What is a personal trainer? Can you trust yours?

What does it mean to be a personal trainer in 2023? As little as 20 years ago, the image of a personal trainer or fitness instructor for the average client was that of an over-excited, muscled-up cheerleader for your fitness sessions, with little in mind other than to make you get off your butt and move for an hour. The expectations were mainly superficial: a personal trainer should look good themselves, above all else, and be reliable— after all, their main purpose was to force YOU the client to be reliable in an area where you were struggling to do so. Qualifications? Expertise? For many clients, the trainer’s body and personality were the only resumé they needed to see.

In the last 20 years there has been a huge evolution in the fitness world. Extremely knowledgeable coaches from the world of sports performance, physiotherapists, sports medicine experts and passionate specialists from varying fields accelerated their exchange of information and developed training approaches that brought together different worlds: the “old gym wisdom” of bodybuilders meets movement specialists; the best research on back injury prevention and rehabilitation meets sports performance training programs; the concept of “functional training” was born, developed, misunderstood and misapplied to thousands of fitness courses across the world :) Intersectional is probably THE academic keyword of the 2000s, and it came to the world of fitness and exercise! It began in specialized conferences, spread to interested working professionals and laymen via published books, and has finally fully saturated every level of the fitness industry via social media. Information that was once only found in sports medicine journals and high level sports performance conferences is now re-packaged and condensed into neat 1-2 minute videos on Instagram and YouTube (okay, 6-10 minutes on YouTube ;) )

REHAB VS TRAINING: PHYSIOTHERAPIST OR COACH?

This knowledge-boom has trickled down to those of us working in everyday gyms with everyday people. The average client is also starting to have a different set of expectations. More and more clients are looking for personal trainers that can help them train SMARTER, rather than just HARDER. Many clients struggling with pain, especially stubborn, long-term discomfort or pain, are turning to their fitness professionals, trying to avoid another frustrating experience with the medical system or having had unsuccessful experiences with other fitness courses or trainers. In all honesty, sometimes the expectation is becoming too high. A personal trainer is not — and should not be, CANNOT be! — a doctor, orthopedist or physiotherapist at a bargain price.

There are very important differences, not just in the obvious level of specialization and education, but also in terms of personality and skillset, that keep these professions separate. A physiotherapist is trained to help you recognize a problem, do specific exercises that counteract that problem and become pain-free. They are trained to work with their clients for a set amount of time and send them on their way after “the problem” has been addressed. This is specific work that plays a very important role in the larger picture of an individual’s health and fitness journey.

A physiotherapist cannot replace a personal trainer or fitness coach, however. My job as such is to be with you FOR THE LONG HAUL — I do not want to see a client for 3 weeks and them wish them well. A trainer is capable of looking at your health in a global way, encompassing your training schedule, nutrition, stress and motivation, and keep you on track for months, seasons, years. Maybe a client has a goal of learning great habits and skills and eventually taking their training completely in their own hands, but this is still going to involve more than the “problem-based”, short-term work of a physiotherapist, and will involve actual knowledge-transfer over time, empowering the client with information about training and their own body. You should be able to trust your trainer to GET PERSONAL, GET INVESTED and WORK WITH YOU LONG-TERM. Finally, a big difference between a medical professional and your personal trainer is MOTIVATION and being a FORCE FOR PROGRESS. A doctor or physiotherapist is traditionally trained to “get you out of the hole” of a specific situation and then move on to the next client. As a personal trainer, I want to move from rehabilitation and corrective exercises to PROGRESSIVE training that BUILDS YOU UP and MOVES YOU FORWARD to a place of greater strength and ability, as well as POSITIVE SELF-REGARD FOR YOUR ABILITIES AND PHYSICAL BEING.

Nowadays, your personal trainer or coach should have the knowledge it takes to interface with the physiotheraphy world. The personal trainer in today’s very saavy and information-saturated world SHOULD BE ABLE TO CREATE BETTER, SMARTER, MORE EFFECTIVE and SAFER TRAINING PROGRAMS than ever before. This means they should have knowledge of at least a handful of VERY COMMON pain-causing issues and know exactly what NOT to do to make these problems worse. These include poor posture, poor form with common exercises, movement patterns that often lead to shoulder impingement, common movement patterns that cause knee and hip pain and how to recognize basic instability in the major joints. Training SMARTER means knowing how to avoid making any of these problems worse with training and having a good understanding of how to train in a way that builds strength that counteracts such issues. Where your physiotherapist’s work ENDS is where your trainer should BEGIN and CONTINUE with you on a path to better health, strength, better lean body mass and improved function.

