Barbell Shrugged - Have you ever heard “the problem is in your head”? w/ Larry Gaier - Active Life Radio #3

Episode Date: July 26, 2019

Larry Gaier is a personal trainer who was standout intern at Active Life HQ (when there was an Active Life HQ). He is the best communicator on staff at Active Life and his intensity of capacity for empathy is the reason why he gets assigned the clients he does.    In this episode, Dr. Sean and Active Life 1 on 1 staff member, Larry Gaier discuss a client who had some physical pain that was extremely fear based. If you have ever heard “it’s in your head” and thought that this suggestion was offensive, you need to listen to this episode. Any time that a coach tells a client or a doctor tells a patient “it’s in your head” when you know you can feel it in your body, it’s frustrating to hear. In this episode we talk about how they’re directly related, and how it should be communicated.    Minute Breakdown:   0-10 - There was more fear than pain. 11-20 - When you change your physiology you will change your habits. 21-30 - What is an athlete? 31-40 - Communication is the key. 41-50 - Setting boundaries with your coach or client.  Work with an Active Life Coach like Larry at http://activeliferx.com/shrugged Find Larry at @Larry_TheHuman  

All right, we got Larry Geyer here with us on Active Life Radio on the Barbell Shrug Network. Larry, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you. This is one of those for you guys who don't know. Larry, despite the fact that he speaks well, he's smart, what he says is important, he doesn't love to put himself out there. So I'm very excited that you decided to

actually come over here and have this conversation today. It's a good day. It is a good day. So we're going to talk about one of Larry's clients who we're not, again, we're not, we're not going to use the client's name because we haven't expressly written, you know, reached out to each of these clients and asked that we tell their story using their name and their life and all that kind of stuff. So we want to make sure that we keep things private. So, Larry, you know who we're going to talk about. What name do you want to give her today? We're going to go Esperanza today.

Okay. Let's call her Esperanza. So, Esperanza is a client who— All right. We've got Larry Geyer here with us on Active Life Radio on the Barbell Shrug Network. Larry, welcome to the show. Thanks, man. Thank you. This is one of those for you guys who don't know. Larry, despite the fact that he speaks well, he's smart, what he says is important, he doesn't love to put himself

out there. So I'm very excited that you decided to actually come over here and have this conversation today. Hey, man. It's a good day. It is a good day. So we're going to talk about one of Larry's clients who we're not, again, we're not, we're not going to use the client's name because we haven't expressly written, you know, reached out to each of these clients and asked that we tell their story using their name and their life and all that kind of stuff. So we want to make sure that we keep things private. So Larry, you know, we're going to talk about what, what name do you want to give her today? Oh, we're going to talk about? What name do you want to give her today? We're going to go Esperanza today.

Okay. Let's call her Esperanza. So Esperanza is a client who I remember vividly getting on the phone with. It was a video call because she was working at the school that she was at, and there wasn't very good cell reception, but there was really good internet. So we did a video call, and the problem that she was running into was she had shoulder pain. Yes? Yeah. And neck.

Right. I knew there was a spinal-related thing. Radiated all down the arms. Yes. And when I was talking to her, if I had to make a list of the things that were probably wrong that needed to be worked out, shoulder and neck would have been fairly low on the list and fear would have been number one. And two. Maybe even three. Yeah. So can you chime in? I mean, so before you chime in, actually, so I get her as someone who's going to come work with us. I was very excited because I was concerned

that she would actually be in her own way and she wouldn't actually sign up. That did not happen. She did sign up. And I immediately knew that the client I wanted to set her up with was going to be you because you would have the patience, you would have the detail that she needed, and you had a lot of experience dealing with clients just like her in your everyday life. So why don't you talk to me about the first conversation you had with her? So the first conversation was entirely about how afraid she was. It was about all of the things she loves to do, all of the things she has always loved to do, and all of the things she's afraid she will never be able to do again. Unfortunately, there was almost a 100% overlap between those lists. So I want to jump in and ask you, how do you start that conversation? I think there's a lot

of coaches out there who are going to be listening to this episode who are like, I have clients like that, but what do I do? Just walk over and be like, yo, you're fucking scared. Yeah. So there's one mistake that I have made over and over and over and over again. And I think only within the last 12 months have I started consistently doing it differently and better. And it's proven to be an absolutely stellar change in terms of getting clients to basically do what's right for them, as you see it. That mistake has always been rushing to show them how much you believe you can save them and how quickly you believe you'll be able to solve their problem. Or the good news is that your problem is probably not as bad as you think it is. Let me show you why.

