What OPEX Coaches Changed Their Minds About in Program Design
Good coaching isn't about defending old opinions forever. It's about noticing what actually works, what wastes time, and what helps clients make steady progress. In this conversation, OPEX coaches Brandon Gallagher and Daniel Persson unpack several ideas they once believed strongly, then explain why their thinking changed.
The result is useful for coaches, athletes, and everyday gym-goers alike. They cover mobility, athlete programming, complex exercise selection, conditioning, and the bigger lesson behind all of it, which is learning to coach with more clarity and less ego.
A quick catch-up before the coaching talk
Before getting into program design, the conversation starts with a few updates from both coaches.
Brandon shared that his podcast schedule had shifted to Wednesdays so it could have its own day, separate from this series. He also teased a new episode focused on fitness marketing with Candace, a topic he was clearly excited about. The episode was set to release across Spotify, Apple, YouTube, and other major platforms.
Daniel, meanwhile, was in the middle of one of the most stressful points of the year for many CrossFit coaches, the Open. That time of year brings a strange mix of emotions. Some athletes treat the Open as their big finish for the season. Others are already likely to make quarterfinals, yet still feel pressure to repeat workouts and chase perfect scores, even when it may not matter much in the bigger plan.
That led into one of the more human parts of the discussion. Daniel was praised for the way he works with athletes who feel burned out, stuck, or disconnected from competing. Many of the people who come to him once loved the sport, then lost that joy under the weight of pressure and expectation.
He described a pattern many competitors know well. Early on, training feels fun because there are few expectations. Then success shows up, and suddenly the goal shifts. Instead of trying to express fitness, the athlete starts trying not to lose. That change can quietly drain the joy out of competition.
For Daniel, the work is often about helping people reframe expectations. That means redefining success, loosening the grip of fear, and finding progress worth enjoying again. It's a strong reminder that program design isn't only sets and reps. It's also the mindset underneath them.
If you want to follow their work more closely, you can find Brandon Gallagher on Instagram and Daniel Persson on Instagram.
Daniel's pre-show half marathon says a lot about coaching life
One of the funniest moments came before the main topic even started. Daniel mentioned that he had gone off-program earlier that day and ended up running a half marathon just before going live.
He explained that running is something he uses at times to support his mental health. On certain days, he heads out and keeps going until he feels done. This time, he was already close to the half-marathon mark when he turned around, so he decided to finish the full distance.
"I run until I'm done."
He had basically just finished the run, showered, and jumped on the call a few minutes later. It was a quick story, but it also fit the theme of the episode. Coaches are still people. They still adjust, improvise, and respond to real life.
That matters because coaching can easily look overly polished from the outside. Yet behind the scenes, even experienced coaches are managing stress, learning in real time, and making decisions based on what they need that day. In Daniel's case, that meant a long run and then a deep conversation about how his thinking has shifted over the years.
Mobility is not the magic fix many people think it is
Why mobility got overused
Both coaches agreed on one topic right away, mobility. More accurately, they agreed that the way many people talk about mobility is deeply misunderstood.
For a long time, mobility got sold as the answer to almost everything. Tight hips, stretch. Shoulder pain, stretch. Trouble squatting, do more mobility. In many gym circles, especially in older CrossFit culture, people spent huge chunks of time foam rolling, hanging out in stretches, and doing long pre-workout routines that felt more like a second workout.
Daniel pointed out how high that entry cost became. In some cases, it felt like you needed an extra hour of mobility work before you had "earned" the right to train. That was not only inefficient, it also made training harder to start.
Brandon shared a moment that changed his view. He remembered spending a long time warming up for a CrossFit session, only to watch another guy walk in from work, full of pre-workout energy, and squat far more weight with none of the long preparation. That moment made him stop and question what the long warm-up was really doing.
A lot of old beliefs about mobility sounded like this:
It fixes movement
It creates range of motion on its own
It automatically improves health and performance
It needs to look like long static stretching or unusual positions
The problem is not that stretching does nothing. The problem is that people often expect it to do more than it can.
What changed in their thinking
The newer view is much simpler. If someone already has the range of motion needed for the exercise, then the main job of the warm-up is to prepare the pattern and raise body temperature.
That led to one of the clearest takeaways in the conversation:
Mobility + stability = strength
Brandon credited early mentor Jordan Shallow for shaping that idea. Mobility is the ability to move through a range of motion. Stability is the ability to resist force in that same range. Many times, what people think is a mobility problem is really a stability problem.
