E140 | Kara Shull: Improving Mental and Physical Health in Children

If you’re reading this, it’s not too late… (well, unless it’s after November 30th, 2020).

THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE for 50% OFF ALL DIGITAL COURSES. Use code ‘GRATEFUL50’ at https://artofcoaching.com/courses/.

I think we can all agree that children need to move, play and explore. But that’s just the start. They also need to develop physical literacy: the ability to perform basic movement skills and the motivation to prioritize an active lifestyle.

These qualities aren’t just “nice to have”… they are absolutely essential for physical, cognitive and social development. And if that wasn’t enough, research has shown that physical literacy is associated with the ability to thrive and participate productively in society!

Unfortunately, opportunities to develop these qualities are dwindling. And that’s exactly why I wanted to invite today’s guest on the show…

Kara Shull (DPT, CSCS) and her non-profit, MOVEMENT2BE, are taking their expertise to underserved communities and providing “movement experiences”. Their mission is to make movement fun and accessible while also teaching the next generation of leaders how to promote these behaviors.

In today’s episode, we discuss:

• How to engage in “serious play”

• The role of communication in getting kids to buy-in

• Why if you can coach a kid, you can coach any adult…

• The psychosocial aspects of movement and wellness

If you want to help Kara and MOVEMENT2BE in any way, connect with her here!

Via their website: www.movement2be.com

Via Instagram: @movement2be 

Via her website: https://www.movement2live.com/

Via her instagram: @movement2live 

If you enjoyed this episode and want even more information about training youth athletes, be sure to check out our episode with Jim Kielbaso.

Jefferies, Philip, et al. “Physical Literacy and Resilience in Children and Youth.” Frontiers in Public Health, vol. 7, 2019, doi:10.3389/fpubh.2019.00346.

Kara Shull  0:01  

One of my roommates was a teacher back in the day. And she was like, Yeah, I teach fourth grade class. And you know what they like the kids skip. And I was like, why? At that age, right? They don’t know that I’m in a bad mood because I haven’t moved, or all I ate was sugar yesterday, you know, they just have the mood. So it’s our job to recognize some of the science behind it so we can apply it to life. And you know what, again, some of the kids who don’t have the best home environments, or who generally just are sitting all the time, these kids are able to develop their brain as well and to soak in the information. So not only are recreating a generation that like can’t problem solve, they can’t understand their emotions. And we need these environments where they’re learning how to problem solve 

 

Brett Bartholomew  0:45  

creativity, movement, problem solving creative like thinking communication, all these things are tied up in a nexus of wellness.

 

Welcome to the Art of coaching podcast, a show aimed at getting to the core of what it takes to change attitudes, behaviors and outcomes in the weight room, boardroom classroom, and everywhere in between. I’m your host, Brett Bartholomew, I’m a performance coach, keynote speaker, and the author of the book conscious coaching. But most importantly, I’m a lifelong student interested in all aspects of human behavior and communication. I want to thank you for joining me. And now let’s dive into today’s episode.

 

According to the CDC, less than one quarter of children aged six to 17, participate in 60 minutes of physical activity every day. Research done in 2017 showed that only 26.1% of high school students participate in at least 60 minutes per day of physical activity on all seven days of the previous week. This and you guys don’t need me to go through this statistics of youth health of youth development of the status of health not only in the United States, but worldwide. It’s not good. Now, let me make something clear. Nothing in this episode is about getting ripped. It’s not about becoming the best youth athlete in the world, or putting your kid on a fast track to be the next major league baseball player or the next rugby player. This is about how a lack of movement, a lack of play and a lack of physical literacy impacts not only kids health, but their ability to socialize and their ability to develop cognitively as well. And this is a problem our guest,  Kara Shull is dedicated to solving. Now full disclosure, I sit on the board of movement to be which is a nonprofit. And Kara and I work together in the past when I worked with a lot of professional athletes and a lot of different domains. And we still have remained good friends and like Kara, you know, we have taken different interests of ours and put them into new practices. You know, she wanted to bridge the gap between and say, Hey, I know you could go to physical therapy school, I know you could be a strength conditioning coach, I know you could open your own practice, but how can we really work with youth and underserved communities, this company started in Harlem to be able to use movement as a catalyst to build self esteem hoped competence and power. And for me, the interest was on communication. Because I talk about this a lot. In certain presentations, I give how much movement contributes to not just Yeah, motor skill development and a healthier lifestyle, but cognitive development, and our ability to interact and understand complex subjects and problem solve at a higher level. So I’m very excited to bring you this. Now we do nerd out about a lot of things. And we only have a certain amount of time on the show. 

 

So if you guys want to learn more about the presentation where I talked about coaching adolescents and creating the optimal coaching environment, it’s very easy. It’s also very free, you can go to artofcoaching.com/optimal. And you will get that entire presentation where we talk about the three predominant neurotransmitters that are impact adolescence, and how it should change the way we speak and understand how to train and work with youth athletes. If you want any of those things, those are there. If you want to support the podcast, you can also do so by going to artofcoaching.com/patron. But most importantly, I hope you guys take from this episode, how important it is that we start getting involved with improving physical literacy and underserved communities. Every single one of you knows a neighbor or a friend who has a kid who has a very special kid, but maybe it doesn’t take to sports. Maybe they don’t like going outside. Maybe they just don’t know how to move well right now. So they abstain from these things, and you need to get involved with this program. There’s so many ways you don’t have to be a physical therapist, a strength coach, you don’t have to have any of these kinds of backgrounds. What you need to do is understand that if we don’t get involved with getting these kids more active through a struggle, not just tricked sport pro cause but true play true movement, we are going to be exposed to far worse situations down the road when it comes to their development. All right, enough for me. Let’s get on with it Kara Shull

  movement to be. 

 

I am here with Kara Shull

 on this new episode of The Art of coaching podcast. Kara. Thanks for joining me for a conversation.

 

Kara Shull  5:23  

No problem. Thanks for having me.

 

Brett Bartholomew  5:25  

Yeah, Kara. You know, I told the audience, we always do the intro before the show, because I never like putting people in that situation that’s like, so tell me about yourself, right? It’s always it’s always somewhat of an uncomfortable like way to introduce you, I would never have you over to my house and be like, So Kara, tell everybody about yourself. I’ve primed it. That said, I think that the thing that I would like to dive into right away is the mission of movement to be and you know, this is something guys, if you’re listening, full disclosure, I sit on the board for movement to be it’s a nonprofit care, I do want you to explain what movement to be is a little bit more and how it helps so many kids so that we can orient people right off the bat on that standpoint.

 

Kara Shull  6:08  

Yes, we are a nonprofit organization, that our goal and mission is really to empower youth through movement, which seems like a broad topic. But really, we are taking our knowledge as fitness professionals and movement specialists to underserved communities where they don’t have the same opportunities to develop both neuro muscularly and physically and emotionally. So we’re just helping provide opportunities for these youth to have some movement experiences, so that they can grow up and be all that they’re made to be. Because they’re experiencing people who really care about them, and who are helping them to understand that, hey, fitness, and movement is fun. And you don’t have to be an athlete, and you don’t have to be perfect at this. We’re practicing. We’re figuring it out. And so we’re building self esteem, we’re helping them to practice things and learn kind of the basic principles of hey, it’s not everything is easy. We can practice and really start seeing some improvements over the whole period of a semester that we work with these youth.

