The Power of Mindset and Movement - With Matt Wells from Ethos Strength and Conditioning

Simple, practical coaching to help you stay consistent and keep progressing

TL;DR

• Motivation comes and goes. Discipline, and training you actually enjoy, is what lasts.
• Mobilise your joints before your warm-up, not after.
• Full-body sessions built around one compound lift give most people more for their time.
• You don't have to be an athlete to train like one. Start with simple regressions.
• Use RPE and the rule of thirds so off days don't derail you.

Introduction

I've been in the health and fitness game for over a decade, and I don't often meet coaches who blow me away like Matt Wells from Ethos Strength and Conditioning did. It's not only how much he knows. It's how simply he explains it, so you can walk away and use it straight away. This was Matt's first podcast, and you'd never know it.

Please note: this blog is for general information only and isn't medical advice. If you have pain or an injury, please see a physio or another qualified health professional before changing your training.

Lesson 1: Discipline beats motivation

Insight: Matt calls motivation a myth. Discipline will always be there, and if you're disciplined, you don't need to wait to feel motivated. He gave a great example. He doesn't enjoy HIIT. Ask him to do 45 minutes of HIIT for three years straight and it's not going to happen. Ask him to walk around the block listening to a podcast, and he'll still be doing it three years from now.

When clients tell me they're not motivated, I usually say that's not true, because if they weren't motivated they wouldn't be in the gym. They just haven't found the type of training they enjoy yet.

Action: Pick a form of movement you actually like and schedule it, rather than forcing yourself through something you dread.

Outcome: Consistency becomes much easier.

Lesson 2: Hide the vegetables

Insight: Matt says we all still have a bit of a child in us. When kids won't eat their vegetables, parents hide them in the meal. He does the same with training. One of his clients loves ballroom dancing, so Matt puts her in a weighted vest and has her move through an agility ladder using dance footwork as part of a superset.

He compares programs to recipes. Not every recipe suits everyone, and not every program will suit every person's lifestyle. Good coaches stay flexible. His line to clients is, "You give me an excuse, I'll give you a solution."

Action: If there's an exercise you hate, ask your coach for an alternative that hits the same goal in a way you enjoy.

Outcome: You keep the benefit without the battle.

Lesson 3: Move more outside the gym

Insight: Matt is big on NEAT, your non-exercise activity thermogenesis, which is just moving more in everyday life. His favourite example is parking further away at the supermarket. You get extra steps, you get a loaded carry if you take your own bags instead of a trolley, and nobody dings your car doors.

Take the stairs instead of the lift. And drink more water. Matt admits he used to be more worried about his coffee than his water. These days he still has two or three coffees, tries not to have any after 2pm and drinks a decent amount of water in between.

Action: Park further away, take the stairs and keep a water bottle with you.

Outcome: Small daily wins add up, especially on days you don't train.

Lesson 4: Mobilise before you warm up

Insight: Matt explains the difference simply. Mobility is movement at the joint. Flexibility is about the muscle and soft tissue. When you free up a joint, the muscles around it tend to relax too.

Here's what surprised me. Most of us jump on the treadmill for five minutes and then do mobility. Matt flips it. If you trained legs yesterday, you're already a bit tight. Jumping straight on the treadmill adds stress to a restricted movement pattern through your ankles, knees and hips. Mobilising first gets enough blood flowing and frees the joints up, so your warm-up runs on better movement. Since he made the switch, he says his back and hip soreness on the treadmill went away. I'm definitely going to start doing this myself and with clients.

His go-to drills include:

• Ankles: working through full range in every direction.
• Hips: 90/90s on the floor, rocking the knees side to side, and hip rotations holding onto a stick for support.
• Thoracic spine: lying on a foam roller at the base of your shoulder blades, heels close to your glutes, taking a deep breath and extending back over it while keeping your hips down. The scorpion stretch is another one he likes.

He thinks we're terrible at thoracic mobility because so much of what we do, like driving and sitting, keeps us folded forward.

