Navigating Pain and Progress in Training

My name is Logan Dube. I'm currently the director of education for the Pain Free Performance Specialist certification. How I got here. I serve personal trainers in general fitness professionals. I still work with clients because I love it. So I still do that layer of the job. And how I got here is by accident. I was an athlete and that was how I first got into the gym really was wanting to strengthen my body and be a better athlete, avoid injury. And at the point where I finally retired from a, from what felt like a pretty long athletic career, I accidentally became a trainer because at the time that I got into it, there weren't a lot of people doing that. I had some people that I was working with in group fitness ask for some help and I thought, sure, I guess I can show you what I know. And then people just kept asking. And so at a certain point I took a look at the fact that I was getting paid more in grocery and coffee gift cards than I was from the real job that I was doing. And I thought, geez, maybe I should make the switch. So I feel like I've gotten to where I am as an educator from just a really step by step, authentic, live in the journey kind of place. And I think ultimately what made me a great trainer was that I loved to teach. And so ending up as an educator is just now instead of teaching clients, I teach trainers. And it's felt like a really natural kind of step by step over the last 20 years.

So now is the certification that you're part of, is this through an in person facility? Are you running your own gym or are you working 100% online now?

So I did run an in person personal training school for about five years and I did a lot of internal education for a company that had at one point up to about 300 personal trainers. So I've been in the commercial space for a lot of my career at this moment right now. The PPSC is a certification that was created by Dr. John Russin, who's a pretty famous bald dude on Instagram. He developed a training system and got some really great results out of it, helped a lot of people and decided that he wanted to help improve the industry as a whole. And part of that was educating trainers so that they could do a better job of helping people. So I work as a part of his education team and we mostly teach live and in person weekend certifications. That's the bulk of it. We think that you learn better if you have a chance to try the thing, do the thing, feel the thing, coach the thing. But of course, we also do some online stuff and we try to provide more support beyond just that weekend by having a pretty robust online platform for our trainers to use. So it feels like a little bit of both. But really the crux of it for me is still being able to show up live. And I find that's going to be the best way to really help people.

I love that. Okay, so now does your certification really serve people who have been in the industry for a while and they're looking for continuing education, or is it more for the people who are like, I'm a fitness gym rat and I'm considering switching careers, or does it navigate both?

I love that question. You know what? I think what it comes down to for me is we serve people who are looking for a better way or looking for answers, looking to navigate problems. When we say we are the Pain Free Performance Specialist certification, part of what is inherent in that title is we want to help trainers address pain. But there's lots of different kinds of pain, right? There could be the my knees hurt when I'm squatting type of pain, and there could be the I used to be an athlete in my 20s and now I'm in my 40s and I can't really do that type of workout anymore. But I do prioritize my health and my fitness, but I'm going to have to find a different way to do it. And there's a sort of. There's some growing pains around shifting how you train to be a better fit for your goals and your lifestyle over the course of your lifespan. Really what it is, it's a message, it's information. If I am walking through my house and I whack my hand on the edge of the table, I'm going to experience some pain. And that's probably a reminder to me to be a little more careful the next time I walk through my house, not swing my hands so wildly from the level of pain. Is information. Part of what we're trying to help trainers do is gather the information about pain that allows us to decide, can I work with you or should I refer you out? And really what that is, without exceeding scope, is you walked into the gym today. That's a great start. Are you comfortable trying a little bit of movement? The choice is yours. Yes or no? Yes. Great. Please try this movement. Let me show you how I'd like you to do it. I'm observing as a trainer, the joints, the alignment, the structure, the movement. I'm observing and gathering information through my own expertise. And I'm similarly going to say to you, hey, how did that feel? And between what I'm observing and what you're telling me, we've created this. You know what, there's a couple things that were brand new to me, but in general, I'm familiar with a good chunk of what you taught. But I got reminded of stuff I forgot I knew or you systemized it in a way that's really going to help me navigate and use what I know more effectively. So I think it's cool to be able to work with anyone at any point in their career and still be able to offer up some golden nuggets, so to speak.