That has been a horrible, egregious error that I have made too many times. Why is it an error? Because when someone is deeply, deeply afraid of what their life is like and is going to be like, for you to be able to, with your perfect third person perspective, jump in and say, hey, it's not as bad as you think think is horribly insensitive. So what I have done differently that has proven to me much more effective is, okay, to answer your question, the first thing that needs to happen with this person is I need to show them how much, how thoroughly I understand how afraid they are. That's it. Call one is to show Esperanza how much I understand

how much your situation sucks right now. So now when you start the conversation, you say, hi, this is Larry. I want to be your coach. What's going on? Yeah. Talk to me. What's the situation? What should I know? And she says, okay, well, I've been having neck pain and arm pain. It radiates kind of from my neck down to my shoulder and to my arm. And I've gone to physical well, I've been having neck pain and arm pain. It radiates kind of from my neck down to my shoulder and to my arm. And I've gone to physical therapy. I've been to the chiropractor. I've tried exercising.

I've tried rest. And I'm just afraid that I'm not going to live with this forever. How do you respond to that? That sounds very scary. And I can understand why you'd be pretty upset about that. So can you talk to me a little bit about the things that bring that on, some of the things that you've done in the past that have, what makes it feel better, anything just finding out as much

information about what her experience on a day-to-day is like right with respect to what makes it hurt what makes it feel better what's neutral right and just learning more about how her mental experience with her pain is congruent if if at all, with her physical experience of that pain. And many often, oftentimes we find that it's not necessarily the case. And so when you say that, I think that people who are listening to this, whether they're coaches or not, one of the almost taboos, right? For a coach or a doctor to say to their client is this is in your head this is not real you know this is in your head and i think that when they say that to somebody they might be on the right path with the wrong delivery right so how do you describe to somebody that the

musculoskeletal dysfunction that you're experiencing does not correlate with the symptoms that you're experiencing. And there are no other musculoskeletal findings, which means there's a strong likelihood that your fear of the unknown around your symptoms is actually magnifying the negative impact of those symptoms because of the uncertainty that you have from them. Yeah. The short answer is delicately and over time. So the way I had to do it with Esperanza is first of all, Esperanza is someone who moves slowly in terms of taking big steps and making decisions. She is extremely emotional. She's extremely smart and she's extremely open-minded, but she's not jumping over any gaps too quickly. She really wants to feel safe before she's extremely open-minded, but she's not jumping over any gaps too quickly.

She really wants to feel safe before she's taking a baby step. And so my understanding of that led the conversation to be something along the lines of, hey, first of all, we are not doing anything that stands out to you as probably unsafe. If we have to, I'm here to over as much time as possible and as necessary to hold your hand and walk with you, baby step by baby step by baby step, as long as you feel really good. And by the end of 10 baby steps, you should be measurably fitter, stronger,

and in a better place than you were 10 baby steps ago. And if that's happened, let's take another 10. Does that sound good? Was there any kind of resistance between what she wanted and what she was afraid of in a sense that she'd like to move faster and get results faster, but she wasn't willing to take big steps to get there?

Yes, absolutely. And for her, what we found was, okay, and just so everyone, just so coaches understand, let me give you the measurables. Esperanza moves perfectly, both through her passive ranges of motion and through all of the movements that she wants and knows how to practice. I would use all of her movement as video demos. She moves perfectly. So measurably, it's very, very difficult to point out, Oh, got it. Like, here's the thing we need to make a little bit better, which makes

the conversation even harder. Right. Um, so for her, it was really about just giving her the smallest, fastest, immediate win that I could. Does that make sense? Absolutely. So what was that? The first one was, Hey, all I want to know is if you can pretend to zip up your jacket five times and not have any pain. Okay. So let's unpack that a little bit. Let's go backwards on that. You clearly were doing that to, for lack of a better word, set her up to be able to do a high pull. Yes. Why did you feel like, let me see if you can pretend to zip your jacket was the ticket. Because when I mentioned that high pulls might be one of the most therapeutic exercises that she experienced, uh, in her program, it was met with tremendous fear and apprehension. Was that fear and apprehension something that she had learned on her own or something that other people had taught her?

Both. Okay. So for people listening, the high pull is when you take a weight, starting at about waist height, and pull it towards your clavicle, your collarbone. This is an exercise that physical therapists, trainers worldwide will look at on video and say, oh, no, no, no, no. That's going to cause shoulder impingement, which is not true.

It's understandable why they think that it might when they don't fully understand the movement. And they compare it to something like an orthopedic test that tests for shoulder impingement. But nonetheless, they had now spread this information, this fear onto Esperanza, who was afraid to do the exercise. And why did you think it was important that she did that exercise in due time? Because she was very, very bad at it. And I understand from her experience that there are a lot of things she's, there are a lot of things that she's always done. And there are a lot of things that she has always avoided and there are a lot of things that she has always avoided this being one of them um also from my own experience with lots of different people of lots of different builds um this is an often overlooked movement that people shy away from

and it's proven for many many people in my experience to across the board make people feel better in general so both from a strength balance perspective and from a general, Hey, I would like to give your body one more thing that it knows it can do for me. Movement is movements of mosaic. And I want to give you as many pieces as possible, right? So a quick example, um, your body is only going to do what it unconsciously trusts that I can do in any one given moment, right? So I used to have a pickup truck and every single time I wanted to put my 50 pound kettlebell in the back of it, I would grab I used to have a pickup truck, and every single time I wanted to put my 50 pound kettlebell on the back of it, I would grab it and I would put it, I would curl it and I would have it in what would be called

