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Authentic gay conversations on personal development, life coaching, and mental health. Join Keegan Hirst, founder of Gay Man's Coaching and former professional rugby player, for weekly real talk about gay lifestyle, coming out, relationships, business, and authentic living. Deep, honest conversations that help gay men build confidence, find community, and create vibrant, unapologetic lives.
00:00
Hello and welcome to the Gay Man's Coaching podcast, the podcast for gay men who want to improve their performance across physique, mindset, career and life. We have got a fantastic guest for you on this week's episode. We've got one of the GMC coaches, Paddy Hughes is going to be coming on and chatting to us off the back of our amazing event that we did at the weekend, the Unapologetic Man event. We had a fantastic turnout, some incredible conversations were had.
00:30
We had a few people join GMC who weren't part of it before and we had lots and lots of people forming connections, getting in their six week squads for some accountability and just really connecting over where they are, what they've got going on in their life and the challenges that they're facing. And it's always interesting when we do these live events, how many people have got so much in common. People often get so caught up in thinking that...
00:56
there's something wrong with them, why aren't they further ahead, they've got these challenges going on. And very often, when we find, and we have these conversations in the community with people who are doing the same work as us and trying to make the same progress as us, we find that we're not alone and it empowers us. It stops us beating ourselves up and allows us to actually take action rather than getting stuck in these doom cycles of, I'm not good enough, I'm gonna try really hard, that can't be perfect.
01:24
don't maintain it, fall off and then just constantly around in this cycle. That is the importance of community, that is the importance of sharing this journey with like-minded people, that is the importance of getting to these events and coming to the calls and extracting the value that we provide at GMC. And someone who is exceptional at giving value within GMC is one of our success coaches, Padda Hughes. Now, Padda has been with GMC for...
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two, three years now. He has grown. I can't tell you how proud I am of him as a coach, with how much he's grown, his skill, his craft as a coach, but also as a communicator. You know, all the guys who work with Pada, who've come into contact with Pada, will know that he is a bundle of joy, he's enthusiastic, and his knowledge is exceptional. So I'm really, really excited to dig into
02:24
some of Paddy's experiences as a success coach and share that with you here.
02:33
Okay, so something that I wanted to do was introduce other voices onto this podcast because GMC is not all about Keegan-Hurst. We have an amazing team of coaches, psychotherapists, physiotherapists, behind the scenes. And we have some amazing clients in the program as well. And I wanted to get their voices on here as well. So today I've got Paddy Hughes, who is one of our success coaches. He's been with us for a few years now.
03:01
um And his craft as a coach has grown incredibly over the time that he's come with us. His clients stay with him for an incredibly long time because he's constantly challenging them and helping them grow. And yeah, I'm going to ask Padra few questions and get a bit of insight into how he coaches, how he thinks, how he structured things and common patterns that he's seeing. Because what I notice is that
03:28
most people don't fail at getting a result because they don't know what to do. It's because they can't stay consistent when life gets messy. And that is something that Padra is very good at helping our clients navigate through. So Padra, welcome. Good to have you, mate. Let's dive straight in here. Check-ins, obviously something that we do with clients each week. I'm interested to know what are the most common patterns that you see from clients that recur?
03:56
um over check-ins. Yeah, so I think you have a couple of classic ones, know, not enough time and things like that, but something that's come up a wee bit, particularly with new clients, is people not recording wins, people not wanting to give themselves a pat on the back. And I think that's a pretty important talking point, like, because you need to be able to give yourself that success, don't you? Yeah. And what do you think is the real reason underneath that why they're not able to share their progress, share their successes, share their wins?
04:26
I think you can go as deep with that as you like. I think people don't want to give themselves, you really want to be humble, don't you? You don't want to be coming up with your bragging, but I think that's part of it. I think people need to, I always say this in New York clients, you need to be able to push yourself into that discomfort. And if you do, if you look for more wins, you're going to find them, you're going to feel better about it. yeah, that place I'm not wanting to brag. Yeah, it becomes a positive feedback loop, right? If you do a thing, you acknowledge it publicly.
