just loves to pursue hard things. And through that process and investing myself fully into it, I'm now sitting here a year later, about like two days out from a bodybuilding show, and I've actually built the best physique I've ever had.

Paul Oneid: So throughout the process of my athletic endeavors, it's been purely this evolution coming towards and like from extrinsic to intrinsic,

Paul Oneid: And then essentially using athletic pursuits as a vehicle for personal development and for identity development and proving to myself that I am who I am. And so when I sit here having achieved what I've achieved purely for me at this point,

Paul Oneid: I don't care about outcomes. I've been fully invested in the process. I've been fulfilled in my relationships. I've continued to show up for the people around me in my work, and I've actually brought them along with me.

Paul Oneid: It's been one of the most incredibly transformative experiences. And I can honestly, like, I don't care, like what happens in two days on the stage because I know that I did the work and I know that I i became a better version of myself.

Paul Oneid: And I've always been of the of the mind, i shouldn't say always, over the years as I've grown in this this maturity level, I've felt very much aligned with my pursuits are an opportunity to develop myself so that I can serve others.

Tony Montgomery: Thank you.

Paul Oneid: For me, my work is purely in service of others. It's to build people up. So whether it's as an as a performance coach, whether it's as a mentor or and as an educator,

Paul Oneid: If I am able to develop myself to the highest level and continue to pursue that level of personal growth, then I can better show up for the people around me. And that's been the core. It's become the core of everything that we do with Master Athletic Performance and with Coaches Corner University.

Paul Oneid: We just use training and nutrition or we use business as our vehicle for developing the people that we work with.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. So one would think too that with with the business model and and the way that social media is set up that there would always be some type of extrinsic reward to do the things that that you do as well, right? Because as we know, um the more we can put our...

Tony Montgomery: athletic achievements up on social media for people to view, the more the more business grows, right?

Paul Oneid: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Tony Montgomery: Essentially, at least that's that's what I've noticed with whenever I was really pursuing online coaching and stuff. The bigger my total, the more people came to work with me. um So how does that not play a role at all in some type of extrinsic motivation to put yourself out there, to put your training out there, to show people like this is proof of concept.

Tony Montgomery: So therefore, I'm the right coach for you.

Paul Oneid: To me, it's all about the way that you frame it.

Tony Montgomery: hmm.

Paul Oneid: So whenever I'm posting things about my physique or about my my athletic achievements, at this point in my career, it's always framed around the person I am becoming through it.

Tony Montgomery: Thank you.

Paul Oneid: And so for us, from a branding perspective, as Master Athletic Performance, as Coach's Corner University, that is the aspect of our brand that we are trying to showcase. We're using the physical transformations as a proxy for the development of ourselves as individuals.

Paul Oneid: And all of our content is framed around that. So, you know, when I'm posting about maybe a PR that I've hit in the gym, It's not like I posted a reel recently where three weeks out from my show, had a PR on the leg press, which coming from a power lifter is hilarious. Post the leg press PR.

Paul Oneid: But the the frame of that post was I'm three weeks out from a bodybuilding show. i just PR my leg press. This is purely about mental fortitude. It has nothing to do with anything other than me being present within this moment and showing up for myself.

Paul Oneid: So that's, to me, that's all the frame. When it comes to the, like, you cannot say that anything is purely intrinsic or purely, well, some things are purely extrinsic, but the extrinsic motivation for me comes from people finding value in what I offer.

Tony Montgomery: Of course, of course, yeah. Yeah.

Tony Montgomery: yeah

Paul Oneid: So, you know, when it comes to promoting the business, I'm promoting the things that are important to me so that the people who also find those things important will come. So yes, I do use the physical as a proxy for the personal development, but I'm really after that person who wants to become a better version of themselves.

Paul Oneid: And I think in sales, if you look at it as I'm not just trying to make money off of this person, I cannot help them unless they pay me, right?

Tony Montgomery: yeah.

Paul Oneid: So sales to me is a service. If I can sell my coaching, that means I can help somebody.

Tony Montgomery: yeah.

Paul Oneid: So if I'm not focused on the financial gain and I'm focused on the individual's benefit, then that frame of reference makes it much more valuable for me intrinsically to continue to make the content.

Paul Oneid: I'll be the first to admit, if I didn't have ah an online business, there was there's no way I would be on social media.

Tony Montgomery: yeah

Paul Oneid: Like, I think it's a, I think it's just a crapshoot, but If I'm going to be on there, I'm going to be posting things that are authentic and meaningful to me.

Paul Oneid: And if people want to buy my services based on that, great.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah, yeah. No, that resonates with me a lot. um One of the things that I've noticed over the over the years is that the the thing that you noticed as well within yourself is that um most of the athletes, if not all the athletes that I work with in the very beginning, are really seeking some type of validation in what they do, right? That seems to be our generation and below's kind of reward mechanism for the thing that they do in life, even to the point now where um people are more likely to say they want to be a influencer than they want to be a astronaut.

Paul Oneid: yeah

Tony Montgomery: Right. But then when we were growing up, those things, we didn't even know what an influencer was, but yet we still sought out validation. And um from my read of the literature, which, as you know, once you say that everything else becomes valid afterwards,

Paul Oneid: Yes. Yeah.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah, of course. So from my read of the literature, it what ah what the way I think of it as, um you know, once we started with the advent of technology, society out evolved human nature.

Tony Montgomery: And we're just playing catch up this entire time. Right.

Paul Oneid: I don't disagree.

Tony Montgomery: then we get Then we get to this point where which I think is a great point where we started to getting these dual family incomes where everyone could work, everyone can be equal, but yet we didn't really think about what that's going to do to the psychology of the kids that are kind of left behind.

Tony Montgomery: And my thought process is due to that evolution that we're not going to be able to catch up to, everyone seems to be seeking some type of validation, which is why i think things like social media has been as successful as they are, as people are constantly seeking that like external validation. So one, um is that something that you've noticed with the majority of the clients that you've worked with? And and two, um why do you think that is? Why do you think validation beyond the simple idea of like evolutionary survival mechanisms of we need to be liked by the tribe? Like that's...

Tony Montgomery: that That's always been there, right?

Paul Oneid: Fine. Yeah.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what do you think?

Paul Oneid: I think it's absolutely present. I think it's a big shift in, cause I mean, you and I started training before there was Facebook, right? I did my first meet in 2000. I think I did my first meet in 2010.

Paul Oneid: So, I mean, Facebook had been around for a couple of years. I remember it just rolled out when I was at Robert Morris. And, but I was still training. I was still doing what I was doing. I was just, I didn't care. I was always loving training.

Paul Oneid: Now I think people pick up training and pick up competing so that they have something to post about. And I think.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah, but I'm saying beyond beyond the posting, you said that when you were younger, you were still seeking external validation, right?

Paul Oneid: and Right. Okay. Sorry. Yeah.

Tony Montgomery: The social media definitely makes it more magnified, but I still think younger people our age were still seeking external validation without the social media.

Paul Oneid: yeah

Paul Oneid: Why do I think, why do I think they're seeking external validation? I think because they are taught very early on that they have to prove themselves in some capacity.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Paul Oneid: So I can only speak from my own childhood experience because I haven't lived anyone else's. I grew up, my family was amazing. I had two, I have two amazing parents. I have a brother who tries his best.

Paul Oneid: But he needed a ton of attention. And so for me, as the older brother, who was more so a higher achiever, I had to do things on my own.

Paul Oneid: And if I wanted attention, I had to achieve something in order for my parents to recognize me. So it's a learned behavior. And I think in households where, number one, there are many single parent households.

Paul Oneid: So that single parent is very rarely around because they're working to support the household.

Tony Montgomery: Right. Mm-hmm.

Paul Oneid: that child learns that they need to achieve or they need to ah get attention in some capacity, positive or negative, just to get attention from their parents.

Paul Oneid: I think that is a learned behavior and I think you can't ignore the sociological implications of that. But when it comes to the advent of technology, I think in general, people are less fulfilled in their lives.

Paul Oneid: They have less purpose. they are more quick to give up. And so when you provide them with an easy access to dopamine and to affirmation that they are enough or that they have achieved or that they are worth it through a like, through a share, through a comment, it is addicting immediately.

Paul Oneid: And I think we are at a point now where there's so much awareness over that that we're starting to go in the other direction. That's why you're having people like me talk about personal growth, internal motivation. You're having people talk about process orientation. You're having people talk about using hardships. like Say what you will about you know the David Goggins of the world.

Paul Oneid: I think he goes about it the wrong way because he approaches it from a self-hate perspective. But if you look at

Paul Oneid: manufactured hardship. You and I have had conversations about this many times in that the more manufactured hardship that you can create in your life and then overcome it, you end up with this intrinsic rise in self-efficacy based on your own interpretation of your successes.

Tony Montgomery: Mm-hmm.

Paul Oneid: And I think that is the key. Whenever I get a client who I can tell is extremely intrinsically extrinsically motivated, I look at it as an opportunity immediately to try to reframe their thought process.

Paul Oneid: So if they're that person who always needs a meet on the calendar, we're not registering for a meet. We're going train. If they're that person who always needs to be dieting, right? You know exactly what I'm talking about. That person who just always needs to be, I need to be in a cut. I need to be in a cut.

Paul Oneid: No, you need to be at maintenance. And so when I talk about using training and nutrition as a vehicle for personal development, I'm using those vehicles to put them in manufactured hardship situations to challenge their beliefs about themselves so that they can develop the evidence that they are competent, raise their self-efficacy and start to shift that motivation internally.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah, yeah. I think the people like the Goggins and the ah Jordan Petersons, I think they're an overcorrection and have become more of a caricature.

Paul Oneid: Mm-hmm. That's a good good way of saying it, yeah.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah, have become more of a caricature of like hard things mentality. When when you look at the research, you can clearly see that like hard things is individual per person, right?

Tony Montgomery: They just, you just need something that slightly challenges you more than you think you're kind of capable of, but you still know you can do it, right?

Paul Oneid: Mm-hmm.

Tony Montgomery: That's the whole point of goal setting is you wanna set goals that are are challenging, um But you know that you're going to get there if you're a coach, right? That's the goal you said is like, I'm going to challenge you.

Tony Montgomery: But I also know that this is a practical goal that we can get to where I think the the overcorrection now is like you must do the most impossible, hardest things on the planet or else you're not a man.