On foam rollers and lacrosse balls, his take is simple. If it feels good, do it. If it does nothing for you, don't. He used a lacrosse ball on his feet after years of switching between cricket, weightlifting and CrossFit shoes, and says don't underrate your feet.

Action: Spend five to 10 minutes on mobility before your next warm-up.

Outcome: Your joints move better before you load them.

Lesson 5: Pain isn't always where the problem is

Insight: When a new client has pain, Matt starts with a movement screen and uses a one-to-10 pain scale. Anything getting towards a six or seven, he pulls back. He also asks what kind of pain it is. A dull ache often points to restriction. Sharp, pulsating or radiating pain could suggest something more, like a nerve issue, and needs to be checked properly.

He also noted that where the pain shows up isn't always where the problem is. A client getting low-back pain during a hip drill might feel fine after some thoracic work.

My favourite story was about a client with ongoing shoulder pain. She'd done physio and acupuncture and lots of mobility, but nothing helped. Then Matt asked about her work. She was on a computer 90% of the day with her mouse in her right hand. He had her switch to her left hand for the quieter part of her day. Two to three months later, she had no pain.

As Matt pointed out, your workout is maybe 45 to 60 minutes. What you do for the rest of the day adds up far more.

Action: Look at what you do for eight hours a day, like how you sit, stand and use your computer.

Outcome: You might find the missing link your training can't fix on its own.

Lesson 6: Go full body and train like an athlete

Insight: For the general population, Matt's biggest nugget of gold is full-body training. He says people split their week into muscle groups like an 80-year-old's pills in a blister pack. It's simple, but it isn't always the most effective. He prefers full-body sessions with one compound lift as the focus each day, like a squat on Monday, a bench press on Tuesday, a barbell bent-over row on Wednesday and a deadlift on Thursday, with accessories around it.

He also asks why people don't want to train like an athlete. Who said you have to be an athlete to train like one? A beginner won't be doing barbell snatches. They'll start with simple regressions, then build up until one day he tells them they just did single-arm dumbbell snatches. People are often surprised at what they're capable of. He still throws in some bicep curls, too, because people enjoy them.

Action: Build each session around one compound lift and keep everything else as accessory work.

Outcome: You get a more well-rounded workout in less time.

Lesson 7: Use RPE and the rule of thirds

Insight: RPE stands for rate of perceived exertion. Matt uses a one-to-10 scale, where 10 means you couldn't do another rep even if your life depended on it. If he gives you a 5x5 bench press, he might ask you to start at an RPE of six and finish at nine, meaning you could squeeze out one more rep at an absolute max push.

The beauty of it is that it adapts to your day. If a client squats 70kg at an RPE of eight on a great day, then comes in two days later when it's raining and miserable and 50kg feels heavy, that's fine. Everything outside the gym affects performance inside it. He's found it especially helpful for female athletes, whose energy can change a lot day to day.

Then there's his rule of thirds. If you're training four or five times a week, a third of your sessions should feel terrible, a third should feel all right and a third should feel great. If that's your month, your programming is spot on. If it's off balance, look at the program or what's happening in your life. On the rubbish days, he scales back to technique or does something different and fun.

Action: Rate your effort out of 10 for your main sets this week, and expect some sessions to feel bad.

Outcome: You stay consistent instead of beating yourself up over off days.

Quick wins

• Find training you enjoy rather than waiting for motivation.
• Park further away and take the stairs.
• Mobilise before your warm-up.
• Check how you sit and work during the day.
• Use RPE so your training matches how you feel.

Closing insight

If I had to sum Matt up in one line, it'd be this: training doesn't need to be complicated to work. Find what you enjoy, move well, listen to your body and accept that not every session will be your best. That's how you stay in the game for the long run.

Connect with Matt

Follow Matt's training page, Ethos Training, on Instagram.

Listen to the full episode

The full conversation is on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube, or press play at the top of this page.

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