The Show Up Fitness Podcast

How to NETWORK with a Physical Therapist Dr. David Skolnik

• Chris Hitchko, CEO Show Up Fitness • Season 3 • Episode 364

Share episode

Send us a text if you want to be on the Podcast & explain why!

The fastest way to raise your rates isn’t a new logo or a shiny app. It’s raising your standard. We sit down with Dr. David Skolnik, a physical therapist who teaches trainers, to unpack why the floor of fitness education is so low—and the exact skills that move you from “gig job” to trusted professional with a full roster.

We start with movement assessment that actually maps to training. Instead of relying on narrow screens, we break down how to evaluate squat, hinge, lunge, push, pull, and locomotion in real time, under load, and with constraints that reveal what matters. Then we tackle pain without panic. Using a simple green–yellow–red framework, we show how to keep training productive during flare-ups, preserve capacity after surgery, and build client confidence by finding what can be trained today.

The game-changer is collaboration with physical therapists. You’ll hear how to speak the same language, what quality PT care looks like on the floor, and how to lead with reciprocity to spark a steady referral loop. We share examples of co-treating that maintain aerobic fitness, train the non-injured side, and support faster returns to full strength. Along the way, we draw a clear line between coaches who coach and influencers who post, and why hands-on practice still beats shortcuts when you want consistent results.

If you’re in Arizona, Dr. Skolnik outlines a new eight-week, in-person program in Mesa designed for working coaches who want to master assessment, pain navigation, and advanced programming. Prefer to start today? Audit your client assessments, define your pain rules, and book a coffee with a PT who loads patients on the floor.

If this helped you see the path from $15 to $150 an hour, tap follow, share with a coach who needs it, and leave a quick review. Tell us: which skill will you upgrade first—assessment, pain coaching, or PT partnerships?

Want to ask us a question? Email email info@showupfitness.com with the subject line PODCAST QUESTION to get your question answered live on the show!

Our Instagram: Show Up Fitness CPT

TikTok: Show Up Fitness CPT

Website: https://www.showupfitness.com/
Become a Personal Trainer Book (Amazon): https://www.amazon.com/How-Become-Personal-Trainer-Successful/dp/B08WS992F8
NASM / ACE / ISSA study guide: https://www.showupfitness.com/collections/nasm

SPEAKER_00:

Like your ability to go market to a physical therapist is going to be awesome. I think the biggest issue that a physical therapist is going to have is they know that the standard for education for a trainer is zero, essentially. Right. So how do you show that you're a trustworthy, above average top five percent personal trainer when you go in to talk to that physical therapist and you don't end up asking the type of questions that I have been asked by personal trainers, which is like, is walking backwards on a treadmill good? Good for what?

SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to the Show Up Fitness Podcast, where great personal trainers are made. We are changing the fitness industry one qualified trainer at a time with our in-person and online personal training certification. If you want to become an elite personal trainer, head on over to showofffitness.com. Also make sure to check out my book, How to Become a Successful Personal Trainer. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review. Have a great day. Keep going up. Hi everybody, welcome back to the Show Fitness Podcast. Today we are here with Dr. Scholnik. Thank you for taking the time there, sir.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely, man. I actually being a podcast guest is one of my favorite things. I love. I can talk. So let's go.

SPEAKER_01:

And I love it. And congratulations on almost hitting that famous 10K mark on Instagram. So make sure to go follow you. Where can people find you?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh Instagram is Dr. DavidSkolnik DPT. I post pretty much every day, been on there for a long time. So yeah, that's definitely the best place to connect with me.

SPEAKER_01:

And we have a common denominator. We both were currently you're at MPTI, used to teach there. And I just love the integration with movement experts. And so you teach anatomy out of in Phoenix or Tucson?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh Phoenix, Mesa specifically.

SPEAKER_01:

Mesa. Okay. Well, um, let's talk about the fitness industry. And we were having a good conversation prior about what you're doing there and the holes that you've seen with the baseline certifications. And there's a lot that needs fixed in Doc. So what can we do to help?

