progress is progress

There are many ways to show progress when lifting weights.

1. better technique
2. more weight
3. more reps
4. more sets
5. all the above the same, but less pain or no pain doing it

All these things are progress. Progress is progress.

Now go progress.

the sea of wannabes

You don't need a university degree to do personal training well. You do need one to help high-risk people, those recovering from strokes and so on. But this is a tiny minority of the gym population. The best personal trainers have the following,

• Have hired a trainer themselves. They actually believe in and value PT.
• Have a background in movement - doesn't have to be weights, could be gymnastics, tennis, a martial art, etc - in which they've done moderately well over 2+ years. Having moved, they are used to watching movement, and thus understand movement better. This is the beginning of the "coaching eye."
• Have set modestly ambitious physical training goals taking 6+ months to achieve, and achieved them, eg a young woman deadlifting 100kg, a guy running 5km in under 20', either going from healthy bodyfat to sixpack abs, got a black belt in a martial art, rehabilitated an injury requiring surgery, etc. They've done something physically challenging and in which they'll have fallen back along the way (as opposed to the easy newbie gains).
• Some general life experience - other jobs they've been successful at, been married, had children, screwed a few things up, etc. This gives them perspective and empathy which helps them get and keep clients, and get them results.
• Enthusiasm for deeper or broader knowledge of health and fitness, ie they keep studying, including trying out things they think are stupid, so they can have an informed opinion on them. This is quite simply professional development, ie getting better at your job.

Not everyone will have them all, the best will though, and most can be developed over time. There are other things that matter but this will do for a blog post which few will read. 

Think of the trainers you know and ask yourself which of these traits they display. In the US, the number of personal training clients is estimated at 6.4 million; 51.4 million are gym members and 12% or 6.1 million use PT services. That's less than one client per trainer. In Australia, it's estimated that we have twice as many PTs as IT professionals entering the workforce every year. Evidently there are rather a lot of unsuccessful trainers out there. Now consider the above list again and see if you can connect the dots. 

It's easy to get the title "personal trainer". It's not easy to get a job and be good at it.

Why lift?

The question, "why lift?" is answered by doing it seriously for 6 months or so. Strength is like education, you don't realise its importance until you have it, and people who are too lazy to get it will come up with all sorts of elaborate arguments about why it doesn't matter to them. 

• "But I don't want to bulk up." I'd believe this woman if I saw her smashing herself with cardio, but she's walking on the treadmill at 4km an hour reading Woman's Day. She's just lazy. 
• "I get enough leg work playing soccer." I'd believe this guy if he were going hard on upper-body, but he's half-benching 60kg and doing one million curls with layback. He's lazy. 
• "I just need to work on my core." This person isn't doing three minute planks, either. The purpose of your "core" (which we used to call "the waist" before it got trendy) is to keep you upright. Is it harder to stay upright with a big-arsed weight on your back? Then you are working your "core" while squatting. They're lazy. 
• "I have a bad back, and bad knees." This is why you must lift, just starting easier and progressing more slowly than someone with no problems. That you don't do it means you're lazy. 

Cardio is important for good health, beyond a certain level it's not helpful. I know many people who ran for many years, and looking back said it was a waste of time. I know nobody was has lifted for many years and said it was a waste of time.

This is the difficult part about selling training, whether by "selling" we mean signing people up for PT, or simply getting someone to train themselves: you don't realise its true value until you've done it for several weeks at least. You lift because lazy is useless, and stronger is better. 

teach correct movement

Just because you don't know how to coach a movement doesn't mean the person can't do it.

Nowadays we have an entire industry created by people who confuse their inability to coach a movement with the person having some mobility or injury issues which can only be fixed by elaborate "activation" exercises and the like, completed of course with lots of pseudoscientific jargon. 

Of course, "shove your knees out" is less exciting than a book full of mobility exercises.

A personal trainer's job is to teach correct movement. If you cannot get a healthy adult under 50 to an unloaded below parallel squat in ten minutes, and if after six months you have that person deadlifting 30kg, you're incompetent. 

Competitive strength and everyday strength

In strength training we often focus on competitive strength, the "one rep maximum", the most weight we can lift once. Often all our training is focused on that. But there's also everyday strength, which is something up to around 2/3 the maximum. And this is important, too. We can't always get 100%. We can get around 67%, though. 

Everyday strength is the weight you can lift without a warmup on a day when you had a bad night’s sleep and missed breakfast and had an argument with your girlfriend or have got your period and are annoyed at your boss, and it’s a weight you could do for a few sets up to a total of 10 reps – and do it every day without any soreness etc. This is around up to 2/3 of your max lift. On a shitty day you don't have competitive strength, but you do have everyday strength. 

