Joe Smiles’ Coaching Philosophy

Introduction:

Yes!  I’ve created a bespoke fat loss course focusing on the psychology, mindset, habits, beliefs, behaviours and thinking patterns for permanent fat loss.  If you’re fat, i.e., overweight, or obese, then forget what you think you know.  You must learn how to lose fat and keep it off for good.  It’s a learning process.

What you’ve learned so far from your fad diet books, social media influencers, recipe books, yo-yo dieting and weight, etc., hasn’t worked.  Devoting your time and effort to my course will provide you with the essential skills needed for sustainable fat loss.

When it comes to my personal training coaching, and rehab training for patients with musculoskeletal and tendon injuries, I also have very specific and effective philosophies that work.

Most importantly, my clients, patients, and the patients from our Tendon Pain Clinic get results.  Here’s a taster of my philosophies on how I’ll work with you (remember to keep that mind of yours open) – enjoy!

 

My philosophy: what I do:

Opinions: I’m sure you’ve heard of the phrase: “Opinions are like… everyone’s got one”.  I naturally get asked my opinions and thoughts on everything health and fitness.  I always say, when it comes to getting you results – where possible – I use facts, not my opinions.  I have opinions but it’s better for all of us that I base these on facts.  Facts don’t care about my feelings or opinions, nor yours.  I use facts on myself so that I’m as successful as I can be in different domains of my life, including sport and training.  If an opinion isn’t good enough for me, it’s not good enough for you.

Everything falls into place when I focus on value for money.  Facts deliver value for money.  Facts deliver results.  Facts are fun because they get you results!  Of course, where there are gaps in the evidence, the art of individual coaching fills those gaps.  Being open minded is about using the facts and discarding the misinformation.

I believe no one has the right to tell you what to think, but you can also learn a lesson from everyone.  When I work, I personally prefer to be guided by what the science tells us on how to live, train, and manage a healthier productive life.  Therefore, l have scientific reasons and approaches for my training decision making, which I can pass on to you, should you wish to know.

 

Discovery:

I tailor gradual, progressive, and periodised exercise sessions to meet your physical and mental levels and needs.  Trusting in this process will give you the best opportunity for success by reducing your pain, optimising your strength, physical condition, and fitness reserve.  All your training is planned, and in detail, for each of your sessions.  This enables us to have a log of your progress, which helps me project a road map of your future sessions.  Sessions help you stay accountable and on track.

I believe it’s important for you to discover how to perform technically challenging rehabilitative, fitness, or sports-specific exercise safely and correctly.  This develops consistent movement patterns, optimises improvement, and reduces injury by knowing how to do things right.

I believe in open rapport and dialogue.  Asking me questions about how to think about, manage, and find solutions to your health and injuries is encouraged.  You’ll discover more about your body and the best options for you.  This comes with patience, extensive clinical experience and easy-to-understand scientific advice.  It’s all about a journey of educated discovery, and finding the truth in what we do, say, and follow.

I’m a big believer in talking things through.  You can’t expect to be successful at your training without tearing down barriers.  The mind and body must work in unison.  I love empowering individuals with the right type of coaching input, life-style changes, and information.

All this changes outlooks (i.e., looking at injuries, weight, health, fitness, choices, etc., through a different lens).  I love sharing the science of exercise medicine; I see it that you’re in the driving seat while I’m in the passenger seat holding the map and guiding the way.

 

A different approach:

I take a different approach to physiotherapy and the therapies industry.  I actively involve you to use your own body to heal itself.  I specialise in using the domain of exercise science in rehabilitation, strengthening, and conditioning, to:

• • • Optimise your healing.

  
  

  • • Optimise recovery.

  
  

  • • Reduce or stop pain.

  
  

  • • Reduce future injuries.

  
  

  • • Increase performance and function.

  
  

  • • Increase physical resilience and strength.

  
  

  • • Increase mental resilience.

  
  

  • Improve quality of life.

Discussing and planning long-term strengthening helps prevent future injuries or flare-ups.  This also enables your body to deal with the stresses and forces you put on it.  I think it’s vital to improve your physical and mental resilience beyond your previous standards so that you can do more of what you love doing – confident in the fact that you’re a fitter and stronger version than before.