SPEAKER_00:

So uh the the post I made that connected us that kind of led to this conversation was something I said about how. So over the last year or so, I've been teaching. Well, actually, over the last four years, I've I've had the chance to educate over a thousand fitness professionals, you know, traveling and teaching weekend courses and now teaching for MPTI here locally in Arizona. And it becomes painfully obvious that there are major gaps in kind of like the underlying education standards for the fitness industry and how that trickles then into what fitness professionals believe about themselves, the impact they can have on their clients. You know, if you as a professional don't know how valuable your skill set could be, then your client isn't going to believe you're particularly valuable. And all of that leads to, unfortunately, in many cases, personal training being like a minimum wage gig job, right? It's a side hustle, it's something you do to make a little extra money while you're making more money, you know, bartending. Um, and I'm, you know, as someone who's been in the fitness and healthcare industry for if you go back to when I started studying this now, like 18 years, that just makes me kind of mad. Like, I don't think fitness professionals should have to have a second and third job while they're trying to make it as a trainer because exercise is such a valuable form of medicine. Um, and it becomes more and more valuable kind of like as we become more sedentary. So, I mean, I think the biggest, the biggest issue we face is that we've got like a minimum wage standard of education, um, which creates a minimum wage um market for trainers, which leads to the turnover rate we see and the burnout and the disappointments, right? And and kind of like these low standards to get low standards and and it becomes this kind of like snowball rolling the wrong direction for us as an industry.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, it's pretty crazy to think that you can enter a field and you want to make this into a career, but yet you're just reading a textbook and then you go to the gyms that are maybe a little more accepted, like the Equinox and Lifetime, and what do they tell you? It's like, well, you don't have any experience. So you have to go to an LA Fitness or a 24, and you're getting maybe nine, 12 bucks an hour. And when you take a step back and you look at it, it's like, well, you you didn't really do too much. I mean, have you trained people? Do you know the human body? Can you tell me the 17 muscles around the shoulder? I can't tell you how many conversations I have with trainers, and they're like, 17? What? I thought uh, I know the back, like that's not a fucking muscle. And the anatomy is just the foundation for everything. So it's like you want to be a professional, but you you lack the professionalism with the technical aspects of our field.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, but I mean at the same time, we I don't think we can expect the current fitness professional to think anything else because that is that is the standard, right? Like they probably know someone who's a trainer who doesn't know anything more than them. And for the most part, you know, like I'm talking about working in the state of Arizona where you don't have to have a certification to get a job in a gym. You don't have to have a certification to call yourself a personal trainer. And so, you know, gyms are just gonna scoop up anyone who walks in the door looking for a job, you know, tell them to come in for a weekend or they do an in-house training and then send them out on the floor to help people. And it's like that's that's unskilled labor. And so to think it's gonna be more than$15 an hour, like I don't know what you know, I don't know how you could expect a business to pay someone more than minimum wage when it only takes 48 hours to be trained up and like ready for the job. But at the same time, what's crazy about the fitness industry is that there's probably no other industry where it's easier to go from$15 an hour to$150 an hour. Right? You take something like Show Up Fitness, you take you go through an NPTI, you take one or two weekend courses or run through an online mentorship, and all of a sudden you're you're literally a top 5% fitness professional in the country within 12 months, and you can demand$150 an hour because you are so much better than everyone else, and 80% of everyone else won't even be doing this a year from now, right? So it's it's a it's a kind of a wild scenario to be in.

SPEAKER_01:

It is every every seminar I do, I say, look around, you're part of the I say five percent because trainers don't do this, and it's interesting. I don't know if it's like a sunk cost fallacy or what, but the big, oh, you know, 700 bucks for a weekend seminar, it's so expensive. But then it's like you spent a thousand dollars on a textbook, it did nothing for you. And where's your con ed? Who's your mentor? How often are you networking with physical therapists? That's one of my favorite questions to ask. Who's on your team? Do you have a physical therapist on your team? And everyone just looks at me like I'm a psycho. It's like, if you don't have a great team, how can you expect to you know charge that premium amount?