 

Brett Bartholomew  7:09  

That’s well said. And I think, you know, when I was trying to boil this down, even when you and I started working together, you know, I wanted to unpack underserved communities more, right, like I always thought, okay, so wait a minute, are these kids that don’t have access to certain resources? Or are these people that you know, maybe just went to school, especially prior to COVID? That, you know, they didn’t get physical education anymore, right. Like, I have a, let’s say, I have a neighbor down the street, and they have a kid that just sport doesn’t resonate with him or her right? Like, they’re kind of that awkward teenager. They don’t really think about going outside, they know they should move, but maybe they’re a bookworm. Maybe they’re into something else, like just movement to be help that kid in the suburbs? Or is it just kids and underserved and impoverished communities? What’s the general answer there? Because I think that there’s so many people that would like to get involved with this. But it gets tough of like, there’s many definitions of what could be underserved?

 

Kara Shull  8:03  

Totally. And that’s a great question. And that’s kind of how we run as an organization is we provide movement for everyone, every kid can have it. But we the nonprofit side provides the more free and services that to youth who can’t pay for it, or to youth who, you know, their parents have three jobs, things like that. So they can’t be involved in all the different sports that some other parents might be like, Hey, let’s try to get them in soccer and dance. And these are the kids who really don’t have some of those same opportunities. Yet at the same time, we’re also saying, hey, movement is for everyone. So that same youth that say maybe their parents can pay for a program, we want them to also take advantage of the programs that we’re offering, and the education that we’re providing for them so that they can also have a good movement experience. So in that essence, underserved is kind of a broad topic. So I’m glad you asked that. But yeah, underserved is primarily our heart is those kids who don’t have the same opportunities to be involved in programs like this, whether it’s because they’re, you know, they’re unable to afford it, or they’re just in a rural community, you know, like, some people grew up in these small towns and like, we just like pushed weight, you know, they didn’t really know how to kind of learn their body movements, they had a dad who was coaching them, which is not bad, right? But we just want to provide our knowledge base to that broad spectrum.

 

Brett Bartholomew  9:32  

And I think the audience that listens to this will appreciate that because we have a broad spectrum of people here too and even me just being a new dad, you know, movement is such an intriguing topic because you know, you from a physical therapy standpoint, me from a strength coach standpoint, and my you know, my masters are then motor learning. And so these things are all things that I’m interested in, but the average person just hears a lot of myths, like even me being the father of a 10 month old. You know, there are so many people that you know, oh, are you going to make your kid do this So you’re gonna make your kid do that is he going to do you know these patterns? And I’m like, No, I’m gonna let him be a 10 month old. Right? And we think about movement and it’s easy. You know you we’ve seen so many parents be like, hey, teach my kid how to run, teach my kid how to do this. I got a 12 year old that he throws 80 miles an hour teach them how to do this. And we have a really great episode, if you guys haven’t heard it on youth athletic development training with Jim kielbasa. So, but I think you know, what people don’t understand is for people that aren’t competitive athletes, movement is so critically tied into confidence and self esteem. I mean, it’s very nurture nature, there are a lot of kids that these things just don’t provoke, or invoke joy in them the same way they do with it, and nothing’s wrong with them. They just haven’t found anything they identify with in terms of standard play, and what have you, you know, so how do you reach those kinds of kids that they’re a part of your program, low confidence, you want to get them involved in something? And you know, just educating them isn’t going to do it? What do you do to hook them and try to find the next best thing to kind of get them intrigued and get their attention?

 

Kara Shull  11:04  

Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, what appeals to a kid like, what are they thinking about at that age, you know, and kids, I will define, I’ll kind of backtrack a little bit, we specifically work with youth who are ages six to 12. Because going back to some of that motor learning that first year of life is where they develop the most, right? They develop all of these neural pathways, those synapses, and then they get honed down and worked on as they learn these different reflexes, and between the ages of six and 12, that’s when they’re really supposed to start developing them, and making them like, Hey, this is how we move. And this is how we move well, so they’re developing those patterns. And that’s where we saw the deficit. So that’s really the science behind the program. It is also again, twofold because it’s building that self esteem during that age. And how did we have to hide the science with fun? Kids don’t care, like, they don’t care. They’re like, Oh, yeah, I’m learning my motor control patterns, you know, like that. They all they want to do is have fun. So we’re there to make sure that they’re having fun, and that they’re really feeling encouraged. That’s why we encourage all of our instructors that we say, you know, what, we are here to plant seeds. We’re here to plant seeds in these kids lives. So to give them the best experience they can, that they can have possible, because you know what some of them might never get encouraged throughout the day, you know, they may never hear that like, hey, that you did that really well. Let’s do that again. You know, they don’t, there’s some kids, you’d be surprised they don’t get that. So again, we just try to have fun and make them feel good. Where it’s like, you know, some kids might get upset, sometimes they might cry, because they couldn’t do something. But we’re right there to pick them back up and just say, hey, well, let’s try this way, or make it into a game. Everything is a game. You know, that’s how you have fun with it. So that’s really how we’ve hidden the science. 

 

And if you will, again, I nerd out on this part. So back to the science behind it of the neuromuscular control. And I’m sure you’ll like nerd out with me about this. But it is about developing those motor patterns. Because really, I come from making this from a physical therapy standpoint. And then working with amazing strength coaches like you it was like, Dude, how can we get these kids and these next generations to move better? Because again, this really kind of started with conversations with one of my roommates was a teacher back in the day. And she was like, Yeah, I teach fourth grade class, and you know, what they like, they can’t skip. And I was like, Why? Why are you serious? They can’t skip. And she showed me some of these kids that I was like, No, that’s terrible. They have no developmental delays, like nothing. And she was like, yeah, they can’t skip. So I went to her class, and just like, did kind of, you know, back then it wasn’t called move it to be, but just did a little kind of screening with these youth. And it was like, wow, those synapses, those things that we talked like, I went in with the motor control hat, you know, that it was like, they are really not moving? Well, they’re sitting at computers, and you know, now, I’m even more adamant about it, because it’s like clash with COVID It’s no one’s really fault. But like kids are just sitting in front of a computer. Seven plus hours,

 

Brett Bartholomew  14:07  

unamplified, they were they were doing that they do that anyway, right? Because even if they weren’t sitting in front of it, like they sit at school, that was something that always drove me nuts at school, I was like, I looked at school, you know, as sedentary activity. I’m like, here we go for eight hours, I just gotta go sit on my butt. Now, you know, and I couldn’t wait for baseball or football practice after that, because I just got so frustrated of sitting the entire time. But I think COVID is just, I mean, there’s a lot of things that have led into it, right, it’s not just COVID it’s cancellation of recess. It’s all these things. It’s,  also just this idea that plays been taken out of our community. When I travel internationally, you still have adults that will belong, you know, and whether it’s a Gaelic football club or a rugby club or this or that and Americans by and large, if they don’t make it to professional sports or whatever, they’re just done, there’s no play. And I think that you know, because inevitably there’s people listening that are like wait a minute, she said from 6 To 12, what if my daughter’s 14? What do we do but before we get to that, one thing I want to, I hope the audience is picking up on is like how you’ve combined these passions. And I think it’s been something that’s intertwined us in an interesting way, too. I definitely want to know how you’ve done that. But think about this, right? I had a passion for human performance in coaching. My motor, my master’s research was on motor learning, but specifically how what we say impacts, right, how we organize the certain actions. Right, so internal external cueing. Do we give somebody a metaphor or an outcome, and believe it or not like that helps the neuromuscular system self organized better than if we give them really, really in depth, right body position, kinematic oriented cues, such as, hey, bend your elbow or flex this, right, like? And so, ironically, my initial passion for physical development, and desire to make that better let into this nuance of like, Wait a minute. So communication is tied into motor learning, because if I say this, it does that. And then I started looking into communication research. And I’m like, wait a minute, you know, the medical industry waste $12 billion a year in US primarily tied to poor communication. The world spends 385 billion on me, I started noticing communication issues everywhere. And I’m like, Well, if if communication issues could impact my life the way it did, and just the instructions I give an athlete, and thus, their performance and their development. I need to do more in this. Now think about you, right? Like, I want to hear you got into physical therapy. Why? And then how did that spiral into now? Okay, kids? 