Tony Montgomery: Right. So I, I think there's always that fine line of like over corrections and what really the science is saying, because it's very easy to get in, in trance with this idea like, you have to do hard things, you have to do hard things, that's going to make you a better person. And it's like,

Tony Montgomery: In some capacities, yes, but in some capacities, you look at the research, when stress levels are extremely high, the thought of doing hard things is only going to create more cortisol, more glucocorticoids. It's only going to disrupt your act. So there has to be this understanding of...

Tony Montgomery: Hard things are good, but like, let's put it in context of each individual person and make sure that they they understand that. So you don't become a caricature. Is that something that you worry about?

Paul Oneid: I agree.

Tony Montgomery: Like becoming this caricature of like, look at the hard work that I've i've overcome. You know, how do you find that line of like, not everyone's gonna blow their quads out and do what you do, right?

Paul Oneid: So for me, it i absolutely, i contrast it with empathy, especially in a one-on-one setting. it's It's very much contrasted with empathy. One of my favorite quotes about this subject is the hardest thing you've ever done is the hardest thing you've ever done.

Tony Montgomery: Right.

Paul Oneid: And so when I actually went through my quad tears, physically, that was the hardest thing I've ever done. Mentally, emotionally, spiritually, have been through much worse. So that aspect of it,

Paul Oneid: didn't even register. It was just like, okay, this is going to probably be painful and take a lot of effort, but I'm, I'm mentally, physically, um I'm mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually equipped to handle it.

Paul Oneid: So it wasn't necessarily the hardest thing I've ever done. I was just listen recently listening to a podcast and he was talking about progress. Um, if you're with a guy named dry Creek Dwayne, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a cowboy, but, uh,

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Paul Oneid: he He essentially hosts this like horsemanship camp where he teaches people life skills through working with horses.

Tony Montgomery: yeah

Paul Oneid: And he was talking about, listen, a win could be just not getting angry today. A win could be you were faced with a decision that you otherwise wouldn't have made and you made one.

Paul Oneid: celebrating the in the insignificant wins as he called it. And that really resonated with me because when we're talking about like perpetual personal progression, that like idea of, I want to be 1% better every day, 1% better could be just one small decision.

Paul Oneid: It could be just one small behavior.

Tony Montgomery: Mm-hmm.

Paul Oneid: It could be just one small change that you made. And that one small change doesn't necessarily have to be a step forward. It could also be avoiding a step back. And when you frame it as this like very long, lifelong process of compounding interest over time, as long as you're not losing ground, you're still moving forward.

Paul Oneid: And that's something that I try to communicate with my clients a lot, especially in the context of, you know, in training. Oh, you got a little niggle today. well live to lift another day.

Paul Oneid: You don't have to push through that pain, right? It could be nothing or you could make it something. You're not going to get stronger in one session, but you could absolutely tear both your quads, right?

Tony Montgomery: Yes.

Paul Oneid: So, or in the context of, hey, you went away on vacation for seven days and you didn't track your nutrition and you only gained 0.2 pounds when you came back. Wow. That's incredible.

Paul Oneid: The last time you went away on a cruise, you gained 12 pounds, Paul. So like things like that, these are opportunities where we avoided regression, but didn't necessarily make objective progress.

Paul Oneid: Cognitively, we did. And we use that as an opportunity to showcase the new behaviors and the new skills. So I think it all comes down to contrasting what progress is and doing hard things with a level of empathy towards the hardest thing you've ever done is the hardest thing you've ever done.

Paul Oneid: And showing that person that if they progressively increase what that hardest thing is that they're going to do over time, they can truly do whatever they feel like they want to do.

Paul Oneid: And ultimately that's our job as coaches. you know, you and I both know that the biggest wins that we get with clients that we coach is when they achieve something that they didn't even know they could set as a goal.

Tony Montgomery: yeah

Paul Oneid: It's like, I never even thought that I could set this goal and I actually achieved it. Wow.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. Yeah. No, yeah. I definitely agree with you on on that aspect of things. Like for me, the biggest wins in coaches is usually never the X's and O's of like how much weight they lifted.

Tony Montgomery: It's more like, oh, you got your you got your life together and you're happy with who you are.

Paul Oneid: never

Paul Oneid: and

Tony Montgomery: Um, but with, within that dynamic, right, this idea of 1% better every day, love it. It's a great idea, but we, we know life presents regressions.

Paul Oneid: Absolutely. yeah

Tony Montgomery: You're not going to live life without regressions. And that's where that empathy piece comes in. And that's also where being a high level athlete comes in as well. Like, you know, there was times where you didn't go to the gym or you didn't follow your diet. Like, you know, there was times where you took steps back, um, and how do you How do you showcase that as like, this is part of of life. Don't beat yourself up over regressions. Like look at the totality of of how far we've come, not the significance of a few steps back in in a week or or a month, right?

Paul Oneid: That's a tough one for me because

Paul Oneid: this last year has been a season of non-negotiables. So you talked about like, you know, there were times when you didn't go to the gym. There were times when you didn't hit your meal plan.

Paul Oneid: The only times in the last 365 days or now, I guess we're probably closer to 400 that I didn't do those things was when I had purposefully planned it in my calendar.

Paul Oneid: So we went to Puerto Rico. I didn't train for eight days. ah We went on a vacation. Like during my rehab, we went out to live's cottage and I didn't track my food, but I did my rehab every day.

Paul Oneid: So like everything over the last year has been planned and strategized to the point where There was a day last week where I was 3,000 steps short of my goal. I got home at 9 p.m. from an appointment and I went for a walk just to get my 3,000 steps in because I said I was going to get 10,000 steps that day.

Paul Oneid: So I think that just like anything in life, there have to be seasons. There have to be seasons where you are 100% dialed in, where you're locked like this, like a bodybuilding prep, right? In a bodybuilding prep, everything is non-negotiable.

Paul Oneid: You have to do the things or you will not get the outcome. That's a very zoomed in approach. But the fact that your life is organized into seasons allows you to zoom out and look at the totality.

Paul Oneid: So yes, it's important that you zoom in and look at the forest as trees. but you have to be able to zoom out. And sometimes you need a guide to help you do that. You need someone else to pull you out of your own your own bullshit to say, hey, look, you didn't make progress today, but over the last 20 weeks, this is the first time you've fallen back.

Paul Oneid: Or hey, over the last 20 weeks, you at the beginning, you had one regression per week. Now it's once every two weeks. Now it's once every three weeks. And so that perspective shift, I think, is what's important.

Paul Oneid: So this, again, thought process has been on my mind and has been the subject of a lot of the content that I've posted lately is I am in a season of non-negotiables. So if I say I'm going to do it, I do it.

Paul Oneid: There is no falling short. And I'm willing to make the trade-offs in the opposite direction. Usually for me, it's sleep where I get my shit done and I might sleep a little less and that's okay.

Paul Oneid: But there again, after the show is done, guess what I'm prioritizing? Sleep. But in my head, I've planned for that.

Tony Montgomery: yeah

Paul Oneid: So that's going to be a season where the progress is probably 0.1% per day.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah, yeah. I guess my only pushback would be um that we know that when people have these non-negotiables, this this rigid mindset of like, this is what must be done and therefore I'm going to do it.

Tony Montgomery: um Cal Newport talks about this all the time with like time management. Everyone has these blocks of time set up for, you know, I'm going to do productivity on this, on this couple hours.

Paul Oneid: okay

Tony Montgomery: I'm going to do emails on this hour. I'm going to do this. And then you get a phone call. and it throws your whole schedule off. And there's really no ability to recoup that schedule due to that rigid mindset.

Tony Montgomery: And then to extrapolate that into a year's worth of work, we know that that usually coincides with burnout, that usually coincides with psychological fatigue, that usually coincides with anxiety,

Paul Oneid: Agreed.

Tony Montgomery: From a rigid mindset now comes a I'm going explode and do whatever I want mindset, right? So it's an overcorrection for what they've done for year, which is why we see in athletics like bodybuilding where people rebound and put on 50 pounds after a show because they do have that all or or nothing non-negotiable mindset.

Paul Oneid: Yeah, for sure.

Tony Montgomery: And I do understand as an athlete, like, there has to be some non-negotiables within your life, depending on your, like your genetic level.

Paul Oneid: that

Tony Montgomery: Obviously the higher your genetics are, the less you have to have that, the lower they are, the more you have to be dialed in.

Paul Oneid: Mm-hmm.

Tony Montgomery: um But I also, think that that mindset doesn't necessarily fit 99% of the people out there, right? Because when you look at the research, it shows that 80 to 90% of the people in America aren't meeting physical activity guidelines.

Tony Montgomery: ah The people that do sign up for the gym, 60% of them drop out after the first six months. And a lot of that is due to this rigid mindset of like, I have to do x y and Z, and I'm going to do it every single day, even though the past year i haven't even done any of this stuff. I'm going to implement all this stuff now.

Paul Oneid: But I think that plays into what you were saying before of the challenge to make progress needs to be just slightly outside the comfort zone, right? It just needs to be slightly higher than where it was before.

Paul Oneid: And I think when you run into issues like that, it's when you haven't built the the habits and the structure around the things that you're trying to achieve. So that person who goes from zero to 100, you can't, like, I'm going to start learning how to run again.

Paul Oneid: I'm not going to go out and run five miles my first day. I'm going to run for five minutes over the course of 10 minutes. That's going to be my first workout. But I've developed the, we'll call it maturity, to see it for the long term and understand that, again, i'm not going to be a marathon runner in a week.

Paul Oneid: um So I think it comes down to like the ability to build habits and build behaviors and build structures around the things that you want to do. i think it also comes down to delayed gratification. you know, we talked about social media and, you know, immediate gratification and validation.

Paul Oneid: And I think it also comes down to

Paul Oneid: being organized enough to understand that in life there are pushes and pulls. This is something that i talk about with my mentees all the time. So I just went through a period of push with my training and nutrition prepping for a bodybuilding competition.

Paul Oneid: I put my business on maintenance. I didn't focus on growing the business during that time. I'm about to actually go into a period of push on my life side of things because my wife is competing and we'll be traveling, you know, because of commitments. I think we're trying, I'm traveling like seven out of the next eight or nine weekends.

Paul Oneid: So my training is going to be on maintenance. My business is going to be on maintenance. and I'm going to be focusing on supporting my wife. And because like you talk about being rigid and non-negotiable, the only way that I'm able to put those other things on maintenance and to be able to push in one area of life is because I am quite rigid and non-negotiable in the other areas.

