Steve here,
Christal Laswell is not only an incredible coach, but she has been a friend of mine since high school. Watching Christal mature from a HS girl to such a top notch coach has been truly awesome to see.
That is why we asked Christal to write blog about a few things she has experienced and learned along the way.
I personally got into this career because I was a client who became the trainer, so her story is really interesting and downright touching to me.
Check out Christal’s story and what she thinks of using the SGT system as a new trainer.
Changing the Lives of Others
after Changing my Own
It was my own personal fitness journey that inspired me to become a personal trainer… quite frankly, something I never thought would ever be. I was on the fast track to City Management, was far too busy for my own good and therefore, had only dabbled in living a healthy and most of all, fit lifestyle. However, it was not until about two and half years ago, after having twin boys that I decided to change my life.
I was the heaviest I’d ever been, the most out of shape that I ever was and I had pain in my body that I’ve never felt before. I not only wanted to shed the baby weight, I wanted to get rid of my back pain as well as get myself into the best shape of my life. I wanted to look better, feel better and be a better version of myself… not only for me, but for my new family. After this journey began, I aspired to be the person that helped others to change their own lives. Now, I have the ability to help individuals through the same self-doubt, health and fitness misconceptions I once possessed and the movement and weight struggles that I experienced myself. I simply wanted to give back to others what I was given…a whole new world of fitness and most of all, my health.
I can clearly remember the day I met with Steve and Jared for my first “interview”. At the beginning of the discussion, we shared our passions for fitness. Shortly thereafter, they were speaking in terms that seemed like a foreign language to me; “functional movement”, “internal and external hip rotation”, “hip mobility”… excuse me, say what? I quickly learned that my prior knowledge of fitness was loaded with misconceptions; the same fallacies possessed by people I now encounter as a trainer. I may not have known any of the trainer-lingo that Steve and Jared were throwing out there, but I had passion on my side and it motivated me to learn everything I could and in turn, educate others. My whole world of fitness changed right before my own eyes.
As a personal trainer, you will meet clients with incredibly diverse levels of health and fitness along with the prior knowledge they possess through their own past experiences. Some clients require a new foundation to be built with proper form and technique; they need to be educated with adequate health and fitness information in order to succeed. Other clients may come to you with a wealth of knowledge that is filled with misconceptions as well as misinformation. This is a struggle for many individuals as well as their trainers; some are incredibly reluctant to go “against” what they “know” while others admit that they will need time to “retrain” both their bodies and their minds. Although the change in training and mindset takes time, it’s the results that have people now trusting the process, their trainers and experiencing a whole-new level of potential for themselves.
The concept of “functional movement” training rocked my world. Every day, I was learning something new about fitness as well as myself. I was retraining my brain to absorb this new knowledge while removing past preconceived notions that I had about health and fitness. In the past, I was lead to believe that quantity was better than quality and working harder (destroying my body every single day) was the only way to achieve my health and fitness goals. Through building a solid foundation of functional movement and training smarter, I no longer focused on training my body in parts, but training my body parts to perform each exercise with optimum movement as well as utmost efficiency.
As a trainer valuing functional movement, you learn while educating others about this life-changing approach to health and fitness. I can honestly say, I had never been “screened” before meeting my SGT friends. I did come to the realization, though, that every trainer I had worked with in the past had no idea what really worked unless it reflected a desired number on the scale. Isn’t there more to it than that? With the Functional Movement Screen, you now have a direction and most of the time, you find yourself knowing more about how your clients move than they do themselves (just through having them perform simple movements). Who would have known? Every individual is different, right? Movement, abilities, strengths, weaknesses all vary… so, why not go get your WOD on? WRONG! A workout cannot be created equally for everyone. Instead, lets build a foundation catered to that person’s individual needs; you can create an individualized training program that offers the most beneficial corrective exercises, variations and progressions, and focuses on improving an individual’s overall movement patterns. Take a guess what follows this progression… RESULTS! AND it’s no longer just a number on the scale, it’s much more than that!
When you have the ability to be a part of a training system, such as SGT, that is built on this core foundation, you get to witness clients improve over time and finally achieve not only their health and fitness goals, but more than they ever thought was possible. Yes, it takes time! People don’t transform overnight, but the results you do begin to see make every second, every day, week and month of training smart worthwhile. Smart Group Training is touching and changing the lives of numerous individuals. Through SGT and the emphasis of functional movement, people now have a reason to trust the process, learn that the quality of their workouts should never be compromised and that working smarter, not necessarily harder, will yield life-changing results.
At this point, you have probably thought about every client you’ve had in the past, are currently training now and may even have in the future. You are probably recalling all of the misconceptions, whether they were your clients’ or even yours, that you’ve had to correct. We all have different starting points, lengths to travel and desired destinations to achieve on our personal health and fitness journeys. As individual as the journeys may be, our top priority as personal trainers is to ensure their travels are functional… in movement, efficiency and most of all, in life.
Christal Laswell