Building Stronger: Dean Somerset Shares Secrets to Post-Rehab Training Success

Building Stronger Dean Somerset shares secrets to Post Rehab Training Success welcome back to the BT Profit Podcast. My name is Chris. I'm giving you your intro for this episode with the Goat. I call him the greatest of all time because he's local to me, an amazing human being and someone who has had an impact on a lot of careers across the industry. Dean Somerset is the co author of the upcoming book Rock Solid Resilience which will be released in February. We'll have all the links for that in the show notes and in this episode Dean discusses the focus of the book which he co wrote with physical therapist Dan Pope and the book is aimed to bridge the gap between rehab and strength training, offering practical advice for individuals dealing with pain or injury. This conversation is going to go into the nuances of pain management, the importance of tailored exercise programs, and the value of open communication between trainers and clients. Dean emphasizes the necessity for fitness professionals to gain hands on experience in person before transitioning to online coaching. He also shares insights on building a network of trusted professionals, staying motivated in the industry. At the end of the episode we are going to have all of the details on how you can get your copy of the book. Highly recommend it. Hope you enjoyed this episode.

What's up Dean? Thank you so much for joining me on the show today. How are you?

I'm fantastic, thanks. Thanks for having me on this.

Oh I can't wait. Just before we hit record, I know that there's going to be a ton of insight that you're going to be able to share with us, so can you just dive in a little bit more? You were starting to tell me right before I hit record, but can you share with us a little bit more about the book that you have coming out in February?

Yeah, absolutely. The book is called Rock Solid Resilience. Myself and my co author Dan Pope who's a physical therapist doctor in Boston, he does a lot of work with high level athletes but also general population people. But he also has a huge focus on getting stronger and getting people to actually have the ability to take care of themselves in the gym rather than just being stuck in like rehab burgate board. My entire career has been based in post rehab. So trying to get people from if they've had an injury to getting back into a gym knowing they might have some limitations, might have some irritation, might have stuff that might be preventing them from doing what they would normally do pre injury by trying to get them just as strong as humanly possible, get them to build their endurance, get back in the game and have the best life possible. So we were at a pretty much on that concept. How do you work around common injuries? How do you avoid getting injured when you're training? How do you build a training program that's going to get you the best results you're looking for without beating you up in a process? And then if things do happen to pop up, what do you need to do? If you happen to have something you can't manage on your own or get through, when do you tag after getting a medical professional back into the mix? So we wanted to make this a really deep book that a lot of people would be able to use as a resource to be able to say, hey, my shoulder hurts, what do I do? My back hurts, Can I still do, My knee is sore, what kind of exercises should I do? Or what kind of exercises should I avoid? And then when should I actually go to a doctor, to a physical therapist, or anyone?

Yeah, so what I'm, I'm curious, you know, as someone who works with a lot of coaches who deal a lot with understanding the nuances between what is pain management that they can address as a coach who's not trained in rehab and when should they, when should they tap out? What are some of the common misconceptions that people have around build. Building strength versus managing pain?

Well, a big thing is what is pain actually? And what does that mean to the individual in front of you? So I'm sure you've heard the. There's some people that have, quote, a high pain tolerance. They can deal with a whole lot of stuff. And then there's a lot of athletes that might get injured and they're out for like a week or two, but then they're back in the game. Did they actually have to fix the injury or they just need a little bit of time? And then from my own experience, training myself, training my clients, sometimes things happen and they go away on their own. So do we really need to worry about it at that point? Pain by itself is just a symptom. It's just something that you're feeling at that point in time that tells you, okay, something is happening. Does that mean it's necessarily bad, good, whatever. So typically, I'll go through a process with the clients where I talk to them, okay, what is your pain? Can you describe it? What does it feel like to you? When does it come on? Are there certain movements that you do that make it feel worse and movements that you do that make it feel better? And then we start trying to break down a process by which we can still train. I'm a big believer that no matter what you're going through, there's always something that you can do in the gym. And sometimes that means we avoid certain exercises or movements that might be problematic. You give them a chance to chill, give them a chance to heal, give them a chance to rest. But we can still hammer some other stuff. If you have a sore knee, you probably still have two working shoulders. If you don't, that's a discussion for another time. But we can probably still do core work. We could probably still do conditioner work. We could probably still do something with that sore knee that's not going to irritate it, but it'll still give you a benefit at the end of the day. So while it might not be something where we're trying to turn from a trainer into a rehab professional, we're still trying to train the body that's in front of us. That doesn't necessarily mean that we're trying to be poor, effective trainers. It means we're trying to figure out how do we work with the person giving us the best that they can, but giving them the best that we have available.

Yeah, that's beautiful. So what I'm curious, too, about when you said. You said with your clients, meeting them with their. Where they're at, specifically helping them identify pain and what pain means. And I'm curious, in your experience, how much of the pain is anticipated pain versus what is actual pain? And how do you navigate those nuances in the conversation? Because sometimes, you know, a client, especially if we're dealing with chronic pain. Right. Someone who's always and especially athletic and active people who are just in chronic movement, like the same movement patterns that they're doing over and over and over again, sometimes there is a fear or an anticipation of pain. As the coach, how do you navigate that with your clients?

Yeah, and that can be very individualized. So some people will be more sensitive to certain types of pain because they've got previous trauma, whether that's emotional, whether that's physical, whether that's a previous injury, and it makes them more sensitive to feeling any kind of pain. So there was people with a high pain tolerance. These are the people on the opposite end. They have a very low pain tolerance. Part of it's also discovering, okay, well, is this pain a bad thing or is this a pain that's just there? So if I have somebody who's got, like, osteoarthritis, their knee is bone on bone, that knee isn't going to feel non painful no matter what we do. So we can work on all of the stretching, all the mobility, all the traction drills, all the everything but that bone on bone contact is still there. The knee is still going to be sore. How much pain are we willing to deal with while still being active, while still doing the things you want to do, while still making progress in the way that you're looking for? And then how much would be considered too much? So if I'm trying to tell a client, no, we can get rid of your pain, that's a lie. For clients like that, I'm not going to get rid of their pain, but I'm going to help them to learn how to do more in their day to day life and manage the amount of pain that they have. So for instance, one of my clients, she's got two knees that have osteoarthritis in them. When we first started training, she could barely bend her knees to get to 90 degrees squatting, she could barely get to like 20 degrees of knee bend. It just wasn't happening. It was really painful. Now she's bending her knees past 90 degrees and squatting to depth. And it's one of those kind of things where it's like, does this hurt more than when we started? No, it's about the same. But she's able to push through it a little bit different. She knows that it's not going to get non painful, but that she understands where her thresholds are for how much pain she's willing to tolerate and also what the type of pain feel is. So for clients it comes down to very individual basis. How much pain are you wearing to tolerate what pain actually means? Is this the sign of an injury? Is this a sign that this is just where you're at in life? Is this something that we should fix or remedy or get around? It's a very individualized thing. And then part of it also comes back to what's my role as a trainer? Do I make a client hurt? Do I avoid pain in diary? Or do we make sure that we have a network of people that I can tag into to be like, what should I do with this person? So if I have a.