After more than 11 years of coaching, I’ve learned that pretty much every single person who shows up to train with me is in pain.
Pain is something we can all relate to. For some, it is an emotionally rooted pain, and for the vast majority of adults, there is some amount of physical pain to deal with every day.
As a trainer, it can be tempting to want to resolve this pain by writing the perfect exercise program. The OPEX Coaching Certificate Program (CCP) gave me another idea. The training program is only a small part of helping your clients live without pain.
Change your mindset
Most people are impatient and want results right now. That’s why people try muscle-ups when they can’t even do a strict chest-to-bar pull-up (CTB). It is not your fault.
We have all been told we can::
Unfortunately, the road to greater fitness and less pain is slow.
The key is helping our clients change their mindset to take a long-term, patient approach to fitness and pain-free living.
Here are three steps that you may not have considered to change your mindset and stop feeling pain in the long run.
Step 1: Many people don’t know where they are.
“Meet them where they are,” says OPEX CEO Carl Hardwick, a man with nearly 20 years of coaching experience, often.
The basic idea is to learn as much as you can about your customers::
Then you can design an effective program for them that takes their entire life into account and ultimately “hits them where they are” in all areas of their life..
However, one of the problems with this is that many people don’t know where they are. They don’t even know what they are trying to achieve with training.
Somewhere along the way, they decided it sounded like a cool idea to snap a muscle and learn. Still, some customers have ignored the fact that they can’t put their hands over their head without straightening their spine (or maybe they don’t even realize it is) and that they experience physical pain every time they snap to have.
This person keeps trying to slide a square pin into a round hole – talk about pain!
Others set arbitrary goals without really thinking about what it will take to achieve them. Have you ever had a client who says they want to lose 20 pounds and get a pull-up, but their actions are inconsistent with their goal?
She never sticks to the homework you gave her and keeps admitting her Taco Bell addiction. As a coach, it is frustrating to see this person fail all the time, and it is even more frustrating to be the person who feels like a failure.
Much of the weeding out of this emotional and physical pain is based on awareness.
Helping clients find what they want – their intention or why – is the first step in uncovering, processing, and eliminating their emotional and physical pain, said Firass El Fateh, owner of OPEX Abbotsford, British Columbia.
You have to: “Dig really deep with your exact reason for this whole thing,” said El Fateh. This starts on the first day. “It’s about setting expectations from the start at the first consultation. Go over the assessment together and give the customer a clear picture of where they physically stand, ”he added.
Emotionally, when customers are honest about what they really want to sacrifice, such as losing 50 pounds, they are more likely to lose emotional baggage and work to fix their problem.
In practice, a thorough assessment can help your customers understand their limitations.
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For exampleIf your client knows they haven’t passed a shoulder flexion test, they’re more likely to respect the fact that going over their head with a barbell may not be a good idea just yet. Maybe it’s even why they’re always in pain. From there, you can determine a path that will help them correct this weakness and avoid pain.
Changing mindset begins with being aware of what is causing the emotional pain and physical pain and understanding what they are trying to achieve.
Step 2: the beauty of simplicity
Remember the elementary school saying: keep it simple, stupid (KISS)?
As trainers, we always try to reinvent the wheel to get people interested and demonstrate our knowledge. Another lesson I learned from the OPEX CCP was the beauty of simplicity.
This leads, as Hardwick calls them, to the “Basic Lifestyle Guidelines (BLGs)”.
Put simply, “Start with the lifestyle,” Hardwick said.
The first thing to do is look at what the person did for fitness and whether they made “a series of inappropriate (for them) contractions and movements,” Hardwick said.
Check out what they’re doing the other 23 hours of the day. How are your sleep hygiene, nutritional hygiene and stress levels? Teach them how this contributes to their pain, lack of recovery and fatigue, Hardwick added.
“If the client is not sleeping well, drinking enough water and getting enough sun, there is no point in delving into the part of the program design,” added El Fateh.
In addition to sleep, stress, sunlight, diet, and other basic lifestyle guidelines, Hardwick asks trainers to consider how many steps the person is taking each day, how much water they are drinking, and what type of bowel movements they are having.
As OPEX founder James Fitzgerald put it, if you are not comfortable talking to your customers about their poop, you are missing out. “It’s an undeniable barometer of health … you need to talk to your customers about it,” he said.
“Identify the lowest hanging fruit living habits,” said Hardwick, “and tackle them before you go through the hassle of writing a fancy exercise program that will promise the world to your client.”
Step 3: teach them why.
Anyone can teach someone to squat, push, hinge, and pull. While useful, people need to understand why they are doing what they are doing so that they can actually embark on a long-term path to better health and a pain-free life. This encourages all-important buy-in, Hardwick explained.
“It has to start with the ability to train our customers,” said Hardwick, not just through “principles and science,” but also through your own and other customers’ experiences.
El Fateh agrees. Once his clients have a clear understanding – based on the OPEX assessment he conducted – he can now “determine how their program will get them from their location to their desired location,” he explained.
He added, “It is important to explain why is behind the program … if people know why they are doing something, they are much more likely to keep doing it.”
The more self-sufficient and autonomous your customers become, the more likely they are to make decisions when you’re not looking (which is mostly the case) that are smart for them and ultimately help them get out of the pain for a long time. Term.