Remember that your body is extremely good at healing itself.  Exercise is the most value-based care you can get for your money, time, and effort.  The right type of exercise not only aids your injury healing process through changing the structure of your bodily tissues, but it also reverses the ageing process.  A stronger you is a more youthful you.  Also, a stronger you is harder to injure, and harder to die!

The exercise we do helps to aid the healing process physically by stimulating damaged and weakened cells just enough to grow and get stronger through progressive mechanical tension (stressing the organism through hormesis – exposure to increasing amounts of stress – thus signalling biological healing processes).  Exercise reduces inflammation, and makes bone, ligament, tendon, muscle, nerves, endocrine, and immune cells stronger.

The exercise we do also helps to aid the healing process mentally by stimulating the mind to adapt positively to stress.  To heal, the mind must also expand its comfort zone, overcome adversity, challenge its beliefs for the better good, apply stoicism, reduce fears, and develop confidence and trust in its body.

Research shows that if you want to outperform all types of therapy and injection outcomes, you need to receive correct exercise training techniques + education + address misinformation + use understanding and listening + open communication + reassurance + encouragement + empathy and caring + create new beliefs.  I also specialise in transforming people’s lives permanently by focusing on life-style, behavioural, and nutritional changes.  Hence, this is what I give you.

 

My philosophy: why I don’t offer you therapies:

I don’t do ‘inactive therapies’.  Musculoskeletal physiotherapists, osteopaths, chiropractors, etc., love to touch you; they take a passive approach to try to heal you.  This passive approach is called passive manual therapy (their touch apparently heals you, and your role is submissive).

Manual therapy is defined as having someone or something apply (manual passive) movement to your body while you are involuntary, sitting or lying still.  This means you’re receiving pressure on your body from someone.  This feels lovely, but unfortunately research clearly shows that any perceived reduction in musculoskeletal pain from someone else doing something to you is a short-lived placebo effect.

If manual therapy worked, there wouldn’t be a continually growing list of options and opinions.  Just like fad diets, there’re dozens of manual therapy treatments/techniques on the market.

Some examples of passive manual therapies (also called complimentary or alternative therapies) include:

1. 1. 1. Soft tissue mobilisation.

   
   

   1. 1. Massages with hands, elbows, feet, machines, and metal tools.

   
   

   1. 1. Joint mobilisations.

   
   

   1. 1. Joint manipulations and thrusting.

   
   

   1. 1. Reiki.

   
   

   1. 1. Cupping.

   
   

   1. 1. Acupuncture.

   
   

   1. 1. Dry needling.

   
   

   1. 1. Laser therapy.

   
   

   1. 1. Electrotherapy.

   
   

   1. 1. Ultrasound.

   
   

   1. 1. Taping.

   
   

   1. 1. Reflexology.

   
   

   1. 1. Osteopathy.

   
   

   1. 1. Homeopathy.

   
   

   1. 1. Chiropractic.

   
   

   1. 1. Physiotherapy.

   
   

   1. 1. Myofascial, Rolfing, and a variety of other connective tissue ‘releases’.

   
   

   1. 1. Trigger point therapy.

   
   

   1. 1. Muscle energy techniques.

   
   

   1. 1. Injections (PRP and corticosteroid).

   
   

   1. 1. Aromatherapy.

   
   

   1. 1. Hot stones.

   
   

   1. 1. Craniosacral therapy.

   
   

   1. 1. Leech therapy.

   
   

   1. 1. Herbs and mushrooms.

   
   

   1. 1. Laetrile, shark cartilage, and Gerson therapy (alternative cancer therapies).

   
   

   1. Bloodletting, etc.

Just like a fad diet, or in this case a manual therapy treatment, it’s selected wholly on the biases of your therapist’s or your own interests, and not on it being better than another treatment.  It also doesn’t have the benefits of exercise or rehabilitative exercise, both the closest things we have in life to a miracle.

There’s been thousands of research papers on manual therapy and alternative medicine/therapy over the decades.  There’s no scientific evidence to prove that any type of these alternative therapies can help to control or cure pain or injuries, speed up injury recovery, help you lose fat, or even cure illnesses like cancer.