I love that. So if you wouldn't mind, I have two questions. This is a bad habit of mine, so I'm going to ask one at a time. I usually am like, oh, just a couple things. So the first is that I'd love for you, you started to talk about it and I'd love for you to dive just a little bit deeper in terms of how you unpack and define the word pain. Because I think in addition, trainers and coaches wanting to navigate dealing with pain, there's also a lot of fear around what is in scope and what is out of scope. And you started to talk about when do I refer out? So how do you really, starting from that beginning, define the word pain and navigate it?

Yeah, so I'll give a little context just before I answer your question. I'm a personal trainer. I've got a bunch of personal training certifications. I've learned a lot of stuff, some which I can use in my scope and some which I realized this is interesting, but I can't use it. So that I navigated that, that frustration for myself in my own career. But part of what I like about the PPSC team is there's some of us that are really proud to be trainers, and then there are also clinicians, physical therapists that make up the team. And in my mind, that's actually the sort of perfect way to do it. Personal trainers have the ability to impact a lot of people on a really big scale, partly because we see our clients more than almost any other type of healthcare practitioner that they might see. But that means that we are then also sometimes the person that people come to first. And there's a lot we can do, but every now and again they need to see someone else first. And so the same partnership that we have on our education team where we work together to deliver our content, is the thing we are trying to help Trainers build for themselves, which is that sense of when can you keep the client in front of you and how can you help them, versus when do you need to go refer or recommend or lean on a network that's going to be able to give this person the proper care. So how do you do that? That's really what we've tried to create in this system, is when someone first comes to me, rule number one is don't hurt them. Right? We're pain free. But rule number two is we empower our clients. So we're not there to say, as a result of this screen, I have determined that this is unavailable for you. You are broken in these ways. You cannot do X, Y and Z for you guys, Zed for me. So really inherently important to the system is that if someone's going to be brave enough and step out of the front door and walk into the gym and ask for help, which is already a huge when, then we want to make sure that we have a way to help them continue moving forward from that moment, not send them back into their house, back to sitting on their couch, back to being in pain. So to circle back to your question, what is pain? Pain is actually a normal part of the human experience. So, one, we want to get past the idea that pain on any level is inherently bad. Really what it is, it's a message. It's information. Right? If I am walking through my house and I whack my hand on the edge of the table, I'm going to experience some pain. And that's probably a reminder to me to be a little more careful the next time I walk through my house, not swing my hands so wildly. So from the level of pain is information. Part of what we're trying to help trainers do is gather the information about pain that allows us to decide, can I work with you or should I refer you out? And really what that is without exceeding scope, is you walked into the gym today. That's a great start. Are you comfortable trying a little bit of movement? The choice is yours. Yes or no? Yes. Great. Please try this movement. Let me show you how I'd like you to do it. I'm observing as a trainer, the joints, the alignment, the structure, the movement. I'm observing and gathering information through my own expertise. And I'm similarly going to say to you, hey, how did that feel? And between what I'm observing and what you're telling me, we've created this very easy to use system that allows me to go at least step one inside of my own scope on saying, hey, you know what? I think I can work with you. Here's what I'd like to do. Let's go ahead and give that a try. And what we recommend is that inside the system, if we work together for three to four weeks and we start feeling better, that's really great information that we're moving in the right direction. And if we are starting to work with someone and all of a sudden it's not feeling good, it feels worse. We're going to say, hey, no worries, I'm going to have you go and talk to this person that I know, they're going to give some extra help. Or if we get to the end of that three to four weeks and there's no improvement, then we might also at that point say, you know what, I really just want to give you the best help possible. Why don't we go check in with this person, get some extra information, make sure there isn't something in the way of us making progress, Right? And so really what we hope that does is removes the fear of someone walking in the door saying, I'd really help losing weight, but my knee hurts. Oh no, you better go talk to someone. No, there's a bunch of stuff we can do first. And that to me is the part where we're empowering people because they came to ask for our help. They came to us first. There's a measure of the help that they're looking for, which is, please help me get moving and be proactive and take care of myself instead of right away because of the presence of pain, which could be totally normal and not harmful, instead of right away having to go into the medical system which is slow and scary and expensive and disempowering because of that big, huge gap between the clients knowledge and the professional's knowledge. Right? Like we're in the middle and we get to say it's a smaller step forward to get started with me as long as it's safe to do so. Here's what that looks like.

