The FITSPRO Podcast

How to create more engaging Instagram stories!

It’s no secret that building an audience is important, and that getting that audience to interact with your content is even more important. But what happens when you feel like you’re doing all of the things, and people are still not taking the bait?

* You’re putting the question box up but no Q’s roll in.

* You’re using call to actions, but it’s crickets. Or worse, only bots respond.

* You tell people to DM you, but you only get reactions.

We need to go deeper. That’s what this episode is about.

If it wasn't made clear yet, this episode is about Instagram stories specifically. I have gone over captions and call to actions in past episodes. Let me just reiterate some key points there:

Look at your HOOK - it’s possible people aren’t even getting to your call to action because your hook didn’t get them to actually read the caption

Give specific options vs open ended, at least until your audience gets used to consistently interacting with your content. Make it easy for them.

Now, today is all about stories.

Where new humans may see your posts (through reach and exposure), your Instagram stories are for your ride or dies. For your humans who follow you, and see you daily. That context is important. Story content can be more intimate, a bit more raw than posts. They serve a different purpose.

To an extent, you need to train your audience.  Not as though they are animals. But the more your audience sees others interacting with your content, the more “normal” or “expected” it feels. The ask via a question box is one thing. But the content of the question box is another.

Just like broad call to actions in captions, it’s not going to work in stories either. Thus, lower the barrier to entry for your humans.

MAKE IT FUN. MAKE IT EASY. Or mix fun and easy with intermediate level content. Leverage people wanting to talk about themselves.

Instead of a question box about health and nutrition, try a fun poll series - mountains or beaches, waffles or pancakes, tea or coffee, breakfast or dinner, hotel or airbnb - literally nothing to do with fitness or health. Sure you can mix in some health and fitness ones if you like, but I hope you can see how this is easier and likely more enjoyable for your audience than trying to come up with a question in the midst of scrolling through IG stories, yeah? This particular example is a playful poll.

You can then graduate from a non-health related playful poll to a health and fitness related playful poll - Still play this or that, but use exercises and food or drink options - squats or deadlift, bench or overhead press, conventional deadlift or sumo deadlift, back or front squat, pull ups or rows etc, stairclimber or treadmill, morning or evening exercise etc.

Honestly I encourage you to just think about how you can bring polls or quizzes into your daily Instagram stories content organically. For instance, I was in a coffee shop a while back that didn’t have a bathroom. It was funny to me for obvious reasons - you’re going to serve people coffee and have work space but no bathroom…come on. So I shared that in my stories and put up a poll “shit yourself” “walk elsewhere” - the poll does nothing, and was not even realistic. It was just funny and people like to respond to entertaining content. Not everything has to be for market research or rooted in you ACTUALLY needing feedback.

This gives your audience ways to interact without weight or expectations.

Today's episode is my take on hiding prices. And it's a hard no for me. While it can be done ethically, tune in to hear the other side and some prompting questions to consider. It's not as black and white as you might think.

If you’re here for the business side of things, then go ahead and join my free on demand workshop, Your Biz | Your Way - 3 steps to build a profitable online health and fitness biz

And while you’re on the site, snag all the free resources - you’ll find goodies for trainees and coaches or entrepreneurs alike. Much love.

LEGION SPONSOR:

I’d like to thank the sponsor of this podcast, the #1 brand of all-natural sports supplements in the world - Legion Athletics.

If you are in the market for adding supplements, I highly recommend Legion. Whether you’re using them to make your life easier, get more protein in, optimize recovery on top of what you’re already doing…

Legion are my people, beyond the supplements themselves, I freaking love that they are Scientifically-backed ingredients and doses. They have 100% Formula Transparency. You can LITERALLY check the scientific studies and literature behind each product, the ingredients and dosages used. 100% Naturally Sweetened and Flavored. So, there’s no extra crap. It’s straightforward and clear to the consumer. Which you know is my jam.

Plus if you’re skeptical, they have a 100% money-back guarantee and free shipping.

Go to buylegion.com and use the code ANNIE at checkout to save 20% on your first order, and you’ll get double Legion reward/loyalty points if you're an existing customer."

My Name is Annie Miller and I’ve never hidden pricing from my customers.

I received a series of questions from a follower a while back. These question boxes turned into a DM conversation. And now I am podcasting about it. I swear content is a never ending cycle.

The question box started with “Should you avoid telling price over text / message? Only on calls?”

