Beat me down, until I cannot move! (please)

Posted on 12. Jun, 2008 by Keith Scott in Fitness

 The fitness world is a very interesting one. Much like the normal “American” mentality, that more is always better, many people in the fitness world believe that the more pain that they feel during a training session or workout, the better it must be. I talk to people all of the time that brag about how their trainer “kicked their butt” so badly, that they could barely walk. I have heard people talk about how their trainer made them vomit by the end of their session. These same people actually use this as a barometer in deciding whether their trainer is good or bad.  Others think that if they are not sore or hurting badly the next day then their training session must not have been good.

Now I will be the first to admit, I have floored clients and clients have lost their lunch while training with me. The difference is, while my training sessions are intense and can make the untrained person hurt or vomit, they have rhyme and reason. There is always a plan and each session is governed by rules and goals. Always!

I watched a trainer last weekend, at the local gym where I workout myself,  bring someone through a workout that was so ridiculously hard and without any kind of structure, that I had to glance away because the look of disappointment on my face would have been more than obvious. The trainer was simply beating this person up in order to give them a “hard workout.” There were dangerous exercises, no proper progressions, way too much overload, and the session did nothing but leave the person hurting and unable to function well afterwards. Since I have no idea what the goals were or what the trainer was trying to do, I gave that person the benefit of the doubt.

Today, while training myself at the same gym, I was able to see this same trainer working with another person. This person was an obvious beginner and did not have much going for them physically at this point (i.e. over-weight, poor mobility, and physical issues.) To my surprise, the trainer used the same exact training program that I witnessed and was used the other day on this person as well. By the end of the session, the person was sitting on the floor and could not move. The interesting thing is that he told the trainer that it was a great workout! Based on what I saw, this poor guy will probably be too sore to do much for the next few days. Worse, he will think he has the greatest trainer in the world because he was left on the floor, exhausted and battered. For whatever reason, many people use that as a mark of whether their trainer is good or not.

In the past 5 months, I have made more personal strength gains than I ever have in my life by doing less. My sessions are no more than 30-40 minutes and I leave feeling good, even though I had a very intense training session… but still enough energy to do what I have to do. My workouts are guided by years of training wisdom and rules, not just seeing how much I can hurt myself. I have also helped to transform clients by doing less, and focusing each session on goals. Not all sessions are created equal and you do not have to be in pain or have to peel you self off of the floor to get a quality session that will give you results.

Think about it, if you grade your trainer on how much pain and torture they can instill on you during a session, I should introduce you to my high school wrestling coach. He will beat you up physically more than any trainer could. He has no training experience, and no background in physiology, but he is one hell of a coach.

Remember, anyone can kick your butt into submission and give you a workout that makes you want to vomit and sore for the next 7 days. Smart trainers give you programs that have a rhyme and reason behind them. Do not get caught up in finding someone that can beat you down and grade that as a “great training session.” You need to train smarter much more than you need to train “harder.” Smart trainers know this.