Lean Bodies Consulting

I have to interrupt the bulking series for a bit of randomness today.

1. There’s a personal trainer at my gym that I would like to fire … and I don’t even work there. In fact, I’d like to fire all of them. Have you ever noticed that very few - if any - clients of the average gym PT ever look any different? Ever? How about the fact that they don’t even look like they train themselves half the time? And to the clients, why don’t they clue in … that it’s not working?

Back to the guy I want to fire. Nice guy I’m sure and he’s got a pretty good physique … from the waist up. You see, I’ve never, ever seen him train legs. Ever. So then, how can a person who doesn’t train legs, teach someone how to squat? I’ll tell you how - they can’t!

Better than that - he has them squatting on the Smith Machine, with the sissy pad. Then he makes them put their feet out in front of them, and he makes very certain that those knees don’t pass the toes - you know, to prevent her patellas from exploding and cracking the mirrors. He’d get fired for that I bet.

But you know, I can almost look past this because hey, it’s really common, sad as it is. But this one girl, she looked like she was folding in half - like a lawn chair, and a cheap one at that. I wish I could put it into words. I might have to get Laura to video tape me in the gym trying to duplicate it. On her descent, she wasn’t just going down, she was practically buckling - at the neck, the lumbar, everything. All the while the PT is watching those knees and saying how good she’s doing. Fired!!!!!

If you can’t squat properly yourself, you can’t teach someone how to squat.

2. Do you ever stop and just watch people in the gym? What the heck? Sometimes you have to wonder what muscles they’re trying to train during some of their lifts. They turn concentration curls into a full body, compound exercise.

People would have far more effective workouts if they stopped and focused on training their muscles, as opposed to just lifting weights. Most of us are not powerlifters so check your ego at the door. We’re concerned with more than just getting the weight up. We’re concerned with development. And to that end, it’s all about rep quality. Make every inch of every rep of every set count. Think of your workouts as contracting your muscles against resistance. Make your reps count.

3. Kipping Pull Ups bug me.

I was going to keep going on my next point - retarded contest prep methods but I’ll save that for the next rant. (but I’m writing it now while I’m in this mood. )

No related posts.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 10th, 2008 at 9:16 pm and is filed under Nutrition, Off Topic . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.