Before we get into WHY I am against withholding price, and how I get my clients to feel comfortable having their prices for all the world to see, I want to make clear that you’re not a bad person if you hide pricing. And you’re not stupid for using the logic you’ve likely been taught. My hope to offer an alternative. Maybe one you haven’t considered.

It’s just like me not using sales calls. Plenty of my clients use sales calls and ENJOY THEM. My job is to make those as efficient and natural for my clients as possible. That, for me, includes revealing the price before the call. The call is a confirmation of the sale, not where the sale is actually initiated and made. We’ll get to that later.

So, if at the end of this episode you still want to hide your pricing, I respect that. Because I am, as I say, for YOUR BIZ, YOUR WAY. Not your biz, my way. ;)

I simply want to make sure you’re aware of your options.

As I said, I plan to cover two things: 

* Why I encourage having prices listed or at least starting prices listed.* Exact methods I use with my clients to make that a comfortable, natural, and joyous situation

Moving forward,

At some point I am sure that you have taken a break from training, whether that be forced or voluntary. So, I’m talking about an injury, or health issue that demands a break from training, versus me traveling the world for a year.

This is a massive mindset based podcast. But will also include my very tangible approach to training these past few months and the results from said training.

At some point I am sure that you have taken a break from training, whether that be forced or voluntary. So, I’m talking about an injury, or health issue that demands a break from training, versus me traveling the world for a year. You could even lump pregnancy into this conversation as kind of a hybrid of those two, being voluntary and involuntary. You certainly at some point will probably take a break from the exact level or type of training you were doing before bearing a child and giving birth.

Let’s start off with one of the most popular narratives I’ve seen and experienced with myself and clients. And that is the frustrations of knowing what you were once capable of.

Common frustrations during injury -

Maybe you’re now working with weights that are below what you used to warm up with. You are extremely de-conditioned. You fatigue much quicker, not only with your muscular system but also cardio respiratory. Even if it’s lifting weights. You might lack mobility, and feel less capable to get into certain positions that you were once able to get into with ease. Or with a lack of pain.

All of these pictures I’ve just painted, number one, I have personally experienced. And number two, they can weigh on a person mentally. And that can be to varying extents. I would argue that the more experience someone has with the come back game, the more they are prepared for those thoughts, feelings, and narratives. I would also say that’s very individual from person to person.

So just know that it’s likely never going to be encouraging to feel less capable than you once were, and I think it’s OK to say that’s justified and that’s pretty normal. We can acknowledge that and then also acknowledge my next point.

Knowing where you’re at - having clarity, and naming the season that you're in for any type of training can take off some of that mental weight and negativity that we felt with the first scenario that I spoke about. So I kind of see this second piece as grace. Having grace for your self, for your body, for whatever happened to you/you chose for yourself.

Essentially, step two has the potential to prevent you or maybe a trainee from letting the first scenario of feeling incapable OR push them to do too much too soon. Simply because they don’t like that feeling and they want to feel strong again. Or mobile again. Or fit, conditioned. And they do too much too soon and then whether that first break from training was from a voluntary or involuntary event, they’ve now landed themselves with an injury or a training setback again.

That’s where defining the season and expectations for that season are very very important for yourself if that’s who were talking about, or for a client if you are the one leading that client through a given season, coming back from a break.

Also, I want to be clear that this “break" that I’m talking about does not have to be from training completely. It can be that you’ve taken a season to focus on something very specific it in that time other things have not been maintained. And maybe now you’re going back to those things and we have weakness, or less ability than we used to. It can also be a single limb that was injured, or just a movement pattern that you have taken a break from.

Starting a business in the world on online health and fitness can be overwhelming, and almost discouraging.

First off: If you’re here for the business side of things, then go ahead and join my free on demand workshop, Your Biz | Your Way - 3 steps to build a profitable online health and fitness biz

And while you’re on the site, snag all the free resources - you’ll find goodies for trainees and coaches or entrepreneurs alike. Much love.

LEGION SPONSOR:

I’d like to thank the sponsor of this podcast, the #1 brand of all-natural sports supplements in the world - Legion Athletics.

I recognize supplements are a luxury. I used them in college, shortly after college and then didn’t use them for years. It wasn’t until Legion that are started dabbling in them again. And I can’t say enough great things about this company the quality of their products.

Legion are my people, beyond the supplements themselves, I freaking love that they are Scientifically-backed ingredients and doses. They have 100% Formula Transparency. You can LITERALLY check the scientific studies and literature behind each product, the ingredients and dosages used. 100% Naturally Sweetened and Flavored. So, there’s no extra crap. It’s straightforward and clear to the consumer. Which you know is my jam.

