How to stay away from untrained fitness instructors and protect yourself from physical injury is the focus because fitness instructors without adequate fitness training may be putting your life at risk.
Do you want to protect yourself from this trending exercise disaster? Here’s how to stay away from untrained fitness instructors.
Some gyms have qualified instructors, yet many don’t. You enter a gym and you are faced with unsmiling staff, unqualified, overworked, and underpaid. No motivation, no enthusiasm, no energy. These are the people whose hands you put your life, at least your joints, bones, and ligaments. It is no surprise that a few clients complain of back pain, muscular aches, or shoulder tenderness after their first day at the gym.
“Don’t worry”, they are often told, “It is always like that the first day. No gain, no pain”. Wrong. No pain, no gain is an old saying. You feel pain because you over-stressed something in your body.
On the other hand, the instructors shouldn’t get all the blame. Some clients are guilty also. The way they hit the different types of equipment at the gym with aggression shows they want to be fit, or lose all the extra kilos, during their first day at the gym.
Why Fitness Instructors Should Be Certified
Gym instructors need to be supervised more. This is because they are the ones who push your cardiovascular, muscular, and nervous systems. Also, speed up your heart rate and blood pressure, and strain your joints and ligaments. Therefore, someone who wields heavyweights and guides your personal health needs to have some certification, shouldn’t they? Like a college degree or professional certificate. At least a bit of training in whatever they are doing.
Some fitness centers have strict hiring standards, but not all do. And if you venture into the world of private personal trainers or in-home visits, you risk a run-in with someone whose credentials are even questionable, because there are virtually no controls. Anybody can tell you he is a professional by hanging an official-looking certificate.
Sarah’s Almost-Near-Death Experience
Take the case of Sarah’s first session at a fitness gym. She didn’t want to come across as a novice, so she pretended everything was fine. Out with the resolve to lose the 7 kg she still carried after having two children, she pressed on. But when she came across unfamiliar equipment, she approached the instructor for assistance. She assumed the instructor was qualified. “Be gentle with me”, she told the instructor. That plea was a waste, as it went to deaf ears.
No pain, no gain disaster
Sarah was shaking as the trainer set her up in the leg-press machine. As the trainer had done with the leg extensions, also counted off the reps until her legs started to shake. Finally, after gritting her way through more lower-body work and a few abs exercises, Sarah was done. Although a determined woman who likes to finish what she starts. Sarah couldn’t take another minute of bashing on the machines.
On her way out of the gym, she told the manager about how her legs had given out. “No pain, no gain”, the manager joked.
Outside, as she tried to enter her car, her knees caved in for the second time. If it’s this bad now, she wondered, how would she feel tomorrow? After a night of painful tossing and turning, she took a couple of analgesics, sprayed Deep Heat on her legs, and lay in bed most of the weekend. On Monday, two days after her workout, Sarah was tiptoeing around the office, as she could not walk normally due to stiffness in her joints. She could hardly even sit from the pain in her bum and hips.
Diagnosed exertional rhabdomyolysis
Later that evening, she carefully lowered herself onto the toilet only to stand up and see that her urine was dark red. She became alarmed and sped to her doctor’s clinic, where a urinalysis measured the muscle-protein level in her blood at 125,700 units per liter. Normal is less than 200. Sarah’s was typical of people who have suffered a heart attack. The diagnosis was exertional rhabdomyolysis. A potentially fatal condition is caused when muscle fibres break down into the bloodstream so severely that they clog the kidneys. The consequence is the inability to process urine properly. Sarah was sent straight to the hospital, where she was monitored closely for five days and soothed with a morphine drip. She narrowly escaped dialysis.
Negligence, Pure And Simple
Paul was offered a job as a personal trainer, even though he had no idea how to work with obese or older people. He also realised that many other trainers were just as ignorant. He took the job but wasted no time getting certified by the College of Sports Medicine. But then, Paul’s case is in the minority.
Many fitness centers know it is important to hire quality instructors. But they are unwilling to do so because they have to pay more. This of course cuts into their profit. Some fitness centers hire college students with no affiliation with exercise-related courses, as instructors, in exchange for a free membership.
If a survey is taken today, the probability is that half of the instructors hired in gyms lack training. Many instructors with no certificate may score an average of 40% on a test of basic fitness knowledge. While at the minimum those with a degree or certification might do better.
One Death, One Survivor
It often takes just one devastating case to get lawmakers to tighten standards. But tracking personal-training injuries is rigorous, and lawsuits against fitness centers are rare. This is probably due to the fact that the client has signed a liability waiver. A waiver that exempts the fitness center from any blame. Or perhaps the client doesn’t have the financial resources to press the case.
Take John’s story for instance. According to the information, John’s instructor stepped away while John was bench-pressing 20kg at a gym. He lost control of the weights, and they crashed down on his chest. His injuries required immediate life saving-surgery. And then there is the case of Nancy, who died in her early thirties due to poor interaction between her blood pressure medications and a weight-loss drug. A drug she started taking on the instructor’s advice.
Two lessons here. First, do not bench press or do any other heavyweight exercise alone, at least you need a spotter. Second, do not take any drug (for weight loss, weight add-on, or muscle bulk), that is not recommended by a medical doctor.
Deaths and serious injuries occur every year, which you may not be aware of. But they do happen. How many fatalities have to happen, before legislators draft bills that would regulate personal trainers, and gym instructors as rigorously as other professionals? For instance, there should be an educational prerequisite for fitness professionals, a college diploma or degree, or 300 hours of coursework. In the meantime, your best bet is simply to stay away from untrained fitness instructors.
Bottom Line
Safety should be the major driving force for certified instructors. If it is difficult to get a license, then it would be easier to weed out unqualified instructors. That would not be a bad thing. At least there will be less back-breaking. Pain, yes, or maybe. But not death. So remember to stay away from untrained fitness instructors.
https://www.nbcnews.com/better/lifestyle/what-look-avoid-personal-trainer-ncna982671
Photo Credit: Creative Commons
