The words we use matter again. This is a story about a woman, her deadlifting journey, and how the language we choose can shape people. I wrote a blog post in early 2020 called The Words We Use Matter, where I talked about how the words we use can affect athletes and clients. A key example is the initial assessment. Instead of using it to empower someone and show what they can do, we often use it to point out faults, hoping that by doing so we’ll “woo” them into buying more sessions. That’s not right, and we need to do better. You can read the original post somewhere else. The idea matters because I go into detail about what not to do during an assessment in Strategic Strength, and because the seeds of that article were planted a year earlier, at a fitness event I attended in 2019.
The quick backstory is that I was invited to Colorado Springs to record a webinar for NSCA Headquarters for their 2019 Virtual Personal Trainers Conference. My presentation was on “Hip Assessment” and how fitness professionals should embrace a bit of asymmetry. Small tweaks to foot position, stance, or variation can help a lift feel not only better, but more stable and powerful. I also took someone from the audience through a real-time assessment and a technique audit.
Jenny Stein, a personal trainer in Colorado Springs, volunteered her deadlift. She had always performed it with a conventional stance, but it had always bothered her back. So I widened her stance to a modified sumo, which allowed her to keep a more upright torso and put less shear on her spine. I then guided her to build better full-body tension: find her hamstrings by adjusting hip position, feel her lats by “squeezing an orange in your armpits,” push into the ground rather than pull, and remove slack by connecting the bar to the inner plates. These cues kept her more engaged and helped her maintain a neutral spine through each rep. Was she perfect? No. I was after “better,” staying positive and focusing on the big improvements that clicked for her in the moment.
I go into more detail on all of this in Strategic Strength. By the end of the live session, her deadlift looked and felt better, which I considered a win.
During a break, another trainer in the audience struck up a casual conversation with Jenny and asked if she had deadlifted before. She said yes, but she didn’t have a lot of experience. His reply was, “Yeah, those looked pretty shitty.” A blunt, hurtful comment. Jenny later told me how the coaching cues I gave her helped, and we shared a few eye rolls about the moment. It made me question that guy’s coaching style. If he talks to strangers that way, what is he like with his own clients? The words we use matter.
If I had responded with the same blunt tone, Jenny might have been turned off from lifting forever. Instead, here’s what happened: in early 2020 she told me she was the girl from NSCA with the “shitty deadlift,” and that her ugly deadlift was now 335 pounds. She entered her first powerlifting competition and even started to dream of a state record. What seemed ordinary to me at the time had changed her life.
Fast forward to 2021, and she wrote again: she now held a Colorado state record with 363 pounds. Then, three weeks ago, she pulled 402 pounds at another state competition, proving she’s a true deadlifting badass. Way to go, Jenny—and may the trainer who doubted her learn from it.
