Even Coaches Need a Tribe!
The Power of Social Support
By: Mike simmons, md
Head MOVEMENT Coach, Three Point Balance
My forearms were burning. The calluses on my hands were complaining. My rhomboids and lats said enough already. Screw it. I reset the timer, grabbed a pen, and scribbled out the 3 and wrote 2 in my workout log, which prescribed 3 2-minute rounds of passive hang from the pull-up bar. A passive hang is just what it sounds like, hanging from a pull-up bar like Wile E. Coyote hanging from a branch on top of a cliff after the Roadrunner just evaded him again. I had done two rounds already and I was giving up.
As I walked away, I thought of Penelope…
Just yesterday, *“Penelope” rowed 10,000 meters in 65 minutes. A 10,000 meter row is a pretty big deal for anybody, but for Penelope it was monumental. Less than a year ago Penelope was out for a walk and lost her balance. She fell into a mud puddle and couldn’t get up. Scared and angry and ashamed she knew something had to change. She had high blood pressure and was diagnosed as a type 2 diabetic. She literally had fallen and couldn’t get up!
She joined Three Point Balance. When she started she was barely able to squat to a chair and stand back up. It would leave her breathless. Rowing 5 minutes was all she could tolerate and it would wipe her out. Penelope dreaded exercising at first, it was pure drudgery. But she kept showing up and now she looks forward to her workouts and often schedules workouts with our other clients.
I’m a coach. I am supposed to be genetically programmed to wake up every morning with a burning desire to workout. I got news for you…some days just getting started is a battle! That’s where my tribe comes in. When I’m uninspired. When I’m tired. When I’m just not feeling it, I have a cloud of witnesses who frankly have overcome a lot more than I have and they keep coming back. How can I do any differently?
Take Eddie for instance…
Eddie once regularly lifted what, for most of us, would be bewilderingly heavy weights, but Eddie went through a rough patch in life and lost the habit of working out. Eddie gained weight and was so de-conditioned when they joined Three Point Balance that even 3 minutes of rowing or getting up from the floor would leave them gasping. Now, Eddie is one of our cheerleaders, meeting with other clients, mutually keeping one another on the hook-getting workouts done. Eddie is an inspiration and part of my tribe.
By tribe I mean social support. Study after study has shown the importance of social support in achieving success in behavior change.
So what is social support?
The social support that likely comes to mind is companionship such as a jogging partner or an exercise group at work. But social support can also be very practical, like a friend lending a ride to the gym or spotting you while lifting a weight or providing childcare while a new mother gets some time out for a jog. Social support can be emotional such as commiserating with a fellow HIIT class athlete over sore muscles from yesterday’s workout or a marathon runner calling out “great work” to a fellow runner as they pass. Social support can be a coach providing feedback on your movement or a nutrition coach providing information on eating protein after a workout.
Finally there is validation, which is comparing oneself with others who are doing a similar task. Say two athletes undergoing rehab for an injury comparing notes. Or signing up for the Vermont 50 mile bike ride because you know your bike riding buddy just signed up.
Support can also be divided into formal and informal. Formal social support is the material and spiritual assistance provided by an organization like Three Point Balance, government institutions, community and other formal social organizations. This kind of assistance has the characteristics of regularity and stability. Informal social support is generally improvised and spontaneous and includes family members, relatives, neighbors and friends.
Take my client Samuel…
He’s a cardiologist. Sam has a family history of type II diabetes and is pre-diabetic himself. When I first started coaching him his A1C (a measurement of the average amount of glucose in your blood over the previous 3 months) was 6.8 (normal is below 5.7, pre-diabetes is 5.7-6.4, and 6.5 or more is diabetes) Sam’s A1C is down to 5.7. He has gone from struggling to do bodyweight squats to a chair, to squatting with a 355 pound barbell on his back. He gets up at 5 in the morning to get his workouts in, 7 days a week, before going to work in a busy cardiology practice. Not to mention he has a beautiful family with a wife who works full time and they are raising two handsome children.
Sam provides me with validation support. I too have a family history of type II diabetes. I too am a physician. I too have an elevated A1C. Like Sam, I either have to persist with my exercise or end up with a disease that will shorten my life by 4 years for every decade that I have it. That voice in my head telling me to quit gets a lot harder to hear when I think of Sam!
That’s how social support works. When you need a hand; when you need to know that someone else is suffering through a workout; when you need that validation that “if she can do it then by god, so can I!”
Who else?
Jessica, manages a busy department at a major college. She has convinced coworkers to do walking meetings with her so she can get some walking in during the day at work (That’s what I call social support!). And Susan who’s retired but you wouldn’t know it. She leads a local church, is starting a Reiki Business and yet she manages to run as well as lift weights. And Rachel who is the administrator of special needs education at a busy school district and yet she manages to work out 6 days a week, going into the gym at 5:30 in the morning to start her busy days. And Doris manages a family, has a busy psychology practice, and still manages to put in regular time with the weights, elliptical, and walking. And Charlotte who works at a very busy Urgent Care as a Physicians Assistant, travels a lot but still puts in her time with the kettlebells. Finally, there are Laura and Kim, my fellow coaches and co-owners of Three Point Balance both of whom are consistent and accomplished athletes.
I am lucky. This is my tribe. These are the people who inspire me.
These are the people that sent me back to the pull-up bar to finish that third set of passive hangs. These are the people I think of when I’m tired and don’t feel like working out. I can’t do it without them.
When we first started Three Point Balance, one of the things that we identified as really important to the success of our clients was social support. We have regular group workouts online, we have regular community circle meetings where we all get together and discuss topics relevant to our goals, and we have a Facebook page to allow dialogue between clients. Most interesting is to watch our clients develop informal arrangements of social support growing out of their relationship with Three point Balance arranging Zoom dates to work out together, chatting on FaceBook, reaching out to become hiking buddies.
If you happen to be struggling to reach your weight loss or fitness goals maybe Social Support is what you need to get you moving!
Can WE be in your Tribe?! We would love to help provide your Social Support 😊
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*all the names in this article have been changed for privacy
AUTHOR
Michael Simmons MD
Head Movement Coach,
Founding Owner, Three Point Balance
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