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Why Would Anyone Hire A Trainer?

by Richard Brownkatz

This is the shameless self-promotion part.

I have never hired a personal trainer.

And I have the injuries to prove it.

I have spent literally years reading, trying, listening, watching, experimenting.

And failing, hurting, making progress, backsliding, improving, over-training.

I have worked out with other trainers, read other trainers, visited their websites and learned a lot from them. My partner in Pyramid Profiles, Marlyn Black, is my personal training mentor, a great teacher and model.

But I have never hired a personal trainer, so why should anyone else?

Let me tell you some stories.

I did a program for a young woman who was accompanied by her grandmother. They liked what I did for them and referred the young woman's auntie. Auntie was middle aged, a little overweight, very smart. When we met briefly to set an appointment for me to do an evaluation and devise a program for her, we had this conversation.

"When did you join the gym?" I asked.

"A week ago."

"Would you tell me what you have done here since you joined?"

"Oh, yes. I used the treadmill and all of the machines every day."

"Every day?"

"Uh huh."

"Uh, how do you feel."

"Exhausted. And I ache all over."

"Yeah. Listen, until we meet, you know what I want you to do for exercise?"

"What?"

"NOTHING!. Go home. Stay out of  the gym. You are over-training and you're going to get hurt. You do NOT need to hurt to make progress. In fact, if you hurt the day of or the day after you exercise, you've probably set yourself back."

Look, most of us middle aged people learned about exercise 500 years ago in high school from coaches and friends who thought "work through the pain" was wisdom.

It wasn't. And that kind if philosophy is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how little most of us know about exercise until we do a lot of work.

Second story. Guy comes in the trainers' office to ask a question. Turns out he really wants a training session but doesn't want to pay for it.

"How can I help you?" I ask.

"I've been doing 100 reps at 50 pounds on the chest press machine for a year and my chest is not getting any bigger."

This is one of those times when, as a professional, you resist the urge to say, "Well, duuuhhhh."

I tell him what to do. I explain he would benefit from hiring a trainer, reading a lot of books, surfing reliable internet sites or partnering with a friend who knows what he's doing. Or going to school. Or taking training workshops. Or just about anything contrary to the idea that we all somehow instinctively know how to exercise or at least we remember most of what we learned in high school.

Third story.

Everybody knows that when you use free weights you should always workout with a spotter, right?

Well, I'm working with a client in the gym and I see this thirtysh guy doing barbell bench presses. He's on a flat bench and he's got two 45 pound plates on an Olympic bar, so he's pushing 135 pounds. No spotter.

Everyone who has been to a gym has seen many, many people doing this. Most of us have done it ourselves. But for some reason this time I mutter, "Oh boy" before going back to work with my client.

Sure enough, about two minute later, I hear a desperate voice straining through clenched teeth saying, "Would somebody get this off me." The 135 pounds is sitting on his chest and he can't move.

Fourth story. My client is doing flat bench barbell presses with 45 pounds. She's just begun her second set and suddenly her left arm collapses and the bar heads toward her. I'm there to catch it. She had suddenly lost all strength in her upper arm. Both her biceps and triceps muscles failed. I suspected a pinched nerve, but I'm no doctor, so I urged her to see one, which she did. Turned out to be a pinched nerve in her neck, which a chiropractor cured.

Last story. Someone asked Marlyn why anyone would need to hire a trainer, especially anyone even moderately intelligent. Can't people just learn to do this on their own?

"Sure," Marlyn said. "But most of my clients are extremely busy business people. They hire me because they don't want to have to think about all this. They don't have the time. So I put in the time and do the thinking for them."

Look. The point is not about hiring a trainer. The point is seeing to it you get good information so that you can exercise efficiently and, above all, safely. There is no sense in doing this only to get hurt or ill or disappointed.

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