Prefer to read? Here’s the transcription of the video instead…
The Best Injury Prevention Advice Ever. Hey, I’m Sarah from mostmotion® and I’m here with another video for every sports and fitness coach who is trying to help their clients avoid injury and get better results at the same time. So is this the best injury prevention advice you have ever heard? Well, the thing is, in order to prevent things happening, we need to be able to see the signs before there’s a problem. It’s a bit like if you had a problem with your steering on your car, you wouldn’t wait until the steering didn’t work before taking it to the garage. You would notice that there was a problem with the steering and take it to the garage before that problem happened. And it’s the same thing with when it comes to preventing injuries. And this is really going to help you in business because when you can see things happening before your clients even notice, then that helps them to really trust you and to really feel like you understand them.
. And there’s a strategy that I use that I call “Eyes, Ears, Ask, Give”, and I’m going to explain to you what the strategy is, and then I’m going to give you an example of it in action. . So the first step – it’s a five step process. The first step is to understand that the what you hear is not really what the problem is. Now clients need to be aware of a problem before they can tell you about it. So they will give you examples of things. Like I didn’t have time to do my training this week, but what they really mean is they didn’t have enough brain space to deal with it. They couldn’t cope with anymore stress to deal with it, or they just didn’t give it enough priority. The time isn’t really the problem. So when we understand that, what we hear isn’t necessarily the problem, then it helps us with the second step, which is to not accept the first thing we hear.
. So if I had taken action on somebody telling me, I didn’t have time this week, then my response might have been, I’ll create a shorter session then. . And if my client can’t cope with more stress, they’re feeling overwhelmed or there’s too much other stuff going on in their life to be able to give your exercise that priority it needs. It doesn’t matter how short that timescale is. They’re still not going to do it. . So if we don’t accept the first thing that we hear, then it helps us to deal with the problem, the real problem, rather than the problem that we’re hearing about. . So the third step is to watch your client move. Why? Because bodies will give you signals that there’s a problem way before your client will even be able to explain it to you. So your client will focus on all the things that are happening in their life before they will accept that they are too stressed.
They will focus on how busy they are at work or problems that we’re having in their relationships how time consuming and tiring their kids are, you know, and all the little things that are happening in their life, but it will take them maybe 10, 15 minutes to acknowledge the fact that they’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed. . But their body will tell you that right from the very first second, because they will come to you like, and their body language, their eyes, you know, if you look in their eyes and there’s no you know, there’s no spark. They just, they just feel flat or you know them very well. And I call it losing their bounce. . When you’ve lost, your bounce is like, you’re just not happy about something can’t necessarily put your finger on it. But the body is showing you that right from the very first second that you see them.
. So when we watch them move, we can look for these little clues that give us the information that we really need to be able to deliver what the client needs. . And the fourth step is to prioritise what we see, which is why the strategy is eyes first, ears second. . So we prioritise what we see. We know the body is overwhelmed. We know that the body is struggling with something. And then we can layer on what the client was telling us. I didn’t have time, or I feel, you know, they might well say, I feel a bit stressed. . But we still don’t take action at this fourth step. We need to prioritise what we see because the body will give us those clues. Even if the client can’t tell us, but if we don’t put this fifth step into action, again, everything can go wrong.
So it may well be that I see the body is overwhelmed and I think, Oh, well, let’s do a stretch session. Let’s allow the body to calm down. Let’s keep everything on a low level. But when I ask the client, what they want, the client goes, actually, I just really need to hit something. If you offer them a stretch session that is not going to wash. . They might feel better after the stretch session, but it’s not what they wanted. . So when we ask the client what they want, then we need to give it to them. . And I really good example of this is a client I had a few years ago now I’m going to call him Darren. . Darren was a high flying executive in a big business. . They were going through a merger. There’s a lot of stress in his life.
His relationship with his wife was very strained. His kids were very young, so they were really time consuming all the rest of it. And he came to me and he said you know, I’ve been really busy this week. I haven’t really had time to do the programming that you set. I was personal training with him once a week. He was doing some stuff by himself a couple of times a week. And he just felt really bad. He said, I feel terrible that I haven’t done the exercise. And he was just like, his whole body was just so miserable. And he was just showing me that he felt so miserable. So I accepted what he said. He felt bad about not doing the exercise, but his body just was telling me that he felt so overwhelmed. . And my plan was to do a gentle stretch session because I knew that his body wouldn’t cope with too much more.
So I said to him, what is it that you feel like doing today? And he went “do you know, I just need to hit something”. So having a martial arts background, I got some pads out. And he we did some warming up and he started hitting the pads and he started feeling a bit better. But the secret is not that , just giving the client what they want is not going to get you the results that you need. . We also need to give the client what they need and that’s a big difference. . The client wanted to hit stuff and I could have just pushed his body and pushed his body and pushed his body to really high intensity boxing session. . He might have felt mentally better, but his body would still have been physically exhausted and overwhelmed. . When we layer on what the client needs…
I added all these movements so that he was moving in different ways. His body was opening out. It was lengthening out and reducing the amount of tension in his body at the same time. The feedback that you get from that is amazing. And the results are amazing. He said at the end of the session, that was exactly what I needed. I feel so much better than I did. I can’t believe how good I feel now. . He was tired, but he was also very relaxed. And that’s the key. I gave him what he wanted, but also gave him what his body needed. And that’s the secret to the strategy, eyes, ears, ask, give, , you need to give the client what they want, because it helps them to get engaged in your session. But when you can layer it on with what they need, you get amazing, amazing results.
. So have you had an experiences like this yourself, put them in the comments below. I want to hear it. Let’s share all the experiences that we’ve had and help our clients to move forward, feel better and prevent problems coming in the first place. . If I’d have created a boxing session high-intensity boxing session and just adding more pressure, adding more tightness to his body, and that would have led him eventually to injury, but by layering on what he needed and opening his body out, we’re reducing the amount of tightness. We’re reducing the amount of stress in his body, which would reduce the potential for injury. . So if you’ve had experiences like this, like I said, common down below, but if you want to share in more under the radar tactics strategies and all that kind of stuff, come and join us in the Facebook group. You’re more than welcome. We’re over at smarttfolks.com. That’s S M A R T T F O L K S.com. I’ll see you in there. Thanks for watching. And I’ll see you again. Next time.