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Today’s guest post is courtesy of Charlotte of The Great Fitness Experiment. Charlotte also blogs at The Huffington Post.

In my line of work (can I actually call it work if I enjoy it this much and nobody is actually paying me?), I come across a lot of personal trainers. Some of my best friends are personal trainers which, besides a lot of dinner party conversation centered around whether squatting too heavy can give you hemorrhoids (it can) or whether you can tell if a client has had plastic surgery (as long as her sports bra fits properly, you can’t), has also given me an opportunity to observe them in their natural habitat - i.e. not personal training. Hanging around them so often, I’ve started to notice a thing or two.

The Good
You can tell a good personal trainer right off the bat. They are the ones that train you with the intent that after a certain period you won’t need them anymore. Instead of making you dependent on them for motivation and exercise routines, they teach you how to make life long healthy habits - whether they’re around kicking your butt or not. I am quite sure that our beloved MizFit and KellyT fit in this category.

The Bad
Another thing I have noticed is that very often they were a member of the Beautiful People Club long before they got ACE certified which begs an interesting chicken/egg conundrum. But more importantly, many of them do things they would never ever tell a client to do.

1. They take performance enhancers. And I’m not talking wheat grass shots or Omega-3 pills (Must that be capitalized? I fear lightning.) One personal trainer I interviewed admitted to taking risky vasodilators, like N.O. Xplode, which besides causing chemists to frown very disapprovingly at the blatant misuse of standard naming conventions - and anyone who remembers high school chemistry knows how serious that is, also happens to have side effects like headaches, dizziness, heart palpitations, cancer and - my personal fave - “Xplosive” diarrhea. Oh yeah, and death. But it totally ups your one-rep max.

2. They do extreme diets. A female personal trainer friend of mine admits that any time she exceeds her “safe” weight, she kicks in the Bodybuilder Diet - boneless, skinless chicken breasts & greens. Which, incidentally, any reader of gossip rags will recognize as the ubiquitous Hollywood Diet. “I eat lean chicken or fish and broccoli and then walk my dog every day! That’s my secret!!” *cough*cigarettescaffeinecocaine*cough* She also ‘fessed up to using dieter’s tea (a laxative), cleanses like the Martha’s Vineyard Diet, and the chew-n-spit method - a favorite of bulimics everywhere. Even the famed Jillian Michaels says she uses diuretics, stimulants and extreme water-loss tricks like sweating it out in the sauna or running on a treadmill with sweats and a jacket on when she needs to get in peak form for a photo shoot.

3. They totally think you look fat in those pants. Of course they would never tell you. Most of them are too polite. The rest of them fancy their paychecks too much. But wringing an honest body assessment out of a personal trainer is like getting child support out of K-Fed. Word to the wise: tighter is not always better, no perfume, and please, for the love of little green apples, wear underwear.

4. They don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s a tough business. There’s so much research coming out, it’s hard to stay on top of it all. So they make stuff up. They take an article they skimmed in 30 seconds and make a whole program out of it with you as their guinea pig. And it will probably work because for 95% of their clients, anything will work. Diet and exercise - you’ve heard of that right?

I should say only the bad ones do these things. But even some of the best ones do them because they’re desperate to stay on top of an industry that is second only to Hollywood in making a career solely out of a nice set of abs. I just thought you might want to know what goes into those abs.

Oh, and in case you thought I forgot “The Ugly”….

Written on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008 at 3:59 am
Filed under fitness.
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