Embracing Individuality and Customization in Fitness

Dr. Alexis Morgan // #ICEPelvic // www.ptonice.com 

In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, #ICEPelvic division leader Alexis Morgan discusses the concept of "fitness freedom" as it relates to helping patients & clients embrace the ability to "choose your hard" in customizing rehab & fitness exercises.

Take a listen to learn how to better serve this population of patients & athletes or check out the full show notes on our blog at www.ptonice.com/blog.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

INTROHey everyone, Alan here, Chief Operating Officer here at ICE. Before we get into today's episode, I'd like to introduce our sponsor, Jane, a clinic management software and EMR with a human touch. Whether you're switching your software or going paperless for the first time ever, the Jane team knows that the onboarding process can feel a little overwhelming. That's why with Jane, you don't just get software, you get a whole team. Including in every Jane subscription is their new award-winning customer support available by phone, email, or chat whenever you need it, even on Saturdays. You can also book a free account setup consultation to review your account and ensure that you feel confident about going live with your switch. And if you'd like some extra advice along the way, you can tap into a lovely community of practitioners, clinic owners, and front desk staff through Jane's community Facebook group. If you're interested in making the switch to Jane, head on over to jane.app.switch to book a one-on-one demo with a member of Jane's support team. Don't forget to mention code IcePT1MO at the time of sign up for a one month free grace period on your new Jane account. INTRODUCTION Good morning, PT on Ice Daily Show. My name is Dr. Alexis Morgan and I am thrilled to be here with you all this morning. I am here in my Airbnb in Carson City, just coming off of the ice sampler and Wow, what a weekend we've had. We have had so much fun learning from all the different divisions here at ICE and learning from all the different instructors. And let's be honest, having a blast, having a blast with each other. It has just been an incredible weekend that we are still running high from. Today's topic is fitness freedom. And it really is fitting for today in reflection of this weekend, just because the 150 people that have been all together this weekend, of course, we're all different fitness abilities, right? We all have our different fitness goals.

WHAT IS FITNESS FREEDOM? And as I was thinking about this topic that is fitness freedom, which comes from our street parking friends, Miranda and Julian Alcraz. As I was thinking about this concept of fitness freedom, to discuss with you all this morning. It was beautiful how really the last two days here at ICE, it was just laid out perfectly. And so I wanna talk with you all a little bit about what fitness freedom is, what it means, and where it came from, and how we can implement it in our lives, as well as our practices, ultimately for our communities all across the nation. So, as I mentioned, we just got off of Sampler, and over the past two days, we've had various divisions talking. We went through different labs, and when our pelvic division did the lab on bracing, Rachel said, choose your heart. We did pushups, and we worked on bracing within pushups. But for every single person, a variation of push-ups is going to be appropriate. For some people, we may need to do the push-ups on our knees. For other people, we may need to have weight on your back. I'm giggling because if you saw the reel at ICE, you saw Dave Finkelstein laying backwards on top of Zach Morgan as he was doing the pushups. So maybe your weighted pushups is a human. If you missed that little scene, watch the latest reel, because it was hilarious. But choose your hard. That was what Rachel told us. Choose your version of hard, because you're gonna get the best out of this lab if it is relatively difficult, Not too difficult to where you can't do it, of course, but also not so easy to where you can't get what we're needing out of this lab, which is a brace. We need to find that moderately difficult heart. Choose your heart. Then in extremity lab yesterday, we went through so many exercises for the shoulder and so many ways to improve our clients, ourselves, our overhead athletes shoulder capacity. And as we're going through these exercises, they said, pick your poison. They said, choose your own adventure. You choose the internal rotation option and you choose the external rotation option that works best for you. Choose your own adventure. The same concept. We're not gonna tell everybody to do the exact same thing because there's so many options here. Let's individualize it for that person let's let them have fitness freedom. The freedom to choose what is right for you and your body at this exact moment in time, which applies to your goals, which may be different than what you would have chosen a year ago and is probably going to be different than what you'll choose next year. Fitness freedom. Do what you need to do right now. And Mitch, at our group workout, running 150 people through a group workout, which did include barbells, and he said, I like to ask people, what is your seven minutes of burpee time? Reps, how many burpees can you get in seven minutes? It doesn't matter the score that you get. It matters that you know. He said, as we're working out today, it doesn't matter what your score is. It matters that you're here, that you're sweating, that you're working out alongside each other. That is what matters. That is fitness freedom. I did a different weight than the person next to me. We did a different, it's all freedom within and it's all fitness. We choose it differently based on our own goals, based on our own needs. Now this idea, this term, I did not coin, this term of fitness freedom, I use all the time. If you've been to our live courses at Pelvic, you've heard me say this, because as we're giving various exercises, various versions of squat and pull-ups, we say it's fitness freedom. Do what you need to do to make it hard for you, to make it easy for you. Maybe you need that, whatever that is, but you've probably heard me use their term fitness freedom. I'm going to read a quote from street parking from Miranda and Julian. because I think it just so beautifully describes not only their company and their vision and their values, but also something that I think you all will resonate with as well. They say, consistency is one of, if not the most important values here. Doing with fitness freedom, in parentheses, embracing the ability to customize and make the workouts for you. and more than nothing, getting rid of the all or nothing mentality. It is so beautiful. I've been doing for the last three months street parkings programming and when you sign up for their programming, you get their emails and I read almost every single one of their emails. Their wording to describe to people this fitness freedom, to describe to people how to get fit. And that is consistency before intensity. It is choose what you need to do for your fitness so that you will be consistent. Because we know that consistency is what drives changes in humans. Consistency is what allows for these individuals to make life changes. We're changing lives here, not back pain. We're changing lives here, not peed pants. What is it that will allow people to exercise, to feel the freedom to do what they need to do on a regular basis to ultimately change their lives? Let's help them find their freedom within that. It's a beautiful saying. We use it all the time. Live this, embrace this. As I've been doing this programming, I have really learned to understand exactly what they're talking about. They have four different versions of every single workout. You choose your heart. You choose your own adventure. Sometimes I'm working out at the clinic at Onward here in Hendersonville, and I don't have I don't have an echo bike. My echo bike is at home. So maybe for that portion of the workout, I'm running outside. Or maybe when I get home, I've got my echo bike and I've got a box, but I don't have barbells. So I'm gonna use the dumbbells. Use what you have. We're changing up the equipment. We're customizing it for ourselves. But the same can apply to that mindset. Maybe for my… pregnant mama who wants to exercise, who wants that fit pregnancy, but she's sick and she's low on energy. Maybe for her, that fitness freedom is just moving through without even touching any weight. We all know what ideal is. We all know where we want to go, but that's a goal. How do we reach those goals? We don't just start doing it. We don't just climb the mountain, right? We train to climb the mountain. Part of that training to climb the mountain, so to speak, is to just move your body through that workout for that individual. Don't even touch the weight. Have a no sweat day, where you're just moving through that exercise, but you're not even sweating. Any of these concepts to break that down, to allow them to feel The freedom to choose whatever it is, is such a beautiful thing. So many individuals do not have that freedom, or at least they don't know about it. They don't mentally have that freedom. They think that they have to do everything as hard as possible, or else it doesn't count. I have to do that RX way, or why even bother? They're saying to themselves. I have to do better than so-and-so. I always do better than them. And if I back off at all, they're going to beat me. Well, maybe for a time, that's okay. We would rather you show up and be consistent in your workouts than not show up at all and not do the effort, not do the work. Allow for that fitness freedom. If you come to ICE courses, you are definitely going to experience that fitness freedom. You're definitely going to experience that group workout at the end of every Saturday, every day one at ICE. We always do that group workout. You are allowed to customize that workout for you. You have that fitness freedom. We'll make suggestions, we'll make ideas, but at the end of the day, it's your workout, and we're just here to guide that. Embrace this, learn it for yourself, and ultimately teach your clients about that. Teach your clients to where they can, at the end of the day, take those baby steps all the way to reach their goals.

