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2003/04/29, 11:34 PM
I was just wondering about the personal trainers that work in your gym. What do you think about how they train people...are they good trainers, bad trainers, mediocre, etc.
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2003/04/29, 11:57 PM
We work out at the YMCA and the people there arn't the best but try to be helpful. In fact I was feeling down the other day and one of them sent me a card in the mail to cheer me up, nothing to do with training but I thought that was a wonderful surprize and it did cheer me up.
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I will lift my own weight someday!!!!!
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2003/04/29, 11:58 PM
Ohhh man, don't get me started. I admit, there are a very few people that know what they're doing and are nice at the same time. Majority of the trainers working at my gym are all stuck ups who are more in tune in telling what people should do or not do. All in all, they think they're the sh*t and I'm just glad that they know not to bother me.
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Shut the f*ck up and train. Let your body do the talkin.
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2003/04/30, 07:03 AM
Hey aegis, I would go to another gym. The gym I work at is full of very smart trainers and we all are very courteous to all who come. I do agree that there are way to many out there though that have no clue what they are doing. For ex. Bally's, Lifetime Fitness, you know the ones, these are full of sub-par trainers.
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2003/04/30, 09:20 AM
My gym seems to have terrible trainers, terrible employees all around actually. Any time I ask for help or advice they seem completely put out and don't take any longer than they absolutely HAVE to to help out. I watch the trainers and they seem very unattentive and almost bored. I was just thinking yesterday how pissed I would be if I hired a trainer and they didn't even bring any energy to our workouts. Not to mention the turnover of the trainers.
I think Dahayz is right though - I go to one of the chain gyms he mentioned - I have a lifetime membership and it's cheap - what can I expect?
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2003/04/30, 09:47 AM
I go to 24 Hour Fitness, and have been VERY pleased with my trainer James. He is very knowledgeable, he changes up my routines all of the time. If he sees anyone who needs help, while I am resting he will walk over and help them. I think that is great. The gym where I go have mostly people over 40. I have watched several of the other trainers there and they all seem to be good. James was just promoted to floor manager for the trainers and he is very down to earth and very helpful to all.
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Gramma
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2003/04/30, 10:00 AM
I don't think they are all that knowledgable, i think ft is waayy better. the trainer at my gym tried to have me workin arms/chest/shoulders all in one day. I don't know that much about lifting but after i was done w/ arms and chest i couldn't do shoulders.
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2003/04/30, 10:01 AM
Trainers come in so many styles. You need to pick the good ones out of crowd. I trained with one at a Bally's some years ago - Juan - he was great, helped me to become the fitness obsessed person I am, including dropping 30 lbs.
I agree, many just "talk among themselves" while weights pin some poor soul to the bench. Only a few do I find approachable to ask for a spot. And a few offer advice or a critique of form.
If I had the money, I'd work with a trainer - carefully selected.
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2003/04/30, 10:05 AM
I have found that small gyms like: Powerhouse, the gym,and golds have the most knowledgable and helpful trainers. This is because they are used to training people for competitions. I especially love gold's trainers, they are the best. Most trainers make the mistake of training everyone the same way..a very good trainer will take a look at your body and create a program that will work for you which will concentrate more on your weak areas, while maintaining your stronger ones.
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2003/04/30, 10:10 AM
The floor trainers in the gym near my home really suck - never around, never willing to help. But the guys near my work are WAAAAY better.
Personally I hate getting to the last 2 reps... My mind starts imagining my arms failing, and me being crushed by the weights (even though they're really not that heavy compared to what others use)... So having someone come behind me and help out on the last few reps is great. At the gym near my work, the guys are generally alert and pick up when someone needs help. They don't just barge in and help out either (which would piss me off)
And they give me excellent help (in terms of correct form) when I'm doing an exercise for the first time. Makes life a lot easier (and a lot less painful)... :)
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2003/05/01, 08:03 AM
I love my trainers; here's a copy of a letter I made up for them since I'm moving:
"My experience at the Old Mill Racquetball and Fitness Club is nothing short of miraculous.
On June 2nd of 2002, I learned news that made me decide to file for a divorce. Things of that severity in one’s life often can result in a significant loss in weight, due to the stress and loss of appetite. So by late June, I’d lost about 10 pounds, down from 252 to 242 pounds. For my daughter’s and my birthday (same day) I’d bought us a Mongoose Mountain Bike with a child seat on the back, and we began riding that day, on June 23rd. We rode daily. I couldn’t even pedal up the steeper hills at first.
I was contending with knee problems from surgeries I had in 1992 and 1993 while serving in the Air Force. I had one arthroscopy which involved a removal of a large portion (1-2 inches) of my medial meniscus ligament, so it was known then that only a matter of time was between bones rubbing together. In 1993, I had a bone-tendon-bone graft, ACL reconstruction. Then, in 2001, I had a laminectomy—my L4-L5 disc was herniated so it had to be removed—the L5-S1 disc is still bulging.