A simple example is overhead position. Many people can get their arms overhead with no load. Add a dumbbell or barbell, and their body starts to shake, the ribs flare, and the lower back extends. That isn't always because the joint lacks range. Often, it means the person can't control load in that range.
Daniel explained that his warm-ups are now built around three basic questions:
Can we raise body temperature?
Does the client already have the range of motion for the exercise?
Do we need a specific drill or reference point for skill work that day?
If the answer to the second question is yes, then the athlete can often just start with a lighter version of the movement and build up. The movement itself becomes the warm-up.
This also changed how he sees accessory work. Instead of rushing through simple strength exercises after a long mobility block, he'd rather have clients move with intent, use full range, and treat every rep as a chance to build better positions.
Where stretching still fits
Neither coach argued that stretching is useless. Their point was more practical than that.
If stretching feels good, helps someone relax, or makes an off-day session feel better, fine. It has value. It just doesn't deserve the oversized role many people gave it. Brandon also noted that stretching may feel more powerful early in someone's training life because any new input can act like a mild strength stimulus at first. Later on, that return drops off.
The bigger warning is this, don't create "room" in a position and then fail to use it. If someone stretches the hips, for example, it makes more sense to follow that with something like a controlled lunge or squat pattern so the body learns to own the new position.
Daniel even mentioned that when clients are short on time, he may reverse the order of the session. He'll start with smaller exercises to raise body temperature, then move into the main lift once they're ready. That kind of flexibility comes from clearer priorities.
Training athletes is less different than many coaches think
The old urge to make athlete programs look special
Another big mindset shift was athlete training.
Early on, Brandon believed training athletes had to look very different. If the client was an athlete, the program had to feel more advanced, more complex, and more impressive. That's a common trap for newer coaches. It feels like the program should look unique simply because the client is high-level.
Daniel said he has felt this too. He described getting a new athlete who was a clear step up in competitive level from anyone he had worked with before. He sat down to write the program and froze. Instead of trusting his process, he started overthinking everything and felt like he suddenly didn't know how to coach anymore.
Brandon shared a similar story about working with Amanda Nunes for the first time. He felt nervous, second-guessed himself, and briefly had that classic moment of thinking he had forgotten how to coach. Then he caught himself and came back to the same anchor point, principles.
The newer view, athletes are still people
This was one of the strongest parts of the discussion. Athletes are still human beings. Their hips still work like hips. Their shoulders still work like shoulders. They may express strength, power, or skill at a higher level, but the body still follows the same basic rules.
That means most of their training doesn't need to look wildly different from a well-built program for anyone else. Brandon explained that for much of the year, athlete training can look very similar to general population training. The real differences usually show up closer to competition, when sport-specific demands matter more and peaking becomes a factor.
For him, that might mean the final phase before an MMA fight looks different. Outside of that, the foundation still comes back to the same tools, the same movement patterns, and the same need for progression.
The key shift is this, don't confuse "athlete" with "needs circus programming."
Principles first is the better approach. Then, once the basics are handled, a coach can add the layers that suit the sport, the season, and the person.
There's also a confidence lesson here. High-level athletes usually come to a coach because they've seen results. They don't need a magic trick. They need the same quality process applied well.
Complex multi-purpose exercises often miss the point
When complexity feels like value
Daniel brought up another change in his coaching, the drop in overly complex exercise selection.
He used an example that says a lot about how coaches can think early in their careers: a single-leg glute bridge with an opposite-arm dumbbell bench press. On paper, it sounds great. You can claim it trains pressing, glute activation, coordination, and stability all at once.
That kind of exercise can make the coach feel smart. It can also make the session look unique. But those are weak reasons to put something in a program.
In many cases, the client just gets better at performing that specific combination. The lift becomes a test of coordination more than a strong tool for building force, muscle, or skill where it matters most.
Why simpler movements often do more
Today, Daniel is much more likely to choose a straightforward exercise and coach it well. If the goal is pressing strength, then a bench press or dumbbell bench press often makes more sense. If the goal is squat development, stay close to squat patterns that allow real loading and real progression.
Brandon framed this as a depth-versus-width issue. A coach can keep chasing endless variation, or they can go deeper on a few staple movements and build strong progressions around them.
That doesn't mean variation has no place. A safety-bar squat, goblet squat, or front squat can all be useful. They're still close to the main pattern. The problem starts when the variation becomes so clever that it stops being efficient.
Daniel made a great point about opportunity cost. Every exercise you choose means you're also choosing not to do something else. Since most clients have limits on time, energy, and recovery, the question becomes simple: is this the fastest and clearest route to the goal?