Tony Montgomery: Thank you.

Paul Oneid: So I don't think being being rigid and non-negotiable is a bad thing, but you do have to have buffers built into the day, right? Like if you have the entire day planned out, that's just not going to work.

Paul Oneid: You need to have periods of like, I call them flex periods where it's like a 20 minute break here, 30 minute break here, whether it means to walk around the block or to go make a coffee or, you know, we just finished a 40 minute meeting. I had a 20 minute flex period and then I had a meeting with you.

Paul Oneid: So during that time, I literally sat on the couch and sipped some coffee, came back to my desk, got set up. So it allowed me to reshift. If I had an email or two to answer, i could have answered it during that time.

Paul Oneid: But people want to take it from zero to a hundred and I've made those mistakes. And the only reason that I do it the way I do it now is because I have that experience and I've built those skills.

Paul Oneid: So like when we talk about the role of a coach or the role of a mentor, there it's to expedite those learning experiences so that you don't have to make those mistakes. And I think the people that the people that people choose as mentors just suck at being mentors.

Paul Oneid: Because they're trying to push the sexy things. Like you'll never hear me talk about get your next $10,000 a month. You'll never hear me talk about sign 12 clients tomorrow because that's unsustainable.

Paul Oneid: So for me, yes, I do believe in non-negotiables. I do believe in periods of push and pull. I also believe in long-term sustainability of development.

Paul Oneid: I want to do this for the rest of my life.

Tony Montgomery: do Do what?

Paul Oneid: You know?

Tony Montgomery: Not compete in bodybuilding.

Paul Oneid: i want to i want to be no I want to be able to ah pursue personal growth for the rest of my life, whatever avenue that ends up being, right? Because again, I see my my own training and nutrition as a vehicle for personal development for myself.

Paul Oneid: I see my business as a representation of my personal development because as I become a better version of me, the business has grown. i have I have the data to back it up. I have the bank statements, right? i have I have the testimonials to back it up.

Paul Oneid: I also know that as I become a better version of myself, my marriage becomes deeper. My relationship with my wife becomes better. My, you know, my ability to connect with my loved ones becomes better. And for me, training and nutrition is a big part of that.

Paul Oneid: Because it's it's part of the manufactured hardship that I put myself through. So you know as I venture past this bodybuilding show, my goal is to get in the best shape of my life, become more capable, become more athletic, regain that sense of athleticism that I used to have.

Paul Oneid: Because a major motivator for me, when when we were laying when I was laying in that hospital bed, I remember looking at my wife and thinking, if I can't play on the ground with our kids, I'm a piece of shit.

Paul Oneid: And being a father is the number one motivator for me to do the things that I'm doing, whether it's in business, whether it's in fitness now, right? So I'm using this bodybuilding show as a means to put a bow on a year of recovery and say, hey, I i could do this. I could recover and I could get in the best shape of my life.

Paul Oneid: This next adventure is I'm going to be a beginner again. I'm going to learn how to run. I'm going to learn how to rock. i'm go to I'm going to learn how to train with kettlebells and I'm goingnna learn how to you know do strongman circuits. And I'm going to become an athletic version of myself that is capable of ultimately playing on the ground with my kids as the best father that I can be.

Paul Oneid: So it's all a proxy for that personal development towards whatever goal that I put in place, which right now is fatherhood.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah, that makes sense. I like that idea. I like that philosophy for you, right? um But as coaches, we know we have to meet our clients where they're at, right?

Paul Oneid: True. Yep.

Tony Montgomery: So say you want them to get to you, A, where you're in this season of push-pull, but their average American doesn't even know what push-pull means,

Paul Oneid: Yep.

Paul Oneid: Mm-hmm.

Paul Oneid: Mm-hmm.

Tony Montgomery: How do you begin to get that process to get to that? How do you form those habits? Like, what have you found to be successful in getting people from point A to point B, then all the way to Z where Paul is?

Paul Oneid: Absolutely. So I'm a big believer that as a coach, when you are, so on the on the basis of marketing, for someone to purchase coaching with you, they have to know you, like you, and trust you.

Paul Oneid: So when someone is coming to work with you as a client, they are somewhere along the spectrum of your journey.

Tony Montgomery: Thank you.

Paul Oneid: So I am where I am. I might be getting, like I had a client came to me, he was 17 years old and just starting powerlifting. I've had clients who are now the majority of my clients are entrepreneurs, C-suite executives, doctors, lawyers who want to be jacked because I'm a business owner who's jacked.

Paul Oneid: And so my goal is to use my experiences to make them the hero of their own journey. I'm the guide, right? So I'm, um, uh, fuck with master Shifu and they're Kung, they're Kung Fu Panda.

Tony Montgomery: Mm, okay.

Paul Oneid: Okay. So, when we When we look at it in that manner, and if I want to make them the hero of their own story, I have to meet them where they are. I can only present them with challenges that are within the realm of possibility for them.

Paul Oneid: If I push them too hard too fast, then they're going to fall off. If I go too slowly, they're going to be unmotivated. So it's about finding that balance between what's too hard, what's too easy,

Paul Oneid: i already know what strat I already know what tools they need to have to get to where I'm at. But it's about pulling the right tool out of the toolbox at the right time when they're ready for it and just bringing them along that journey very slowly.

Paul Oneid: um So with nutrition, it could be, hey, you've never tracked your food before.

Paul Oneid: Let's eat off of a food list. So I'm gonna give you an options of foods to eat and you're gonna eat those foods. We're going to do that until you can consistently eat those foods 90% of the time. Then we're going to look at portion sizes.

Paul Oneid: Then we're going to look at measuring the amount of fruits and vegetables. Then we're going to start tracking our protein. then we're gonna So it's a graded exposure to these behaviors over time to the point where, well, now you don't have to track your food anymore because intuitively you know what's in it and you know what foods you digest best, you know what foods make you perform the best, and then we can just move forward from there.

Paul Oneid: So it's it's this pattern of challenge, adherence. You know, um if you go through, basically, you just repeat the cycle of unconscious incompetence to conscious competence over and over and over and over again until you just operate at this level.

Paul Oneid: The cool thing that I found is that in the majority of people who come to work with me, whether it is a mentorship capacity or in a client capacity, they have the ability to operate as I do in one area of their life.

Paul Oneid: You don't get to be a lawyer or a doctor or a C-suite executive. By being a lazy piece of shit, you have to have something inherent within you that allows you to pursue excellence, but you only know how to apply those skills in one area of your life.

Paul Oneid: So a big part of what I try to do is draw parallels. And by drawing parallels between the excellence that you had to achieve in order to be an interventional radiologist, who's the partner of his firm, well, you can apply those same skills to your training and nutrition.

Paul Oneid: it's It's directly in parallel. Training is life and life is training. And so that's pretty much my strategy.

Tony Montgomery: Now, do you think people, when you say people are lazy, you think that people are lazy inherently or do you think people are lazy due to life circumstances and they just need someone to show them the way?

Paul Oneid: I do not believe people are inherently lazy. i think the majority of people, so we talked about, um we talked about how, you know, I was initially motivated by extrinsic ah validation to prove my self-worth.

Paul Oneid: I think a lot of people don't value themselves enough to believe that they are worth it. So they don't even try to pursue external validation because they think they're not even worth it.

Tony Montgomery: What do you think that comes from?

Paul Oneid: I don't know. i think part of it is, i think part of it is life circumstance. I think part of it is, um, the overwhelming pressure of external forces upon them, whether it be unfulfilling job, poor financial situation, family pressures, um, an inherent desire to people, please, and put yourself second.

Paul Oneid: I see that a lot. I see that like people prioritizing others and letting themselves fall off. And that's a big reason why they seek coaching is because they want to get out of those habits.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Paul Oneid: That's something that I see with coaches a lot in the mentorship sphere and that they're encountering burnout because they have no ability to set boundaries. um So I don't believe that people are inherently lazy. I think that in a lot of instances, they don't think they're worth it or they don't they don't believe that they're they should treat themselves the same way that they treat others.

Tony Montgomery: yeah Yeah.

Paul Oneid: Whereas like my internal philosophy is centered around selfishness.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Tony Montgomery: Mm-hmm.

Paul Oneid: like i I believe in the virtue of selfishness in that if I put myself first, I can show up better for everybody else. One of the exercises that I have all of my mentees do is a prioritization exercise. So I say, okay, you're going to list your top five priorities in order.

Paul Oneid: The caveat here is that you can never say yes to something that is below anything above it. So I rank myself as number one. I rank my wife as number two.

Paul Oneid: I rank my family as number three. I rank my training and nutrition as number four. And I rank my business as number five. Which means that I'm never going to take a meeting if it means that I'm going to ah miss a meal or if I'm going to miss a training session.

Paul Oneid: I also never ah book a family event during a time where my wife has something important that I have to support her through. And I will also never do something for my wife if it means that I lose a piece of myself or that I subjugate myself to her.

Paul Oneid: The expectation and the understanding between us as a couple is that she has those same priorities. She will always put herself above me because if she's not on good on good footing, our relationship will not be on good footing.

Paul Oneid: And when you ask people to do that, it is incredibly hard for them. Because it puts it right in their face how often they put themselves second or third or fourth.

Paul Oneid: Great. You grew your business by $5,000 last month. But guess what? You gained 15 pounds. You didn't train. When I hear about a coach who doesn't train, I want to wring their necks.

Paul Oneid: like How are you a product of your product? Would you hire you no you wouldn't. right so So for me, that prioritization exercise is a huge light bulb moment for people.

Paul Oneid: One thing that I do with clients is I ask them, who are you? But you can't use your hobbies, your work, or your your family, or your faith in describing yourself.

Paul Oneid: That's a really big eye opener for most people because they have no idea how to do it.

Tony Montgomery: And why is that important?

Paul Oneid: Because it it shows, like that exercise shows you your your true understanding of yourself and where your motivations lie. So when I was, again, going the rehab for me was very transformational to my mindset because I made it non-negotiable and I had to be strict in my priorities and I had to understand who I was.

Paul Oneid: I made it my goal to galvanize my identity. And my identity is I am someone who serves. I am someone who pursues hardship. I am someone who is anti-fragile. Those are three elements.

