After working as a personal trainer for close to a decade, and after having the opportunity to work with a LOT of new and aspiring trainers. I’ve been able to help develop a lot of these trainers, and also seen a lot of them learn and develop on their own, some with great success, some with an almost hilarious level of ineptitude. I mean, some of them just seem like they’re completely out of touch with themselves and seem like they’re trying to fail. It’s like watching an episode of Jersey Shore and wondering if they know how stupid they look, act and sound, or if they actually think they’re that cool. Since I’ve watched a few hundred such trainers, I have come to realize a few concrete facts.

1. Most new trainers expect to make crazy bank right out of the gate and are pissed off when they figure out that it’s a business like any other, and will take time to develop

2. They treat training as a job instead of a career, meaning they clock in at 9, clock out at 5, and wouldn’t dream of doing any work to build their business around these hours

3. My biceps are unusually large and fantastic

4. Coninuing education is essential for a trainers success. You can pretty much graph the successful trainers and how much they read compared to the unsuccessful trainers.

5. There are certain classifications of trainers, shall we call them “types,” each with their pros and cons. We’re going to discuss the Top Ten Types of Trainers, and what you can do to deal with each.

Trainer #1: Book Smart, People Dumb

This trainer is the kind of person who can recall each and every ACSM standard and will train their clients BY THE BOOK each and every time, which means pretty much machine based exercises since that’s what most of the research has been done on. They tend to have an advanced degree, either a bachelors’ or a masters.

While this is a fantastic thing to add to a training repertoire, what doesn’t help them as a trainer is the fact that they have all the personality of wet toilet paper, the appeal of a 1981 Ford Escort, and a complete unwillingness to market themselves, expecting clients to simply come to them and their enveloping umbrella of knowledge and fantasticalness. They could take some lessons from this guy on presentation and energy:

As a result, their three clients feel like they get great service. They should, seeing as how these guys spend 20-30 hours designing their program each week, tweaking and tuning each exercise for hours until they have it perfect. Each client is made to wear a heart rate monitor to ensure optimal training zones, have their blood pressure checked even if they aren’t hypertensive, give a fecal sample, and rate their level of anxiety before each and every workout. The trainer then takes this information, carefully analyzes the results, and has them walk on the treadmill for a half hour as the end result. Then they complain of burnout, and how the busy trainers are only good at selling and not at training, like them.

How to Deal With Them

Ask if they’re looking to go back to school to get another degree, because inevitably they plan to get their masters/PhD/commander of the Cobra certification, which would be a cinch for them because they’re just that awesome.

Trainer #2: High Energy, No Focus

This trainer excels at teaching group fitness classes and any situation where being loud is optimal, but has a hard time working with one person at a time. They have crazy amounts of energy and tend to live off enough Monster energy drinks and NO Xplode cocktails to cause an elephant to have an aneurism.

The downside to this high energy is that they tend to be unfocused in how they approach their business. Want a program made up to do on your own? Too bad, cuz this week was just too busy and life got in the way before I could make your program but hey let’s train legs today oh shiny things!! Billing and all the administrative things rarely get done on time, programs are done based on what the trainer feels like that day or what they saw on their favorite Youtube channel that morning, but their hair is looking bitchin this morning. 

These trainers are great at getting new clients, but have difficulty trying to keep their clients, as their lack of focus means clients feel like they aren’t a priority and look to go elsewhere. But hey, they’ll be front row center at their next spin class!!

Since they’re all jacked up on Mountain Dew and loving life to the fullest possible more than you could ever do ever, they will tend to look at everything and everyone except their client, who will inevitably do their deadlifts with posture like a question mark and have their knees collapsing everywhere when squatting or lunging.

How to Deal With Them

Ask them how their protein-only diet, vegan diet, locovore diet, omnivore diet, slow-carb diet, baby food diet, or whatever diet their currently doing this week is going. After that, ask how their colon cleanse, liver cleanse, kidney cleanse, cayenne pepper cleanse, or any combination of those is going, and wait for them to inevitably give you their definition of how to solve world hunger, find peace in the Middle East, and how to get a rockin six pack all within the same paragraph. See you at the squat rack!!

Trainer #3: Baggage Trainer

This trainer brings their personal life to work and puts it on full display. Crying in public is common, and occasionally just plain funny. They may have loud phone conversations with their significant other, with whom they have been having “problems” with for the past, well, ever, and they will talk non-stop about themselves and what may be holding them back with all their clients all day long. The client may want to ask a question about what kind of foods they should be eating to lose weight, but that is simply an opening for this trainer to tell them all about what they did on the weekend and how it didn’t work out well for them.

Their clients are kind of confused, because they don’t know why they are paying someone when the trainer is asking them for advice on how to make their life better and listen to their problems all session long. As a result, they typically won’t renew clients much. Well, that, and the fact that their programs look like they were a third priority in the day.

Bicep curls twice in the same program with the same weight? Whatever, I’m sooo depressed.

How to Deal With Them

Let them talk about their issues, because honestly you won’t be able to talk about anything else. Then just nod and smile.

Trainer #4: The Kool-Aid trainer

This trainer has decided to join one of the thought processes within the industry that has developed a cult-like following of deeply committed fans. They wear the T-shirts that display it for everyone to see, and use lingo that no one else can figure out since they aren’t in the club or know the secret handshake, and they aren’t down with “the leader.”

Anyone who tries to argue a specific point with them about the benefits of another method of training had better be ready for a battle, because they will throw down with both guns blazing on why their form of training is the best in the world for everything, all ways, period. BOOM!

These trainers will tend to train their clients in the same way, regardless of the goals or limitations. Yes, I’m sure doing snatches and kips are great, but they probably aren’t right for your client fresh out of ACL rehab and who has localized swelling, but what do I know? I guess they really DO need to push full ROM out of their knee today. Just tell them to spray some Icy Hot on it tonight and it will be good as new for tomorrow’s workout. BOOM!

How to Deal With Them

Ask them what they’re training for. Odds are, it’s nothing specific, and that’s the point, but they know they’re right in every way possible because their program is the alpha and omega, all rolled into one.

Trainer #5: The “Expert” Trainer

This trainer has taken it upon themselves to be the end-all be-all of training, and has developed their own “method” of training that contains secrets that no one else should be able to figure out because they are so smart and obviously better than everyone else. The downside is that everything they say is riddled with so many holes of physiological and anatomical logic that every trainer who has ever read a book on exercise physiology pretty much calls them out every chance they get.

Does this phase the Expert? Quite the contrary. They will continue to extol the virtues of their training, and continue to refer to themselves as an expert, even though not even doctors with 30 years of experience will have the cojones to call themselves experts in their field. Why do you think they call it a practice?

How to Deal With Them

Ask how they train their clients, then shoot their theories to shit when they tell you they “focus on the small muscles.”

Tomorrow I’ll show you the next 5 trainers and we’ll all have a good laugh at them.