Your Role with Pain As A Personal Trainer

You're listening to the PT Proffitt podcast, episode number 30. Today I'm sitting down with Lucy Hendricks and we're talking all about your role with pain as a personal trainer. Are you ready? Let's get started. Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance and movement, package and position their products and services and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast. What's up coach? I'm Beverly Simpson, host of PT Profit Podcast and welcome. Welcome back to another amazing episode. So today I'm sitting down with Lucy Hendricks, who is the owner and founder of the holistic fitness creator and co owner of Enhancing Life LLC in Lexington, Kentucky. So she is a personal trainer that takes a holistic approach to health. And in this episode you are going to discover her journey, which she openly shared with us all about what her role has been with managing clients with pain and what her experience was like even from the start, from going to college and struggling in college to becoming a personal trainer. And she shares her journey about what that experience is like and what that led her to do to become a coach, educator, speaker and blogger. She's mostly known for her ability to take complicated topics and making them digest for fitness and rehab professionals, which you'll discover today in this episode. She also shared with us her process for what her business does and how she's been able to manage navigating her Lucy the coach as the business owner, helping other fitness professionals and also helping the people inside of her gym. She helps coaches who have clients that have been hindered by movement limitations and helps them get back to doing what they love, whether it's a competitive sport, general strength training, or living a life without pain. And one of the things that she also does, which she does talk about inside of this episode, is helping people who feel hopeless understand why they feel hopeless and help them see and feel more hopeful, full with their fitness goals. So, without further ado, let's go ahead and roll that interview. Hi Lucy, thanks so much for joining me on the show today. How are you?

I'm good. Thank you for having me. I'm excited.

This is going to be so good. I'm super pumped. So as per usual, it would be awesome if you could just share with us a little bit about who you are, who you serve and how you got there.

So My name is Lucy Hendricks. I am a trainer in Lexington, Kentucky, and I own a gym with Dave Wilton. How I got here, I failed out of college and my mom was willing to pay for this personal training school that was a year long. And I hated how my body looked. So I figured I would get in shape and that would be a good experience. And I just accidentally fell into this industry and realized, wow, I actually really love this because I met a trainer named Mike Robertson and I saw that personal training was more than just like a motivator and a cheerleader, which I am not. So that gave me a lot of hope that I could, like, make it in the industry. And who do I serve right now? We serve, I would say the deconditioned population, the people who normally would never exercise or maybe they've never exercised in their life before, people who don't like to exercise. And the gym is not their main focus in life. And a lot of those people tend to have chronic pain or autoimmune disease. And we find that maybe they are that way because they've never found an exercise routine that felt good. So those are the people we work with.

That is so fascinating. I know that today we're going to be really diving into pain and our role as fitness professionals and our role with pain. But before we go there, I'm so curious to know, because I never knew that about you, about your college experience. So I'd love to know. And the reason why I'm so curious is because for those of you who don't know, Lucy, she is so smart and has trained and really helped so many personal trainers get better at being personal trainers. So the fact that you quote, unquote, failed out of college, that is mind boggling to me. What did you go to college for? To learn.

I don't even remember. I think I was trying. I wanted to be a journalist for maybe. I don't even know, I don't remember. No one's ever asked me that. I knew at one point I wanted to be an architect, but then I hated math. My education just went downhill in high school because I had an eating disorder, started skipping, and then I just never found anything that I was interested in. And that's just how I've always been. If I'm not interested in it, I just won't put any effort into it. And when I found personal training by accident, I found the corrective exercise side of things, the fixing side of things, and that just drew me in. And when I got obsessed, I just couldn't Stop learning about it. Which also comes in play with my personality disorder, which is ocpd, Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. So when I get obsessed with things, I really put a lot of energy into it.

I love that I'm similar in the sense that when I care about something, I go all in. And I'm curious to know, too, were your parents supportive when you said, I'm going to be a personal trainer?

