There are moments in my career where I’m painfully aware that the biggest mistakes I’ve made were not technical. They weren’t about sets and reps, or cue selection, or whether I chose the “right” exercise on a given day. They were relational. They were human. And almost every one of them came back to the same root issue:
I wasn’t actually listening.
This is uncomfortable to admit—especially in a profession that prides itself on awareness, attunement, and sensitivity to nuance. But if I’m honest, many of my missteps as a movement professional continue to come not from a lack of knowledge, but from an excess of certainty.
What follows is not a sermon from a mountaintop. It’s a reflection from someone who has repeatedly fallen into the same traps, recognized them too late, and is slowly learning a better way forward.
The Cardinal Sin: Advising Without Listening
The greatest sin of the movement professional is not that we don’t know enough.
It’s that we often stop listening once we think we know.
A client tells us they want to feel strong again. We hear, “They need progressive overload.”
A patient says they’re afraid to move. We hear, “They need education.”
Someone tells us they miss running. We hear, “They need load management”
In each case, we may not be wrong. But we may not be listening.
Listening is not simply allowing someone to speak while we wait for our turn to explain. Listening is the willingness to temporarily suspend our own agenda—to let the client’s words land before we categorize, interpret, or correct them.
Too often, we listen just long enough to confirm what we already believe.
The Seduction of Knowledge
Movement professionals are, by nature, curious people. We study anatomy, biomechanics, neuroscience, psychology, and training systems. We attend seminars, read research, debate ideas, and refine our frameworks.
And at some point—quietly, without malicious intent—knowledge becomes identity.
We stop having ideas and start being the ideas.
When this happens, the client becomes a canvas onto which we project our worldview. Their body becomes a case study. Their pain becomes a problem to solve. Their questions become opportunities for us to demonstrate how much we know.
This is where listening erodes.
Because now, every sentence they speak is filtered through a pre-existing model. We aren’t meeting them where they are—we’re trying to bring them where we are.
And again, the issue isn’t that the information is wrong. The issue is that it’s premature.
Teaching Before Understanding
There is a real tension in our profession:
On one hand, clients often don’t know what they don’t know.
On the other hand, they know exactly what they care about.
When we skip the second in favor of the first, we lose them.
I’ve been guilty of explaining load management to someone who really wanted reassurance.
I’ve lectured about tissue adaptation to someone who needed permission to trust their body again.
I’ve corrected technique when the deeper issue was fear, frustration, or loss of identity.
Education matters. Deep understanding matters. But timing matters more.
You cannot educate someone into caring about something they didn’t ask about—at least not without first earning the right to guide them there.
Listening is how that right is earned.
We Are Not Creating Clients in Our Image
One of the quiet dangers of being passionate about movement is the unconscious desire to reproduce ourselves.
We want clients to lift like us, think like us, value what we value.
We celebrate when they adopt our language, our preferences, our philosophies.
But that is not the job.
The job is not to turn a client into a movement professional.
The job is to help them move toward their interests, their goals, their version of a meaningful life.
For one person, that might be returning to competitive sport.
For another, it might be hiking with their spouse.
For someone else, it might simply be waking up without dread.
If we impose our hierarchy of values onto them, we may win intellectually—but we lose relationally.
And without the relationship, none of the rest matters.
The Illusion of Knowing Best
Here is the humbling truth that took me far too long to accept:
We do not know what is best for another individual.
We know anatomy. We know principles. We know probabilities. We know what has worked before.
But we do not know their internal experience.
We do not know how their history lives in their body.
We do not know what they are ready for today.
Assuming we do is not confidence—it’s arrogance disguised as care.
Our role is not to dictate outcomes. It is to offer informed options, to explore consequences together, and to support decision-making that aligns with their values.
That requires humility.
Listening as a Clinical Skill
Listening is not passive. It is an active, trainable skill.
It means asking better questions. It means tolerating silence. It means resisting the urge to immediately fix.
It means being willing to hear things that don’t fit neatly into our frameworks.
It means letting a session feel “unproductive” by our standards if it is deeply productive by theirs.
Some of the most impactful moments I’ve had with clients didn’t involve exercise at all. They involved being present while someone articulated a fear they’d never said out loud.
That is movement work too.
Guidance, Not Control
Being a guide means walking slightly ahead—not dragging someone forward.
It means knowing when to lead and when to follow.
It means introducing new ideas gently, in language that connects to what the client already cares about.
It means patience.
True behavior change does not come from being told what’s optimal. It comes from discovering what’s meaningful.
Our job is to create conditions for that discovery—not to rush it.
A Personal Reckoning
If this piece sounds self-critical, that’s because it is.
I have talked too much. I have listened too little. I have assumed understanding when I should have asked another question.
And every time I’ve corrected course, it wasn’t because I learned a new technique—it was because I learned to slow down.
To ask. To wait. To hear.
The more experience I gain, the less certain I become—and the more effective my work feels.
The Quiet Power of Humility
Humility does not mean underselling our expertise.
It means holding it lightly.
It means remembering that knowledge is only useful when it serves the person in front of us—not our ego.
We are not saviors. We are not fixers. We are not the main character in someone else’s recovery story.
We are guides.
And the first responsibility of a guide is to listen.
Closing Thought
If you are a movement professional reading this and feeling a little uncomfortable—that’s a good sign.
It means you care.
The goal is not perfection. The goal is awareness.
Listen longer than feels efficient. Ask before you explain. Let the client’s interests lead.
Most people don’t need better explanations.
They need someone who’s actually with them.