Fitness and fatness

"You look fit," a person will say to someone skinny. This shows a fundamental confusion about what "fitness" is. "Fitness" is not about being lean, still less is it about good health. The three are different things. 

Fitness is the ability to do a task. That's it. This may or may not include having sixpack abs, usually not. Generally it does not include being healthy, since pushing your body to extremes of performance in one area is rarely good for it. Of the two people below, one is fit for weightlifting, the other is fit for running marathons. They are not fit for each-other's tasks. See also here for a visual example of the diversity of physiques fit for various athletic tasks. 

Fit? Yes. Healthy? No.
Likely: diabetes, joint issues, cardiovascular disease

Fit? Yes. Healthy? No.
Likely: joint issues, ammenorrhea, osteoporosis

The Olympics begin today, and as usual the Australia media fall over themselves to fawn on any athletes they think might win medals (they ignore those unlikely to do so, only to grovel when one wins unexpectedly). Part of this expectation that the athletes should earn medals is a vicious attack on anyone who might deny some hysterical commentator the chance to bellow, "GOLD! 'Straya wins GOLD!" 

Thus, when the swimmer Leisl Jones showed up looking a bit chubbier than normal, the media went into paroxysms of indignant rage, which when questioned  was staunchly defended. "No, we're just talking about her... fitness." No, you're talking about the size of her belly and bum. 

Who cares if she can swim?

This has been attributed to sexism, and I think there's some truth in that, as the media and general public tend to feel that any prominent woman has some sort of moral duty to be worth having a wank over, or at least not put you off if thoughts of her happen to cross your mind at the relevant moment. No such standards are applied to men, since a man is allowed to be as ugly as a sackful of arseholes provided he's more or less competent at what he's doing, or at least has big wads of cash. 

As well, the media and general public often feel some distress and confusion whenever confronted by any female physically stronger than a eight year old with muscular dystrophy, and thus look for any excuse to stick the boot in. So there's definitely sexism involved. 

However, the wider issue is confusion between fitness, health and being lean. These are three different things, and if you improve one, you will often take away from one of the others.

Choose a point somewhere in there

Again, fitness is the ability to do a task. Health is, as Dan John noted, the optimal interplay of the organs - things are just working right. Being lean is just being lean. 

Fitness and health

Any athlete who reaches international level and stays there some time will not be healthy, since pushing your body to those extremes, repeating the same tasks again and again, this is not healthy. Swimmers get shoulder impingements, weightlifters damage their knees, runners damage their knees and ankles, and so on. If you push your body to the limits of human capability - or a bit beyond, with the help of drugs - then you will push it to a level which damages some of the tissues in the body. Thus, top athletes aren't healthy. If they pull back on training to allow their health to recover, their fitness for the task of performing on the field, track or in the pool will diminish. 

Leanness and health

Being lean is not an indicator of being healthy, either. "Fitness" models on the day of their shoot are tired and weak, being depleted of glycogen (giving them energy) to help keep water retention low so you can see their sixpack. And of course, starving people are generally pretty lean, as are anorexics. Leukemia patients are usually lean. But nor is being fat an indicator of health. Fatness or leanness is, unless you go to the extreme of one or the other, a separate issue to health. A person can be a bit chubby or a bit lean and still be healthy, or be chubby or lean and very unhealthy. 

Fitness and leanness

There are no sports which require a sixpack as part of the scoring, any more than their score on height or shoe size. Generally certain physiques will do better at certain sports, and athletes with particular physiques will gravitate to particular sports, or change their physiques to suit - if they can. There are not many short basketball players, not many tall gymnasts, not many chubby sprinters, and not many lean hammer throwers, not at the top level anyway. 

Fitness = performance

Your fitness is measured by your performance. Your ability to do a task is measured by how well you do at that task. Leisel Jones' fitness is measured not by whether she looks good naked, but how she swims. My workplace has a swimming pool, every day I see dozens of women leaner than Jones, none of them are on the Australian women's swimming team - because lean as they are, they are not as fit for the task of swimming as Jones is. 

