I walked into the Student Recreation and fitness Center here at UF in July of 2010 with the objective of finding out about the personal training class that RecSports (the campus recreation company) was offering that fall. Little did I know that my simple inquiry would turn into something that would change my life completely. Sure, I refined my knowledge about exercise and programming, but the biggest takeaway I've acquired thus far is the ability to interact with people and decipher them; not just the way that they move, but also the way they think.
I remember the first training session that I conducted; I still consider myself lucky that our training shirts are black. I was so nervous that I was sweating profusely and my voice was shaking. The word (if it even is a word?) "Um" stuck itself between my words, even as I explained a simple squat--something I have done a million times before myself. I never thought that exercise would be so hard to demonstrate. Sure, we had practiced exercise cuing multiple times, and I was definitely prepared to do so. But with my first client standing attentively in front of me, I froze like a shy middle schooler in a talent show. I knew what to do, but I didn't have the confidence to spit it out.
Let's just say that the trainer who couldn't explain a squat doesn't work at the gym anymore.
I've been lifting since 9th grade. I took a weight training class as an elective my freshman year and learned how to bench, squat, clean 50 lbs (also known as picking the weight off of the floor and bringing it to your chest, no form required to pass the class), and fall asleep on the leg extension machine. We did most of our lifts in pyramids, starting with 60% 1RM and ending sometimes as high 95% 1RM. So in other words, I lifted like a football player. I still like this technique, and it helped me increase my bench from 55lbs (that's the bar plus 5 lbs on each side) to 95lbs by the end of the year. But there's definitely much better methods than this. Over the next two years of high school, I played around with different workout schemes at my local YMCA, drawing exercises from other gym-goers and the occasional group exercise class that I attended. I knew a lot about fitness, but programming was another story; let alone monitoring that of someone else. I've learned how to progress, adapt, and track progress. I made up a system with blocks of 4 workouts in order to remain consistent yet innovative. It's a far cry from the mini spiral notebook that I haphazardly used to keep workouts in.
Contrary to popular belief (and perhaps at one time my own), personal training is not inventing crazy exercises in order to impress others and gathering stares from other gym patrons like daisies. You can't judge a personal trainer by their exercises, but you can by how they convey the exercises that they spent so much time putting together. So much of personal training is building a fitness experience; creating a one hour "world" of sorts. Understanding what type of world each client needs is the pillar of training someone to accomplish a goal. The large amount of psychology that is involved in training someone should have been obvious to me when I decided to become a trainer, but it somehow took me by surprise.(You mean, I have to apply all of my knowledge while being entertaining AND funny?)
I've learned so much over the past 2 years as a personal trainer, and the experience that I've gained will undoubtedly springboard me into an awesome future career. When I think about how far I've come from stuttering through my exercise cues, I can't help but smile. Learning how to train well has been a long and arduous process, and one that I doubted at times that I could complete. It takes a lot of confidence to hold someone's health in your hands and not being afraid of dropping it.
I'm not worried about that anymore. I have a firm grip.
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