Navigating The Conversation [Part 1]

In this episode, we explore how a hiker can navigate personal training sessions if they have a recurring issue that sometimes flares up from these sessions. 

​Episode Transcript:

[0:00] All right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode, we are diving into a really, really common problem that I see and hear about

[0:08] from hikers all around the world. And this problem is specifically for people who work with a local personal trainer or who does group exercise classes, and also people who also struggle with some type of limitation, an ache or pain or something that holds them back or whatever may be. And this is a situation I see from a lot of people. I hear from a lot of people. I've had a lot of direct clients struggle with this. And also a lot of people I chat with over the years struggle with this. And I want to talk it through in a bit of detail. Now, if you don't work with a local personal trainer, if you don't work with do group classes or anything like that, you know, this may not be super relevant for you, but hopefully it's interesting either way.

[0:53] So let me lay out the situation. and this may sound familiar to you, but I'll lay out the situation. You, as a hiker, you have something you want to train towards. Maybe it's a big expedition. Maybe just generally you want to get fit. You want to get strong or whatever it may be, but you are actively training towards that. And you, as a hiker, to get help with this, you do some work with a local personal trainer and you go into a gym and do some one-to-one sessions together for 30, 45 minutes, 60 minutes at a time, or you go do some group classes, whether it's a small group exercise of groups of like six to 10, whether it's big group classes like 30 people or whatever may be.

[1:31] We're covering all of these situations, but you go into a local gym or do a local class or whatever may be. And as you're going through that, you're like, you know what? I quite like this. I like the environment. I like being in this situation. I have people waiting for me. Maybe I like the socializing or whatever may be. And that's all good. But then at some point you realize you have a bit of a limiting factor, a little bit of an issue. There's something in these sessions that just isn't quite right. So for example, maybe you're doing group exercise and they've just got you doing lots and lots and lots of lunges, but you realize that, you know what, actually, after doing lunges, my knees get a little bit sore and, you know, this is a little bit tricky. Or maybe you're working with a personal trainer who really, really likes getting people strong. And when you're doing weights with them and when you're doing your strength training, they really just keep on stacking up the weights and really pushing you and kind of pushing you almost to your limit. And you realize, okay, initially that was sort of all right, but now, I'm kind of getting a bit uncomfortable. Like the next days I wake up and my joints are sore or I'm struggling to recover or whatever it may be, my back sore or whatever it is. Or maybe you're working with a trainer or a glute class and they love doing burpees or squat jumps and they get you doing lots and lots of that. But you realize that, oh, you know what? I get a bit dizzy when I do these things. It really makes me feel a bit gross. Or one of a million things. And you just realize that something in these sessions is just not quite right for you personally.

[2:56] Then essentially what you do, you're like, all right, well, I struggle with this. Then you tell the trainer or the coach who's running the sessions this issue. And you're like, hey, I'm struggling with this, or hey, I'm struggling with that, or whatever it may be. And in that session, they respect it. They listen to it. They're like, hey, you know what? Okay, good to know. We're going to work around this, and we're going to maybe skip lunges, and I'll give you an alternative. Or maybe we'll just have a bit of a lighter session today, or whatever it may be.

[3:20] And this may be all well good for this session, maybe the next week, maybe the next two or whatever it may be. But then the trainer seems to forget and they end up after a couple of weeks, just going back to asking you to do the same old things, asking you to do those lunges again, or asking you to push the weights, or asking you to do burpees or whatever may be. And you end up getting asked to do the same old things you wanted to avoid. And this ends up putting you in a bit of a tricky situation because a lot of us, we don't want to be difficult. We don't want to keep on raising these issues and these points and end up being, in quotation marks, difficult, even though technically that is perfectly fine and that's exactly what the coach is there for. But sometimes we just struggle with that. And also a lot of people are like, oh, you know what? Maybe I had a week or two off doing lunges. Maybe I just want to test my knees and see how it goes. And you do it and you're like, oh, I hope it's going to be better. And then you do it and you end up getting the same issues again. And it just turns into this recurring cycle for weeks or months or even for some people, years. This is a really, really, really common situation. I've probably in the last 12 months had a dozen direct clients who have gone through an exact similar scenario with this, whether it's with local trainers or boot camps or small group training or big group classes or whatever it may be. And I just know so many hikers out there do struggle with this, people who obviously I don't work with directly.