the front rack or the waiter position, right? And then I would kind of lift it up and over with my hands in an upward pressing motion. It was only after I got my high pull up that without even thinking about it one day, I was turning around to talk to someone and I found myself high pulling my kettlebell into the back of my pickup truck. And that only happened because my body had understood that I can put it there. Had I tried that before my body would have registered this

as being painful and dangerous. So as far as I'm concerned, I wanted to get as many unconscious possibilities as possible. Does that make sense? Yes. So how did you know that Esperanza was bad at high pulls if she wasn't willing to do them yet? Um, I didn't, it was just another thing that I wanted her shoulders to be able to feel like they could do. Right. So it was one example in a long list of things that I imagined she would meet with, with trepidation that I wanted to gently, gently expose her to and gradually improve over time. Okay. Got it. So it was, it was essentially an expectation. Yes. Okay. Now I want people to know that this client is exactly the kind of client who we want to work with at active life for reasons being they are the things you said earlier, right? The fact that she's smart, she's capable, she's not living in a victim mentality.

She wants to move forward. She just needs a little bit of guidance. So you get her now doing things like zipping up her invisible jacket. And then I imagine the next step is what? You start to load her up with some light kettlebells or light plates? Yeah. And honestly, it took three months of, so first of all, Esperanza's compliance with workouts was about 33% for the first five or six months of our training.

I remember that. Why was that? Because, so half the time she was too afraid to try the other half of the time it was incomplete because it hurt too much that you can, I could easily, very easily say that is 100% my fault. I should have figured out how to dial it in and make it feel more accessible and digestible for her much, much sooner. But but frankly at the time I was making as easy as I thought I could have and What's really important the crux of this call the crux of this? this this decision of how she was going to move forward is Really is really the kind of The biggest point of this this entire talk, which is that there

was a point at which she decided that whether she had thoracic outlet syndrome, whether she had a torn this or a strained this, it was her decision that she was no longer broken and that she was actually going to move forward. It was finding someone who was in her position, who had gotten to a point where they can crush it and not be in pain, despite what five doctors were telling them and that they were still going to move forward and pursue their health and fitness as they wanted to. Once she made that decision, her compliance went to a hundred percent. So I imagine that when you said things like thoracic outlet syndrome, and I don remember what else you listed off, those are things that doctors told her she might have. Yes.

Okay. And was there any element of her essentially living that diagnosis and presenting as a WebMD of the findings? Yes. She was sending me screenshot after screenshot of all the things that she was researching on her own that she thought she had wrong with her. Yeah. And this is something I want to talk to you for all of you guys out there who are dealing with something that might be similar to Esperanza or any of the clients you've heard about on the show and will hear about on the show in the future. It's important to note that those diagnoses that doctors make are relevant. They're relevant.

They're real. They exist. They can be seen on MRI oftentimes. The problem is that there aren't many websites that are listing how people perform with these things. They more generally list the catastrophic findings and limitations that correlate with these things. And then people start to live that in their real life. So for example, if you have thoracic outlet syndrome diagnosed by a doctor, okay, you're at an inflection point. Are you going to be the person who reads like the web md page or are you going to be the person who looks for every single opportunity to be different and to live

your life and that's the kind of thing that we try to instill in our clients is that while you might have that diagnosis from a doctor if anybody else in the world has that same diagnosis and is living the life that you would like to be able to live, then it is at least possible, if not probable that you can live that same life. I think that's really, really important to point out. Like as long as someone's done it before you can maybe do it. And even if they haven't, someone had to be first. Right. And right. So you're either going to decide to be the first or you're going to decide to be like the first. Um. The point is, it wasn't her anatomy and physiology that set her apart and made her more or less capable to move forward.

It was her decision that she was going to adopt a totally different attitude. Because what's important to know about Esperanza is that her diet was probably 50% where it needed to be in terms of quantity and quality. It was all over the place. It was spotty and it was insufficient. So she was malnourished. So how did you know that? Because we've talked about it. Okay. So I want people to understand. I mean, you're, you're, you're taking care of her shoulder and her neck. Yes. I'm not telling her what to eat. I'm not telling her how much to eat,

but I am asking her questions that lead her to point out hey what could be better here so do you feel like you're do you feel like you're eating well enough I don't need to get into any details about any bit of nutrients for her to say no definitely not right that's that's that's easy that's low-hanging fruit hey how much you sleeping Oh five hours a night on average and you wake up all right maybe that's a conversation we need to unpack. What's the stress level at work? Oh, nine out of 10 baseline. Got it. Right. And this is all before we had what we call our lifestyle check-in, which now every single client who works with us gets, where on Mondays,