04:54
Not necessarily on social media, but certainly in our community. And then you go, Oh, that was a good thing that I did. get feedback and it reinforces, it reinforces that loop. Um, I, yeah, I totally get it. People don't want to be, people don't want to be seen today. Um, that's a big challenge that people have. So what's your go to then, um, your go to intervention when people are shying away from discomfort in general. Cause that's, you know, that's a lot about what we do, right. It's pushing people out of their comfort zone.
05:25
I think it's just holding up like proof that that type of thing works. Like there's a couple of different people in our community that you'll see who are consistently posting their wins and stuff like that. And I think people think they're doing so well and that's why they post their wins. I think they're doing well because they post their wins. Yeah. It's the other way around. Yeah. So I think just showing people the benefit of, if you push through this, this is what's on the other side. Yeah. That's what's been working for me. Yeah. That's great. What's something else that crops up in check-ins a lot?
05:55
I would say that perfection paralysis. think this is rife. think a lot of people, you know, we've got a hundred club. don't know if that's been something that's been talked about on this podcast before. no. Do you just want to explain what the hundred club is? Yeah. So in essence, it's a perfect week. You know, you, you nail your nutrition, your steps, your training and everything like that. We give you a wee, a wee shout out. It's a hundred club, but I sometimes see that if people don't get that, then the whole week's done. You know, it's that PT. You have like one tire pops, you slash the other three things, whatever.
06:24
I think, think recognize one day off in a week, even if it's not amazing, you can still have six really good days. That's still a very good week. Yeah. Yeah. Perfection paralysis has been a common one. And why, why do you think, um, why do you think that that's so common? And, and obviously you've had some amazing successes with your clients who've come in with that problem and, you help them work through it. So what, like, what are some of the action steps and reminders that you help people with to
06:54
to work, because it's not an overnight fix, right? So what's your kind of plan of action with that? I think again, it's kind of zooming out a wee bit. Like when people are, I understand why you feel that way when you're in the day to day, like say today, for example, if I slipped, it feels like the whole diet's gone or whatever. But if I zoom out a wee bit and look at a calendar over three months and there's one day, you realize, that's not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. So just kind of reminding people that 80 % over the span of six months is going to be.
07:23
way more effective than 100 % over the span of two weeks. Yeah. I think that's a common misconception, isn't it? That people have that they need to be perfect for a month rather than just be consistent at 80 % for three months. You'll get a hell of a lot more progress and enjoy the process a hell of a lot more as well. A hundred percent. Yeah. And I think, think people do, I think it runs a wee bit deeper in that people start to feel like something about themselves if they're slipping up, like, I'm the type of person who does this. So I think a wee bit of work on that.
07:53
is also helpful. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, we do a lot of work on identity, don't we, people in and around, again, not wanting to take up space, not wanting to be seen, not wanting to celebrate their wins, feeling that they, you we hear it all the time, don't we, people saying that they're a perfectionist. What are some of the, what are some other identity shifts that you find yourself helping clients a lot with? I think that one's a pretty important one, it's just said perfectionism, think, I think perfectionism is a bit of
08:22
fear and disguise. think that's an important one, but becoming the type of person who, does not miss up, miss on things. You know, a lot of my clients have said that like very busy week this week. I'm like, okay, I understand. But if we don't get all the sessions done, whatever, and they'll say, Oh no, I get my sessions done. It's not, I'm going to, it's, this is something that I do. So I think stepping into that identity of this is just what they do know and who they are rather than these. So like a shift from, I'm the person who
08:50
tries to get my session into, I'm the person who gets my session in regardless. Yeah, I've had a few of those and I love to see that. Yeah. And what do you think are some big things that again, allow people to step into that new identity? How do you support your clients in doing that? I'll always, I'll help them stack the wins. I'll encourage them to write them out themselves in our check-ins and just in the messages in general. I'll point them out for them. I'll say, at how well you've done here. But again, it's...
