Car­la Rauseo

The feed­back from my last ar­ti­cle ti­tled "Care­ful of Those So-called Train­ers" was quite in­ter­est­ing. To my sur­prise, there was much sup­port and it seems that many peo­ple are frus­trat­ed by the lack of qual­i­ty train­ers and have be­come aware of the dan­ger­ous prac­tices of un­qual­i­fied in­di­vid­u­als ply­ing their fraud­u­lent trade in gyms. Oth­ers, not quite as aware, still qui­et­ly no­ticed ques­tion­able ac­tiv­i­ties but nonethe­less con­tin­ued to ac­cept them, be­cause "de train­er must know what he do­ing." My in­box con­tained e-mails from pro­fes­sion­als lament­ing the grim sit­u­a­tion, and from fit­ness en­thu­si­asts seek­ing qual­i­fied train­ers to help them reach their goals. Ob­vi­ous­ly this is a hot top­ic, with many ques­tions, ex­pe­ri­ences and com­plaints; so I de­cid­ed to re­search and delve a lit­tle deep­er in­to what ex­act­ly is oc­cur­ring and why these quacks are as ram­pant as mos­qui­toes in a dengue out­break in the rainy sea­son. To­day, there is a huge de­mand for per­son­al train­ers. With so­ci­ety's "thin-is-in" fix­a­tion, and with the ex­plo­sion of the in­ci­dence of lifestyle con­di­tions like di­a­betes and heart dis­ease, the need to get fit and stay healthy is not on­ly a mat­ter of aes­thet­ics, but one of life and death. Who bet­ter to serve that de­mand, than the per­son­al train­er!

But de­mand does not war­rant a sup­ply of frauds and my re­search has led to some in­ter­est­ing sto­ries and rev­e­la­tions that ex­plain the cur­rent glut of in­com­pe­tent train­ers. I found out that it is ex­cep­tion­al­ly easy to mas­quer­ade as a train­er. I dis­cov­ered that in many gyms, there is no ef­fec­tive screen­ing process for what is called a "floor train­er," the per­son who ori­ents new per­sons to the gym, shows them how to use equip­ment, and as­sists peo­ple with ex­er­cis­es. If the gym has a va­can­cy and a buffed in­di­vid­ual "ap­plies," he is sim­ply shown how to use the ma­chines and mirac­u­lous­ly be­comes a "floor train­er" de­spite the fact that he has no back­ground in train­ing prin­ci­ples or ex­er­cise pre­scrip­tion (don't get me wrong, there are a few who have this back­ground and are qual­i­fied). What then oc­curs, is that he be­gins "train­ing" clients as he would train him­self, with­out even tak­ing a med­ical his­to­ry. He be­gins pre­scrib­ing bend­ing and twist­ing ex­er­cis­es for os­teo­porot­ic Mar­garet who has low back pain be­cause "he does do dem and dey does help his back."

He sees Bob, a qual­i­fied per­son­al train­er, giv­ing his young ath­lete a com­pli­cat­ed mul­ti-di­rec­tion­al med­i­cine ball core move­ment, and re­peats it with first-timer Jane, who has no con­trol of her pelvis and trunk. So our floor train­er has gone from sim­ply show­ing peo­ple how to op­er­ate ma­chines to de­vel­op­ing fit­ness pro­grammes. Why shouldn't he? Af­ter all, there is lit­tle su­per­vi­sion and no prac­tice guide­lines for such in­di­vid­u­als. Floor train­ers with no qual­i­fi­ca­tions are at­tract­ed by the at­ten­tion they re­ceive from the gym go­ers. The ques­tions about ex­er­cise pro­gram­ming, nu­tri­tion and mus­cles, the re­quests to "spot" (as­sist), all cre­ate a feel­ing of im­por­tance, feed the ego, and all too soon our floor train­er has clients of his own whom he is "train­ing" with a lot of blue smoke and mir­rors. It is just too easy. These guys are ex­cep­tion­al ac­tors. It is no won­der that many of them feel threat­ened by any­one of­fer­ing sound in­for­ma­tion and ad­vice. This de­ceit and brava­do ex­plain the an­tag­o­nism among "train­ers" in some gyms. "Big egos are shields for lots of emp­ty space."

It is vi­tal to the well-be­ing of the pub­lic that we de­mand to SEE, not HEAR about, the qual­i­fi­ca­tions of the train­ers with whom we work.

In­deed there are ex­cep­tion­al qual­i­fied per­son­al train­ers in Trinidad who can eas­i­ly pro­duce this pa­per­work.

But do not be fooled by com­pli­cat­ed, tech­ni­cal speech­es of grand re­sults from oth­ers be­cause "emp­ty ves­sels make the most noise." But be­ware! An­oth­er rea­son for the glut of poor­ly qual­i­fied per­son­al train­ers is the pres­ence of sham in­sti­tutes that claim to cer­ti­fy per­son­al train­ers. Many "train­ers" send fees to these fraud­u­lent as­so­ci­a­tions for "cre­den­tials" which they flash at their un­sus­pect­ing clients. "My train­er qual­i­fied man! He show me his cer­tifi­cate!"...which he got with­out lift­ing a fin­ger! This brings me to yet an­oth­er rea­son why there are so many schemers ply­ing their snake oil trade in the fit­ness in­dus­try...the gen­er­al pub­lic. We let them do it! I think we are al­ler­gic to ac­count­abil­i­ty, be­cause we run from it with our tails be­tween our legs like pusil­lan­i­mous pup­pies. Once we SEE the train­er's cre­den­tials (as we should with any health care pro­fes­sion­al), we need to go home, get on a com­put­er and re­search the in­sti­tu­tion from which he got them to val­i­date his claim that the as­so­ci­a­tion is au­then­tic. It is tru­ly a mat­ter of OUR health and safe­ty! From what I have been told, there are about 15 ac­cred­it­ed or­gan­i­sa­tions that cer­ti­fy per­son­al train­ers in the Unit­ed States.

They in­clude Na­tion­al Strength and Con­di­tion­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (NSCA), Amer­i­can Coun­cil on Ex­er­cise (ACE), Aer­o­bics and Fit­ness As­so­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­ca (AAFA), Amer­i­can Sports and Fit­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (AS­FA), Coop­er's In­sti­tute, and Na­tion­al Acad­e­my of Sports Med­i­cine (NASM) to name a few. There are al­so oth­ers in dif­fer­ent coun­tries. The sit­u­a­tion of per­son­al train­ers in Trinidad is re­al­ly a shame, and those frauds should feel ashamed. It is the pub­lic who suf­fers, yet we are the ones to blame. Per­son­al train­ing is a no­ble and nec­es­sary pro­fes­sion, a vi­tal com­po­nent of the health of our com­mu­ni­ty; yet we are re­duc­ing it to a dis­rep­utable joke, where clowns and buf­foons reign supreme. Ac­count­abil­i­ty is the moth­er of cau­tion, and if we ne­glect to hold our per­son­al train­ers (and any­one in any pro­fes­sion for that mat­ter) re­spon­si­ble for their ac­tions, then we shall con­tin­ue to live in a com­e­dy where peo­ple are in­jured and the joke is on us.

Car­la Rauseo, P.T., M.S., C.S.C.S. is a state reg­is­tered and li­censed Phys­i­cal Ther­a­pist and Cer­ti­fied Strength and Con­di­tion­ing Spe­cial­ist at To­tal Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre.