Your Personal Trainer Sucks
LET’S BE HONEST: YOU’LL NEVER BE AS FIT AS YOU’D LIKE TO BE.
You’ll always be “too” something or “not enough” something else. You know it. I know it. Your personal trainer knows it. But you still keep paying for session after session to have some guy or girl with some degree or certification tell you something or other about how you can. It’s about time your trainer stopped lying to you. Here’s the top eight reasons why your personal trainer sucks.
8. THE ASSESSMENT SUCKS
Talk about a waste of time. How hard is fitness, really? What the hell is a PAR-Q? Medical History? Even if that questionnaire had any effect on the way you were about to be trained, your trainer (most likely) is not a doctor which means that he or she knows absolutely nothing. Why do they need to know about your injury history? Your acute and chronic pain? Sleeping patterns and stress levels? Are you kidding me? BE A PERSONAL TRAINER. Count my reps, shut up and take my money.
And what is with these contrived movement assessment? FMS? SFMA? TPI? NKT? Stop using words like “flexion” and “cervical” and “health” and point to the damn squat rack. So I can’t balance on one foot for more than 10 seconds, I HAVE TWO FEET, JACK. Who came up with these screens anyway? Can your trainer really explain the benefit of knowing these things relative to what they call your “program”?
They can? Fine.
7. CORRECTIVE EXERCISE SUCKS
Not only has your first session with this “professional” been spent discussing your bowel movements and diaphragmatic trauma, but now your trainer has you lying on the ground and rolling around like you’re a goddamned infant. YOU DON’T NEED TO ROLL. EVER. You know why you rolled when you were an infant? Because you didn’t have the cognitive capacity to tell somebody weaker than you to go get you what you wanted. That’s why you’re here. To tell your trainer, WHO YOU PAY BY THE WAY, what to do. And now they have you crawling. Do you still need a bottle and blanky? Get off the damn floor and walk away from your trainer like the grown up that you are.
If by some magic grace of god your trainer managed to sell you on the “benefits” of these “correctives” you’ve still got a major problem ahead of you.
6. THE PROGRAMMING SUCKS
Your personal trainer, that person who now understands your intimate relationships with both your internals and externals, only sees you how many times per week? My guess is that you’re the 2–3 kind of person which, lets be honest, is WAY TOO MUCH TIME spent with one person on any given week. Even so, that’s only 1% of you’re entire time spent on your fitness. What about the other 165 hours of the week? What are they doing for you then? OTHER CLIENTS? Do you let your spouse sleep with other “clients”? Doesn’t your trainer convey to you that you can’t see results by working out only 2–3 times per week and not doing anything else? They do? So then what? They give you homework? What kind of crazy bullshit is this. Homework is punishment. Homework is what teachers gave you because you didn’t pay attention in class. And now some dick in nike dryfit is telling you to run in place on a moving platform for an hour a day? Are you a horse? NO, BECAUSE HORSES DON’T HAVE HOMEWORK. You’re paying this clown to treat you like an infant horse. You’re being spoon fed this bullshit that is “fitness” day in and day out. Speaking of spoonfed…
5. NUTRITION SUCKS
What is the point of exercise if you have to eat right too? By the way, and I mean this, there’s no such thing as “good” or “bad” food. And every single day there are more and more articles on what’s “good” or “bad” for you. Here’s a fact you need to keep in mind and this is 100% true: every person throughout the history or mankind who has ever gone on a diet has or will die at some point in their life. Eating “right” is for chumps. Enjoy your food. Stop working out. Which may or may not lead to number 4.
4. YOUR BODY SUCKS
Look at your trainer’s body. Now look at your body. How long have you been paying this person? Does your body look like theirs? No? WHY ARE YOU PAYING THIS PERSON? You’re being tormented day in and day out both mentally and physically and you seem, for some reason, to like it. Remember the first sentence of this essay: “you will never be as fit as you want to be.” Even if you didn’t have body dysmorphia, which your trainer has surely helped you develop, you are facing an ever progressing uphill battle toward death. Why be fit now when YOU WILL DIE eventually? Your great grandkids going to remember your six pack? Or are they going to remember how you left the family bankrupt because you spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to have a personal trainer make you feel bad about your Overhead Squat Reassessment? You paying for personal training is like you playing the lottery — you’re an idiot.
Let’s say, miraculously, that these things still haven’t stopped you. Don’t forget point 3.
3. YOUR SCHEDULE SUCKS
Yours. Not theirs. Well, theirs does too. Most of them have to work somewhere between 12–16 hours per day to service. Most of them don’t get lunch breaks. They have clients constantly rescheduling, making adjustments to their travels, coming in too early or too late, complaining of something or other, taking phone calls during their sessions, and texting or calling constantly with “why didn’t you like my instagram photo of the healthy meal I posted three weeks ago?” They might also have managers up their assess, other trainers trying to poach their clients (and then business), never get to see the sun or even take care of their bodies because the hours that are not spent on their feet are spent creating silly ass assessment protocols and corrective exercise strategies to go along with a custom program for your 1 or less session per week that you may or may not be able to make because your dog’s babysitter caught mono. SORRY TRAINER. NOT MY JOB, NOT MY PROBLEM. You should have gone to law school like your brother and then maybe you wouldn’t be in this situation day in and day out running on less than 4 hours per sleep 6 nights a week. WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD. Speaking of…
2. TRAINER EDUCATION SUCKS
Ask your personal trainer what college they went to. Then ask what their degree was. Then ask if they graduated. Then ask hell they became a personal trainer instead of having a real career like a doctor. Ask them how many certifications they have. Ask them how much money they spent on it. Then laugh in their face. Unless they didn’t do any of those things and refuse to pursue continuing education. Then you’re probably in pretty good hands and should offer them a position in whatever the hell it is that you do that’s keeping you so out of shape.
1. FITNESS SUCKS
Fitness isn’t a real word. It is a word we invented to describe the simulated activity that our ancestors were forced to do in their every day lives (read: survive) in order to provide us the current life we lead where WE DON’T HAVE TO. Have you heard of “paleo” before? It’s a diet. Apparently you only eat meat and dirt or something. There’s no “paleo” fitness though because PALEOLITHIC MAN DIDN’T HAVE GYMS. They were running away from lions which kept them fit as hell if they didn’t die before the age of 17 which they all did. These people couldn’t think of the wheel for hundreds of years and now I’m supposed to follow their food habits? Stop. Speaking of running, have you heard of runner’s high? The basic consensus seems to be that runners experience an overflow of endorphins after about a 6–7 mile run. That could be up to two hours of running to get high! Are you high right now expecting me to try that? So many drugs can do that and get you back to your normally scheduled day of doing nothing without the time commitment of two hours.
And this idea of “functional” is complete and utter bullshit. What does that even mean? CrossFit gyms (the only real gyms by the way) use it to describe their method of training. Trainers will advertise this shit all the time. “I’m a functional trainer.” “I only train functional movements.” Here’s the definition of functional: “of or having a special activity, purpose, or task; relating to the way in which something works or operates.” You and I both know how you work and operate: at a desk in front of a computer for 10 hours per day. So why the hell is this “functional trainer” asking you to deadlift and swing a kettle bell? Stay at your computer and don’t move ever. Go home and hate yourself a little less knowing that I just saved you a small fortune on never having to pay another trainer again.
And that’s about it.
Fire your personal trainer today and click the store link on my website to be apart of a growing community of self-motivated individuals following a structured and personalized program based upon their real needs in and out of the gym. Also like my Facebook page and share if you enjoyed reading.