09:19
looking at other people in the community and the coaches and like other sources of inspiration that these people are there because of these sort of shifts. And if you adopt that same sort of identity now, that's how you become that. Yeah. I think that is something that's amazing about our community is that when someone comes in and it's easy to get overwhelmed and see all these people succeeding and doing really well. But the beauty of that is that they've got exactly the same resources as everybody else in the community. And if they can do it, there's
09:48
literally no reason why they can't. So I think that's uh being able to shift someone's perspective from, at all these people winning, I'm not gonna be able to do that, to look at all these people winning, I'm in the place where that's happening. That's an amazing thing. So we've talked a bit about there about things that pop up in...
10:14
check-ins and we've talked about identity shifts, we uh both agree is a big part of coaching. And another key aspect for coaching for me is being able to do the right thing or say the right thing, make the right change to the client's program, say the right thing at the right time. And that's something that you're very good at. Rather than just doing the same approach over and over, it adapts, it changes with.
10:42
what the client needs, what's going on in their life. What do you think is the difference between nice coaching and coaching that actually creates long-term change? I think you've actually helped me a lot with this shift in that I used to think nice coaching was kind of letting people off at their slip door. People say, I've had a hard wake or it's been busy. just say, oh, that's okay. Whereas I think holding people to a higher standard,
11:10
is actually nice coaching, even if sometimes that means you have to say something like, no, that's not, I'm not taking that. You you should have been able to get this done, obviously with the exception of genuine reasons. I think helping people get out of their own way sometimes may come across as, know, confrontational or whatever in the moment, but that is nice in the long run. Yeah, it's, yeah, definitely. It's having compassion and understanding where people are at and what's going on for them, but also
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Yeah, you said it there, you nailed it. It's holding people to a higher standard than they would hold themselves. Because we can all let ourselves off with that. So for you then, when you're helping your clients raise their standards, what does that look like? How do you speak to clients about that? What's an example of what that might look like?
12:02
Well, I think the first thing is you have to sort of do it for yourself as a coach and challenge yourself with bigger things. And me doing that in different areas has helped with clients. So what that looks like with them, like this month, for example, every single client of mine, we have goals down for the first quarter of the year. We had to get that locked in. There was a lot of resistance to that. Some people didn't want to do it because if you clearly define a goal, you clearly define like a reason to feel as well. But kind of just challenging that and being like, no, let's do this and let's see what happens as a result of it.
12:31
that to me is holding that higher standard. You're setting the goal that they didn't want to set in the first place that they're a bit nervous about. And then every single week we just kind of gear them towards that. We chat about it and that's what it looks like. So it's just about stretching them out of their comfort zone a little bit and instilling a bit of belief in them that you think they can do it even if they don't. 100%. Yeah, 100%. And if Stephen Hannigan's listening, he laughed because there's been a lot of times where he said something and then he's like, I shouldn't have that because he knew fine, rightly I'm going to hold him to do that then. Yeah.
13:01
Yeah, it's funny, isn't it? Like I said at the beginning, clients often don't need to know more. They just need to get out of their own way. So you've talked about these shifts with pushing people out of their comfort zones, identity shifts, making progress. What do you feel over and over, over your years of experience as a coach? What are small habits that create big ripples of change?
13:30
And why do you think they do it?
13:34
I probably the biggest one that I'm always recommending to people is journaling. it's not for the like, obviously there's a bit of mindfulness in that, but it's just reflection. Like it's just at the start of every single day, you write out what you're going to do that day. And at the end of the day, you review either why you did or why you didn't. And I find this a lot with clients, even their gym consistency starts to improve as a result because they'll have planned to go, they'll have every good intention, they'll maybe miss a session. They'll go to write down their excuse that evening and they think I don't have one. There's no self development without self reflection. know, if you're
14:04
doing that consistently every single day, you can't help but make progress. Yeah. There's a saying, a quote, sorry, not a saying, a quote by a psychotherapist who said, we don't learn from experiences, we learn from reflecting on experiences. And I think that's an important part you say there, if you write down, oh, I couldn't go to the gym because, oh, there is no reasons. And suddenly you catch yourself on, right? Rather than, know, why...
