When I trained as a personal trainer, it was after many years of training myself and my friends and many years of reading about strength training, nutrition and coaching. Doing the qualification was a great experience, as I met some great people and talked about all kinds of current issues. As I went through the course, I wrote a series of articles about what I was learning:
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Getting qualified as a personal trainer – I explain why I decided to get qualified as a personal trainer, despite having a number of years experience already in helping people get stronger and more mobile
1: concepts of fitness – what exactly does fitness mean? Let’s take a look because there is nothing more annoying than people who start training for a marathon “to get fit” but they look like a famine victim, can barely move their bodyweight around and eat nothing but sugar-coated biscuits “for the energy”
2: skeletal anatomy (levers) – if you start lifting weights in anger then at some point another lifter will refer to his or her “leverages”. This is what they are talking about.
3: muscular anatomy – not a detailed discussion of anatomy but a consideration of why the study of anataomy is important, along with a few examples to make the point.
4: cardiovascular fitness – nothing winds me up faster than people talking with little understanding about cardiovascular fitness. Here, I discuss the basics and then explain what exactly you are training when you go out for your long run.
5a: nutrition(part one): Macronutrient basics – this is a brief introduction to the basic qualities of the three macronutrients: carbohydrates, protein and fats, along with some links and thoughts about issues that are relevant
5b: nutrition (part two): Macronutrient roles – and in this article, I develop the discussion of the macronutrients to cover what roles they play in the body
5c: nutrition (part three): Macronutrient respiration – and finally, we cover the technical aspects of how the three macronutrients are digested. This is actually quite important as many people misunderstand this issue
6a: energy systems (part one) – in this post I cover some fundamental questions about aerobic respiration and how it can be trained, including taking a look at the long-slow-distance reductionists and the short-sharp-intervals reductionists
6b: energy systems (part two) – and in this post, I cover the basic aspects of anaeorbic respiration and training. Of particular interest here are the two main theories of lactate, including the metabolic by-product theory (the one you learned in school) and the lactate shuttle theory
6c: energy systems (part three) – in this post, I finish the energy systems by looking at the most short-term energy system, the creatine phosphate system. I share some thoughts about how I have used this in the past and also discuss creatine supplementation
7a: skeletal adaptations to training – for me, one of the most exciting results of strength training is that your bones grow and get stronger as a result. In reality, this means that osteoporosis should be all but extinct in today’s day and age. And yet more and more people are suffering from it.
7b: muscular adaptations to training – most people tend to associate strength training with increased muscle size but that’s not the be-all-and-end-all of the story. There are many more factors to consider, including improved posture, increased creatine-phosphate storage and increased capillarisation
7c: cardiovascular adaptations to training – most people tend to think of increased heart strength and size as an adaptation to cardiovascular training but actually most of the adaptations are elsewhere, particularly in the muscles. I really enjoyed researching this topic, particularly because of some ridiculous animal studies that have to be read to be believed…
8: flexibility – in this article, I describe the basic fundamental factors that underly our flexibility and also introduce the great work of the Czeck physiotherapist, Vladimir Janda
9a: barriers to exercise – some people just find it overwhelmingly hard to do any exercise at all. Here are some common reasons and some ways to get around them.
9b: benefits of exercise – and some people don’t realise what huge benefits there are in exercising regularly. Here are the main reasons to stop sitting around and do something active instead.
9c: the dangers of inactivity – and if you really need the big guns, here is a list of really bad things that will happen to you if you don’t get up and moving around before it is too late.
10: screening and gathering information – screening is somewhat controversial but for one-on-one clients it would seem to be a pretty good way of developing a programme that is going to get the best results fastest. In this article, I discuss various resources that will help you create a screening tool for your clients
11: communicating – “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care” is a great quote I come across a lot in the fitness industry. Communicating that you care is key if you are going to succeed
12: ethics – nobody likes wading through a long post on ethics but it is here for completeness.