SPEAKER_00:

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I so I am a physical therapist. I think that's a great point. I think it goes both ways. Um, I've I've taught physical therapists as well. And you know, as a physical therapist, one thing that always bothered me and bothers every orthopedic physical therapist I've ever met is when they have a patient come in and they say, uh my surgeon told me I had to come here so that I could get MRI. They told me physical therapy isn't gonna work for this. Um, but you know, I'll give you three weeks. And it's like, how can or you get someone who didn't get referred for physical therapy after a back surgery, didn't get referred to physical therapy after a neck injection. It's like, man, how do surgeons still not know what we do? And then as physical therapists, we turn around and it's like, have I ever referred anyone to a personal trainer? No. Like, so why are you mad that the surgeon doesn't know what you do? Like, you don't think your patients would benefit from having a trainer, right? So they actually are healthy, so they actually are fit, so they're not just like this walking orthopedic condition. Um, yeah, it's really interesting, but it's a probably the most valuable referral uh relationship you could have would be high-quality fitness professional with uh a physical therapist who values exercise.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. I think there's something from the confidence standpoint when you can look at your client in the eye and say, I guarantee you I can get you out of pain. Because if I can't, I can do some basic stuff, but I know my lane and I have a therapist I can refer you to. I worked with the prehab guys, I worked with this, and it's like, you know, don't know your lane. And if it's something that you're like, I'm not quite sure, thoracic outlets, I don't know what the fuck that is. Um maybe you should go work with uh Dr. Dave to get that checked out. But the confidence knowing that, you know, we're kind of like detectives and we can go and navigate and like, oh, there's a curveball, let's just send you out. And we just need more of that. But unfortunately, you know, I think it part of like the continued education is trainers will kind of go down a rabbit hole and then they think they're like this jack of all trades, like, oh, I can take care of everyone. It's like that's that's kind of ballsy because you literally studied for a couple months, whereas physical therapists three years for you know post-grad. And it's just like it's it's it's unfortunate that you have like that that difference in in respect for one another, I would say, from a trainer side, because if you have a therapist on your team, your life is so much easier. And then you have a nice little referral tree because a lot of clients, when they're done with the therapist, they want to go and work with some qualified trainers.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I mean, I've obviously I've got a bit of an unfair advantage because I'm a physical therapist who works as a fitness professional. My wife is also a physical therapist. Um, but I've had situations where I have basically like co-treated, right? I've had clients who are in physical therapy and they work with me. It's like they're seeing someone else for the hands-on stuff for the dry needling, right? For the more corrective diagnostic-specific exercise, right? Post-knee surgery, say. But then they come to see me twice a week because you know, you still need to train the leg that didn't have the surgery. You've still got two arms, you still have a core, you still have a heart and lung cardiovascular system that should probably be stressed every once in a while, all of which is gonna make the recovery of the one knee you had surgery on more effective, right? And if you're a if you're a trainer who can understand some of that stuff, like your ability to go market to a physical therapist is gonna be awesome. I think the biggest issue that a physical therapist is gonna have is they know that the standard for education for a trainer is zero, essentially, right? So, how do you show that you're a trustworthy, above average top 5% personal trainer when you go in to talk to that physical therapist and you don't end up asking the type of questions that I have been asked by personal trainers, which is like, is walking backwards on a treadmill good? Good for what? When? How long? Who? Right? Like, that's that's not even the beginning of a question, right? There's so much left unsaid there. But if you can come into the physical therapy clinic and be like, hey, I've done everything I know how to do to improve this person's glenohumeral joint range of motion and then build the strength as they've gotten more mobile, right? We've worked on core stability, and at this point, they still can't get their left arm overhead. I know it's not the peck or the lat because it doesn't matter what position I put their arm in, they can't get their hand overhead. So I really I know that they need a physical therapist to get hands on. Um, I'd love to make that referral to you. It's like, holy crap, that guy knows what he's talking about. I might have a patient who needs to come see you because they told me that their last personal trainer is the reason why they end up in physical therapy because they got hurt. Um and they but they don't know what to do in the gym. I've got a patient for you. And it's like now all of a sudden it's like you've extended an olive branch, they gave you one right back. And it's like that's the start of something awesome. And as a coach, right, if you're charging enough, how many clients do you really need? Like two physical therapists would probably max out your client capacity within 12 months.