[4:42] Because it can be a little bit tricky because maybe you love what you're doing with that trainer or the class. Maybe it's a really positive thing for you in 95% of the time or 98% of the situation. It's not like it's to a point where you're like, oh, you know what? I just want to give this up. This sucks. But you really enjoy it. But you just don't want this issue.

[5:01] This keeps on coming back and you're like, oh, this is really annoying. So today, I'm going to, And tomorrow, we're going to be talking about how you can navigate these situations. And I'm going to give you a little bit of an action plan around how to work around this. Now, I'm going to be splitting this episode up into two parts. Today, in this episode, we're going to be talking about one-to-one PTs, one-to-one personal trainers, and how you can go about that. And then the second part, we're going to talk about group exercise, which will cover group exercise, boot camps, and small group training, or whatever it may be. So we'll kind of cover both scenarios because they're similar, but a little bit different. So first of all, let's talk about personal training. Now, most people from the outside would kind of think, look, if you are working with a one-to-one personal trainer, if you are paying money to see them each week, if you are literally working with them every single week and you're spending 30 to 60 minutes with them, if you have this personal relationship, which you may have after weeks or months or even years of working with someone, shouldn't they already know your issues?

[6:08] Shouldn't they already know what triggers are? And shouldn't they be able to plan around that? Because that's literally what personal training is. Personal training. Training which is personal for you and going to be right for you. And yeah, in theory, that'll make sense. And yes, a good PT, they will absolutely be on top of this and they will absolutely sort of be able to adjust things. They'll make sure, okay, X, Y, Z is not good for you and we're just never going to do this. Or if we really want to do this, we'll build you up in a safe way or whatever it may be. A good PT will do this. And if you've got someone like that, fantastic, awesome. This shouldn't be an issue for you at all.

[6:42] But I'll be honest, this, even though it sounds from the outside how it should be, I would probably say this is not standard practice in the fitness industry. And unfortunately, Unfortunately, a lot of PTs and just one-to-one trainers, they do have a few limitations when it comes to this type of thing. I'm not saying everyone does, but I would probably say this is more of the average approach in the sense that a lot of PTs, and again, I would sort of say for the most part, a lot of PTs are really terrible about taking notes in the sense they spend the whole session. They take you through the session. They watch your form. They watch your exercise. They have conversations with you in between sets and reps and this and that. But a lot of people just don't take notes. They don't write down what's going on. They don't write down what's happening. And also on top of that is if they have sessions back to back to back afterwards, they don't have time to do notes afterwards. They may end up doing three or four or five hours of stuff. And by the time they actually get down to write things down, they've completely forgotten what's going on. That is a really, really, really common thing.

[7:52] Number two, you know, another limitation is a lot of personal trainers that don't really work off a personal program in the sense that these types of things are very, very easy to work around is if as a coach, you sit down and you're like, okay, Ali, Ali, for example, Ali is my wife. Let's use Ali. Ali is training for this and she doesn't like this exercise. She has this problem or whatever it may be. So I will sit down and I will write out a program for Ali to work around this, to get her where she needs to be for her goal and make sure we're not covering these issues. And if we're sitting down and doing programming in advance, this can be really easy to do.

[8:28] But again, industry standard, most trainers are probably not really doing programming. They're just putting together workouts for the day. They may end up doing the same workout for four or five different people through the day or whatever it may be. This is a really common practice in the fitness industry. So if they're just doing a standard workout, they may just go back to their tried and trusted favorites about how to approach things and they'll just forget about what you may need. Sounds sad, but it's pretty standard. On top of that, a lot of trainers just don't have good memories, in all honesty. I remember me as a local and an in-person personal trainer, my memory sucked. I would forget things all the time. A lot of trainers, if you work with them, they kind of count to 10 in the sense that we get lost when we're counting your repetitions and you ask how many reps are left and we're like, oh, maybe three more.

