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11 July 2009 11:24 AM
"Worst Idea Ever"
Freddie writes:
There are no consistent and widely used standards to indicate that a personal trainer knows what he or she is doing. There's dozens of certifications that are close to meaningless because there's no real regulatory body maintaining the standard and saying "yeah, this person knows what he's doing." Some of the different certifications are given out by people who are pretty rigorous about it; some you can simply pay a fee and get a piece of paper over the Internet. Sometimes, you have both for the same kind of certification, so that one person actually went through an intensive course to get the certification, and someone else just printed it out. The effect is the same; people shopping around for a personal trainer end up looking at sometimes dozens of different types of certification and having no possibly way to make an informed choice. And there are serious consequences for consumers. Google around a little and you can find hundreds of horror stories- trainers who led their clients to tear their ACLs or break vertebra or rip muscles. There have been a few deaths. The fact that there's no kind of regulatory body at all and no consistent standards ensures that consumers can't make informed choices, and that leads to injury.Indeed, countless Americans injure themselves each year, sometimes seriously, because they exercise without personal trainers to guide them! This phenomenon goes on in gyms across the United States -- and on public streets too. Just yesterday I saw a guy playing pickup basketball in shoes designed for running that didn't offer anywhere near the ankle support that he needed. As Freddie says later in his post, "regulations that protect people from bodily harm are what a lot of people actually want most from government, and expect most from government," so it makes sense to at least consider assigning a government sponsored personal trainer at public playgrounds, and a basic licensing requirement for employees at Foot Locker so that they can better advise customers on their athletic footwear needs. This is especially true if we're moving toward a national effort to reduce health care costs, and to shift some of the burden for care onto the public generally. We need to weigh the right of people to exercise on their own against the cost they impose on society by doing so.
Later in his post Freddie writes:
Clearly, even if there were regulations concerning what kind of training and testing was necessary to sell your services as a personal trainer, that wouldn't obviate the need for consumers to do their homework. You'd still want to look around, to search the Internet, talk to references, etc. But just like the existence of formal regulations for medical doctors ensures (with a vanishingly small number of exceptions do to out-and-out fraud) that the doctor you see will at least have met a certain minimum level of schooling and testing, so some kind of organized, national certification process for personal trainers could help people to choose a personal trainer with at least some confidence.I'm glad that he proposes national standards. The rise of long distance running and cycling has probably increased the number of people crossing state lines during training to make this a plausible instance of regulating interstate commerce, so no need to worry about Constitutional concerns. Plus I can think of no better use of Congress' time or skill set than to draw up a canon all existing personal trainers would have to prove that they know in order to continue earning their livelihood. Funds from a second stimulus could be used to fund the National Office of Personal Trainer Oversight, which could employ roving inspectors who enter gyms unannounced to check certification paperwork and licensing fees. Every taxpayer can feel good about funneling resources to a cause as worthy as preventing the affluent from being injured by the folks who help them exercise. Or perhaps the full cost of the permitting could be born by the industry itself, marginally raising the price of personal trainers and lowering the number of people able to get help exercising. But I'm sure that the health benefits of the people who won't get injured will outweigh the health losses of those who won't hire personal trainers, because that is my intention, and as we all know, so long as the federal government is called upon based on good intentions, the resulting policy is bound to be sound.
Finally, as someone who'd like to one day have a kid or two, and who intends to raise them in the middle class, I'm glad to know that should they ever desire to become a personal trainer, I'll be able to make that happen for them by funding their classes at the local certification center, and that they won't have to worry about competing against the dread poor people for whom classes of that kind are a much greater financial burden. There are a few matters to be wrinkled out, of course. If I agree to help my friend get into shape, or help my next door neighbor learn how to surf, or show a guy in my hotel exercise center how to use the back extension machine, how is the state going to be apprised of my lawbreaking? After all, they can spot check every gym, but exercise advice can easily be given in any garage training center or back alley in America.
Oh well. We wouldn't want to make the perfect the enemy of the good.
I can take mean; I don't care about mean. I do care about dishonest, and if you'd bother to think about it, you'd see that this is a flatly dishonest post, constantly misrepresenting my position.
Have to say I agree with the author here, and I'm glad he spoke up. This post is, to say the least, disingenuous.
First of all, standard-setting professional organizations for doctors, lawyers, etc., are not government bodies; yet they are invaluable. Clearly that would be the kind of model we are looking at here.
Second of all, personal trainers don't lead their clients through basketball games or jogs through the park. Obviously. They teach their clients to sculpt their bodies, using the least effort for the maximum results...like most disciplines, athletic or not, there's a lot of skill and knowledge involved. And a lot of the exercises, if performed incorrectly, will either do you no good or actually harm your body (squats are a good example).
To the author: I'm not sure how much good the certification would do. In my mind, the gyms that hire trainers do the vetting; I've noticed a strong correlation between the caliber of the gym and the caliber of their trainer. The real problem is that even where training is roughly equal, and you have trainers who can assign exercises that are pretty well suited to your goals and abilities, the difference in quality between them can still be vast. Good trainers push you, and they are nice and encouraging about it. Bad ones let you plateau, or they're bullies. Hard to certify attitude.
For reals though: trainers have changed my life. Good ones are worth their weight in gold, and I'd recommend a good trainer over a good shrink.
For the record, the above post isn't disingenuous or dishonest -- it is sarcastic. If that doesn't come across, it is surely my failure as the writer, and I'd hate for anyone to think that Freddie is advocating anything like the reductio ad absurdum outcomes that I raise. I do think, however, that the absurd issues I raise are as easily justified by the rationale Freddie uses as anything that he is actually arguing for.
The problem is that just about everything to do with the 'fitness' industry isn't supported by evidence. The crew over at crossfit.com do a good job of deflating the gym membership bs, but the flipside is that real fitness is difficult.
Oh, and ankle support for basketball shoes - no evidence. Kobe Bryant wears basketball shoes with no ankle support (although he does tape his ankles).