Jillian Michaels. Does She Give Personal Training a Bad Name?

I read an interesting article today by a reporter, Terry Foster, who writes for the Detroit News. He basically interviewed his personal trainer who said that some people told her they did not want a personal trainer because they were “mean”. They base this perception mostly on what they see TV trainers like Jillian Michaels doing on The Biggest Loser.

Jillian Michaels is by far the most popular of the “bully” personal trainers on TV. In fact, she even wears a t-shirt on the show occasionally that reads “bully”. Another example would be Harvey Walden, the personal trainer on Celebrity Fit Camp, although from what I can see,  Harvey Walden seems less of a bully than Jillian Michaels. Regardless of whom we talk about, people watch TV show personal trainers and think that what they do is representative of everybody who is a personal trainer –and that is just not true.

I wanted to set the record straight as much as I could and say that the vast majority of personal trainers do not yell at their clients. Likewise, they are not bullies either. They don’t intimidate people and they don’t put people in situations that are potentially dangerous (I’ve seen TV trainers do some pretty bizarre things).

Another thing that good personal trainers don’t do is market potentially unsafe dietary supplements. Here is my review of Jillian Michel’s Maximum Fat Burner. It was because of products like this that lead to Jillian Michaels being sued recently.