14:31
you trying to say you didn't go to the gym, it feels like you've been attacked, when you, it's part of taking ownership, right? Journaling. cause I talk about joining a lot, how would you approach it with a client who maybe was a little bit resistant to journaling thought, know, whether they don't know what it is or they don't know how to do it or they don't know what the impact is going to be, you know, what would you, how would you navigate that? Yeah. So
15:01
With regards to the impact, I'd say just try it. Like the worst that's gonna happen is you've wasted five minutes in a day for the next week. Nothing wrong there. With regards to how to do it, I think that's the biggest question I get. And we have plenty of resources in GMC that's been really, really helpful for that. But also there's no, I don't think there's one like correct way of doing it. I think kind of give it a free rein of whatever you need you're gonna do. Like you're gonna write down at the end of the day what you need. But I think a non-negotiable and it should be either something you're grateful for or a win because you need to give yourself.
15:30
some sort positivity or it's just self-flagellation at the end of every day. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I agree that I don't think there is a right way to journal. Sometimes I ask myself questions, sometimes I do a gratitude journal. Sometimes, uh I don't know if you've ever done this, but if I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed or anxious, I literally just write and I just get empty my head onto a piece of paper, even if it's just...
15:54
someone was a dickhead and someone was this and someone was that, even if it's just ranting and just get it all out of my head. And yeah, I find that uh journaling's had a huge impact on being able to reflect. I agree, because that's where we grow. Any other small habits that you think have a big impact on overall progress? I think, yeah, actually I think delay, because something that we get a lot of is people who have these like,
16:23
self sabotage and behaviors. So say somebody, for example, is really, really keen to lose weight and they know that they want to, but they get a bit stressed and they eat and that's just an automatic response. I've got this thing now. I'll just say to clients, just wait a half an hour. Let's just give it 30 minutes. I've actually, I've had some clients in the past set a 30 minute timer on their phone, go for a walk, do something else. And when that timer goes off, if you still want to stress eat, go ahead and do it. And then they're saying to me that they forgot to the timer in the first place. So I think, I think some sort of delay just between
16:53
I feel that's why I'm going to do this. It can get rid of those bad habits. Like we've had clients as well. I've clients at the minute who are working on stop and smoking and know, stress eating things like that. I think that's a really, really good strategy. Yeah. So just putting a gap between the emotion and the action, just put a gap in and kind of taking back that control there. I guess that's what meditating is there for, right? That's why people meditate is to build that in. Is that something that you do with clients?
17:22
I do. Yeah. I have a couple of clients who are on the meditation. try not to, I try not to posh it too much because I'm not consistent with it at the minute myself. So it feels a bit hypocritical, but yeah, like it's, I've sent out a couple of guided ones this week and people are getting good. Goodbye. You've mentioned that a couple of times while we, while we've spoke here, Padra about it feeling important for you to be, for you to do things, whether that's you setting goals for yourself, getting out of your comfort zone, being in good shape there. You've said that you're not asking clients to meditate cause you're not doing it.
17:52
consciously, why do you feel that that's important for you as a coach to do those things and to set that standard? I think it makes a stronger statement in terms of authority, first of all, like, you know, I've done this, so you should do this type of thing. But also you, and I kind of learned this quite a bit last year. Like last year, I ran my first ever half and I got myself into probably the best shape I had. And I actually learned a lot more from that, that I'd never have in the years previous of.
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pushing myself to a certain point and, you know, even dieting to a certain point. I'd never done it to that extent. So I'm not even sure how I was able to push clients to that extent up until then. Yeah. But now that I've got the lessons of, I've actually lived through this experience type thing. Yeah. It's a lot easier to, um, this is part of reason why we coached gay men and why I started coaching gay men is because I'm a gay man and I can experience that and know what you're to bump into, when you're going to bump into it.