A few weeks back a bunch of my clients went to a powerlifting competition. James at 78kg had previously squatted 130 for a single in the gym, and was regularly doing 100 for his work sets. His first attempt 100 was no problem, and 120 came up easily. Now he tried 140, I saw him come under the bar a bit loose, step out uncertainly, then look a bit confused first to his left – the bar swung – then his right – the bar swung again, then shake his head, go down – and not come up.

The bar had clanged against a metal part of the straps, and as this was the first day he’d ever used the monolift, he didn’t know what it was, and it distracted him as he wondered. Now, when he tried 100, he could be a bit sloppy and still get the weight up. 120 he had to be tighter getting under the bar and more focused. 140 there was no way he was going to do it unless he was 100%.

A 67% lift requires 67% effort and focus. A 100% lift requires 100%. Sometimes we bash ourselves up for not getting 100%, and we forget just how much better that 67% is than it was before. While focused on competitive strength, we forget about our everyday strength. And the truth is that as we continue training, both are improving. So that our old work weight is now a warmup. My client Rosemary, being a small woman in her 60s with a back injury, took six months to be able to deadlift 60kg just once. Now she has done 80kg, and will try for 85 and 90 at a meet in December. But whether she gets 85 or 90 or not, 60 is now a warmup for her. She can just walk in and pull 60 even on a crappy day, and do it for a stack of reps. 

Anourd that's the way it goes in strength training. Your old competitve strength is now your everyday strength. The right mindset in strength training is a balance of ambition and contentment. Too much ambition and you get all depressed when your competitive strength isn't what you hoped. Too much contentment and you never improve either competitive nor everyday strength. You need to appreciate what you've achieved while realising you can achieve more. This is how progress happens. 

Of course, you can push your 100% directly, or just push your 67% and watch your 100% come up anyway. This is the premise of Dan John's Easy Strength, and will be the subject of another article. 

Kudos to Tara for her article Shut Up, Brain, which inspired this one. 

Talented athletes suck

Give me the gimpy ones. 

Whenever I get a gym member or client who is naturally physically talented, I breathe a sigh of regret. Talented athletes suck, they rarely achieve anything. When a person is talented, they're used to things being easy. As soon it gets hard they realise they're risking failure, they become nervous and quit, backing off and changing goals or making excuses. 

Many of us knew someone like this at university. They were naturally so smart that they got through most of high school without studying. But come first year university, or at the latest second year, suddenly they can't pass without studying. Generally they drop out and have an unplanned gap year. 

It's the same when it comes to athletic endeavours. The young woman who can squat 60kg for a single on her first day in the gym later gets to 75kg for work sets and starts complaining, missing workouts and so on, maybe even quits training with me. Three months later she's in the rack squatting 50kg. Meanwhile her untalented friend who started at the same time and struggled to squat the empty bar is smashing out 80kg for work sets. 

Talented people take success for granted and quit when things get hard. Untalented people always find everything hard so just assume it'll always be hard. So they stick with it and get better, and eventually surpass the talented.

If you're a talented athlete, please don't come to me for training, I don't want to waste your money and my time, you're just going to quit as soon as it gets hard. If you were the kid who was picked last, if you're old or riddled with injuries, then head on down and we'll accomplish amazing things. 

"He's not just my client, he's my friend."

Most fitness professional organisations will have a Code of Ethics which includes something like, "the trainer should ensure they do not form a personal relationship which might compromise the professional relationship." What they mean is, "keep it in your pants," but it applies to other kinds of relationships as well. This is difficult because a trainer and client will spend a lot of time with each-other, you the trainer will see the client in vulnerable moments - both failure and success - and clients will generally trust and open up to you in surprising ways. 

Some things for a trainer to think about are below. This is useful for clients as well, of course. 

You can be friends with a client, but there are limits. Essentially you don't want to be a dickhead in front of a client, nor overly familiar. They should not see you drunk and vomiting, or grinding on chicks/guys at the club. If you have problems with your husband or mother, don't talk about them to your client. Especially don't badmouth your colleagues or boss to the client-friend. Any gifts you give to your client-friend should be related to their physical training, like weightlifting shoes, a new set of cricket pads or whatever. 

As a trainer, you'll tend to find that the friendship is rather one-sided and won't last past the training. If they're sick you'll call and see how they are, you'll remember their kid's birthday, that sort of thing. They won't do the same. As well, once the training relationship is over, the friendship will fade away. It's like when you stop working at some place, and your workmates say, "hey, we gotta catch up, let's do lunch sometime." You never will. Take away the common activity and the relationship is dead. They were just friendly, not your friend. 

Since they're your client in your workplace where you spend 20-60 hours a week, they're a big part of your life. But you are only 1/2 to 3 hours a week of their life. They may spend more time each week with Simpsons repeats than they do with you. Outside training, and after the training stops, you'll be well-thought of until you're forgotten shortly afterwards. This is disappointing but there it is, you won't get your fill of social life from the gym, same as any workplace, you need to have a life outside work. 

There are exceptions of course but these are the general rules.