our clients will see, how did you sleep? Was it restful? Did you feel recovered when you woke up? All of these different things. And they just came up naturally in conversation for you guys. Is that right? Yes. Okay. Well, intentionally. Of course. Of course. But naturally, intentionally. And I want to make clear that we're not a nutrition company. We're not a sleep company. We're not a psychology company. We're not working through stress in that kind of a way. So the question I guess I'm asking is,

how did you approach that in an effective and yet delicate way? Yeah, I mean, once a client has the understanding that managing all the intangibles outside of the gym is setting themselves up with a platform upon which our work can be most effective, that's when the mindset shift happens, right? So as soon as someone understands, oh, got it. If I am sleeping well enough, eating well enough, and I'm managing my psychological and emotional state really, really effectively, then all these high poles are going to start to do their job. That's when something happens.

So what happened with Esperanza is that the reason why she wasn't taking care of all those other things is because she generally understood herself to be hopeless and broken. The decision to not be anymore made all of those things come together at the same time. How did that decision happen though? I believe she, I'm not going to take credit for it. I believe she found someone online. I'm going to have to find out who it was. If anyone is relating with, with NTOS, she found someone online who had it and was, excuse

me, with what? NT, uh, neural or neurological thoracic atlas syndrome yeah um she found someone online who was diagnosed was very symptomatic and was crushing it and was less and less symptomatic to the point that now it's just oh yeah it's this thing that i deal with once in a while instead of oh my athletic career is over for esperanza it was extremely important that she could continue to identify and express herself as an athlete. And she felt that that was taken away from her. What's up, Shrug Nation? Are you enjoying this episode? I bet you are. I'm going to keep this brief. We'll get you right back

to the show in a moment. In the meantime, if you're interested in anything that we're doing at Active Life, make sure that you head to activeliferx.com slash shrugged. You want to be a better coach. You want to help your clients better. You want to get out of pain, but you don't want to go to the doctor or miss the gym. Activeliferx.com slash shrugged. That's where you need to be. We'll see you when you get there. Turn pro. Here we go back to the episode. Yeah, I mean, I love the question

of what an athlete is. And I think this leads to a conversation that we could have about how everyone, whether you're a grandmother or LeBron James, should be approaching

improved performance the same way. That's a conversation for another day. In the meantime, in my opinion, an athlete, someone who decides to identify and consider themselves an athlete has nothing to do with

being paid or competitive. It has to do with someone who wants to understand and be able to fully express themselves with their body, to be able to do more and do better with their body such that they can enjoy the quality of their life more. Whether that means throwing a ball in a crazy direction, in a crazy way, or it means getting up off the couch with no knee pain. To me, someone who is identifying themselves as an athlete and moving forward with their lives as an athlete is anyone who is trying to be able to improve the quality of life via their physical performance. That's kind of the Bill Bowerman definition of an athlete. I don't know who that is, but he sounds like a smart guy.

That doesn't surprise me. Bill Bowerman is one of the founders of Nike. And his quote is, if you have a body, you're an athlete. Yeah, love it. Yeah. Or at least need to be considering how you could improve yourself as such. Should be. I mean, look, we're in a country where more than 50% of the population is obese, which is crazy.

And with obesity, obviously, is going to come, or excuse me, obesity oftentimes follows sedentariness. So we can agree that most people should be, all people should be pursuing better movement and more movement. But I think that it's realistic to understand that most people are not which is fucking crazy to me so okay so she wanted to be an athlete who was able to express herself in what way um so she's a crossfitter right but it was i think she took her first vacation in like five years um like, uh, it was in the middle of winter. Yep. And she went to Lake Tahoe with three of her friends and she snowboarded for the first time or like the second time ever. And she chewed it. She busted her ass all over the place, but she had a blast and she texted me, she texted me halfway through. She was like, Hey, snowboarding, eating shit out here,

having the best time of my life and i was like got it like how you holding up you know like things feel good she's like yeah a little this little that but but it's great and so for her it's starting to believe oh i can actually pursue whatever i want with my body i'm not telling someone that hey guess what you are going to be able to do whatever you want to do with your what? You are going to be able to do whatever you want to do with your body. You're not going to be able to do crazy triple backflips off a cliff into water. You're not going to be able to dunk a basketball. You're not going to be able to do this, that you're not gonna be able to, you know, PR your power clean by 200 pounds,

but you are going to be able to pursue whatever physical endeavors you want. And to make that clear, I think we should also say, you're also not telling her that she is not going to be able to do those things. It's just the presentation of how we can help is not, yes, we're going to get you a 300 pound power clean. I love it. You're going to dunk a basketball and you're going to do backflips up for rent. I actually, this might be a stretch, but we'll figure it out.

