In July 2019, we sat down with Anthony Masino and Warren Seeto to discuss what makes a great coaching partnership.
SET THE SCENE. TAKE ME TO THE BEGINNING.
Warren: I came to 5EW at the start of 2017, burned out after working eight years in my corporate job. I was flying a lot for work, and originally came to Melbourne to take a break, but that didn’t actually happen.
WHAT MADE 5EW STAND OUT FOR YOU?
Warren: When I started working with Anthony, I told him I wanted to wake up without anxiety. I dove into the philosophy of 5EW. I remember talking to my girlfriend. She said, ‘Why do you want to join this gym?’ and I replied, ‘Have you seen what they do, this blood marker stuff, this biomechanical stuff.’
I normally don’t trust things unless I have a reason to – I remember getting my first blood results back and being told
“Warren,you don’t eat enough, you don’t sleep enough, you smoke too much, drink too much.”
Which was no surprise.
I’m fascinated with psychology, why we do what we do, how the mind works. My anxiety really annoyed me. I wanted to address the biochemical aspects. I wanted to get the physical instrument in good shape so I could access the mind with the assistance of a personal trainer, and 5EW seemed like the place to do this.
Anthony: We started with goal setting and the anxiety piece that Warren addressed really stood out for me. I remember not holding back, because Warren was so open to different insights and concepts. Warren was open to absorbing everything and would ask questions constantly.
Which made the experience easy for me, due to his openness, but as Warren mentioned, there was work to do on the lifestyle factors.
Warren: I remember doing the Fresh Start program. My breakfast beforehand was a coffee, a cigarette, and a banana.
I never thought this could be the reason for my anxiety. I thought it was work-related; being under the pump, which to be fair, was true, but it became exacerbated by the alcohol and the self-medication.
After that first month, of sticking to Fresh Start, I was finally functioning as a healthy human being – I truly couldn’t remember ever feeling like that, ever.
I replaced my old breakfast with deconstructed Vietnamese bakery roll, deconstructed – no bread, just chicken, salad, egg and avocado and I replaced my daily coffee with turmeric lattes.
These days they’re kind of popular, but when I first started the Fresh Start, there were only a select few cafes that made them. At my workplace, they would provide complimentary coffees for the team, and when I would place my morning order, they’d look at me really odd when I asked for a Tumeric Latte. I copped it from my colleagues for so long! However, the anxiety was getting less and less, so it was really worth it.
SO IN THE BEGINNING, NUTRITION WAS THE BIG SHIFT. WHAT ABOUT TRAINING? HOW DID YOU APPROACH THAT?
Anthony: The first thing we worked on was connecting the concepts of physical and mental health. Then, we had to link the two in a practical sense, like; how a big night out would degrade his energy the next day, Warren’s thought patterns around a few areas of his lifestyle. Getting our clients to acknowledge and understand the full spectrum is one of our foundational practices at 5th Element Wellness.
Warren: The big goal for me in the gym was getting a muscle-up. It was painful, all the transitions and all the discipline required! Having achieved it, finally, I could witness the compounding effect of working hard and getting a result, it taught me how everything had linked and how the progress I made, manifested itself physically, in the muscle-up.
Anthony: A lot of personal development is naturally in the mind, but people tend to stay up in their heads. What I love about transitioning to something like a muscle-up, this cerebral process finds an analogue in the body.
You need to be consistent, show up every day, practice the discipline, be aware. And all these aspects are part of the process that is happening on a subconscious level. A training process, the physical/biochemistry part, is just as important as talking about it, the mental part. The process needs to be embodied both mentally and physically.
WHERE ARE YOU NOW, WARREN?
Warren: When I started I was working in finance. Just under eighteen months coming to 5EW, I quit my job. I needed to work out what it was I was going to do because I knew finance wasn’t my thing anymore. It looked like personal development was the space I wanted to go into. Now fast forward two-and-half-years and I’m working as a mindset coach.
AND ANTHONY, YOU ARE NO LONGER TRAINING TOGETHER. CAN YOU SPEAK ABOUT THE PROCESS OF MOVING ON?
Anthony: There’s always a lot of transformation for the coach, too. If you set up the relationship as coach and client, and only that, it creates an imbalance, which isn’t fundamentally how I like to operate.
I don’t see it as a fair exchange. I’ve always learned just as much from my clients, as they have from me. It allows you to detach from a restricted role or a timeframe or an outcome. You become flexible.
So, as a coach, I see Warren moving on as a success. He reached a point where he was fulfilled. We worked together for two years, some people I’ve had transformations in three years, so sometimes the coaching process is longer. But, I believe it shouldn’t go on any longer than it needs to.
The true goal of the coach is to create independence within the client.