SPEAKER_01:

And that's the beauty of that referral system. And like you said, I think there's something about the the anatomy. You don't have to be a nerd and get into all the intrinsics of it. But if you're if you go to a therapist, like, oh, what's the rotator cup? And you're like, Did you just fucking say cup? And uh you're just like, Well, uh like all my patients, yeah. And it's like, whoa, like there's it's just a there's a discrepancy in the language, and you can you can find it out pretty quickly. And like, I'll have trainers that I'll talk with and they're newer, and they oh, I got this, you know, certification, whatever. And then they just start going into diagnosing. Oh, I have a client that has upper cross-tender. I'm like, no, I don't, it's kind of a little red flag. I don't think we need to be saying that. And so it's like you can just have a good foundation of movement, core patterns, and and have a conversation. And and most therapists that I come across, I would say most of them are pretty damn cool. You get some fucking weirdos that are doing ultrasound and some, you know, real, you know, pretty easy stuff. But it's like, okay, most of the time it's like they have a background in sports, they have an orthopedic background, you can usually connect over a team or whatever it is. And like next thing you know, it's like, hey, you know what, Dave, let's just go work out. Let's go lift some weights, and then you got a bro, then you can start throwing some weights around, and you got a buddy on top of it, you have a nice system right there. That's how it should be.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and you'll know a lot. You know, as a coach, you'll know, you'll know a fair amount just walking into the clinic, right? I feel like you probably said this or posted about this, right? If you if you see a dusty weight stack, right, and like, you know, a weight tree with nothing more than 10 pounds on it, and none of the patients are actually doing exercises, they're all on tables or behind closed doors. That's probably not the clinic that you want to make atop of your priority list to connect with, right? You want to go into the clinic where you see the therapist working with the client in the trap bar, right? Somebody's skipping on some turf, there's an agility ladder out, you know, and and the clients, the patients are moving around. And so, you know, that's a good sign that the therapist understands the patient needs some load, they need some movement, they need at least half their session to be up off the table active, and they're they're probably gonna have a better sense of how to explain to their patient how important an ongoing um exercise resource or expert is going to be to keep them out of the clinic, you know, down the road.

SPEAKER_01:

It's like if you invest into this, it is almost like a game where you find 10 therapists, you reach out. I'm always a big advocate, pay them their hourly rate, and just have conversations. And it's like it's a cuisine, cuisine, whatever the hell you said, and you're trying different stuff. And oh, this was good. Oh, that sucked. You're not gonna go out there and tell everyone in the world like that's a terrible person. I went to a spot here in Santa Monica and they're doing some weird Swedish shit and they're putting people in some crazy contraptions. I was just like, that doesn't really align with what I'm at, where I'm at right now. And you know, I talked to Arash and the guy from the prehab. I'm like, is this like new? Like, is there science that I need to be caught up with? They're like, no, you get places like that. And so it's just like I have a soundboard that I can have a conversation, but then you just bounce around other ones, and then you find someone who you align with.

SPEAKER_00:

100%. Yeah. I mean, not every client is going to be a good fit. You can't expect every physical therapist to be a good fit. You might have one that's a good fit, and then that changes. Um, but you never know if you don't, if you don't go in. And you know, I was just talking to one of my students about this because she really only needs five clients, right? She's not, she's retired. This is her kind of second or third career, you know, this is her fun money, and but she loves she's a total exercise nerd, right? She loves learning about movement, she just loves learning in general. It's like and she's worked in a physical therapy clinic as an aide, right? And so it's like, man, how do I go in and how do I make those connections? Like, probably the best thing you could do is you make the first referral, right? You go in, it could be yourself, it could be your husband. If you have one client, I'm sure there's something that they've got going on that could benefit from a few physical therapy sessions. Maybe it's your neighbor, right? But if you can bring that therapistic client right off the bat, the chances of them then reciprocate, and same with a mentor, right? Like you're gonna have a hard time finding a mentor if the first thing you do is ask them to help you and you know, hope that it's free, right? The first thing is bring them some sort of value and everyone's intrinsically motivated to then provide something back.

SPEAKER_01:

Hey, can I pick your brain for a few hours? It's like, oh, here we go.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, no, my brain picking schedule is is booked for the next five years. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01:

