Not before and after photographs. What their lives could do afterwards
that they could not do before, which is the part that actually matters.
Maree walked in in 2014, and never left.
She wanted to get fitter and stronger. She did not feel comfortable in
gyms. She was nervous, quiet and reserved, and she came anyway.
Twelve years later she is still here. She went past every goal she set,
got stronger, and her walking improved. As life has thrown things at her,
travel and years of sitting among them, we have dealt with each one as it
turned up.
She is also the wall sit queen. The running joke is that she could sit
there and knit, she is that good at them.
Community, friendship, and accountability. I travel regularly, and I
know I need to be held accountable to coming to see Lachlan, to
showing up, to doing the work. I’ve tried on my own, and it just
doesn’t happen.
Maree, twelve years in
She calls me the enigma solver. Bring him the hard problem, she tells
people, and he will find you an answer.
Luci had tried everyone, and was still in pain.
She came in in her mid forties with constant hip and lower back pain.
Pilates, yoga, gym classes, chiropractors, osteopaths, physiotherapists,
GPs, surgeons. She had been to all of them.
She is a designer and sits for most of the day, and the stiffness had
quietly taken things off her list. She could not go for a walk. She could
not take her dog out.
Here is the part she could not get over. She was already strong. She had
been training. What the assessment turned up was weakness in a set of
small muscles nobody had thought to check, and hips that needed
realigning and the right muscles switched back on.
She was technically, functionally strong, and still in constant pain. It
was the little things that fixed her.
She felt it shift within a fortnight. Within six months the pain was
gone, and she knew how to keep it gone herself. She trained here for over
three and a half years and now does big hikes every week, carries her art
supplies into the bush and stands painting all day.
She only stopped because she moved to Sydney. Her words: the biggest
thing she regrets about the move is that she cannot come to Steps to
Greatness any more.
Christie books 7am and it does not move.
Eight to ten hour days, sometimes twelve to fourteen. She is as time poor
as anybody I train.
So she blocks out 7am, four mornings a week, and nothing gets to have it.
It is the one hour of her day that belongs to her.
What she wanted when she started was to turn fifty feeling and looking
and being in the best shape of her life. In the weeks before her
fiftieth she set a personal record on every single lift, and walked into
that birthday on top of the world.
She is training for a marathon now, and the biggest hike she has
attempted. She did not start there. It was built slowly, and the reason
it worked is the slot that never moves.
They did not arrive ready.
Not one of the women above walked in fit. Maree was nervous. Luci had
been told by six different professionals that she was doing everything
right. Christie had no spare time and still does not.
What they had in common is that somebody looked at them properly before
writing them a program. That is the whole method, and it is what the
fourteen days is for.