Giving Them Their Dessert

Giving Them Their Dessert

Years ago, I attended a strength and conditioning conference that had no shortage of quality speakers. But one talk stayed with me long after the event ended. It came from Chris Carlisle, the strength and conditioning coach for the Seattle Seahawks, and the concept he introduced was deceptively simple, but like all great coaching concepts the genius was in the simplicity. He called it giving your athletes their dessert.

Coach Carlisle was talking about buy-in. Specifically, how to get athletes to commit not just to a single session, but to the entire training process over a long season, year after year. His answer was to give them something to look forward to at the end of every workout. Something enjoyable. Something that fed a little ego, eased the mental fatigue of hard training, and sent the athlete out the door feeling good about what they had just done.

His example was arm training. Bicep curls at the end of a grueling session. Nothing overly complex. Nothing aggressively sport-specific. Just something the athlete genuinely enjoyed that served as a reward after all the heavy lifting was done. That if he was going to ask for professional level physical performance in the weight room on top of their already demanding practices, the least he could do is gamify it and make it as enjoyable as possible.

The Sneaky Sport Psychology

At the time, I remember hearing that lesson and taking it as face value, ok don’t fill every workout with nothing but things that suck – got it. What I did not yet appreciate was just how much depth that concept carried. It took years of coaching my own athletes before I fully understood what he was actually describing.

When athletes grind through a demanding session, they spend most of their mental energy in a state of focused effort and discomfort. That is the work. That is what produces adaptation. But if every session ends on that note, the cumulative psychological toll starts to matter. Training begins to feel like something to endure rather than something to pursue. Motivation erodes. Retention suffers.

The dessert flips that script. It acts as a mental reset at the end of the session, shifting the athlete from "I’m grinding through this" to "I love this part." That emotional endpoint is what they carry into the next training day. It shapes their relationship with the process itself.

Engaged lifters train harder. They show up more consistently. They buy into the greater program because the greater program consistently gives them something back.

The Hidden CAR Benefits

Here is what surprised me as I started applying this principle with my own athletes: figuring out what each lifter’s dessert actually is turns out to be one of the most valuable intelligence-gathering exercises a coach can do. Figuring this out with each athlete was improving our Coach Athlete Relationship and increasing their training outcomes.

Some athletes light up during heavy back work. Others come alive on accessory movements for their upper body. Some want to attack their core at the end of the session. Others are most energized when they get to attack a weakness. The specific answer is less important than the fact that you know it.

Once you understand what genuinely drives an athlete, that knowledge becomes a dial you can manipulate as a coach. You can use it to pull more effort out of a lifter during a tough training block. You can dial it back strategically when managing fatigue. You can use it to reignite motivation when a training cycle starts to drag. Knowing what your athletes truly enjoy is part of the soft skills of coaching that creates actionable data.

This is also where the dessert concept deepens the coach-athlete relationship in ways that pure programming never will. When a lifter realizes you have built something into their training specifically because you know they love it, that communicates something important. It tells them you are paying attention to who they are, not just what they can lift.

How to Apply It

The practical framework is straightforward. Think of every training session as a meal. The main movements are the protein and the variation movements are the vegetables. They are non-negotiable. They get done first, they get done with intention, and they get done to a high standard. That is where the real adaptation happens.

But at the end, you leave room for dessert. Something the athlete looks forward to. Something that is lower in cognitive and physical demand relative to what came before it. Something that lets them finish the session on a high note and walk out of the gym feeling accomplished rather than depleted.

For powerlifters, this might look like finishing with a few sets of a favorite accessory movement like running the rack on bicep curls. It might be a variation like JM Press they enjoy hitting even if it is not the highest-priority item in their programming. The specific choice depends entirely on what you have learned about that athlete. That is the point. It should be personalized.

Over time, I have found that sprinkling in these enjoyable finishers consistently produces higher engagement across the entire training week. Lifters are more focused during the hard parts because they know something rewarding is coming. They leave sessions in better mental states. And they come back more invested in the process.

Why This Matters More Than You Think

Retention in coaching is not just a business metric. It reflects the quality of the relationship between coach and athlete. Lifters who stay are lifters who are growing, and a significant part of that growth happens because they remain engaged with their training over months and years rather than burning out after a single competitive cycle.

Coach Carlisle offered a simple concept that day at that conference. But what sits underneath it is a serious coaching principle: the best training programs are not just physiologically sound. They are psychologically sustainable. They give athletes a reason to stay engaged, a reason to come back, and a reason to trust the process even when the process is uncomfortable.

Eat your vegetables. Do the hard work. But always, always save room for dessert.

If you want to learn more about how OPS approaches athlete development and programming, visit opsgym.com.