Lean Bodies Consulting

1. Trainers that can’t train themselves.

Seriously. You’re a personal trainer, but I never see you train - ever. In fact, even if you did train regularly, I wouldn’t be able to tell. This really, really bugs me about the personal training industry. You’re a personal trainer yet you don’t look like you’ve applied any of your ‘knowledge’ to yourself.

Now I can understand if you have different goals - say for example, you train for strength, or performance in a sport and not for fat loss. Ok, fair enough. Then I hope you’re at least strong and better in your sport because of your training. Or maybe you’re a competitor (or even non-competitor) in your offseason, focusing on putting on some muscle. Fair enough. I’d expect that what you’re doing is getting you results - after all, you’re a “trainer”.

But if you’re instructing/training people who are interested in fat loss … and you don’t know how to get yourself in shape? You shouldn’t be teaching anyone anything. Again, fine if being lean, etc. is not your goal right now, but you should be able to get there when you want to - because you know how, right?

The trainers in my gym - they’re just your regular gym warriors - they’re not training for sport, for strength, etc. They’re ‘bodybuilders’ - you know - wanna get big and ripped? At least I assume that from watching them do the Flex magazine workouts. And yet … it doesn’t seem to be working.

Just because you have a certification, doesn’t mean you’re a trainer. We all have certifications. You know what I learned in mine? Not much, and nothing that changed my methods. I learned more from reading what other more experienced and smarter people are saying and doing. Certifications offer ‘perceived credibility’. Great trainers are built from a life of self learning, open mindedness and experience. And that should include being able to get a dedicated result in YOURSELF too.

2. “It’s all you!”

No it’s not. Seriously. It’s not. If you’re getting a spot for something (why I have no idea), and your spotter says, with his hands on the bar, “IT’S ALL YOU”, or tells you “nah man, it was all you”, you can be sure that it was not all you. Do your own reps already.

3. Upper Bodybuilders

Train your legs for crying out loud! Yes, it looks like you’ve had some success with your upper body, but geez man, you have absolutely no leg development, no glute development, no nothing. How many times can you train arms?

I think I am one of only a handful of people in my gym that train legs regularly - and hard. At the other end of the spectrum you have the guys - who when asked why they don’t train legs - say something like

“I do a few sets of leg extensions and leg curls each week. I don’t want my legs to get too big’”

Yes because it’s just that easy to get legs that are too big.

“I run”

Ok … is there a second part to that sentence?

“I play soccer”

That’s nice. We’re talking about leg training.

There’s not much more satisfying in the gym than a tough leg workout - some heavy FULL squats (not those shallow knee bends 9 out of every 10th person does … on the Smith machine), some heavy deads. This is the fun stuff. Or maybe I’m just twisted.

Got any of your own?

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 26th, 2008 at 2:17 pm and is filed under Off Topic , Training . 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.