Inside The OPEX Method Week 7: Lifestyle, BLGs, And Coaching The Whole Human

Thanksgiving week was the perfect backdrop for a deep focus on lifestyle inside The OPEX Method mentorship. While most people were loading up on turkey and pie, the coaches in this cohort were shifting from sets and reps to daily habits, behavior, and how clients actually live the other 23 hours of their day.

Week 7 was all about the OPEX Basic Lifestyle Guidelines (BLGs), how to assess them, how to prescribe them as habits, and how to use tools inside Coach RX to track lifestyle in a real, practical way. It was a shorter week because of the holiday, but there was a lot packed into it.

Here is the full Week 7 recap video if you want to watch the conversation:

Now let’s break down what happened in Week 7, what BLGs actually are, and how this all ties into being a true professional coach.

From Program Design To Lifestyle Coaching

Up to this point in the mentorship, the focus had been on exercise program design. Coaches went through a heavy stretch of content on resistance training, aerobic training, anaerobic training, and long-term planning. It was a full fire hose of training theory and structure.

Week 7 hit the brakes on that momentum just enough to say, “Great, you have the training. Now can your clients actually adapt to it?”

That question leads straight to lifestyle.

OPEX teaches that the real foundation of client success is not the perfect training split. It is the habits and environment that support recovery, energy, consistency, and health. You can write the most thoughtful training program on earth, but if someone sleeps 5 hours, eats junk, and sits all day, their results will stall.

That is why Week 7 zoomed in on lifestyle coaching, and more specifically on the seven OPEX BLGs.

Another key theme on the call was the difference between actions and habits. BLG prescriptions start as intentional actions, like “drink two 40-ounce bottles of water today.” The whole point, though, is to never have to prescribe that forever. You use actions for a period of time so that they turn into real habits the client owns without constant reminders.

The 7 OPEX Basic Lifestyle Guidelines (BLGs)

OPEX uses seven BLGs as a framework to anchor lifestyle coaching. In Week 7, coaches worked through what each one means, how to assess it, and how to talk about it with clients.

Here is a breakdown of each.

1. Alignment

Alignment is about you and your client having the same north star.

You both need a shared definition of success and a shared picture of where this is going. If the client thinks success means visible abs and you think success means less back pain and better sleep, you will drift apart fast.

Good alignment looks like:

• Clear long-term goals that both coach and client agree on

• Regular check-ins on whether those goals still feel true

• Honest talk when things feel off or priorities change

There is nothing more frustrating than working hard toward two different outcomes without realizing it. That is why alignment sits at the top of the BLGs.

2. Energy

Energy is how a client feels day to day.

Instead of trying to hack or “motivate” someone into feeling better, OPEX coaches focus on helping clients live closer to their natural circadian rhythm. Simple consistency in sleep, wake times, meal timing, and movement patterns often moves the needle more than any supplement.

Coaches look at questions like:

• Do you feel alert in the morning or hit snooze four times?

• Do you crash every afternoon?

• Do your energy levels swing a lot through the week?

The goal is not just “feel better.” The goal is a stable, predictable energy pattern that supports training and life.

3. Fuel

Fuel covers everything about what goes into the body:

• Food quality

• Food quantity

• Food hygiene (how you eat, not just what you eat)

• Hydration

In Week 7, they did not turn this into a nutrition deep dive. Instead, they zoomed in on basics. Is the client eating enough? Are they eating in a way they can digest well? Are they actually drinking water through the day?

Fuel is where small, simple changes can create a big ripple through performance, energy, digestion, and mood.

4. Movement

This BLG is about movement outside of training.

Many clients think, “I work out four times a week, so I’m active.” Then you realize they sit the rest of the time.

Movement covers the daily patterns that sit between training sessions:

• Walking

• General activity

• Time away from the desk

• Any light physical tasks

Coaches are looking for a base level of daily movement that keeps joints happy, improves blood flow, and supports overall health. Training is important, but it is also just one slice of the pie.

5. Sunshine

Sunshine is exactly what it sounds like: time outside in real light, ideally in nature.

In practice this might look like:

• Getting outside in the morning

• Taking walks in daylight

• Spending time in natural environments when possible

This BLG ties back into energy and sleep because light exposure strongly affects circadian rhythm. It also just gets people off screens and into a more relaxed environment.

6. Sleep

Sleep sits at the base of the BLG pyramid.

You can try to hack around bad sleep, but it catches up. In Week 7, they talked about what “good sleep” actually means in practice and how it supports all the other BLGs.

