I finally got up the courage to join a gym. I figured that I had been missing something since I had never worked on the stacked weight equipment, just free weights. My weight is down, I'm no longer obese...heck I'm no longer fat (Yeah!) so I felt pretty comfortable joining a gym.
I joined on March 2nd and I bought 5 personal training sessions. Mainly to see what kind of a program they would develope for me after finding out my goals and also to see what it was like working with a personal trainer. I got my personal trainer certification through ACE in 2000. I've never put it to professional use, at that time I was still obese and so it was just a personal goal for myself.
Anyway, here is what happened...and it isn't pretty:
The first one hour meeting, I filled out this form about goals. I put down that I really wanted to work on my flexibility and I wanted to work on developing a six pack. We went over what I ate that day, breakfast was fat free yogurt and oatmeal, snack was a fruit and cottage cheese, lunch was tuna on whole wheat with an orange, snack was a Myoplex Lite shake and dinner was going to be a baby spinach salad with diced chicken breast, a dinner roll and a big ole glass of skim milk. The personal trainer said that I needed to clean up my diet and eat more protein...period.
Then he wanted to know what kind of working out I had been doing. I told him walking and fitness videos. He said videos by who? Well I said on easy days maybe a Kathy Smith, on harder days maybe a Kari Anderson and on tough days a Cathe Freidrich...well he hadn't heard of any of you; but that didn't stop him from telling me that you can't get a good workout from videos, the only way to burn fat is to hit the weights and get on some of the aerobic equipment (bikes, tredmills and so on). Now at this point I'm just taking this all in, gettig a feel for what its like to be a personal trainer because I'm thinking of a career change.
The next morning we had our first sessions. I wanted 7:30 am but he insisted on 10:00 am. I told him I had to be at work at 11:00am and that I needed more time getting from our workout to my office. His response 'You have to give up some of the control...let me help you.' Now I am a pretty easy going person, but this guy almost ended up with my chair wrapped around his head. I met him the next morning at 10:00am. He put me on an exercise bike for 5 minutes to warm up, then we hit the weights. Basically we did the 75%-85% if my one rep max...meaning 3 sets of 8-12 reps using free weights and machines. Afterwards he said 'O.k., be sure to stretch out and meet me in my office.' I was thinking, wait a minute...wasn't my goal to work on flexibility? And he is just going to walk away. Well, I stretched out and I headed for his office, I was more than ready to have a little talk. As soon as I got to his office he said he was going to assign me another personal trainer if I didn't mind because his load was too heavy. I gladly said it was alright. So we made the appointment.
I met with my new trainer, a nice young lady in college studying Kinesiology...I was feeling pretty hopeful. Unfortuantely my workout with her was pretty much the same as the one with the first trainer. I asked her if she had seen my goals and she said yes she had my paper work. She did give me some new stretches that I like, but we didn't address my flexibility. She also gave me a book on low calorie cooking, which was fine. Finally about half way through my second session with her I noticed that she would look around, think for a minute then decide what exersice to do next, now keep in mind, on this day there was only one other guy hitting the weights at the same time we were. I finally asked her, 'Hey, did you actually design a workout for me? Because it looks to me like we are flying by the seat of out pants and to be honest, I can do that on my own, I don't need to pay $65 and hour for that kind of a workout.' She said she hadn't actually designed a workout, but we were working to help my build muscle and endurance.
Now when I renewed my Personal Trainer certification I used the Douglas Brooks program called 'Program Design for Personal Trainers' and I wasn't seeing the kind of attention and design that he said should go into designing a program for a client. I was seeing the one size fits all and I didn't care for it. I told her so, and I asked her how was this going to increase my range of motion when we only stretch about 3 minutes at the end of my workouts. Now at this point I guess we got the other guys attention, the one that was hitting the weights with us.
My trainer goes, 'O.k., lets do some stretching and I'll show you ways to stretch for relaxation and to increase flexibility.' I was like was happy with that...until she showed me the first stretch. She did that deep lounge stretch with one leg straight the other bent and the body facing forward with the hands on floor between the legs. Now the problem here was she had the heel of her foot of the bent leg off the floor, she was only on the ball of her foot, her bent knee was way past her toes with her butt really low adding a lot of weight to the pull against the knee and her straight leg was locked at the knee...I sat there and I actually corrected my trainers form. We unlocked her knee, we shifted her weight back so that her bent knee went over her foot and she was able to put her heel down and we lifted her hips a bit to take pressure off the knee. The guy that was workout out with us started asking me questions; and thanks to Douglas Brooks I fired off the right answers. What I didn't know was that this guy was the club manager and guess what, I was getting interviewed!
After he asked me a bunch of questions, he asked about my training and I told him that I was ACE certified and he actually offered me a job! Now how cool is that? I actually start working as a personal trainer on April 3rd. Of course the first thing I did was go home and start re-reading all my training materials.
I'm also in the process of getting my group certification; I took one of their group classes and they need help there too. Only three students in the class.