 

Kara Shull  16:33  

Yeah, yeah. Well, this is why Brett, I feel like we’ve always gotten along, because we like trying every way to make these connections. And for me, honestly, PT, school was kind of a, I was one of those that originally went to go to medical school, and then like, did all the prerequisites. And I was like, ah, whoa, I don’t want to do that. So the PT school side was kind of like, okay, how can I use all these prerequisites, and then eventually fell in love with you, wow, we could really help people, we can have a really big impact in people’s lives by helping them to move well and feel better. But before that, I was involved in nonprofits. So I was actually a communication major. And I loved organizational communication, like figuring out structure and leadership as well as just leaving what you said, how to communicate well with someone how to get communities all together for a common cause. So then I started going into the nonprofit world and worked for Big Brothers Big Sisters I worked for, I did an AmeriCorps program all before PT school. And then I started realizing Wait a second, that part of me is, is is pretty big. It’s still this big passion. And I love what I’m doing here with PT, but that’s still missing. So how can I kind of combine this, and then it was just a combination of looking at also, I’m a huge believer in prevention, right? Like, the way we go about things sometimes, like, I’ve seen so many clients, even pro athletes, right? Like, even when we work with the combine, guys, it was like, dude, these guys, like, never learned how to hip hinge, you know, like, they just, Jack is terrible.

 

Brett Bartholomew  18:14  

That’s something that the average listener, I think, would appreciate, right? Because they get this idea that, you know, these elite athletes, and all these people are great movers. And they are in context, right. But that context is very narrow, the amount of time they spend practicing and playing relative to their overall life is low in accordance with all the other movements they do, right, whether they’re playing with their kids, whether they’re just going to the store, you know, and so, and not only that, they get movement within a very narrow domain. And so it’s interesting, because, you know, for the nerds out there that are in the performance world, they’d be like, Well, how do you define good movement? And, you know, there’s Purus for about every movement assessment, right? Like, I still think it’s so funny how there’s this expectation out there that we’re gonna find the one best fitness tracker, the one best movement screen, the one, everybody’s seeking out the one best thing and think about the narrative that sends to kids, right? And think about what it’s sent to adults, like, hey, what’s the best form of exercise? Or the one you’re going to do? Most commonly, right? Like, I don’t, I think it’s funny when I had a friend of mine laugh one time because a woman was talking about how she loves zoom bunnies, like God, that’s not training. That’s isn’t that I go, Dude, she’s moving. You know what I mean? Like, I get it, like you’re a strength coach, and you’re big, tough guy, but like, the woman’s moving, and it with kids, What expectations do they have? Right, like, think about what they see all the time, in general. And before social media it was magazines, before his magazines, it was models before it was models. It was, you know, whatever, like people have always aspired to live up to a certain idea, but no wonder a lot of them kind of abstain from movement. Because if you’re somebody that’s a late ish bloomer, you might be you know, not as excited and not as hot I mean, I probably wasn’t I was a way better athlete at like 20 to 25 than I was in my mid teens. But what would you say Kara and feel free to respond anything I said there, but I also want to know in conjunction, if somebody does have a 14 15 year old right now, that’s gangly, baby giraffe, just kind of homely again, great kid. But the chickens aren’t clucking in terms of movement looks Knock Kneed, they don’t love it. And they’re scared for that, you know, maybe their kids stressed out because of school, and he has no healthy outlets. Like, is it too? Are you saying it’s too late for them? Because they haven’t developed these pathways?

 

Kara Shull  20:33  

No, not at all. And kind of, again, backtracking a little on some of the one of the deaths that came to mind when you’re talking about the athletes. It’s like, yeah, this lady can do Zumba. And then this guy’s you know, in new strength, and they could squat 350 450 pounds, you know, but can they touch their toes?

 

Brett Bartholomew  20:50  

Right, Everybody’s got some form of function, right?

 

Kara Shull  20:54  

Totally, totally, totally. So in that essence, you know, working with the kids who may feel like we missed kind of that age range where we really are developing well, well, development happens throughout life, right. So I’d say when it comes to teenagers, now we do have I didn’t mention, because the bread and butter is really ages six to 12. And that’s really try to be our best and focus in on our best programs. But we do have a middle school offering that what we did specifically in Harlem, because that’s where we are located primarily. When we first started, everything was we had these middle school kids 6 7 and eighth graders who the same type of movement experiences and the games that we were playing, they’re like, I don’t care. You know, so I think when it comes to something with movement, we also need to connect it with something that they’re interested in again, it relates back to fun, even though they’re in a bigger body, and they might have more attitude, they still just want to have fun, you know? So I think when it comes to maybe the kid who like you know, they’re kind of they might bat have bad posture, they might not be seem to take any interest in sports or even competition, like some kids aren’t motivated with competition, you know? So you got to find something that’s like, Hey, what is something that you enjoy? That involves movement? And that might be something like, obviously, it depends on your environment where you add, it might be like, just hiking, like, Hey, let’s go on a hike. Let’s like, move. Hey, Let’s just try turning on YouTube. Again, we can use technology to like, help with movement. So can we turn on a YouTube video and just dance, you know, I don’t even care what you look like just dance go crazy. it builds a lot of confidence, you know. So it’s really, that’s really what at the end of the day, we’ve tried to push the most like, at the end of every class, we are planting seeds. We’re trying to build these pillars of movement. But at the end of the day, we’re also just encouraging them to do movement that they think is fun. So we kind of consider it a movement experience. We want everybody to have good movement experiences. And for everybody that’s going to be different. So again, for those middle schoolers, or people who they feel like Man, this kid is just all he wants to do is play video games, hey, get DDR. You know, I like that they can play a video game and move and have a lot of fun. So it’s just kind of meeting them right where they’re at, I think is the key to really, you know, finding their inner drive and what gets them going.