Sometimes an exercise looks cooler than it performs.
He also pointed out that many things people label as "stability problems" improve once the client simply gets stronger. In other words, strength solves more than many coaches give it credit for.
Sustainable conditioning beats the "die on the floor" model
The old trap, chasing pain
Conditioning was another area where both coaches had clearly changed their minds.
Brandon talked about getting caught up in the old idea that conditioning had to feel brutal to count. If his lungs weren't burning and he wasn't flattened at the end, it felt like the session didn't do enough. That's a very common mindset in fitness, especially in high-intensity environments.
The image is familiar: hard bike sprints, all-out intervals, crawling on the floor after the workout, and a coach using that suffering as proof the session worked.
The issue is that feeling cooked is not the same as building a bigger engine.
The newer goal, build a base that lasts
Now the focus is different. Conditioning means improving the ability to keep doing work. It means building a bigger base so other qualities can sit on top of it.
Instead of chasing collapse, Brandon looks for repeatability. He gave the example of doing eight rounds and trying to match every round. He wants to see consistency, pacing, and recovery between efforts. He wants people to notice what changes when rest drops from one minute to 30 seconds, not just blast blindly through the session.
That kind of work does a few things well. It builds aerobic support. It improves recovery. It helps other training qualities too, including strength work and harder interval work later on.
Daniel put it very simply, painful conditioning is optional.
You don't need misery to build useful conditioning.
That idea can surprise clients. Many assume the hard feeling is the whole point. Yet sustainable aerobic work and measured resistance-based conditioning can move someone a long way, especially over months rather than days.
For lifestyle clients, this matters even more. Longer, lower-intensity work often forms the base of health. It supports recovery, heart health, and better tolerance for the rest of training.
Why coaches keep returning to hard finishers
The coaches also made an honest point about why painful conditioning stays popular. It gives fast feedback.
A client leaves drenched in sweat and says, "That was hard." The coach gets immediate proof that something happened. That can feel rewarding, especially for less experienced coaches who want visible buy-in on day one.
But long-term coaching asks a tougher question. Did the client actually get better, or did the session just feel dramatic?
That same confidence theme shows up again here. Coaches who trust progression don't need every session to look extreme.
The bigger lesson is confidence without rigidity
By the end, the conversation had moved beyond mobility or conditioning. The real thread running through all of it was how good coaches think.
Daniel spoke openly about cycling through periods of self-doubt. He'll feel like he doesn't know enough, go study, get excited by new information, apply it, then eventually hit another point where he wants to learn more. That loop can be uncomfortable, but it also keeps a coach growing.
The key is not letting doubt become paralysis. It's okay to admit you don't know something. In fact, that's often the start of learning it well.
A few ideas stood out here:
It's okay not to know: Confidence doesn't mean pretending you have every answer.
Principles matter: They keep you from getting pulled in every direction by trends.
Ask why something works: Success without understanding is still a weak spot.
Stay open to changing your mind: That's not inconsistency, it's growth.
They also pushed back on the all-or-nothing way people argue online. Saying "I use less mobility now" is not the same as saying mobility is bad. Saying "I want to get someone stronger" doesn't mean endurance is worthless.
That's an important filter for any coach. Not every design choice needs to become a fight between opposites. Sometimes it's just a question of value. Is this tool worth the time, energy, and space it takes up in the program?
For coaches who want to see how these ideas apply in practice, the CoachRx free trial offers a way to explore the platform, and the OPEX Method Mentorship goes deeper into the coaching framework behind this style of design.
Good coaching gets simpler, not shallower
The clearest takeaway from this conversation is that better coaching often looks less flashy over time. The warm-up gets cleaner. Exercise choices get more honest. Conditioning gets more repeatable. Athlete programming gets less theatrical and more grounded.
That doesn't mean coaching becomes basic in a bad way. It means the coach gets better at seeing what matters. Principles start to beat performance, and long-term progress starts to matter more than short-term drama.
If you've ever felt pulled toward more complexity, more pain, or more "special" programming just because it looks impressive, this discussion is a useful reset. Strong coaching usually comes back to the same thing, know the goal, choose the right tool, and stay willing to change your mind when the evidence gets better.
Connect with the coaches
Brandon Gallagher:Brandon’s Instagram (@bgperform_)
Daniel Persson:Daniel’s Instagram (@danielcapersson)
Join us live on Tuesdays mornings 11:30am EST on the OPEX YouTube Channel
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