Looking for an Advanced Personal Trainer

by Alan Gordon

Finding a realistically advanced Personal Trainer is hard. Over 7,000 accredited and qualified people, who are working as personal trainers in the UK, do so, through training courses that last only days, weeks or a few months! These are the realities that lie behind nearly all specifically titled personal trainer qualifications. When seeking an expert, accepting any qualification at face value, however impressive sounding, is not a wise move.

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.

Courses lasting 2 weeks, 6 weeks, 12 weeks or even 10 months do not produce credibly expert Exercise and Nutritional professionals. 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.

In truth, the specific personal training qualifications handed out by the vast majority of personal training companies are just very basic starting points with which to begin the long and intense learning curve

Good starter qualifications such as a Sports Science degree, plus a realistic number of years using the ‘tools of the trade’ equals in any field, an advanced experienced expert. The refined experts in personal training have realistically senior qualifications and are usually in the 36+ -age bracket.

Advanced personal trainers are always experts in three very separate, specific fields, namely Exercise Biomechanics, Remedial/Injury Biomechanics and Nutrition.

Advanced trainers always implement these three initial procedures and complete them fully before any exercise is undertaken, for safety and science based progress.

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. Topics that must be covered 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. You should always be asked to take with you a ‘diet diary,’ where you record everything you eat and drink and the actual times of the consumption over the next seven days.
2. Body Composition Testing. Achieved with a scientifically credible method such as bio-electrical impedance. This test establishes muscle, water and fat levels, including numerous other factors which gauge your progress, like metabolic rate.
3. Biomechanical Range of Motion Test. The ROM Test establishes how you uniquely bend, stretch, rotate, flex, extend, contract your entire body/musculo-skeletal system. Actual ‘wrong’ exercises or ones that are bio chemically unsuitable for your body can cause significant problems and is technically known as ‘sub clinical micro-trauma’. The ‘hidden’ damage then builds steadily until it reaches ‘clinical’ level; this test is therefore crucial.

For any exercise plan and for all goals at any age or gender, these are ground zero formalities. Those who tell you that they are irrelevant, usually do so for one of two reasons:

1. They are actually unfamiliar with the process.
2. They lack the qualifications, skills and knowledge to perform them fully or at all.

Simply establish the training time behind any title/qualification presented, 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.

Alan Gordon is an expert in assessing the standards of personal trainers and has also been an expert witness in cases of personal injury and incompetence in litigations involving personal trainers and health and fitness personnel.

See Personal Training and Alan Gordon's website www.alangordon-health.co.uk for more information.