Katie Harrell, a strength coach, discussed her journey from teaching high school science to becoming a pre and postnatal coach and an ALP (Active Life Professional) trainer. She emphasized the importance of addressing specific needs in training, especially for pregnant and postpartum women, and those with chronic pain. Katie highlighted the significance of patience and gradual progression in rebuilding strength post-injury. She also stressed the impact of lifestyle factors like sleep, diet, and stress on functional capacity. The conversation underscored the need for trainers to provide objective, patient-centered advice, balancing ego with the client’s long-term well-being.

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Ryan Jore 0:15 Hi guys. Welcome back to the podcast. This week we have on strength coach Katie Harrell, Katie, welcome to the podcast.

Katie Harrell 0:21 Yeah, I’m stoked to be here.

Ryan Jore 0:22 Yeah. So why don’t you start just introduce yourself a bit to the audience, how you got into coaching and sort of your background?

Katie Harrell 0:28 In a previous life, I taught high school science and health for like, close to 10 years, yeah, and I was always into nutrition. I was a nutrition coach, like, before I was a teacher. Covid, I was also on my maternity leave. My position was eliminated, so I was like, Well, I’m just gonna, I guess I’ll just do this full time and also raise a baby. While I was pregnant and postpartum, I was part of a gym across the gym, and they didn’t quite know what to do with me. I was, like, the first pregnant person they’ve ever encountered. And so they were, you know, I was always like, well, just ride the bike. Just ride the bike. And I knew that there had to be more than that. And so, you know, naturally, during my first couple months of maternity leave. I also got certification for pre and postnatal coaching, so that led to just training a lot of like pregnant, postpartum moms, and then I started working at a CrossFit gym. Got my CrossFit credential, my L1.

Ryan Jore 1:42 Yeah

Katie Harrell 1:44 And I could tell that that quite wasn’t what I wanted to be doing. It wasn’t I felt a lot of members were getting a disservice because we weren’t addressing needs. It was too broad, and what most people need was more specific, and I had been really interested in Active Life, Professional, ALP, and so I enrolled in that and for that, for me, really clicked. And so I’ve been doing that for almost a year. So I graduated a few months ago, and so I’ve been doing that full time. I left across the gym, and now I’m on my own.

Ryan Jore 2:26 With your prenatal place. And it was that the girls gone strong?

Katie Harrell 2:29 Yes.

Ryan Jore 2:30 Yeah. I did that one when my wife was pregnant. It’s so good because it’s again, it helps you realize that there’s not that many differences in training. Again, so much of it’s just symptom dependent, but it’s nice to have like, that resource to look back on and just know, like, okay, hey, I need to make sure to avoid this or watch for these little things and, yeah, it’s just a great course.

Katie Harrell 2:49 Yeah, and it, it does, like, help reframe people, like my clients mind of you know that, like, fear that holds them back from training like they used to, and they don’t know, like, I didn’t know before I got my like, what I could do, am I supposed to be squatting like the baby? And so I think that really helped with, yeah, just sharing that message of, like, where our bodies are not fragile, like we can still do, they’re not invincible, but they’re not fragile. And so I really like that message, and just, it was just, it’s a really fun, fun group.

Ryan Jore 3:14 I think back to, like, my first ever pregnant client, where she was just told, okay, you can never do this, never do that, never do this. And now realizing it’s like, okay, it’s symptom dependent. It’s like, if she lays on her back, say for bench press and she feels fine, like it’s probably fine, versus being like, okay, we can never, ever, bench press. Never, ever.

Katie Harrell 3:36 Yeah, definitely.

Ryan Jore 3:37 Maybe a little more nuanced than that.

Katie Harrell 3:37 Yeah. Which, again, if you’re a doctor, you’re just going to cover your bases. Obviously, I get that, but that’s also why you hire, hire a qualified professional who can, like, find those nuances.

Katie Harrell 3:50 And if they’re not comfortable going on their back because their doctor told them not to, there’s like, you don’t have to avoid it. We can just change the angle of modified.