Plus if you’re skeptical, they have a 100% money-back guarantee and free shipping.

Go to buylegion.com and use the code ANNIE at checkout to save 20% on your first order, and you’ll get double Legion reward/loyalty points if you're an existing customer."

A few weeks ago, I reviewed the intake survey from my fitsPROs inside FitsPRO Foundations - I do this quarterly or so to revisit my ideal client and their experiences. Where are they when they decide to enroll with me? How can I serve more humans in that stage of business? For instance, through this episode.

There were a few common themes - and to be clear, these intake forms were from Jan 2021 to September 2021. 

Content creation, finding and converting clients online, creating an offer and feeling confident in the price point, automating systems and processes - all of these came up repeatedly. And all of these are covered in depth inside my course. Go team.

But also…the words “getting started” or “where to start” or “I have no idea where to begin” also came up time and time again. In one phrase or another.

That feeling is real. And it’s a BIG feeling. Before I enrolled in Marie Forleo’s B school and Hilary Rushford’s Instagram with Intention course back in 2015, I had my kitchen counter breakdown.

If you’ve heard this story, it’s worth hearing again, so stick with me. If you haven’t, I am about to paint a VERY vivid picture of how I went from in person trainer to online trainer FOR REAL.

Got my biz license 2014 for fit design by Annie. That was in person and online training. Even though I didn’t have any online clients yet. I was using Instagram as my main platform. But I maybe had one to 300 followers at the time and no real direction with what I was doing. This was back in the days of only being able to share a single photo. If you wanted to share more than that it had to be in a grid. So if you look back almost every post in the beginning of my Instagram is a grid with a horrendous Instagram filter. And a super short caption.

So,

Everyone knows you need to “niche down” and get clear on your “target market,” your “ideal client.”

In fact I don’t know a single business coach who doesn’t talk about this on some level. That’s for good reason. If you don’t know who you want to solve problems for, who you want to create content for, who you want to work with, then what are you doing? How is that going to help you build a sustainable and successful business?

That’s what getting clarity on your niche does for you - when you have a singular person, or singular experience you. Keep an open mind as we talk about your target market. This topic doesn’t fit as cleanly into a nice little box as people like to think. There are many things that can be beneficial to get clarity on when it comes to who you speak to you in the online space and how you market to them.

SO - This came from a question during a training I did for Fré Skincare on how to create content for growth and exposure.

The woman understood that she needed to get clearer on her niche and who she speaks too online. She knew that this was important for building an engaged audience. But she was like you know, how much do I just be myself and attract people via that approach, and how narrow do I need to get with my messaging? She’d been told by other biz coaches that she needed to be super duper specific and nitty gritty with her niche.

We discussed two approaches. Because you know I believe there are core pieces that every business needs to establish and have clarity on. Yes, 100%. But there are often options on how we get that clarity.

Your options are not limited to the two I’ll share today, and you can certainly use a combination of them as well.

I think a lot of people get caught up in not knowing where to start with their niche. Or get overwhelmed with how specific people might say you need to get with your niche. And while I do think specificity is important. I hope that these two approaches can break down some of the barriers you might be feeling with getting clear on who your niche is.

Let’s go ahead and dive into the first option for identifying your niche

Your offer and business is for a given demographic

Meaning you identify them by age range, gender, life situation (ie: millennial moms, high achieving, middle aged executives, military personnel, cross fitters). Either your expertise and offer demand this, or you have a preference on who you would like to work with. Both are allowed. Both are fine. If you’re like, but I want to work with men and women, that’s okay too! Option 2 is going to be for you.

Looking at a demographic is NOT your niche in it’s entirety.

Your niche is not white skinned, 40 year old moms who make $60,000 per year. That’s exactly what I said it is, a literal demographic. But it CAN be helpful to make some identifying factors clear if they are applicable. Age range, sex, past experiences, personality traits, industry or career, location, beliefs, values, income etc. There are going to be common denominators within your demographic. And some people are going to be very specific with those and other people are not going to be as specific with those. It’s important for you to know if you need to be specific and if there is room for that or if that doesn’t necessarily fit your offer and what you bring to the industry.

When looking at the demographic approach to identifying your niche it’s going to be important no matter what to make sure that you are clear on the shared aspects of people who might be in your niche. So ideally yes you are identifying one specific person and that is who you are...