In the beginning, she was very concerned that she was just going to throw 12 grand out the window and I was going to fail out of that as well. But once I got into it, so supportive, especially my mom. I've talked about this on podcast before, but we grew up in Guatemala, and my brother, who's five years younger than me, had all these behavioral issues and my mom refused to put him on medication. So she started playing around with diet, playing around with food colorings and how that impacts people's behavior. And this is before anyone knew what gluten free was. So that was. And then Guatemala is like three years behind. So she was really ahead of her time of seeing, like, how food impacts kids, how the lack of movement impacts kids. Like, she used to have us do all these exercises, like cross connecting, crawling, trying to get our brains to work together. Crazy. Like, she was way ahead of the game here with that. So I grew up with, like, that mentality and of course I resented it. But when I got into personal training and I found, like, the root cause of people's movement dysfunction, like, that was the idea back then. She really believed in that. She really believed in the corrective exercise, getting fixed because she'd been in pain her whole entire life. And I remember we would go to chiropractors three times a week, massage therapist. Like, she was always getting fixed. So when I got into corrective exercise, she was all about it. So she supported me, paid for all my seminars, was my guinea pig, did all my classes, did all the breathing, was super proud of me. So she was really supportive in this choice of career.

That's amazing. And did you notice an impact like, once you started getting into corrective exercise and was getting it, you know, working on your mom, did you notice change and was there impact for your brother in terms of his behavior and how he moved based on her changes?

The changes for my brother when he was younger, there were changes with all the food stuff. Like, she would do experiments like give him food coloring and watch him go from writing his name to all of a sudden doing it backwards and, like, showing dyslexic symptoms and being hyperactive. So from that aspect, yes, there would change for her when she started training with me, definitely in the beginning, she was talking about how her back would go out and how she would always have these spasms that would take her out for weeks. And those were happening less and less. She was able to get stronger, so she would do our group classes. So she was able to deadlift and do a bunch of stuff. But I always noticed that her weights were so much less than just a regular person coming in. So, like, everybody kind of has like the initial weights. Like you come in and it's like about 10, 15 pound press. That's about like normal. But for her it's like five pounds was like, she's shaking. So it was really interesting. Even though she progressed from her perspective of like, I'm so much stronger, my life's different, My back almost never hurts. Like in the gym, she didn't like progress compared to everybody else. There's different perspectives of progress there.

Oh, I'm curious. Is that part of the reason that led you down that the guinea, like, led you down that road of learning more about pain and how pain impacts your population that you serve?

I think yes and no.

Okay.

I think subconsciously, yeah. Because I always grew up with it and I got drawn to the idea of fixing people just because that's what I grew up with was chiropractors fixing people, massage therapists fixing people. So I was drawn to the idea of fixing and I wasn't really interested in learning about pain because I didn't realize there was like, so much to learn. I didn't know, like, that was a possibility for me to learn this stuff just because in our industry we are turned off by learning about pain. It's if someone's in pain, technically we should be referring out or even the fms. The idea is you screen someone to see if they have pain, to see if you have to refer them out. So, like, that kind of perpetuated the idea of, like, that's not something I learn about, but my personality type and how I treated people because I thought everybody was broken. Definitely drew in a lot of people in pain. Just never thought that was a population to like actually dig into. I didn't know they were like their own population. Like, I didn't know, you know, like, there's obesity and all these, like, all these different populations that we learn about. I didn't know persistent pain and deconditioned population was an option until like 2016.

Great. So I definitely want to Dig into that because I can hear in some of your answers that you have some. I'd love to know your thoughts about what questions are the common misconceptions that trainers and fitness professionals have about pain specifically. And where do you see our role in pain management?

