Ok, so today is venting time. My vent today is about "personal trainers.." I wont mention any gym names, but I think you guys know which ones.
The story starts with my mother, who is a very sedentary woman, who needs a lot of mobility work, and a lot of stretching. Typical office worker, tight anterior, weak posterior. So she decides to get a gym membership. .. wicked, that's a good start. Then she decides she needs a personal trainer. NICE! Now she wont be one of the many that is overwhelmed by the whole "gym" scene.
WRONG. Terrible idea. The first workout consists of a "circuit" .. so 8 machines, mostly isolation machines, and a LOT of pain for my mother who has, at most, opened a car door for exercise in the last few years. She couldn't move for about a week, then the pain slowly subsided.
Needless to say, being in the profession I was in.. I was angry. Very angry. So I called another gym, talked to the HEAD TRAINER to which I explained my mothers predicament. He was happy to brag up his assistant trainer (who I think is awesome so far) and told me to send my mom in.
SO, in she went. Tonight was the first time I talked to her since her initial consultation in which the assistant trainer said all of the right things in my opinion. Knew where she needed help, and knew what not to do. But, unfortunately my mother prefers, like most women, to be trained by another woman. So this assistant trainer even said about his OWN gym, that there weren't many trainers he would refer her to, but he knew of one that would be good. Now. .. my mother is doing the SAME circuit that she did at the last gym.. . but now they are adding in some isolation oblique exercises.. I am fuming.
My mom tried to calm me down, but this "trainer" is just reinforcing strength in her bad postural position. And to make things, worse, she is the most sore in her chest. .. one of the areas she should be STRETCHING, not strengthening.. Needless to say, she thinks I am overreacting because in another 6 weeks, she is done with the training, and they let her free in the gym to do what she wants. So really, all she paid a LOT of money for, was for some IDIOT to ask her about her day and direct her to each circuit machine.
So I told her to pretend that she referred me to a doctor. And that doctor decided to stab me very hard in the chest every time I came in. My mom would be angry right? If I called her, and was like, "Mom, my chest kind if hurts, I'm going to see this doctor, and he stabs me everytime I come in." She would get very angry. But wait, what if I told her that in only 6 weeks, he was going to just give me a knife and let me loose on my own to stab myself in the chest. Any better? What if I paid him an absurd amount of money to do it? No? Hmmm...
This is my job. I see "trainers" like this all the time. I am going to call Chris, who seems very smart, he wants to leave the whole big gym scene in a few months and start his own private thing, kind of like ACF. But I told my mom she has to get rid of this trained monkey and actually get a trainer who doesn't just see her as a number on a sheet.
Gyms like this make me SOOO happy to be working at a place like All Canadian Fitness with Ernie and our other trainers.
. ... I feel a little better now.. . .