Whether you're looking to hire in your business now, or you can't even comprehend hiring someone, today's episode is worth a listen. You will at SOME POINT need to pay a human to help your biz grow and run.

I’ve had a few one on one business clients recently hire a VA, or outsource for certain jobs within their business and it made me think about you humans, knowing when and how to hire. Because it can be an overwhelming part and time In business.

First off, one size does not fit all.

I have friends and colleagues who took a completely different approach to hiring than I did. So at the end of this, it’s important to do what makes sense for you, your vision, and the needs of your business.

And even if you aren’t ready to hire right now, I think it’s important to understand what to be looking for in your business before you actually get to the point of meeting to hire. More often than not, and I include myself in this, entrepreneurs end up hiring later than they probably should have.

And when I say hire, I am not talking about hiring full-time employees of your company. Or even a part-time employees of your company. Especially in the online world, it’s pretty common to take two or three different approaches for hiring contractors.

You have options:

Outsource for a given repeatable task within your biz - formatting and scheduling emails or IG posts. Some kind of task that happens on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis in your business. And having someone take over these tasks that don’t directly require you to do them, can free up space for you to either do less work, or do the work that is required of you to take your business to the next level.

I would also put hiring coaches in this category. You are essentially hiring more of your self or fill in gaps within your offer so maybe you do strength training online and you need to hire a nutritionist or registered dietitian on your staff and that is who’s going to work with all of your clients on nutrition. Or you’re simply hiring other qualified coaches within the strength world so that you can generate more revenue through your current offer. 

Another option is:

A certain one off project - editing videos for a program, building out your website. They should be hiring a person who has a specific trade and you need that trade within your business. Now, you might hire this person one time and then hire them again in the future for a similar task. But they’re not someone that you’re paying on a consistent monthly basis. A great example of this for myself is hiring the person who built out my workshop funnel for me, or hiring my brand photographer to do brand shoots for me every six months or so. I am paying people to complete a one off task for me in my business that makes my life easier and allows me to generate more profit. But they are not an employee of my company and I do not pay them monthly.

The last option that we’re going to go over is:

Hire a jack of all trades - virtual assistant. And let me remind you that you can do all three of these as well. It’s not like if you have a virtual assistant you can’t hire someone to help you build out your website that’s not what I’m saying. I’m just trying to kind of categorize types of hiring that you might consider when you are ready to hire someone for some part of your business.

And one virtual assistant may do something different for one entrepreneur than a virtual assistant does for another entrepreneur. So it’s a very broad section. But essentially you would just need someone to be able to fulfill the tasks that you have listed out for what you...

In today's episode, we're covering simple strength & conditioning tips and considerations like muscular biases, cardio and lifting, menstrual cycle, limiting factors and more.

Today’s episode is brought to you by 8+ years of personal strength and hypertrophy training, trial and error, and 7+ years of working with clients in person as well as online.

Let’s go ahead and get started with one of my favorite tricks of the trade for super setting exercises.

How to work the same muscle group but lower the cardio-respiratory demand

If we know anything about the cardiovascular system it’s when we lay down or go upside down, the heart rate drops. When we stand up, it tends to rise. Of course there are situational factors at play.

So if you’re wanting to work on strength, but you have a client, or yourself, who is rather de-conditioned. Their wind, or cardio respiratory system is their limiting factor in comparison to their strength. We can play off of that knowledge and lower the intensity of one exercise by choosing a variation that is either laying down, or supported in someway.

For instance, a barbell inverted row vs bent over row. I would hypothesize, the heart rate would be lower during the barbell inverted row than a bent over barbell row. In the bent over row, you are standing, and the load extends from the upper back through to the lower back, into the glutes and hamstrings. Where is the inverted rope is going to mostly tax the upper back. Both exercise target the upper back as the prime movers, one allows you to lower the intensity of the movement.

Same goes for choosing a glute focused exercise to pair with a Romanian deadlift.

A lying single leg bridge would be a fantastic option in order to still target the glutes, but keep the heart rate from continuing to rise.

Smaller muscle groups, and supine or supported positions or some thing to think about in your future programming. Again, that’s just one way to still target the desired muscle group, but maybe keep the cardio respiratory demand down. If that happens to be a mothering factor for yourself or a client.

You can of course tax the cardio respiratory system or work on capacity if that is in fact, factor.

That takes us nicely into the next topic. I talked about this in previous episodes, on the blog, and on Instagram.