18:51
I think it is really important to have experienced it yourself as a coach. And that's why we have such a broad team with different lived experiences because we have some coaches who struggled with their weight all their life, were overweight. We have some coaches who struggled to put weight on. uh know, some coaches who've grown up, you know, more affluent and been able to do things and some coaches who haven't. gives a...
19:17
a wealth of experience and I think it's so much more powerful, you're right, to say, I know what you're going through because I've gone through it myself. As much as empathy is good, sympathies is more important as well because you've literally been in their shoes. So we've talked about the small habits that have a big ripple effect on people in a positive way. Let's look at the other side of that. So a client comes to you and they're struggling.
19:46
to be consistent, they're not seeing progress. What are some of the first things that you'll look at?
19:54
What we're doing well is probably the first thing because I think the easiest, like you've said, you've sort of touched on this already, it is a wee bit overwhelming when you get started, all the support and also everything that you have to do because you've went from someone who, generally speaking, you might not have been taking care of yourself to a very high standard and now you're coming in to track your steps, your food, you've got workouts, you've got check-ins, you've got me texting you every other day asking, have you done this? You know what I mean? It's quite a lot. So I think...
20:19
Building on what you're doing well is a very good way of making sure that you keep doing well. So if I've got a client who's come in, really can't get the food, but he's out walking, doing 15,000 steps a day, it's like, right, brilliant, you're doing well here. Why are you so good at this? Or I find I'm quite stressed from work and going out for a walk when it clears my head, okay, could we maybe try a gym session when you're feeling that way to get out some of that energy? Then they do that and they're like, oh, this gives me the same sort of benefit. So tying why they're doing well in one area to something else, I've done this a few times and it works really well.
20:49
Yeah. uh And uh there are some things that you find are consistent things that crop up as things that have a negative impact on people's uh ability to be consistent, whether that's phones, alcohol, work stress, sleep, like sticking the head in the sand. Like what are some of the most common things that you feel you have to nip in the bud uh with
21:18
and work with clients to nip in the bud to be able to start building that consistency. I think probably the last one you said that I think surrounding people not wanting to be a burden and not communicating small issues and then 20 small issues becomes a massive issue and then it consists of falling off a cliff. So I navigate that very early days by just trying to build like a friendship with client the best they can, a good relationship in terms of listen, tell me when things are going well, but equally tell me when things are going bad. You know, you need to because if I don't know, I can't help.
21:48
Yeah. So it's just about building that relationship. Everything comes off that, doesn't it? People think coaching is, it's always telling you what to do and if you don't do it, we're going to shout at you. for those at GMC, definitely that couldn't be further from the truth, could it? Oh, no, that's all there. All my clients I can talk to in both a very firm and straight way, but also I can have the crack with them. And I think that's important. You need both ends of that spectrum to be able to have a working relationship.
22:17
It's a bit weird in a way, you you're kind of telling someone what to do and you can tell them off for certain things. It nearly feels like a parental sort of thing. So I think you have to, you have to work hard on that. Yeah. Coaching is a funny one, isn't it? Cause you've been paid to tell people what they don't want to hear in a way that they can take it on board, actionate and then change their, their behaviors. So speaking of changing behaviors there, let's talk about some wins. Share some, you don't have to share the client's names, but
22:46
share some wins from some recent client wins, but wins that have nothing to do with, you know, the scale or losing weight, you know, often the things that people overlook as wins, or they don't realize that come as a knock on effect of starting to look after yourself. Yeah. Well, I've had what we kind of touched on a bit there about getting stress out in the gym. had a client who has a history with quite bad anxiety and, you know, other mental health issues who
23:16
previously would have went into these sabotage behaviors like we were talking about earlier and it would have led to maybe panic attacks or anxiety attacks. And he lately has been channeling that and having really good gym sessions off the back of that. And I just thought, wow, saw that he's able to do that. And you could see the PBs flying out because there's just so much emotion in it. Yeah. Yeah. So just taking control and re-channeling things that have been a negative in the past and channeling them in so that they're becoming a positive going forward.
