Personal Trainer Course

By Ashley Boyce, an allied health world staff writer
Published: January 26th, 2010

How do personal training courses teach client injury rehabilitation?

Rehabilitation therapists are distinctly different from personal trainers. They have earned certification specific to rehabilitation therapy and are required to carry a state license in order to practice. Rehabilitation therapists work with injury victims in the months following an injury and through the complete process of recovery. They see to it the injured person has recovered fully or to the degree possible depending on the extent of the injury. In cases of severe injury this can take years. A common sport–related injury Personal Trainer Courses

is sustained by rupturing the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) located in the knee. This often requires surgery, but can be recovered from through conservative management including physical therapy and the use of a brace. Physical therapy usually involves very targeted therapeutic rehabilitation exercises to strengthen the muscles in areas surrounding injured bones, tendons, or ligaments. Rehabilitation therapists can specialize as either physical therapists or occupational therapists. It is ultimately the rehabilitation therapist and the injury victim’s physician who decide when recovery is complete enough to stop rehabilitation therapy and transition back to a normal life including regular exercise.

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The personal trainer’s role is in the maintenance of the rehabilitated state. There are personal trainer courses specific to injury rehabilitation that see to it practicing trainers are intensely aware of their client’s past injuries and take special care to maintain the strength of the muscle groups surrounding the injury while taking measures to avoid re-injury. Many injuries can be chronic life-long problems that can only be managed by staying in shape. This kind of specifically targeted maintenance, which keeps tendons and ligaments limber and muscles strong, is most effectively accomplished through ongoing periodic sessions with a personal trainer. Many people who have recovered from severe injury attest to the fact that when they stay in shape with the help of a personal trainer they have no issues whatsoever with old injuries. Bill Linaker, who began a regimented resistance exercise program as part of his recovery from a slipped disk, had so much success he became a committed proponent of physical fitness and ended up taking personal training courses and making a career out of it. In Bills words: “As long as I maintain my core strength, the muscles surrounding the injured area, I live a normal life. But if I don’t stay in shape I am completely debilitated by the recurrent pain of my old back injury.”

What do personal trainer courses teach about nutrition?

One of the main concerns a personal trainer has when working with clients who are interested in weight loss, is what these clients will do when they’re not the gym. This is particularly true of eating habits. This is a unique challenge because of the omnipresence of food and the fact that many people struggle with food addictions and compulsive eating. For this reason many personal trainer courses are designed to help graduates set expectations for how a client should eat if they are serious about attaining their fitness goals. Personal trainers often ask their clients to keep a food log in which they record what they’ve eaten. Sessions often begin by reviewing the food log to see what the client has been eating so as to address the importance of proper nutrition.

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Veteran personal trainer Bill Linaker told us what he gleaned from his personal training courses in nutrition: It’s all about a good balanced breakfast, which he says, “can all be done in the blender”. He suggests a blended breakfast as an alternative to a full meal because many people aren’t in the habit of eating breakfast at all. Bill believes this is because most people have their daily food intake schedules backwards. He said: “What people eat for dinner they should be eating for lunch. It’s good to eat a big healthy lunch. Most people don’t want to eat breakfast because they still have dinner in their stomach. At night go light. Don’t eat a lot of food at night when you don’t need it. I recommend a salad or a bowl of fiber cereal for dinner.” Personal trainer courses in nutrition have been developed to round out a personal trainers’ expertise in all things related to weight maintenance.

How do personal training courses help graduates develop a routine?

Despite the difference in peoples’ individual fitness needs, personal trainers will conduct each of their sessions within a certain framework and in accordance with the formula they’ve found to be most effective. Bill Linaker, a 40-year veteran of personal training, described the formula he developed over years of experience that he applies to every session: “I have a definite game plan: There is definitely a routine to follow. I always start with abs first as this is the warm-up for the entire body. When we move to the upper body I start with shoulders because they are an injury prone area of the body, and always end with arms because these are used for the whole torso; then lastly legs. The idea is to get the most done in the least amount of time.” The progression of muscle groups and parts of the body being addressed is always the same; the specific exercise that are done to address these different parts of the body is what is honed to each client’s individual specifications and ability.

