kevinkirschdpt

Doctor of Physical Therapy
Strength and Conditioning Coach
I help people move better to get out of pain and to achieve their athletic potential
#BlueDoorLife

[kevinkirschdpt @kevinkirschdpt]

Maturing as a coach/trainer/PT is realizing that there is no best way to train. What will help one person reach their goals might not work for you and your clients and vice versa. Judging others’ methodology based on snapshots is lame and unhelpful

[kevinkirschdpt @kevinkirschdpt]

I personally became such a better coach/trainer when I broke down by barriers and became more willing to experiment, be wrong, and be bad at things. Just because something is intimidating or looks a bit silly doesn’t mean it’s not valuable

[kevinkirschdpt @kevinkirschdpt]

Maturing as a trainer/PT is realizing there is no “best” way to get things done.

[kevinkirschdpt @kevinkirschdpt]

Instead of rolling your eyes, ask for the why. Strike up a conversation. Try to see a different perspective and integrate that into your own lens. By all means, challenge the “experts” and realize when it’s garbage, but realize you could be depriving yourself by not being open

[kevinkirschdpt @kevinkirschdpt]

On the other side of the coin, if you’re more proactive about eating well, training, putting on muscle, etc, the more wiggle room you seem to get later on if you have to slack, get sick, break a bone, and so on.

The best day to start was 10 years ago, the next best day is today

[kevinkirschdpt @kevinkirschdpt]

An unfortunate trend that I see in the general population is waiting until something is broken or “wrong” to start to get in shape or start taking health seriously.

[kevinkirschdpt @kevinkirschdpt]

Particularly in the field of rehab, some people are too far gone to truly help. We can mitigate some symptoms but you’re likely not going to be able to recapture what you once were if you let things slide past a certain point. It doesn’t matter how “good” I am as a PT.

[kevinkirschdpt @kevinkirschdpt]

Ultimately, do whatever training makes you the happiest and is the most fun while getting you closer to your goals. However, make sure you are ingesting fitness content and following plans that are tailored to your goals and not what made somebody else “successful”

[kevinkirschdpt @kevinkirschdpt]

There’s a trend now in fitness influencing to be a “hybrid athlete” which seems to mean that you run and lift but you don’t do either particularly well? It’s like CrossFit but less impressive? It appears to help if you take a bunch of gear and post shirtless pictures. 🤷‍♂️

[kevinkirschdpt @kevinkirschdpt]

Secondarily, when it comes to influencing younger athletes, be up front about your current training and how you got there. Don’t mix up aesthetics, influencing, and athleticism. I’ve watched too many athletes stunt their long term potential chasing stupid trends.

[kevinkirschdpt @kevinkirschdpt]

If you have a base in one sport and then choose to move to another sport, there’s nothing wrong with that. However, if you were a bodybuilder and then switch to distance running for your YouTube content, don’t try to sell people your physique with your current training plan.

[kevinkirschdpt @kevinkirschdpt]

The problem with this is that the average person is now being told that the key to fitness is to get really good at powerlifting, bodybuilding, and running while truly not getting good at any of them.

[kevinkirschdpt @kevinkirschdpt]

Simple things that get overlooked in the rehab world:
-Adequate Nutrition
-Sleep (both quality and quantity)
-Stress Management
-Cardiovascular Fitness

[kevinkirschdpt @kevinkirschdpt]

Scapular mobility often needs to improve more than scapular stability. This is often due to an over cueing of “shoulders down and back” for posture/stability. Few scapular muscles are able to control posture. Retraction doesn’t magically = stable. Free the scaps. Move the ribs.

[kevinkirschdpt @kevinkirschdpt]

Therefore, it makes more sense to focus on improving movement strategies with downstream effects on the symptoms rather than attacking the symptoms directly.

[kevinkirschdpt @kevinkirschdpt]

As an industry, we need to move past the narrative that “tight” or “weak” muscles cause pain or injury.

[kevinkirschdpt @kevinkirschdpt]

These symptoms of pain, tightness, and weakness can often be correlated with a certain movement strategy that the client has adopted to accomplish movement tasks.