Easy Personal Training Sessions?

[leachy]

In the gym I goto I've recently noticed how little the personal trainers push there clients, along with some of the weird exercises they have them doing.

For example there is a guy who comes in regularly for a PT session, and he would be well over 150kg and the PT has him doing weird exercises with cables and a bosu ball. There was another older guy being trained and he was doing dumbbell shoulder presses/bicep curls with about 6kg.

I just find it funny that these people are paying for a service that looks pretty piss weak. Has anyone else seen similar crap at there gym?

 

[Shrek]

All the time. It infuriates me so I train at home so i don't have to see it.

 

[leachy]

The thing is it looks more like rehabilitation for an injury then overall fitness and weightloss, the sort of exercises my physio had me doing for my shoulder.

 

[PTC]

Read my thread about the Client from hell and you'll see why PT's do this.

It doesnt make it right, but it just shows why...maybe.

Its not always the PT's fault

 

[Kyle Aaron]

There are two key points here.

The first is that the best workout is the one you stick to. Beginners to physical training have a great resistance to hard training, they perceive normal fatigue and muscle soreness as terrible injury.

As well, a person new to any task - in the gym, at work or school, wherever -has a low tolerance for failure. You have to adjust the challenge level to allow them some successes, this encourages them to keep coming. So for example you don't have people go to failure on every set, it may be good for them physically but will be terrible for them mentally, they'll get discouraged and quit.

Ease them into things and they stick to it and get some benefit; push them too hard and they give up and get no benefit. So most trainers err on the side of "easy" with beginners - we can always make it harder later.

The second is that "easy" is relative to the capabilities of the individual. For example, your 150kg obese guy - trust me, anything he does is hard for him. Try strapping 3-4 20kg plates to your body and carrying them around all day every day then see how much you feel like squatting 100kg.

I had one guy begin at 165kg with poor posture and frequent back pain, for him "squats" were just sitting on a chair and getting up from it without using torso weight shift to do so. After two weeks it was a lower chair, then add some weight to it. Another two weeks and a milk crate. After that, remove the milk crate and squat to that depth. Now after five months he's 140kg, has better posture and no back pain, and front squats 70kg x5, deadlifts 120kg x5, overheads 40kg x5. His first session he did 8 sets in an hour and was rooted, now he does 25-30 sets in an hour and is tired but okay.

His lifts and workload may not impress you or anyone else around here, but he has got results. Had I started him with heavy stuff straight away, even if he didn't run away he'd probably get injured. And so he would be squatting, deadlifting and overheadding nothing now, and be the same bodyweight he was in May.

Certainly there's a lot of bullshit done in PT sessions out there. But have a look at the people training on their own, there's even more bullshit. And in many cases, the bullshit doesn't look like bullshit once you realise that the best routine is the one you stick to, and "easy" is relative.

 

[Kyle Aaron]

The thing is it looks more like rehabilitation for an injury then overall fitness and weightloss, the sort of exercises my physio had me doing for my shoulder.

Now this is a genuine problem in the industry, many PTs imagine they are physios. I work with physios, I am not a physio.

Read my thread about the Client from hell and you'll see why PT's do this.

I think there is a sensible middle ground in this. Some people will crack the shits however easy the routine is, your Client From Hell sounds like one of those.

We can push people without kicking them over the edge. I know Markos does not kick people over the edge, he looks carefully at their individual capabilities and pushes them closer to their limits, that is why he is an excellent coach.

The other day I was talking to a triathlete in the gym, he was kneeling on a swiss ball doing cable crossovers. I asked him why, he said something about core work. I explained that whenever you introduce instability, you increase the work on the midsection, but decrease the work elsewhere, and strength will improve his performance and decrease his chances of injury. For example one of my clients is a triathlete, on the weekend he ran a marathon and got his best ever time of 2hr47'. "Oh I get enough work on my legs doing hill sprints."

Some people you just can't help. Most people you can help, but you need patience and to ease them into things.