I really like relating someone's progress in this way to dating. Tell you what I mean. I think that a really, really effective mindset for both is this pretty good. Let's see how it goes. Right. So when you could, when you could to to be present and appreciate the the aspects of what you're doing that are great right now and just look just slightly ahead at what the next best thing is, what's the next right thing? What's the next right thing? What's the next right thing? And not get too hung up in whatever crazy outcomes may or may not happen that in your head would mean a crazy collapse or a crazy success, really, really fast progress happens from what I've seen. Well, so what you're talking about is essentially setting the expectations that, I don't know. Yes. Okay.

And I think that speaks to, do you remember Tony Blauer's fear loop? I know he came and did a meeting with our entire staff, but have you ever heard of Tony Blauer's fear loop? No. Okay. came and did a a meeting with our entire staff but have you ever heard of tony blowers for your loop uh no okay so tony talks about the idea that um there's a stimulus that is unexpected and then essentially we go through a series of thought and that series of thought can lead us on the path of oh my god what's going to happen here or what's happening here, how do I change it? And having the consciousness to make that decision flip is everything. Yeah, I love it. I think any time that we are making fear-based decisions,

we're running around the edge of a cliff with a blindfold on. Yeah. And I don't think that's a good idea. I can get behind the idea of not running around the edge of a cliff with a blindfold on. I used to tell patients all the time, the moment that you're out of pain, do i i can i can get behind the idea of not running on the edge of a cliff with a blindfold on i used to tell patients all the time but there's the moment that you're out of pain and this is actually good for anyone to listen the moment that you're out of pain you've taken a step back from the

cliff you still have a blindfold on and you think you're safe right i mean it's it's the exact metaphor you just used you're running around on a cliff top with the blindfold on. You think you're safe. It's not until the moment that you fall off the cliff that you're like, shit, probably shouldn't have done that. Yeah. Um, yeah. So let's get back to Esperanza. Great name by the way. Yeah, I think so too. I think if I have a fourth kid, I'll name her Esperanza. So I think my, my mom was going to name me Esperanza if i was a girl really yeah i think so she went with larry damn pretty bummed that i turned out this way what a mush before that's bronzy she got what are you gonna do well i think i think what happened well first of all her dad's name was lawrence so okay that's there's that uh but also i think my my grandmother wanted to name me laroy so i'm really glad my mom went with Larry instead. Oh, for those of you who are thinking

about what a Leroy might look like, it's not what I'm looking at right now. Yeah. At least from my own stereotypical perspective. Capital L, lowercase e, capital R, lowercase o, y. It's pretty bad. Is that French? No.

Definitely not. Oh, man. Well, okay. Off of names and back to Esperanza. So she goes snowboarding. This is what, three, four months into her working with you? Uh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So she obviously had less fear to begin with. How did you get there? So let me, let me create the premise. She's got there in the gym, but I feel like fear is very circumstantial. Absolutely. And frankly, look, I think it was two or three months before she actually completed a six-week cycle. Meaning that she did six weeks.

Meaning that she hit over 75% of the workouts that I laid out for her for a six week linear progression. Okay. It was, it was rough. She finished that six weeks with 90% retention or compliance. And I was like cartwheeling out of my chair when I, when I was just looking at a whole bunch of green checks across the online application that I'm using to program for her. And you know, I call her and I talked to her to congratulate about how much of a win this is. And do you realize what kind of accomplishment this is? You haven't hit more than 50, 75% of all of your workouts until this point. And you just hit six weeks of workouts, four days a week, you hit 90% of them and you finish them all, right? All the workouts that you hit, you actually finished them. Maybe there all, right? All the workouts that you hit,

you actually finished them. Maybe there were one or two things where you're like, I really just couldn't get through this. I was afraid or it kind of just hurt. And she said, yeah. And the truth is she was uncomfortable the whole time. She was extremely uncomfortable the whole time. I don't want you to think that I like said something to her and she set off into six weeks of, you know what I mean? But no, I don't. Do you mean physically uncomfortable or mentally uncomfortable? Both. It didn didn't feel good and she was afraid of everything she did but it was the first time she finished it now when i'm looking at what the measurables are for progress that's a fucking measurable and a half right there sure she

actually did it so for me the first thing is, okay, stop. I understand that it hurt physically. I understand how afraid you were. Rest, take a breath. I'm going to deload you right now. You're safe. You're good. The first thing you need to understand is that you actually have the capacity to get this done. So let's just talk about what your body can actually do. You are more capable than we both thought. I told her straight up, I wasn't sure you were gonna be able to finish all this. Now, I know that we use strategies as coaches where sometimes we will create the environment

where we want the client to feel as though there's something more difficult than it really is for them to achieve so that they will have the sense of achievement, build the confidence, move from there. Was this that scenario? Yes. And it was somewhat though. I look, I thought that she should be able to, I would love her to have been able to, but I wasn't sure she was going to make it. And when she did, she exceeded my expectations. right? And her knowing that allowed her to take my, my expect her, her, her seeing her achievement being beyond what I thought she'd be capable of

doing, breathed a ton of confidence into herself. Right. And so now she understands, okay, first, I need you to know none of that was physically comfortable. All of it was mentally uncomfortable. I'm glad I'm at the deload. I'm glad it's over. But yes, I understand that I could do it. And that's really, really cool. Good. And so I imagine from there it was a different training stimulus altogether.