So when you lead with reciprocity, you're gonna be better off. And so with your experience, you've been able to create some new new stuff that you're launching out here soon. So why don't you tell us more about that?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so over the course of four years of teaching um certification courses and now teaching during PTI, the three most common areas where uh students ask me for more help, or they feel like even after an awesome weekend certification or an eight-week certification course, they're like these things make me uncomfortable when I think about them with a future client. It's movement assessment, because if we're talking about NASM, it's overhead squat, uh single leg lunge, which is like impossible, and then an abstract cable push-pull where they don't tell you what angle, how much weight, and all you're looking for is did they shrug? All right. And and you might just need to gently remind them not to do that, and then all of a sudden they go from failed path, right? Zero to one. Um, so it's insufficient, right? And even if you even if you mastered those three assessments, like how much insight are you gonna get into what your initial program should look like for that person? So um, how do you assess the big fundamental movement patterns? Um, squat, hinge, lunge, push, pull, and like locomotion. Then the other big gap I find is pain, like an understanding of what can cause pain, you know, and there's hundreds and hundreds of things that we have now found through research that are associated with a pain experience. To me, you know, if you as the coach are just as scared of the pain your client just told you they experience as they are, that is not a good place to be. Right. That is you're going to default to what we all do, which is like just stop doing that. Let's do something extremely regressed because I'm scared of being at fault for you now, being flared up, right? And then maybe I lose you as a client. Um, so understanding potential causes of pain, what you can do in the moment. Is it pain? Is it discomfort? Like, what is the green light, yellow light, red light in terms of physical symptoms? So that as a coach, you can be like a permanent optimist, right? There's always a way to go forward, there's always a movement we can do, and it's probably not we don't need to go from squats to dead bugs, right? Like there's a lot of stuff in between where you can still get a stimulus and not cause that same pain. And then finally, understanding those two, and then how to write a good program, right? Like, I've had so many students who are like, I understand the fundamentals of how to write a program. However, I don't think I know how to actually write a program for any of my clients. And so without the movement assessment and without, you know, just giving them like some subjective, you know, what does your client actually want that you can gather while you're watching them move as you talk to them, the writing a program is impossible. So whereas NPTI fundamental program out here is for people who want to become fitness professionals, the new program that we launched this this month that I designed is for people who are currently coaches and are still feeling like they're not confident enough to make this a full-time thing, to feel like they're really helping people at the level they want, right? They're so passionate about exercise and they're realizing they don't know how to help their clients experience what they've experienced. So bringing um local coaches who want to become that top 5% and giving them the tool, the tools to do that.

SPEAKER_01:

Now, would that be in person in Mesa or would it be online?

SPEAKER_00:

That'll be in person in Mesa at least for now.

SPEAKER_01:

And how long will that course be?

SPEAKER_00:

That is eight weeks on Fridays. So we've got like four a 40-hour curriculum for advanced training principles, and then we have like a 250-hour version of our master's program.

SPEAKER_01:

That's great because most trainers at Fridays and Sundays are pretty low. So it still gives you an opportunity to almost bring in case examples because who else better to learn from than a physical therapist? And then you can learn while you're progressing and helping your clients.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's been really fun. Like the hands-on stuff is it's so critical, right? Like I've heard so many people talk about over the last couple of years, you know, you don't need any in-person experience to be an online coach. It's like I totally disagree. Um, you know, I think one of the best ways I've heard it put is like there are online coaches and then there are coaches who work online. Like you want to be a coach who works online, right? Not someone who jumps straight into online coaching. Yeah. Um, because it seems like an even lower barrier, right? It's like if it's if it's too easy to get a job in a gym, it's 10 times easier to be an online coach because you literally just type it into your profile.

SPEAKER_01:

I just like to stir the bee's nest and I say it's it's you're basically a coach or you're an influencer. Because yeah, I keep saying it's just it's it's ridiculous. No one's looking at your program. How do you even know the stuff you're writing is legit? This was awesome, Doc. Thank you for your time. Where can people find you again?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh, Instagram is at Dr. Davidskolnick DPT. If you're in the Arizona area, you're thinking about becoming a personal trainer, or you are a personal trainer, um, look up NPTIAZ on Instagram. Um, again, we've got offerings for people who are aspiring trainers. We got offerings for people who want to level up and are already training people, both of which are awesome. We're inside TT Mesa, which is just a super dope gym. Great place to be an independent coach. Um, yeah, man, that's it.

SPEAKER_01:

Make sure to go give him a follow. And I know we have a lot of trainers in that greater area, and I think that's really awesome how you're offering it just on one day, because I know sometimes it can be like too and you know elaborate, and then you have to kind of take a step aside. But that's that's awesome. So if you're listening to this in the Arizona area, this is a must-take course. You got to get out there and level up your game and just help your clients better. And you can see, I always say that the industry isn't saturated, it's saturated with a bunch of trainers who have no idea what the hell they're doing. And so when you invest in yourself and you get around great people like Doc, you're gonna be able to turn this into a career. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

I appreciate your time, man. It's a good conversation.

SPEAKER_01:

Have a good one.