Ep 4: Lowering the barrier to entry

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Warning. Listening to this podcast may cause empowerment, inspiration, and lifestyle changes. Please proceed with caution. Hi, my name is Krystal and welcome to the Luxury Health Podcast, where you learn to be your own best friend. I'm a primal health coach, a yoga instructor, Pilates teacher, and journaling enthusiast.

I offer virtual coaching for women looking for their last wellness journey. I produce a biweekly newsletter, the Sleep, Stress, and Schedule Fix, the underrated elements of any health and wellness journey, delivered for free to your inbox every Sunday morning. I offer virtual coaching circles for women looking to build their sustainable movement routine, and I'm a Fullscript partner offering comprehensive and personalized lab testing.

Links to all of this and more in the show notes.

One of the things I don't often talk about but am often confronted with is the inaccessibility of the health and wellness space, particularly as it comes to a financial aspect. One of the things I often hear is people talking about how they don't have the money for things like supplements or paying for workout classes or gym memberships, and that's been my inspiration behind my free PDF download that I have on my Linktree.

It's ten things I would do that are low cost if I were starting my health and wellness journey. It is a living document; I am continually expanding and revising it. It is a free download, so feel free to go back and re-download it. We've talked about a couple of the items on the list in earlier podcast episodes, including seeing a doctor or another health professional and taking really good inventory of items you might already have before you get started. You don't often need to repurchase a lot of items. And today, we are going to be talking about the goal-setting aspect of it, one of my favorite aspects as a health coach. It's something I spend a lot of time doing.

So I'll start off with the fact that this week I was confronted by the inaccessibility of the health and wellness industry. I have to say it was not specifically this week. I think it was a couple of weeks ago. I've started taking private Pilates, or I guess I should say I was, because I'm not sure what this looks like going forward, but I'm getting ahead of myself. So for some context, I am working on wrapping up my five-hundred-hour comprehensive Pilates training program. For about the last year, I've been working with a Pilates studio based out of Columbus, Ohio, and the head instructor of that program has been out on maternity leave for a number of weeks. And as it was summer and I had some extra time, I thought I would start taking some private sessions at a studio in Pittsburgh.

It was a little bit closer, and I thought it would be good for me to get some experience at another studio, get some different perspectives. In the course of signing up for these private lessons, I was speaking with the studio owner, and I mentioned that I do teach Pilates, that I'm a Pilates apprentice, and that I'm working towards finishing up this training and explained my situation.

She-- the first thing she said was that she had never heard of the studio, never heard of the program, but I didn't put much stock in that because frankly, there are 101 Pilates programs out there right now. I would doubt anyone is familiar with all of them. I see new programs all the time. I run across programs that have been in existence for years that I wasn't aware of. I kinda thought it was an odd comment, but I wrote it off.

And so I've been taking these private sessions on Friday mornings. I go up, I work with a really lovely instructor, and it's been a really educational experience. It's amazing how many more muscles you use when you have one-on-one instruction, or rather than in your self-practice, but that's a whole different story.

So the one day I'm there and the head of the studio, the owner of the studio comes in, and she mentions that they do offer their own training program there as well. And she was very passionate speaking about the lineage that the program goes through and that she thought it would be good continuing education for me I, if you don't know me in real life, am a chronic learner. I'm always looking for a new certification. I'm always looking to expand skills, expand my resume, just learn as much as I can, especially in the health and wellness space. So I was initially flattered, and then she said, "Well, you know, we don't really teach other instructors because you guys have your own programs, and it's just not something we do."

I thought that was an, an odd thing to say to someone who is a paying client just because of my background. It wasn't like she was teaching anything that seemed overly different or overly specific. I didn't feel like I was being let in on trade secrets to a method or anything like that. I told her, I said, "I would, I would be interested in information. I'm always interested in learning more. Feel free to, to send me anything you have." And so she sent me an email, and reading through it, I was affronted by this inaccessibility that we often see in the health and wellness space, and not just from a financial component, though there is a financial component that I thought was high.

There was also a time component as well And so I was reading through this PDF and it says that the course takes place over four days. You will learn their methods, foundational concepts. You'll understand how to assess and train the body, fantastic. Study safe techniques and how to apply core concepts to their level one exercises.