 

Brett Bartholomew  23:24  

Yeah, and I think that’s, you know, you guys, you use good words there. We have a quiz on our website, a drives quiz. And, you know, we made the distinction we have a podcast on this drive is a subconscious influence or behavior, it’s very different than motivation, right? Kids, and people in general can be motivated and inspired momentarily. But that generally doesn’t stick with them where like, whatever you’re driven to do. And again, beyond the context of this, we have six drives, if you guys are interested, go to artofcoaching.com/whatdrivesyou. But when you’re trying to get somebody engaged Kara, you’re spot on the most common, the most effective way is one that’s indirect, and one that evokes emotion. You know, people think that education, there’s so many coaches and facilitators and teachers out there, whatever term they want to use, and it’s well intentioned, so I’m not criticizing in any kind of, you know, know at all kind of way, but they do think that just giving people information, so right now, as we’re talking, right, I’m on the health.gov website. And you know, it talks about all the things right, like, Hey, kids get at least 150 minutes a week, muscle strengthening activity, like no kids going and looking at this, you know, like this thing doesn’t really speak to them, you know, and, and they hear Yeah, boosts your mood, sharpen your focus, reduce your stress, improve your sleep, that’s great, you know, information, but again, does it connect with a kid, you know, now granted, I can say this, this isn’t necessarily for kids. This is just moving in general and some of the things say for adults for parents, but I’d make the argument that what you did at least I know why got involved with it is there’s not enough on kids. You know, of course there’s after school programs and there’s things like this and some people you know, have their personal trainers or what have you will will have these kinds of things. But you know, you even have strength coaches, I think it’s something that’s always bugged me who are really elitist about not wanting to work with kids. It’s always Hey, how did I get to work with professional athletes? How did I do and I’m like, to be honest with you, I didn’t always do that I worked with kids. And even when I worked with a lot of professional athletes, and members in the military, I still really enjoy working with kids, because there’s so much that goes on. And I think what’s exciting now is when you and I came up, and we’re not that old, but shows the youth of the field route, both fields physical therapy, and, and training conditioning, a lot of times you had two choices, right, you could open your own facility or your own practice, however you want to term it, or you go work for a team or some organization. And now we have more and more coaches, we have more and more people. Well, I mean, welcome to the 21st century, who are embracing other routes, right, whether that’s an entrepreneurial route, whether that’s a non for profit route. And so there are these ways to blend skills and interests and meet people where they’re at and think about how great this is. If people like you are out there, helping these kids get foundational movement skills and confidence, it then helps the strength coach that sees them at the high school level, which helps us train coach it sees him at the college level, which helps us you know, and then eventually, after they’re done with sport, these are people who they don’t lose their purpose. I mean, how many times did we see retired players of every sport come in 300 400 pounds diabetes, and you know what, that’s nothing. 

 

Kara Shull  26:24  

And they can’t move. They like they just hurt 

 

Brett Bartholomew  26:26  

and it’s nothing to laugh at. Because if people understand, right, like, that’s easy to understand how those folks fall into that trap, because they wanted to play their sport, they didn’t train because it was always fun for them. And that’s why I lose my mind. And I’m so happy to hear you say like how you, you know, you can blend science and fun. Because when people think that like, oh, anything that looks like play, and this and this, and we don’t have time at Sports Science, I’m like, You have no idea how to engage people. And that impacts them well after sport, right. And then that impacts how they deal with how they teach their kids to have relationships with Exercise and Movement. And I can speak on this because I was addicted, you know, training, I had bad training advice. And that nearly cost me in my life. And it costs a lot of other people a hell of a lot more, sometimes it’s their knees, or like you said, sometimes it’s confidence and, and all these things. So you said that you started in Harlem, which is awesome. Where are you now?

 

Kara Shull  27:19  

Yes, so we’re primarily based in New York City. But now, and thanks to COVID, we are changing things to be more online. So what we what our vision is now moving forward into 2021 is that we are building platforms in which we can train whether say if this appeals to you, you know, as a fitness professional, if you’re a fitness professional out there, that we want to we created an affiliate program, because we want to engage you as well. So we provide trainings and our curriculum. Because just to again, I keep backtracking. But to backtrack, again, what we did, right, you had mentioned that like there’s not a lot out there for kids. Well, what we did was we took it and took it another step further. Okay, there’s not a lot out there for kids. There’s not a lot of specific things out there for kids. What we wanted to learn or teach them is, again, the premise of movement. Because there’s, if they right away, start to isolate, like it’s either hockey or baseball or dance or whatever it might be. And instead, we wanted to go, Hey, let’s teach them what physical literacy is. Because if I’m gonna get off on another tangent, like, if you start looking at physical literacy online, Canada has it right. And Australia has it, you know,

 

Brett Bartholomew  28:35  

what do you mean by right? For people that have no context in this quest? What is it, 

 

Kara Shull  28:40  

right, so they at least have it defined online, or they are at least giving these bench markers that you should be hitting at a certain age. So a lot of times you can look up things like the CDC has a guideline that says, you know, by age, or six months, they should be able to sit up right and not have you know, without a back on a chair, they should be able to start pulling themselves up, things like that. So that in the age groups of six to 12, they really don’t have those guidelines, it’s like, you know, they should be able to skip they should be able to throw a ball, that sort of thing. So we went another step further and said, Hey, we’re going to define what physical literacy is to our organization. And we say that it’s understanding body mechanics and neuromuscular control in order to prevent injury and move at optimum performance. Now, that’s that’s like for all those people who aren’t strict. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  29:26  

the average person is like neuromuscular. Hey, lady, listen. Yeah, my kid, listen  my kids gangly and needs to get their ass moving, what is neuromuscular, just get them out of the house and get them moving?

 

Kara Shull  29:38  

Exactly. Well. And so then we just say, also known as we provide tools to all of our youth who are participating to enable them to be all that they’re made to be through health and fitness, right. So again, we’re helping people like you just said through that continuum of life, we want you to be all that you’re made to be so that you can use the concept of physical literacy which is really just being able to know your body So use it all throughout your lifespan. So then we paint it out as this pillars of movement starting with strength. And then we go through mobility, balance coordination, endurance, again, if people are probably like, what are those? What? How do you what I don’t even know what those things are, right? But we do and, we laid it out so that people could also be educated on it. So strength is we say the ability to control movement, and we teach our youth that so they’re not only understanding that we do some good fun games, but then we reinforce it with like, what is strength, what is strength, it is the ability to control movement, what is mobility, it’s the ability to move freely and easily. So then they’re taking those concepts with them out into life, like, hey, I need to play my sport, and I need to remember to work on my mobility so I can do my sport. Oh, so I can play with my kids as I get older, you know.

 

Brett Bartholomew  30:49  

Alright guys jumping in here, quick, just remind you, this is the final week for you to get 50% off all of our digital Flagship courses at artofcoaching.com. Again, 50% off, this is the final week, it’s part of our we didn’t do Black Friday, we did an entire black November. And this is the final week. There’s no exclusions, there’s nothing else anything like that 50% off, all you got to do is use the code grateful 50 That’s grateful 50 It’s all in the show notes. And you can get 50% off any of our digital content. This is all about how to become a better communicator, understanding psychology, understanding the decisions we make, or it’s about adapting your career During times of uncertainty. As I’ve said, before, you’ll hear me use the term coach and athlete refer to strength and conditioning in some of these courses. But that’s simply reflections on my experience, all of us, especially given the pandemic have been through circumstances where we struggle with communication struggled with going where to go next in our career. So these things can be applied, just like you read books from artists, musicians, Navy SEALs, all of our work, whether it has a strength and conditioning and human performance kind of background or ring to it or not, can be applied to you and it is being applied by 1000s of professionals across the world right now. artofcoaching.com/courses, grateful 50 link in the show notes. Take advantage of it now. This is the final week. All right back to the episode.

