How Personal Trainers Convince You To Give Them Your Rent Money
By Sean Hetherington
Certified Personal Trainer
Since some bodybuilder and his acolytes invented the career of Personal Trainer back in the 1970’s, we’ve taken on all sorts of interesting titles, not the least of which is Superhero. While it can looks like we’re flying above your local bakery, hoping to pick you up like Superman did to Lois Lane, and whisk you to Paris where you’ll be thin, happy, married, rich, and in the good graces of God, we are simply, and mostly just out of work actors trying to make a buck by hanging out in our favorite place: The Gym.
How did Gwyneth and Mariah get such good trainers and mine is such a Vinnie and where the hell are my abs and wedding rings!
Here are the skills we lie about in order to get your business and that you blindly believe so as to not have to make that portion-controlled, balanced meal. Before you spend this week’s organic grocery budget on our “life-changing services,” be advised of our sexy Witch Doctory:
We can’t shapeshift
Our job is to count back from 10 and re-rack your weights. We cannot take on the dimensions of your freezer and know when you’re binging on those Skinny cows. But if you’re not losing weight after months of our workouts, we usually know that’s what’s going on and are not about to take the blame, Mister. We might even call you out on it, if we think you’re impressed by tough love, and by impressed I mean, interested in buying an extra ten sessions. An hour on a stationary cycle will not undo the calories of a Thanksgiving feast in July, so if you have an overeating issue, be realistic about what a trainer is capable of helping you with.
We’re not Ironman
We can’t remove the arm fat that’s ruining your life by implanting go-go gadget steel beams or by prescribing you more tricep pulls, push-ups, or dips. Spot training is not nearly as effective as regular cardio and a sensible diet. Problems aren’t erased by the dumbbell tinkering, but managed through the eating and the thinking, so consider a food diary and body image support groups like OA.
We don’t have x-ray vision
If something hurts, tell us. When you wince, we assume it’s good pain.
Pain is good? Well, no, fatigue is good, and that’s what builds muscle and burns calories.
There is nothing worse than losing a client because you’ve re-injured yourself. If you got in a car accident on the way home from that Milli Vanilli concert in ’89, and it still hurts sometimes when you lug your groceries up the stairs, tell us about it before we make you give us a piggy back ride on the treadmill.
We are not an Extra Terrestrial
We don’t take on your bigger feelings (intentionally), or directly feel your pain, and we don’t get thinner when you get thinner, so as invested as we are in your weight loss, it’s not our journey. A good trainer knows that and will not be calling you at home to make sure you feel beautiful after each of our workouts. Our greater goal is that you like us enough to refer us to friends, especially if those friends are Nora Ephron and/or Steven Spielberg.
We’re not Bruce Wayne
We haven’t made a fortune already to support our 5 AM volunteer vigilante work of your fitness. In fact, if you could move your session to around 1 o’ clock so we can catch up on sleep from bartending till late last night, that’d be fabulous. We have bills. When we’ve put on our bat suit upon seeing the shining spotlight of cottage cheese thighs in the twilight sky, please remember to bring a check or cash. Even Commissioner Gordon gave Batman a per diem. We like for you to pay in packages because it helps us design your exercise program for you in advance, based on how long you’ve invested in this program. Ask us for a deal on bulk buys. We love them.
We’re not dog whisperers
We can’t “glamour” you into liking this exercise. And we don’t like yelling at you, either. We want you to succeed and feel good. So when you get bitchy about how hard this is or how we’re trying to kill you, hoping we’ll bark back at you like a drill seargent—know that we’re totes uncomfy, Girl. We’re here to motivate you with positive vibes, cheering you on as Third Base Coach, in hopes that you get a hot body that gets you to third base more often. Remember we were certified to do this over a weekend and have no formal training as shrinks. We’re experts on drink breaks, not daddy issues.
We’re not vampires
We can’t speed walk to your bar and knock that fourth kick-ass margarita out of your hands and then lock lips in some taboo client/trainer forbidden love affair. That clichéd gym scene you saw in that dirty cable movie was a fantasy. Regularly, we see your nose hairs, smell your sweat and breath, and we know your hip size, down to the quarter inch which is not nearly as hot as it sounds. You notice they skip that scene in the triple X cinema and just talk about squats.
We are not 80’s pop R & B group Club Nouveau
But lean on us, anyway. Trainers can genuinely help, and a lot of us used to be overweight or underweight, so it’s personal. We know the muscle groups and we’re handy with a tape measure. We try to keep your hour with us fun and we have terrific resources for those folks who do all the things we can’t. Therapists, nutritionists, and chiropractors are all in our rolodex, and if we’ve told you that you don’t need one of those because we once rescued a litter of kittens from a burning house, then you’re being scammed, not saved.
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