STOP Experiencing Imposter Syndrome!
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Have you ever felt imposter syndrome as a trainer or just felt like you didn’t feel that you’re good enough? Didn’t know enough. And I’ve asked yourself, what am I doing in front of this client right now? Then stick around, I’m gonna get pretty vulnerable and share with you a bit about my own impostor syndrome journey, and how I work through it to become an expert level trainer. Before I get personal, I want you to know if you liked these videos, and really want to know more about movement related training, please hit the subscribe button. Alright, I’ve been in the fitness industry for about 18 years and in that time, have hit some pretty highs, honestly, some pretty high highs and I hit some lows to some bottoms, no questions asked. But in this video, I’m going to be serving up some raw and real content that has gotten me to become an actually a seven figure year fitness facility with over 400 active clients. But actually, more importantly, has helped me change hundreds of people’s of lives for the better, including my own. So I want to start out today by talking about my lowest of lows. The first thing you need to know about me and my story is that I started growing up with very little confidence in myself because I developed a stutter as a kid, that was so bad that it really inhibited my ability to communicate. I live with this constant and relentless anxiety that these words coming out of my mouth wouldn’t be good enough for me to essentially effectively communicate my ideas, my thoughts and my passions. Over time, I honestly learned just how to deal with it. And I got used to functioning with that level of anxiety. When I started training, even though it was certainly older, you know, adult by all contexts, I was certainly mostly able to overcome that stutter through a lot of training, a lot of therapy. But this fear and anxiety about not being able to communicate became the biggest focus of my imposter syndrome. The thought running through it through my head was essentially Yes, I do have the knowledge. But it doesn’t matter. Because I can’t speak it I can’t can’t say clearly enough. So to pair this complex emotional experience of imposter syndrome with the fact that I was rejected from PT school two years in a row. After spending at the time, half of my life chasing that dream, I was absolutely crushed. Because I didn’t think that I would ever be able to get the education that I wanted. So I could help people, and also help myself, I was just gonna be left to be that personal trainer. And if you’re a trainer watching this, you know that that feeling of comparing yourself to other experts, other physical therapy, doctors, chiropractic doctors, medical doctors, even in the field, the status quo in this industry is to make the assumption that they know more than us that they can help more clients than us in movement. And we can’t possibly be more educated than them. So what do we do, we immediately limit ourselves to the potential and we’re left in this constant state of never feeling good enough, which is only exacerbated when a client comes to us with some crazy thing a herniated disc plantar fasciitis shoulder problem, we don’t know. And we don’t know what to do about that we’re like, I don’t know, like if we kind of freeze, I’m actually curious if any of you watching right now have felt that. If so just drop a quick little thumbs up in the comments below. I’d love to see how we can connect a little bit deeper. Anyways. But there are two things that kept me going my passion for fitness and movement. And I hope that there was still a way for me to get that physical therapy knowledge. Honestly, I wanted to feel adequate, I wanted to feel like I was enough. And I thought that my knowledge would get me there. Well, after stumbling around for a little bit, I ran it to the great Institute where I was able to gain the same knowledge that physical therapists go to school for this from the movement side. And I figured out how to apply that knowledge and integrate it into the fitness field. And I just want to say they do an amazing job of simplifying and breaking down complex topics into bite sized digestible pieces of information. As someone who was not a good student, and really didn’t enjoy studying ever. I actually appreciated how well they took the academia quote unquote, things out of learning so much to the point where I actually couldn’t wait to set aside those Sunday night hours, that’s when I had the time to do it, to go to the local coffee shop and sit down and dive into studying. I actually was the thing I look forward to the most. From there, though, I was able to lift the veil and see the potential that was in front of me. I was able to get over this wall that said learning Movement Science was too complicated. And there was too many subjects that I just needed to master just to be good enough. And so with that, I shifted my mindset from feeling overwhelmed by all the information that was out there to I’m going to learn one thing at a time, and then something else and then something else. That process of learning just how the foot works all by itself, not worrying about anything else in the body. I was able to then say got it I can move to the ankle focus on how that works. Then the knee and Then the hip, then the low back, then the thoracic spine, which honestly confused the hell out of me for a long time. Finally got that figured out, then the scapula, then the shoulder, then