Given that I’d done nothing to get my heart rate above 100bpm since March of 2001, I was at the end of my rope when I came to Old Mill on July 19th of 2002. I signed up for the 4 hours of free instruction with new memberships. I got Bob Doty for a trainer. Nothing has been the same since.
He showed me form on the nautilus machines, taught me that the only way to go is up from here (regarding feeling better), and warned me that my guarded approach was typical yet unwarrented. In other words, people with injuries are often put into a revolving circle of medical treatment, physical therapy that’s low-intensity, and pills and rest. After over a year of that and no relief, I knew, as I’d really known all along, that the answer was in the gym.
Bob’s approach was as much to question my way of thinking and paradigms I’d accepted as it was towards teaching form and method. As I first looked at the lower-back nautilus machine, I feared it worse than death. I could already feel the L5-S1 disc popping backwards, pressuring the thecal sac and making my legs go numb and causing me to collapse, be deformed, and be sent to a bell tower for the rest of my sad days.
Bell tower or not, Bob’s suggestions and words echoed something I read in, “Body for Life,” once (while in a waiting room at a chiropractor’s office), which is paraphrased by the author here: “I knew that I didn’t want to live like that anymore. I went to the gym. I was going to get into great shape, or die trying. Either was better.”
Bob taught me in various ways that the mind contains all kinds of roadblocks for you. Some were created by you, some by others, but all needed to be knocked down, one at a time, to progress. The lower-back machine was not there to hurt me. It was there to help me.
My first few months on the polaris inverted leg press were equally frightful. My knee sounded like bubble wrap being stomped on by a hyper child every time I’d lower the weights, and one day, doing calf exercises on it, I almost yanked both tendons in my lower leg, at the end of the calf muscles. It was not really a feeling of pain, as much as it was that something had just gone wrong; some part of my calves informed me that I’d gone too far. Including the 70lbs of the bar itself, I’d been calf-pressing 490lbs. Whoa! I didn’t even realize it before; just kept charting my weights and increasing. I laid off of the machine for a few weeks, and came back healthy and stronger.
This is as much a testimony to Bob’s approach as anything else I can say. I was taught not to look at the numbers too hard, but to just look for progress. Always progress. ANY progress. So bumping up the weights 10 or 15lbs on lower body exercises every few days was certainly just that, yet I didn’t join to reach a “level,” I joined to continually progress. 490lbs! The reason I got there is because I wasn’t trying to get there. A hurdler who is focused on the finish line will break his neck; he must focus on one jump at a time. And that’s a key point in Bob’s approach; make progress, forget an end…that can be defined later (for instance if you’d gained too much muscle mass for your taste and you just wanted to maintain it, obviously you wouldn’t be looking to add weight, but probably to fix the weight and add sets/reps.)
I’ll never forget the feeling of “I can’t.” I had that feeling when I walked into the gym. At one point, Bob asked me to walk down the aisle and turn around and come back. I know I must have looked like my ankles were in shackles and I was on stilts. I had no flexibility and was very gaurded over my previous injuries. He let me know that; he wanted to see a looser, longer stride, and he promised me that would come. It did.
Inasmuch as a trainer will tell you that nutrition is more important than the workout itself in bodybuilding, Bob is unique in his approach in showing that thoughts lead to actions, and actions lead to results. Too many people are focused on the actions, yet nobody bothers wondering why if all other things are equal, one person in the gym goes for two weeks and never returns, and another gains forty lbs of muscle mass and has an eight-pack showing. So it’s really simple; there is a difference in action, and that action is dictated by the thoughts that induced it (or failed to induce if for those who lacked significant action).
It took me some time to get faith in Bob. It would have with anybody; he was telling me my body could do things that I just knew it could not do. He hasn’t been wrong yet.
At one point, on old football injury to my shoulder came back to haunt me. I kept working out, and had a marked difficulty with the shoulder raise machine. Eventually, I went on to get an MRI, and my family doctor told me I had a “wacky tendon,” and that I’d have to live with it. So I asked the doctor if that meant I could keep working the shoulder without doing structural damage, i.e. only have to deal with the pain, and his response was, “Well, I always tell me patients if it hurts, don’t do it.”
It was a fairly depressing day; I was under the impression that I could no longer work my shoulders for increase in size, and knowing that, couldn’t work the rest or my body would be out of proportion. However, the fundamental change in my thinking that Bob had helped to instill led me to question the medical authority. I worked it anyway. It kept hurting, and getting worse.
So I told Bob one day. He quietly ducked into his office and pulled out a big rubberband (resistance band). I said something like, “Bob, I told you my shoulder hurts, and I just finished working out. And now you want me to do more?” He shrugged his shoulders and said, “Well, you could go home.”
