Trauma-Informed Personal Training is an approach to fitness that considers the impact of trauma on someone’s body, nervous system, and subsequent experience with movement, while also serving as an intervention for trauma healing and integration.
A trauma-informed approach recognizes the prevalence of trauma and seeks to create a consent driven and supportive environment for individuals who may have experienced it.
Trauma-Informed Personal Training is an innovative approach to movement rooted in both lived experience and extensive research, notably the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study from 1998. This study acknowledged that more people than not have encountered trauma in their life. The ACE Study revealed that approximately 61% of adults have faced at least one adverse childhood experience, with nearly 1 in 6 reporting four or more types.
Despite this pervasive impact, the fitness industry lacks a comprehensive understanding of how trauma resides within the body. Personal Trainers, who directly engage with the body, often lack training on recognizing and addressing the effects of trauma on movement. Therefore increasing risk of injury, harm, retraumatization, and negative associations with movement.
Traditional fitness culture approaches the training relationship from a deficit perspective and often markets movement as a “fix” for any perceived deficit. Alternatively, Trauma-Informed Personal Training understands that clients are not problems to be fixed and instead seeks to work in equal partnership with clients to create a movement practice that is sustainable, safe, and accessible.
This approach expands what it means to be a Personal Trainer by integrating insights into how trauma influences the body and how movement can be a powerful tool for release of trauma, nervous system flexibility, and increased self-connection. This approach empowers trainers to establish deeper connections with their clients and provide more effective support by acknowledging the full complexity of their experiences.
3 Ways Trauma Impacts Engagement with Movement
Trauma can put us in a chronic state of hyper or hypo arousal that can make a movement practice difficult to sustain.
After trauma, the body might connect slowing down with danger resulting in a pull towards faster paced movements and difficulty resting.
Adversely, out of survival the body might gravitate to a more disconnected/shut-down state making the stimulation of movement potentially triggering.
Understanding how to work with the nervous system is crucial for both the sustainability of movement and to reducing risk of retraumatization.
Disconnection from the body is a natural and necessary response to trauma, and not having full access to our self-sensing system can make safe engagement with movement challenging.
An initial goal in TIPT may often be to increase interoception, or connection with our capacity to perceive our internal state (thoughts, feelings, sensations) in order to reduce risk of injury, and support a gradual reconnection with the body.
Movement can produce physiological symptoms similar to those commonly experienced with trauma (rapid heart rate, sweating, tension). Adding in environmental triggers experienced in a gym (loud noises, smells, crowds), it can feel daunting to navigate.
While we can’t predict or prevent every trigger, an initial focus of TIPT might be to identify as many internal and external triggers as possible and create a plan for how to navigate them using movement and grounding techniques.
Research to back it up
Harte, C. B., Vujanovic, A. A., & Potter, C. M. (2013). Association between exercise and posttraumatic stress symptoms among trauma-exposed adults. Evaluation & the Health Professions, 38(1), 42–52. LINK
Hegberg, N. J., Hayes, J. P., & Hayes, S. M. (2019). Exercise intervention in ptsd: A narrative review and rationale for implementation. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 10. LINK
Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of ... (n.d.). LINK
Rosenbaum, S., Sherrington, C., & Tiedemann, A. (2014). Exercise augmentation compared with usual care for post-traumatic stress disorder: A randomized controlled trial. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 131(5), 350–359. LINK
Vigue, D., Rooney, M., Nowakowski-Sims, E., & Woods, S. (2023, July 6). Trauma informed weight lifting: Considerations for Coaches, Trainers and Gym Environments. Frontiers. LINK
Whitworth, J. W., & Ciccolo, J. T. (2016). Exercise and post-traumatic stress disorder in Military Veterans: A systematic review. Military Medicine, 181(9), 953–960. LINK