experience

"I've seen you come in a lot, how long have you been here?"

"I've been working out for seven years."

"Excellent. How many pushups can you do?"

"A couple from the knees."

"I could give you a programme to strengthen that."

"I don't need a programme, I've been doing this for years."

"I know how that is, I was really good at high school, I stayed there eleven years."

This is a conversation I had with a gym-goer, except for the last part which I thought but didn't say. "Experience" is a funny thing, how do we define it? I asked my boss for a pay rise.

"Why do you keep talking about how many PT sessions you do? There are a lot of other trainers here doing much less PT who have been here longer, they're much more experienced."

"Who is more experienced, the person who has done 50 hours a year of training people for ten years, or the person who's done 500 hours a year for two years?"

"The ten year guy." 

Simple time spent doing something does not make you an expert at it, otherwise most 50 year olds could do stock car racing - they've been driving for 30 years, after all. As I noted in discussing PT apprenticeships, what's needed for mastery is deliberate practice - doing things which challenge you, and thinking about them afterwards. 

This applies to the gym-goer, too. If after seven years of training you have still not done a pushup, I would suggest that you have not challenged yourself seriously in that time. Your practice was not very deliberate.

Experience is demonstrated not by the sheer time spent doing something, but by accomplishments. These come with deliberate practice, with effort challenging yourself. Judge a PT not by how long they've been doing it or the letters after their name, but by their clients' results. Judge a gym member not by how long they've been doing it, but by their accomplishments in the gym. Results demonstrate experience.

Trainer or trainee, if you're experienced - what have you done?