This whole thing just blows my mind. While the trainers were nice and very personable, they were not worth that $65 to me. Now maybe they specialize in training for sports or something like that I don't know but man...:9
I joined on March 2nd and I bought 5 personal training sessions. Mainly to see what kind of a program they would develope for me after finding out my goals and also to see what it was like working with a personal trainer. I got my personal trainer certification through ACE in 2000. I've never put it to professional use, at that time I was still obese and so it was just a personal goal for myself.
Anyway, here is what happened...and it isn't pretty:
The first one hour meeting, I filled out this form about goals. I put down that I really wanted to work on my flexibility and I wanted to work on developing a six pack. We went over what I ate that day, breakfast was fat free yogurt and oatmeal, snack was a fruit and cottage cheese, lunch was tuna on whole wheat with an orange, snack was a Myoplex Lite shake and dinner was going to be a baby spinach salad with diced chicken breast, a dinner roll and a big ole glass of skim milk. The personal trainer said that I needed to clean up my diet and eat more protein...period.
Then he wanted to know what kind of working out I had been doing. I told him walking and fitness videos. He said videos by who? Well I said on easy days maybe a Kathy Smith, on harder days maybe a Kari Anderson and on tough days a Cathe Freidrich...well he hadn't heard of any of you; but that didn't stop him from telling me that you can't get a good workout from videos, the only way to burn fat is to hit the weights and get on some of the aerobic equipment (bikes, tredmills and so on). Now at this point I'm just taking this all in, gettig a feel for what its like to be a personal trainer because I'm thinking of a career change.
The next morning we had our first sessions. I wanted 7:30 am but he insisted on 10:00 am. I told him I had to be at work at 11:00am and that I needed more time getting from our workout to my office. His response 'You have to give up some of the control...let me help you.' Now I am a pretty easy going person, but this guy almost ended up with my chair wrapped around his head. I met him the next morning at 10:00am. He put me on an exercise bike for 5 minutes to warm up, then we hit the weights. Basically we did the 75%-85% if my one rep max...meaning 3 sets of 8-12 reps using free weights and machines. Afterwards he said 'O.k., be sure to stretch out and meet me in my office.' I was thinking, wait a minute...wasn't my goal to work on flexibility? And he is just going to walk away. Well, I stretched out and I headed for his office, I was more than ready to have a little talk. As soon as I got to his office he said he was going to assign me another personal trainer if I didn't mind because his load was too heavy. I gladly said it was alright. So we made the appointment.
I met with my new trainer, a nice young lady in college studying Kinesiology...I was feeling pretty hopeful. Unfortuantely my workout with her was pretty much the same as the one with the first trainer. I asked her if she had seen my goals and she said yes she had my paper work. She did give me some new stretches that I like, but we didn't address my flexibility. She also gave me a book on low calorie cooking, which was fine. Finally about half way through my second session with her I noticed that she would look around, think for a minute then decide what exersice to do next, now keep in mind, on this day there was only one other guy hitting the weights at the same time we were. I finally asked her, 'Hey, did you actually design a workout for me? Because it looks to me like we are flying by the seat of out pants and to be honest, I can do that on my own, I don't need to pay $65 and hour for that kind of a workout.' She said she hadn't actually designed a workout, but we were working to help my build muscle and endurance.
Now when I renewed my Personal Trainer certification I used the Douglas Brooks program called 'Program Design for Personal Trainers' and I wasn't seeing the kind of attention and design that he said should go into designing a program for a client. I was seeing the one size fits all and I didn't care for it. I told her so, and I asked her how was this going to increase my range of motion when we only stretch about 3 minutes at the end of my workouts. Now at this point I guess we got the other guys attention, the one that was hitting the weights with us.
My trainer goes, 'O.k., lets do some stretching and I'll show you ways to stretch for relaxation and to increase flexibility.' I was like was happy with that...until she showed me the first stretch. She did that deep lounge stretch with one leg straight the other bent and the body facing forward with the hands on floor between the legs. Now the problem here was she had the heel of her foot of the bent leg off the floor, she was only on the ball of her foot, her bent knee was way past her toes with her butt really low adding a lot of weight to the pull against the knee and her straight leg was locked at the knee...I sat there and I actually corrected my trainers form. We unlocked her knee, we shifted her weight back so that her bent knee went over her foot and she was able to put her heel down and we lifted her hips a bit to take pressure off the knee. The guy that was workout out with us started asking me questions; and thanks to Douglas Brooks I fired off the right answers. What I didn't know was that this guy was the club manager and guess what, I was getting interviewed!
After he asked me a bunch of questions, he asked about my training and I told him that I was ACE certified and he actually offered me a job! Now how cool is that? I actually start working as a personal trainer on April 3rd. Of course the first thing I did was go home and start re-reading all my training materials.
I'm also in the process of getting my group certification; I took one of their group classes and they need help there too. Only three students in the class.This whole thing just blows my mind. While the trainers were nice and very personable, they were not worth that $65 to me. Now maybe they specialize in training for sports or something like that I don't know but man...:9