Ryan Jore 3:59 Exactly. So when you mentioned how you kind of got into the active life professional, again, from what I’ve got, I’ve most of the best information I feel like I’ve got from your pages involving, like chronic pain and kind of how people work around that, what made that kind of a targeted area for you, or something that really inspired you.

Katie Harrell 4:17 Working with several of my clients, or even, like just watching members in the gym struggle with mobility issues or avoiding movement patterns altogether because, you know, they couldn’t raise their arms overhead, or didn’t feel comfortable squatting too parallel and just avoiding those movements altogether. And I just, I knew that yet, like, some modifications were helping them, but we weren’t, like, addressing the route and so, I mean, we can box squad forever, but, like, is that really improving their outcome? It’s better than nothing, of course. I wanted to really get to the root of things, and then really help people break past that limiting, I don’t wanna say thinking, but their limited like belief around what their bodies can do.

Ryan Jore 5:10 I mean, it’s definitely is a limited belief. And I guess one of my favorite things in listening to Sean on podcasts from active life talk about that of, okay, so we can have them do these very or, like, you know, just general programming, but it’s like, that’s probably not gonna, like, give them their best life going out of the gym. Like, how can we find things that lets them expand their capacity so they’re not having to always modify things and can just keep moving forward? Honestly, the movement avoidance things has been one of my favorite things of the last few years. Of, you know, raising like, as a beginning trainer, where I didn’t always know how to, like, I’m not gonna say I can fix things, but, you know, you’re just like, Okay, well, I guess we’ll do hamstring curls, because we have no idea how to deadlift or whatever. And instead of, now, resin, okay, well, how many, you know, can we add, like, little constraints or whatever that gets them in a position, or, you know, maybe it’s a movement trip drill that makes them feel better, or whatever it is, and just finding those little ways to because it’s really cool, if you get someone who, say, always had chronic back pain could never do, like a barbell deadlift, and over the course of weeks or months, you get something to where you can do it. That’s just a really cool thing to see for someone that you know, what used to be like a blocked off thing for them is now something they can just do whenever they want.

Katie Harrell 6:12 Yeah, exactly. And it’s so fulfilling, right? Like, versus, I mean, it’s really cool to help somebody, like, add 10 pounds to their back squat, but it’s, for me, it’s even cooler to help the client be able to put their like socks on by themselves, exactly, you know, or I had a client who would had knee pain and avoided again, all the things and we could do, you know, banded leg extensions. We can continue to do that, but that’s not helping her go up and down the stairs. Right? She’s like, walking down sideways, and she’s a doula, so she’s like, up and down, carrying babies and bags and stuff. So she’s like, let’s, let’s get them living the way they want to, and, like, living, living the best lives that they can.

Ryan Jore 6:56 Yeah, exactly. There’s never anything cooler than when someone’s like, Well, I never thought I’d do x again. And it’s like, yeah, like, that’s just part of your life again. Like, you can just do that now.

Katie Harrell 7:04 And it’s just a neat thing when, you know, doctors maybe have told them, like, well, this is just how it’s going to be. Don’t or avoid, avoid deadlifting, you know? And then the trainer’s like, well, that’s what your doctor said. We can just work around it. But what are you going to do when you need to, like, pick up your dog to carry the car to the vet or pick up your kid from the playground when it’s time to go, it’s being able to do the things outside the gym so that they can live the best lives that they can.

Ryan Jore 7:32 Exactly, and it’s not, obviously, as trainers, we’re never trying to override like what a doctor said or something on stuff, but it’s, again, a lot of times we have to, you know, as a doctor, they have to give general advice, because obviously they’re trying to, like, keep someone from getting into a very compromising position. It’s like, obviously we’re never gonna be like, take that same person just max deadlift immediately. But it’s like, well, if we can expand your capacity on, say, like, a toe elevated romanian deadlift, and now that feels fine, and eventually maybe a regular romanian and then eventually maybe a trap bar feels fine. It’s like, well, if we can keep expanding the symptoms are allowing it like, why wouldn’t we just keep trying to expand their window of possibilities there?

