Personal trainers and aimless sessions

The valiant and competent PT stands ready to
catch her 1kg dumbbell
should she fail on the 687th rep

Sometimes people will look around their gyms and ask me why PT sessions consist of random exercises with neither PT nor client taking notes of what they're doing. There's a method to this madness. 

Firstly, most PTs have 0-3 clients. Up to around 6 clients, the PT can just remember their previous personal best lifts and go from there to make sure that they're pushed in each session - remember that if you do more than you did before you'll progress; it's better if this "more" is structured, but you can go a surprisingly long way without much plan simply by actually making an effort; and clients generally demand novelty, thus the randomness. And with 0-3 or even sometimes 6 clients, the PT can keep all this stuff in their head. Get 12-18 clients and the PT has to start writing things down, though. 

With all that, bear in mind that many clients don't actually care about progress. If you have them puffing like a steam engine for half an hour, they're happy. Magazines and Biggest Loser and a heap of movies of people doing pushups in the rain while someone shouted at them have told them that simply being thrashed is progress, or if not progress is sufficient atonement for their "sins" of sitting on their bums eating crappy food most of the week. "Okay, today you will do 1,000 jumping jacks, I'm going for coffee, leave $30 on the table on the way out." 

"You did 5 pushups last time, 6 pushups this time, this is progress, well done" is an alien concept to them. This is especially true when you come to the "but I just want to tone up" crowd (which has both male and female members). 

Remember that physical training can change how you look, feel and perform. Many people begin poor in all three. These kinds of unstructured workouts with no real progression will, so long as the person is pushed, raise them from poor to okay in two of the three, and all three if they improve their diet, too. If you've been looking, feeling and performing poorly for the last several years, simply being okay will feel amazing. 

A structured workout with progression in combination with a good diet is necessary to improve how you look, feel and perform from okay to good. But many clients will be thrilled just to be okay as even that's a vast improvement for them. And for that, just getting them working hard and sweating for half an hour a couple of times a week is enough. 

Let's not be too disdainful of this, since the person with this kind of session with a trainer is better off than they would be on their own. Most people on their own don't progress the resistance, speed, time, etc, they just come in and read the paper on the bike or do a few sets of lat pulldowns lurching their body back, etc. Simply by being given a routine working their whole body and pushed a bit harder each session they get results they'd never get on their own.

Only a minority of clients will want something more. This small number grows if the trainer uses sessions to educate the person. But most PTs don't, they provide only the service demanded. Bring 'em in, thrash 'em, sign 'em off, see you next time, next! Again, this is an improvement on what most people do on their own - they will at least see progression from poor to okay. 

Clients with no real goal except to be thrashed for half an hour a couple of times a week bore me, so I never recruit them, if given them by a manager I try to change their minds, and if that fails I shuffle them off to other trainers. But for many trainers this kind of client is their bread and butter.