As trainers, it’s sometimes easy to get frustrated and blame clients for their own fate when they just don’t do what they’re supposed to do to reach their goals. But we need to remember that it isn’t only our job to write exercise programs; it’s our job to effectively implement them as well. If our clients aren’t doing what we ask, we need to change the program. After all, a great program on paper still won’t produce results if the person for whom it’s written doesn’t do it. And as trainers, right after “do no harm,” our oath is supposed to be “produce results.”

We create safe AND EFFECTIVE exercise programs. This certainly isn’t easy when working with real-world constraints like work, family and behavioral issues – and this is an often overlooked challenge by trainers first entering the field. We get into this industry because we love fitness. FITNESS!! (Sorry, inside joke…) But not everyone feels that way. Most of the general population still looks at exercise as a chore. People know they need to do it, but it definitely isn’t fun – and any excuse they can find will suffice. That’s often why they hire a trainer.

We wear many hats as trainers. Sometimes we’re there for accountability, other times for support. We’re exercise programmers and educators. We’re not psychologists, but we do need to listen, communicate and find different ways to motivate all sorts of people. A lack of compliance to great exercise programs means our programs aren’t really that great. But guess what: It’s our job to make them better so that we get results. If our clients’ results are our successes, then if their results suck, we have failed.

And only once we accept that can we continue to grow in this field. 

Kelly’s use of insightful educational videos and unique combination of strategies from both the worlds of strength and conditioning and physical therapy make him a valuable resource in the fitness field. And lucky for us, that valuable resource has compiled his years of work into a book that becomes available THIS TUESDAY, April 23rd:

Kelly’s motto is ‘All human beings should be able to perform basic maintenance on themselves.’  Well, in Becoming a Supple Leopard: The Ultimate Guide to Resolving Pain, Preventing Injury and Optimizing Athletic Performance, he teaches you exactly how to do that so you can reach your maximum performance potential and stay injury-free. Here are just some of the things you’ll learn how to do:

• Prevent and rehabilitate common athletic injuries
• Overhaul your movement habits and efficiently channel the most powerful muscles in the body
• Quickly identify and fix inefficient movement patterns in yourseld and others
• Problem solve for pain and dysfunction with little equipment
• Unlock reservoirs of athletic capacity you didn’t know you had
• Develop strategies that restore function to your joints and tissues
• Accelerate recovery after training sessions and competition
• Create personalized mobility prescriptions to improve movement efficiency
• Improve your quality of life through regained work capacity

If any of this sounds good to you, pick up a copy of Becoming a Supple Leopard at a local retailer or order it HERE.

It’s a shame to see such a huge accomplishment soured by tragedy, and a joyous tradition for my home state now forever tainted.

After Hurricane Sandy forced the cancellation of the NYC Marathon this past fall, many fellow New Yorkers fled up north for yesterday’s race – so Manhattan is pretty devastated as well.

I am thankful that all of my family and friends in Massachusetts are safe, and my heart goes out to those who were not so lucky.

While formal V02 max tests might not be practical for most trainers, gathering and tracking progress in a variety of fitness categories (strength, power, body composition, etc.) is important for a number of reasons, many of which Chris discussed. Some of the main takeaways from his presentation were:

1. Assess movement first because, without good movement patterns, performance numbers don’t matter.

2. Before we can decide which assessments to choose, we need goals. Aside from SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound), trainers should help clients set goals that are action-oriented rather than focused just on the outcome. I talk more about that in THIS ARTICLE, for which I was recently interviewed.

My teaching example is usually the use of a timed work density circuit as a performance measure for clients who want to lose fat. Decreasing the amount of time or increasing the amount of sets of the circuit are action-oriented process goals that feed nicely into the outcome (or product goal) of body composition change (more work = more calories burned).

3. We need to start defining “results” as feeling better, stronger, etc., and assessing via these parameters is important when we don’t have DIRECT control over aesthetics. And using multiple assessments increases our likelihood of getting buy-in for our programs.