I love this story. So, yeah, so I attracted everybody who had pain because I was under the idea of corrective exercise, breathing exercise. And my idea back then was, oh, you don't get to lift weights. And it was perfect because I was like obsessed with breathing. But my boss was a power lifter, so I had the. The pressure was on me. I needed to get these people lifting. Like that was like a no. Like there was no. No way around it. But I felt like they weren't ready. So I had to get really good at the breathing in order for them to lift safely. That was my thought process. So I would get a lot of people to getting to lift through breathing. And because of that process, I attracted a lot of people in pain. And right in the beginning I thought, all these people are in pain. What are we supposed to do about it? And I learned, oh, physical therapy. So I pushed everybody to physical therapy. I mean, I sent my mom, my grandma, my uncle, like, all the clients. And what ended up happening was some people got better, a lot of people didn't. So now I'm thinking like, well, PT suck. Like, they're not doing their job. And then I got a lot of people better who had seen 5pts pain, doctors, exploratory surgeries. They got better training with me. So now I'm thinking, PTS suck. They should be doing this breathing stuff. And I'm like blaming that industry. And around that time I was told, this is not your population. Like, if you want to work with these people, go back to PT school. Or I was even told to take the testimonials and change them if they said anything about pain. So if it said after training six months with Lucy, my back doesn't hurt, I had to get rid of that and say back tightness or something because, like, it was not my job. And that was like, I had a lot of come to Jesus meetings with me of Lucy people for training, that breathing. And this whole time for years, I'm thinking I'm doing something wrong. I'm not supposed to be working with these people. But the hierarchy that we were told, oh, refer out if they have pain wasn't working because most of these people were already referred out. So it wasn't like, if you came to me and you have back pain, And I'm like, oh, you have to go to PT. Oh, I already see one every five weeks, or I've been to, like, 10. I'm not going to go. So, like, that step that we're supposed to, like, go through just wasn't working. So I just thought I was doing something wrong. And I also wasn't doing anything different with them than I was with my regular people. So when I was being told, oh, you shouldn't be working with these people, like, I'm not doing anything different. I'm just teaching them how to breathe and progressing them from there. And then 2016 came. I left that gym, had my own, and I, like, brought all those people. And my best friend, Dave Rascoe, I don't know if you know who that is. He's a trainer, nutrition person. And he told me, zach Couples, who's a physical therapist, does these online consultations with you. And I knew who Zach was because I'd already read all of his blogs. I was, like, a huge fan. And I was really nervous. One, because I don't want to be judged. And I was nervous of him looking at me doing the assessment. And I was nervous to let him know that all my people had pain because I had all these troubled people that had been in pain for years. Even though I was able to help so many, I still had these, like, this group that I just couldn't help. And when, you know, people like Bill Hartman, who's a really good physical therapist, you really want more for the people you work with. It's like you feel like they deserve to be pain free when you see people in other places get that done. So I scheduled one session with Zach, and amazing results. The lady who thought was gonna have to get a hip replacement was able to put it off for years. So that was amazing. So then I scheduled another one, and then he would spend, like, an hour talking to you about the client, and then I scheduled another one. And then at one point, we were doing, like, four hours every weekend, and I was, like, so scared to just add another one. I'm like, he's gonna find out I had these people in pain. And then one day he goes, you treat people in chronic pain? What? No, no, no, no, no, no. These people are already referred out. Like, what? And I, like, I got so scared. Like, what else are they supposed to do? Like, if they don't come here, they're gonna go somewhere else, so they're never gonna train. Like, I don't know. I just, like, started rambling. He's like, no, no, no. Like that's amazing because these people need, like, you progress in there, graded exposure, you work on their cardio, you promote real food, you promote sleep, you, you promote community. That's all the stuff people in pain need. And I was like, wait, how, like pain equals damage? Like if you have pain, you're injured. And that was my idea of what pain was, which is why it was out of my scope. And when someone would do a breathing exercise and they got out of pain, I thought, you know, they got fixed, something got fixed. And that's what people's idea around pain is. Pain always a marker of injury or damage. So of course the fitness industry shouldn't deal with that. But that's kind of like the old school mentality, the outdated mentality around pain. When someone experiences pain, it could be a marker of injury or damage. And also the potential of injury or damage. And the reason why it's there, it's to get you to change your behavior, not to tell you that you're injured. And people in chronic pain can really benefit from things like sleep and cardio and increasing their fitness levels. Having human connection, just being heard, just having a place to come to, having a movement practice, because pain and how you influence pain or how, or how much how you experience pain is influenced by all that other stuff as well. That's when I realized, oh, wow, so I've been just lied to. And that's when I took his course, a two hour course on pain, which I'll send you a link to, and realized, wow, personal trainers can have a role in people's pain freedom journey. Like now it doesn't have to be an either or. So even if someone has to go to a physical therapist or I mean anything, go get a sleep study or go work with an autoimmune expert, like training can always be an option because I can always work on all these other things.

Yeah, I think that you have set a really key point here, which is, you know, it's not about either or it's. And it's because people, you know, a lot of personal trainers, I think that what happens to a lot of people is that we tend to look at things in a very narrow scope and we forget to treat the whole person. That pain doesn't necessarily mean, you know, injury, it just means pay attention. There's something that we need to pay attention to. And people experience pain not just from a physical experience of sharpness, but their interpretation of what pain means to them. It's a brain signal essentially. So I think that's really powerful. But I'm also curious. You said that Zach was a physical therapist, but at the time that you got introduced to his work, you already had this interpretation or this belief that pts suck. So what was it specifically that led you to his work that you thought, oh, maybe I need to pay attention to this particular physical therapist?