 

What I’ve found is you, really have to sometimes and no matter how anybody thinks of it this just life you have to hook people with some form of outcome based granted authentic unethical clickb ait you know, and by clickbait I just mean a headline, right, you’ve got to get some emotional tie in there to get them to engage with deeper information. I mean, even the research world and stodgy academics know this, nobody’s going to read a paper unless it has some kind of, you know, titular title, like, you know, right now we’re doing a lot in, I’d have to almost pull it up as we speak to remember it exactly. Here it is, we’re doing a lot with the medical profession, because this is a profession that again, in health care, more than $12 billion is lost a year to poor communication in many ways. And, you know, one of the articles that we had pulled earlier was jazz and the art of medicine, improvisation in the medical encounter. And believe it or not, a big reason we had we were pulling this is because we’re trying to get people to understand that human performance realm is really behind when it comes to communication training. I mean, there’s nothing in a lot of this certifications licensures in any of it, that talks about social skill interaction yet, coaching process itself, the coaching process itself is social in nature. And we do a lot of improv and role playing in our scenario, because you know, you’d like you work with kids and different personalities. Where do coaches ever go to get education for this stuff? So what you do in movement to be we try to do for communication, right? Your physical literacy, where communication, and we would literally have people early on that would be like, well, you know, improv doesn’t have a place and this and I’m like, then why is the medical community been doing it for over 20 years, where they actually have medical improv classes at universities across the globe, because they understand the value and here it is, in serious play, right, like adults need to play to because I would imagine for you to keep these kids hooked. And for you to give them the education they need. You gotta have great coaches who know how to deal with introverted kids, skeptical kids, kids that, you know, are withdrawn kids. I mean, think about all the things that we see with the personalities. Like what are your thoughts on the role that communication plays in terms of getting these kids to really hook in?

 

Kara Shull  34:29  

Yeah, I was just gonna say, Brett, I mean, we’ve used some of your stuff. You know, I’ve taken some of your, some of your little tidbits here and there because like, external cueing is huge. And I will say, you know, I’m thinking, Gosh, Brett, we should like, you should have the people who go through your courses, we should just throw them into a movement to be class that can be their improv. Because I always say, I always say, you know what to teach a kid. You can teach any adult if you could teach a kid because here’s the thing they’re gonna call you out on anything that you get wrong. They’re gonna be like, what? Like The first straw, 

 

Brett Bartholomew  35:00  

and then the real educator knows that too. And that and that goes back to the point of like when these people just want to work with one population. And nobody wants to hear that advice, right? Care. Nobody wants to hear, Hey, how’d you get to this or that, and I’m like, Oh, you work with a lot of people. You immerse yourself in dense and diverse experiences. And generally like motor skill acquisition, if you engage with a lot of environments, and you’re running, you jump in, you climb and you bruise your knees, guess what you learn, like right now watching my little guy, we put little pillow cushions in his way, sometimes all and I’m like, Oh, it’s a daddy bridge. And he’ll come bash my face for a little bit. And then he climbs over and we’ll somersault. I would never Todd Marinovich, that kid, because you create the environment that does it for three things drive behavior, and you know, this better than most, the environment that you create, or one’s perception of an environment that matters too social factors, right? How are others engaging? You know, like, again, that’s the nurture idea, like, how are you interacting with people? How do they influence you? What have you. And then our drives? Primarily, those three things are behavior and is information in there, for sure. But information is never going to be one of the primary drivers of behavior, because if people don’t relate to it, they’re not going to engage with it. Bottom line.

 

Kara Shull  36:13  

Yeah. And it’s all encompassing to an experience going back to the term, we’re creating a movement experience for people because they’re going to have emotions attached, they’re either going to have fun or hate it, right? They’re going to have a challenge attached that either they feel like it’s accomplishable or not, you know, so we’re providing that experience, whether it’s again, putting a pillow in good, you know, something like that. We’re just kind of get creative. And I think the best thing you could do, like you said, in diversifying your own experiences to hone in on your skills, as a coach or as a communicator. It’s like put yourself in these environments. Yes, go teach some kids go, go go. Do I think the best thing like you’re talking about improv is, yeah, you got to be able to think on the spot. My best instructors, what we do for hiring some of our instructors is I give them two minutes, I give them a Thera band. And I say, here’s the topic, mobility, you have to create. And maybe that’s not a good example

 

Brett Bartholomew  37:13  

It’s fine to improvise. Just go. Yeah, 

 

Kara Shull  37:15  

yeah. So balance, and you have to you have two minutes, I need you to create two activities for kids ready, go and when they can come up with anything. It’s kind of like, alright, we got some work to do. Yeah, go back, look at some exercises, things like that. Because some days, you just have to think on the spot. Like, yes, we have an outline, and we have guides and things like that. But some of these kids will throw things at you. They’re like, ah, yeah.

 

Brett Bartholomew  37:39  

And what I hate about that is I’m glad you brought that up. Because what I found is when let’s say somebody fails in that exercise, what I found is nine times out of 10 they get mad, and then they’re like, well, that’s not realistic. You know, I’ll never forget it. And it’s like, first of all, everything in life is realistic, because the most insane shit happens in real life. I think I told this on a previous podcast, but for example, we were going on a retreat for our coalition program. And we were doing whitewater rafting. And one of the boats flipped somebody’s org got stuck broke the cheekbone, like literally have somebody else in another boat. So our river guide had to stop because we had to wait and see, hey, are these people going to be okay? We had to literally pull a dude out of the water or what have you. But all of a sudden we’re sitting there, Kara, and there’s 10 minutes have gone by and we have the wackiest river guide ever. I mean, this is a guy that is telling us about something they eat just to get off topic for a moment, but it all relates back called the river guide gumbo. And he says they will literally go into the Dollar General and get I hope somebody’s eating. By the way, when they’re listening to this. They’ll go into the Dollar General and get sardines and canned meat literally just add some obscure canned meat and vegetables and they’ll cook it with this stuff. But anyway, we’re like trying to tune this dude out and all of a sudden, like 15 minutes in we are. This dude had pulled out a bunch of things out of his bag. While we’re waiting, right? We’re waiting to see are these people going to be life flighted? We haven’t gotten a report yet. And this dude had constructed about a six to 10 foot long didgeridoo and started playing it and he’s like, just thought I’d keep you guys engaged while we’re waiting. And I go timeout. Now, we roleplay a lot in our apprenticeship and common situations right how to have conversations with a difficult boss how to have conversations with your significant other or what happens. We come up with stuff all the time. And if somebody fails, you know, there’s usually one person that classical that’s not realistic, and that wouldn’t happen on my timeout. I was stuck in a whitewater rafting thing with a guy that pulled out a 10 foot long didgeridoo and started talking about this and we had to save somebody that got you know, thrown into the water and somebody you’re going to tell me things don’t happen a year ago. What if somebody was like, that’s it. We had an improv thing. Hey, imagine we’re now in a pandemic where you have to be six feet away from the kid and you still got to engage them. They can’t read your body language because your face is covered with a mask. So Somebody would have bent like, this wouldn’t happen, this wouldn’t happen until 2020. Did. You know? And so when people say that these things can, that’s what I always just get a kick out of, because when you’re hiring, people should be put in improvise situation, and you know what they should be okay with failing, they should be like, Shit, I’m sorry, I messed that up. Let’s go again, like, get competitive with yourself and think about the kids or the purpose while you’re doing it. Instead of your own feelings. You know, like, it drives me nuts.

