The Lazy Fitness Professional

The fitness industry is changing rapidly. If you’re reading this blog post then I’m going to assume that you’re the type of person who has a keen interest in your health; the type of person who goes out of your way to learn new ways to maximise your fitness and become the healthiest version of yourself.

With all of the enthusiasm in the world you trawl through articles online, debate with friends at dinner parties and read every relevant link on social media, but the goal posts keep moving. You’re told that fat is now good for you, that you need to walk a specific number of steps per day and exercise within a heart rate range of 5 beats per minute before chugging down a high protein shake to feed your tired and depleted muscles. Everything that you learn contradicts itself yet makes perfect sense all at once.

And the same problems face health professionals.

I guess the main difference between health professionals and anyone else is the fact that we HAVE to keep on top of the research. We HAVE to stay in the loop and HAVE to relentlessly add to our knowledge base.

Or perhaps I should replace the word ‘HAVE’ with ‘SHOULD’.

You see, the knowledge is out there but many personal trainers and coaches choose to stick with their perceived strengths. They decide that they’ve learned enough from perhaps a year or two of training the public in commercial gyms or parks and what they know will enable them to successfully meet the requirements of any prospective new client. In my opinion this is not only naïve but also tremendously arrogant. As an industry we need to keep learning, from the bottom to the top. We should be hungry for that one piece of knowledge that will change our clients’ lives. That one client who’s struggled for years with chronic back pain due to bad posture and as a result can’t exercise with any real intensity. Or maybe the client who experiences seemingly inexplicable bloating and digestive distress which causes enough inflammation to trigger belly fat storage which makes them feel truly awful.

When you’re looking for a personal trainer to help you improve your fitness, look at your diet with you or fix a persistent biomechanical problem, ask yourself a few questions first. Do they seem like the kind of person who, when they’re not seeing clients, spends their time researching ways to better their practice? Do they go out of their way to book themselves onto seminars and pay out of their own pocket for courses and workshops that enhance their knowledge? If not, I’d keep on looking!

The guys and girls who do best in the fitness industry and most value to their clients’ routines are those who don’t kid themselves that they know everything. I’m looking forward to meeting many of these true professionals at a string of events and workshops I’ll be attending over the next couple of months.

Have a healthy day :)