We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kayla Lawson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kayla below.
Kayla, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
Thriver’s mission is to redefine fitness for all abilities by providing more accessible fitness opportunities to individuals with disabilities.
As a previous special educator, I saw first hand the lack of accessibility to programs for people with special needs within the fitness community. While teaching a self-contained early childhood class, I was frustrated when my students would attend their general education PE class, only to be grouped in a corner and given a ball to throw around while the rest of the class participated in whole group games and activities. This was only one instance of the lack of accessibility to fitness that prompted the motivation to start Thriver.
I wanted to help lead the change and start bridging the gap to fitness by providing individualized personal training and fitness groups specifically tailored to fit each athlete’s needs. As a trainer and a coach who is also in the CrossFit realm, I knew that I wanted to include an aspect of functional fitness within each client’s program.
Initially, I meet with each client individually for an intake meeting where I get a baseline of fitness and exercise history, current movement patterns, goals, strengths, areas for improvement, and a general sense of what they enjoy. From there, I take that information and create a personalized workout program that we work on together for some duration each week.
Coming from a CrossFit background, I know that community drives engagement. I wanted to provide that for my clients as well, so I started a weekly fitness group for my teenage/young adult clients. We meet at a local park once a week where we take on more group based workouts. These may not directly align with their individuals goals, but they are fun and provide motivation and camaraderie.
Each time I meet with a client, my goal is to provide the best 30-45 minutes of their day. This comes by making exercise fun, but it also comes with building a relationship. Exercise can be hard. It’s not always what everyone I meet with initially wants to do, but with some communication, use of preferred activities, and consistency, I’ve seen all of my clients grow in tremendous ways.
Kayla, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Thriver is a personal training and fitness small business that provides individual and group fitness instruction to people with special needs.
Individual instruction is tailored to each client’s specific needs, abilities, strengths, areas of improvements, likes, and dislikes. After an initial intake meeting, I create an individualized plan that we work through each week. Clients range in age, goals, and abilities. For some, our sessions look like strength and core work with dedicated time to learn how to ride a bike or swing at the local park. For others our sessions are mostly seated with the goal of core and trunk stability and developing basic movement patterns. Some clients are using a barbell and learning how to do a pull-ups, others are balancing and learning how to jump rope. Everything is tailored to the client – music choice, session duration, warm-up preference, built in breaks – the list goes on. My goal is for each client to have fun, make progress, and leave our sessions with a smile on their face.
Group sessions are less about meeting individual goals and more about providing a community aspect to exercise. We meet at a local park and complete body weight workouts while playing brain games throughout the session. The community aspect of fitness drives motivation and the desire to come back each week.
Through Thriver, I’ve also had the opportunity to provide PE instruction at some of the schools within the Special Schools Coalition of Houston.
The success of Thriver is built on establishing solid relationships within our community of athletes and their families. As a special education teacher, one of the most important lessons I learned was to begin the year by establishing rapport with both my student and their family. Show up, listen, advocate. Let the student’s family know that you are on their side, you are there to help and support however you can. This is one of the pieces of teaching I wanted to ensure transferred over to the Thriver business model.
Each intake phone call is handled with care and the individualization of our program begins there. From that point on, my goal is to make sure every parent I interact with knows their child is in good hands. Exercise is more than just an activity to stay healthy. It is an opportunity for social interaction, it is a chance to establish life-long healthy habits, and in our case, it is one-on-one time to continue building relationships.
Many of Thriver’s new athletes come out of recommendations from current or previous clients, be it through word of mouth, posts on parent groups, or information passed down through teachers at the athlete’s school. Our drive to build these relationships has in turn prompted parents to share us with others! We are so grateful for our athletes and their families, and we strive to continue creating a community where our athletes can grow!
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I began training my first client through Thriver during the summer of 2019. Nine months later, we were transitioning all of our training online due to Covid-19.
Like countless other businesses, I worried that this might be the end of Thriver. Among many other issues brought through the pandemic, as a relatively new company whose business model focused on face-to-face interaction, this period of time proved to be an interesting challenge.
Thankfully, we were able to use it as an opportunity to grow, implementing virtual training options, and our amazing athletes and parents stuck with me as we endured the learning curve that was virtual training.
As in-person training began to normalize, Thriver continued to offer virtual options for athletes who needed a bit more flexibility in their training plan. At Thriver, we want to make fitness as accessible as possible to each and every one of our athletes. Our goal is to provide services that continue to allow all of our athletes to find success in their fitness.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Starting Thriver was a multi-year long plan that took many turns before coming to fruition. Just like how it started looked nothing like my very first ideas in planning, what it looks like now is completely different to my initial vision when it started three years ago.
I’ve had to unlearn constantly chasing goals and learn to trust the process. This business is ever changing. It grows as I grow and I grow as it grows. Providing individualized personal training in a way that establishes and builds authentic relationships and is truly personalized isn’t extremely scalable. I’ve had to accept that I won’t be able to reach everyone, and that’s okay. What I can do is build up a network of likeminded individuals to work together on bridging this gap. I’ve learned to trust the process and let go of the pressure of getting it just right the first time.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thriverfit.com
- Instagram: @thriverfit
- Facebook: thriverfit