July 18, 2005
Bad Trainer
Last week I pointed out a misleading headline about personal training which made matters looks worse than they were. But there’s no getting around the facts of this story: Personal trainer convicted of assault.
Here, it’s actually worse than it sounds: the guy attempted to murder his client by drugging her and then trying to suffocate her with Saran wrap. And take a look at these facts:
Wenskunas [the client] said Kelavos [the trainer] came to her Orange Tree condominium on April 4, 2002, to help her try to sell her treadmill. Wenskunas nine months earlier had hired Kelavos as a personal trainer through 24-Hour Fitness.When he came to her home, Wenskunas said he offered her a pill to help her lose weight.
She later said during an interview that the pill made her feel as if someone had given her anesthesia, and the next thing she knew she was in her upstairs bedroom with no clothes on and wrapped in a blanket.
She was able to struggle free from Kelavos by jumping off a 12-foot high balcony, she said.
Can you imagine the kind of advice he had been giving her for nine months if he was able to convince her that selling her treadmill and taking diet pills were good fitness moves?
And it gets worse: although the original story said he faced almost five years in jail, this follow-up piece indicates that he served only 120 days. However, one silver lining is that the victim was so outraged by the outcome that she’s founded a victim’s support group, Crime Survivors Inc.
Posted by Kristen at 01:06 PM | Comments (0)
July 16, 2005
Misleading
“Unhappy with Fitness Trainer, Woman Demands Money Back.” That’s the headline of this recent Action 9 consumer news report. At first glance, that summary seems accurate:
Kristi Stanfield wanted the expertise of a personal trainer. But after spending more than $1,000 for a trainer, she was unhappy with the results and wanted her money back.Stanfield is a busy young professional who likes to hit the gym and get the most out of her workout. That's why she plunked down big bucks to hire a professional trainer through Beyond Fitness.
"I paid them approximately $1,200 for the year and began having problems almost right away."
Stanfield said her trainer was not showing up for sessions, didn't know much about workouts on the exercise machines and knew even less about nutrition.
"There was just a great amount of turnover and I felt that a lot of the people who were supposed to be training me knew less about fitness than I did," she said.
So far, so bad. But the headline seems wildly misleading when read in the context of the very last line of the story:
Stanfield has had several sessions with Rosen [a new trainer] and now she's turned down the refund we got for her from Beyond Fitness because she said he is what she's been looking for.
I guess the point of these consumer “Action” reports is to highlight the efforts of the crusading reporters on behalf of wronged consumers. But the real news here is that the new guy was so good that the client even turned down money offered for the missed sessions and bad advice. Why wasn’t the headline “Overjoyed with Fitness Trainer, Woman Refuses Refund”?
Posted by Kristen at 12:46 PM | Comments (0)
July 07, 2005
Certifiable
According the American Council on Exercise, there are more than 300 fitness certification programs available to the public. Becoming a Personal Trainer for Dummies has a helpful run-down of the six best known certifying bodies in the personal training industry – ACE, the American College of Sports Medicine, the National Strength and Conditioning Association, the National Academy of Sports Medicine, the International Sports Sciences Association and the Aerobics and Fitness Association of America. Directory.net has a extensive list of fitness certification organizations, as does personaltrainernet.net (together with a convenient comparison chart).
I’m certified by one of the organizations on the Dummies’ “best known” list -- NASM -- and am working on my AFAA credential. I hold a number of others, including one issued by the gym I work at, and I’m considering certification by ASCM.
What’s the advantage to multiple certifications? It’s not just the increased credibility that comes with having a string of acronyms after your name. Although there’s a certain overlap in what’s taught by each certifying organization, there are differences in focus, perspective and principles which make for a more well-rounded personal trainer who can serve varying populations of clients. Furthermore, the overlap itself is important: the process of repetitive learning makes understanding and speaking and the language of fitness second nature. And on the more practical side is greater job mobility -- some employers require particular certifications, or that their trainers hold multiple certifications.
Posted by Kristen at 12:02 AM | Comments (3)
July 05, 2005
Self Defense
Some people feel that asking a future spouse to sign a pre-nuptial agreement takes the romance out of the marriage. But the personal trainer/client relationship is a professional one, and the authors of Becoming a Personal Trainer for Dummies offer some terrific advice on how to start out on the right foot: hire a lawyer and negotiate a waiver of liability! They also suggest presenting the client with a disclaimer and informed consent form containing the following langauge:
I realize that my participation in these activities involves potential risk of injury, including but not limited to bodily injury, heart attack, stroke, or even death. I also recognize that there are other risks associated with exercise and personal training and that it is not possible to list every one.
Dummies, pp. 95-96.
Getting a lawyer is the easy part. What personal trainer doesn’t already have her own attorney? None that I know. In fact, most of the master trainers at my gym have entire law firms on permanent retainer. At $600 an hour, legal counsel is one of the best bargains going.
The tricky part is getting the waiver signed. Once the client apprehends the grave threat you pose to his life – risks so varied they can’t even be enumerated -- he may want a lawyer of his own. But this doesn’t have to put a chill on things. Most health clubs have conference rooms to accommodate waiver negotiations, typically adjoining the pilates studio. Pick the right caterer, and things can be quite civilized as counsel negotiate through the night towards a fair and equitable level of client injury and disability.
