Tank Tops May Be Hazardous To Your Health
There’s not much to say…even Rook is confused
Personal training has come a long way from the 90’s body-builder days. Men in tank tops are mostly gone, and I haven’t had anyone try to sell me steroids in 20 years. Despite all the progress, though, we have a lot further to go. We trainers get a bad rap for good reason; too many clients get injured on our watch. “We” is a broad and all-encompassing term for those in the industry who injure clients: trainers, coaches, and boot-camp instructors. Our industry relies heavily on Physical Therapy to put clients back together, but we shouldn’t have to. Why are so many of our clients getting injured in the first place?
Injured clients get stuck into what I call “PT Ping-Pong” patterning. Here’s how it works: client overtrains under the guidance of a trainer/coach – client gets injured – client sees physical therapist and gets better – client returns to trainer, overtrains, and gets re-injured…rinse and repeat. Too many clients have completed this process several times before I ever see them for a consultation. Understandably, these potential clients are frustrated and very wary of hiring another personal trainer. They don’t want to return to exercise without expert supervision, but their insurance coverage for physical therapy has run out. They are in a holding pattern of fitness purgatory, and they don’t know where to turn.
High intensity and impact burn lots of calories, but at what cost to the client’s joint tissue…?
PT vs. Personal Training
Why does this pattern keep happening? Trainers are too focused on getting their clients the wrong results: weight loss, hard workouts, giving a client her money’s worth, etc. Peek in the windows of any major gym and you’ll see clients pounding their bodies with ridiculous exercises, all under the direct supervision of a trainer or coach. The right focus should be on the long game for your client: functional quality of life, freedom from injury, and a holistic improvement in health.
PT’s can help you prescribe appropriate tissue loads
This is the shift we trainers can learn from our physical therapy colleagues. Clients benefit most when the trainer and the PT work closely together to segue PT programming into effective personal training workouts, rather than just throwing the client back into the high-intensity meat grinder. When the client knows her trainer and therapist are tag-teaming her programming, she is more likely to buy-in to appropriate levels of loading and intensity. Without this team approach, treatment breaks down: clients graduate form PT, stop doing their exercises, and return to the pounding workouts that drove them to PT in the first place.
Work closely with your PT; boost your education and the client outcome
The Best of Both Worlds
The solution is simple. Trainers need to take what we learn from physical therapists and apply it to our work. That way we can prescribe loads that build tissue up, not break it down. When clients push back and want to do stupid shit, it’s our responsibility to say NO. We have to prove to our clients that PT and training are not mutually exclusive; that healthy functional movement does not limit results. What good does lower body fat do your client if she can’t walk?
When in doubt, trainers don’t have to worry about making the correct diagnosis or prescribing the best treatment - that’s what the PT is for. Don’t ever be afraid to consult the physical therapist and take a team approach. Therapists are always looking for trainers they can trust with injured and recovering clients. The best part?…most PT’s I know offer education and guidance to trainers willingly. The cost of formal CEU’s and destination conferences is high, so treating your PT colleague to a cup of coffee has a much higher return. What I have learned, simply by asking PT’s for help, ensures that I can provide the best outcome for my clients. Mentorship from my physical therapy colleagues has been the single biggest benefit to my career.