Bad Personal Trainers and Half-Ass Physical Therapists- The Striking Similarities

 

I’m sure almost everyone reading this has been to a big box gym. Your 24 hour fitness, LA fitness, Lifetime Fitness, Golds Gym, and even smaller gyms such as Anytime Fitness and Snap Fitness almost always have personal training services available. However, the rigors of the educational standards these personal trainers have to complete in order to gain their certifications can vary by incredible amounts. Trainers I have talked to at these gyms have credentials that range from a simple weekend course, being trained in house, to a B.S. in exercise science that lead to pursuing the level of Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) or similar. The difference in knowledge and coaching skill is often very apparent along this spectrum, and there are certainly excellent trainers out there who have forgotten more about coaching and programming than I know (Dan John, Eric Cressey, Nick Tumminello, Dean Somerset, Robert Palka, Bret Contreras, etc). However, the one thing I feel like I am seeing all too often now, regardless of education, is personal trainers overstepping their boundaries to rehab injuries and “correct imbalances” in the same ways the physical therapy profession has been struggling to rid itself of over the past 20 or so years.

 

These trainers are moving forward and expanding their skill set in their eyes, but in my eyes they are trying like hell to become eerily similar to the half-assed physical therapists we are trying to move away from in my profession. They seem to think that every exercise should be performed on an unstable surface such as Bosu or physio ball. I regularly see trainers having poor clients do single arm bicep curls while standing on one foot on an upside down Bosu ball in some futile effort to do God only knows what. I don’t know if they are trying to improve the core, increase motor control, increase muscle activity, or just secretly laugh to themselves about how silly they can make their clients look.

 

 

 

 

 

Every exercise they use to train a client has the word functional or dynamic imbedded in its title in order to make them feel and sound as smart as possible. As if the basics of squatting, dead lifting, pressing, and pulling aren’t functional and don’t build strength and movement patterns that flow directly over into daily life. They are more concerned with bird dogs, abdominal hollowing, holding a plank for 5 hours, body blades on a bosu, single leg standing bicep curls, and tossing sand bags than the ability of their clients to squat down deeply, lift things from the floor, put things over their heads, and grow a robust system that can tolerate increased loads.

 

If they aren’t using the bosu they are trying to relate everything back to Janda’s upper and lower crossed syndromes. They spend their time making every exercise about “lengthening and toning down the short and facilitated while strengthening the long and inhibited. They feel that posture is one of the most important factors in the health of their clients and place an extraordinary amount of emphasis on postural “corrective exercises”. Yet, they are unaware of the literature that continues to steadily stream out showing a very poor correlation between posture and pain/dysfunction. Just like the physical therapists of old, they don’t understand that pain is a multifactorial experience that doesn’t occur solely due to tissue damage, posture, or "poor movement". They tend to have an excessively biomechanical lens they look at all things through, and they likely help to implant nocebos about core weakness, arthritis, disc bulges, and many other things into our patient. I don't believe they are inherently trying to do anything wrongs. They are driven and motivated to be helpful, but are misguided just like many of the physical therapists of the past (and sadly of course the present). Side note: This stuff still exists in PT. I literally had a physical therapist colleague of mine reprimand a patient for bending forward to put on their shoes. She told him that his back was all out of whack and that bending over to grab his shoes was going to make it worse by putting extra pressure on his discs and undo everything she just did for him. We will call my colleague Jane. Please don't be like Jane. I'm already losing my hair and don't need another reason to pull the rest out.

 

Furthermore, if some idiot on the biggest loser made something popular, or it’s an old out dated physical therapy idea that was misguided to begin you can bet they will implement it. If it has marketing buzz or sounds complicated there is all the more drive to use these interventions because it adds PERCIEVED value, regardless of actual value. If the person marketing these “magic bullet” “secret to unlocking your potential” “injury prevention” “corrective exercises” is well built, you can bet the buy in will be that much more. Regardless of if the seller actually uses these themselves, or if they look how they do actually in spite of their boasted methods.

 

 

 

Yet, the biggest kicker I see is that most of these trainers don’t actually train themselves the same way they train their clients. I watch these trainers go in the gym and lift weights like someone trying to get bigger, stronger, and higher functioning. Why would they train themselves this way and throw all the craziness at their clients. Why have so many personal trainers tried so hard to become the half-assed PTs of the past? Training is such an important profession that has a great capability of impacting so many lives for the better. Listen to your clients and set the goals according to what THEY want to achieve. If they want to be leaner, help them get leaner. If they want to get bigger, help them get bigger. If they want more flexibility, help them touch their toes. If they want to get faster, employ tactics that help increase power and speed. Stop trying to rehab injuries because this is outside of your scope of practice. Stop trying to be a half assed PT. And most of all, stop trying to train everyone the same way because it’s what’s trendy right now. Stick to the goals that your client has and the time tested basics we know about strength and conditioning that work.

 

Thanks for taking the time to listen to me rant,

Jarod Hall, PT, DPT, CSCS

 

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