Formosa Fitness

On one of the fitness boards I post on, a person asked a question about a trainer. They said they wanted to train with this person because he got good results. But the trainer was well-known for making everyone go through a period of stabilization training. But the person asking for some reason didn't want to do that type of training because she thought it was worthless (based on her one year of experience working out at a gym, no less).

To my surprise, many people got on there and gave her advice on how to argue against the training, even trainers gave her tips against it.

It pissed me off.

When someone goes to a trainer, they should be looking for results, not method. The trainer is the subject matter expert, not the client. Take your goals to the trainer and let them devise the program. If you're going to dictate method, then why hire a trainer in the first place?

So I got on there and asked if this trainer was getting good results, making her want to hire him, then why was she second-guessing his methods. She said she didn't want to do this kind of training. I then told her that if it was me, I would refuse to train her because she was being arrogant. Naturally that killed the thread.

I was listening to a stengthcoach.com podcast yesterday by Gray Cook and he covered this well. He called it coddled conditioning where the client gets babied and none of their issues are addressed. Instead the trainer allows the client to dictate an endless variety of methods, none of which make any difference because the client isn't sticking with one long enough to make it work. Nor are they addressing what they NEED instead of what they WANT.

I saw this alot when I taught English and my private students brought in a new book each week. It was frustrating.

As trainers, it's irresponsible of us to not address the client's needs as well as the wants. If people are so spoiled that they leave when we do that, then that's fine too. Not everyone deserves our time.

Gray Cook in the podcast made an excellent point that some training needs to be EARNED. In other words, people that can't do basic exercises don't get to try new things until basics are mastered.

As trainers, we have to mix the hard stuff with the candy. We have to give people what they need along with what they want. It's a delicate balance.