Totally, totally different. How did it change? First of all, that was, I think, a month before she found that guy online who had the same situation as hers where she had her mindset shift but in that month in between her finishing that cycle and her finding that guy online she we decided finding that guy online the guy online who had the thoracic outlet syndrome who she could relate to who was crushing it without pain that made her have the mindset shift that she could it wasn't like she went on and nothing against going online and finding a significant other she didn't go on match.com no this was this was an athlete on instagram right that was in her exact situation

and who was winning big time so for her this was like okay if this guy can do it maybe i can just like you said in that month in between it was a lot of conversations about like okay what are all the other things obviously you can do this you can conversations about like, okay, what are all the other things? Obviously you can do this. You can actually do this. You have legs. What are all the other things we could start to clean up? That's where conversations about diet came in. And by the way, I'm the first one to say, just so you know, I'm not going to tell you what to eat at all. That's good because I watched you eat an entire box of cookies on a ride back from Boston. That's never happened. Yeah, then that's happened. That's definitely happened. Right. So I'm not going to tell you what to eat and I'm not going to tell you

what time you need to get into bed, but I am going to tell you that these things are going to make a huge difference in how you feel. So whatever it's going to take

for me to communicate to you via conversation that these things are going to change your world, that's what I'm going to do such that you go about finding it on your own. And frankly,

if you go about finding it on your own, I'm more confident that you're actually going to make lasting change and this month period was the point where she started to conjure up the decision that she was really going to get after it in all her aspects right fitness nutrition health sleeping friends everything all of that and that started to happen and finding the athlete on instagram who was in the same situation as her, who was crushing it, that was the tipping point. That put her over the edge and she switched gears. So what were you able to do now that previously you weren't? She has like a 97% compliance rate.

She has gone from high pulling with no weight in her hand, imaginary zipping of her jacket to 25 pound high poles, power cleans, a whole bunch of shit with no pain. She's hopping into class with her friends again for the first time in eight months. Frankly, I don't care about squatting with a barbell. She does. She's able to do it now. And I'm making sure that she's not doing it in such a way that's irresponsible. I am managing her musculoskeletal health. If it's important for her to squat with two legs under a to do it now and i'm making sure that she's not doing it in such a way that's irresponsible i am managing her musculoskeletal health if it's important for her to squat with two legs under a barbell with her friends in a workout where they could all be sweaty and hurt together and then laugh and high five that's totally worthwhile for me to say go do that and i want to be clear for

people listening there was no snark in the hurt that you just mentioned when you said they want to hurt together he didn't mean get injured together and like that's a bad idea yeah it was more like you know what we're talking about the the suck yeah the physical hurt hard yeah sorry if i was unclear about that no i i know you were clear i know that people don't who are listening to this don't necessarily know you so i wanted to make sure that they understood. So she's back in class now, eight months, and she's still working with you. How do you balance working with her and her being in class as such that she was the kind of person who is smart enough to take smart size steps about how to move forward. So she's someone who will send me a screenshot of a workout and she'll be like, hey, what do you think about this?

Right? And then I'll just either be like, do it, or not a good idea given the context of your week, or I'll be like, I like it, make these changes. And she's down. or not a good idea given the context you're weak or i'll be like i like it make these changes and she's down for her to be able to do 10 of the workout with her friends in class is immeasurably valuable it's invaluable so that's that's that's all she needs and now i can just make sure that look what am i really getting paid for it's managing her load her volume her decisions her exercises it's managing her musculoskeletal health if i can it's my job to look at the workout in the context of what i know she needs to be healthier and make the decision about whether or not it's

okay and she respects that so in your opinion what's the situation of or what's the prognosis of permanence if you will for what she's dealing with? Because you just described there are still some days when she shouldn't do everything in class. Is there going to be a day when she can do everything? Yeah, I believe so. I don't know if she's going to be doing everything as is written, but I know that she is going to feel like she is doing everything. Well, and I want to be clear. Everything as is written might not be the best idea for anybody.