Good sleep is not only about total hours. It also touches:

• Consistent bed and wake times

• Ability to fall asleep and stay asleep

• Waking up feeling refreshed most days

Sleep is so powerful that improving it can start to clean up energy, recovery, cravings, and even mood, without touching anything else.

7. Digestion

Digestion answers a simple question: is the client actually using all the good food they eat?

They might be “eating well” on paper, but if digestion is off, they are not absorbing nutrients properly. That shows up as bloating, discomfort, irregular bowel movements, or feeling heavy and sluggish after meals.

This BLG connects tightly with fuel and food hygiene. Slow eating, chewing, and basic awareness of how foods feel in the body can all matter here.

The BLG Coaching Process: From Assessment To Habit

Knowing the seven BLGs is one thing. Coaching them is another.

In Week 7, coaches were given a simple four-step process to move from theory to practice: assess, identify, prioritize, prescribe.

Here is a quick snapshot:

StepKey QuestionAssessWhere is the client right now on each BLG?IdentifyWhich BLGs are clearly off and need attention?PrioritizeWhich one or two will make the biggest impact now?PrescribeWhat simple habit will help build that BLG?

Step 1: Assess

Inside Coach RX, coaches build out a BLG assessment that works just like a movement screen. For each BLG, they answer a binary question.

Is this BLG where we want it to be for this client, yes or no?

The system makes it black and white by giving clear definitions of what counts as “yes.” That keeps things from getting fuzzy or emotional.

Step 2: Identify

If a client has three or four “no” answers, the next step is to identify which of those deserve focus. Not every weakness is equal.

For example, a client might be off on:

• Sleep

• Fuel

• Sunshine

From there, the coach decides which of those is most meaningful for this person right now.

Step 3: Prioritize

This is where true individualization shows up.

The “right” priority depends on:

• The client’s goals

• Their history and what has worked before

• What they feel ready and willing to change

• Why they hired you in the first place

A coach might see that sleep is the biggest physiological problem, but if the client is completely overwhelmed by the idea of changing their nights, it may make more sense to start with hydration or walking.

The rule of thumb in Week 7 was simple: pick the lowest hanging fruit that has real impact and that the client is actually ready to grab.

Step 4: Prescribe

Prescription does not always mean a checkbox inside an app. Sometimes it is a conversation and a clear area of focus that the coach tracks in check-ins.

Other times, prescription looks like a specific, trackable habit with structure, support, and accountability inside Coach RX.

The hydration example from the call made this very real:

• The issue: client is not drinking enough water

• The prescription: carry a 40-ounce water bottle

• The target: finish two full bottles per day

• The support: a nightly check-in tile in Coach RX, asking “Did I drink two 40 oz bottles today?”

The coach and client might run that for 2 to 4 weeks. At the end, they talk through questions like:

• Did this help?

• Does this feel automatic now?

• Do we still need to track this?

If the client feels confident, the coach can remove the formal prescription and simply re-check hydration next month. If not, they keep it in place for a bit longer.

Across all BLGs, the idea is the same. Use clear, simple prescriptions to teach habits, then pull those prescriptions away once the habits stick.

Bringing BLGs To Life In CoachRX

A big part of Week 7 was not only understanding the BLGs, but building them into Coach RX so coaches are ready to use them with real clients.

Coach RX now has two calendars:

• An exercise calendar

• A lifestyle design calendar

Most coaches are used to thinking in sets, reps, and training sessions. The lifestyle calendar invites them to treat habits, sleep, walking, and other BLGs with that same level of structure.

Wearables And The Lifestyle Calendar

One barrier the Coach RX team saw was client fatigue around logging lifestyle data. People would happily log their back squats, then ignore questions about sleep or hydration because it felt like a chore.

To reduce that drag, Coach RX added wearable integrations.

Here is how that looks in practice:

• A client connects a device like an Oura Ring or similar tracker

• The coach prescribes “sleep 7 hours per night” as a lifestyle habit

• Coach RX pulls in sleep data automatically

• The coach sees compliance rates and sleep cycles without the client typing anything in

The same thing works for:

• Step count

• General activity time

• Other metrics common to wearables

There are also health trends and insights screens so coaches can see patterns over time instead of random snapshots. All of this exists to make lifestyle prescription easier to follow for the client and easier to read for the coach.

Why Context Matters For Coaching Conversations

With all this data coming in, it is easy to get lost in numbers. The key is to treat wearables and lifestyle data as context, not as the only truth.

The goal is not to live glued to an insights screen. The goal is to have useful information at your fingertips when you need it.

A simple example from the call:

The agreed goal is 7 hours of sleep per night. The insights tab shows that a client is averaging 6 hours and 15 minutes. The coach can walk into the consultation already clear on the next priority.