Paul Oneid: That means that I have to show up for the people around me. I have to show up for myself and I have to become stronger through struggle.

Paul Oneid: I did all of those things. So I know who I am. And that's why, you know, before we hopped on air, you asked me how I was feeling. And the first word out of my mouth was proud because I did that for me.

Paul Oneid: And like, I made a, I posted it in my story, but on Sunday I had ah an appointment with my posing coach. And when he sent me the pictures of our posing session, I literally sat in the car crying because I was so happy and proud.

Paul Oneid: And I was so happy and proud because I did it for me. And if I can show people, whether in a mentorship capacity or a coaching capacity, that that level of pride is possible as long as you continue to keep promises that you make to yourself,

Paul Oneid: like I could not ask for a higher level of success. I don't care what my bank account looks like. I don't care about anything else. That's all I care about.

Tony Montgomery: Do you think that this idea of um selfishness as as a virtue, um Iran's philosophy of selfishness, selfishness as a virtue, as long as you're not hurting anyone else is kind of the but idea of it.

Paul Oneid: Exactly. Yep. yeah

Tony Montgomery: um Do you think that that is a philosophy that fits you because that's the person that you are? That's the mindset that you are? Do you think that's the philosophy that people should strive for and encompass regardless of their personality or the things they have in their life.

Paul Oneid: I'm never going to tell someone how to live their life, which sounds funny to say as a coach, because I literally architect people's lives.

Tony Montgomery: You tell people how to live their life.

Paul Oneid: I tell people how to live their life.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Paul Oneid: um But this is a, this is a mindset or an attitude that I have cultivated over years, decade, like 38 years of life to get to where I am today.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Paul Oneid: And I can tell you without question that I am the happiest and most fulfilled I have ever been. I can only draw on my own experiences because I have not lived anyone else's life.

Tony Montgomery: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Paul Oneid: So I won't tell people how to live their lives. I can give them my experiences. i can share my victories that I've had with myself and other clients who bought into the process. But ultimately it's that person's decision.

Paul Oneid: Through coaching and through mentorship, it becomes very obvious where people's bottlenecks are. Like it is very, very obvious what your limiting factor is.

Paul Oneid: And in 99% of cases, it's what's between your ears.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Paul Oneid: So if I can get that person out of their own way to start to prioritize the things that are truly important to them, progress is guaranteed.

Paul Oneid: It's not even it's not even a question.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. yeah No, I mean, I agree with you, this whole concept of you have to find the identity that best serves you.

Paul Oneid: Mm-hmm.

Tony Montgomery: right? And what makes you truly happy? And you have to kind of sort through life to kind of figure that out, right? Like, um for me, just to show um happiness can be done and in different ways, right? Is that I found that I lived a very me first, selfish life, even though I wasn't hindering other people's life, I put myself first above others.

Tony Montgomery: But when I started to put myself in service to others my life transformed and became so much better and so much happier and that is the thing that serves me right now is the fact that the things that i do in my life are to help the majority like i want to help people with mental health disorders more than i want myself to be successful in my job right so

Paul Oneid: But you being successful in your job allows you to help people. So is it a chicken or the egg scenario? Right? Because you still are pursuing personal growth.

Tony Montgomery: Well, it's

Paul Oneid: You're still pursuing your education. And I would put myself in that same category. if you're If you're talking about it like that, I'm pursuing my own level of personal growth and prioritizing me so that I can serve others.

Tony Montgomery: Right. But I'm saying like your hierarchy allows you to put yourself first, which is great for for you because that's created the most happiness. That's created love.

Tony Montgomery: My hierarchy that I found to be more transformative is, you know, if I have to do research, I'm going to do research instead of going to train today because ah my research is more valuable than my individual goals right now.

Paul Oneid: Okay. Totally. Okay. Totally fair. So, but your hierarchy would still be you for like, I separated me as the individual from training and nutrition.

Paul Oneid: Right. Like I separated my personal endeavors from myself as a human because I am not my personal endeavors. So that I think that's the delineating factor between the way that we're looking at it, because I don't disagree with you at all. Like everything that I do on a daily basis from a personal development standpoint is so that I can serve others.

Tony Montgomery: But you see how when you say those things, it can sound somewhat contradictory, right? Like I want to be selfish, but I also want to serve others.

Paul Oneid: Maybe, yeah.

Paul Oneid: You can't, so I can't pour from an empty cup.

Tony Montgomery: i'm gonna

Paul Oneid: I would rather pour from the overflow of my own cup

Tony Montgomery: Right, but how do you get to that overflow? i

Paul Oneid: by prioritizing myself.

Tony Montgomery: Right, but how do you... by prioritizing yourself as the individual and not the extrinsic caveats of training wife, what are you prioritizing then I guess is what I'm asking. Because you kind of separated everything that is you.

Tony Montgomery: So then therefore, what are you prioritizing?

Paul Oneid: That's a good point. That's a really good point. um You know, when I think about personal growth, I think about my mindset. I think about my education. i think about my,

Paul Oneid: the like the lessons I'm learning through my service. Cause I learned so much from my clients, right?

Tony Montgomery: Of course, yeah.

Paul Oneid: Like, oh my God, like every single day, the amount of time that I spend on zoom or doing check-ins, like way more than college.

Tony Montgomery: Way more than college. okay

Paul Oneid: So, I mean, that, I totally get where you're coming from. Maybe I need to articulate it a little bit better.

Paul Oneid: But when I look at it, when I look at it for myself, I look at it as if I'm not happy and fulfilled and growing, then I can't be of service to others. So, you know, when you say you prioritize studying over ah researching over training,

Paul Oneid: so that you can serve others, i so I still see that as you prioritizing yourself because your research is important to you.

Tony Montgomery: Right. But it's the thing is like you prioritize yourself. But the thing that makes you happy and fulfilled are the things below you in your hierarchy. so you you want to make your wife happy.

Tony Montgomery: You want to make your family happy.

Paul Oneid: Hmm.

Tony Montgomery: You want to train and push yourself. And those are all the things that like create happiness and fulfillment and joy that make you you So I don't know, maybe instead of having like it be a hierarchy, maybe it should be more like a ah circle and everything just interconnected, right?

Paul Oneid: like can eat Like an ecosystem. Yeah. i Yes, I totally see that for sure.

Tony Montgomery: because with the Ayn Rand stuff, like I love her stuff. I've read it. It's very compelling. i like the ideas. But like you said, it's it's very difficult to articulate the value of selfishness without making you sound like a selfish prick sometimes.

Paul Oneid: I totally agree with you.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Oneid: and that's And that's the thing. Like if you spoke to anyone about me, and you know me, I'm the farthest thing from selfish.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah, of course.

Tony Montgomery: Right, exactly.

Paul Oneid: But i i do I have become very strict in my personal boundaries in that I will not pour from an empty cup.

Tony Montgomery: yeah and boundaries are important. And I think that goes back to this whole idea of of people do not set boundaries because they're seeking validation. And therefore, if they have boundaries, they might miss this one person that's telling them like, oh, you're awesome, right?

Tony Montgomery: So,

Paul Oneid: Yeah, that's true. Yeah, for sure.

Tony Montgomery: you know So boundaries are extremely important because that does create that burnout sensation of getting pulled in every direction.

Paul Oneid: Yeah,

Tony Montgomery: So it's good to set boundaries. But the fear I have is when people who are very like type A personality, want to get things done, they make everything transactional.

Tony Montgomery: And that makes the people around you feel like shit.

Paul Oneid: can see that.

Tony Montgomery: Like, okay, like you value this over me. Why did this have to feel like a transaction? Why didn't that to feel like something more, right?

Paul Oneid: you ever find that type A people have type B problems and type B problems have type or type B people have type A problems?

Tony Montgomery: little bit, yeah.

Paul Oneid: And the other thing that i've I've come to realize is like, so when you meet somebody, you get along with people the best who make you feel the best about yourself.

Tony Montgomery: Of course, yeah.

Paul Oneid: So, i I think that it just comes from, especially in my interactions with people, because I live my life, you know my entire life is interacting with people, whether it's in a coaching scenario, mentorship scenario, you know relationships.

Paul Oneid: It's all about how can I uplift the person around me?

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Paul Oneid: And you that it does it does, but to me, it all it still comes back to being the best version of me.

Tony Montgomery: But you see how unselfish that sounds?

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. Yeah. But like, you can understand like the person that wants to get into a conversation you've met, the the people that want to get into a conversation just to talk about themselves.

Paul Oneid: Oh, I have no time for those people.

Tony Montgomery: firstly yeah Versus the people that are like genuinely interested in learning about the other person.

Paul Oneid: Yeah.

Tony Montgomery: Like the one of the things I love about doing research is that I get to spend a week with you know, seven to 10 visits with this one person and get to know so much about them.

Tony Montgomery: And to me, like, that's fascinating because everyone, everyone has a story to tell.

Paul Oneid: Yeah.

Tony Montgomery: And I think one of the things from a psychological perspective that can bring out the best in people is to make them feel like you want to hear their story, like their story is important because as a personal trainer worked one-on-one, we've come to this realization that most people that hire coaches in the um real world environment, like 24 hour fitnesses and stuff like that, they just want somebody to talk to because a lot of times in their life, they don't have that person that can kind of tell them that their story is interesting and then important.

Paul Oneid: yeah

Paul Oneid: For sure.

Tony Montgomery: And I think going through life, over these last 10 years being fascinated with psychology, the happiest my conversations have been is when I've focused more on trying to learn everything I can about the other person, as opposed to me trying to say, oh that's an interesting story.

Paul Oneid: I would agree. Yeah.

Tony Montgomery: Let me tell you about my story. That's just slightly better than yours.

Paul Oneid: The one upper.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah, yeah.

Paul Oneid: Yeah. Yeah. Dude, I'm, I'm, I'm picking up what you're putting down a hundred percent.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah, yeah. No, that's awesome, man. It's good that you found, because that's a hard thing, too, it is like you got to find those things that complement you and make your life full. Like, how do you get a glass full on your own?

Paul Oneid: Of course.

Tony Montgomery: It's almost impossible to do.

Paul Oneid: I would agree.

Tony Montgomery: right? The bio psychosocial model of mental health is there's biology, there's all the things inside of you, there's psychology of, you know, how you think of yourself, how you think of others, then there's a social interaction.

Tony Montgomery: And, and those are the things that you want to manifest in terms of how can i get the most out of those things in my life, but also give those people those, those same things.