That's right. And in my opinion, most people are not the same. Right. So for most people, doing everything is not what's written. Correct. I mean, I can just speak to the fact that I've worked with CrossFit Games athletes, winners of the CrossFit Games, where we've told them if you're ever in a gym

and a workout like this comes up, I don't want you to do this part of it for the purposes that the diminished return that you're going to get from that as compared to what you could get from doing something else is not worth it when your goal is to win. So I don't want people who are listening to this to think, oh, well, a weak person, a scared person,

a whatever person is the person who shouldn't do everything. No, it's the opposite. A well-rounded program is great for a rounded individual. Most people have corners, right? And we got to avoid those corners. We got to account for those corners. She's a particularly interesting shape and a well-rounded program for her right now is is certainly not appropriate right right so is she in a place yet where she can make decisions

about a given percentage of things without standing on your way or does she have to check in with with larry every day before she goes to the gym so the the short answer is yes but not confidently so she still wants to and she's still happy to because i'm thankful for her patience right the fact that eight months later she's just feeling okay by the way i don't mean physically i mean mentally to get back into class that tells me she's truly in this for the long game, right? And it's at the point where it's had the conversation. So yes, she's smart enough and she's skillful enough to make the decisions, but she still appreciates my guidance there. And that's what I'm here for, right? 10% of what I do is write in the content. Zero, very little, very little of the credit that she's had is, is my own. I just told her what to

do. I just point to her the next right thing, right? I'm, I'm the soundboard. I bounce back what she's saying and I show her things as objectively in the truth as I see it. She has made every single step mentally and physically to take herself to a place of, uh of deep, deep self-loathing and depression to, I can do this. Was she actually depressed? I would say so. Clinically depressed as diagnosed by a psychiatrist, I have no idea. But if your friend is, or your family member or anyone that you see on the street is talking to you about how useless doing everything seems and how basically apathetic

they are about, um, everything they once loved because they don't think that they're ever going to be able to do anything again. I don't think you need to be a psychiatrist to say that someone's probably depressed about something. Um, so I'm certainly not diagnosed her as being depressed. I apologize if that was rather insensitive. I didn't think you needed to apologize for being insensitive. I just wanted people to be able to understand the specific clarity of what you were talking about in a sense that, to me, when you use the term depressed, it can be misconstrued as clinically depressed, but the definition of depressed,

the real definition of the word depressed just means less than otherwise. Right. So, so, um, extremely fearful, extremely sad and, um, strong feelings of, uh, hopelessness sum it up pretty well. Um, a biweekly choked up phone call about how much everything sucks is, is, is good description. Right. So, so that's enough for me to know that this is not how someone should be living their life. Right. And typically we don't do biweekly phone calls with our clients because they're not necessary, but this was a case where it was what was necessary to get done. Yeah. I, it hasn't been this way in the past. First of all, I haven't heard 97% compliance across the board. I haven't heard about a drop of pain in eight weeks. Uh, literally not one. It's literally all been questions about performance.

Um, so it hasn't been, it hasn't been recently, but I was spending about twice the amount of time, uh, with her that I was spending on, on the average client. And I was happy to do it because that's what she needed. Well, and that's the next thing I wanted to get to is I think that the reason why a lot of people end up signing up to work with us do so is because they feel like at this point in their life, they're unsure of what they're doing is right. They're afraid that if they do the wrong thing, they're going to get hurt. And largely they feel like they're a burden on the coach and on the group of people in the room when they show up. And she was particularly that way. Uh, I actually found out that I should have been spending three times as much time with her, but she didn't want

to reach out because she felt bad about it. Right. So it took three months of me imploring her to reach out and lean on me before she maybe felt like she could start doing it. Well, and that's the point that I really wanted to pound home is that I think people recognize, no problem. People recognize that if even I want to first point out, you're probably not a burden on your coach, on your community, on on your gym most coaches want you to approach them and to ask them the questions that you think they don't want to hear and they want you to hold them to giving them a thorough and complete answer that allows them to solve your problem in some cases that might even mean you buying one-on-one training sessions from your coaches so that they can build out a formal and complete solution for you as opposed to them feeling like they don't want to push you to buy

because you would be uncomfortable buying and leaving knowing that, okay, she would have been uncomfortable buying, but now everybody's uncomfortable knowing she's not going to get the help she needs. Yeah. And I mean, for coaches out there, I really, I really want everyone to, I really want all my coaches to understand that if you are doing this profession, when you take someone's money, you're not taking money to write content and that's it. There's a lot that comes along with coaching and there are a lot of qualitative aspects and communicative aspects that are coming along with this and you need to know what you're signing up for. So when someone, when you give someone 100% and they need more, give them 105% and if

that's not enough, give them 110 and if you unwilling to do that, that's okay, but you need to refer them and their money to someone who is willing to do that. Totally. Of course this is within reason. Someone can be astronomically off the rails and out of bounds with the amount of time and energy that they require of you. You can set those boundaries for yourself. There's no right or wrong.

You need to decide what is okay for you in terms of time and energy expenditure. And then you need to stick to that. And if someone is going outside of that by a little bit, I would suggest stretching because that 2% that you are stretching is where maybe 50 or 75% of their progress might come from. And it's also 2% that other coaches are unwilling to stretch,

which makes you not 2% more valuable, but infinitely more valuable because there's nobody else above that threshold. Correct. Yeah. I think that's a phenomenal point to bang home. And for those of you out there who are listening who are not a coach, you're a client, and you're thinking that maybe your coach can help you in the way that we help our clients

from a distance. Great. Go to that coach and let them know the kind of help that you want. And instead of going to the coach and telling them what your problem is, go to the coach and tell them what you'd like your outcome to be and what you're willing to do to have that happen. If you're able to communicate that. So, so what I mean by that is let's pretend you have shoulder pain. And every time the pull-ups come up, you feel like you can't do them. So you have to leave the gym or skip the gym or do ring rows. And you're just getting tired of that.