I don't really care about swimming, but it's my sincere hope that Jones will win gold, and then the media will shut the fuck up about the size of her bum. Of course, I still don't expect them to learn the difference between fitness and fatness. 

2012.07.30 Addendum: at this stage, Jones is through to the final with the 5th fastest time. The "unfit" woman has at most 4 other women in the world faster than her. All of us wish to be so unfit. 

2012.10.27 Addendum: an interesting and familiar-sounding article. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. 

Will I get rich being a PT?

No.

Sorry, but there it is. You'll get $10-$50,000. 

Typically people pay $50-$80 an hour for one-on-one PT here Down Under. How much the PT gets depends on how they're employed and how successful they are, but $40/hr is reasonable and common. Most people who have money for PT are working 9-5, so they want to work out 6am-9am or 6pm-9pm; the split is about 40% of all PT clients in the mornings, 40% in the evenings, and 20% during the day. Given this, we can extend the mornings and evenings by an hour, 6am-10am and 4pm-9pm. 

Most clients will want to do 2x 30 minute sessions a week. If the trainer works five mornings or five evenings a week and is completely booked out with all 20 hours (40 sessions), they'll be doing 20hr of PT a week with 20 clients, which is $700-$800. This happens to be 125-133% the minimum wage in Australia, but of course that minimum wage assumes you're working 37.5hr a week, and we're talking about 20hr, so it's not too bad.

More determined trainers - usually the single ones under 30 - will work both mornings and evenings, doubling their potential PT income. 

In practice of course nobody is going to be solidly booked with every possible session each week, nor would they want to be - 3-4 clients back-to-back is generally your limit, after that you're just going through the motions and everyone starts getting the same workout. And of course you do need to eat and go to the toilet and so on. And about 1 in every 6 scheduled sessions just doesn't happen, for whatever reason. Thus the 8 available sessions in practice becomes 4-6. 

Some trainers boast of how much money they make doing bootcamps. 12 people at $15 each for an hour, etc. That's nice, but you won't be doing bootcamps from 6-9 five days a week, you'll be lucky if you do five hours of them weekly. 

PTs can also act as gym instructors doing gym shifts for the introductory appointments people get at most gyms. $25-$30 an hour is common, as are 4 hour shifts. Notice that you actually end up earning about the same money over the 4 hours. For example,

• 0600 Anna
• 0630     -
• 0700 Bob
• 0730    -
• 0800 Cara
• 0830 Dan
• 0900 Erica
• 0930    -

The 2.5hr of PT over 4hr earns me 2.5hr x $40/hr = $100. Or I could do a gym shift 6-10and earn 4hr x $25/hr = $100. In those 4hr there'll usually be 3 different appointments and 1hr set aside for breaks, cleaning and administration. And usually 1 of the 3 gym appointments won't be booked in or won't show up. Trust me, 2 introductory gym appointments and a bit of dusting and stats are a lot less work than 5 PT clients. 

Why then not just do gym shifts, forget PT? Well, the gym shifts are all casual, so could be taken from you by the gym manager at any time, whereas 5 clients are not going to disappear at once; PT gives you more income resiliency. Secondly, you cannot choose your co-workers or the gym members, but you can choose your PT clients. You may or may not like your co-workers and gym members, it's just luck, but you should like all your PT clients. And you get to see their progress. 

And of course you can do both, you could do PT 0600-1000 and then do a 1000-1400 gym shift, or vice versa. 

Many PTs will also do group classes such as circuit, boxing, Zumba, kettlebells, etc. Most management roles will be permanent part-time, a PT team leader doing 10-20hr and a gym manager 20-30hr. Roles may also be available at the front desk signing people up for memberships, and so on. 

And you can also have a second job at another gym. This sometimes leads to farcical situations, where two staff are each employed at two separate gyms in the same chain and working 10-20hr at each instead of each of them just staying at one gym for 20-40hr a week. 

