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About becoming a personal trainer

I forgot to say that yesterday the woman who'd previously accused me of sexism asked about nutrition, "Don't different breeds of people put on weight differently?"
"Breeds?" the teacher asked, as people laughed.
"Yeah like Asians are all skinny and stuff."
"Um... not all of them. You'll find that's diet. When Asians eat nothing but Macca's and KFC they get fat, too."
"Oh. I thought different breeds were different."

The one who accused me of sexism turns out to be racist, kind of ironic, really

Today attendance was rather down compared to yesterday's exam. Must be Post-Exam Blues. Or maybe people are just sick of this exercise programming stuff.

We saw a cheesey DVD that went on about energy systems (repeating the old misinformation) and talked about recovery. It had the strength & conditioning coach for Richmond AFL club, apparently (I don't follow the footy) they don't perform too well and have a fair few injuries, so people were sceptical of his advice.

The DVD took 30 minutes to say "um yeah, you should do some light work after your heavy work, stretch, get massages, and jump in hot and cold water." I wasn't aware most gyms had masseurs on staff, along with cold pools and hot saunas, but there you go.

After that we had to write up a workout programme we could do outside the gym (interesting for a gym instructor...) "All you have is a sport oval and a bench."
"What's the client like? Age, health, fitness, strength, goals?"
"Don't worry about that, just write a programme."
"..." I looked blankly at the teacher.
"Well, write it for yourself."

We then went down to the basketball court to do it while the teacher shot some hoops not watching us at all. Five minutes in, it rained and the teacher sent us home. I was quite happy to keep training but apparently rain will cause severe injuries.

Wolverine is preparing a big list of things to show to the Senior Educator which boils down to, "this is buggered, are you going to fix it?" I think the answer will turn out to be "nup," which is why I expect to do Cert IV somewhere else.

So, not really a productive day, but it got me out of the house and cycling. I got rained on cycling home, too, amazingly it did not cause me any severe injuries, just a wet bum.
 
Wow, words fail me...

Hooray for another instalment into the becoming a PT soap opera! But by gosh, TAFE Cert III sounds pretty bad.
 
Josh_GTiR said:
That Woman sure sounds smart.
Click to expand...
I dunno, but given the part of the country she's from - a rural area with a significant aboriginal population - I am not surprised at her attitudes towards race, it's sadly common.

Who is smart or not will be decided when we get exam results. For all I know I'll be at the bottom of the class I'd be surprised, but you never know.

And Katie, I think it's the particular place I'm at. Others at other institutes have described more... well-organised experiences.
 
Kyle Aaron said:
"When Asians eat nothing but Macca's and KFC they get fat, too."
Click to expand...

While I most certainly think the woman could've asked her question better, I see her point... I have a large number of Asian friends, both male and female, who indeed stuff themselves with junk food, Macca's and KFC and the whole lot, and still stay remarkably slim. (Some of my female friends plan to take the 1kg ramen eating challenge here - challenge ramen - I wouldn't be surprised if they could actually do it!)

So.... obviously they have a higher metabolism than most other people, but does this have anything to do with genetics ie. race?
 
It makes me laugh, too, Markos. In that way, "oh no" way. Every day.

And Katie, I know young European blokes who do the same. It's very individual, depends on a lot of stuff. I mean if all you eat every day is a Big Mac and a chocolate bar, you will stay skinny. But if you eat great food, lots of vegies, and then eat sweets and drink beer on top of it, you will slowly become fatter - that's what happened to me.

And then there's the person's activity level, whether they're one who sits around quietly or fidgets a bit, and so on - how many fidgety skinny people have you know compared to fidgety chunky people? There's lots of stuff to it.

It's cultural rather than racial, people's favoured diet and lifestyle. Plenty of skinny short Asian or European parents in Australia have tall fat kids.
 
Ignore what any culture eats now, check what they ate during the period when we accumulate fat cells, thats the key, which is why I laugh at all these notions of adopting a mediterannean diet.

The reason Fadi looks great now, is not only because of his current diet, he was bought up on a medi diet, he accumulated fewer fat cells than someone raised on a crappy junk food diet.

If Asians were eating crap during their early teens, then they too would have weight issues.
 


Genetics plays a part but I think body size and composition has a lot to do with it.i have a lot of friends who look skinny but when they take off their shirts they have man boobs.I get a bit of a shock when some of my "skinny" friends tell me their Bf is around 20%- about the same or a bit less than me and I have a bit of a gut.
 


Can you elloborate on this for me please markos?

Being a fat kid am i just desitned to be fat forever?
 
n00bs said:
Being a fat kid am i just desitned to be fat forever?
Click to expand...
No. No kind of physique is impossible for you, it's just that some kinds are easier and some harder.