 

Kara Shull  40:25  

Well, and that’s where tagging on to that we do develop the social emotional side of these kids, because they have the time they fail. When we get these kids tennis balls. Remember, these kids couldn’t skip, right? We give them a ladder, you know that we asked them to jump on one foot, and they can’t do it. Yeah, they’re getting discouraged. They’re getting scared. But we want them to recognize, like, you know what, you’re gonna fail. And that’s okay. We just have to keep practicing. We have to keep trying, you know, because a lot of kids can’t deal with that failure as much

 

Brett Bartholomew  40:54  

kids adults, can’t we I mean, we have a culture that can’t deal with it anymore.

 

Kara Shull  40:58  

Totally, totally. And it’s, I think we need to redefine it, right. It’s not even failure, per se. It’s just, you haven’t honed in on your own experience.

 

Brett Bartholomew  41:07  

It’s,  a learning yeah,

 

Kara Shull  41:08  

it’s your skills. It’s just I mean, if I took that if I said that as a physical therapist, shoot, I remember how dumb I felt, I’m sure in strength and conditioning coaches, anyone when you first start your profession, remember how dumb you felt like you were always like,

 

Brett Bartholomew  41:21  

I feel dumb now. The more information you have, yeah, but I know what you mean, for sure.

 

Kara Shull  41:27  

But Brett, you feel dumb, because you’re constantly giving yourself new experiences and challenging to hone in on those skills. And now you’ve accomplished different skills, right? And that’s exactly what we’re doing in this program. And doing it life is we’re going through and we’re going, we’re giving ourselves these experiences, because we want to feel dumb, I think, you know, it should be like you failed. Yeah. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  41:46  

Right. No, I agree. 

 

Kara Shull  41:48  

Now, we got a skill that we can develop, you know,

 

Brett Bartholomew  41:52  

Yeah, cuz I mean, the, we say it all the time, like, the opposite of fear is not like a lack of fear. It’s a love of learning. And that’s not cliche. But it’s funny, you know, what I found is, I can say that, and some people are like, oh, yeah, but somebody that, you know, writes a book and spent five, you know, 50 years in the military or whatever says, and people are like, this is astounding, you know, and it goes into, again, making sure your message is relatable. And it’s from people that you want to hear. I mean, these kids look up to you guys, to a degree to they go through those phases, I’m sure where they’re like, Who’s this person? I don’t like you. What do you have to tell me? Okay, I kind of like you, you all right. Now you’re one of my friends. I can’t live without you. Like. That’s what you need. So like, looking at your program. I know, in terms of what you offer, you have these physical literacy lesson plans, right? You have instructor training, which I think is huge, right? Being able to receive coaching on how to run a movement to be program in your community. And you also have a mentorship, like, is there where do people need to start? If I’m like, yo, I want to get involved in this. I don’t have a ton of time, because I have my day to day job. But I definitely know I want to support this, like, what do I do?

 

Kara Shull  42:54  

Yeah, well, one, of course, there is the affiliate program. But that is for people who have that time to put in that mentorship, work and to start a program in their community. But then also, I mean, we are nonprofit. So let’s be real, that financial support is helpful. And really, you’re not just giving and tossing away money, we want you to be a part of our community. Because we are really generating a new generation who experienced is moving in such a way that it’s developing to be you’re helping them to be all that they were made to be. So you’re planting seeds within this generation by getting involved with know, you’re being a part of something bigger than yourself by financially partnering and saying, hey, I want to get on board with what y’all are doing. Because I recognize that, yeah, these kids, they’re growing up and to be able to have these experiences and to grow well and and be the next generation that’s really going to take over and help to uplift you know, some of the troubling things we’ve had, especially in 2020. We also just sharing, you know, in financially something that’s like you can’t you don’t have it right now, just being our advocate on Instagram, like things like that are really helpful, where you’re just sharing, you’re posting you’re tagging, you’re helping us to share and get some more followers just to you know, yeah, so you’re at some class and you can just say, hey, you know what, and just follow give me a bit to be a follow there, cool group, just all of that helps us a lot. Because that helps us at the end of the day to spread the word about what we’re doing. So just being that light, essentially, that’s kind of spreading the word of our mission, and who we are and what we’re doing is helpful.

 

Brett Bartholomew  44:28  

What do you think people that, you know, let’s play devil’s advocate, right? And even if there isn’t an argument to be had, let’s pretend there is what what’s the argument against this kind of thing? What’s the argument of like? Yeah, seems like a cool idea. Not for me, or you know, is it people that don’t understand it? Is it people that feel like play is a waste of time? Like, what do you what kind of friction? Do you think like the hard headed person or what do you come up against with respect to these things?

 

Kara Shull  44:58  

Yeah, you To most people, we don’t really get a lot of friction per se. Most people like oh, yeah, kids need to move But I think there’s a little misunderstanding. Again, it’s it’s really, they might not understand the deeper impact of this. Like, if we aren’t getting our kids to move well now, and they can’t skip in fourth grade. Okay, we’re talking about communication you spent, you talked about how companies spend billions of dollars because there’s miscommunication, right? Look at how many billions of dollars the US alone spends in musculoskeletal issues. So we’re looking at that down the line, and we’re thinking like, okay, so when we’re talking about healthcare, and different programs, gosh, we’re going to be paying for people who don’t move well, and their joints aren’t moving. Well, you know, so it just I think it’s not really we don’t really get a lot of friction of like, oh, that sounds like a terrible program. Oh, it sounds like you’re doing bad things

 

Brett Bartholomew  45:56  

helping kids who wants to help? 

 

Kara Shull  45:58  

Who would do that? Right, but it’s more so a not a depth of understanding. It’s kind of like, oh, yeah, cool. Your kid plays soccer? No, no, no, we’re like giving them tools for life. Right? Then that’s the skill set, not only again, not only physically, but emotionally, you should see some of these kids, they freaking love us. We come in with our movement to be shirts on and they’re like, movement to be What do we doing today, you know, and we’ll see them out in the community. It’s like a movement to be hey movement to be so it helps plant these seeds of like, Hey, we’re being a light that we’re more than just movement. And that’s the beauty of it is yeah, there’s all this science. There’s all that stuff of physical literacy. But then again, there’s the stories of the kids that, remember that program that you did as a kid, you know, we all have it, I always tell our instructors to, we all have that whether it was a camp that we went to, or you know, some counselor we had, or some teacher we had who we remember, we might not remember their name, or might not remember exactly what they look like. But they instigated in some sort of spark that was like, oh, whoa, like for you like, Oh, I really like working out, you know. And so you took that and ran with it. And it’s, again, we’re planting the seeds in these kids that there we might be again, the only ones who are encouraging them throughout their day. You have no, you have no idea how many times I see people and kids, especially in more of the underserved communities that they get yelled at all day, by teachers, by their parents, you know, be good do this straighten up. it’s always commands instead of encouragement.