SUMMARY Thank you all so much for being here and listening this morning. Just wanna do a quick little notification for you all who are listening live. Probably by the time you're listening to this on the podcast, next year's sampler will be sold out. So if you're listening live and you want to go to the sampler next year, which you want to go to the sampler next year, 91 people are already signed up. This just went live on the website, um, 24, 48 hours ago. 91 people are already signed up. We only have 59 tickets left. Today is Monday, April 29th and they will sell out today. So if you want those tickets, if you wanna enjoy this beautiful place that is Carson City right outside of Lake Tahoe, come join us, buy that ticket to where you can join us. Today marks day one of Pelvic Online Level 1 and Level 2 starting out. This is our very first cohort for Level 2 and we are amped to have so many people who are ready to provide this fitness freedom this fitness forward pelvic health to their communities in this level two. And we're of course excited about all of the folks who are joining us with the level one as well. Some people have taken the live course before, some people are brand new to pelvic, taking this online course to understand a little bit more about how they can help themselves maybe, their family members maybe, and their communities about pelvic health. So if you are interested in joining us, we've got some online courses coming up in a couple of months. They will sell out, they always do. Level one starts in January, level two starts in, I'm sorry, not January. Level one starts in July, and level two starts in August. So be sure to sign up for those, we would love to have you. And then lastly, if you want to join us in May or June for Pelvic Live, we are going to be in four different cities. We are gonna be in Kansas City, Missouri, Anchorage, Alaska, Highland, Michigan, and New York, New York. So we would love to have you join us for our live course as well. Thanks for joining me this morning. Enjoy your fitness freedom and hopefully we'll see you next year at Sampler. Take care.

OUTRO Hey, thanks for tuning in to the PT on Ice daily show. If you enjoyed this content, head on over to iTunes and leave us a review, and be sure to check us out on Facebook and Instagram at the Institute of Clinical Excellence. If you're interested in getting plugged into more ice content on a weekly basis while earning CEUs from home, check out our virtual ice online mentorship program at ptonice.com. While you're there, sign up for our Hump Day Hustling newsletter for a free email every Wednesday morning with our top five research articles and social media posts that we think are worth reading. Head over to ptonice.com and scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up.