Coaches that train sportsmen care about making their sportsmen better. Their success is based on improving their athletes performance on the field/court/ring. The End is normally what justifies the means.
Personal training though, you have everything screwed up. The complete industry wants to talk about how important "results" are. Every ones clients wants outcomes, you are the outcomes delivery people. And how do you do this? You make #%^ up.
Disagree? Run-down a mental set of the personal trainers you've encountered who make use of a periodization scheme, who've defined protocols for balance, strength, hypertrophy, and power. Describe your education with Stuart McGills study and Mike Boyles Joint by Joint strategy or the last period you browse anything by Verkhoshanky or Yessis or Bondarchuk. Your familiarity with Grey Make and the FMS or Dave Tate and the EliteFTS business?
You know who John Goodman is? Thomas Plummer maybe?
"Um, John Goodman is just an actor. I have no idea plumber is, can be he an actor too?"
... you sorry sorry fellow.
I can let you know the solution, and its going to be a long set of NOs.
None of you understand anything. Your "education" begins and ends with your training qualification textbook that you never read. Your "workouts" are whatever the hell you entirely on YouTube that looked hard. Your own schooling is the stuff you prefer, and you've neither obtained significant lean mass nor improved your athleticism within the last 10 years. You became a trainer because you "liked working out and employed in a gym seemed easy", and that is a direct quote incidentally.
Everyone reading this will probably swear they are not this kind of trainer, but they can say for certain at least twelve trainers that suit this description perfectly though.
You'll argue that you do know your stuff though. Your argument depends on the truth that all you clients let you know that "you're my shrink/psychologist/life trainer". You'll eat that junk up and believe that you're amazing because you understand the state of everyone's marriage. After that you'll argue that their paying for guidance because they're unhappy and its your job to make them happy.
Boy oh boy it is. Its also your job to obtain BMI below 30 and lower their risk factors that come with being truly a deconditioned fatass. That's your first job. That's what they hired you for, lest you neglect.
"All my clients get results though!! Except the ones that don't and give up after their what is in-home personal training starter bundle or tell me they cant afford schooling."
That makes a whole lot of sense. In the end, obesity bears with it no higher health care costs over the course of a person's life. Neither http://www.bbc.co.uk/search?q=New Jersey does seated 10 hours a day, eating a diet plan of Costcos frozen meals, and implanting your ass to your sofa. Those things all result in happy existence and in no way is a coronary attack of type II diabetes in your future.
So what kinds of program is your teaching based around?
Don't solution, because that probably just confused the hell out you. And please god don't state you're P90X certified. Simply, DON'T, SAY IT
We tire of encountering trainers that feature their results based schooling principles, but haven't any system for producing stronger/skinnier/fiter clients beyond the program they pulled away of their certifications text message book/FLEX magazine/bodybuilding.com. This drives me bloody crazy.
And to answer fully the question "whatever your certification textbook/mens health/bodybuilding.com/shape magazine said" is probably the answer.
That's lovely, it really is. I'm glad that individuals who entrusted you with their health are being qualified using workout routines of the week from Bodyrock TV. (on a side note, I'd worship that girl's body till I collapsed by from exhaustion and dehydration, but I digress).
Ive heard arguments against trainers periodizing their customers training. Ive heard arguments that most fitness workouts don't value the program, they simply want to enjoy the workout.
Ive read all this, and then I look around at a US people that is 2/3rds obese, 1 in 4 are obese, and the prevalence of low back pain, joint problems, and a generally inability to go is rampant.
And fitness trainers don't want to check out any sort of progressive development scheme, because the client could easily get bored.
So I'm calling out the complete fitness industry then. This is utter ridiculousness, and you all understand it. Lucky for you if you train nothing but hypermotivated athletes and models. Those aren't working out market for another decade though, the 100 million those who are overweight are the market.
These people will demand a progressive system for ridding their bodies of the excess bodyfat. They'll have to understand the difference between bodyfat and lean mass. You will need to know about hormones and how their insulin sensitivity is totally fucked up.
You'll need a system to revive normal joint mobility. You will need to find out about fascial patterns and top and lower cross syndrome and motion engrams and imbalances and how exactly to fix these things.
You will have to know about nutrition and be able to make coaching advisements that border on being a psychological prescription to improve.
You need to be able to progress someone through defined stages of training that encompass joint stabilization and mobilization, that encompass the essential motion patterns of squat hinge pull press push. You will have to train them why these things are important.
And you'll need to do this for old people too, because geriatrics are overweight too and seniors are just getting older and more immobile.
You may need a system for each one of these stuff. A teachable, defined program.
And you'll want all of the education that comes along with it.
So get smarter dammit. And if all of this sounds unappealing, after that get the hell out of the industry. I'm fed up with personal training being seen as a joke job that's done by college students and workout addicts.
Were medical researchers, and we need to act like it. And most of all, we need to BACK IT UP.