[9:19] That's an ongoing joke in the fitness industry between clients and trainers. That's just a struggle. A lot of trainers, in all honesty, in the moment, they just don't have good memories. Again, they may be in a rush in between session, between session, between session. They may be taking you through sessions at the start of it, you know, super early in the morning. or at the very end of a long day, or whatever it may be. But sometimes memory is just not amazing. And on top of that, there are trainers out there who maybe are just kind of really like doing things in a certain way. They've got a particular way of going about things. They've got particular ways of training people, the particular ways of pushing people, particular exercises they like, and they just don't really like getting off their usual course. It happens. All of this may sound terrible, and it may sound like I'm having a bit of a dig at people, but it's not. In all honesty, for a lot of people, and I would sort of say the majority of people who are going to local gyms and doing training, these types of things, they don't really matter too much. In the sense that.

[10:19] You don't really need good notes or good memory or even amazing programming to get people into the gym, to get a good sweat on and get them walking out of the gym or walking out of their session feeling better than when they came in and giving them a good day and giving them a good experience and helping them feel a little bit fitter. You know, I would say, say 90% of people who are going to trainers, that's probably what they're after. So none of this really matters too much around it. However, if you are dealing with limitations, then this can be a little bit tricky and we need to sort of work around it. Now, I'll give you a couple of direct examples of this situation of two clients I've had in the last 12 months. Now, first client is a longer-term pain client in the sense that they came to me, they've had pain for years and years and years and years and they are training for a particular hike. They've been working with a local trainer for ages. They wanted to keep on with that. And they were like, hey, I want to improve my hiking. I want to get on top of my pain and all this. So, we were working together. We were doing sessions. They were also doing sessions with a local PT. And as we were kind of coming through the weeks and the months, we sort of identified, all right, with the PT, a lot of the stuff they were doing was like more maximal intensity lifting in the sense that they'd do an exercise with the PT. They'd start on a weight.

[11:34] That'll go okay. Then the PT will put a bit more weight on, push them a little bit more. That'll go okay. Then the PT will put more weight on. It'll be a struggle, then the PT will put more weight on and kind of push them to the limit, which a lot of people love. But in this particular situation, we were actually like, all right, that's actually a bit of a trigger because after every single time you do this, the next day or two, your particular pain points flare up. So this person had the conversation with the trainer and saying, hey, do you mind me not doing this? Do you mind if we just pull back the intensity a little bit? Because I feel like it's kind of aggravating things. And it worked for a month or two. It was great. They pulled things back. We worked on other areas. The pain eased off. They started progressing with their weight and their fitness again because they were always getting held back by those flare-ups and everything was working great. But then after about, I think it was like six weeks or so, the trainer started pushing the intensities again and pushing them back to that point, which they're a little bit uncomfortable on. And this led to the cycle just happening again and went on for a while.

[12:33] Or the second situation is a client that we're working with leading into a big trip who had hip issues. They came to me and they're like, hey, I've got this trip coming up. I've been doing all of this training. I really enjoy these small group classes. But recently I picked up a hip issue and I'm a little bit worried about getting ready for this trip. And we identified that, you know what, you're doing a lot of jumping, a lot of squat jumps, a lot of split lunge jumps, a lot of burpees. And we identified that's actually a bit of a trigger from these group exercises. So we sort of said, hey, you know what? Maybe just hold off on these for a little while. Let's just pull this back and avoid it. And they had a chat with a coach and the instructor in the classes for a few weeks. This was fine. And then they started getting encouraged to do these again. And the discomfort came back. You know, this type of stuff, it's really, really, really common. But there's just a couple of concrete examples. And in all honesty, none of this is ideal. Because, you know, if you've got that, if you enjoy those sessions, if you've got that personal relationship, you want that to be a positive thing. And you don't want that sending you back in certain ways.

[13:30] So with all that being said, now I want to talk you through how you can approach this and how you can actually give yourself the best chance possible of kind of getting the best of both worlds in the sense of enjoy your sessions and not fall into these pitfalls.

