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Personal Trainers - the choice is yours
By Ian Hales

So you’ve finally decided to get your butt off the couch, The most reasonable way you can think of achieving those abs of granite, that butt of steel and not forgetting those perfect pecs is to enlist the help of a personnel trainer.  In my day the only people who used these private training aids were over weight film stars or rich widows wanting more than a jog round the park.

To the untrained eye this group of fit young individuals with their wealth of knowledge purchased from an un-known Fitness organization by video or Internet, float around our gym's like pregnant sea horse's spitting out their young of information.  Setting out to change the foundations of bodybuilding as we know it, with their fluro-coloured fitness ball under one arm and a clip board under the other, Always eager to correct your squatting posture when you’re warming up! But when 500lbs is on the bar they’re off like a scalded dog to the other end of the gym to instruct some poor individual on how important rear delts are to over all fitness and skeletal posture, unbeknown to them he was probably training well before they were on solid's.  My question is? Would you hand over the responsibility of your fitness and well being to these glorified rep counter's, I'm not saying all personnel trainers are inexperienced or bad, but if you've not been there how can you report or instruct somebody with confidence that this is the correct way to carry out a specific exercise?

Knowledge is something you can gain by reading but experience has to be earned.  For those of us that have been slogging away in gyms for years training hard, eating correctly and witnessing some pretty horrific techniques, they may have a place, If one injury can be prevented then I welcome them.  In these fancy health clubs and hi-tech gyms, We have become fossils of fitness with our strange rituals of making sure the bar is in the correct position two or three times before stepping under it or fiddling around with the plates before that ever elusive 300+ bench, but if it makes entering that world of pain any easier then so be it! These young weight's Nazi's need to know we started this whole bodybuilding, weight loss fitness bullshit! We strove away in old disused warehouses or old youth clubs with most of the equipment being made by the owner, no nice comfy benches or a piece of hammer strength in sight!!. 

The gym's were cold no fancy air conditioning or trendy decorative schemes to attract women or the business classes, two sweaters and a hat were necessary just to get warmed up then you might consider taking one off, only if your breath was no longer visible.  And would Lycra have been invented if Mr. Dupont could see what miss-guided information it gives to over weight women? 

So is this the end for all of us who remember personnel trainers as the guy behind the counter at the gym who would give you a quick show round if needed or if you were female you got one anyway, as with all things bodybuilding and fitness is a multi-million pound industry and as soon as money is involved as with anything the sharks come out to hunt, so be careful of these young and old fitness guru's claiming of get big scheme's and dieting miracles, In my world if he hasn't got 21" arms then how can he show me how he got his?

If fitness balls are so good at developing stabilizer muscles then I wonder why I didn’t see one in Dorian's or Ronnie's video hmmm!   Must have been in the cupboard?  With exception some personnel trainers have been good bodybuilders and have had as much experience as some professional athlete's, but why have some one that’s been in the game, when you can have someone who still is in the game? And still is enthusiastic about fitness, you need someone who will push you to greatness not just tell you the route.

 No pain?  Remain the same!

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