He's already a trainer so why would he get himself a trainer?
He'll learn new skills and empathy. The new skills is straightforward enough: however experienced you are, if you put yourself in the hands of another trainer you'll learn some things. Recently I had a trainer, he at first said I shouldn't pay because I wouldn't learn anything, I should just tell him how he could make the programme better. I said, "I'll pay for three reasons: Firstly, professional respect. Secondly, I will learn a few things, even if just small things. Lastly, if it's free I might bail after two weeks, if I pay I'll do it, and if I do it then I benefit from it, and I can make a proper assessment of how to improve it."
And in fact I did learn a few small things, like: meat and vegies alone makes you constipated, it's not enough fibre, and if you do a lunge by stepping back rather than forward you don't do so much knee flexion so it's kinder on dodgy knees. These are small things but it's those things that make a huge difference to that one particular client you have.
Like most trainers, he hasn't been through the
process of training. Yes, he says he's competed in PL/WL, but he didn't say his results and anyway he's 17, so he can't have that many years behind him. That's no slight on him, it's very common in trainers - they become trainers in the first year or two of their own training, that newbie phase makes them passionate about it and want to Spread The Word. That enthusiasm is good, but it needs some experience to support it.
As I said: set moderately ambitious goals that will take 6-12 months to achieve and involve setbacks along the way. If for example a healthy young guy wants to squat 100kg, he can generally do that simply by starting with the empty bar and adding 2.5kg every session for a few months. If he wants to squat 180kg then at some point between 100 and 180kg he'll get stuck a few times, and will have to figure out how to get around the stuck point.
A healthy young guy can stay up all night, live on cigarettes and KFC and squat 100kg. He can't do that and squat 180kg. So he'll have the experience not merely of showing up to the gym and doing as he's told, but of having to organise the rest of his life, food and sleep.
(It'd be the same if we were talking about a 20' 5km run vs a 30' one, or 10% bodyfat vs 15%. The squat's just illustrative. Adjust numbers for natural talent; if he's a 120kg Samoan then the 180kg squat will be more straightforward, but the 20' 5km would be impossible.)
Perhaps more importantly, he'll have the experience of
failing, and of sitting around between sessions thinking, "next time I go in, I may fail again." This is a daunting thought. Combined with the difficulty of sorting out food and sleep, he may start to understand why many people don't want to do personal training, and why even when they sign up they don't get the results they could, and why in fact many quit just as their bodies are starting to change.
Having every workout watched and critiqued for 12 months can be daunting, too. Someone watching every aspect of your movement and offering criticism, even constructive, is scary. I say this and people go, "I know, I know, that's obvious," but if you look at how PTs interact with their clients, knowing something intellectually and having genuine empathy for it are different things. If you've had a trainer then at some point they said something that made you feel awesome, or made you feel awful. And then you as a trainer become more conscious of what you say and how you behave and programme things for people.
Now, this is fair advice for anyone, to get a trainer to develop some empathy.
As a final point, having a trainer yourself actually gives you some cred with potential and current clients. It shows you genuinely believe it's worth paying for and doing. I can't quantify it, but it does make a difference with recruitment and retention. Would you go to a church with an atheist priest? Would you eat a steak cooked by a vegan? Why would you go to a trainer who has never had a trainer?
Whats a proper qualification?
Varies by country.
Following your advice to the teeth what results can one expect given that the situations are right.
You can expect to at least not fail dismally. You laugh, but most trainers do in fact fail dismally. Whether you're a great success depends on many things, not all of them under your control. But if you follow this advice, you will at least not fail. Dave Tate said that in lifting, there are four levels,
Sht
Suck
Good
Great
The same goes for being a trainer or coach.
- Sht - you hurt people. This is the typical gym-goer if the guy tries to train his girlfriend (women almost never try to train their boyfriends because their boyfriends won't listen).
- Suck - you don't hurt people, but you don't help them. This is most personal trainers with a short certification behind them. The person will get newbie gains for the first 6 weeks and may be encouraged to continue training as a result, so the Sucky trainer can actually help people by accident, simply by getting them to show up and do something. But no improvements past the first 6 weeks.
- Good - you help people. This is an intelligent trainer with at least 2 years of experience doing ongoing training with 20-50 people individually, and who has spoken to or taught a movement to 5-10 times that number. They'll have some continuing education in some form.
- Great - you help people a lot; usually this is a trainer who is generally Good, but is Great with a particular niche, they have extensive general continuing education, and some specific stuff to do with their niche, too. This is at least five years experience training 50-100 different people ongoing one-on-one, and 10-20 times that number one-offs.
The interesting thing I noticed about working in a big gym is that the trainers who were Sht didn't know it - but every gym member did. If you follow this advice you will definitely not be Sht, and very probably not Suck. Doing the "speak to one new person every day, teach one new person a movement every day" will take you from Suck to Good.
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