Thus, very few PTs work full-time training people, but are either part-time during their careers, or make it into a full-time job by combing several smaller jobs. In Australia, around $50,000 annually is about the upper limit for a personal trainer employed by a gym. $30,000 is more typical. Now you know why so many trainers are in their 20s and living at home, or stay-at-home parents, etc. 

Self-employed trainers are another matter, of course, with income varying from "losing money, going bankrupt like a thousand other small businesses, woops," to... sky's the limit. 

Why is the industry like this?

The fitness industry is like the hospitality industry. For most of the jobs there's a fairly low barrier to entry, you don't need years and years of education and experience. It thus attracts a lot of people with a casual attitude to it, people who do not see it as a long-term career: university students, people who've been unemployed for years or failed at every other job, etc. 

Like hospitality, most members of the public don't value the expertise offered (remember: two-thirds of new gym members refuse the free appointments offered to get them started, and about two-thirds of those who do accept the appointments ignore the routines given them). Since they don't value it, they won't pay for it, so gym owners can't offer high pay. 

As well, gym owners and managers are wary of relying too much on a few staff. A typical gym is open 100hr a week, even with 2 staff on the floor almost the whole time you could staff it with 5 full-time people. But what if one is sick? You're screwed. Much much easier to have 20 casual part-timers who do 4-12hr each. 

Of course this is a vicious circle, the employers making it all casual means people with casual attitudes are attracted to it, which means the employers will not give them full-time jobs, and so on. 

"Doesn't sound like much..."

It's not. You won't get rich training people, the rich ones do stuff other than train people - like teach PT courses, write books, sell DVDs, supplements, quit training and just make money from spruiking their mates' stuff in their blogs, etc. Some of them invent certifications which you have to pay to be retested in every two years. Oh hi there, Pavel. 

You do PT not to make money, but because you enjoy it and it fulfills you. 

But do you need to get rich?

It's a lot harder to find a job that makes you happy than one that makes you money. Sometimes that's not so bad - you use the money to do things that do make you happy. There's more to life than money, money is just a tool to get you the things you need (food, shelter, etc) and want (dinners out, movies, trips overseas, etc). If you're doing a job you hate then some of the wants become needs - to keep you sane - if you love your job, maybe you don't want as much other stuff.

WonderGirl tells us that it's wrong to even think about money, you should do it because you love it. Of course, she's 24 and apparently single and childless. Money does matter, money must always be your first priority - because if you have an income of $0, you can't do anything else. "I want to help people!" Me, too. Can I help anyone if I'm homeless and hungry? Money must always come first. Of course, after money coming first, the questions will be: but how much money? And those other priorities I have, what are they? And how far below the first priority are they?

This is why I work for a community gym rather than a commercial one. Both have "make money!" as their first priority, and "help people!" as their second. At a community gym, this second is only slightly below the first, at a commercial gym it's way below the first. For example, a community gym which has spare cash will put it into programmes offering cheap or free access and training to stroke victims, people with mental illness and so on. A commercial gym will never have any programmes like that however much money they've made. 

Up to you, really, whether you become and stay a trainer, and where you go to work. I love my job. It's my work, the activity which makes me feel creative and productive and useful. As Dan John said, "If you get this right... you can change people's lives with weights." 

Are you a morning person?

I'm not naturally a morning person, but if you want success in the gym, you'll have to become one. Start with breakfast.

When I was first employed I'd been given a couple of gym shifts, and told, "You might want to set aside a couple of blocks a time each week when you're available for personal training." I told my wife, who said, "Cool. Nine to five."

"The people who have money to train are working then. So it needs to be mornings or evenings. Like 6am to 9am, or 6pm to 9pm."

"I don't want to be woken up early!"

"Okay, I'll do evenings."

"Then I'll never see you. Do mornings."

"Rightyo."

I've had a lot of 5 o'clock starts since then. A lot of mornings where I got up and it was very cold and dark, and in the past year, after five hours of sleep split in two by my son. Not much fun sometimes, especially when I arrive at the gym to find a message from my first client saying they couldn't come in because they'd not slept well. Uh-huh, must be terrible for you.