Oh, yeah, I should clarify. PTS and Lexington sucked because I got introduced to people like Zach and Bill Hartman, and it was just like, I also. I know I have unrealistic standards, but when you put the standard there of Bill Hartman and Zach couples, these people who are just helping everybody, and then now I have these PTs who weren't helping people, who weren't doing what Bill and Zach were doing, it made me realize that not all PTs were created equal.

Just like not all personal trainers.

Are created equal 100%. And then the reason why I don't complain about personal trainers as much is because I don't deal with them. If I was a physical therapist, I would probably be complaining about how all trainers suck. Yeah, it's the pts that impact me the most, not other trainers.

Because you work with people in chronic pain.

Right.

So I'm curious, what are your markers? And what now. Now that you've come here and you've come full circle, what are your markers for pain management? When do you look at someone and decide, okay, this person needs extra help. This person needs to go see a pt. What are some of the red flags? And I don't want to say red flags, but what are some of the experiences or things that people say and do that cause you to lead them out?

I would say two different scenarios. One, we're looking more of, like, an acute injury. So the red flags that I would look at would be, one was her trauma. Like, did you fall? Or, you know, have an accident? Because that would warrant a referral. And there's, like, pain, swelling, pop, loud pop, no sensation, like numbness, tingling, loss of, like, bladder control. So those would be the red flags of, hey, you need to get this checked out. And maybe not pt. It would be, like an MD as well. So those would be the red flags of, like, of an acute injury. Was it trauma, pain, swelling, popping? Did you hear a loud pop? Just last week, a client came in. There was a pop and swelling and bruising, and it was a minor calf tear. And so there red flags. Go, get it checked out. But despite whatever they find, like, you'll still be able to train, because even there, people struggle going to the doctor to get things checked out. And Then the second scenario of, like, what leads me to refer someone out. Now we're thinking, like, chronic pain. That's usually not a PT referral, because if they're in chronic pain and they've been in chronic pain and it's something that's not getting better or just not improving at all, I'm now thinking other things because usually they've already been to pt, they've already been to the pain doctor, they've already done the rehab physical component of it. Now I'm thinking more other than like a counselor or a trauma expert or a sleep specialist, because I have sleep apnea. So now I'm thinking other things that are impacting this person's inability to get better. But even with that, that's tough because people can't afford things. Even if they can't afford it, they still don't go get a sleep study. So that's the problem about the idea of if there's a problem, you just refer. And to me, that's like a fantasy world. Like, that doesn't happen, trust me. Or there's a lot of pressure trying to get someone to go to a functional medicine practitioner and they spend two grand and they get two grand worth of supplements and they didn't get help then. Now that's on you. Like, I just spent $4,000 and I still have, like, Hashimoto's is still, like, screwing me. So when I see the red flags of this person needs someone else, what really that does to me is now I need to adapt my training to meet them where they're at, which might not be training hard because they have sleep apnea and they have a ton of pain and they're not going to go get it fixed anytime soon. So I have to deal with that.

So, you know, I'm curious because you did mention that you serve a lot of people that in addition to, you know, chronic pain, you serve a lot of people, the general population, that are not motivated to work out. And I think, and I can, you know, this is just my interpretation, but based on what you're saying to me, when someone's in chronic pain or when they're experiencing all those things, I completely understand where that mindset comes from of like, well, why bother? It's just there's no point, right? And I think that that's very important because a lot of trainers, they tend to want to work with the people who are already motivated because they can be committed, that they'll adhere, they'll stay consistent. And so it can be more appealing to work with that type of person than work with someone like that is struggling and that feels that chronic pain and almost, you know, feels hopeless. So I'm curious, what, what are some of the ways that you help people go from feeling hopeless to feeling hopeful?