23:46
100%. 100%. Yeah. And you've other clients as well. Obviously I've a couple of them in a who are kind of, I've never really been out in the dating pool or anything like that, but I've got them set up in a pretty good shape. Confidence has increased and I'm hearing about a few dates that are going pretty well. So that's a good one. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. It's amazing. And it's so many people come and they, don't feel confident dating. I mean, just, just while we're on confidence there, cause everybody who comes into GMC, I think I can confidently say everybody will say that they want to be
24:15
more confident. So, you you've got some great examples there of clients feeling more confident, confident enough to go out dating, to put themselves out there, to get out of their comfort zones. What do you think are some of the key things that clients do or you help clients do to build that confidence? What do you think are some of the key things in there? I think, I think like bottom line of it, it's a broad topic, but confidence is you're doing things that you said that you were going to do. That's
24:45
I see clients by confidence. So if they come in, we set these goals and we say, this is what you're going to do in a day to day, week to week, and they do it, it comes very, very fast. Yeah. And it's funny, isn't it? that takes us right back to what we spoke about at the beginning of the episode with celebrating your wins. Cause your win is doing the thing that you said that you were going to do and then saying, look, I did the thing that I said I was going to do. So it's like a bit of a hack.
25:15
to building your confidence, right? Exactly. Yeah, and obviously, you know, getting yourself into great shape and really strong and fit and fast and stuff that helps with confidence too, but. Yeah, because you know that you can take yourself to places that you've not been before and you know you can get out of your comfort zone and you know you can show up for yourself and you know that good rig is usually a by-product of looking after yourself, right? And when you look after yourself, you feel more confident. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, I think people come in looking for that, thinking that that's the thing that's gonna give them the confidence, not realising that.
25:44
it's actually the process throughout it that's doing it. Yeah, I agree. It's the process of getting in shape, being healthy, prioritizing yourself, managing your boundaries. The byproduct of the process, the byproduct of that is confidence. And the result of that is confidence, sorry, and the byproduct is a good rig. seeing as we've got a seasoned pro on here on the podcast, I want...
26:11
you to do us a favor here Paddy, give the listeners three rules to follow for the next seven days that are going to allow them to move forward. Just three simple principles, like kind of things that you would instill in your clients. Just think about those guys who are coming in off the bat, you know, wanting to get them off to a good start. What would be three principles you'd give them? I'd say first of all is established non-negotiables. It doesn't need to be massive. It doesn't need to be 20,000 steps and
26:41
no calories, whatever it is, but have these so that even if your day goes to absolute shit, you'll still hit them. Like make them easy. be number one. I'd say number two is journaling every morning and every night. Like people say to me, they don't have the time. You have the time. You've got two minutes on the morning. You've got two minutes on the evening. The morning's about planning the day. The evening's about reviewing, giving yourself some feedback. And then for number three, I just say reward yourself. If you get through a week doing both of those things, give yourself a wee pat on the back. Like do something nice. It doesn't need to be a big steak dinner, but give yourself a wee reward and you'll probably do it again.
27:11
Yeah, I love that. Have some carrot rather than stick. Yeah, definitely. No, mate, that's been great. It's really good to get some insight from one of our success coaches here. Padder, as I said, is a fantastic coach. He's got about 40 clients at the minute. He's absolutely killing it. His guys are flying. So over the course of the next few weeks and months, there'll be solo episodes from me and we'll also be getting staff members on. We'll be getting clients on.
27:40
um covering a range of topics. So thank you for listening. um I'll see you next week. Look after yourself. Stay safe and don't eat and drink and behave at the expense of how you want to look and feel. See you later.