To be honest I'm glad I chose the mornings. I've introduced literally hundreds of people to the gym. What I've found is this: breakfast matters. Not everyone who eats breakfast eats well through the rest of the day. But everyone who misses breakfast or has a token piece of toast eats badly through the rest of the day.

If I can't get them to start eating a decent breakfast, I can't get them to change anything else. The person who won't add an egg to their piece of toast and have a glass of milk with it isn't going to be counting up the grams of protein they're eating or ensuring they get 2 fruits and 5 vegies a day or cutting out alcohol or whatever. If they won't knock back a bowl of oats then they won't do a workout outside their PT sessions. But if they actually will change their breakfast, that small and simple step can sometimes lead to other change in their food and exercise. Not always, but sometimes.

As well, most people work or study during the day, so they can work out in the mornings or the evenings. If they don't have breakfast they won't work out in the morning, or won't keep it up. Immediately after work they're tired and the gym is crowded so they decide to have dinner first, then they're full so they won't work out. The people who work out in the mornings are simply more likely to stay as gym members and PT clients. Every morning you see 100 regulars who come three or more times a week. Every evening you see 300 people you've never seen before.

People having breakfast is also important to me since I do all my PT in the mornings, and I don't like it when people faint or vomit. For success in the gym, become a morning person. To become a morning person, start with breakfast.

Functional life screen

Your hobby is my work. 

In physical training and therapy we've seen offered a functional movement screen. This is a series of movements which the person performs, and you look at whether they can perform them well, have to shift around a lot to do it, or if the movement causes them pain. There are many ways to look at movement and assess it, the point is to have some systematic way of looking at the body's movement so you can improve it.

You can think about your life in the same way. Every person's life has several things in it which give them meaning and purpose, from which they draw strength and fulfilment. There are lots of ways to break them down, “work, rest, play, pray” is one, I offer another. The exact way you break it down isn't important, what's important is that like your physical training, if you think systematically about it then it helps you focus on your strengths and weaknesses and lets you know what you need to work on.

This will be relevant to health, fitness and personal training, I promise.

Friends & family - some may separate the two, but in some cultures it's all family, in some blood relatives are less important and friends are more so. The point is that you should have some people in your life who you socialise with, who you can rely on to help you when needed and tell you hard truths, and who can rely on you to do the same.

Intimate – among your family and friends there will be one person you are particularly intimate with, who you can trust absolutely and have shared a lot of significant experiences with. Commonly this relationship will be sexual, but it need not be.

Work – Work is an activity which fulfills you, makes you feel productive and creative, and towards which you feel some sense of duty. This is distinct from a job, which is just what earns you money. You may have a crappy job (street sweeper, accountant) to provide money for your real work (being a father, helping adult literacy, etc). Obviously it's most convenient if your job is also your work.

Hobby – like work, a hobby fulfills you and makes you feel productive and creative, but you feel no sense of duty towards it, you can pick it up or put it down at any time. Note that a diversion or leisure activity is not a hobby. Watching the football, doing bicep curls, spending hours on the elliptical or masturbating to porn may be relaxing and fun, but they don't fulfill you, still less make you feel productive and creative.

These four elements of life complement one another. A person who has all four going well will be happy, no two ways about it; if anything goes wrong with one of them, the other three will support it. For example, I lost interest in my old career, but with help from my intimate (wife) and advice from my friends, I turned my hobby (fitness) into my work (I went and got qualified). Thus the three functional areas of my life supported the dysfunctional area. Three legs of the four-legged table were steady and made up for the fourth being shaky.