Due to the increasing popularity of pre-training legal summits, it’s now common practice for a client to dispatch counsel to your club in advance of the introductory free session. Ideally your own counsel will be advised of the arrangements so you can simply make the necessary introductions and go about your business. If the client appears as well, feel free to put him on a scale or whip out the calipers – but no training until the waiver closing has occurred.
Be aware that if your gym is running special promotions you may be called upon to execute paperwork concerning sweatshirts, mugs, tee shirts and the like early in the evening. Don’t mistake these for the waiver, which generally presents itself in a large black binder.
Leave it to the lawyers to thrash out the details. But don’t lose sight of the big picture. Given what’s at stake, it might be prudent to suggest an updating of the client’s will and health care proxy. Questions over who has the ultimate authority to remove life support – the trainer, the client’s spouse, or the assistant manager – should be fully addressed. Similarly, the agreement should cover whether training sessions are suspended for the duration of the lawsuit or merely on the days of the parties’ depositions.
Finally, some issues will require the participation of the club’s corporate counsel, such as whether the full membership fee or merely the discounted retaining charge is due when the client is in a coma.
Don’t underestimate the power of minimizing your exposure. A strong legal position makes for a stronger client, when the trainer is free from the spectre of litigation. Make sure that pushing your client beyond his physical limits doesn’t push you beyond your financial means!
Posted by Kristen at 11:53 PM | Comments (0)
June 27, 2005
Good Job!
How do you motivate your clients? Here’s a helpful analogy from Becoming a Personal Trainer for Dummies:
When you’re training a dog and the dog does something you want him to do, like sitting on command or not peeing on the floor, you reward him with pats and doggie treats. It works the same way with people . . . [w]hen they’re rewarded for a certain behavior, they want to do it more often.
(Dummies, p. 144). Playing catch with a client on a stability ball is more like training a circus seal than a dog, but the Dummies are otherwise on target. Clients need positive reinforcement. And since we can’t toss them fish (they’re too uncoordinated to catch it in their mouths), all we have is words.
The Dummies authors suggest saying things like “good going” and “good job on the cardio today” and “good form.” That might be to much of a “good” thing, though. Clients who hear the same kind of compliment after each exercise might start to question your sincerity, viewing you like the kindergarten teacher who gives out the same gold star to every kid no matter how badly they trace the letters of the alphabet. If you’re going to be that unoriginal you might as well reward your client’s performance with a yawn.
The authors do suggest more specific, complicated forms of praise, but those might be hard to remember unless you bring their book along. And that would be a terrible mistake. You can say the nicest things in the world, but you’ll have no credibility left if you’re caught reading them out of a book, especially one written for dummies.
The most direct approach would seem to be to ask the client what he or she would like to hear. After all, even a trained chicken gets to choose which colored button to peck to send that tasty pellet down the chute. Unfortunately, with humans that’s the worst option of all.
Never, I repeat, never, have a discussion about praise-words with your client. Once you’ve brought that issue out into the open it’s all over. The notion that it’s all a big game will forever hover over your relationship like a dark cloud. You’ll feel awkward and self-conscious offering any words of encouragement at all, knowing that your client knows you’re just a parrot repeating the phrases you’ve been taught. You won’t be able to save things by trying to say something off the script. The client will see right through that, viewing it as a sad attempt to escape the predicament you’ve created, or possibly a form of disobedience. And if you give up and go back to just saying “good” you’ll be laughed out of the gym.
Got it? Good job!
Posted by Kristen at 08:27 AM | Comments (0)
June 23, 2005
Economics
Obesity is part of an economic issue, says Meg of I Am that Girl Now, who is “fuming” over those who think that poor people just want to be fat:
The more leisure time you have available, the more time you have to read up on nutrition and lifestyle tips, to experiment with cooking, to exercise, to prepare for the next day. The more money you have available, the more of a safety net you have-- money to pay for the fresh fruits and vegetables, money to restock after those fruits and vegetables go bad before you thought they would, money to stock up on Lean Cuisines for as long as it takes to get the lunch-packing thing figured out, money to pay for a gym membership that's convenient for you, money to pay for proper running shoes, money to buy a sports bra and a pair of dumbbells. Like it or not, money and leisure time make this journey a lot easier.
I agree. Fitness should be for everyone, but that’s not necessarily how the industry always works. Personal training can be expensive, and according to IHRSA statistics it is by far the largest profit center for sports clubs. (Note: For the clubs, not the trainers). The average household income for a club member was $79,300 (as of 2003).
Not that one must have a personal trainer to be fit. There are many fine bodybuilders in prison. I don’t think the authorities provide trainers, and on wages averaging 17 cents a day it would take an inmate over a year to pay for just one session. So I’m not sure how they learn the proper technique, Maybe they read us fitness bloggers online. (I’ll ask my parole officer about it). Unfortunately, some states ban weight lifting in prison, in part out of concern over incidents involving assault on guards. It’s a shame that just a few bad apples in the SuperMax can spoil it for everyone.
Posted by Kristen at 07:22 PM | Comments (0)