This week, I sat down with my good friend Joey Szatmary, owner of the business/brand "Szatstrength" (Lions Den Strength and Performance), and co-host of the Building Forward Podcast.

This one's a little different because Joey is officially stepping in as my co-host. We kept it loose and ran a rapid-fire Q&A across nutrition, training, and business. We confess our worst cheat meals ever. We look back at the coaching advice that makes us cringe now. Then we get into how we actually coach real people with real lives. Joey breaks down his 1-to-10 scale for building client confidence, why he's done treating training and nutrition as all or nothing, and why he believes you'd rebuild a business on community and output, not strategy.

Key Quote (Joey Szatmary)

"I do not give them whatever the task would be unless I can get a nine or 10. Even an eight isn't good enough. It needs to be so simple for them to almost look at me and laugh."

5 Core Themes

1. Coaching the person, not the plan. Joey admits his early nutrition coaching was built on exact diet plans. He assumed clients were as passionate and disciplined as he was, which set them up to fail. Nutrition, he says now, is mainly behavioural.

2. The 1-to-10 confidence scale. Joey assigns only tasks clients rate 9 or 10 for ease. Then he adds one weekly stretch goal that's just out of reach. Small wins build a snowball, and a stretch win builds belief.

3. Systems over all or nothing. Joey gives clients an option one, an option two, and a worst-case plan, so a chaotic day doesn't become a lost day. His one-bowl approach for clients with no set breaks is a good example: get meal one and the last meal right, then eat the rest whenever you can.

4. The little things are the price of admission. Joey long believed heavy lifting covered his core work. Direct core training, GPP, and mobility have paid off more than anything else for him in recent months, especially with the injuries he's accumulated.

5. Patience before program changes. When a client stalls, Joey's first question is "how long?" One bad session isn't data. He prioritizes volume by primary, secondary, and tertiary lifts, so he can stretch blocks to 8-10 weeks. He also warns that an expected deload changes how clients perform in the weeks leading up to it.

Main Take-Home Message

The best plan is the one your client can actually live with. Joey's approach centers on simple, repeatable behaviours built around a client's real life. He uses systems that bend instead of break, and he's patient enough to let the data show up before changing anything. That applies to nutrition, training, and business. You'll get better results from consistent, genuine output than from chasing the perfect protocol or overthinking the strategy.

Find Joey

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/szatstrength/?hl=en

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@SzatStrength

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@Buildingforwardpodcast

Website - https://szatstrength.net/

Find the Podcast

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple

Watch on YouTube