Katie Harrell 8:06 Yeah, exactly

Ryan Jore 8:06 One of my other favorite posts you did recently was on, like, the social response to pain and how we learn that from our families, which is, that was strange, because you always hear that’s like, oh, you know, the Johnson’s always have bad knees or bad backs or whatever it is. And it’s funny how that there does just become a learned thing where people just assume, like, wait, my whole family runs with bad backs. It’s like, why that’s that’s not something that is like you’re stuck with for the rest of your life. Could you expand on that a little bit?

Katie Harrell 8:32 Yeah, so bad backs, bad knees, bad hips, shoulders. You know, whatever it is, if we’re just told all our lives, like, you know, I have a bad back, and so I can’t, I can’t play basketball anymore, and so we replace that with environmental factors, like, we maybe sit more and we’re taking the elevator instead of the stairs. We’re not challenging our movement patterns to we’re not challenging our movement patterns. We’re not challenging ourselves to get into those things, those movement patterns. So if we’re raised with these beliefs that it just it is what it is, then that’s just what we grow to know, and then we never really get to see that there’s something beyond that, and it doesn’t have to be this way and with a few adjustments, or, like we were talking about modifications, progressions, whatever it is, we can get past that. Like sentence this, like movement sentence that we’ve been given.

Ryan Jore 9:36 Exactly, it does kind of become a self fulfilling prophecy. It’s funny because it ties in with one of the other questions I had on one of your other posts. But is so many times people just seem like, okay, well, my back, used to hurt with deadlift, and then it should go right back to the same weight, and it hurts again. And then it’s like, Well, you see, I’m just not known to do whatever exercise. It’s like, okay, well, what if we started- I mean, I had someone where they had metatarsallogia, so they were having, like, severe foot pain. And this is someone who is. Really strong. So it wasn’t like an issue with any of their upper body or lower body muscles, just, literally, they just couldn’t put pressure on their foot. So we started her deadliest at like 65 pounds, which was like comically light, but it allowed her to expand on that. And then we just kept adding and adding, and we actually did for a while. We would only add every other week. We weren’t even out every week. And now she’s done something like 265 or something like that, with no foot pain. And you know, if you take basically most injuries, you can take that from some level of like finding some things. I think a lot of times, people assume it has to be challenging right away. And it’s like, it doesn’t have to be challenging, it’s just it’s more symptom dependent.

Katie Harrell 10:33 Well, and the capacity that our bodies have, right? So we have this capacity line here. And you know, you there’s different things that affect that. So it’s like the thing your anatomical, the things you were born with, right? Like this, the shape of your hip socket, or if you played football and you had several concussions, like the things that we just can’t change about our bodies, and then you have the recovery piece in there, it’s and that’s all about lifestyle things, right, like sleep, diet, stress, and how we manage those. And a lot of us are not managing very well. And then it’s then you have your functional capacity, and that’s what you your body can do right now, like how it moves, and the better you can get into movement patterns, the smaller that boxes. And you know, the harder those movement patterns are for you, and the harder it is for you to move, the bigger that box is. And so you build, you stack all these things up into your capacity line. And then you add things like your responsibilities, being a parent, taking care of your parents, cleaning the house, like all the responsibilities of everyday life. And then from there, we have exercise. And so sometimes we’ll try to jam exercise, and then we go over our capacity, and that’s the injury. And we think the deadlift-

Ryan Jore 11:51 It’s the exercise.

Katie Harrell 11:52 Yeah, oh, I threw out my back from the deadlift. And so deadlifts are bad, and it’s, well, no, it’s because of all these other things. And we just tried to force that in. We weren’t ready to hit that. We exceeded our capacity of what our body could handle.