Your appetite (how much and what food you like) and general physical activity level (apart from deliberate exercise, how much you fidget, walk or run or lift things in day-to-day life) is something that's determined quite early on, and is usually pretty settled by your teenaged years.

This appetite and general physical activity level will determine a person's basic physique. That's what they'll be like unless they make an effort to be something different. And the more different is what you naturally drift to from what you'd like to be, the more effort you need to make to go from one to the other.

The appetite and general physical activity level is partly personality, and partly physical. For example, I have a friend the same height as me, but he has broader shoulders, bigger wrists and ankles. So even without regular gym work he's around 20kg heavier than me - though not stronger. He's just a more solid guy due to his larger bone structure.

For me to be as big as him would take me years of effort, as I'd have to add muscle to make up for the lack of size in bones. Not only years of effort, but enormous amounts of food, too.

And that's where appetite comes in, too: am I the sort of guy who'll want to eat an extra kilogram of meat and spuds every day for the next five years? Probably not. So I drift to a less solid physique than him.

On the other hand, if I wanted to be thin like a fashion model, that'd be a bit easier for me - I'd just give in to my lower appetite, and stop lifting weights.

So nothing is determined, nothing etched in stone. But you have a kind of physique you'll just drift to unless you make big efforts to have some other kind of physique. And some kinds of physique will be easier for you to get than others.
 
n00bs said:
Can you elloborate on this for me please markos?

Being a fat kid am i just desitned to be fat forever?
Click to expand...

I'll either start another thread or make it a newsletter topic.

Just understand that as a male, you already have accumulated ALL your fat cells, you now either make them smaller or bigger, you cant add or reduce the number, unless you use lyposuction, which has its own disastrous problems. You also cant change their location.

Mesomorphs end up with a fantasticly even spread over the entire body, endomorphs generally have them in clumps, stomach, ass, chest, so if a meso and endo gain the same ammount of fat, the endo's shows up easiest.

Women have a whole lot of issues, they continue to gain fat cells with each pregnancy, sucks to be them.

There is a massive difference with gaining fat cells and gaining fat.
 
Today in the morning the teacher said, "I work five days a week, I have enough to do, so this morning we're going to mark each-other's exams." She was half an hour late because of the regular Tuesday morning meeting they have. I guess no-one's ever too busy for a meeting.

We went through and she read out the answers. We'd pop up and read them out if it didn't exactly match what she'd said. Me and the person next to me got exams of two guys who'd sat next to each-other. All the unanswered questions were the same, and all the short answers were the same - down to the bad spelling.

Boys and girls, if you're going to copy someone else's work, sit next to someone smarter than you. Bart Simpson doesn't copy Nelson's work, does he? He copies Milhouse!

These two are in a group of four who only show up half the time, and the other half they're always 10-45 minutes late, and chat throughout the class. One of them had bought an iPhone today, so they were very chatty. These are the same people who prompted my comment earlier in this thread that perhaps tertiary education should be for over-25s only. Those younger often have the high school mentality that they have to be there and will rebel against it. "I'm a rebel, I talk in class, what a legend, hoo-haa."

In the afternoon we went on with nutrition, and there was lots of information in there. Unfortunately the four idiots yabbered on. Me and some others were getting really pissed off. The teacher was the equivalent of the parents you see in the supermarket, "don't do that, don't do that, don't do that" - but nothing ever happens. So on it goes.

I can't say I dealt with it with any diplomacy.
"Look, can you guys be quiet, please? This isn't high school, you don't have to be here. If you just want to chat, there's a coffee shop up the road."
"Naw man you can't tell us what to do."
"I'm here to learn, and for once we have a session where someone is actually trying to teach us something. Can you please just shut up?"
"You shut up, you're such a loser," said the girl in the group.
"Stop whinging, stop talking, have some self-control and harden up. It's time for you to be a woman, not a girl. And if you want to talk about losers, we were just marking your papers, so I'd be careful if I were you."
The teacher interrupted, "Everyone stop bitching."

When we went on a break, I stayed in the classroom. Had I gone out, I'd've had to talk to those idiots. And honestly I might have smacked someone in the head. Which apparently is against TAFE policy or something.

Were I a teacher, I think I'd have a soccer-style yellow-card-red-card system. One minor disruption, you're warned. A second and you're out. One major disruption and you're out straight away. See you next session.

My exam result was not bad considering I dropped off the session of the lazy teacher (the replacement for the two who quit, the one who likes to play with his mobile phone) who gave the answers to the 30 multiple choice questions.