If you are lucky enough to be pain-free and are looking for personal training to improve your general fitness or achieve strength or body metrics goals, you want someone who for sure is not going to create problems. That is the very least you can expect! So how do you know who to trust!?

QUALIFICATIONS, PLEASE

What qualifies a personal trainer? An individual can work as a fitness and personal trainer, both in established gyms as well as on a self-employed basis, without any specific qualifications whatsoever - that’s the hard truth! I was able to complete one of the more lengthy, in-person fitness & personal training courses with plenty of hands-on course hours. This is extremely important to note, since completely online certifications abound nowadays, where you can receive a “license” with very little or even ZERO practical, hands-on learning sessions with an instructor! And the truth is: any average client will not notice the difference just looking at a trainer’s license or certifications. Have you researched at length the best personal trainer certifications and would know what to look for on that little piece of paper!?

It is also my opinion, based on my experience with several fitness certifications and continued learning courses, that although the material may be reliable and the instructors informed and passionate, the standards to complete the course/certification are designed so that nearly every attendee passes the course. You pay, you show up, you understand a very bare minimum: you get the piece of paper. These are not university degrees.

One test you can run with your personal trainer or fitness coach is to simply ASK THEM WHO THEY HAVE READ and WHO ARE THEIR MAJOR SOURCES OF FITNESS KNOWLEDGE. Sounds like an easy question, right? Wouldn’t you expect any professional in their field to be able to provide a modest list of their favorite sources? I am a big fan of well-made, smart, re-packaged information and instructionals on social media. After all, so many of us fitness professionals are visual, tactile and sensorimotor learners and simply reading our way through material is not enough— a well-made video is an incredible tool. However, the only way we can differentiate between GOOD renditions of that knowledge, and poorly translated/corrupted/misinterpreted versions of the original material is if we have some experience of that material “straight from the horse’s mouth.” ASK YOUR COACH or TRAINER to TELL YOU about their favorite SOURCES OF INFORMATION. During our initial consultation, first training together, or at any point during our training sessions, I’m always happy to talk about my influences and sources. In some cases I am even going to recommend that my client reads certain sources or watches an important video— and you can be sure if you research that source, you will find that they have very good credentials are well-respected in the field.

Many certifications, courses and seminars present high-quality, well-researched information in the form of seminars, powerpoint presentations and practical sessions. Your trainer might have good information from such a source and not know the original source information - sure. But a personal trainer that has not read ANY of the major, staple, fundamental books on important fitness topics in the last 25 years? Who cannot name a handful of reliable, science-based experts from whom they glean guidance and knowledge? That is, in my opinion, a trainer you cannot trust.

Science-based, knowledgeable, passionate, motivating, client-centered and…can we laugh a little please?!

Love your body from the start

Positive self-regard.

We can only get started from a point of positivity. We are not working to fix anything. We are working to optimize you— and we like you!

If you have goals related to the way you want to look, that is okay. If you don’t that is also okay. Either way, my approach is to optimize YOU with a smart training plan.

To be continued…

First rule: show up

Consistency is key.

There are not any goals we can reach if you cannot regularly schedule training into your life. This is your first commitment to yourself. You can make this decision knowing I’ll be there to help you show up.

This is a great way to spend your time. You are worth it and the rewards are many.

To be continued…

In our time, movement is meditation

Movement is the human default mode. In the 21st century many of us have to make efforts to integrate more mental stillness and more physical activity into our daily lives. These things are not at odds with each other.

When you are focused on using a lot of your strength to lift something really heavy, there is not much room for mental chatter. When you are sweating, breathing and putting one foot in front of the other, your mind tends to save energy by closing the open tabs of to-do lists, self-criticism and worry.

If you spend your days sitting still while thinking fast, physical training can be part of a balance that you very much need.