Cardio before or after lifting

The answer is, it depends. Generally speaking, if strength training is the primary focus we would want to prioritize, and perform cardio or more conditioning base work after the strength training session is complete.

If conditioning is the primary focus, and the strength training is in support of the conditioning, then you would perform the cardio activities first, and follow those up with the strength training or resistance training session.

You essentially want to make sure that the primary focus of your training is not being hindered by the other portion of your training. Whether that be resistance training or cardio.

Also, cardio is not going to inherently ruin your strength gains, or hypertrophy. In fact one of the other points we will talk about today are the benefits that are possible for it’s an hypertrophy training from low intensity steady state cardio.

In present day, we can look at CrossFit athletes is a perfect example of this. They’ve pretty much squashed the idea that you can’t be strong and powerful and have a strong aerobic base at the same time. And be training BOTH of these in the same season.

Last week we covered the first three phases of business from pre-conception, to conception, to embryonic. If you missed that, you’re likely in one of those three stages, so please do go give that a listen, then come on back.

Today we continue from embryonic to infancy. I know that all sounds so young when you can feel like, “oh my gosh, how can I possibly be in infancy when I am beginning to scale my business and possibly even hire multiple humans?!” But I assure you, you are still an infant.

Last week we covered the first three phases of business from pre-conception, to conception, to embryonic.

If you missed that, you’re likely in one of those three stages, so please do go give that a listen, then come on back.

Today we continue from embryonic to infancy. I know that all sounds so young when you can feel like, “oh my gosh, how can I possibly be in infancy when I am beginning to scale my business and possibly even hire multiple humans?!” But I assure you, you are still an infant.

For perspective - I consider my business in the adolescent phase and I won’t be into adulthood for YEARS. I am just BARELY an adolescent in many ways. 

As I stated in the last episode, you are not confined to these definitions by any means. Maybe you’re between phases or resonate with a bit from one phase and a bit from another. The point is to identify and define YOUR PHASE, and what you need to focus on in order to make it to the next phase - if that is indeed what you want for your business.

Not every business will make it out of embryonic, or adolescent and that’s A-Okay.

So, small review of embryonic stage - the client roster is full, you feel like the bank account doesn’t always reflect the work put in, and you need to scale, you’re at your ceiling but you also don’t know HOW to do that, because you recognize that what got you from conception to embryonic is not going to get you to infancy. 

Infancy

If you haven’t already invested in your biz, I’d argue that infancy almost demands it. Either through hiring a house keeper, going to therapy, hiring a coach, or delegating tasks to book keepers, assistants, and other coaches is definitely going to happen. Directly related to, or indirectly related to your biz, get ready to invest money in order to create space or expedite having a plan to move forward and generate more revenue.

In business, we have these natural ceilings - periods of time where we need to create more space in order to grow. In those times, something has to give. And that’s normally money. Hello infancy.

You’re all in. You’re past sinking or swimming. You’ve proven you can swim, but it’s time to upgrade. You’re either building out an offer suite, to ensure that no money is left on the table, or hiring a coaching staff in order to reach more humans with your signature offer. Either way you’re scaling. This is typically where my 1:1 biz clients come to me at. Here, or in between embryonic and infancy.

In this phase you feel established. You know what you know, and you know how to leverage that. Your messaging is clear, and you’re confident in what you do, even if you need a reminder every now and again. As proud as you are of what you’ve built, you now see how much more you could be doing with your biz. How many more people you can reach - or you can reach your same people but in a new way, from a different angle.

Say you’re in the 3-5k per month mark but you want to hit that $7-$10k mark. This is, in my opinion one of the hardest jumps to make in the online health and fitness sole-preneur game.

Identifying phases of business is similar to identifying the season of business that you’re in. It helps us set realistic expectations and kind of gauge where we should be at that point. Or what we should be focusing on.

So that’s kind of my hope today, is to help you identify which phase of business you are in, and what your focus might be in your current phase in order to advance to the next phase.

If you have followed me for any period of time on Instagram or been to business pages of my website, you’ve heard me talk about phases of business.

Identifying phases of business is similar to identifying the season of business that you’re in. It helps us set realistic expectations and kind of gauge where we should be at that point. Or what we should be focusing on.

So that’s kind of my hope today, is to help you identify which phase of business you are in, and what your focus might be in your current phase in order to advance to the next phase.

I am unsure if I came up with these, but to my knowledge, they don’t exist anywhere else. If I need to give credit, please let me know. I just enjoy drawing parallels between business and the world of anatomy and fitness. So, here we are.

