About
You are right to check.
You are about to let a stranger look at your body and tell you what to do with it. Reading this page first is a sensible thing to do. So here is what you are actually checking.
Will he understand what I am dealing with?
I have Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. I also have MCAS, which tends to travel with it.
For years I did not know that, and I trained myself the way you are supposed to train, and my body kept failing me. I could not work out why. I assumed I was doing something wrong.
I was not. The programming was never built for the body I was in.
I do not coach difficult bodies out of a textbook. I live in one.
That is not a medical qualification and I would never dress it up as one. What it is, is the reason I do not look at a body that behaves strangely and reach for the standard program anyway.
Will a man understand what I am going through?
It is a fair thing to ask, and the honest answer is that I could not have worked it out on my own. So I went and learned it properly, from the people who study it.
I am certified through Girls Gone Strong in women’s strength, in menopause, and in pre and post natal training. I am certified in Dr Stacy Sims’ women’s training. Those are not general coaching courses with a chapter about women at the back. They exist because a woman’s body does not respond to the same programming as a man’s, and pretending otherwise is how women end up hurt or bored or quietly convinced they are the problem.
I add to that every year, because the research keeps moving and the women here deserve the current version of it.
What does he actually know how to do?
I have been coaching for eighteen years, which includes time with US collegiate athletes. Steps to Greatness itself is a different number: it has been open in Katoomba since 2013.
The qualifications that matter to you are the ones that answer a specific question about your body.
- CPPS and NSCA are why I know how to load a joint that has been through something, rather than avoiding it forever and calling that safety.
- Advanced Pilates is why the first thing I build is stability, before anything gets heavy.
- MNU nutrition certification is why, when you ask me about food, you get an answer based on evidence instead of whatever is being sold that year.
There are others. I am not going to list them all at you, because a list is not the thing you are trying to find out.
What if my body does not fit the program?
Over the years I have worked with women whose bodies came with real complications. Neurological conditions, reconstructions, joints that had already been operated on, chronic pain that nobody had explained to them properly.
When something turns up that is outside what I do, I say so out loud. Then I go and ask. I have a network of doctors, physios, chiropractors and osteopaths I lean on, here and overseas, and I would rather send you to one of them than guess at your expense.
I also write participant reports as a personal trainer for allied health work. I am not a registered NDIS provider and I will never suggest I am.
Honestly, the hard ones are my favourite part of the job. A body nobody has been able to solve is a problem worth sitting with.
What is this place actually like?
Small, warm, and full of women who were nervous on their first day.
There is one thing here that is not negotiable. If somebody takes away from how safe this place feels, they do not get to stay. I have asked people to leave over it.
That is not a rule I enforce on you. It is one I enforce for you. It is the entire reason a woman who has not exercised in twenty years can walk down those five steps and not be looked at sideways.
The standard is there to protect you. It was never a test you have to pass.
Fourteen days of training with Lachlan, at no cost to you.