Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Your pay.. earn it.

I admit it, I am a snob. I know a good bit about training, but I am far from an expert, but I am a proficient amateur. I have no patience for professional trainers who either don’t know, or don’t care enough to take care of the people that are paying them to at a minimum keep them safe, and at a maximum get them fitter. Two experiences (at two different facilities) yesterday: First, the client is doing a circuit of exercises (Bulgarian split squats, push-ups, 1 arm rows, and walking lunges) he is doing exactly none of these exercises with decent range of motion, core stability or even control of his body. His “trainer” is standing there one arm crossed, one hand under his chin staring off into space. He is making no corrections, or even suggesting that perhaps doing split squats with his weight forward of his front knee, with the knee bending inward at an angle that hurt me.. Might be a bad thing. I understand, that it’s a bit of a blow to people’s ego to have their form corrected, you might even lose clients that way, but if they get hurt they’re not going to be paying you any way, and not trying to help people is reprehensible.
The second instance I was setting up to do some speed pulls against bands when the trainer and his victim..I mean client set up at the other lifting platform. So far so good.
“We’re going to do deadlifts” hey! Even better.
“Is that the exercise that always hurts my back?” Uh oh.
The “client” grabs the bar from the trainer, and descends. She gets in the neighborhood of the floor, and her hip mobility is used up her lumbar spine flexes, her butt tucks under, and her back hurts. The trainer nods in approval, and this poor woman heads closer and closer to disk issues one deadlift at a time. Some people need adjustments to exercises to accommodate their particular body type/mobility issues/whatever to ignore that and to keep pounding people through the same program is to show that you are not skilled enough to make assessments and adjust accordingly. This is compounded by the fact that the client said she was in pain, and the trainer forced her, like so much play-doh through a fun factory, to do the exercises without trying to adjust her body or the exercise so that she could do them pain free.
In my opinion what these guys were doing is worse than stealing. They are activly injuring people, then asking to be paid. It's pitiful. Know your craft, and do your job.

My workouts (pain and trainer free):
Morning:
Chins 4,4,3,3 @ bw+45
1A dumbbell press: 6/6 @ 75, 4/4 @ 85 x 2
1A rows: 6/6 @ 95 x 3

Afternoon:
Mobility drills and whatnot.
Speed pulls:
8 singles @ 315+2x Monster mini bands. I really liked these, I can go heavier, but this was my first go at pulling against bands, and I was short on time.
I will revisit.

Jitz:
Couple basic side control escapes, and two quick rolls. I got beat up, but did pretty well. Tired, but good work.
Mahalo.

1 comment:

Christine said...

Okay, I think blogger ate my first attempt at a comment. *ahem*

It's soooooooooooooo hard not to look at someone with bad form like that. Have you ever seen the V8 commercial where people get *thwaped* on the head for not eating veggies? That's what I feel like doing to round-backed no form lifters.