We went into the corner armed with huge rubberbands that had handles. He led me through and performed with me several exercises that both stretched and worked the shoulders. He knew to within one second when I would feel burn or lactic acid buildup in each case. He also said something like, “In a few moments, you will notice your pain is gone.” Righto, I thought. You’re trying to kill me again, Bob.
A few moments passed, and the pain left. No way, I thought. Just coincidence. But it wasn’t…it stayed that way while we talked. I remember thinking that it didn’t matter much, because if I had to do these painful exercises every time I wanted a few minutes worth of relief, it wouldn’t be worth it. But it wasn’t just a few minutes worth; I bought a huge rubberband to take home with me. I did these exercises a total of maybe five times. The pain has NOT RETURNED, and it’s been about five months, and I constantly lift heavier and longer with my shoulders now.
His explanation was that blood is being forced to the affected area, and blood basically brings in the good things, and carries away the bad. With blood going to the affected area, you have oxygen, nutrients, chemicals, etc. getting focused on the injury. I don’t know about all that. I just know it worked.
To sum up, in a little over nine months, I’ve been transformed from weak to incredibly strong, and growing. I give some of the credit to my nutrition, some to my motivation which was, in large part, a generalized anger coming from issues surrounding my divorce, and some to just hard work/work ethic. But in reality, had I not had Bob to coach me, or Dave or Sherri or Judy to answer my questions whenever I had them, I’d be stumbling around the gym without a plan and without much gain. I joke to my friends sometimes when they asked me what I did to get strong, and say, “I’m the guy that Bob built.”
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--There are no versions of the truth.--
Jeff Goldblum, Jurassic Park II
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2003/05/01, 12:58 PM
Errr, I apologize for not reading all of that . . .
Anyway, I remember being a lad of 16 or so, working out religiously, and there was a guy named Gene at our gym who had won some obscure contests long ago and was supposed to be this great trainer now. I always knew who was training under this bozo because I would see them doing these archaic exercises that I knew were destroying their joints and doing little for their physiques. And he charged something like 50 bucks a month! Got all my knowledge from stacks of Muscle and Fitness. Best investment of my life (other than this here wedding ring).
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. . . to crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women . . .
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2003/05/01, 05:15 PM
In my opinion, the majority of trainers are pretty poor. The good ones, however, all tend to be in the same places, much like the location that dahayz works at. I've seen the trainers in my gym walking folks through prefab routines, showing no regard to their form. In fact one of the more well built trainers there uses the most atrocious form I've ever seen. Unfortunately, many certifications don't require testing on certain essential things. And many trainers aren't enthusiasts, they're folks who happen to be in good shape who need a decent job. It's really unfortunate.
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"Don't follow leaders and watch your parking meters!"
-- Bob Dylan
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2003/05/01, 09:22 PM
I couldn't agree more, it is sad that a lot of trainers today are only out to make a few bucks. Sure, we need jobs and to make money, but it is actually an awesome experience to witness a person transform not only there bodies, but there whole life for the better. This is lost with a lot of the trainers nowadays, the self-satisfaction from helping out another human being. It's sad, BUT, even everyday people can spot the good and the bad trainers, there is something about the bad ones that sticks out like a sore thumb. I can only conclude from my own experience that it has a lot to do with there true love for what they do(the good ones), and there willingness to help, WITHOUT trying to push there training services onto them. So, just be choosy.
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2003/05/02, 09:39 AM
I've seen a few trainers "bloom" when they get an enthusiastic and cooperative client. It must be tough to go through a bunch of folks who expect everything to be easy and quick. But to get someone who catches the fitness bug and pushes for more from the trainer, like I said, I've seen their attention and contribution grow. Sometimes a great dancer is just a mediocre one with the right partner.
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2003/05/02, 01:51 PM
OMG! I thought I was the Queen of Long Posts! I think the King has arrived! LOL!
To be honest, I don't know diddly about the trainers at my gym. :) Noirutla is my trainer, so I've never even spoken to any that the gym employs. :)
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~Jennifer
http://www.gwindalyn.com
If you dont stand for something, you will fall for anything.
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2003/05/02, 02:55 PM
Ok Ok I'm sorry, no more long ones, it's just that it was, well, there :D
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--There are no versions of the truth.--
Jeff Goldblum, Jurassic Park II
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2003/05/02, 03:04 PM
some of the trainers at my gym just think that they are hot shit because they are trianers. they kind of know what their talking about, but i see them most of the time just looking at the girls in the gym rather than paying attention to the person their trying to help. either that they are BSing with the other people in the gym.
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Kev
Focus and lift!
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2003/05/02, 06:23 PM
The trainers at my gym are all evil... most of them are out of shape or 17 years old. The women employees all wear these shiny joging outfits - they bring to mind Stepford Wives... very scary. I lucked out in the sense that two of my friends became personal trainers- both put a ton of work into it and I trust them. I also joined a women's gym that has really good personal trainers but there are no weights there, just hydrolics.
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My diet starts Monday, that means I can eat whatever I want until then... right?
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