 

Brett Bartholomew  47:28  

It’s a lot of autocratic, it’s telling sell, right? That’s what we look at it is they’re either telling somebody how to do it, or they’re like, hardcore, this is why you should do it, you know. And it’s like a comment. It’s like, that doesn’t really always work, especially when you’re talking about and I won’t go too nerdy down the rabbit hole here. Because if you guys are interested in what I’m about to talk about, in the earlier part of the episode, when we introduce Kara, I mentioned the length that you can access all this but you know, the three primary transmitters that play a significant role during this part of a child’s life. And so much of it ties in right you have like, let’s like, let’s talk about dopamine, right like that decreases during adolescence, well, that’s not just respond, that doesn’t just play a role in movement, but also emotional responses, the ability to experiment, or experience with pleasure and pain, you know, you have like serotonin, which obviously plays a huge role in mood alterations. So like you said, you know, somebody made it think, Oh, well, this person can’t skip who cares? Like they don’t understand. And, you can’t blame them. Because, you know, it’s not a lot of their education. And this doesn’t make us better than it’s just, this is always poorly communicated. We don’t understand the link between movement and cognitive development. You know what I mean? And so like, this isn’t about sport, this isn’t about being ripped. This isn’t about being strong, even. It’s about just like this neuronal emotional, like deep relationship with kids understanding that, like, literally you moving can have impact or not can does impact brain development. And who doesn’t want a kid that’s a clear thinker, especially when we’re bombarded with bad word bullshit. Daily, we need more critical thinkers in society. And I think that that’s a huge tie in right, like I even need, like, if I don’t go out, then right now. COVID. So different. I’m previously used to a job where I’m, I’m out and I’m moving and I’m coaching and even if I’m not working with athletes, right, that’s one time a year where I am, I’m doing a ton of that. But even on the years, I’m not I’m leading workshops, and I’m still active and very kinetic. And, you know, now it’s like, if I’m not purposeful about taking a walk with my wife and getting my training in, it’s very easy for my day to fill up because you know what, there’s always a friend that’s like, Hey, man, can I have five minutes? Hey, man, can I have three minutes? And then I’m like, Well, I got a meeting here and then wait a minute. We have a client here and we got a podcast here and then it’s like, Hey, dude, can I get your opinion? And that can get chewed up and then my mood? Oh my god, you don’t want to be around me if I haven’t moved. Like yesterday was a day like that yesterday. I didn’t actually get my session in and I like I’m just not a pleasant dude to be around but it’s okay because I Have at least those base foundations where these kids, they may never have that, or they don’t have the freedom and autonomy to be like, alright, tomorrow, don’t mess with me in the morning, I am moving, you know what I mean? So we’ve got to create that structure for them.

 

Kara Shull  50:13  

Well, and they don’t know at that age, right? They don’t know that, oh, I’m in a bad mood because I haven’t moved or all I ate was sugar yesterday, you know, they’re just, they just have the mood. And so it’s our job to recognize some of the science behind it so we can apply it to life. And you know what, again, these are some of the kids who don’t have the best home environments, or who generally just are sitting all the time, there’s a lot of research, and it is difficult to research because you really have to see a child through the whole lifespan. So that’s the difficulty and again, not understanding the full depth of it. But these kids are able to develop their brain as well and to soak in the information. So not only are recreating a generation that like can’t problem solve, which is they can understand their emotions. In these environments, where they’re learning how to problem solve 

 

Brett Bartholomew  51:06  

creativity, movement, problem solving, creative like thinking, communication, all these things are encompassed in a nexus of wellness. You know, that’s what I met, this isn’t an advertisement. And certainly not big enough time that I get sponsored by Amazon. But literally, I’m showing you you can see me, I got early access to this thing called the Amazon. What is it the Halo, okay. And Halo is kind of very much like, you know, like, it’s their fitness tracker. So you could compare it to like a Fitbit or whoop, or, you know, an Apple watch or what have you. But the entire reason I asked for early access to this is because it’s got a feature on it called tone. That literally right now as I’m talking to you, it’s analyzing the tone of my voice and speech patterns. To let me know, do I come across as positive, high energy negative, confident, knowledgeable, passionate, and it’ll give me conversational and now, somebody’s listening to this and Kara, I get bombarded with this where they’re like, oh, privacy, privacy, listen, like privacy is interesting concept in these day and ages, right? Like, the minute you choose to live on planet Earth now, like you have no privacy, whether you have an Alexa in your house or not your phone’s listening to you or somebody’s got data from your credit card. Now, Amazon’s got this whole privacy thing figured out apparently, and here’s the reality, I don’t really give a shit. I want to know how I’m coming across. But here’s what I love. I also had people and these are the purists that would be like, well, I hear it’s not as accurate as the whoop on this or the eye on this on that. And I go, Oh, do any of those things do conversational analysis. Because when we talk about wellness, which is what you’re talking about when we talk about, yes, I want sleep, I want hydration, I want movement, I want these things. But here’s my bold claim. I’m totally right. I’m totally okay being wrong. Okay. I think in the next 10 to 20 years, you are going to see a boom in social like social aspects of this communication. Because now, this is telling us, hey, relationships are an important part of wellness, just like movement is just like diet is just like these things. And you’re seeing these technologies get into communication. Four years ago, I was looked at as a quack and trying to get Oh, Mr. Communication guy, what are you going to do Dr. Phil people under lifting heavier weights? And it’s like, no, I’m gonna learn how to coach and communicate better, and hopefully have a better life and relationship with these athletes and anything else I want to do. Because people don’t lack ideas, they lack the knowledge of how to communicate to implement them, you know, and how these kids communicate with themselves is related to their movement and their confidence, right? And so how can we have wellness without movement communication, a better concept of self and a better interaction with those around us in these ways, right. So that’s, I don’t know that I’m going on a soapbox for you. But I also just love these things of how these helped. Yeah, it’s better people, better communicators and better relationships.

 

Kara Shull  53:50  

Yeah. And I love what you said, it’s better people, you know, and I think again, we’re even in ourselves, you can see we’re always the tires, right? Like, that’s what I encourage everyone who’s listening to this podcast to tie your passions together, there are connections, I promise you, you might have to go deep, but find those connections. But with that we’re just creating an experience for people you know, we’re creating experiences to help people to just be better. And I love I’m gonna have to steal that app from you. Well, or when it tell me when it comes out?

 

Brett Bartholomew  54:18  

Yeah, well, yeah. You apply for access your your big time enough to it’s not like they looked at me and they’re like, Oh, you got a blue check on Instagram. I had to wait like two months. I’m sure it’s just because I bought a certain amount on Amazon. They’re like, yep, this guy has given us a lot of money. You know, give him the habits here. So right now I’m coming across as competent, opinionated and stern.

 

Kara Shull  54:39  

I love it because again, here’s where I’m going to connect, you know what you’re doing and what we do with moving to be to is like, we have to if I was to talk like you this to you the whole you know, like, hey, obviously that makes it with kids again, that’s why it’s raw. It’s real. Going back to like, let’s put your people with our people and make them excited, you know, Kids are gonna be and all of a sudden, kids are jumping around and they’re like, super excited, and then you can’t calm them down.

 

Brett Bartholomew  55:05  

You know? Well, that’s what I was gonna ask you. Oh, sorry, go ahead. 

 

Kara Shull  55:08  

So we talk about all those things like the intonation of your voice makes a big difference, you know. So I love that it’s totally, we’re totally getting off on tangents. But it’s all again, creating these experiences. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  55:19  

I think it’s art related, 

 

Kara Shull  55:20  

make them better. Yeah.