Some alternative therapies might be unsafe and can cause harmful side effects.  Yet people seek out these alternatives because:

1. 1. 1. They’ve been dissatisfied in some way with conventional medicine.

   
   

   1. 1. They see alternative treatments as offering more personal autonomy, personal care, and control over their health decisions.

   
   

   1. 1. The therapy is seen as more compatible with their values, worldview, biases, or beliefs regarding the nature and meaning of health and illness.

   
   

   1. 1. They’ve heard hearsay from a friend that it worked for them so it must work for oneself.

   
   

   1. 1. People get desperate when they’re in pain.

   
   

   1. 1. People want something done to them, to comfort them, which is easier than being proactive and getting yourself out of pain yourself or doing harder things like exercise rehab.

   
   

   1. They’ve been marketed to.

Yet what you need – not want – but need, is the most proven, scientifically practiced pathway for your health.  It’s in your best interest to apply this principle to your injuries.  It’s the right type of exercise for your injury, using the right amount of volume, frequency, and intensity to heal and come back stronger.

If you needed brain surgery, would you tell your brain surgeon which surgical procedure you’d prefer them to try?  Or would you pick a brain surgeon that operates on your brain differently from their colleagues?  Probably not.  So why do we pick and choose manual therapy treatments like we’re in a sweet shop?  Probably because when we’re confused and desperate about the pain we’re in, we want some immediate human touch and attention to comfort us, and take the pain away.

 

For once it’s your parents’ fault:

Research on hundreds of thousands of people around the globe have shown that manual therapy treatments only change some people’s perception or sensation of pain briefly, some of the time (mostly none of the time).  The fact is, placebo treatments and pills have scientifically proven to work as good or better than all manual therapy treatments.  Manual therapy doesn’t solve the problem, they cost a lot, and you need to become reliable on them long term.

Also, treatments tend to work better if we ‘buy’ into them (financially, emotionally, mentally, and we choose to believe them to work).  This is called the placebo effect; a bit like when you fell over as a kid and your mum rubbed your knee better.  Just like when your mum rubbed your knee, you believed it would feel better, you trusted her, and you felt comforted.

Yet nothing physically changed in your knee.  Therapies aren’t magic wands, and neither was your mum.  They don’t change your body’s injured tissue structure, nor encourage your body’s tissues to heal themselves.  Yet we feel cared for.

Just like the placebo phenomenon that’s built into our evolution since we were kids by our parents, by our parent’s parents, and so on to the dawn of time, another similar phenomenon is the expectancy effect; when someone expects a given result, that expectation unconsciously affects the outcome of the expected result.  When we expect to have a certain kind of outcome, even without realising it, we change our actions and behaviours to get this exact outcome.

Research performed on thousands of humans have shown that people feel better if you give them a blue pill (a soothing colour) in a soothing and medical/clinical environment, by someone dressed in a white coat, than if you give someone a red pill (harsh danger colour) in a non-medical environment, by someone dressed in normal clothes.

It’s scientifically proven with the same results with toothpicks and acupuncture needles when the patient can’t see what’s pricking them.  Same with massaging your skin, fat, and muscle by trained and untrained massage therapists.  The list goes on.  Yet you’re not actually physically getting better or improving your health.

Competing athletes aren’t ‘officially’ allowed to inject/swallow supplements, wear things, or have things done to them which speed up their recovery healing time or enhance performance.  Let’s face it:  If manual therapy treatments really did work by stopping an athlete’s pain, speeding their healing process, and making them perform better, faster, stronger beyond what is humanly possible, then these supplements and treatments would be banned at the Olympic Games.

There’s only one thing that can reduce pain, speed healing time, and improve performance faster than humanly possible, and that’s performance enhancing drugs like steroids.  That’s why steroids are banned, and rubbing, poking, and prodding an athlete isn’t.

(On a side note, that’s also why all alternative, complementary, homeopathy, and supplements off the shelf aren’t banned, as they don’t do anything.)  You’ll also see some athletes pray to God and have superstitious ticks.  Athletes need to feel cared for too, you know.