Tony Montgomery: And that's where community and fulfillment come in. And you do that through mentorship, through coaching, through training, through

Paul Oneid: Hmm.

Tony Montgomery: um through everything that you do and uh and i think that that's that's really important um that that's the way some people pursue life is like you know i want to give as much as i get and i think and it doesn't need to be transactional right like there's so many times where i've met people where it's like and you might you might see this now as your you know as your coaching business comes in but they're like when you first started, they wouldn't even talk to you. You they you have to talk, like you need at least 10,000 followers for them to be like, oh yeah, like let's have a conversation, right?

Tony Montgomery: Those people that are out there, you know?

Paul Oneid: Yeah. One of the things that I've always found pretty cool is that like I have never, whenever I have invested and into giving, I have always gotten more in return.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah,

Paul Oneid: And I think that that holds true.

Tony Montgomery: exactly.

Paul Oneid: And when it comes to work, I mean, I've found something that is truly fun for me. So like, it's easy to work really hard because to me it's play.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah, same.

Paul Oneid: So

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. People are like, you know, what do you what are you going to do when you retire? And it's like, why like why would retire?

Paul Oneid: I'm not going to retire.

Tony Montgomery: Like, how do you spend your weekends?

Paul Oneid: Yeah.

Tony Montgomery: Well, the same way I spend my weekdays. Like, I'm doing what I love to do, you know?

Paul Oneid: Yeah. Exactly.

Tony Montgomery: Maybe the weekends I have more social interaction, but it's like, I'm still trying to learn, trying to grow, trying to figure out the best research, trying to figure out, like, because that's what I absolutely love to do.

Paul Oneid: Yeah. Can we pause? I have to pee.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Paul Oneid: Thank you.

Tony Montgomery: All right. And we're back. um So let's let's move on to to some other stuff. um When it comes to maybe appease me just a little bit, because my research focuses on people with mental health disorders, sedentary people, how can we get them to start exercising to reap the benefits of that? So maybe not so much the people that come to you,

Tony Montgomery: for training because those people have that healthy user bias. They have some key intangibles. um The majority people may be lacking those key intangibles or mean may maybe they have it, but they haven't been able to find them yet. Right.

Paul Oneid: 75 hard.

Tony Montgomery: So from a motivation adherence perspective, like what are some strategies that you found to be helpful to keep athletes engaged over the long term? Right. When we're thinking about a process of not,

Tony Montgomery: sign up in January, lose 20 pounds by the end of January, unsustainable. i the What is it? 45 hard or whatever those things are.

Paul Oneid: Yeah.

Tony Montgomery: These challenges that people do that are really not um sustainable.

Paul Oneid: yeah

Tony Montgomery: like What have you found to be strategies for keeping athletes engaged and and keeping them motivated?

Paul Oneid: One of the things that I,

Tony Montgomery: And if you come up with any good ideas, I'm going to steal them and use them for research later and just pretend that they're mine.

Paul Oneid: yeah no problem. So one of the things that I like to do is, is look at the popularity of these systems and and and see like, okay, what can I pull from this? Cause obviously you you mentioned 75 hard.

Paul Oneid: So why is 75 hard so popular? It's popular because it's a very strict, simple set of guidelines that, that seem relatively achievable, right? You need to read 10 pages a day. you need to go for two walks a day. need to get some sort of workout of some kind.

Paul Oneid: On the surface, that's pretty simple. But what I pull from that is they now become part of something bigger because they've joined a community. And so your environment has changed.

Paul Oneid: In this instance, it's an online community. So you're you're a part of something bigger. You can share experiences with others.

Tony Montgomery: right.

Paul Oneid: You can develop some level of inspiration from other people's successes. You can model your behaviors after high performers. And that's why in you know years past, group fitness was so popular.

Paul Oneid: CrossFit was so popular. And so I look at a lot of these systems that in the grand scheme are quite unsustainable. Like 75 hard is is unsustainable because it's a lot to do in a day for most people for more than 75 days. ah CrossFit unsustainable for most people because it's super high intensity and your body will break down.

Paul Oneid: But what do they have that people are drawn to and that do allow some people to have success? And for me, it's community. So one of the things that we built into our coaching is we have a community feature of our coaching where people can interact with each other. We share resources and things of that nature.

Paul Oneid: So that's a huge piece is changing your environment. The other thing is finding something that you enjoy. i used to be really dogmatic about this in that i was like, you have to weight train, you have to do steps, you have to do cardio.

Paul Oneid: These are the things that have to be done. I've detached quite quite hard from that in the sense that I just want you to do something active with your body where you're moving and you're having fun.

Tony Montgomery: yeah

Paul Oneid: If that's pickleball, great. If that's yoga or Pilates, awesome. And let's get you consistent doing stuff that you like. Then let's try to pepper in things that you don't like, like weight training or like mobility.

Paul Oneid: And eventually, if it's implemented properly, hopefully you can learn to love those things too.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. I think a big thing, and correct me if I'm wrong with you in this, but if you have something like a pickleball and they start to love it, you get the community of the pickleball.

Paul Oneid: Yep. 100%.

Tony Montgomery: And then when you introduce strength training, you can introduce it as a caveat to helping them become better pickleballers, right?

Paul Oneid: one hundred percent

Tony Montgomery: And then that creates better buy-in. And then also too, it's like, You know, only resistance train for 20 minutes, that's going to make you better pickleball, not this idea that you have to go there for an hour, you have to hit X amount of body parts and all this other stuff.

Tony Montgomery: Right. so I think that idea of is kind of bringing it back to what the thing that they enjoy will help them do the thing that they don't enjoy.

Paul Oneid: And that plays into another point that I'd like to make. So I have this concept that I call anchoring habits. So if pickleball becomes your anchoring habit and it's something that you can do consistently, if I leverage that anchoring habit into other habits that build that anchor, you will be more consistent with it.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Paul Oneid: So if I'll use Olivia's mom as an example, she loves going for her morning walk.

Tony Montgomery: yeah

Paul Oneid: but she also has two knee replacements. So for her, if she wants to continue to do her morning walks, she knows that she has to do strength training a couple times a week to maintain her mobility.

Paul Oneid: And then if she can walk pain-free, she's more than happy to go to the gym. And so now going to the gym has become fun for her. She actually, she goes to F45 and she does her group fitness. So she's got a great community of people that are there.

Paul Oneid: she then knows that her then she now has people to join her on her morning walks. And so it builds upon that. So anchoring habits for me is ah is a really big one. I had a client recently who really loved Pilates.

Tony Montgomery: Mm-hmm.

Paul Oneid: And the problem is is, she was hypermobile and had a back injury. So I'm like, that's probably not the best thing for you. But let's do this. I want you to walk to your Pilates class.

Paul Oneid: So you're getting natural decompression of your back. You're getting warmed up for the session. You're going to be more engaged in it. And you're also going to get more physical activity. All of a sudden she started losing weight.

Paul Oneid: Well, now that we've got this anchoring habit, we've stacked on another habit that allows her to increase her energy expenditure. Her ultimate goal of weight loss becomes easier to achieve.

Tony Montgomery: yeah.

Paul Oneid: And that increases her motivation to keep doing it more.

Tony Montgomery: yeah

Paul Oneid: So it's it's ah to me, it's all about creating a framework that builds upon itself slowly over time. And that's the key is slowly over time. If you try to dive into it too quickly, you fall to the level of your systems.

Paul Oneid: And if you don't take the time to develop those systems, you're going to end up in a bad place. You're going up with regression. That's why recidivism for weight loss is like 99%.

Paul Oneid: Right? So at that that's kind of my my strategy with honestly anyone. Even if you're going for a high performance activity, it's supposed start somewhere.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. Yeah. So how do you how do you frame long term success with people that are trapped in this instant gratification? Like, how do you tell them like, hey, like, we may not lose weight until we get the these systems in place.

Tony Montgomery: And they're like, but I hired you to help me lose weight.

Paul Oneid: I remove expectation. Yeah, I remove expectation. ah hundred like i And this is probably a deeper topic, but my philosophy on life in general is to try to live life without expectations.

Tony Montgomery: Mm-hmm.

Paul Oneid: So i yes, I set a goal and I reverse engineer the strategy in which I'm going to achieve that goal. But ultimately for me, it's about the process.

Paul Oneid: So when a client comes to me trying to lose weight, I explained to them, hey, this is the process by which we are going to try to lose weight. We are going to increase your energy expenditure. We're to improve your nutrition.

Paul Oneid: And I don't set the expectation that if we do X, y and Z, you'll be in a 500 calorie deficit so that over the course of a week, you will lose one pound. That's not how life works.

Paul Oneid: That's also not how physiology works. That's how math works. What we're going to do is we are going to behave in a fashion of somebody who is trying to lose weight.

Tony Montgomery: Mm-hmm.

Paul Oneid: We're gonna adapt our identity towards the goal that we're trying to achieve. And we're going to start to make promises to ourselves about the habits and behaviors that that individual is going to undertake.

Paul Oneid: And we're gonna learn how to keep those promises. That's gonna increase your confidence and then you will over time achieve the goal. But the expectation is just, I'm going to be process oriented.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah, so you yeah you remove expectations by introducing education.

Paul Oneid: It's a tough sell.

Paul Oneid: Exactly.

Tony Montgomery: You don't just remove expectations and be like, I'm not going to teach you anything. Education is the

Paul Oneid: Oh my God. No.

Tony Montgomery: yeah like education is the removal of expectation

Paul Oneid: Exactly. Yes.

Tony Montgomery: Right. And I think that's one of the biggest things that the successful coaches do um very nicely that they educate their athletes. They don't gatekeep from their athletes. They try to educate them and in all aspects, right? Psychology, behavioral change, um adaptations, physiology, like all that stuff. The more you can teach them, the more they buy into the process because they understand it better.

Paul Oneid: One of the things that bothers me the most about a lot of young coaches who come to me for help is they want to focus so much on the physiology. They want to focus so much on the biomechanics, the X's and O's, the nutrition science.

Paul Oneid: But until you realize that this physiology only matters as much as the psychology allows,

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Paul Oneid: The individual in front of you is the most important part of the puzzle. So if you are only focused on the science, you will never get results with people unless they're already ready for change, which the majority of people are not.