You feel like a wasting class. Go to coach and say, my shoulder hurts every time pull-ups come up. I would like for my shoulders not to hurt ever. I would like to be able to do everything that is written on the board when I come to class. If you are capable of helping me with this, I will be more than happy to purchase an assessment and training sessions, as many as it takes for you to help me get over that hump. And if you're not, I understand. I'd like to work with Active Life because they're confident that they can help me

and they'll keep me in this gym. If you have that upfront conversation with a coach and the coach has a problem with it, it's the wrong coach. Yeah, I love it. And if you're someone who is particularly concerned about being a burden in that way, the client that you just described sounded like someone who is not at all worried about being upfront and direct with someone. If you are worried about having that kind of conversation, because it sounds rather confrontational, then also demonstrate, have the, I would implore you to have the courage to be vulnerable and to say, also, I understand how much work you do. Please let me know the best way for me to talk to you when things come up. How would you like me to talk to you about how I feel my progress is going?

Right. And if you can, if you can relate that, then, then the coach is going to understand that you care about them too. And it's not just like, Hey, I need this,

this, this, this, this, this, this. Right. So I'm not,

there's nothing wrong with what you said. That's a particular kind of person. I, yeah, I took, I took what you said very positively. It's a great other side of the conversation, right?

It's a great, what is, that's the yin. I'm the yang. Sure. If you want to go there. Is that what what it was i can unpack that another time yeah we can unpack that in the time fine so take home message for for the people listening in relationship to this client if you had to tell them box it up put a bow on it what's the take-home message for for this client or for someone listening to this about this client for someone listening to this about this client? For someone listening to this about this client who relates to what this client went through.

So the decision to, the way I see this is you have two ways to approach what might be a very, very uncomfortable existence right now. You can either have fearful monologues in your head and fearful dialogues in your head about what your situation is and what you won't be able to do, or you can have some compassion with yourself and the situation, and you can decide to positively anticipate outcomes that you want and do whatever it might take to even get 1% better because 1% better is going to feel really, really, really good compared to where you're at right now. Yeah. I think the 1% better is a big deal because it allows you to understand that there is better. Right. Exactly. I mean, look, if, if, if you're, if you're in a 10 square foot space and you're terrified because you're not sure what's going to happen, being lost is a really bad place to be there. If you just look up and take a breath and decide, okay, I can take a baby step in one direction that would get me closer to where I want to be.

What are some of the things that I can do in order to take that? It's a much better way to approach it than like i'm never going to get home right so if getting home is just you feeling good about even be this whole thing isn't about like where am i going to be it's about how good you can feel starting to move in the direction of where you want to be yeah have you ever heard the story about uh how marcus latrell got where he was from where he was to where he needed to be after the whole lone survivor incident happened with Operation Red Wings? No. Okay.

I should. So, brief story here, because I think that it speaks perfectly to what you were saying as a summation of this entire talk. Marcus Luttrell was the only survivor of the military conflict that I think was called Operation Red

Wings where Mike is then Afghanistan I don't know if it's Afghanistan or Iraq but it was where Michael Murphy did what he did to earn the Medal of Honor where he stood up on the cliff radioed for help and got shot and killed for helping his his comrades and Luttrell finds himself unable to use his legs, laying face down in a pile of dirt, and he talks about knowing that he had to get miles from where he was, and he was unable to move at all. So he drew a line in the sand or in the dirt right in front of his face,

and he just got his face across that line and then drew another one and then got across that line and then drew another one and got across that line until he was rescued. Like until he got to the village where he could be rescued, where he knew he needed to get. And yeah, it was a pretty crazy story. It's the idea of you don't need to be able to get all the way

to the end right now you just need to draw the first line and get across it and by the way i probably bastardized that story i'm half regretting even bringing it up because it probably carries so much more weight than i just described it's still powerful that's powerful yeah that landed for me hard yeah good well then for you listening out there, draw the line, cross the line, draw the next one, cross the next one. Larry,

where can people find you? Larry underscore the human. It's Instagram handle. That's probably a good place to start. I'm not giving you my phone number or your email. It's fine. Regular on their email. Nice.

Yeah. That's raised. That's raised thing. Thanks for this. This was cool. No problem. My pleasure. We'll do it again.

That's going to be a wrap for this episode of active life radio on the shrugged collective network. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please head to wherever you listen to podcasts and leave us a five-star rating as well as a great review. If you really love this episode, make sure you're sharing it with the people who need to hear it. Value unshared is value wasted. And of course, if you're looking to get more from us, whether it's coaching courses, one-on-one coaching from one of our staff members

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