 

[180sx kid]

I know this will sound a bit arrogant but I dont care...
Im guessing 99% of the people and PTs at my gym think I just do heavy weight and low volume because thats all they ever really see me do because I do all my KB cardio etc at home but I have always wanted to do a PT with a few of them and say throw everything you have got at me, put me through your hardest workout... I would love to do that one day laugh in there face then turn around and say... ok lets see you do one of my sessions now...
99% are a joke. the ones who do make there clients do decent excercises dont ask them to go anywhere near heavy enough... this is why most comercial gym goers never see much improvement.

 

[leachy]

Yeah Kyle I totally agree on the "whats hard for one person is not the same for the next guy", only your brain knows how heavy it is. I see 15 year olds lifting more than me. But when you see them having a good chat with the PT after a set and I finish a set covered in sweat seeing stars it gets me wondering whether the clients are employing a PT or someone to have a good chat!

I have seen this guy doing ab crunches for crying out loud.

They are great results you got for your client. It doesn't seem the guy from my gym is getting the same quality of training that you are giving, which is pretty sad actually.

 

[Kyle Aaron]

I have always wanted to do a PT with a few of them and say throw everything you have got at me, put me through your hardest workout...

Come to either of my gyms and we'll see how we go. I'm confident you could destroy me - but I'm confident I could destroy you.

However, remember that the point of a workout is not to destroy a person in an individual session, any moron can do that. "Let's do burpees for an hour, superset with inverted rows, on each set go to failure." There you go. The point is to make that workout be part of training, a planned progression towards a specific goal. That may or may not leave us lying on the floor after the session.

99% are a joke. the ones who do make there clients do decent excercises dont ask them to go anywhere near heavy enough... this is why most comercial gym goers never see much improvement.

No. Most commercial gym goers don't have a trainer, PT is taken up by 3% of people in gyms on average. 97% have no-one but themselves to take the blame or credit for their results.

Most people in gyms are not engaged in progressive resistance or cardio training. They do the same thing all the time, the same weights, sets and reps, or they change exercises every week or two, never stick with any one exercise long enough to get strong or fit at it.

They are great results you got for your client. It doesn't seem the guy from my gym is getting the same quality of training that you are giving, which is pretty sad actually.

I didn't get those results for my clients, they did - they worked hard and got the rewards. I just pointed the way.

The point is that if you had seen my early sessions with these two guys, you would think it was "easy training" as you described in your first post. But it wasn't easy for them (the marathon runner could not squat below 30-45 degrees due to flexibility issues, the big guy could not squat deep due to his weight bearing through his knees and his balance), and they have progressed to better things.

You have to see the individual workout in the context of a routine over some months. Simply ask the PTs the following two questions:

"What is the benefit of this exercise? Why this one and not some other?" and
"Where do you see the client progressing to in exercises in the next 3-6 months?"

If they cannot answer those questions, then yes they are idiots. But if you ask, you may find they have reasonable answers

 

[gareer]

Kyle I'd just like to say that your one of the few PT's that I truly respect. Most of them are pretty useless and have no real idea of the human body and it's capabilities. But you have everything down pat. You truly understand Personal Training and everything it encompasses. I'd recommend someone to you any day.

 

[Kyle Aaron]

Thanks. But to be fair, gareer, that's not something you can judge except in person. I mean Markos seems like an arsehole online, in person very different. So I could seem competent online but in person...

If you come to Melbourne, come work out or chat and then you can judge.

All I will say is that I am always trying to learn and get better, and these are early days yet.

 

[PowerBuilder]

Kyle's point about not looking at an individual training session and building an assumption about the PT, but having a longer term veiw of the person. We often can't see the forest through the trees.
Posted via Mobile Device

 

[Kyle Aaron]

Oh don't get me wrong, you could know all the context and the whole programme and it could still be shit. The point is you don't know until you look into it. And it can be worth looking into, rather than just assuming.