With just two, any difficulties in one may hurt the other. For example, I know a couple who moved to China for the man's job in engineering. His wife got a job teaching English, which she loved – it was her work. But she was away from her family, and there was no way for her to keep up her netball hobby. She had work and an intimate, but family & friends and hobby were absent. When she had stresses at work, this led her to put a lot of weight on her marriage, and there was a lot of tension and arguments. She then spent more time at work avoiding this and eventually left China and went back home, the marriage broke down. Had she had her family & friends around (or new ones), or her hobby to enjoy, things might have been different. A table with two legs will not be standing long, it's just too unstable.

When just one of the elements is present and doing well, it's very unlikely to last. One part of a person's life simply can't handle the weight of their whole life. A person with none of them is on a bare-arsed gravel slide to depression.

More numbers-oriented people may choose to rate each area of their life as per the functional movement screen.If you do choose to give a rating to these areas, you should burn the paper immediately afterwards, since simply seeing a rating of themselves is not likely to impress the people involved in it.

• 3 if the element is going very well with nothing left to desire. It functions and functions well.
• 2 if the element is present, but could improve in one or two ways (eg job and work becoming one, more time with intimate, etc). It functions but not as well as it could.
• 1 if the element is present but not working well or is “okay, I guess.” It's not really functional.
• 0 if the element is entirely absent, or actually makes the person unhappy (eg no friends & family, or hobby of volleyball made less fun by team politics, etc). It's dysfunctional.

Nobody is going to have a score of 12/12. I would say that 9 is pretty damn good, providing that there are no elements with a score of 0.

I'm not the type to score things this way, I just offer it as a suggestion. But it can be useful to consider each area of your life in turn and ask yourself if it could be improved in some way. This may require compromises, more time and effort here means less there. Maybe you love your work but 12 hours a day there leaves no time to see your friends and family, or maybe you gave up your hobby for time with your intimate but would now like to return to it. It's all about balancing the different aspects, and remembering that you can't give 110% to any one area without it seriously harming one or more of the other areas. 

Relevance to fitness & personal training

Others talk of your life in terms of traffic lights, eg if you are moving house this weekend your life is in a “red light” situation, and you can't really start an ambitious new physical training programme today; but if you are healthy, happy and with no big changes coming up, you can. The four elements of the functional life screen offer a more systematic assessment.

In my experience, people who would score poorly on the FLS simply will not stick to a fitness routine. If they have no intimate or endless difficulties with them, if they argue with their few family & friends, if they have a job but no work, they will be too miserable and irresolute to get anything useful done. The exception is the hobby area, since physical training may become their hobby, it may fulfill them and make them feel productive and useful. One client said to me, “Some people like movies, some like shopping, I like deadlifts.”

The purpose of PT is to make physical training more productive and fun for the client. We make it more likely that health & fitness will become their hobby. Despite what PT school told us, we're unlikely to train people for whom fitness is work – fitness models and athletes. At best it's the client's hobby. Remember that the thing about a hobby is that the person has no sense of duty towards it. They can stop at any time, or do it somewhere else with someone else.

A while back Alwyn Cosgrove commented that most people have only three places they go – to their job, home and one other place for their hobby. They have to have a job to survive, they also need a roof over their head – their hobby is optional. If a person comes and spends time with a personal trainer, they are choosing to spend a good part of their lives the PT. We have to be the best part of the client's day.

Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. This month I have had two clients quit. The first asked for a certain style of training, got it and didn't enjoy it – I was definitely not the best part of her day! The second is stopping after 22 months and over 150 sessions because she has taken on a huge mortgage, the day she told me I thought she was going to cry. About a year ago she said, “the days I work out with you are simply better.”

Dan John said at the end of Intervention,

“You can add and subtract all you want to this. But the thing is this. If you ask the right questions, if you narrow and you throw out all the stuff you read on the internet and all the stuff you see in magazines, if you get down to what is crucial and important... you can change lives with weights.”

He's absolutely right. He's talking about what correct movement and strength do for bodies, but it's true for our souls as well. Having a fulfilling hobby, spending part of your day on something which makes you feel productive and useful but for which there is no pressure of duty, this can complete your life. This hobby doesn't have to be training up your health and fitness, but if it is I might be working with you. Your hobby is my work.