What is Evolved Coaching?

A chiropractor wanted to send me a 17-year-old volleyball star with a frayed rotator cuff. She asked, “What do you do? How do I describe it to her mom?”

“I solve athletes’ problems.”

“No, like, what do you do? What do I tell them? Will you give her postural exercises? Her posture is so bad.”

With a concrete finality, I said, “Just tell her I will solve her problem.”

I've been trying to explain Evolved Coaching for years. People ask, and they want something that fits a box they already have in their head. They want the square peg to fit the square hole.

“So it’s physical therapy?”

Nope.

“Strength and conditioning?”

Also nope.

“So what is it?”

“It’s Evolved Coaching.”

And then comes the blank stare.

Nothing like this exists. I could say, “I use critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and evolution to solve movement and body problems.” You'd probably nod politely and have zero clue what I'm talking about. Throw in, “dynamical systems theory, ecological dynamics, and skill acquisition,” and boom—people go cross-eyed. So I've learned to simplify. I've given my elevator pitch a playful tint: “I’m the Sherlock Holmes of unsolved injuries.”

The Sherlock line gets people to nod their heads. But the look on their faces tells me they still don’t understand. So what is Evolved Coaching?

The problem with quick pitches like these is that they rely on pre-existing and shared concepts. I say “dentist,” and you instantly know what that means because you've got that concept locked and loaded in your brain. I say “Evolved Coaching,” and unless you’ve been through one of my courses, your mind draws a big fat blank. The concept of Evolved Coaching doesn’t exist out there in the collective consciousness. Not yet.

So, in order to explain what Evolved Coaching is, I need to create a new concept in your mind. A new idea. And one of the best vehicles for that? Metaphor!

Michelin Star Coaching

Taco Bell and Alinea both serve dinner. At Taco Bell, you can order a Crunchwrap Supreme and get exactly what you expect. At Alinea, you walk out having your entire understanding of what food can be changed forever. Both are dinner. And yet they’re incomparable.

Alinea has held three Michelin Stars since 2010 (!!!), a distinction no other restaurant in the U.S. has come close to. They're one of one, blowing minds Monday through Sunday by doing things no one else has tried—and doing it excellently. And that's the closest thing I can give you to understand Evolved Coaching. It is in the same category as physical therapy and strength and conditioning, and yet it’s a completely different universe.

Taco Bell = assembly line recipes.

Alinea = custom-made experiences for all your senses.

Standard physical therapy and performance centers = assembly line protocols.

Evolved Coaching = programs built specifically for you.

But what does ‘custom-made’ actually mean? Because I'm still being vague, aren't I?

It means this: someone evaluates you in a way that makes you go, “Holy shit, how did no one see that before? It’s so obvious now that you've pointed it out.” One pro athlete literally yelled at me, “You mean I’ve been doing Nordics wrong for fourteen fucking years!? It was such a simple fix. Why the fuck didn’t anyone notice this before!?”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him he'd been getting drive-thru programming his whole career.

How Evolved Coaching Works

Here's what you can expect from your first Evolved Coaching session. After an initial evaluation, an Evolved Coach runs you through a series of trials and errors, trying new movements on for size and seeing what fits. She does this not only to see what solves your problem, but to collect more intel. These experiments are still part of the evaluation, but they’re also part of your program.

These new movements are often custom-made. Just like those gorgeous Alinea dishes that don't exist anywhere else. You won't find YouTube tutorials for half the stuff we do—unless an Evolved Coach has posted it. Even something basic like a Bulgarian split squat becomes something radically different. It’s like comparing oranges to Mars.

You’ll leave your session feeling different than after any other appointment you've ever had.

Maybe your pain is gone after one session. (I'm serious.)

Maybe you've got a handful of promising experiments to try, ones that already started working in our session.

But definitely you have different expectations. You know you're not getting six months of ambiguous glute exercises. Your Evolved Coach has already told you something to the effect of, “If it’s not significantly better in two to four weeks, we’ll try something else.” Because one of the cardinal rules of Evolved Coaching is that we do not repeat actions hoping for different results. We’re not insane.

How Evolved Coaching Differs From Physical Therapy & Strength Training

Let’s say your ankle hurts when you go on your toes and when you run. A traditional physical therapist or coach may tell you to do towel curls, foam rolling, and stretching. So. Much. Stretching.

An Evolved Coach watches you run first. She knows better techniques from worse ones. She also knows there are seven different muscles that put you on your tiptoes, and how each one helps you run. She knows better than to assume they're all working well. So, she tests each one individually.

Say she discovers you're using your peroneals as your primary muscles to lift your heel off the ground. Problem is, they didn’t evolve for that job. They're terrible at it. Your soleus and gastrocnemius did, though. And, lucky for you, she knows how to get your brain to use those muscles again.

Now, don’t get ahead of me. This doesn’t mean she’s going to tell you to squeeze your calves. None of that.

You walk out with movements you’ve never seen before. With a confidence in your coach and your ankle that you haven’t felt in forever. And while you're heading home with your new program, she's already back at her desk plotting what to do if this approach doesn’t work. She's got plans B, C, and D swimming around in her head because she knows something most practitioners don't: the problem is solvable.

Evolved Coaches solve problems.

So, that is Evolved Coaching.