That's a good question. Probably sharing a lot of my own personal experience and my own setbacks. Just a couple weeks ago, I wrote this big, long email of life is just one setback after another and not feeling shifted, shame or guilty for that, and just creating a space where people can come in and be a mess and totally be fine with being a mess and bringing awareness to all these other factors that maybe they didn't have awareness to before in a way that what you said was gives them a hope of, oh, wow, I've never worked on my sleep or I've never even thought of walking, or I've never even thought of how cardio would impact my pain or how meditation would impact my depression or any of those things. So if you introduce all these other factors in a way where it can produce a little bit of hope and get them to see that I'm coming from a place of understanding of the reason why you drink every weekend and smoke weed with your spouse and you binge is not because you're lazy and you want to be unhealthy. The reason why you hate the gym and you've never been to one is not because you're a piece of shit and you don't care about yourself. It's like coming from a place of understanding first so then they can take personal responsibility for their health. That's what I'm trying to create. It's a work in progress. So I don't really like to answer like, this is how I do it, because it's like I'm. This, this is how I'm currently doing it and working through it.

Sure, sure, sure. And, you know, everyone's individual, so. And it's not, you know, it's not necessarily about, let's find step one, step two, step three, and then replicate it. It's just more about, you know, I think a key component that you, you mentioned is that you're coming from a place of empathy, which I feel like a lot of people miss. They. They miss the importance of knowing where someone's at.

Mm.

So I'm also curious, too. You said that, you know, I'm curious. Do you have to spend a lot of time creating buy in? Because in addition to trainers having preconceived notion, I feel like a lot of People also have preconceived notion about what fitness is, that if they don't work six days, six, you know, work out six days a week, then that must mean they can't be fit. Or then that must mean they just have to suffer. So do you have to spend time creating, buy in for things like paying attention to sleep and paying attention to meditation? People think, no, that's too woo woo. And that's not fitness.

Yes, I know this is not advice. Don't do what I say. Yeah, don't do what I do. Take it. Yeah, take it or leave it. So yes, it is not easy to buy in on this stuff. But I also, I have clients that have been with me for like eight, nine years now, like around me and back in the day when I didn't have the self awareness of how aggressive I was with like imposing my will on people because the confirmation bias, like clients. One time a client was like, I like training with Lucy because she imposes her will on people. I'm like, that's right. So back in the day I would pass out articles on nasal breathing. I'm like, this is important. Come to my seminar. And because I was so young, I think people felt obligated to support me and my passions. So they would come to my seminar anyways and slowly I would increase the buy in. But what that ended up doing, when it comes from like our training model, our model is really driven by referrals or our business is being driven by referrals. So even if it's a little weird at first or our process is a little weird, people are already under the impression of this is a good place because three of my friends come here or we have a lot of family members. So I think that does make my job a lot easier because I don't have to sit here and convince the person something that their friend already convinced them of. Right. So that process alone is really easy. And then getting people to buy into things like meditation and sleep, we found doing things like challenges are very important. And learning how to leverage results, learning how to leverage social media, getting the clients to feel like they're part of something bigger. And I'm really good at that. I leverage both of my life, which is Lucy Hendricks who teaches coaches and then Lucy Hendricks gym owner and I try to push both worlds together and get the client to feel like, hey, if we can like come up with a process where trainers can teach people how to meditate, like we can totally change the industry. Like helped me help the industry and clients do have this, like, weird sense of responsibility for other trainers. Like, if I'm taking a picture of some. A client, I'm like, can I use this for my blog? Whatever you need, like, whatever. I'll help. I'll be a guinea pig. Students can practice on me. So that's kind of how I get them to buy into those things. And as soon as you start doing it, people start experiencing results. And that's all you need. That little trickle of, well, the breathing helps me or the sleeps helped me. And then you use that and then you start to create this culture that when you come in, that's just what we do. That's just what we believe here. That's just what we. That's the. That's our process.

That is so good. You just hit. You hit on so many good points that I just want to reiterate that nothing will sell better than results, than someone's word of mouth. When someone, when someone says, this helped me, then that's. Then. Then you'll get the buy in.

Right?

And I think that it go. You know, that's what you were saying earlier, and that's what happened to you in terms of the physical therapists that were local to you. People were just going and then not seeing results. And so of course that's going to damage the buy in. So I think that's really important. And I'm also curious. You mentioned a little bit about your process in terms of your gym. Can you share with us a little bit about what your process is specifically and how you feel it's to. Time stands out, stands apart from other facilities.

