“I want to get stronger, but I’m afraid of hurting myself again.” If that’s you, you’re in the right place. Most of the people I train are working around something: a knee that’s been scoped, a back that goes out twice a year, a shoulder that never fully came back, arthritis, a joint replacement, or a body that simply hasn’t been asked to do much in a long time. Training around injuries isn’t a side specialty for me — it’s how I learned to coach in the first place.
Why I take your injuries seriously
I played multiple sports growing up and paid for it: more than a half dozen joint surgeries before I was out of my early twenties. At 17 I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, and the medications didn’t do much for me. What did was two or three years of obsessively studying joint stability, mobility and strength — and then applying it, slowly, to my own body. I’m stronger now than I was before any of it, and I train Muay Thai several times a week on joints that were supposed to be a problem for life. I don’t tell clients that story to impress them. I tell it so they understand I know what it feels like to be scared of a movement, and I know the way out. Read the full story.
Who this is for
- After physical therapy. You’ve been discharged, you’re “cleared,” and you have no idea how to get from the PT exercises to actually being strong. That gap is where people get re-injured — or quit.
- Bad backs, knees and shoulders. The chronic, nagging kind that flares up when you do too much and never fully goes away when you do nothing.
- Arthritis — rheumatoid or osteoarthritis. Strength training is one of the best things you can do for arthritic joints, if it’s loaded and progressed correctly. I live this one.
- Joint replacements and past surgeries. Hips, knees, shoulders — once your surgeon clears you for exercise, there’s a lot of strength to be built, and the rules for building it are different.
- “My doctor told me to get stronger.” Bone density, balance, blood sugar, blood pressure — and no one explained what “get stronger” actually looks like in a gym.
- Years of nothing. Not an injury exactly, but a body that’s deconditioned enough that a generic program would hurt it. Same careful approach applies.
How I work around an injury
- A real assessment before anything is loaded. Your history — what happened, what’s been done about it, what your doctor or PT has said — and then how you actually move: range of motion and mobility at the hips, shoulders and spine, your hinge and squat patterns, single-leg balance, and where things feel restricted or unstable. Ten minutes of this tells me more than any intake form.
- Train around it, not through it. A cranky knee doesn’t mean no leg training; it means we pick the hinge and hip-dominant work it tolerates and build from there. Pain is information, not a badge. I will never push you through it to make a session feel hard.
- Stability and mobility underneath the strength. Most chronic joint problems have a control or range problem next to them — weak glutes and tight hips under a bad back, poor shoulder blade control under a sore shoulder. We fix the foundation while we build on it.
- Slow, honest progression. Small increases, logged every session in the app, so we both see the trend and catch a flare-up early instead of late.
- Working with your medical team, not instead of them. I’m a strength coach, not a physician or physical therapist. If you’re under care, I’ll follow your provider’s restrictions and I’m happy to coordinate with your PT. If something looks like it needs a diagnosis, I’ll tell you to go get one.
What usually changes first
Confidence, before strength. Within the first few weeks most clients realize the movement they’d been avoiding for years is fine when it’s set up correctly and loaded appropriately — and that discovery changes how they move through the rest of their life, not just the gym. Then the strength comes, then the joint feels better under load than it does at rest, and somewhere in there “I have a bad knee” quietly becomes “I used to have a bad knee.” Greg’s elbow pain — severe every time he trained when he started — disappeared completely after a few months of training around it. Beverly, in her 80s, hasn’t fallen in three years and can get up and down off the floor again. These aren’t miracles; they’re what happens when the program fits the body.
I had chronic knee pain, and had been to doctors and physical therapists about it with no real change. I went to him thinking I would just gain strength to help me live with it. Early on in our work, he saw a pattern in the way I was moving that was off. He patiently helped me gain strength to correct the pattern, and, very surprisingly to me, my knee stopped hurting.
Rebecca
At the time I had various aches and pains in my neck, lower back and knees. Grant has worked through all that with me, and other things that have cropped up over this time. He listens, considers the issue, and comes up with a plan. I can honestly say none of the things that bothered me when I started with him are a problem today.
Melinda
Common questions
Do I need clearance from my doctor?
If you’ve had surgery, a recent injury, or a condition that affects exercise, yes — get cleared first, and bring any restrictions to the consultation. If it’s a long-standing ache you’ve been living with, we can usually start carefully and adjust, but I’ll always err on the side of sending you to get it looked at.
Will it hurt?
Muscles should feel worked. Joints should not hurt. If a movement produces joint pain, we change the movement — the range, the load, the angle, or the exercise — that session, not next month.
Can you work with my physical therapist’s program?
Yes, and I’d rather. If you’re still in PT, I’ll build around what they’ve prescribed; if you’ve been discharged, I’ll use their home program as the starting point and progress from it instead of starting over.
Am I too old or too far gone for this?
No. My oldest client is in her 80s. Bodies adapt to appropriate load at every age — the only requirement is that the load is actually appropriate, which is the whole job.
The consultation includes the movement assessment described above. Call/text 765-571-1514 or book online. Training in Carmel, Indianapolis, Westfield, Fishers and Noblesville, in-home and online.
This page is general information from a strength coach, not medical advice. Always follow the guidance of your physician or physical therapist, and get cleared for exercise after an injury or surgery before starting any program.