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Why are you a personal trainer?
You probably enjoy working out and get satisfaction from helping people get healthy and fit, right? And while this is true, personal trainers & fitness professionals are also warriors of health & fitness. But who are we fighting? Well, there are plenty of people, businesses, and whole industries who profit from making people diseased and miserable. Many personal trainers are feeling a call to arms these days. We want to help more people and be more influential, work in the communities, empower people and protect our most vulnerable populations, like children who are becoming obese in record numbers. We want to take on these bad guys, and start fighting back. Because...
Quite Simply, We Are in the Midst of a Lifestyle War.
One side wants us to be lazy, look for quick fixes, find solutions outside of ourselves, and be dependent on others for health and happiness. (Fast food companies, drug companies, health insurance companies.) And they have tremendous resources and utilize them to the fullest capacity in this war. They do anything to keep you fat and stupid, even create ridiculous sandwiches. 
Think I'm Exaggerating?
I am not. One recent study found that several of the largest health insurance companies reinvested their profits into fast food companies, to the tune of HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of dollars. These companies want you to be sick! And your clients. And your friends. And your family. They make money getting you sick by selling you processed edible poison (fast "food"), and then they make money feeding you medication. And guess what, they are winning the war. In fact, they are creaming us. In 1991, the fattest state was Mississippi, with an obesity rate of 15.7%. But that is better than our THINNEST state today in 2010, Colorado, which has an obesity rate of 19.1%.
Where Are the Good Guys?
On the other side, there are people like us. Fitness professionals, personal trainers, boot camp owners, etc, who try and help people one at a time as best we can. Empowering them, getting them to think and act for long term reasons, teaching them how to take control of their health and fitness, how to be more independent, eat healthy, and ultimately, be happier. If we work together as a community, we can take on the bad guys and win. But we have to get organized, work smarter, and expand our ability to influence, empower, and inspire people to a healthy lifestyle. This is part of the reason I created the "Association of Elite Fitness Professionals". Many trainers have tremendous power to influence their clients in a positive way, more so than their clients doctors, therapist, politicians, and even sometime the client's spouse and family! We have a power to stop this madness, if we work together. Join the fight and do what is right. Please post any comments below, thanks. Johnny Fitness
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One of the things that came to mind as I read this is our scope of practice as trainers, and how far we are supposed to go with our clients in this culture of disease. I know for me I was fascinated to see the effect Jillian had on clients when she would combine personal training with (what looked like) deep personal issues – sort of using a psychotherapy session while using that anger or sadness in a physical way to release through exercise. I really felt she was on to something, since my background is in both fitness and psychology.
While I was going to school I also took a 600 hour national certification course for massage therapy. The first thing we learned was about boundaries. As it pertains to fitness trainers, we really have to think about what we are getting into with our clients. Yes, we want to see them achieve their goals and feel empowered. Right now, with both males and females, the way we deliver our knowledge about fitness, nutrition and plain old sensibility has to be careful. Many people (for these purposes I classify disease as an eating disorder, horrible body image problems and depression & anxiety). As much as we want to get to the core reasons as to how our clients got to where they are (when first contacting us) we really gotta be careful about…how far do we want to go with this? We are fitness trainers and as much as we want to be everything for them, we’re not therapists. But many times they want to share their life experiences (which is fine) but we need to respond with empathy and again work with them within the scope that we are allowed. We can help them feel better by showing them how great it feels to be strong and how much their confidence has developed. But we really gotta be careful not to go the Jillian ‘Biggest Loser’ route with any of this!
This has got to be one of the most intelligent, fair, and balanced comments I have gotten on my blog to date! Thank you so much for adding your voice to the conversation.
I don’t think personal trainers should go out there and try and fix their clients heads. I do think, and I suspect you will agree, that trainers need to be aware of when of the different diseases and psychological issues their clients are likely to have, so they can recognize them, and refer the client to the appropriate professional (The elite level trainers will be able to set them up with that professional because they have a network of other professionals in their area.)
BUT! I do think that there is a much deeper issue going on here. The whole “beyond the scope” thing is tricky, and it cuts both ways.
What I mean is that there is a MAJOR issue while “Segmented knowledge” in our society. Basically, we are a society of specialists, and its legally enforced to stay that way. But most of the problems we are facing today can’t be solved by specialists, who take a very zoomed IN perspective. We need more people with a more holistic, zoomed out approach, who can see how all the parts fit together. We need more people who have studies several disciplines, and less people who have only studied one, but are awesome at that one discipline.
“To be wise, one must study many things” Heraclitus.
We need more wisdom, we have plenty of intelligence and skill. So we must study more than one discipline.
When I had a herniated disc, I went through 6 or 7 doctors who said I need surgery, before I found a physical therapist who took a holistic approach. (And saved me from surgery!)
Sure, not just anyone should be allowed to be a surgeon and cut into people, but as trainers we really do have the power to influence our clients for the better, and I think it is our moral obligation to inspire, educate, and empower them. Again, I am not saying trainers should try and fix all of their clients problems, physical, mental, and otherwise, but I am saying that we should hold ourselves and our clients to a higher standard, and challenging them to do better; helping them live a healthy lifestyle is 100% within our scope.
Johnny Fitness