I had a session this week with a client in her mid-sixties. She's back training after an operation, and it was cold in the gym, so I wanted to keep her moving early.
Normally her session is simple: one strength move, a couple of accessories, done. This week I added something different: plate taps.
Feet tapping the plate, fast, almost like running on the spot. The difference is she has to take her feet off the floor, both of them, briefly, over and over.
Most people stop doing that as they age. Nobody tells them to stop.
They just quietly stop jumping, hopping, skipping, anything where both feet leave the ground at once.
It's a specific kind of fear, the fear of being briefly unsupported, and it settles in so gradually most people never notice it happening.
I demonstrated the movement. I told her what to do. She just did it.
Two years of training together sat underneath that moment. Her confidence in the relationship, especially coming back from surgery, meant she didn't need to be talked into it or reassured through it.
The trust was already built. She just used it.
We trained for about twenty minutes in total. Most of that time wasn't spent on the plate taps. But by the end she was high-fiving me, grinning, already thinking about showing her grandson what she could do now, something close to what he does.
The best fruit is always out on the limb, not near the trunk.
Most people never get there, not because they're afraid of the risk itself, but because nobody built them a trunk strong enough to hold them while they reached for it.
That's the actual job. Not the plate taps, not the programme. The two years that made them possible.
Comment CONVO, and I'll send you the workbook I use to build that foundation with a new client from the first conversation.
Paul