Tony Montgomery: yeah

Paul Oneid: And that's why they reach out to you for help.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. And if you also only focus on the science, you're more likely, you're 50% likely to be wrong. Like the biomedical research, 50% of it's wrong, right?

Paul Oneid: I

Tony Montgomery: Like, so, you know, the the lived experience is is far more important.

Paul Oneid: i agree.

Tony Montgomery: I think you get that through, um psychological considerations. one One thing before we move on to some of those psychological kind of ideas and and thought processes, we we talk about these ways to motivate and create adherence.

Tony Montgomery: And that sounds great. And I agree with everything that you're saying, but I don't necessarily know if those ideas translate to low socioeconomic status individual. Community is expensive.

Tony Montgomery: um This stuff's expensive. How do we get Cause those are the ones that need it the most, right? Those are the ones that have the most health problems. They have the most chronic disease. they have How do we implement these strategies to help those people come up?

Tony Montgomery: Cause that's the thing that I find very difficult that I battle with all the time is like, it's expensive to live this healthy lifestyle of enjoyment, community engagement,

Tony Montgomery: when you're struggling to put food on the table, right?

Paul Oneid: So there's a few thoughts that I have here. The first thing when you were talking about that, that popped into my head, and I'm going to sound like a complete arsehole for saying it, is i don't target those people.

Paul Oneid: right like i don't

Tony Montgomery: Understood.

Paul Oneid: So that that was the first thing that popped in my head. It's like, man, I charge $525 a month for coaching. like I'm not getting a low socioeconomic status individual coming into coaching.

Tony Montgomery: You're the problem, Paul.

Paul Oneid: Well, here's the caveat is I also give away so much information for free.

Tony Montgomery: You're the problem.

Tony Montgomery: Right.

Paul Oneid: and Give away so much good information for free that if someone was to look and consume it, they could move forward and make change.

Paul Oneid: The other prospect is we do have low ticket offers in our business that are affordable, do create community, do provide education and do provide a framework for people to make progress.

Paul Oneid: So there has to be some level of financial investment, at least when it comes to working with our business. Now on the broader on the broader scale,

Paul Oneid: I don't know if I have an answer for you. public health

Tony Montgomery: Me neither. That's why I asked you.

Paul Oneid: public health my my but Public health is not my forte and I'm totally okay to tell you in this instance, I don't know.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. I don't think anyone does. That's the problem, right?

Paul Oneid: I mean, unless you want to go with like a government subsidized program that is completely free of charge, but at the end of the day, like who are you going to get to run it?

Paul Oneid: Eventually it'll be capitalist. And people will try to make money off of it.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah, yeah, no.

Paul Oneid: So you have to you have to you have to rest on the fact that I give away a lot of information for free. I give away a lot of strategies that can help people immediately right now that are very low barrier to entry.

Paul Oneid: And I think maybe that is the key is how can we as fitness professionals and coaches lower the barrier of entry to fitness?

Tony Montgomery: Yeah, look, and also outreach too.

Paul Oneid: So if we constantly...

Tony Montgomery: I think outreach is a big thing as well, right?

Paul Oneid: Yeah.

Tony Montgomery: You know, lower the barrier, but then also let people know in these communities that this is available. Not you in particular, because obviously if you don't focus on this idea, then it's not something that's ever going to be salient in your mind.

Tony Montgomery: um But you know you see the health crisis that we're going through both mentally and physically, and you just feel so bad and you want to help in some capacity and you can only do your part, but it's like,

Tony Montgomery: it's crazy to me that we live in America and that there's still people that struggle as much as they do. And it's like, how can we get them to value and value themselves? Right.

Paul Oneid: Well, dude, listen, I moved here from Canada where we have socialized healthcare care and a lot of social programs and they're worse off.

Tony Montgomery: and

Tony Montgomery: I don't think, yeah, I don't think socialism is the answer either. um But yeah, yeah, it's it's just something that I think about a lot. And that's something that I try to do within um some paradigm of my research is just trying to help the people that need the most help.

Tony Montgomery: um So I was just curious if you if it was something that ever crossed your mind. And if it did, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Oneid: No.

Tony Montgomery: it's It's tough.

Paul Oneid: No.

Tony Montgomery: It's unfortunate, man, because...

Paul Oneid: It is unfortunate. i agree.

Tony Montgomery: you not only can you present this stuff to them and they have these barriers, but then there's these psychological barriers as well of like, there's no hope. Why would I exercise when I know that I am not going to get the job that I want? I'm not going to do like, you know, there's, so how do you create hope for these people?

Tony Montgomery: um it's something that I think about a lot within like the research and and interventions and stuff. You have something to say.

Paul Oneid: Just thinking hope is a very, hope is very powerful.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Paul Oneid: And I think hope can be transformative. And I think in general, there's a massive lack of hope in this world, whether you're talking low, low socioeconomic status or high socioeconomic status.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Paul Oneid: I think the general mood in the Western world is very low.

Tony Montgomery: Low hope low high uncertainty, I think is, the way to to look at it.

Paul Oneid: Yes.

Tony Montgomery: um Because for me, it's like,

Paul Oneid: And it's cultivated in every aspect. It's cultivated everywhere.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. yeah Human nature is sure we like evolve to procreate and to to survive. But I think a lot of the things psychologically that we do is how can we create less uncertainty?

Tony Montgomery: Religion creates less uncertainty for people. I think that's why people flock to that and love that because it gives them answers to things that they don't have answers to. um Therapy,

Paul Oneid: And there's a huge resurgence of that.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. Yeah. So we have all these things that help them with an uncertainty. um and I think figuring that out and understanding that dynamic is the key to progress in this mental health dilemma that we have. But then get getting back to to your coaching and everything, I think that's one of the key things as a coach too, is like, how can we take away uncertainty? How can we take away psychological stress from our athletes so that they can focus on the process and the things at hand, how have you found um successful strategies?

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Paul Oneid: Education. It all comes down to education.

Tony Montgomery: yeah

Paul Oneid: It all comes down to creating a safe space for them to ask questions and then being able to answer those questions in a way that removes the uncertainty and gives them confidence that the road that they're on is is accurate towards the goal that they've set.

Paul Oneid: um Uncertainty is something that i think it plagues people in a lot of ways. You know, you talk about anxiety. Well, anxiety is a fear of the future, right? It's an un so it's a it's an uncontrollable fear of uncertain situations.

Paul Oneid: When you know you're starting a business and you're launching something new, there's a lot of uncertainty. Like, will people like this? Can I help people? If you're and venturing into a new fitness endeavor, it's like, is this the right way to do it?

Paul Oneid: We see this all the time. Is this the best way to accomplish the goal? Is this the best resistance profile? Is this the best supplement? It's like, it's probably better than doing nothing.

Paul Oneid: So let's start here.

Tony Montgomery: Mm-hmm.

Paul Oneid: And again, playing back into the initial conversation, the initial part of our conversation of creating these small, measurable benchmarks that you can prove are accurate through results, removing the uncertainty, building confidence, building self-efficacy, and then moving that person along that spectrum as the hero of their own journey. That's that is coaching.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. And how do you deal with athletes? How do you deal with the mental side of it with, you know, you have your check-ins, you have all this stuff, how much effort and time do you put into the mental side and what does that look like?

Tony Montgomery: Like, are you asking them about their um relationships? Are you asking them about,

Paul Oneid: Absolutely.

Tony Montgomery: their social life, like what what all does that look like? And how do you encompass that into, is it check-ins? Do you have like a mental health check-in day and then a physical check? like How do you do all that?

Paul Oneid: That's fantastic question. So one of the things that we do at the beginning of our coaching with our clients is during onboarding, we have a questionnaire that's called creating a healthy coach athlete relationship.

Paul Oneid: And that and in our intake forms,

Paul Oneid: In our intake forms, we ask questions like, what's your family situation like? What do you do for work? What's your weekly schedule? All these things, trying to get to know the individual from ah an individual standpoint.

Paul Oneid: Then the coach-athlete relationship questionnaire is like, hey, what do you need from me mentally, emotionally, spiritually that I can provide you within this relationship?

Paul Oneid: And everything in our coaching is framed around getting to know our clients as intimately as possible. And obviously there are some clients who will share everything. And there are some clients who will be, keep things a little closer to the chest, just want the X's and O's. And that's totally fine with me as well.

Paul Oneid: Our coaching is very high touch. I have 45 clients. I talked to each one of them almost every single day in some capacity. And i asked them i I put in all of their birthdays.

Paul Oneid: I put in the names of their children. i track you know what their pets' names are. i track you know when their anniversaries are and all these things over time so that I'm injecting myself into their life as someone who intimately gives a shit about them as a person.

Tony Montgomery: Right. So you're not doing that just to check boxes. You're doing that because you actually like care about them.

Paul Oneid: I genuinely i genuinely care about each and every person that I work with.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Tony Montgomery: I think that's important because I think people can tell when you're just checking boxes versus when you actually care, right?

Paul Oneid: Oh my God. Absolutely.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Paul Oneid: People know it's it's very obvious.

Tony Montgomery: It's what we do. We spend our whole lives evaluating whether or not people are real or whether or not they're full of shit. And they find out very quickly if you're if you're full of shit.

Tony Montgomery: um So yeah, i just wanted sorry toer I just wanted to make sure that people understood that it's like a genuine appreciation and care for the people that you work with. And I think that's the most important thing.

Paul Oneid: Absolutely.

Tony Montgomery: have you like When you meet these coaches that aren't people people like and they don't like people, you're like what like, what business are you in? It makes no sense to me how you can be so nihilistic, so pessimistic, but yet be a coach.

Paul Oneid: To me, that's not coaching though. I think it's programming or it's, you know, yeah, it's programming.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Oneid: Dude, I send every single one of my mentees gets a Christmas present. Like every single one of the mentees that I've ever worked with gets a Christmas present. I send them an audible book every year.

Tony Montgomery: Nice. That's awesome.

Paul Oneid: And you know when when we have we're actually implementing right now um different benchmarks within our coaching relationships where there's an alert that goes off to the coach and then to me where at three months, six months, and one year of working with us, we are going to be automating a gift to be sent out to our clients, like ah a little memento of you know something that has to do with either either it's like a hat or a t-shirt or something that makes them feel a part of something bigger.

Paul Oneid: Because something that a lot of coaches don't do within their coaching practice is actually identify what do you want people to feel when they're working with you?