[13:47] Realistically, what you need to do is you need to have a serious conversation with your PT. And in this episode, as I said, we're talking about one-for-one trainers. And realistically, you need to sit down and have that conversation with your PT. You need to lay your cards on the table. You need to be very, very clear about this. And then we need to kind of lock it in stone. So this is how you go about it. Now, first of all, you need to initiate a conversation about this. Now, one mistake that a lot of people will do, and it doesn't seem like a mistake from the outside, but this is something that we're kind of getting away with here, is if you try to have this conversation in the middle of a workout or at the end of a workout, or even if you're trying to do this by text or phone, if you're working with a local trainer, in the sense that if you try to raise something in the middle of a workout.

[14:39] More often than not, this conversation is going to be restricted. It's going to be rushed. It's going to be pulled down to one or two or three minutes in between sets of exercises. The trainer will feel kind of pressured to get you moving again and get you back in exercising instead of just standing around having a conversation in the middle of a session. On top of that is if you have a serious conversation about something in the middle of a session, more than likely the trainer isn't going to have an opportunity to write it down and it does have that risk of them forgetting about things. The same thing is if you try to do this at the end of a session. If you've done 30 minutes or 45 minutes with a trainer, and then you're like, hey, have you got a couple of minutes to talk through things? They will quite often be in a situation where they've either got another client working for them, or they've only got a small gap where they're going to go eat something, they're going to sit down between sessions, they're going to go do their own session or whatever it may be. And they may be kind of thinking ahead towards that. So again, you may not get the time that you deserve in this situation. It may end up being a bit rushed. So what I strongly recommend you do is if you're trying to have a serious conversation with a local PT, at the start of one of your sessions, when you're due to start your 30 minutes, your 45 minutes, your 60 minutes, whatever it may be, just go, hey, coach, do you mind if we just sit down and have a bit of a chat for five minutes before we start?

[16:01] Now this may be a little bit annoying because you're like well this is time i paid for to actually exercise this is time i paid for where i should be actually training but i promise you this is the best way to approach it this is the best chance of you getting your point across this is the best chance of you getting the support you want and this is the best chance of you making this stick so do this at the start of a session and see if you can sit down somewhere and not just do it on the gym floor where you're just standing around. Then from there, you want to lay out your situation very clearly and very succinctly. You basically want to tell them, number one, what the issue is. You want to say to say, hey.

[16:42] I'm really enjoying the sessions. And we always want to start positive because this is just a way you can have a good conversation with people. Start with something positive. Say, I really enjoy the sessions, whatever it may be, all going well. But I have one issue that I want your advice on. I want your help with. And then lay out the issue and just sort of say, look, I always seem to find that whenever I do burpees, my knees are sore the next day. Or I always seem to find when I'm pushing to that max level of intensity, it feels good in the moment, but I end up in pain the next day or whatever may be. Lay out your issue, be very, very clear. Then from there, lay out what solution is and what your potential solution is. And just sort of ask them, hey, do you mind if I don't do this exercise and we do something else? Or do you mind if we just don't quite push quite as much and just use slightly less heavy weights? Or do you mind whatever? Now, you don't have to be technically minded here. You can just kind of lay out what you sort of think here may be a good idea. And the trainer will either agree to that and say, yeah, that's fine. Or they might be like, oh, you know what? Actually, yeah, I get your point. You've told me the issue. Maybe we're going to do something else instead. And they will be able to take it from there. But lay out your issue, lay out your potential solution. Ask them, is that okay? Get their confirmation and agreement.

[18:05] Nine times out of 10, that'd be easy enough. They'll be like, yep, cool, no more burpees, good, let's go, five more minutes. Not five more minutes, let's get into the session.