And that sounds great. I love a training. I love a weekend in an Airbnb. All of that sounds great. But reading to the next page, there is a mentorship requirement, and it does have to be noted that there is a fee for this mentorship program. Fees are paid to the mentor, a total of one thousand dollars. And the mentorship requirements are that you have to spend a minimum of fifteen hours per week in the studio, and that's initially where I honestly stopped reading. As an adult, as someone who works a full-time job, (a little bit, little bit more than full-time), and has other commitments such as family, sleeping, eating, all that good stuff, fifteen hours a week seems a little bit excessive. But it also includes that you must attend free weekly meetings and workouts with your mentor. Great. I love me a free class. You also need to spend time observing your mentor while they teach sessions. And then there's this tricky line that says, "Assist as needed to support smooth studio operations." It's not my first rodeo. I assume that means cleaning toilets and dusting. Continue weekly lessons with your mentor, which seems like that seems like, paid, paid sessions aside from the free weekly meetings and workouts. And practice teaching with, quote unquote, "Guinea pig students and fellow interns when possible."

Lovely.

So if you need a unpaid part-time job, you can get that. And so that's just for course one. It looks like there's also a assessment where you are assessed on their exercises. There's some registration fees, there are tuition fees, there are evaluation fees, and all of it left me feeling rather disappointed I fully understand and respect that Pilates is a very complex, in-depth system. It's one of the reasons that I choose to study it; it's something that you can continue to learn with, continue to grow with as a practitioner, as a student. There's so many avenues you can go down. There's so many specializations, and I think that's really great, and I respect the education of the instructors who run these programs, who plan these classes, who spend a lot of time studying so that they can continue to give back.

However, I do have to put my foot down when the mentorship requirements are honestly excessive for anyone. The only way that you could complete this program is if you were Not working. I was trying to really nail down what that would look like for an adult. So for me, I also have a bit of a commute to the studio.

It's about an hour. 15 hours a week. If you were to go five days a week, that's three hours. If you work a normal nine to five, even if you had a very short commute, if you were to work nine to five and then go and spend three hours in the studio, it would, it would really eat up your entire day. I, I guess the alternate there would be to spend your weekends there.

I guess the alternative in this space would be to spend the weekends there, about eight hours your entire Saturday and Sunday, and then not have any rest days. I'm just not sure how that would work for, for most adults. So I, I did have to send her an email back. I did have to tell her that I thought that their internship requirements were a bit excessive for an adult, and I, I did note in my email as well that for most adults, this is, this is not going to be an accessible program, and that honestly, unpaid internships or mentorin- mentorships are financially ostracizing for many people.

And that's something that I've seen many times before, something that I am fairly passionate about, as I think that the barrier to entry for many industries is too high financially and from a time commitment perspective. I am also a 200-hour yoga teacher, and the studio that I did my training at, it was a hot studio, and I really did enjoy the program.

However, I did opt to not teach at their studio, and it was because of, again, this financial barrier to entry. So the studio itself did not compensate their students fairly. This was a high volume hot studio that charged market price or above for their classes and was franchised, and the instructors made, I believe at the time back in 2020, it was 15, maybe it was $20 a class, whether it was an hour class or an hour and a half In addition to that, to audition at the studio, even though we were taught by them, we still had to audition with a 90-minute video that they had to evaluate as well, and this was also unpaid work that had to be done.

So I did opt to not teach at that studio even though I had been doing some volunteer work there prior to getting my certification. I did opt not to teach there. When one person participates in a predatory system, it does harm everyone. So in the spirit of not being predatory, so I do offer paid coaching sessions because we do all have to keep the lights on and pay all of our bills and all of that fun stuff.

I do offer some free resources. So the link to my Linktree is in the show notes. You can go there. It's a great way to get in to- contact with me if you don't wanna send me an email. It links to all of my social media, all of that good stuff. But one of my free resources is ten things I would do if I was starting a health and wellness journey, and these are all low-cost options.

Through my previous episodes, we have talked through some of them. As I mentioned before, some of the things you could do is see a doctor or a health professional before starting. Many insurance companies will offer incentives if you are going to see your doctor, get your annual physical. I go into more detail about that.

One of the other things that you can do is you can, take stock of your current inventory, such as subscriptions, equipment, all of that good stuff. This week we're gonna talk in depth about building out realistic goals using a framework. So as a health coach, one of the things I spend a lot of time doing, aside from talking about fitness and nutrition, is actually helping people set goals.

That is primarily what happens in a health coaching session, is we decide what your goal should be, how we're going to get there, what the steps in that process look like. So the example I always like to give is running a marathon isn't a goal. It's a wish. It's something that you would like to do, or it's something that you could see yourself doing in the future.

