Trainer Trickery

I wanted to write a little here about something I see almost every day and absolutely cannot wrap my head around.

What I’m going to talk about here are Personal Trainers at the gym.

Now, stick with me. I have no problem with the concept of a Personal Trainer. Getting in shape is awesome and if you need a little help to do it, great, whatever works. My issue here is that 97.6 percent of these trainers I see are out of shape. (If you’re thinking that percentage is oddly specific, that’s because I’ve actually conducted an entire study on this phenomenon and written an article on my results that can be found on the Harvard Science Review website. And yes, everything I just said there was complete bullshit.)

These Personal Trainers that I see are completely out of shape, and they are training other people to get in shape. Maybe it’s just me, but if I were to hire a Personal Trainer, you best believe I’m hiring the guy that looks like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson or Zac Efron, not the guy who looks like he just finished a 6-pack of beer and a bag of Barbecue Lay’s, then rolled off the couch to put his “Personal Trainer” shirt on and hit the gym.

I mean, I don’t know if it’s the same for you guys, maybe my gym is weird, but just about every single Personal Trainer I see is in worse shape than the person they are training! I love seeing people at the gym who seem like they are new to working out, it means they are kicking ass and setting goals. So, it is a massive disservice to these people that they are being told what to do by Beer-belly Brian.

I’m sure Beer-belly Brian is great to hang out with on a Saturday night, but am I going to hire him to show me how to get abs? Hell no! And you can bet your house on that. If you wanted to train to be good at football, would you hire a badminton coach? If you needed your toilets fixed, would you hire a psychologist to solve the problem? No, you’d hire a plumber, wouldn’t you. (Shit, maybe you’d hire a psychologist, depends how bad the damage is I guess.)

These trainers are being paid top dollar too! I headed over to my gym website to investigate, and some of them are being paid hundreds a session!

Whaaaaaaat?

Ol’ Beer-belly’s charging an “affordable” $110 a session! His specialties? Fat loss, and athletic training. Again,

whaaaaaaat?

If this is how things work, well guys, looks like I’m going to go pursue my life long dream of training fighter pilots. No, I’ve never flown a plane, but if Beer-belly can tell people how to get abs, I can show people how to fly planes in battle right?

Oh, and if you want to “gain muscle mass”, the trainer for that is 120 pounds, maybe. Dude, if I want to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, I ain’t gonna hire Frodo, right? That’s like paying an atheist to be a Pastor at my church. Part of me just can’t help but to think that this is just a giant scam. I mean, what does it really take to acquire the esteemed Personal Trainer title? Knowing not to play tag on the freeway? Not sticking your hand in the disposal?

I’m not trying to bag on how these trainers look, this is just a business thing. Money is at stake here. I love my grandma, but am I going to pay her money to show me how to use Twitter? These trainers man, they’ve got quite the nerve charging money with such a weak display product. Train people for free all you want. But don’t look like Larry the Cable guy, and charge money for fitness advice. Am I right?