The six phases of business are:

* Pre conception* Conception* Embryonic* Infant* Adolescent* Adult

Before we dive into each phase, I want to make abundantly clear that these are not black-and-white. Maybe you feel like you don’t fit perfectly into any of these phases. That is possible and that’s totally fine. What’s important for you, is to maybe define your own phase, and set some expectations for yourself in order to grow your business. So hopefully in one way or another this episode, and my phase examples help you do that.

The phases, just like biology, progress and build on one another.

First up is the pre-conception phase

In the pre-conception phase, you have no income. You have no business yet. But you have an idea or the pressure that something needs to happen other than what is currently happening in your life. And a business might be the long winded answer to that.

There’s a lot of discomfort, and dissatisfaction in this phase. And that’s met with, sometimes, a dream of some kind. There are only ideas and feelings in this phase I like to say. There’s not a lot of answers or even action.

Perhaps you’re training people in person. Or working 2 to 3 jobs. Maybe you’re contemplating a career path switch or pivot. Like I said there is a level of dissatisfaction here or an urge to do something other than what you were doing now. And there can be so many different driving factors here.

Just to use myself as an example because that’s what I can give you without fault. My pre-conception phase was after college, when I was very unclear on what to do with my life. For the first time, mind you.

I had definitely decided that I was not going to get my masters and be a college strength coach, but that was my plan for the last four years of my life. So I was left with a lot of questions, a lot of feelings, and no concrete answers. No sense of direction.

I would say that my pre-conception phase was probably 2014 and 2015 combined. I did start an Instagram account in 2014 or 2015 but with no real direction, no consistency, no hope to get clients. So I knew that I wanted to be online, but that was pretty much the end of the plan.

I got my business license in 2015. And that was for Fit Design by Annie, a fitness training and program design,

To explore unorthodox movement or not?

Something I get asked a lot online is what I used to support or believe in with health and fitness, that I no longer believe in or support now. I’ve talked about this a bit in other episodes and on Instagram, but I used to be quite the movement elitist.

I’ve also mentioned that I think having more rigid beliefs in any instance when you are new at something is part of a natural process.

We see this often in religion or when someone enters a new industry or philosophy in any area. We tend to start with a more rigid system, and then as we expand and get more comfortable in that space, we are open to questions and gray area. Beyond that gray area comes a new understanding.

Early in my strength and conditioning career, my philosophy was a mix of starting strength, Mark Rippetoe, and Kelly Starrette.

None of those resources or people are bad, it was more so that I took all of that information and thought everyone needed to squat the same, deadlift the same, keep a neutral spine all day every day, and don’t veer away from the basics.

Now, I am still a fan of the basics.

I still aggressively support squat, hinge, push, pull, carry. But I am much more open to squatting patterns, hinging patterns, pushing patterns, pulling patterns, and more unorthodox versions of those patterns.

In the world of training glutes we always hear that we need to train the glutes from all different angles in order to get optimum hypertrophy or increase in cross-sectional area of the glute max, as well as the glute med.

That information is certainly not incorrect, and I ask you how it can be applied to other areas of the body.

People who made me question my movement elitism were doc Jen fit, knees over toe guy, the shirtless dude from move you which I believe now is wealth, and Edo portal.

I’m not saying I support these people or accounts forever and always, I am just saying that at one point in my career or another, these accounts and people specifically made me broaden my view of movement for strength and conditioning.

So in today’s episode, I want to explore all things movement, like bracing with a rounded spine, knees going over toes, strengthening the spinal erectors, and exploring end ranges, in general under load.

Along with topics like the fact that everyone thinks that doing single arm high pulls causes shoulder impingement. Let’s just go ahead and start with that right now. I program high pulls for my clients. And we should start by defining what impingement actually means. According to Oxford Languages, impingement in a medical sense means “a painful condition caused by rubbing or pressure on a tendon, nerve, etc., by adjacent structures.”

That does not need to happen, and should not be happening if performing a the movement of a high pull in the absence of internal rotation and scapular anterior tilting.

If you are performing a high pull correctly, it will only strengthen your shoulder joint and the functionality of that joint. The stronger we can be across different ranges of motion the better. Yes? YES.

A high pull is just another vertical pull. We have pull ups as a vertical pull, and things like lat pull downs. The high pull is simply in the opposite direction of those downward vertical pulling movements. And that is largely why I program it for my clients. To balance the strength we’re building in downward vertical pulling.

If performed correctly, a few things should happen.