4. The assessments we choose should depend as much on the client’s lifestyle as they do on the goal (e.g., the client who wants his butt kicked gets an FMS but the client undergoing a lifestyle change should probably just track attendance).

5. Not every assessment should be an exercise but we can turn any exercise into an assessment, so we don’t need to stick to just the traditional tests and protocols – but the devil is in the details: Without good technique and consistency in measurement, numbers don’t matter.

6. Don’t be afraid to start doing assessments just because you haven’t always done them; starting the process is as simple as a conversation about revisiting goals – you just have to own that conversation.

Chris and I also spoke a lot about the motivation/accountability factor as well, and that might be the biggest reason to make sure you’re doing assessments with your clients. It’s much easier for someone to stay motivated and accountable to a goal that he/she knows is going to be evaluated. Moreover, it increases feelings of accomplishment – for the client AND trainer. After all, a trainer’s successes are his clients’ results.

Bottom line: Make sure you’re continually setting goals with your clients and using assessments to monitor progress – for both your satisfaction and theirs.

But carrying books around all day can get cumbersome. Enter these mobile apps:

There are now apps for iPhones that allow you to search for fitness-related research via sites like iResearch, PubMed and Google Scholar. You can even get access to full text through some of them.

No joke – April Fool’s Day or other.

And when it comes time to get a new phone, here’s a really cool thing you can do with your old one: DONATE IT HERE and help provide meals to those in need while also doing your part to improve the environment – courtesy of fellow fitness professionals John Romaniello, Eric Cressey and Ben Bruno. Now that it’s an option, you’d be April foolish not to partake in such a worthy cause.

Most of you who have been in gyms over the years probably recognize the name ‘Weider’ from some of the equipment:

 Many of you also know that Joe Weider founded several fitness magazines, including Muscle & Fitness, Flex, Men’s Fitness and Shape. Having written for two of those four mags myself (and having worked as an editor for four others), Joe Weider’s name has been a pretty big one throughout my career.

Although Mr. Weider was also known for pushing pseudoscience and supplements… he also founded the International Federation of Body Builders (IFBB). Not too many people know this, but I actually used to be a judge for the sport (though for a different and natural organization). Needless to say, without Joe Weider, my career path would probably have been very different.

So thank you, Mr. Weider, for your contributions to fitness, and may you rest in peace.

I have to say, for all the slack they get about not paying attention to safety, they were extremely hesitant to let me in because I hadn’t been through the beginner classes in order to learn the nine movements around which they base the workouts.

But given that I’m a veteran in the industry and the class happened to be small, they let me join after some basic movement analysis in the warm-up – which consisted of overhead squats with a dowel, push-ups, pull-ups (yes, pull-ups were a warm-up!), sit-ups and a jog around the block.

I guess they were impressed with my movement because they let me go all out after that. I wanted to mention that I got a 21 on the FMS, but I managed to hold my tongue…

The Workout of the Day (WOD) consisted of 12 barbell thrusters, 9 toe touches to a bar (done hanging from the bar) and then a run around the block with a 20-lb. medicine ball. We were instructed to go through as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes. Girls were to use 55 lbs. for the thrusters while guys used 75 lbs., with the option of scaling up or down for fitness level/safety. Yet oddly enough, modifications to the actual exercises were not allowed…

Personally, I tend to prefer dumbbells over barbells for overhead lifts; simply put, years of throwing a ball and swinging a bat have left me with asymmetries in thoracic rotation and overhead movement, and I typically get trigger points to no end under my left scapula (not the most easily accessible area with a foam roller) when I use a bar for things like thrusters. I was told I could use a lighter bar but not dumbbells…

It wasn’t the load that was the issue, so I chose not to go lighter. But I could’ve gone heavier with dumbbells and not have this annoying pain in my back right now…  In any case, I finished just behind one of the regulars and five seconds shy of five full rounds. I worked hard, had fun and met some new people with good camaraderie – so it served its purpose. Of course, I like to think we have equally good camaraderie at Fit6 while still accounting for (and sometimes mandating) appropriate exercise modifications…

I was also impressed with the attention paid to recovery at the end of the class – which included specific foam rolling and discussion of a very important point that is often overlooked: You make your progress after your workout, when you rest. 