Ryan Jore 12:10 No Exactly. And it’s again, I was just talking about this on a recent podcast we did on how I used to assume everything was form related. And it’s like, I still think form is important, but it’s like there’s so many other factors. Like, I’ve had clients like say, when they’re going through a divorce, it’s not surprising how much more often their pain is triggered and it’s hard to remember. It’s like, okay, this does not mean there’s anything physical happening here. You have so many other stressors going on in your life. Your body’s just giving you a response to try to get you to pull back a little bit. And it’s obviously, we’re still going to try to listen to that degree, but we’re also not going to just that person automatically seem okay, I did something damaging. It’s like, or you’re just going through more stress right now, and it’ll be fine tomorrow, as long as we’re not stupid today

Katie Harrell 12:41 Exactly, and we just need to back off a little bit for this season, yeah, and then build up some of that tolerance again and work on decreasing all those other the things we can, like the diet and the sleep and stress, work on decreasing that. And then over time, our job is as trainers and healthcare professionals is to help them raise that capacity line so that they can begin to tolerate more, running, heavier, lifts, all the fun things we want to do.

Ryan Jore 13:10 Exactly. And I think obviously a person could do this themselves to a degree. But I think what it is so important, like you’re saying on having a professional with you, is we’re not as emotionally attached. So I think it’s a lot easier. It’s it’s so much easy, because even in my own workouts, I’m so guilty that sometimes we’re like, you know, my back hurts on the second set it does this. I’m like, well, f— it. I’m planning three sets today. I’m doing three sets versus if I was coaching that same person. I mean, like, let’s take 20 pounds off for your last set. Or let’s, you know, do a set of three instead of a set of five. It’s so much easier from the outside to say that, like we’re so guilty on our own, and being like, well, you know, I’ve done two sets, I might as well just finish it out.

Katie Harrell 13:47 Well, the program, says three, three sets.

Ryan Jore 13:47 I know. I know.

Katie Harrell 13:47 Same, same, yeah. And it’s just having that, like you said, the overall, overarching picture, the person that can look from a 360 review, because we’re all, I think, so hard on ourselves, like, I should, I should be able to finish the start set. And it’s just nice to be, like, told, like, yeah. Like, you said, like, well, if that was, like, your back hurt, you know, what did it feel like on a scale of 10? And you say, like, an eight, it’s like, okay, well, we’re doing, you know let’s not push that. Yeah and then then we exceed our capacity.

Ryan Jore 14:21 It’s the classic case, I think, like, I shouldn’t say Americans, but as people in general, we’re so bad at either being all or nothing. It’s like, well, you know, my back hurts, so I’m not gonna do anything. Or my back hurts, screwed. I’m doing the full program. It’s like, there’s a huge gray area in between there that’s probably going to be a lot happier spot for someone. Yeah, exactly so similar to what we were talking there. As far as capacity, I think one of the common things we see a lot of times for people is, you know, something hurts, they kind of rebuild a little bit, and then it gets feeling better, and then they just kind of go right back into, you know, their regular program from before, and then that’s where we tend to see that pain cycle again. Could you kind of tackle, like, kind of a better approach of what we want to look at there when we’re trying to rebuild back to a previous level?

Katie Harrell 14:59 Yeah. The short answer is patience, yeah. Thank you. Follow me at no easy, like and subscribe, no in all seriousness. So you know, we have the pain, we we back off, and then it feels better, and we think, great, it’s good to go. And then we jump right back into it, and then we get back into that pain. And sometimes it’s worse because we haven’t let those tissues heal, or, you know, the tendons still inflamed, or whatever the reason. And so instead of being like, jumping back into it, for example, like instead of jumping into your current mileage where you left off, or the current weight that you were lifting, perhaps a better approach would be to progress slowly, progress into it. So instead of jumping back into daily five mile run, you know, that’s it’s really hard, because when you’re working with athletes like you do, right.

Ryan Jore 15:55 Especially runners.