In accordance with the routine-development personal training courses that are part of most programs, most personal trainers follow a two-step routine: Stretching, then workout. Stretching limbers up muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints to reduce the likelihood of injury. Stretching also increases blood flow to the muscles, which will make the exercises that follow more effective. After stretching exercises, personal trainers move their clients on to the workout phase; addressing specific muscle groups. The extremely effective sequence used by Bill Linaker starts with abdominals, then upper body with shoulders first, upper back second, chest third, and arms last. Then comes the transition to low impact aerobic exercise done for several minutes, often on an elliptical or stationary bicycle. This maintains the elevated heart rate while moving blood flow to the legs before moving on to the resistance and strength training exercises that address the muscles in the legs.

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Personal trainer courses teach that exercises performed by the respective muscle groups are done as a series of either strength or resistance training exercise in three sets of 15 repetitions (reps), or two sets of the maximum reps the client is capable of. Strength training exercises would be performed if the client wishes to add mass and is comfortable with working with free weights. Resistance training is more appropriate for all ability levels and will have the benefits of improving strength and definition without using free weights and without bulking up. In all cases it has been recognized that strength and resistance training done at a brisk pace keeps the heart rate up so as to provide a cardiovascular workout simultaneously which will burn calories and body fat for weight loss while increasing lean muscle mass.

Veteran personal trainer, Bill Linaker, is a proponent of the two-set method. He told us: “The whole workout is about the last three reps of the second set. That’s where the intensity is. The first set warms things up, gets blood into the muscles, loosens up the tendons and ligaments, and programs the motor nerves in the brain to know what we are doing- the last three reps should require my help. That’s where the real results come from.”

How do personal trainer courses teach injury avoidance?

Personal training courses teach students that developing an effective work out includes considerations for how the client is going to feel the next day. Even a great workout that has left a client incapacitated by soreness will end up being counterproductive if it causes the client to be reluctant to workout at the proper level of intensity during subsequent sessions. Soreness could even turn a client off from working out altogether. This is particularly true when working with somebody new to exercising, somebody returning to exercise after an injury, or with the elderly. Bill Linaker was candid about the trial and error process by which he developed effective programs that don’t leave his clients extremely sore the next day: “In the beginning I hurt my fair share of people who didn’t know the term ‘no pain, no gain’ also applied to the next day!”

Being sore as a result of a vigorous workout, especially one that involves strength or resistance training is part of the process of getting into shape and building muscle. If a workout doesn’t result in soreness then the muscle is not being overloaded enough for the workout to be effective in building lean muscle. Next-day soreness is caused by micro-trauma to the muscle fibers that results in localized edema, or fluid retention. The localized edema puts pressure on the muscle’s nerve endings causing soreness. Personal trainer courses teach students to fine the proper balance for each client.

Contrary to common belief, soreness is not the result of lactic acid or even muscle damage. Some soreness is a good thing as it is an indicator that muscles are growing as a result of exercise, but significant pain could indicate serious trauma or damage to the muscle. Effectively increasing muscle strength is accomplished by periods of stress, followed by periods of recovery. It is during the recovery period, about eight hours after working out, that cells around the micro-traumatized muscle promote tissue growth to heal the damaged muscle fiber causing the muscle to grow in size and strength. Continual stress or damage to muscle without rest intervals will not increase the strength of muscle. This is why personal trainers always give muscles a “day off” between workouts.

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To mitigate the inevitable soreness caused by exercise, personal trainer courses will teach students to structure routines in two-parts, the first part always consisting of comprehensive stretching of all major muscle groups. This is most often followed by a warm up which would involve some moderate intensity, low-impact exercise on a stationary bicycle to gradually bring the heart rate up and increase blood flow to the muscles being worked. If the session was particularly intense a cool-down period of moderate intensity exercise will allow for a gradual transition back to a standing heart rate. With a vision of the client’s long term fitness goals, and to help sustain the client’s motivation, personal trainers are always inclined to start slow and light; introducing heavier weight and a greater intensity as they observe how the client responds. This requires a careful balance so as to be able to push the client hard enough to get results without causing them too much pain.