Most personal trainers are idiots? Are you sure? LOL. That goes without saying. I was talking to an oldtimer the other day about personal trainers. He had an interesting perspective. It goes sometning like this.

Most people are far more concerned about fitting in socially than meeting any kind of objective criteria. Therefore hard work or muscles do not fit into their agenda. The problem is that fit bodies have been popularized by the media. Sooo..., they want the body. But they have noi idea how to get it.

As social creatures with limited abilities to acheive success, they turn to people who look better than they do. After all if they look better than they do, it must because they have some kind of specialized knowledge. (Joe Weider has certainly capitalized on this phenomena.) So they turn themselves over to those folks that look better in magazines or gym clothes. Having a fancy peice of paper that says they are "certified" helps as well. After all we are a society obsessed with credentials (as well as appearances).

Since there is no real specific functional objective other than meeting some kind of social fantasy, there is no need ot provide any legitimate services or knowledge. After all, who will notice. Add to that popular culture has a definite anti-muscle bias and a whole fitness and health vocabulary based on this bias and ignorance. Hence terms like toning, etc. Although these terms are meaningless in terms of training they are very important in terms of fitting into society at large.

This oldtimer referred to personal trainers as mediocrity coaches. He described their primary purpose as perpetuating all the conventional marketing hype and ignorance. Under no circumstance will they to create any significant changes in someone's life. This is not what is expected or what they are being paid to do.

It is interesting to me that we require training and experience in almost all crafts trades (carpenters, plumbers, etc.) and many other professions. But any idiot can become a trainer by taking a class that essentially teaches popular culture. But again they serve a culture that does very little reading and study of any kind. (Particularly when they have finished their formal education.)

I have often described most "normal" folks as people who go to bed at night just as ignorant as when they got up that morning. Successful peopls actively pursue knowledge every single day. Personal trainers are a poor subsitute for learning. If most folks who go to gyms have such low standards for themselves, why should they expect anything different from personal trainers?? A classic case of the blind leading the blind.

Lee