You Don't Know What You Don't Know, but You Know Yourself Best

You don’t know what you don’t know. We’ve heard it before, and it’s true. It’s easy to tell ourselves that we will “find a way” or “figure it out” on our own. This approach can work from time to time, but it’s often not the most effective way to go about doing things, and in my experience leads to me learning the hard way. 

What am I talking about? Here’s the deal. Quite a few of you have been a part of our community for the better part of a decade, and even more! I love it! Having people that have grown with us and the privilege of being a part of the many seasons of your life is one of the true rewards of our work. I’ve seen little kids grow up, go to college, get married, and some are now having kids!! Which means our population of grandparents in the gym is growing! Others of you have just walked in the doors, are getting your feet under you, and may feel like half of the whiteboard brief is still a different language as you try to decipher through what these new movement terms are. But…. you’re both in the same boat. You don’t know what you don’t know. 

For those of you that have been with us for a decade it’s easy to get in the groove and routine of training, and at times start to assume we know what is exactly best for us. Or sometimes we try to self diagnose and sadly, if there is misinformation, feel like training is something we “can’t do” anymore or take the wrong approaches to bounce back. Maybe your goals have changed over the past 7 years and you’ve built a great foundation of strength and are looking to explore some new sports outside the gym, but need to find ways to maintain what you’ve built up. What if you just had a baby (congrats Kat!) or started a new job and are struggling to find the time to workout or how to navigate a new schedule? Can I even do workouts on the road? What if I’m limited on equipment or don’t have any? Or maybe you’ve been at this for 15+ years and have to come to grips that your days of personal bests are behind you. How do we navigate that?!

If you're new in the gym, questions are expected! Especially if this style of training is new to you. Everything from what movements are right for you to what loading to use, how to adjust intensity, what subs work, etc. Maybe you’ve “caught the bug” and LOVE this type of training. But what about those trail runs and long rides you like to go on? How do you fit those in without overtraining? Which activity should take priority and why? With a new season of sports coming right around the corner, what can you do to prepare better for them? Will the training in the gym provide you with what you need? 

As much as we would love to be inside your head, or maybe not on second thought, it’s just not possible. We do our very BEST to program our weeks with workouts that will build a broad base of fitness that include strength and conditioning in a variety of ways. Make you the “jack of all trades” so to speak so you can go do anything you want outside the gym on a whim. But even with that in mind, when we are programming for a large group of people, it’s IMPOSSIBLE to have each workout, specifically what you need. So what do we do? 

Provide 3 options of workout variations:

APP

Stoke

Refresh

These go from most demanding to least demanding in regards to both movement and how we approach intensity. It’s much more than just “scaling” reps or times most days. You can even mix and match them to meet your needs. We also offer the information on Auto Regulating on our boards above the sink. Asking yourself some simple questions on how to approach the workout. But STILL, this can fall short of what is best for you, or leave you questioning what exactly to do. Maybe it’s just a bit overwhelming to figure these things out too and you just need some guidance doing it?

This is where “you know yourself best”. This may be relative to your previous training experience, sports we have played, or influences our coaches or parents may have had on us, but it’s still true. You have a better idea of how stressful your day was than me. You know well you slept last night and what kind of energy you have for the day, or if it’s time to back off. And for the most part you can tell if certain movement patterns just don’t feel quite right more than others. 

So what do we do with this? Ultimately I want to serve you BEST! The best way to have a customized approach is to interact with a coach through our Elevated membership. We meet to go over goals, address movement assessments, come up with a game plan for workout templates, and keep in touch throughout the week finding out what is working well and what needs to be adjusted. The workouts are tweaked to meet YOUR specific needs, all the while keeping you in class. This means some of the time there won’t be any changes to your workouts! Others there may be quite a bit of difference, but you still get to take part in class. If you’re less of a “class” person you can always do some one on one work and apply what you learn there to your workouts. Even a combination of both!!! Why do we offer this? Because you don’t know what you don’t know, but you know yourself best. When you work WITH a coach, as a team, and can address your goals it can be a game changer to your training. And despite it not always feeling super complex or wildly different, that’s the beauty of it. When you have someone in your corner that knows what they are doing, they make it look easy. But making it look easy doesn’t mean designing and providing it is easy. It takes knowledge, decades of experience, and understanding because we do what you do. And that is what we can provide.

All of this is an encouragement to you. It’s an effort to help you be more aware of what you have available to you and help consider if it’s a good fit. Class, whiteboard briefs, and our daily coaching will remain and we will continue to do our very best at it. But if you need that extra little nudge, we are happy to help. Feel free to grab a trainer or shoot us an email to ask more questions on what this may look like for you. 

See you in the gym!

Chris 

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