Personal trainers are a dime a dozen these days. More and more people are becoming interested in fitness and healthy living. As a result, the fitness industry is churning out substantially larger numbers of trainers compared to even a decade ago. While the optimistic would hope that this would be a positive outcome, and that this increase in trainers would benefit the public, sadly this is not the case.
There is much more to being a personal trainer or strength coach than taking a client through a workout, or giving them cookie cutter information on training and nutrition. When someone makes the decision to go to a trainer to seek help, they are doing so out of a desire to improve themselves for what ever reason motivates them. When the trainer does the things mentioned above, the client suffers. Drawing on the post on training specificity, all people are unique. Everyone has unique nutritional and training needs, and its the trainers job to assess these unique needs and prescribe accordingly. However, this is a rare occurrence these days. Most main stream gyms today are concerned with client volume, not satisfaction. This, along with a lack of desire and coaching knowledge among many so called trainers, has resulted in an express lane style of coaching. Many trainers now simply push clients through an hour long workout, often identical for all their clients, take the clients money, and that's the extent of their interaction. While this has become the norm, it is not the ideal method. Not even close.
A personal trainer or strength coach plays and integral role in a client's body transformation and physical performance. Poor training leads to poor results; superior training leads to superior results. The coach or trainer should take an active interest in each individual client's needs. This is done by meeting with the client, performing interviews and assessments, and prescribing training and nutritional recommendations unique to the individual. The trainer should develop a plan with achievable goals, over a reasonable time frame. In addition to being based on information gathered during the consultations and assessments, the plan should be based on ideal outcomes for the individual. While many people come to a trainer asking for 30 lbs of weight loss in 6 weeks, this is not possible safely. It becomes the job of the trainer to focus their client's goals on something much more reasonable, safe, and lasting. As the plan progresses, the trainer should constantly be getting feedback from the client and performing assessments. This allows for manipulation of the program to keep progress steady.
Sadly, these ideas go way beyond the scope of involvement for the typical trainer. At my old gym, there were four trainers on staff. Three had degrees, one did not. All were certified by a sanctioned governing body such as ISSA, ACE, etc. One of them also had a master's degree in exercise physiology. Out of the four available trainers, only one showed this level of commitment to his clients. I know this based on both a long time friendship with him, as well as being a former client. He provides the ideal service for those that desire results. He also stays as up to date as possible with research and information in our field. These my friends are the mark of a true trainer. Two of the others, sadly one with a degree in exercise science, do not even come close to this level of practice. this means that 1 individual, 25% of the available trainer pool, is worth your time and money. The remaining 75%, do not hold your breath. Sadly, this also means that many of those wishing to achieve their goals possibly will be stuck with sub-par training as one individual can only effectively train a certain amount of people.
So what does all of my ranting and soap boxing mean for you? All of this boils down to one key idea, evaluate your trainer. A trainer worth your time and money uses the techniques above with each and every client. A great trainer uses the science of exercise and nutrition to provide results, results that he or she has documented over numerous successful clients. These traits are easy to spot, and before you invest you hard earned money in a trainer, look for them. Finally, if you are one of the unfortunate people working with a poor quality trainer like those mentioned above, I'd advise a change of plan.
There are many great trainers around that even offer services over the internet, or have numerous books published worth their price (More on diet and exercise books later). A few include Dr. John Berardi (www.precisionnutrition.com) Eric Cressey (cresseyperformance.com) and www.tmuscle.com. These people and websites are a treasure trove of information and services that are worth looking at.
As always, comments, questions, and discussion welcome!
No comments:
Post a Comment