 

Brett Bartholomew  55:22  

And we put together, you know, we put together a communication analysis. So at our workshops, we actually help people, we give them scores on tone, clarity, conciseness, all these things. But here’s what I want to know, right? Anybody that listens to my stuff, hopefully, by now understands, I’m very anti leadership BS. I’m not somebody that is really, even when I was an athlete or anything, I don’t really want to coach at Super uppity up all the time, and inspirational. I’m like, I just, you know, and we work with a lot of people in our coaching that feel like in regardless of their industry, hey, you know, I’m not that super positive, you know, inspirational person. I’m not this kind of, you know, leader personality or fitness, personality or motivator, personality. And is that bad? And I’m always like, no, that’s not bad at all. Like, there are a lot of kids that would not relate to the I wouldn’t relate to that. Now, I happen to say, sometimes some real stuff in an inspirational way. But that’s not my goal. I just have conviction. But I don’t want somebody telling me, I’m sorry, I don’t want somebody telling me, hey, the key is just positive thinking, consistency and clarity of purpose. Of course, those things are important. But if you’re telling me like, that’s the key, hey, you just if you have a morning routine, and you don’t sleep, and you live for passion and energy, enthusiasm, you’ll be sick. I’m like, I’m out of this room. I’m out of here. So that’s what I was gonna ask is, what if somebody identifies as somebody that’s like, hey, Kara, I’m not super high energy. I do love kids, but I’m not going to be that person bouncing off the wall, like, can they get involved? Is there a place for them? Or do you guys have to have people that are just like, you know, enigmatic and abelian? And, and they just want to get you know, is there room for multiple person out and hold on multiple personality? Different personnel? Is there a room for schizophrenia in your program?

 

Kara Shull  57:10  

Um not exactly. That might get filtered out in our background checks. But um, yeah, so what I think the biggest thing is, I’m gonna push back on that a little bit, because I think sometimes not all the time. It’s this fine line of Is this your personality? Or is that you know, as not being hype and things like that? Or is this a misconception that you have in your mind that you have to be a certain way, so therefore, you’re not going to push yourself? A littlebit? 

 

Brett Bartholomew  57:38  

So let me make sure I hear you correctly, you’re saying does that person really? Are they really not somebody who’s super energetic and motivational? Or are they scared? How somebody will interpret that? 

 

Kara Shull  57:49  

Exactly correct? 

 

Brett Bartholomew  57:51  

unpack that for me

 

Kara Shull  57:52  

Yeah. So is it someone who is saying, Oh, I’m not that personality type that’s like this? Ooh, I;m gonna hype the room fitness person? Because they have this concept in their mind? Or are they someone who just hasn’t pressed into their own skills in that area? Right.

 

Brett Bartholomew  58:11  

This is a disagreement. This is Oh, I am definitely,

 

Kara Shull  58:15  

I think that someone can use their personality, because here’s what my experience was. Because I talked to a group fitness I used to teach cycling, people would be like, really you care? You know, because I’m not necessarily like this super had that room. But I took that hype, and took it into my own way of doing things. And here’s what I was gonna say, yes, there’s room as far as movement to be because we ask every instructor to take it in their own way. we’ll give you skill sets, right? That things like intonation of your voice, getting to know every kid’s name, using, you know, cueing external cues. We give them tools that they can use as instructors, but we want them to use their personality, because kids are going to recognize if you’re being fake 

 

Brett Bartholomew  58:57  

Well, that’s what I was saying. Because that’s where I was gonna push back, like when you were saying, is it you know, that super high person is that you just not pushing yourself to get there. Now, I don’t want to get there. I’ve been to those conferences. I hear those, you know, you walk by you smell the burnt coffee, you have your laminate, and you’re hearing a bunch of people go nuts in a huge, like, obscure conference room and you walk by, and there’s one person leading in the middle, like, it’s some kind of crazy cult, and I’m like, I want no part of that. And I wouldn’t say that that’s because I’m not pushing myself. It’s I don’t, that’s not how I that’s not one how I want to be and that’s not how I feel like, that’s just not what I think helps people you know, now with kids, it’s different again, with everybody. Effective leadership is situational. So you do need to know which version of yourself to be at what time, but I don’t you know, even when I worked with kids, I didn’t come down. I’m like, All right, Billy. Julie, Susie, Tommy, Billy, let’s go. I just gotta go what’s up guy. What do you think today? And I’d ask them a question. I think and that’s what I want to make sure I’m hearing you correct. So you’re not advocating for group statements people to raise the house, you were saying no matter what version of or what type of communicator you are, there’s space for you. We just give you common tools.

 

Kara Shull  1:00:11  

Exactly, exactly. Yeah, all I was saying was, you know, we I think we go off this stereotype of, oh, I have to be this hype, whatever to like, lead a class like, yeah, and I pushed back saying, You don’t have to have the hype. You just have to have the tools and knowing your own self, how you work, you know, and kind of just being willing to hone in on your tools and how you work to really bring in the room.

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:00:33  

Yeah, no, that makes sense. All right. So we’ve gotten a lot of good information out there. I want to get as many people to you as possible. Of course, my whole audience knows that your information is going to be in the show notes. Guys, if you’re listening, we give away those free podcast reflections, which are notes, pages, PDFs, things that you can use for staff development, personal development, all that. So make sure you go to artofcoaching.com/podcastreflections. But Kara, where is the number one place? They should go right now to get involved with movement to be?

 

Kara Shull  1:01:06  

Yes, and that is to our websites. So www.movement, it’s the number two be B, E, as in boy and egg.com. So movement2be.com.

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:01:19  

And then obviously, it’s about on Instagram, as well. Right movement2 the number two be adopted or movement to be

 

Kara Shull  1:01:26  

yep, yep, yep. And then you can see places where it says, To sign up for online courses and what we offer and then there’s an inquiry application where you can reach out to us, because again, we’re trying to build community and relationship with people. So you will hear from us for sure. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:01:42  

I love it. 

 

Kara Shull  1:01:43  

We’ll try to plug you in, in the ways that really do fit you and ways that you can help have an impact in your community.

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:01:49  

And do these people have to be physical therapists, personal trainers, strength coaches? Is there like can every I know you said people can support in a lot of ways so even if there’s Tom the lawyer listening, right, he can give he can spread the word. But in terms of being instructors in terms of being boots on the ground, what background did they need to have? And is it a certain amount of years of experience? What’s the limiting factors here?

 

Kara Shull  1:02:12  

Right yeah, for instructors, we don’t necessarily require a certain amount of years of experience but we do require that people be have a personal trainer certification or experience in working with youth and physical fitness, so that they have some of the background of the science because that’s where we do want that to still be the bread and butter but we also want to bring the the impact of having that classroom experience so in that essence, our instructors need to have that but we also have assistant instructors you know people who 

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:02:45  

So what I’m hearing is everything’s negotiable. I’m here and reach out to Kara everything’s negotiable

 

Kara Shull  1:02:52  

we’ll find a fit for you for sure. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:02:56  

Well Kara. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the energy the purpose behind all this I love being a part of movement to be you know, and what I do compared to you or anybody else is super small. Right? I just I want to help get your story out there. I want to get the message out there. And so thank you for coming to share some of your time with us today.

 

Kara Shull  1:03:16  

Definitely Thank you for having me. It’s always a lot of fun,

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:03:19  

 Guys. Until next time, Brett Bartholomew with the art of coaching podcast, signing off