Help with difficult clients (low back pain)
Hey guys, I was hoping some of the more experienced trainers could help me with this.
When I was hired at my gym, I was replacing another trainer and so I took over all of his clients. To be honest, I don't think the man was even certified. After listening to my clients talk about him, he placed a lot of them in a great position to be injured. Having deconditioned, middle-aged clients do single-leg squats on the machines with 90+ pounds on them, kettle bell lunges with a 45 pound kettlebell (which actually hurt this clients back and she JUST returned to the gym recently), pyramid style sets on a fly machine with a client who is new to exercise. The list goes on and on.
Anyways, I have taken over these clients, assessed them myself, and brought many of them back to the stability/endurance phase of the OPT model, and focused on corrective exercises where needed.
I have a few clients that are incredibly stubborn. They suffer from low back pain. And when I say this, they struggle to do planks for 30 seconds. Not because of a weakness in the core, but because of low back pain. (Before I get criticized I do realize that the lumbar spine is a part of the core and I have explained this to my clients.)
They expect me to keep giving them exercises but they can't do any of the ones that I give them. ,stability ball crunches, reverse crunches on a bench, bench knee tucks, side-planks, stability ball knee pull-ins, mb rotations (standing and/or seated) have ALL made them stop or complain of low back pain. I introduced floor bridges, SB bridges, marching, even had a list of corrective exercises from a chiropractor in UMass but they are simply not interested. I even had one client tell me "Well I don't pay you to correct my low back pain, I pain you to lose the fat from my stomach."
I'm at my wits end. I don't understand why they won't let me correct it so we can progress to more difficult exercises in the future, and I simply can not find any exercises to work the core that will not hurt their low back.
So I guess my question is this. Are their any exercises that are corrective for the low back, but are interesting and fun so that my clients won't know I am correcting it? Or are their any core exercises that won't put pressure on the low back?
Thanks guys.