I recently had the pleasure of teaching at the AAAI/ISMA fitness conference in Baltimore MD. It was a lot of fun and a time to catch with a lot of people who I have not seen in a long time. While I had a lot of interesting conversations with people while I was in Maryland, one conversation stood out to me because it was related to something I posted a while ago.
It was at lunch, when a woman who was attending the personal training class I was teaching came up to me. We started talking and it turned out that we were both from the same area and attended the same gym. What suprised me even more was how she didn't have good things to say about some of the personal trainers at this very well-known gym.
She said to me ” some of the trainers there are not very good. You know one of them actually text messages people on his phone when he is doing personal training”. I have to tell you that I was surprised because this was the same person and the same incident that I wrote about in my “Top 4 Signs of Personal Trainer Burnout” post back in July.
That short conversation with that women just solidifies why I always say in the classes I teach, that “everybody watches personal trainers” when they are working with people in the gym. When people see trainers doing stupid stuff like talking on the phone or text messaging they remember it – and they tell others.
When I see trainers doing dumb stuff like this I just have to wonder if they really think people don't notice them. They have no idea that what they do influences their reputation.
I hear so many trainers talking about how important it is for a personal trainer to work out and stuff like that. While this is true, I say that acting professional in public is more important.
My friend and colleague Scott Fishkind, who is a personal trainer in TN recently also wrote about this also in his review of how to prepare for the ACE personal trainer test. Scott, said it better than I could- “What type of trainer would you want to send your most cherished loved ones to?” THAT’S the trainer one should strive to be!”
Amen!
Have you seen personal trainers doing unprofessional things?
I see Personal Trainers discussing personal business and shooting the breeze with their clients the whole time they are training clients instead of supervising
and instructing their clients.
Good point and I see it too!
Thanks for your comments Judy. As I just mentioned on the comment by Dinah (another blog I wrote on fitness trainers helping the health care system), I think the fitness industry needs to stress qualified more than certified for the fitness industry. No qualified personal trainer would be text messaging during sessions.
Agreed. I have seen the texting and phone calls during a training session. Granted it was a freebie, but still unprofessional.