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. yeah

Paul Oneid: So when they work with Master Athletic Performance, I want them to feel like, number one, this is the most professional coaching relationship that they've ever encountered. I want them to feel like they are valued and I want them to feel like they're our only client.

Paul Oneid: I want every single client that I work with to feel like they are my only client. So every system and process that we implement, whether it's our check-in process or our onboarding process or education process, is focused on making those people feel those three things.

Paul Oneid: And when you approach it like that, creating relationships becomes very easy because you are removing vulnerability. right Vulnerability means susceptible to attack.

Paul Oneid: You don't want people to feel vulnerable. You want them to feel safe. And when they feel safe, they will be open. And when they are open, they're open to change because they trust you.

Paul Oneid: And if you can create trust in the coach-athlete relationship, literally all doors open for progress.

Tony Montgomery: It's the same way in therapy, right? It's how can you create trust with the people you work with so that they can be as open as possible.

Paul Oneid: Yep.

Tony Montgomery: And I like the way that you frame vulnerability um into openness, safety, and and and trust. um I think that's a far more accurate way of of talking about this idea of how to be vulnerable to be open um when it comes to to working with your athletes do you have maybe like a score sheet how do you track like mental readiness so that you know when you can push them versus when you know you have to pull back

Paul Oneid: I don't track it.

Tony Montgomery: no just kind of like an intuitive thing of like getting to know the

Paul Oneid: I'll be honest. I don't track it. um it's it's more It's more conversational. Yeah.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I i mean, I, yep.

Paul Oneid: I found, so sorry, just to build on that. If you track everything, you track nothing. And we also have to be conscious that these people live lives.

Paul Oneid: So my my check-in questionnaire, like if I'm coaching someone on training and nutrition, my check-in questionnaire is like 20 questions. So i'm getting them to answer 20 narrative questions plus all the biofeedback that they're tracking throughout the week.

Paul Oneid: If I add in a mental readiness score or sheet to that, that's probably like a half an hour to an hour of their time a week just giving me data.

Paul Oneid: So for me, I would much rather be intuitive within the relationship standpoint and have those conversations rather than add another questionnaire

Tony Montgomery: So when you say, when you track when you you when you track, if you track everything, you track nothing

Paul Oneid: yes i believe that because if you have so much data what are you doing with like if you're tracking let's say

Tony Montgomery: and

Paul Oneid: You're tracking their motivation, their stress, their perception of recovery, ah their sleep, their sleep quality, faster blood glucose, blood pressure, resting heart rate, 20 narrative questions.

Paul Oneid: Are you using all of that information every week to guide your decision making? Or could you be more accurate in the information that you're collecting, be respectful of that person's time and efficient in your communication so that you're only collecting what you need to get that person from A to B?

Tony Montgomery: I think you're right. I think sports scientists would be very upset with you about that idea.

Paul Oneid: Yeah, well, sports scientists can kiss my ass. I've worked like that. I see. i see i see so much more value from just getting to know somebody and forming a relationship than just filling out endless questionnaires.

Paul Oneid: I'm not trying to do research. I'm trying to learn a person.

Tony Montgomery: And you don't think research, you just think certain research is more valuable than others. And you don't want them to have questionnaire fatigue of like, I got to answer these questionnaires again.

Tony Montgomery: so I'm just going to write whatever you want it to be.

Paul Oneid: But the thing is, Tony, even,

Tony Montgomery: You want it to be concise enough to get.

Paul Oneid: yeah Yeah, because like, even with what I'm asking now already, I have to trim it down for some people.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Paul Oneid: Like those CEOs, those doctors, those lawyers, they don't have an hour and a half to check in with me a week.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Paul Oneid: You know, like I have one guy, he's like, only ask me what you need from me and we'll just have conversations. I'm like, good, I'd rather that.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. I mean, questionnaire fatigue is a real thing. In some of these psychology departments, they do like mass testing, right? And they build research off of this mass testing.

Paul Oneid: isn'

Tony Montgomery: And it's like, this group gets to give them 10 questions. This group gets to give them 10 questionnaires. you know So you have six people in this department giving out 10 questionnaires.

Tony Montgomery: So you have 60 questionnaires and then you give it out to a thousand people and you're like, do you really think that's valuable data? Like if I was a college kid filling that out, would be like, I wouldn't even think twice about the right answer.

Paul Oneid: Yeah,

Tony Montgomery: Right.

Paul Oneid: not yeah not even close.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. So, yeah, no, I think that's a good point. Right. Yeah. All those things make make complete sense to me in terms of fatigue of the person and making sure that it's detailed enough to where you get the things that you need to get, but that you're not overcooking. You don't want to overcook it, right?

Paul Oneid: Exactly.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. Yeah. No. So how do you... with Within these conversations, within these training metrics that you do track, how do you know when to push and when to pull? Like say they're getting ready for meet or ah bodybuilding show and they just have they just got fired from their job, but they're persistent on doing this X. And you're like, there's no way you're going to be able to do that.

Tony Montgomery: How do you work within their... Right.

Paul Oneid: It's not my decision to make.

Tony Montgomery: right

Paul Oneid: It's not my decision to make. If they want to push towards the goal in spite of the situation, i can give them all the information that they need and I can advocate for probably what's going to be the safest decision to make.

Paul Oneid: But ultimately, they're the hero of their own story. It's my job to get them to to where they want to be in as safe and healthy a place as possible. it' not my It's not my job to tell them how to live their lives.

Tony Montgomery: Right. I understand that. But as a coach,

Paul Oneid: Right. But as a coach, I'm not making decisions for them.

Tony Montgomery: it's not, yeah, but the way the way that, and maybe maybe it's over extrapolating, but the way that I look at it is like, if you're, say you're an MMA coach and you're working with someone and they're done like their career is over, but yet they're still fighting. Is it your job to be like, Hey, like as a coach, you just don't have it anymore. And I just don't want to see you get hurt.

Tony Montgomery: And I want to, cause the athlete's always going want to push. Is it ever your job to be the break? And you're saying that that's not something that you do.

Paul Oneid: A

Paul Oneid: a break doesn't stop a person, it slows them down. And it slows them down long enough that they stop. Okay? So the break for me is the education.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah, okay.

Paul Oneid: It's presenting the options. It's presenting the trade-offs to those options. But ultimately, I am a guide. I am not a decision maker. So...

Paul Oneid: where where i would Where I would draw the line is if I thought that person was harming themselves.

Tony Montgomery: yeah okay

Paul Oneid: And if they still chose to make the decision contrary to the advice that I provided, then I would i would fall to my ethics and I would say, hey I cannot be a part of this.

Tony Montgomery: Right. Yeah. yeah

Paul Oneid: But if I don't think that they're going to hurt themselves, like, I mean, you talk about an MMA fighter, like they could probably die in the ring. but they might have the best the competition of their life, right? Like who am I to make that decision?

Paul Oneid: If, you know, but if that person was, let's say dealing with multiple TBIs and I, and my professional opinion was that they would do themselves lifelong harm if they participated, I would remove myself because that person is going to make the decision they're going to make.

Tony Montgomery: No matter what.

Paul Oneid: It's my decision. It's my decision whether I want to be a part of it or not.

Tony Montgomery: Okay.

Paul Oneid: And I've had to make that decision, right?

Tony Montgomery: yeah

Paul Oneid: I've had ah in my, in my situation, it's usually come in the context of like performance enhancing drugs.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Paul Oneid: It's like I don't think that you should do this. If you choose to do it, you're welcome to go get another coach.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. Yeah. And I found myself in those shoes as well, um where it's like, I'm trying to help you make the best decisions for the future you because all you're focusing on right now is the immediate you.

Paul Oneid: Exactly.

Paul Oneid: Yep.

Tony Montgomery: And if you're not able to fully see that, I don't want to participate in 20 years from now when you want to, 10 years from now when you want to have a kid and you're just like, I can't have kids anymore because I destroyed my health for ah hobby that i did on, you know.

Tony Montgomery: So yeah, I understand that.

Paul Oneid: Yep.

Tony Montgomery: what do you What do you feel like are some of the the key traits that you see in people that are successful um as athletes working with you? And do you feel like those are things that you as a coach can help them develop or they just have it or they don't?

Paul Oneid: I think that, so if you were to ask me what the most important quality of a high performer is, it is someone who is totally fine doing the same things every day.

Tony Montgomery: Mm-hmm.

Paul Oneid: They're totally satisfied in the monotony.

Paul Oneid: I personally believe that I can teach you how to do that.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Paul Oneid: Certain personality profiles are much harder than others.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah, yeah.

Paul Oneid: right Like that person who needs the the variety and things like that. But you can build that into the process. Like one of the easiest ways, someone who needs a lot of training variety. Cool, you run a week A and a week B. So then every week it alternates.

Paul Oneid: Or even you go a step further, week A, week B, week C. And you run kind of like a cube method or whatever it was. Is that, yeah. Anyway.

Tony Montgomery: Sure.

Paul Oneid: um So you can build that in. But as long as those same three weeks repeat ad libitum,

Tony Montgomery: Right.

Paul Oneid: until infinity so you can see progress we're fine so there's a give and a take that one quality of i'm totally fine to do the same things all the time for a really long time is the difference between somebody who achieves greatness and someone who doesn't that's my personal opinion i can definitely teach you how to do that but some people just can't get out of their own way

Tony Montgomery: So you can see progress.

Paul Oneid: I will say that my personality lends itself to more success than others within those challenging cases. And I've had a lot of success where other coaches have failed.

Paul Oneid: But i still haven't I still am not 100%. I don't think I ever will be.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Paul Oneid: And I'm totally okay with that.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. So would you, would you say that high levels of conscientiousness, would you say that that would be the trait that they value hard work, that they value, um that type of stuff or would it be?

Paul Oneid: Yeah. Yeah. I think conscientiousness would be a good one. I think most high performers are very detail oriented.

Tony Montgomery: yes

Paul Oneid: I think ah you're going to go, the the interesting part is like, if you were to classify like a type A competitor versus a type B competitor, the type A competitor might be successful because they are so detail oriented. They are so regimented, but they also could be unsuccessful because they're so stressed.

Paul Oneid: They're so high strung. That type B might be a little bit slower to get the progress because they're not as locked in, but that could be contrasted by the fact that they're so relaxed and their recovery will probably be better between sessions.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Paul Oneid: So there's a give and a take to everything and nothing is good or bad. It's just how you, you as the coach manipulate the intervention to suit that person, to get them to a place where, hey, we're doing the same things all the time for a really long time.