All in all, while I certainly agree that Olympic lifts are not meant to be done for high reps or under extreme fatigue (which the competitive nature of CrossFit tends to promote), I didn’t see firsthand any issues with safety. The coaches were actually quite cognizant of it – which I certainly appreciated – so perhaps things are changing for the better. One can only hope…

Of course, there are always structural abnormalities, postural deviations, conditions, etc. that may warrant a different approach, and this is precisely why assessments are so important. I’ve always admired Tony Gentilcore for constantly acknowledging these things, and I admire him even more now for making his recent core training seminar available:

Together with Dean Somerset, Jeff Cubos and Rick Kaselj, Tony discusses how he assesses his athletes to determine things like whether or not back pain (or the potential for back pain) is flexion- or extension-based, the role of posture and breathing, the importance of hip mobility and glute strength in the prevention and treatment of low back pain, and where foam rolling/massage and core stability fit in. BUT, he does so without losing focus of the goal: PERFORMANCE.

As trainers, we don’t treat pain, and most of our clients don’t want to spend money doing just “corrective exercise.” They want to train. We just have to understand what movements and loading patterns are likely to cause pain and what interventions are likely to help prevent or improve symptoms.

I don’t want to give away too much, so check out this video for a little more about Tony Gentilcore and Spinal Health and Core Training:

If you like what you see so far, the full seminar is available HERE.

Not good. That’s why it’s so important for personal trainers to understand things like moment arms, lines of force and injury mechanisms when planning programs for today’s clientele with today’s equipment.

For example, let’s take an exercise that a lot of trainers seem to like: Medicine ball walking lunges with rotation.

Before I go any further, I want to say that I agree wholeheartedly with Eric Cressey in that “there are no contraindicated exercises, only contraindicated lifters.” Well, except for maybe upright rows…Those are pretty much contraindicated for everyone – at least everyone with a skeleton.

But I digress.

It’s not that there is anything inherently wrong with the walking lunge with medicine ball rotation; it’s just that it happens to be a very complex exercise for a number of reasons, and tends to get used as fancy “variation” of a lunge to “spice up” workouts when in fact it’s actually a pretty advanced progression.

Let’s start with the lunge. Even a “basic” forward lunge is actually a pretty advanced exercise when we consider forces and knee mechanics. As the foot hits the ground, we have to put the breaks on to decelerate the forward momentum of the body, stop, and then change direction as we push back up to stand. And underneath the surface, the distal end of the femur is pushed forward into the back of the patella, potentially causing shear (or “gliding”) force.

In the reverse lunge, however, the femur moves away from the patella. The working leg also stays fixed, whereas in the forward lunge, it moves. This actually makes the reverse lunge a regression, and an important exercise to master before moving to the forward lunge. I talk more about that HERE. The walking lunge is even more advanced because of the increasing momentum with each step.

For someone with worn cartilage on the back of the knee (a condition known as chondromalacia that could eventually lead to arthritis), however, the reverse lunge is the more appropriate variation (if the lunge is going to be trained at all, that is). So, in some instances it serves as regression, while in others it may be the more appropriate variation and the last step in the lunge progression – preceded by mastery of the less dynamic split squat.

Now let’s look at what the addition of trunk rotation does to the walking lunge. First, it creates a rotational force (known as “torsion”). While training to resist torsion is important, if the exercise we choose is too advanced and we wind up creating too much torsion instead, chances for injury increase. And when you then hold a weighted medicine ball in your hands with outstretched arms, the torque that we need to resist also increases. Now add in the most recent “cool” modality for the exercise: The ViPR.

