LOOKING FOR AN ADVANCED PERSONAL TRAINER

 

Finding a realistically advanced Personal Trainer isn’t easy at all. Knowing what to look for, in order to recognise the advanced professionals is something that will help you get the expert you’re seeking. However, bear in mind that over 7,000 accredited and qualified people, who are working as personal trainers in the UK, are so, through training courses that last only days, weeks or a few months! These are the realities that lie behind many personal trainer qualifications, so if you’re automatically assuming expert attention from the title, I’m afraid what you see is not what you’ll get, a good 95% of the time. When seeking an expert in this field, accepting any qualification at all at face value, however impressive sounding, is not a wise move in your search process.

 

Be aware that advanced Personal Trainers are not just for advanced athletes and competetive sportspeople.

They are literally for every male or female at any level, from the most inexperienced person, young or old, seeking to lose weight, to the regular exerciser looking for a more productive workout. Retaining an advanced Personal Trainer just means that they are much better qualified, have far more expertise and dramatically more knowledge, which for their clients of course, translates to a higher success rate achieved more efficiently and safely.

 

Particularly over the last ten years, in the UK, Ireland, Europe and Scandinavia, I’ve been retained many times to privately assess many people providing personal training. Unfortunately, the problem of impressive sounding qualifications and power titles, based on very short training periods (which are increasingly being accepted as the ‘norm’), is growing at a prodigious rate. Demand for personal trainers has escalated immensely, so consequently they’re being produced ever faster! Unfortunately, rapid mass production, drastically leaves out one very vital factor…… quality.

 

It’s really not rocket science at all for any reasonably intelligent person to work out, that credibly expert Exercise and Nutritional professionals are not produced on courses lasting 2 weeks, 6 weeks, 12 weeks or even ten months. Even so, if someone presents you with a certificate or diploma from an official training organisation, natural assumption of specialist capability is often the layman’s reaction. But just think for a second; would you let a dentist who qualified for the title by doing a twelve-week training course, inject your gums, drill out your tooth and give you a root canal filling?

 

Without doubt, all learning is of course a very good thing, and the majority of those who embark upon the road to being personal trainers do so with sincere intent and laudable enthusiasm. However, the learning curve to being a real expert in this field, is through a very long arc indeed measuring quite some years, and due to this factor, it is wise to bear in mind as a sound rule of thumb, that such an expert in all the necessary fields required for properly advanced personal training will not be younger than their middle to late thirties. This is after gaining their basic starting point qualifications such as a Sports Science degree, in their early twenties. Good starter qualifications plus a realistic number of years using the ‘tools of the trade’ equals in any field, an advanced experienced expert; again; hardly a Particle Physics calculation!

 

In the field of Exercise Biomechanics for example, there are small areas of it like gait and posture analysis which are important, but this involved sports science takes literally years to learn and this full term of academic application and study is necessary to be able to perform a full and complete Range of Motion Test. For example, a person’s active biomechanical ranges through numerous dynamic movements also need to be established, which is why advanced trainers need around an hour to go through the full and comprehensively proper process.

 

All personal training courses in the UK deliver some knowledge of personal training methodology, but they do not remotely produce experts, as the training times are not even remotely long enough. Graduates have much to learn and yes we certainly are, all eternal students, but refined experts in personal training have realistically senior qualifications and are usually in the 36+-age bracket. I’ve encountered this first hand time and time again, in all the countries I’ve conducted assessment processes in over the last decade. It is very important to bear in mind that there are personal trainers and Personal Trainers, because in every profession, ascending level of expertise exist and realising it is no different at all in personal training circles, will provide you with the appropriate mind-set when looking for truly advanced people. 

 

There’s quite a lot of background to know in full if you’re seeking an advanced Personal Trainer, but to simplify matters a little for you at first meetings, be aware that, advanced ones are always experts in three very separate, specific fields, namely Exercise Biomechanics, Remedial/Injury Biomechanics and Nutrition. All three aspects at individually high level are required to deliver advanced personal training.

 

Advanced trainers always implement these three initial procedures and complete them fully before any exercise is undertaken, for safety and science based progress. Bear in mind that all three procedures must be provided, so missing one or parts of them out, or applying less than appropriate times to those procedures is not good news at all for advanced Personal Trainer hunters!