I got 93%. Those four morons will have to resit the test. What a surprise.
 
hi guys, i dont mean to hijack or derail the thread by any means (not that it'd be even possible now)

but i'd just like to say, i recently joined a gym in august, having no experience whatsoever in training with any equipment, it was a commercial place, i wasnt sure what i was supposed to be getting for my money or how any of it worked, anyway, i signed up for a years contract, knowing full well it would be a lifestyle change and im not the type of person to back out after 2 weeks, and even though im 5'8, 60kg, 10-12% BF, i'd like to put on some more muscle and fill out a bit better, but mainly it gives me something to do other than sit on the computer after work ;P

anyhow, the contract gives you a PT for a couple sessions, first to access you and give you a program, and to teach you to use the machines.

problem is, first off, i dont trust a PT who isnt that fit. period. hes not terrible, i mean, 5'10, probably 70-80kgs, and he works out. the problem is, he was the epitome of what i didnt want to be, he shovels down those mass gainer shakes, and only does benchpress and squats, and is simply one of those lame jocks that you see always looking at themselves in the mirror, i just didnt trust him from the get go. if he was a good looking guy, then vanity is tolerable if not understandable - but hes not.

secondly, the program he gave me was ridiculous, i told him my goals were to gain some muscle, id like to be around 70kgs , and to keep my arms real lean for boxing once im in better shape. also to be lean, but thats a given, ive got no fat on me as it is.

we do legs, day 1, leg press, leg curls, seated calf raises, lunges.
day 2, core body, abs etc, do that superman position **** x 3, and where you lay on your back and bring your knees in and extend your legs, and just regular sit ups, cant remember what else but it was stupid.
day 3, cardio
day 4, rest
day 5, upper body, bench press (yay cp exerience), chest fly thingo, the lat pulldowns or whatever, like shoulder press or something. whatever.
day 6, rest
day 7 cardio

what i didnt know at the time was, CARDIO? ARE YOU ****ING STUPID? i tried this **** for 2 weeks and i had to figure why i wasnt gaining any weight on my own.

put in more than you take out, except for me, with such a high metabolism, cardio was basically just negating everything i was working for. great idea bro.

from a profession standpoint, this guy is retarded, its obvious he saw me and went yep, quick buck, this guy wont be back. only now do i understand this.

not only did the first couple of days of workout kill me to the point that i coudlnt go to work i was so sore, i literally coudlnt move my arms - but he just generally didnt really care whatsoever.

thus, i did my own thing. a view from the consumer, as opposed to the personal trainer, its good to explain what or why this is what they need to do. in my case, i was given a routine to fallow, without proper instruction of form or technique, and without any real depth to WHY this routine was good for me, and i dumped it. even if it ended up being the right thing, its basically a , do this and this, come and see me in 3 months, trust me (why? your not setting an example with your physique, why would i trust you with mine? your qualification? maybe for an unintelligent person this would be enough, but ill need to see results whether it be yourself, another client, or myself - before you gain my trust)

most people at that point id imagine would probably just quit alltogether.

after 2 weeks of soreness, i had to take 2 weeks off for surgery and dental work, a month goes by, i get back into it. doing my own thing, i learn some stuff on the internet, to get me going. a month 2 months later, ive gained 4kgs, a bit of definition,
im a WHOLE lot stronger - i can feel it. but this isnt a success story.

i wasnt taught properly from the beginning and it created bad habits that im only just discovering.

-bad form
-the last 3 weeks i didnt gain any weight because noone explained i had to add weight to tear my muscles to initiate growth. its simple i know, but i didnt properly understand the mechanics of the human body.
-i had to figure out all my dieting and nutrition on my own, with no tips. he could have at least pointed me in the direction of OATZ (<3)
-and lastly, NO SQUATZ, NO DEADLIFTS. i dont know how to do them properly or safely.

if he was a more approachable guy, i might have been inclined to ask, but frankly, i dont trust anyone there because they are all douches.

so tomarrow, im gonna go learn to do squatz and deadlifts, and combined with OATZ, make this a success story. SQUATZ AND OATZ

but to get back to the point of this post , after researching on the net and rolling around to different gyms all over the place, its obvious there is a serious problem of QUANTITY over QUALITY in the industry. im in a bit of a crux in terms of career paths and thought it might be intresting to learn how one goes about becoming a personal trainer. needless to say, it seems ridiculously easy and is obvious just a peace of paper you pay for to get going. but theres such a lack of QUALITY information, much less information backed with scientific basis (aka broscience), that i just dont trust anything or anyone and dont really know if it would be a wise choice to outlay the dosh to take a course.

and then i found this post. its about the only thing thats relevant to someone whos really curious to find out more about becoming a personal trainer. and i'd like to thank you all for contributing, some of the links and information will help me greatly, whether i choose to eventually take a PT course, or just do it for recreation to be a sexy person naked.
 
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