[18:14] Sometimes, maybe 5% of the time, they may be like, hey, actually, I really, really, you know, you said your squats cause you pain, but no, I really, really, really want to build up to squats and do squats because it's going to be so beneficial for your particular goals. They may be really adamant that they want you to do something for a certain reason, which is fair enough. I often have this conversation with a lot of my clients. And for example, a lot of my clients, there like we often do step downs. Step downs are a great exercise for hikers, really, really good. But a lot of people, when they first start doing them, they may get a little bit of knee pain. And a lot of people will ask me, hey, do you mind if we do something else there? And sometimes I'll say, you know what? I'd actually really like to stick with the step downs because that's going to be really valuable for us, but we're going to make these adjustments to make it more comfortable for your knee or whatever it may be. So if someone is really adamant that they want you to do something, which is fair enough, and that's, you know, the trainer may have a plan for you, just to say, okay, I understand. So what could you recommend that we can build up to this so I'm not getting in pain? Just ask them that. So it doesn't end up just you just pushing through pain, but what can we actually do? And then ask them for an action plan and they'll go through it. So that's your conversation. Have your five minutes, lay it all out. Go through your session. And then essentially after the session, what we wanna do is we wanna make sure this is kind of stuck in their heads. Because again, they may have a super busy day. They may not sit down and do notes for another four or five hours. They might...

[19:36] It may be the end of the night or the start of the morning or whatever it may be. We want to make sure this is locked in. So after the session, what you want to do is send them a message or send them an email, however you communicate, and basically send them a message and put this in writing. And it's not in a jerk way saying, hey, I'm putting this in writing because I want to like, you know, written confirmation that we discussed this or anything like that. Like, obviously, that's, you know, you could do that, but it's probably not conducive to a great relationship between the two. So, but just sort of something that's sort of saying, hey, coach, you know, thanks for the session. You know, I really appreciate you talking about, you know, talking about X, Y, and Z. So, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk about my knees and the heavy lifting. And I think just holding back an intensity is going to be really useful to manage my knees or whatever it may be. Just something like that. So, you've literally sort of said, hey, thanks for talking about this. And I really think what we agreed with and write down what you agreed with is going to be useful.

[20:29] So the idea behind this, it kind of just cements things in people a little bit more. And then finally, once you've done that, you've had that conversation, you've sent the confirmation, then finally, you just need to keep aware of this moving forward. Because a lot of training will still forget. Or maybe it'll be another month or two or three, and they'll start reintroducing these things or whatever it may be. So then just give them a gentle mind. And just like if they do say, hey, do 10 burpees, and you're like, burpees are no good for me. And then just sort of say, hey, actually, do you mind if we do something different? I'm just a little bit concerned about my knees. Or, you know what, if they're really, really pushing to the squats, like, yeah, yeah, we're going to go really heavy today. Just sort of say, hey, actually, you know what, do you mind if we just not push so hard? Just give them those gentle reminders and prods. And usually that should be fine for them to pull you back. Again, some people may sit you down and say, you know what, actually, it's been three months. I would actually like to do some squat jumps because I feel like it may be really good for you just to get trust in your body again and experiment with this and see how you're going and if they lay things out logically like that happy days are great, Or if they're just like, oh, I just want you to do this, well, then that's a whole nother conversation. And yeah.

[21:38] So listening to this from the outside, like if you're not in this situation, you might be like, oh my gosh, Rowan, what are you talking about? Like, why would you need to do this? Why would you need to go through this process to get a professional to be in your best interest that you are paying?

[21:53] Yeah, perfect world. And as I said, a lot of trainers will not have these issues. They'll be able to stay on top of things. They'll be able to stay, you know, whatever it may be. but it does happen so if you're in this situation where you're like hey i really like this uh this trainer i'm doing some good stuff with him but this is one thing that's holding me back give this a go, best case scenario it'll absolutely sort you out and you won't run into issues anymore, worst case scenario you'll be in exactly the same situation where you were before and then you can either make the decision saying all right i'm just going to deal with it or maybe it's time for a change. Completely up to you. But give this a go. I think it may be quite useful. So with that being said, you know, I'll sort of say like, you know, this is really, really common. A lot of people struggle with this. And, you know, sometimes just the smallest changes can just make all the difference. So if you do struggle with this, give this a go. I really do hope it helps. So that's part one of today's episode. Next one, as I said, we're going to be talking about small group training or group exercise, which is very similar, but slightly different and how to navigate that conversation. So with that being said, I hope this helps a few people. Anyone has any questions from this, please feel free to reach out anytime and we'll talk to you very, very soon. Bye.

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