1. Initial Consultation. A very in-depth discussion, involving completion of a comprehensive health questionnaire, which should be at least 6 pages long to establish all your background history in numerous areas. All areas of your exercise and nutritional physiology are extremely relevant, so topics that must be covered in the questionnaire are: Health profile, heredity, cardio-vascular profile, exercise history, pollution risk, stress quotient, glucose tolerance, digestion, immune system, histamine, allergy analysis and immediate diet overview, Average consultation will never be less than 2 hrs, due to the discussion required on the various topics. On leaving the consultation, you should always be asked to take with you a ‘diet diary,’ where you record literally in great detail, everything you eat and drink and the actual times of consumption over the next seven days. This is very important, as it is very much required for proper in depth nutritional analysis by the trainer before your next meeting; NB. It should actually be the trainer personally that performs this analysis, not someone else brought in to deliver the nutritional aspect of your requirements.
   
   
2. Body Composition Testing. Achieved with a scientifically credible method such as bio-electrical impedance, not fat callipers, hand held ‘monitors’, miniature arm lasers or stand-on scales! This test establishes muscle, water and fat levels, including numerous other factors that gauge your progress, like metabolic rate. The mobile bio-electrical impedance method is only 3% off the most accurate lab based protocol in existence, which is something, called a DEXA scan (a form of MRI). Again; to fully analyse the findings and revelations delivered by this method, it is necessary to be well qualified in Nutrition too, hence the real requirement for your chosen person to be expert in this other area.
   
   
3. Biomechanical Range of Motion Test. Beware here, as without this hour-long test, ‘personal’ training simply isn’t possible! Without it, what you’ll get is ‘supervised exercise’ certainly not what you pay for and a long way from ‘real’ personal training.
   The ROM Test establishes how you uniquely bend, stretch, rotate, flex, extend contract your entire body/musculo-skeletal system. If this total individuality isn’t observed and analysed and your exercise program, for whatever goals you have, is not based directly upon the results, what then in plain common sense, will be remotely ‘personal’ about your exercise plan? Actual ‘wrong’ exercises or ones that are biomechanicaly unsuitable for your body can cause significant problems, quickly or some way down the line; very subtly without you actually realising it’s happening at all and is technically known as ‘sub clinical micro-trauma’.
   This ‘hidden’ damage builds steadily, until six weeks, six months or even two years down the line, it reaches ‘clinical’ level, meaning you then, all of a sudden, certainly ‘know’ about it! This test is therefore crucial and begins with the basic fundamentals of posture and gait analysis, then moving on to the more involved areas of biomechanical analysis such as movement dynamics. So always remember without fail, regardless of what you may be advised is pertinent and necessary, be very certain that going forward in any exercise plan without receiving the full ROM Test protocol in advance, definitely renders you more susceptible to suffering hidden, gradually developing musculo-skeletal problems.

For any exercise plan whatsoever; from weight loss to tone, shape,
or rehabilitation,strength improvement or sport specific, for all goals at any age or gender, these are ground zero formalities not some form of luxury ‘extras’, so make absolutely sure your chosen trainer is capable of providing them in their full and complete format if you want advanced professional attention.

Those who tell you that they are irrelevant or unnecessary, usually do so for one of two reasons:

1.Because they are actually unfamiliar with the process, which speaks volumes in terms of what you’re looking for!
 
2.Because they lack the qualifications, skills and knowledge to perform them fully or at all, and simply a quick questions and answers session on the specific level and length of their training times will reveal the facts.

Without these safety and efficiency measures being implemented at the very start, bear in mind what is definitely more possible as a result of not completing them, and the lower levels of expertise that you are being asked to pay advanced expert fees for.

In truth, by just applying plain common sense, you can implement your own quality control process when seeking your advanced personal trainer. Simply establish the training time behind any title/qualification presented to you, completely regardless of the organisation or company that provided that training and ask yourself if anyone could honestly achieve expert levels of advanced knowledge in such a time. The answer you have will help you find your realistically advanced personal trainer.

 

Exercise and Nutritional Consultant.  Alan Gordon MSc. BSc. (Hons 1st)