13a: planning sessions – in this article, I discuss how I might create a template for a training session, leaving aside special populations
13b: training overweight clients – and, based on my template, I discuss how I might modify that for an overweight client, while reviewing the thoughts and comments of other trainers who have worked in this market
13c: training elderly clients – not ageing is a particular passion of mine and I am enthusiastic about the need for older people to perform strength training to delay the ageing process. Find out more in this article…
13d: training female clients – I find it hugely satisfying that my girlfriend can squat more than anyone I work with, has no lower-back pain despite wearing heels a lot and looks fantastic to boot. Women need to strength train to look good and feel good. End of.
14a: warm ups – nobody does warm ups and that’s why everyone has joint pain or knots in their muscles. You don’t have to do a lot of warming up to make a difference. Here are a couple of ideas.
14b: recovery – we all put 100% effort into our workouts but most of us only put 50% effort into our recovery. If you want to succeed, it might be worth changing that ratio around for a bit…
15a: resistance training – fundamentals – in this rather expansive post, I have a go at forumlating everything I believe about strength training. It all gets a bit out of hand but you’ll get the idea
15b: resistance training – contraindicted exercises – I like good mornings and Romanian Deadlifts. My personal training institute don’t. What the hell do they know?
16: cardiovascular training – I try and summarise the main issues around cardiovascular training. It’s not a complete study but it should provide a basis for further thought.
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Although I covered the basics of macronutrient nutrition in my series above, specifically the macronutrients, I also took a more advanced module in nutrition. This module concentrates more on the qualitative questions rather than the chemical basics:
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1: The digestive system – the common phrase “you are what you eat” has now been replaced with the expression “you are what you absorb” and study of the digestive system makes this very clear
2a: Macronutrients: fats – part one – most people today still cling to the idea that saturated fat is bad for your heart (the lipid hypothesis) but there is no commonly-accepted mechanism by which this is supposed to happen and studies are weak in showing any effect
2a: Macronutrients: fats – part two – in this post, I provide links to a number of outspoken doctors who have made it clear that they won’t hold to the ridiculous lipid hypothesis any longer. Saturated fat doesn’t cause heart disease. End of.
2b: Macronutrients: proteins – while saturated fat has been the real bad-guy of the macronutrient world in the last few decades, protein hasn’t been given a clear bill of health either. Let’s kill that myth too, while we are at it.
2c: Macronutrients: carbohydrates – if you really want to demonise a macronutrient, carbohydrates would be the best one. You don’t really need that much of it and it comes with all kinds of health risks
3: Vitamins and minerals – in my opinion, if you are eating plenty of unprocessed meat and vegetables, while avoiding processed food and grains, you probably don’t need vitamins. Before you shoot me down, check out the links I’ve unearthed on the subject…
4: Water – I was shocked when I found out how much rubbish there is in our tap water, although it must be noted that bottled water is probably worse. It’s a shocking indictment of what we are doing to the environment
5: Healthy eating guidelines – you can take the healthy eating guidelines issued by most Government agencies and toss them out of the nearest window. The sheer ignorance is staggering. I often like to remember this when bloggers get heated about how someone has failed to understand some small aspect of the Paleo Diet…
6: Weight management – you have to accept that the modern world has a lot more overweight and obese people than it used to have. Here are a number of perpsectives on why that might be.
7: Evaluation of popular diets – my course notes teach us how to evaluate popular diets based on an arbitrary food pyramid. I prefer to look at how close our diets are to what human beings ate in the wild before food manufacturers got their grubby little hands on our shopping trolleys
8: Diets for endurance athletes – do endurance athletes need to eat lots of carbohydrates? Can they survive on the Paleo Diet? Find out here
9: Diets for strength athletes – do strength athletes need to eat all of that protein? Do they need lots of carbohydrates too? Find out here
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Still can’t find what you’re looking for? You can always contact me for help…
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