the neck than the elbow, and then the wrist, one by 1000 My process. But I was also guided by coaches, Gary Gray, Dave Tiberio, amazing men and their team who broke it down to the three main categories of all movement. Movement possesses these three things, the movements and principles of movement that are forward and backwards, that are side to side, and that are rotational to the right and to the left, the frontal plane, the sagittal plane, the transverse plane, once you can understand how the joints move, and all their potential, they can start laying on how the bones move in between those joints or around those joints, then how the muscles work, then how the preceptors play an amazing role in controlling the body. You don’t have to memorize 800 And something muscles. Because ultimately, it’s not about what you memorize, it’s not what something’s called, it’s not what the definition is, it’s about your knowledge of what they can do. So you can start chipping away, but understanding the systems of those four or five muscles that really dominate a particular joint. Once you understand those four or five muscles that dominate that joint, they can go back and understand the next four or five muscles that secondarily dominate that joint right the layers of them all, then go back again, understand the other four or five muscles that tertiary dominate that joint. It’s this process of unpacking an unlearning. And every time you go back and relearn through the exact same process of understanding how the human body actually works in movement, you start to realize, like, Ah, crap, there’s actually so much more that’s important. But you’re ready for it, you’re mentally capable of absorbing it, versus literally just sit all flying right over your head and be like, Ah, forget this, it’s too much. And all the while you’re literally applying the capacity of your knowledge, right, that you can actually absorb step by step into your athletes and clients every single day. And you’re slowly challenging yourself to go deeper and deeper and deeper, versus being freaked out that when a client comes with some crazy, like herniated disc, and you just don’t know what to do, you can understand enough while that lower back is hurting, right, you can kind of understand like, Okay, I may not know how to fix it, but I know how to avoid it. You can continue to train and condition that person regularly without having them basically do one wrong workout. And then they’re done because their shot can’t get up for days on on end.
This was a huge confidence builder for me when I started to understand how to tweak exercises to avoid pain, and how to successfully navigate people’s fear of pain in a way that allow them to sustainably continue to move and workout continually. Because that’s when I realized I was able to start to tap into the mental side of things. And that’s where you can really start to change people’s lives. I truly believe we, as personal trainers have the best ability to solve so many problems that the human body experiences because it starts with the physical. Because once you have a good grasp on the physical, that client is willing to take you into their mental arena. And once that mental arena is relatively trusted, you can go to the software. And that’s how you can train or can start to slowly unpack the depths of the entire human being. Not just again, physically, if you want to go to that depth of the soul, so long as the clients willing to take you there. You can go there, you can involve yourself with that person to change everything about who they are. It’s an amazing process. Being an expert trainer is much less about the degrees and certifications you have. It’s about developing the skills and the experience that allow you to connect to the body, the mind and the soul. Because that’s where true transformation happens. So there you have it. Some of the most important lessons I’ve learned along this journey to achieving my dream of becoming a movement therapeutic specialist. Now, it took me at least a decade to gain all that knowledge, so takes time. But it has helped me to get to where I am today. And I wholeheartedly believe it’s knowledge that can change the industry, which is why I and my team created the multi dimensional movement coaching mentorship program, multi dimensional in the way that we move sagittal, frontal and transverse, and the way that we potentially can serve our athletes and clients mind, body and soul. This is a comprehensive life changing course we’re going to equip you with the foundation principles of movement and teach you how to apply them to your training sessions to avoid pain, deliver your clients results and to how to operationally run these methods. We also dive into some of the behavioral aspects and soft skills of coaching that most programs don’t even touch. If you want to overcome that negative self talk you empower yourself through gaining applicable knowledge and experience. Please click on the link in the description below to book a call with us deep dive into what we know what we have experienced and how we can help you take the first step to changing your life and your clients lives. Lastly, don’t forget, if you enjoyed this video and content please like and subscribe to our channel to stay up to date with the content that we’re working, working really hard to put out to share, open source everything we know about movement and training. Thanks for hanging in there. Thanks for listening. Cheers.
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