It's so powerful. And I also encourage my people to remember that everybody is operating at some level from mistakes and misconceptions. And what personal trainers often miss is that they are the first line of defense more times than not, because I'm more likely to go visit a personal trainer than I am to go to physical therapy because we have misconceptions of what we think that process is going to be like and what is required in order to qualify for physical therapy. So I think that's really powerful. So I'd love for you to share, if you wouldn't mind, a little more on, on your actual process and your system. It sounded, from what you were saying, is that it? Look, it sounds like it's a combination of screening, programming, cueing. I'd love for you to walk us through your framework, if you wouldn't mind.

I'm feeling really good that you pulled out those three things. That means I'm doing a good job of explaining stuff. So nice work. You nailed it. That's essentially it. I say that there's two sets of three. So the first set of three, when someone first walks in the door, and this is a little bit almost the client acquisition business strategy, how do I get them to say yes? We take that first point of contact or that first in person point of contact and we say, look, we're going to take this hour, let's say it's an hour. We're going to take this hour. We're going to break it into three parts. One part is an interview, right? Like I need to ask you some questions, I need to learn what's important to you. I need to understand why you're here today and what is going to feel like a successful hour. Right. I could do a bunch of really cool stuff, but if it didn't meet your expectations, it's really hard to get a yes at the end of that. So there has to be a build trust, build rapport, communicate, create some level of comfort right at the beginning. And that's really important. Then the second portion needs to be a workout experience. I talk about it being the test drive. I'm not going to go buy a car sight unseen because it looks pretty on Instagram. I want to sit in the driver's seat, I want to take it out on the road and I want to make sure that I feel comfortable right in that driving experience. So that portion, the workout portion, we spend pretty much our whole certification, our whole two day cert, really trying to dive as deep as possible into all of the ways to make that workout part successful. And we call it a plan smarter strategy session. But really all it is their first workout. And what it needs to be is a combination of see how they move, right? So screen or assess, depending on exactly what techniques you're going to use. There needs to be an element of teaching them what they need to know to move better in order to train with you. Right. And then there needs to be an element that actually feels like a workout. And the reason why we say that is because you can Screen and educate. And the client never breaks a sweat, right? You can have them break a massive sweat, but they don't learn anything. So all of these kind of ways where we're hitting 1 out of 3 or 2 out of 3 don't get us the same result as if we managed to get all three of those components into that workout block. And what I usually say is the result is that they should be smiling, sweaty and feeling successful. Smiling because they've had a good time. And also a little bit, they're glad that it's over because it was hard. Right? Successful because they've come, they've done the thing, it met their expectations, they have overcome some of the challenges that you presented them with. Hey, can you do 10 of these? Wow, that was hard. But great, great job. And then sweaty because again, like, we're not medical professionals. If they don't come in and get a workout, we're failing to meet their expectations on a base level as being what personal training is. So that's the second block of that first session. And then the third piece is you've got to make a professional recommendation where. So where you said programming, there's an element of that. And what that looks like to me is we're going to sit down for a couple minutes, I'm going to review and remind you of why you came in. I'm going to. I'm going to tell you a few of the things that we went through, what my observations were, and again, from really empowering place. So not you can't do this, but hey, we were able to do this successfully today. And then here's what I'd like to do more of to help you reach your goal. Right? So the scariness of the sales process, I think, often comes from, I really want to work with you. I don't entirely have the confidence that I'm going to be able to help you reach your goal, but I don't have enough clients and I really want to work with you, so please just do it right. Instead, the ability to say, here's what you wanted, here's what I observed. Great job doing this. Here's what the plan is. Do you want to get started? That's bringing that whole piece full circle, right? What's the point of screening and assessing somebody for only my knowledge? If I'm not going to share back with them some of what that means for them moving forward, then what was the point of doing it? So that's the system, right? We learn screens and assessments, we learn how to coach and queue up all the foundational movement patterns. We learn how to program based on their current entry point to a movement and then we show them what that programming looks like as they move forward. Because, hey, if you work with me, you're going to get stronger, you're going to learn stuff, you're going to move better, we're going to make progress. The program pacing is going to match your improvement over time. It's not a static. Learn these eight exercises and you're good forever. So that whole thing is like the structure and what we hope trainers come away with when they are done at the end of the day on Sunday.