Yeah. So we have an onboarding process that it wasn't like, written as a system until this year, but it has been this way. That's just pretty much what it's been for the last two years. And it was when I got questioned by a client who was not really a referral by a client, which that, like, showed me so much like, oh, this is why I don't like marketing. This is why I don't like dealing with people like this. She. What we end up doing is a lot of basics, like a lot of basic moves and supine, quadruped, half kneeling, because we train people in a group setting. And when I got really obsessed with breathing and posture and everything had to be a certain way or it was unsafe or I put really strict standards on how I wanted things to be done. And as I met Zach, I realized maybe I was kind of wrong for doing those things from a perspective of right or wrong. And having lifting be this binary thing. However, I couldn't ignore all the other positive outcomes of being so strict. People got stronger a lot faster, people progressed faster, people were independent. So now we had a semi private setting where I just get to hang out with people because I don't have to babysit them. So Dave and I, my business partner and I, like, we can't ignore all these positive outcomes, but we know that we shouldn't tell people, this is how you squat, this is how you do a step up. Really pay attention to your ex heal. Like, don't not pay attention to it. Try to differentiate between tucking and untucking without promoting fear avoidance, without putting ideas in their head of this is right or wrong. I can never go into extension. Like all the negative outcomes of being too detailed. So we developed an onboarding process that gives us the best of both worlds. So we had to figure out how to communicate with the new client of, hey, for the first few sessions you're not going to be doing much because in the past we used to describe it as like, you have to do the basics and get in a good position and safe position so you can lift because fat people were broken. But now we do the same exercises because it produced amazing results. But now we say, so for the first few days, you're going to be learning like the basic positions, the lingo, the cues, just because it's really overwhelming at first to learn all this new language. Just like, for example, rock climbing. If you were to learn how to rock climb, it's not uncommon for you to take a class and spend 45 minutes on hand position and foot position. So like any skill, it's going to be overwhelming at first. But we find that if people spend two sessions doing these moves, they progress a lot faster. And there we strategically pull out a program that's their end goal, like the end goal. So if you're coming to me just to lift, I'm going to pull out the program of the person that just deadlifted 300 pounds. So at least you see, like these two days are not forever. Like, clearly they exercise, clearly they let their clients lift. Or if you're a scared pain client, I pull out. Look, Janet squatted for the first time without knee pain. So it's like I pull out what their end goal is, to show them the end goal, show them the journey versus them doing a 45 minute warm up and then thinking, is this gonna be forever? Like, is this how it's always gonna be? When am I gonna exercise? So our onboarding is a movement consultation with me where I run people through an assessment. I go through a lot of the basic cues and then I look at them in different positions. How well do they go in supine? How well do they tuck there, how well do they reach there? How well are, how successful are they in quadruped and rock back? So I make all these observations. So when they come in for their first session, they, that session kind of meets them where they're at. So if they struggled in quadruped and they couldn't just not feel their neck, I'm not going to put things in Quadruped. If they struggle getting a full exhale with a pause, I'm not going to frustrate them and go beyond that. And then in their program it's going to say just work on exhaling. So a lot of people who do this type of training don't go through this like observation of like how well does a client take cues? How many cues can they take? What positions are they successful in? So then they can't write this program that doesn't frustrate them. And then they go two days with practicing those moves, which is pretty much like a warm up. And then they get their first program, which is a lot of the same stuff. It's the same warm up that now lasts 10 minutes. And then they have an 8A and a B day. But those days are the same. And usually it's squatting and then assisted step up because you're kind of loading the same patterns, loading the same tissues, doing a lot of things and short seated. And we find that just giving people consistency gets them to progress a lot faster. And by the end of those six days that look the same, they're already setting up their step up on their own. Like they're already going to the squat on their own. And then after that they get the regular A day, B day and a warm up. So from the trainer perspective, it's like you're doing like the same stuff every day. Like this is not, this is boring. But we have to remember it's all new to the client. And people who try to be detailed, it's like, oh, people don't like it. I think you're giving them too much variety. And when it's too much, people get frustrated. And I had a perfect example, this quarantine with the bike. I haven't been on a bike in over a decade. My mom dropped it off. So I come downstairs and I'm looking at the bike, I'm like, how do you get on a bike. I forgot how to ride a bike. And my mom was like filling up the tire and she's like, try it. And I push it down like, it's good. She goes, no, no, get on it. I go, no, it's good. She's like, no, like, get on at the seat. I'm like, is this good? Okay, like, don't. And then I like immediately thought of the client of like trying to do a squat for the first day. Like, I don't know what you want me to do. Okay.

Like, yeah.

