Are We Creating Co-Dependent Clients?

I had a fascinating scenario with a client I hadn't seen for weeks. They're still new to my schedule and came in and wanted an hour workout they could do from their home. They said they might cut back on their lessons because they want to save money, but they also wish to do something daily. They're motivated to work out for an hour a day! And dare I say, this might be the second time in my career this has ever happened to me!

Not to generalize, but it typically will be a man who will ask this. I think it comes from the personal training paradigm where someone would be given a workout to repeat for several weeks and then return and get an updated exercise. I have a feeling that's the origin of this thought process regarding working out, but it threw me for a loop.

I had a lesson planned out and hadn’t seen them in a couple of weeks, and they'd had a minor surgery, and blah blah blah. I didn’t know this change of plan was coming.

So this was my compromise…I said, “I can't let you work out on the reformer alone because that's a liability and could be dangerous. But I will video mini movement clips.” And because I have a gym next door to the country club studio, I said, “I will film you doing gym equipment exercises and then thread them together and make an hour workout. And then we can revisit it and swap out the clips.”

So that's initially what I did. I veered from the lesson plan, but it got me thinking…

Why Aren't More Clients Asking For Tools To Use At Home?

Are so many of our clients 100% reliant on us to give them workouts, corrections, feedback, and advice? Have we sort of inadvertently created a codependent environment? It takes one to know one.

So it makes me think this industry reminds me of when people get sucked into physical therapy or chiropractors. It starts as a good thing, but then they get wrapped up in this machine and go regularly for the rest of their lives.

Aren't we trying to instill good health and happy mobile bodies in our clients? They can take this work and bring it into their everyday life and not rely on us for the rest of their lives.

Right?!?

What Is Your Goal?

Something to think about as a movement teacher, what is your responsibility to your clients? Is it your responsibility to hold on to them till the day they die? Will they take weekly sessions from you on Mondays at 9 am in perpetuity? Sure, great for your bank account. But from a non-business standpoint, what's your goal? You want there to be some inter-dependence of the client.

I think that's why virtual sessions ended up being a little shaky for many people (tech aside). It was up to the client to have props, put them in all the right places, adjust them, move them to the side, and figure out how to move without the help of another human who did it all for them.

Okay…Time To Do This Alone

I change all my clients’ springs and hand them straps in one-on-one settings. Group classes differ because many have instilled that interdependence in those clients. So they end up changing their springs and adjusting. I think that's beautiful. And I think that that's probably where we should be going.

In private sessions, clients are a little coddled and a tiny handheld, and sometimes they need a little of that attention, but when do we cut the cord and say, "Okay, you can do this alone."

Food for thought. I've zero answers to this, which will get me thinking too. Can I give a couple more people homework snippets? Can I use language that will cut the ties of people feeling so reliant on me? Throw the question back at them when they ask you, “Why does this shoulder hurt?” “Why do you think it hurts? What do you think you've been doing?” Things like that. Right? That would be a good place for us all as movement teachers to start.