Weirdly though, it's not a goal. There's no clear path forward. There's no steps. It's not something that's attainable. Running consistently isn't a goal either because there's no parameters. A goal is to run a 5K in September, a 10K in November, a half marathon in March, and to run a marathon the following July.

You'd have to train in running and complementary disciplines four, five, maybe six days a week. You'd have to decide to train before or after work. You'd have to decide what fatigue and burnout look like for you, how to know when it's appropriate to up-level your fitness, when to stay at your current training level, what metrics you're gonna track.

It's all a process with steps, metrics, contingency plans. This is where it's helpful to have a goal-setting framework to employ. This is something health coaches work with frequently. Like I said, while I do spend a fair amount of time talking about eating, sleeping, and exercise, most people know what to do.

It's the execution of it that causes the setbacks and issues. Going it alone can cause delays in the process and can cause you to fall off track. Here are some of the most common methods I use when working with clients on setting goals. The first one is SMART goals. SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound.

This is a great framework for deciding on a specific goal and from there, breaking it down into mini goals. This is a pretty commonly used and heard of framework. Most people have used it either in work or in some other capacity, maybe in a health or fitness way as well. So going back to our running example, and this is hilarious because I, I do not run, and I actually don't recommend it often.

But, I do know a lot of people who do like to run. So a specific goal would be to Become a runner or what you would consider a runner, or your specific goal would be to run the marathon. And so it would need to be measurable as well. So you would have to define that for yourself. So again, maybe it is to run a marathon in the next twelve months.

Maybe it is to run five days a week to consider yourself a consistent runner. it needs to be attainable. Again, if we're talking about a big goal, like running a marathon, maybe we need about a year lead-up. Maybe we're talking about a smaller goal or a smaller chunk of the goal, such as a 5K. I know that there's couch to 5K programs where you can do that in thirty days or sixty days.

That would be considered attainable. Realistic as well. When we're talking about realistic goals, again, running a marathon, not a realistic goal. Running a 10K, realistic. Running a 5K, realistic. Running two days a week, probably realistic, maybe, something you could work on increasing over time. Running seven days a week is not realistic.

And time-bound, finally. So when do we wanna have this done by? At what point do we need to have accomplished this, or at what point do we decide that we need to pivot with our goals? The next one is the WOOP method, and this is, used for trying to define your goals primarily. So WOOP stands for wish, outcomes, obstacles, and plan.

So this is a great framework for when you aren't entirely sure what the end goal is. By framing it as a wish and then focusing on the outcome, for example, if I get my credit card debt paid off, I'll have more money to put into saving for vacations. Then you can go back to your SMART goals framework to build out your plan and to have a contingency plan for obstacles you may encounter.

And the third one I wanna talk about here, there are many goal-setting frameworks. These don't encompass everything. You can always reach out to me if you're trying to set a specific goal and want to find a different method that's more tailored to you. But the FAST method, and this is often used kind of during the process.

So FAST stands for frequently talked about, ambitious and clear, specific numbers, and transparent. This method allows you to stay focused while in the process of achieving your goals. By staying focused on what you're trying to achieve, having clear-cut goals that are ambitious but not too daunting, tracking specific metrics, and being transparent with those close to you about the progress or roadblocks that you are having allows you to stay engaged with this process.

I hope you found this information helpful. I hope you found this information informative. I hope there is a way for you to incorporate this into your health and wellness journey. I hope that this podcast offers you some solutions that are a low barrier to entry for you to get started. The link to this document that I have been working through will be in the show notes, the 10 low-cost things you can do to start your health and wellness journey.

If you have specific health questions, feel free to send me an email. My email address is in the comments as well. If you're looking for additional support, I have partnered with Fullscript to offer comprehensive labs and supplements uniquely tailored to your needs. One of the products I really love, one of the lines I really love is their stress support line.

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Upon expo-exposure to acute stressors, cortisol secretion can generally help maintain homeostasis in the body. Because of its central role as a first responder and its capability to modulate multiple critical physiological functions, cortisol is often seen as the bridge between stress and its health consequences.

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It is only twenty-seven dollars for 30 days' worth. Links to this will be listed in the show notes as well. It's one I highly recommend if you are experiencing high levels of stress and it is affecting your sleep-wake cycles. What I like about this product as well is Integrative Therapeutics, it has been responsive to people who have intake or food sensitivities, so they also make the Cortisol Manager in allergen-free.

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That's all I have for this week. Thank you all so much for listening. I would appreciate it if you would try, take the time to rate this podcast. Subscribe if you have not, so you get alerts when new episodes drop, and I will talk to you next week. Thank you so much.