I know all this sounds like a hard pill to swallow (pun intended), but you can either choose to ‘feel’ better for a moment, or ‘get’ better and move on with your life.  I’m offering you the latter.

 

Learned helplessness:

Unfortunately, manual therapy encourages learned helplessness.  It disempowers you as it makes you believe you must rely on someone else’s physical touch to get you better, reduce your pain, and improve your situation.  In reality, you just need yourself, and someone to show you the right knowledge for your issue.

Becoming dependent on pseudo-scientific treatments also encourages false hope, and is emotionally reactive, akin to a knee-jerk reaction to get someone to do something to you ASAP to get rid of your pain. It’s like applying an expensive sticky plaster, or like a flight rather than fight response to pain.  (Don’t even get me started on corticosteroid injections being an expensive sticky plaster.)

Your solution needs to encourage a proactive fight response, by taking a calculated, scientifically proven, longer-term approach to health and pain and addressing the underlying causes.  You need to do something to yourself and for yourself and take action.

Any placebo outcomes from complementary treatments and therapies create learned helplessness because they’re unethical.  They’re a trick of the mind and often don’t work for most people, or work for a short period of time until the placebo trick wears thin.

You also don’t know who they’ll work for as it depends on the individual’s strength of belief in the process.  Such placebos are unethical and morally wrong because they take advantage of your knowledge which when realised, undermines your trust, compromises your patient-therapist relationship, and results in potentially extending your medical harm and disease.

In addition, any placebo outcomes from complementary treatments are unethical as they don’t work for most people, and you don’t know who they’ll work for as it depends on the individual’s strength of belief.  Overall, passive treatments are damaging to your health because they prolong illnesses and injuries, delaying mental and physical health.

 

Drawbacks to the therapy education system:

Injuries and exercise play a tiny role in physio, osteo, and chiro academic curriculum.  For example, university physio degrees briefly include only one musculoskeletal injury module, and exercise teaching goes as far as explaining that if you’ve got a bad knee, you bend it and straighten it, etc.

Students are told to get patients to buy into them having magic healing hands.  Yet all the evidence for healing from pain, injury, clogged arteries, type 2 diabetes, obesity, depression, etc., points to exercise.  Most physio study is based on hospital ward work such as moving and walking patients from their bed to the bathroom.

Therapy degrees are gradually letting go of teaching outdated manual therapy because there’s no evidence for them.  But they still teach them.  Yet improvements in education are constantly hampered by political hierarchy, industry manipulation, and corruption.  Therefore, therapy degrees still include a lot of passive treatments, governance and marketing, that has nothing to do with making patients better.  The health and pharmacology system are rigged against you.  There’s money to be made to keep you ill and injured.  Having spent my whole life being ill, I’m the best person to approve this sad message.

 

Therapy marketing:

You’ll be familiar with the many marketing strategies that physios, osteopaths, and chiropractors use.  They always look for your failures.  If you’ve ever been to a therapist, I’ll bet your bottom dollar you’ve been told your pelvis/feet/knees/spine is out of alignment and needs to be put back in place by a so-called expert.

These statements capitalise on your fears.  You must rely on going back to ‘correct yourself’.  Of course, none of this is true.  If a person had a pelvis or spinal joint out of alignment, they’d need morphine, emergency surgery and a blood transfusion from the horrific car crash they just had.  Furthermore, there’re thousands of people running city marathons every year with different gaits patterns, bodies, and postures, or missing a limb, all having the time of their life.

Don’t look for someone who puts you down and picks holes in you.  Look for someone who builds you up.

 

Touching your body doesn’t change your body:

Lastly, remember earlier that I mentioned you need mechanical tension, or progressive stimulation (hormesis) to get a stronger mind and body?  You also need metabolic stress.  Passive manual therapy isn’t enough change or heal tissues.

The reason being is that applying needles, machines, or someone’s hands to move, massage, rub, poke, or prod your skin, fat, muscle, and joints passively doesn’t offer anywhere near the amount of mechanical tension needed to make your mind and body adapt, heal, or improve itself.

Only resistance exercise (be it rehab or for health), or cardio, plus time, can force your molecules, hormones, immune system, and cells to adapt and proliferate enough to tick the boxes.

I unapologetically think you deserve better.