A longer lever with more weight distributed away from our center – the axis of rotation here – produces even greater torque. What typically results is an inability to maintain stability and resist these increasing forces, and we see rotation start to occur at the knee as well. And while the knee has a few small degrees of available rotation, it is predominantly a hinge joint – which means it’s really only supposed to flex and extend.

The trunk really isn’t supposed to rotate a lot either – at least not from the lumbar spine. The medicine ball (or ViPR) walking lunge with rotation ideally trains thoracic rotation, but if the client doesn’t lunge to 90 degrees to lock out the lumbar spine and/or has crappy posture, core stability and/or T-spine movement, this ain’t gonna happen.

I think you get the point by now: Make sure you know what is and isn’t appropriate for the person in front of you, and follow your progressions before adding in fancy variations just to keep things interesting. Most clients care much more about safety and results.

Some modalities serve as great variations for exercises, however, without necessarily being progressions or regressions. Take resistance bands, for example. Elastic resistance provides a unique stimulus because the tension increases throughout the range of motion. We call this “variable” or “accommodating” resistance. So with a chest press, for example, the triceps receive more load than the muscles that horizontally flex the shoulder:

This isn’t so when the same exercise is performed with cables. The band is a better option for someone who specifically wants bigger or stronger triceps, and a safer modification of a press when there’s an injury at the shoulder. You can read more about that HERE.

The bottom line here is that modalities and exercise variations can serve as progressions, regressions or simply modifications for a specific goal or contraindication; it just depends on how you look at it and what you’re working toward. The point is that you do look at it, and you do know what you’re working toward. That’s what programming is, and that’s our job as personal trainers. It requires continual goal setting and assessments, and careful analysis of the effects of forces. If you understand your ABCs and remember the WHY behind the WHAT, appropriate exercise selection and program design become much easier.

First and unfortunately, there are a lot of clowns in this unregulated industry, which means just about  everyone can get in the door somewhere…

That’s reason #1. BUT, it only means there’s a greater demand for continued education as you’re forced to compete with more people, many of whom are more qualified than you – and this brings us to reason #2:

Much like you can sail through college, barely pass your exams yet still earn a Bachelor’s degree (which isn’t worth much these days anyway…), a personal training certification can be easily obtained online and, even a certification from an NCCA-accredited organization only suggests minimal competency; it doesn’t actually mean you have any skills or are at all qualified for a job. Again, continued education and practical experience become the keys to success.

Reason #3: Personal training is also like college in that some people choose liberal arts schools – where they gain knowledge in multiple disciplines but aren’t necessarily great in any one of them – while others attend technical or other specialized universities, or go on to pursue a specific degree. Similarly, many trainers work with the general population and see a diverse clientele, while others will obtain special certifications in medical exercise, sports performance, yoga and Pilates.

But regardless of the clientele, all fitness professionals have to design safe and effective exercise programs to help their clients reach their goals, and here’s where reason #4 comes in: Much like a four-year college program requires a pre-planned and timely path of education that leads to the ultimate goal of graduating with a degree in a specific major, a fitness program should follow a similar path. While you have a general plan in order to meet the requirements for your major, you still have to meet certain general education requirements, and you have prerequisites to complete each semester before moving on. The same goes for fitness: Proper mobility, stability and strength in major movement patterns are your “core requirements.”

Once you have your ABCs out the way, you can take more specialized courses that will move you closer to your degree, or that end goal – be it maximum strength, hypertrophy, power or performance. You can change your major along the way just as clients may change their goals – and that’s OK; but realize that it’ll take a little longer to graduate.

Should the end goal change, you simply change the path; but as long as you’re working toward something specific and progress is evaluated so you know you’re headed in the right direction, you can still stay on track. Unfortunately, this is where many trainers fall short: The client takes too many electives, loses direction and never actually accomplishes anything – and this is just one more reason why education is paramount to success in this field!