That's so good. So now I'm curious as they continue to implement the systems and structures that they put in. What I have seen in my life and in my career, I have seen a lot of trainers, and I'll say trainers specifically because that's the majority of who I was work, who I work with, which is what I see oftentimes is how trainers make data driven decisions based on the outcomes that are happening from their program.

Right.

I always talk about guessing, testing and assessing. And what I see oftentimes is a lot of people struggle to navigate what's the next best choice. And when I say best, all I mean is that that based on the data, what do they think the next thing to do is? Do I say course? Do I need to course correct? Are we moving the dial? Is this adherence and they start to navigate some of those muddy waters? Because learning and adaptations, as we all know, is not linear. We don't just go, it looks like this. And if you're listening to the podcast, I'm doing like a wavy arm. It's just not, it's not as linear as oftentimes it can look like when we're programming. So how do you help your trainers and coaches be discerning in their decisions based on data?

Love it. So in the PPSC course, we teach the screen, the assess, the movement pattern, the queuing, the common strategies, and then we have this really cool visual which we call our pattern pyramids. So the six foundational movements are squat, hinge, lunge, push, pull, carry. And just in case you haven't been familiar, we don't just mean loaded carry, we also mean carry is basically core. So dead bug and plank and side plank and half kneeling. Those are carry exercises because I am managing to carry my body in space, resist rotation, resist flexion, whatever it is. So carry is grip carrying heavy stuff. But it's also just I can put my body In a position, maintain that and then do a movement pattern on top of. So that's it. To be a human, those are the things you have to do right now inside of, let's say the squat pyramid. On day two, we screen, we assess, we coach, we strategize around how to help people squat on day one. The goal is what is your appropriate entry point to squat. And the reason why I think this is important is because sometimes when we talk about screen assess and first session and consultation and all this stuff, the way that we talk assumes that every single person we meet for the first time has never exercised before, is deconditioned, is overweight, has pain somewhere, and in general, like they're a mess. And that's fine. A lot of people come to us from that position. But what I also find really interesting is we get people returning to exercise after an absence. We get people navigating an injury, but they are good at a bunch of stuff. Like we, we get people on day one at lots of different levels. So the system doesn't work unless the system allows us to address day one with the person in front of us, no matter where they are in their fitness journey. So this is what I mean by entry point for exercise. If I take that older, deconditioned, overweight, weak, never exercised before person, maybe their entry point for a squat is a body weight squat to a box. And what I'm teaching them is getting into a nice neutral spinal position, bracing the abdominals and strong feet on the ground and your shin and torso angle are parallel. You know what I mean? All that stuff. Maybe that's what I'm teaching them. But what if I walked into your gym for the first day? And part of why I'm looking to hire a personal trainer is, man, with my new job, I've been sitting a lot, I've been traveling a ton. I'm not feeling super consistent. I'd really some help creating a plan that I can be flexible with as I'm traveling. And my former pro athlete brain has a really hard time with good enough. So if I'm not perfect, I do nothing. And that's why I need your help. I need your help getting back to good enough. Because it is a priority for me to exercise. I am just having a little bit of trouble figuring out how to manage it with my current lifestyle change. Right. That is also a very real day one if you give me a bodyweight squat to a box, you're right. And I'm not going to hire you because I could do a loaded variation quite easily. And so if our screening system is. Everybody starts on day one. Everybody starts with stability. Everybody starts with foundations. That's not correct. That's not appropriate. So then the pattern pyramid says, okay, a body weight squat to a box, or even a suspension training.