Katie Harrell 15:56 Yeah, because you you’re training for something or, you know, you got the lifters that just want to be able to lift again, the weights that they were sometimes, that is, that is attached a little bit to ego. So instead, we want to really focus on managing your volume and the load so that you can create that capacity line a little bit heavier while you are building up that your tissues be able to meet that capacity that you’re asking them to do.

Ryan Jore 16:23 Exactly, so I was trying to explain to people is, like, almost no one, or literally no one I trained, has, like, financial implications on, you know, being able to lift x-pounds by x-day. So it’s like, if we get there in two weeks, or if we get there in four it doesn’t really matter, like, it’s still close in the relative scheme of your life. I always try to explain to people, like volume increases, or we see the biggest injury risk. It’s like, if you go from zero to 100 that it doesn’t matter how good your technique is, that’s still like, not what your body wants to see.

Katie Harrell 16:50 But Ryan, it makes for cool Instagram video.

Ryan Jore 16:51 I know it does. It’s like, well, I got to do it, you know? Katie Harrell 16:56 No, exactly. So it’s and a lot of that, I joked, but it really does come down to the patients, because we want to get to where we we were. Because sometimes part of our identity is in our athleticism, just, you know, certain populations. It’s in our athleticism. It’s in our our ability to hike on weekends or play basketball or whatever it is, does it have to be strictly in the gym and and so it’s like we want to get back to there, because if we aren’t lifting at where we were, then who are we? Yeah, and so a lot of that does take some patience. And that’s kind of like those conversations as trainers that we have to have is, if this takes two weeks or four weeks, it shouldn’t really matter, as long as you are able to do this beyond the four weeks, if you want to keep doing this for a long time.

Ryan Jore 17:52 I know I literally had someone one time where, remember, I think it was on bench press where, basically, you know, we found, like a weight that was doable for him in terms of pain response, but he didn’t want to be seen benching only X number of plates on the side. It was just like, Who the f— you know? It’s like, it’s gonna be three weeks of your life. Like, you know, go at nine o’clock at night or something, if that’s that much of a concern, like-

Katie Harrell 18:12 Wear a mask. Drive in a different car.

Ryan Jore 18:13 Literally, I’ve had clients who wouldn’t do a warm up set on bench at the bar. Like, why? Don’t want someone to see me benching just an empty bar? And it’s like, I it’s like, okay, world class power lifters still start with an empty bar sometimes. Why do you care?

Katie Harrell 18:27 Nobody, and nobody else cares. It’s the voices that we tell ourselves.

Ryan Jore 18:32 Yeah. Honestly, I think you could probably summarize this episode in two words. It’s just ego and patience. Listen to symptoms. Don’t just rush things just because I have to be at x-plate by x-number of days.

Katie Harrell 18:42 Yeah, exactly

Ryan Jore 18:43 And fully said by two trainers who are also equally guilty of this. I’m sure, like, I’ve done the exact same stupid thing, but it’s easier for me to stay on the outside. Like, I always tell my clients. I’m like, I make the mistake so you don’t have to

Katie Harrell 18:53 Exactly, yeah. Well, we’re also like, it’s hard to give ourselves that 360 view, right? Because, like, it’s easy to do it for other people, but if my program says three sets, I’m going to do it. But I know, you know, being smart and trying to be smart about it, I know, totally guilty.

Ryan Jore 19:11 I said it’s we’re experts in this, right? Is that how that works? Right?

Katie Harrell 19:16 Do what I say not as we do, right?

Ryan Jore 19:20 Yeah, that’s why I lift in my garage. And it’s like no one can see me making stupid things that I would never let a client do. Before we wrap up. I want to make sure you were able to drop your socials so people can know where to find you or your website or anything.

Katie Harrell 19:32 Oh, cool. Yeah, you can find me mostly on Instagram, katie.harrell. That’s where I’m mostly

Ryan Jore 19:44 Awesome. Thank you Katie.

Katie Harrell 19:45 Thank you. This was a blast.

Ryan Jore 19:47 Thank you. We’ll see you guys next month.