And then that's exactly what's happening with people. We introduce too much too soon. And what we've done is it's all the same.

Did you get on the bike?

No. And I remember thinking, I need to just like come downstairs at 6am when it's still dark and like, hold on to my banister. Get on, like, understand how it feels like to be on the bike again.

Yeah, no, for sure that you bring up a good point. And also something I've heard you say throughout this podcast is you talked about community. How do you create that type of community environment with a one on one setting?

Oh, it's semi private. So it's right now because of COVID it's two people per coach, but it's usually three to four people per coach. So then we're interacting with all of them. And then we have our group classes, which now is 5, but it used to be it could be up to 10.

So something that I've found in my life and experience is that what seems to be the most personal to people tends to be the most general. And so meaning that a lot of people experience the same things, which is why it's easier from a coach's perspective to want to grow these people together. But how were you able? But sometimes when someone, you know, feels like it's a personal experience, they don't want to be in a group. So how were you able to move them? You know, especially when we're dealing and talking about pain because they think I'm the only one. This is only unique to me. How are you able to move them into, you know, get going into a group setting?

And what do you mean by that? Like being comfortable being in the group setting or being comfortable talking about things?

Both. Like how you know, how you know if someone just wants to work with you, how are you able to show them the value of being in a community?

That's a good question. We give them a lot of one on one in the beginning and we do that is one thing that people are a little skeptical about, especially if they've done one on one of how are you going to give me attention in a group setting? And I just tell them to trust me. Just give me, give me a few sessions, you'll see. And we've only had one person, which is a person that yelled at me a couple years ago of like, I don't want to do this breathing stuff, who wasn't really referred to us by a client. She was the only one that didn't like the group setting. And she even mentioned, I don't like going into the gym and seeing my friends because we had a client who knew her and I thought, oh, maybe now she'll like us and she'll stay because we give everybody a month trial or we can like just tries for a month and you can cancel. So she literally said, I don't like going into a gym and seeing someone I know. And she's been the only person that's given us that type of feedback of I don't like knowing people when I go somewhere, I don't like having an interaction with someone. So when it comes to being comfortable in the group setting, give them a lot of one on one. They have at least two sessions, one on one. Then we tell them just trust us. If they're very skeptical, we might like try to put them in a place where it's not going to get booked up or a place where someone's really independent. And that's usually the unspoken rule is if I have a new person, you know you're being ignored a little bit. Or if you have a new program and that's what I tell the person. It's like usually the way it ends up being is your first day on the program, it's his third week, it's her sixth week. So everybody is pretty much independent towards those end weeks. So now the attention can go towards you. So that's how we get them comfortable in that setting and then in the community part of it. Lexington is very small and we do have a lot of couples and friends and family members. So a lot of the times people kind of come to together and they know each other, they come around the same time. So that's always, always a plus.

Love that. Okay, so I definitely want to be very mindful of your time, so thank you so much. This has been incredible. So I'll leave you with one last question and then we'll share with people where they can learn more about you. But you mentioned that you got really into breathing. And so I'm curious to know from your perspective as you evolved from personal training, how did you start and how did you get introduced to breathing? Because me, I was a trainer for five years before I even heard that breathing was important. And the only way that I discovered that was because I had children. Otherwise I would have just been on that. You know, breathing is natural.

You do it 24 7, you don't.

Need to pay attention to it, you know, really matter to me until it mattered to me. So I'm curious what your experience was and how you got introduced to breathing and when you know and how have you been able to incorporate that into. Especially when you were working with your power lifter boss. Like, how were you able to incorporate that and show that it's important to fitness?

