Crappy Trainers….
22. Jun, 2009 
1 Comment
As a trainer who has been in and around health clubs for 12 years, I have seen my share of ill suited and apathetic trainers and fitness staff members. I was at my gym the other day working out and noticed a female trainer (working) with a client. This trainer, by her facial expression and actions (or lack thereof), really had no interest in her client. All the while her client was exercising, the trainer was either looking in the other direction with a bored look on her face, or playing with her cell phone. During a 35 minute time span, I didn’t once hear a verbal exchange between the two. Now, this trainer was in very good shape and I have to assume that she felt that was enough to sell herself as an expert. I couldn’t help but wonder what this poor client was thinking and why she was shelling out her hard earned dollars to pay this idiot for doing nothing.
This is just one example and believe me, I have seen a ton of similar scenarios.
Personal Training is not for everyone, but the lure of relatively easy money in exchange for fitness advice has brought the unscrupulous as well as the perpetually grumpy out of the woodwork. If you have an indifference to the health industry and/or have little to no interest in actually helping people, then this is the wrong business for you. If your idea of a quality training session is pushing a few random exercises on someone, then this is a bad fit for you.
Personal training, the way it should be done anyway, takes a certain skill set and lots of patience. Also, without a true desire to see your clients succeed, your career as a trainer will be short at best.
This seems to be particularly rampant in university health centers. Now I know that the trainers are usually students and they get paid much less than professional trainers, but it’s still a service that’s being offered to students and faculty of the university and is often a person’s first exposure to the world of personal training. I have heard from several people that they have signed up for such a program at their university’s gym only to get assigned someone who would rather be flirting with the other trainers than focusing on the client. It leaves the client feeling left out, ignored, unworthy of attention, and certainly doesn’t make them more inclined to pay professional fees later.
Fitness is a very personal focus. It’s about me, about my body and what I put in it and what I do with it, and I’ve probably decided to focus on it because I’m not pleased with the size, shape, fitness of that body. When you bring another person into this sphere of focus, you are allowing them into a very personal space, and it needs to be someone you can trust, someone who not only helps you achieve what you want, but who makes you feel better about the whole process.
I would think that a good personal trainer is someone who can be different things to different clients. Training is my profession as well, though not personal training, and I know that I spend the first few minutes of every training session getting a feel for my audience and I adjust my presentation, my performance, based on the make-up of the audience. While knowing the information behind the subject being trained is critical, being able to communicate it in a way that meets the needs of the clients is at least just as important.
I’m very lucky to have the best personal trainer in the world. Thanks, Steve!