Paul Oneid: And then we're gonna see progress.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. I mean, on both sides, a and B are essentially modulating their autonomic nervous system to the best of your ability, right?

Paul Oneid: Exactly.

Tony Montgomery: um

Paul Oneid: exactly

Tony Montgomery: i went i I'd be interested. I don't know if you work with younger clients, but they've they just posted at survey research, which takes survey research for for what it is. But they have found that um younger generation is more narcissistic, less conscientious, less agreeable,

Tony Montgomery: like dramatically standard deviations below the norm. Have you, have you noticed that if you worked with younger people?

Paul Oneid: Really?

Paul Oneid: no, no

Tony Montgomery: Because they wouldn't come to you, right?

Paul Oneid: they wouldn't come to me. I think my, i think I self-select based on how I present myself to the types of people that I want to work with.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. Well, let me put it, let me put it to you this way, because that, that is true.

Paul Oneid: Um, the,

Tony Montgomery: That was when you were in college, Did you notice that people were actually excited to learn about exercise science?

Paul Oneid: I think there's a standard deviation. think there's I think there's a a normalized curve. You got people who are there to check a box. You got people that like you and I who are just living it every single day. And then you got most of the people are in the middle who are find it fun, but also find other things fun.

Paul Oneid: um you know while you were talking While you were talking, I was thinking, I'm like, you know i have this concept of an elf client versus a half client.

Paul Oneid: An elf client is exciting, lucrative, and fun. They're the people who will pay what you're worth. they love what they They love what they're doing and they're incredibly fun to work with.

Paul Oneid: And a half client is hard, annoying, hard, annoying, lazy, and i forget what the F stands for, but they're basically the clients who come in and just give you a hard time the whole time.

Paul Oneid: And if you... If you're very bad at marketing yourself, you look at your roster and you have like a ton of clients who just don't fit the ideal that you're looking for.

Tony Montgomery: you just took whoever, right?

Paul Oneid: just took whoever.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Paul Oneid: And so for me, like I did this the other day, I looked at my roster. i'm like, I like all, i would buy ah i would buy a drink for all these people.

Paul Oneid: Well, I shouldn't say a drink. I would buy a coffee for all these people.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. Yeah. No, that, yeah, that makes sense. The the reason I ask is because, the amount of students that I deal with now where their mindset is like C's get degrees and it's astronomical compared to when I was in in college. And it could just be, obviously there's going to be a bias there and there's going to be my memory saying something that's probably not as accurate, but the amount of kids that I teach that teach

Tony Montgomery: could care less about learning and exercise in an exercise science program is astronomical right now.

Paul Oneid: I'll never get that.

Tony Montgomery: No.

Paul Oneid: I'll never. I just, I can't relate there.

Tony Montgomery: No, it's, yeah, me neither, neither. So so you have type a you have type B. When you look back on their success, do the paths look very similar?

Paul Oneid: Yeah.

Tony Montgomery: What are, what are what are the key things? um Trying to get them to focus on the process. Like what, what are the key things that you've seen to drive this success?

Paul Oneid: Process orientation is huge, right? Focusing on what are the boxes I need to check every day. Being intrinsically motivated and trying to detach from external outcomes is a huge piece.

Paul Oneid: Trying to make sure that they continue to have a why. And that's going to be different from each person, right? Some people's why is just that they love what they're doing.

Paul Oneid: some people's why is that they want to be the best in the world and you know we talked a lot about intrinsic motivation today but if you want to be the best in the world even though that is an external goal you don't have control over it so you can only focus on the process and you have to be intrinsically motivated um the other The other piece here that I think is really important, and and I think I, again, self-select for this type of person, is the people that have the best results with me actually want to learn about the process.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah, I noticed that too.

Paul Oneid: they want they want They want to become a master of their craft. They don't just want to drive the ship. you know so So I think those three things are are what I would say.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. And now you you deal with a lot of high level executives that have kind of life beyond the training and everything. But when you're dealing with athletes that identify with their sport, how do you how do you get that out of them? Because that is, for me,

Tony Montgomery: the sport's not always going to be there. could be an injury to where they have this, lot like in the military, I noticed this where people identify as like, I am a Marine. And, but then when they get out, they're like, I don't know what I am anymore.

Tony Montgomery: I've lost my identity. Is that something that you've had to work with, with people that identify with their sport?

Paul Oneid: working with I'm working with a gentleman right now. He's 40 years old. All he's ever known is powerlifting at the highest level. His goal is to set the Masters world record, and and he's going to do it.

Paul Oneid: But it's been a constant process of, hey, man, you can't only have this one thing. And if you're pursuing a very high level of excellence, injuries will come, illness will come.

Paul Oneid: For him, he got shingles. And he got shittles so bad that he was bedridden for a month and a half.

Paul Oneid: And over that month and a half, we spoke on a weekly basis because he was in a dark place.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Paul Oneid: And so, but through that month and a half, we broke through, through creating um a very close relationship of safety and openness and trust, where he realized that his identity was in was rooted in the wrong things.

Paul Oneid: And he took it as an opportunity to, to grow and to improve himself as a man outside of powerlifting. And that that's one of my biggest wins as a coach, actually.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. Yeah. I think the hard thing that I've had to deal with, um even as a researcher now, one of my research assistants at Oklahoma state was a high level ah collegiate wrestler and he got retired from the sport.

Paul Oneid: Okay.

Tony Montgomery: He didn't choose to retire from the sport. And you got to imagine at Oklahoma state where wrestling is everything that, that, that broke him right big time.

Paul Oneid: who

Tony Montgomery: And then he came into my lab and we started working together and get to know each other and kind of gave him different things to focus on. Um, to give him a different identity, give him a different sense of of purpose.

Tony Montgomery: But that idea of like you not getting to choose when you walk away, i think is hard for a lot of people. And I think that's why a lot of people stay in the game longer than they should push themselves longer than they should.

Tony Montgomery: Like for me, seeing 40 year olds, 45 year olds blasting drugs, looking purple on the platform, um, high blood pressure, right? Like to me, that's, you're scraping for something that's just not, not, not there anymore. Yeah.

Paul Oneid: Yeah. I think one of the reasons why I was so able to deal with my injury when it came to like, not powerlifting anymore was cause I had already decided I was going to walk away after the meet.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Paul Oneid: And so it was, know, on top of the fact that I made my wife made me promise not to compete again. She's like, listen, I just took care of you in a wheelchair for six weeks. You can fuck off.

Tony Montgomery: yeah

Paul Oneid: Um, So that to me was like a very easy decision, but I could totally see how, you know, getting retired rather than choosing to retire would be extremely challenging.

Tony Montgomery: yeah and i think right yeah and i think it just comes down yeah i think comes down to finding a ah different purpose beyond the sport right a different sense of

Paul Oneid: And that that's ultimately why I went back to the sport after bodybuilding, but I did it for myself.

Paul Oneid: I have so many purposes in my life. I feel so grateful, you know?

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. um what What is one of the biggest mental mistakes you've made as an athlete or a coach that comes to mind?

Paul Oneid: There are a lot of instances as an athlete where I just chose to do more, even though I knew it wasn't required.

Tony Montgomery: Mm-hmm.

Paul Oneid: um Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Paul Oneid: And there were when that motivation was extrinsic, it came from the from a wrong place of I need to do more so that I can prove I'm worth it.

Paul Oneid: and that that ultimately was the reason why i didn't achieve the goals that i wanted to achieve in the sport yeah

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. yeah The ego. Ego takes over so many times, right? Yeah. What is, um, what is the belief about training or mindset that you've changed your mind about?

Paul Oneid: that there's one way to do things like i

Tony Montgomery: When did you, when did you change your mind and what pushed you to change your mind about it?

Paul Oneid: Life experience, life experience, and learning from other people, um you know, realizing that champions become champions in so many different ways.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah.

Paul Oneid: There are no two champions that took the same road.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah. Right.

Paul Oneid: And who am I to believe that my way is the best way to the point where I now aloneton now no longer have a my way?

Tony Montgomery: right

Paul Oneid: it's the way that suits the individual in front of me and coming to a point where in my own life, in my own athletic journey, I just have to be able to train.

Paul Oneid: I just have to be able to push myself in some capacity, have a runway of progression. And then I'm happy.

Tony Montgomery: yeah

Paul Oneid: It's like, as long as I can push the rock up the hill, I'm happy.

Tony Montgomery: yeah you found what what makes you happy yeah yeah well paul i want to say thank you for your time uh you know getting ready for bodybuilding two days out is probably not the best way to spend two hours although it could be a great way to like distract you from being hungry and stuff like that as well um

Paul Oneid: Yeah, exactly.

Paul Oneid: I don't know if you counted how many nicotine pouches I just jammed in my mouth, but um no, man, i'm a any opportunity I get to chat with you and catch up is is truly one that I will cherish.

Paul Oneid: you know You're someone who I will consider to be one of my closest friends, even though we don't talk all the time. It's always picking up where we left off and to see you and in your endeavors and your passion for what you're doing is is inspiring to me.

Tony Montgomery: Yeah, likewise, man, to see what you're doing. i'm really excited for the next step in your path of really just having a family, becoming a father. i think that's going to be awesome.

Paul Oneid: Yeah, me too, man.

Tony Montgomery: I think that's going to be the thing that you excel at the most in your life. I'm really excited to see that.

Paul Oneid: That means a lot.

Tony Montgomery: Tell people where they could find you if they're interested in your coaching or if they want to find your information that you put out there.

Paul Oneid: Sure. So you can find me on Instagram at Paul O'Neid. ah You can find me at Coaches Corner U or at Master Athletic Performance. And then I've recently started posting more on my YouTube channel. So I've been posting twice a week, you know, vlog style, ah vlog style, like day in the life.

Paul Oneid: workout vlogs mixed in with some business education and things like that, showcasing like what online coaching and mentorship looks like. So people get an inside view. You can find me at pauloneed underscore MAP. And then I have my Coaches Corner University podcast, which is at Coaches Corner U on YouTube.

Paul Oneid: Appreciate

Tony Montgomery: Perfect. Well, Paul, you're the man. Appreciate your time, buddy.

Paul Oneid: you, buddy. Talk to you soon.

Tony Montgomery: right. Take care, man.