What is the stupidest thing you've seen a PT doing with their client in the gym?

[Admin]

What is the stupidest thing you've seen a PT doing with their client in the gym?

 

[White_Lie]

I wouldn't say stupid but I see so many trainers that just don't seem to care about their job. Training people to do exercises with poor form usually

 

[steveP]

Sitting there chatting about what they watched on TV the night before instead of actually doing a workout.

 

[Jungnaut]

Flirting with female clients and touching their booty at every available opportunity. And making them squat like retards, not a even quarter rep - what the hell?

 

[crf529]

Teaching every client under the sun, their 'version' of cleans and snatches. Amplified by the awesome fact not one of them can even squat the bar only, correctly.

 

[Darkoz]

Taking their money

 

[aussienick]

Box squats onto a bosu ball

Squatting in the smith machine

 

[Kyle Aaron]

Hard to say, I had 4.5yr in a Y so lots of competition there.

Rack pulls standing on an aerobics step.
Bosu half-squats in the smith machine.
An obese deconditioned woman with her feet shoulder-width apart and pointed forwards, heels directly under her shoulders, in the smith machine, the exercise physiologist asking, "so why can't you squat deeper, is it your hamstrings or...?" Gee I wish I had an ex sci degree too.
Kneeling wobbling on a swiss ball throwing a medicine ball back and forth with a trainer. Why? "Core conditioning, he had a herniated disc."

 

[jzpowahz]

seen that medicine ball throwing one before. Thought it was going to end up through the window.

Too many to list/remember but today I saw a guy with a bosu ball against his back doing maybe 1/8 of a squat lots of times for some reason. Suprised the PT wasn't yelling out "feel the deeeeeeep burn"

 

[Puggy]

I think trainers need a lot of experience either in the field working with clients or their own personal transformation/fitness journey before they can really be 'qualified' by more than just a certificate.
I've seen some bad stuff, but some really awesome stuff too. Most of the time, the bad stuff comes from regular kunces who haven't exercised much in their lives, who suddenly want to become personal trainers, the good stuff, guys who have done it all before with years of personal and professional experience behind them.

 

[RyanF]

Teaching every client under the sun, their 'version' of cleans and snatches. Amplified by the awesome fact not one of them can even squat the bar only, correctly.

Ah yes, the PT's "version" of an exercise. When a PT tries to recreate an exercise and says "this is my version of ______," it almost always ends up inferior to the original exercise. That's what happens when you innovate for the sake of looking impressive rather than to actually solve a problem (pro tip: no trainer seeking to solve a problem by modifying a technique ever called it their "version" of the exercise).

I've seen some things that looked bad, but when I considered the context, I understood why the trainer did it that way, and it all fell into place. I've seen other things that looked moronic, and the context is that the trainer was a moron.

A recent winner of the moron award goes to a trainer who tried "correcting" my bench press by teaching me a technique that meant I couldn't safely lower the bar all the way down, and I couldn't get 80kg up for a single rep. He also "fixed" another guy's deadlift by teaching him a technique that reduced the load the hamstrings could take and reduced the load he could actually get off the floor by 50%. He was almost as bad as the trainer a few years back who told me I was deadlifting wrong because the bar was making contact with the floor, and proceeded to demonstrate the most round-backed deadlift ever, followed by the recommendation that I follow a macro split with 80% protein.

Another trainer trainer tried teaching his female, middle-aged, untrained client to clean and jerk with a hex bar. I've also seen him make elderly clients who can't stand up with decent posture (let alone lift with safe form or technique) doing about 50% above 1RM. u wot m8.

I think the lamest thing that's stuck with me was a trainer getting his client who very clearly could squat full ROM with weight to do bodyweight box squats...but stop descending and come back up long before she came close to touching the box.

 

[Fister Roboto]

A recent winner of the moron award goes to a trainer who tried "correcting" my bench press by teaching me a technique that meant I couldn't safely lower the bar all the way down, and I couldn't get 80kg up for a single rep.

Just to play devil's advocate, I have found a great PT in my gym. Knowledgeable and very much walks the walk.
There are certain tweaks he has made to my form that have reduced the load I can handle but will make the movement much safer in the long run.
Generally the the load you can handle will quickly increase as you develop muscle memory.

 

[canned tuna]

Yesterday, guy benching the bar severely imbalanced
PT keeps trying to make him arch more
Hello....

 

[RyanF]

Just to play devil's advocate, I have found a great PT in my gym. Knowledgeable and very much walks the walk.
There are certain tweaks he has made to my form that have reduced the load I can handle but will make the movement much safer in the long run.
Generally the the load you can handle will quickly increase as you develop muscle memory.

True. More often than not, a technique tweak will necessitate a short-term decrease in load so that you can actually use the new technique. This wasn't one of those moments. In this instance, every one of his tweaks decreased tightness/stability and worsened the leverage. There are valid reasons why someone would choose to bench press this way, but none of those reasons apply to me, nor are they important to the majority of people.

 

[Goosey]

What's the PT's role?

 

[RyanF]

What's the PT's role?

To train people in a way that's relevant to their needs and abilities. When a PT isn't doing that, it's pretty silly.

 

[Goosey]

So a PT is in a sense like a GP?

 

[Kyle Aaron]

Yes.

A long time ago on this board tried to insult me by saying, a top coach gets the last 5% of someone's performance, a PT gets the first 50%. He later apologised but I said, actually no, you're right. And that really is the trainer/coach distinction - the first and second 50% of someone's possible performance.

But when you think about it, 50% of an age-ranked world record is pretty good, if you get some chubby accountant or stay-at-home mother with a bad back to that, you totally change their lives. Look at raw drug-tested records as an example. For a guy in the 80s kg - so a normal height guy who, after a year or two of training is no longer chubby but hasn't got a sixpack - 50% of world record squat, bench and deadlift is roughly 140/100/160.

Woman in 60s kg, about 90/65/110.

And then think of a 5km run time, a 50% performance would be 25' for the men and 28' for the women.

Seriously, if you can take a previously sedentary person under 35 and in under 12 months (could be quicker, we'll assume just a PT session or two a week, and people who don't have perfect food and rest) get them to 50% of world records - you've totally changed their lives in a way they'll never forget, and very probably established habits of exercise they'll keep up forever.

So yeah, like a GP.

 

[RyanF]

So a PT is in a sense like a GP?

Kyle says yes, apparently. I'm fine with that, but I don't see how you get GP (specifically) out of moving someone from their current context to their intended context. I would have called that "doing what someone has paid you to do," but okay.

 

[Goosey]

This is what I dislike very much about the so called fitness industry.

building strength (the by products many) and losing fat (counting calories) is a very simple process, made complex by douche bags wanting to make a living out of it.