I was 19 when I was introduced to it. So I hadn't even started training. I was still going through that that year long school and one of the teachers happened to introduce a blog who talked to Mike Robertson. And then my classmates saw that he was speaking in Louisville and Mike, which is an hour away. So my mom paid for the seminar, paid for the hotel. That's when I got introduced to Mike Robertson, where I got introduced to the breathing and then the concept of neutral spine, which the breathing helped you get to that. So the concept of neutral spine is being able to put your spine in a safe position for you to lift weights. And he wouldn't say this now, but from back then, you know, like that's what he would help people do who are always in pain or athletes, and he would get them into this position and now they were able to lift weights correctly. He then my boss, who was a powerlifter, he was into that stuff because him and Mike Robertson were friends. So he told me. Mike did. He invited me to dinner that night with everybody and he said, if you want to do this stuff, like stick to him because he is pretty close to what we're doing or at least we agree. So I went back to the school again, lacking self awareness. I went to the owner and I said, this school sucks. You're outdated. You need to learn about this neutral spine stuff and the breathing. They did not like that. And then I went and worked for the power lifter. No, I went and had one other job and they gave me two clients. We're in a lot of pain. This person hadn't been able to put their jeans on without pain in like five years. And then her husband had back surgery and he was unable to like bend over without Pain. And I had just bought Mike Robertson's product, which had breathing exercises in there. I did those, and they got better after two weeks. I'm like, wow, I'm amazing. This is so cool. I want to fix people, and I don't even know what I'm doing. I'm just getting them neutral, doing what Mike Robinson Robertson is doing. Then I got fired from that job, and then slash, quit. Never sure what happened there. Went and worked, interned for the Powerlifter for, like, seven, nine months. I didn't have a job. I just wanted to work there so bad. But then I also was, like, really bad with people and really bad with talking. And he was doing some of the breathing stuff. But they really separated the two from breathing, from training. And because they had gained so much trust from their clients, because both of them had been around for so long, they could get their clients to do stuff that they didn't want to do. And they would almost kind of play that game of, fine, I'll do it just because you tell me to. Or, you know, it was like the veggies. No one wants to eat. Veggie day.

Love veggie day.

It's important for you to do it. But then paint the culture of breathing is something that people who in rehab do or broken people. And then the idea of health versus performance, because that is a very powerlifting mentality. And now I see that, you know, no one, even if you get into powerlifting in the beginner stages, like, you're not hitting performance to the point where doing one breathing exercise is going to take away from your performance. But that was a culture around that. And I got into it because of the results it produced with the people who were in pain. That came to me because people did get better. Symptoms went away. People's hips felt better, people's back felt better. So I was, like, seeing all this result. I just never understood how to question myself or go deeper or really understand confirmation bias. And when I got to know Zach, I realized, you know, the reason why someone has pain is way more than, like, their posture and structure. And the reason why someone will get out of pain can also be so uncertain, because people's expectation can play a role in someone getting pain relief. So. And then because we're such a referral community, if you knew two clients that got out of back pain training with me, you are already coming into that expectation, and my back's going to feel better. And that expectation alone can play a role in someone not feeling or getting better, increasing someone's Fitness levels can play a role in getting someone better, increasing blood flow. So a lot of the times, pain can be contributed by the lack of movement. So if I were to glue you on your chair and not let you move for five hours.

I'd be in pain.

Yeah. And then that's. What is your body telling you to do?

Yeah. Move, move.

And I got these people to move, so maybe that was it. So the results are still happening, but just my idea of why this person is getting results is so much more uncertain. And the claims behind the breathing and the claims of putting people in certain positions and getting results are. I've just backed off just because they're not backed up by the current research on pain.

Mm. That's so good. That's so good. And one of the things that I heard you say that I really want to reiterate because I think it's so important, and this is something that's also in full transparency. It's hard for me, too. Once you start becoming an expert and once you start seeing all these types of results, that's when you start to feel like, maybe I don't need a coach anymore. Maybe I don't need to continue to sharpen the saw. But that's, in fact, backwards. And that what makes you better is having that coach and helping and working with people that can help you see what you can't see. That's what's going to make you better. And it doesn't ever end, which is what I heard you saying, which I love. So thank you so much for hanging out with me today. Can you tell me and us where someone, if they wanted to work with you, learn from you, hang out with you? Where can I send them?

My website is coachlucyhendricks.com and I am very active on Instagram, which is lucyhendrichs. I also have Facebook, but I'm trying to stay away from Facebook other than my community page, and that's where you can find me.

Okay, awesome. And we'll definitely make sure that we link all of that in the show notes.

Cool. Thank you for having me.

Yes, it was a blast. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you for listening to the PT Profit podcast. If you like this episode, chances are your friends will too. So it would be a huge service to us if you would please leave us a review and share with your friends on your social media channels. When you leave us a review, be sure to take a screenshot of it and email that screenshot to my team at info simpson fitness.com, and we'll send you a very special Instagram podcast that will show you how to create compelling content so that your ideal clients come to you. And you go from wanting clients to a wait list of clients ready for your services. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you on the next episode.