“Hey, our target was 7 hours. You are at 6:15 on average. Let us spend this call unpacking how to add 30 to 45 minutes over the next month.”

From the client’s side, that feels like a coach who really knows what is going on day to day, not someone who is only reacting when problems come up.

When To Prescribe Lifestyle Habits And When To Just Watch

A smart question that came up in Week 7 was this: when should a lifestyle factor live as a formal prescription in the program, and when should it just be part of weekly conversations?

There is no one rule that fits every client.

Sometimes, a coach may prefer to gather more context and talk through patterns in consultations before dropping in a bunch of lifestyle tiles. In other cases, the assessment could show something so off that it makes sense to go straight to a structured prescription with daily check-ins.

The BLG process helps here:

• Assess the BLGs

• Identify what is off

• Prioritize the one or two that matter most

• Decide what “prescribe” should mean for that client

Prescribing everything to everyone just because the software allows it is not good coaching. It is the “when you have a hammer, everything is a nail” trap.

Great coaches decide where formal tracking will actually build habits and where a simple pulse check in weekly notes is enough.

Looking Ahead: Turning Coaches Into Professionals

Week 8 will act as a bridge from lifestyle coaching into the business and professional side of coaching.

The focus will shift to what OPEX calls BRS business principles:

• What does it mean to be a professional coach?

• How do your daily actions reflect that?

• What systems do you need so your service is consistent and reliable?

A few themes that will show up:

• How to retain clients, not just sign them

• How to keep people for 36 months, not just 6

• How to think about attracting new clients without living inside marketing tactics

• How to define your market based on whether you coach online, local remote, or in person

They will also walk through simple metrics that many coaches never look at, like:

• Revenue

• Average ticket price

• Retention rates

Most coaches are used to tracking 1-rep maxes and 5k row times. Far fewer track the numbers that show whether their business is actually healthy. Week 8 starts to close that gap.

Upcoming Events, Masterclasses, And Black Friday Offers

On top of the mentorship content, there is a lot happening across the OPEX Fitness and Coach RX ecosystem.

Free Masterclass On The OPEX Method

On December 1, OPEX is hosting a free masterclass that introduces coaches to the four main pillars of The OPEX Method. It is the second time they are running this topic, and Carl will bring a fresh angle and more depth to it.

If you want a broad but clear look at how OPEX thinks about coaching systems, client results, and long-term development, this session is worth your time. You will also see how all of this ties into the mentorship in more detail.

To learn more about the mentorship itself and upcoming cohorts, check out the OPEX Method mentorship page.

The first cohort of 2026 officially starts on January 13, with enrollment closing on January 9. The masterclass is a simple way to figure out if that path makes sense for you.

Monthly Coaching Community Call And Chronometer Integration

Next Wednesday, December 3, is the regular monthly coaching community call. Any coach who is:

• Part of the OPEX community

• Using Coach RX

• Or just plugged into OPEX content

can jump in.

This month’s call will center on BLGs and the Lifestyle Rx feature, and it will also highlight a new integration with Cronometer (or Chronometer, depending how you say it).

That partnership gives coaches who want deeper nutrition tracking another tool to pair with Coach RX, especially if they coach clients on detailed food intake.

Black Friday Deals For Coaches

Since this recap landed on Black Friday, there are also several time-limited offers running through next Friday, December 5:

• OPEX Method early registration: 20% off full price for the mentorship when you enroll early.

• LearneRx: 50% off. Learner X is like Netflix for coaches, with more than 105 courses and growing, plus the option to trial a free account to see what is inside.

• CoachRx: 30% off your first three months if you are new, or 30% off annual plans if you are already a subscriber and want to upgrade.

If you have been circling any of these tools, this week is a good time to move.

Bringing It All Together

Week 7 showed why training alone is not enough. The OPEX BLGs give coaches a clear foundation for lifestyle and behavior, and Coach RX turns that framework into something you can actually assess, track, and build into daily routines.

From here, the mentorship shifts toward helping coaches act like true professionals, with clear systems, solid retention, and real business awareness. If you want to go deeper, watch the recap video, register for the free masterclass, or simply sit down and score yourself honestly across the seven BLGs.

Thanks for reading, and if you coach others, ask yourself this: are you programming workouts, or are you coaching a whole human life?

The livestream runs across YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Questions are welcome during the stream and after. If you have a question, add it in the comments where you watch.

The team reviews them and answers in the next live session. There are no silly questions. If something is blocking you, someone else is likely stuck on the same thing.

Curious about joining a future cohort or want the full curriculum?

Get the overview and next steps inside the OPEX Method mentorship and CCP Level 1.

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