“What good are shrugs? I don’t know what muscle group that even works.”
He then proceeds to offer an alternative, which I just HAVE to see, so I say ok.
He then proceeds to show me an exercise using 5 lb dumbbells in each hand.
Now do this, stand as though you are about to do a shrug, move your hands forward about 10 inches, hold them there. Now pinch you scapula retractors together. He says: “see how much better that is?”.
I say “for you scapula retractors - maybe, but I’m trying to work my traps”.
After I finish, as I’m walking out, I make sure to point out my gigantic bulging traps - I was on, so the pump was massive.
BTW, he was shaped like a bowling pin, but I’m sure there’s no correlation between that and his training knowledge.
“There are free weights over there but I’m going to set you up on the machines. Machines are foolproof, noone ever hurt themselves on a machine. Plus they have a handy diagram which shows which muscle group you are working, chest, back, or legs”
I was doing clean-grip high-pulls from the hang at the base gym, at a previous command. As I’m repping them out, this skinny older dude(40ish, hey that’s older, I was like 25) comes running over. Seriously, he ran over like he was going to save me from a falling light or something. So I saw him coming in my peripheral, and stopped so I wouldn’t be mid-pull when he collided with me.
Him: “Hey man, you shouldn’t be doing those.”
Me: “Why? I like them.”
Him: “I’m a nurse. I know what your trying to do, but your doing them wrong. That will destroy your back.”
Me: “I’ve been doing them for a while now, and never had any problems.”
Him(raising voice): “I’m a NURSE, and I’m telling you not to do them!!”
Me: “Uhh, okay.”
He walked away, and I stood there for a minute feeling confused. Then I did them anyway. Cause f*ck him.
The absolute worst training advice EVER was given by ME when I was in Lesotho–in the Peace Corps. It nearly caused an entire village to starve to death.
I went to visit my friend (another PCV) in her village, Mokhotlong. She knew I had boxed and told several of the boys in her little village that a “boxer” was visiting her. My arrival was quite dramatic. An 11 hour ride in the back of a pickup with about 10 other people and 2 sheep. We had to stop at the bottom of at least 15 mountains and walk up them because the truck could not handle all of the weight.
When I finally arrived the kids ran away, frightened by the white man.
Eventually the village boys started crowding me saying ‘spar, spar’
repeatedly. We play-boxed a bit and then I showed them how to do push-ups
and, unfortunately, pullups.
Here’s where my bad advice comes in: I find a single silver bar crossing the village and demonstrate how to perform pullups. For some reason (massive sleep deprivation and lack of food?!) it didn’t occur to me that that was their only water supply for irragation.
Suddenly the boys are jumping all over the bar, swinging from it. I’m getting yelled at by the village elders and am racing from kid to kid, grabbing him off the pipe before the damn things
bursts. Fortunately the pipe survived.
So, next time you hear a PT tell you to use machines instead of doing dead lifts. Remember that it’s bad advice. But not THAT bad.
[quote]enterthedojo wrote:
flynniec6 - considering the time most people spend training nothing but their arms, you’d THINK they’d figure things out by now!!
TriGWU - sorry, I was hit by the laziness bug… typing personal trainer all the time gets tedious…
You know, sometimes it isn’t what these idiotic trainers SAY… its the damn STARES they give! Most of you should know what I’m talking about… that sideways, lingering, “what the hell does this fool think he’s doing,” glance they give you.
It usually happens when you’re doing some kind of crazy, stupid, pointless exercise like deadlifts or squats. And you’ll often get it when you’re lifting more than 100 pounds in ANYTHING.
You get it because OF COURSE there’s no way you could know more than a 2 day certificate course personal trainer…[/quote]
There is this one trainer at La Fatness that stares at me like a serial killer every time I RDL or deadlift. These exercises are as dangerous as chainsaw juggling according to this guy. I guess I should only do band squats on a bosu ball like he recommends…
[quote]boatguy wrote:
I was doing clean-grip high-pulls from the hang at the base gym, at a previous command. As I’m repping them out, this skinny older dude(40ish, hey that’s older, I was like 25) comes running over. Seriously, he ran over like he was going to save me from a falling light or something. So I saw him coming in my peripheral, and stopped so I wouldn’t be mid-pull when he collided with me.
Him: “Hey man, you shouldn’t be doing those.”
Me: “Why? I like them.”
Him: “I’m a nurse. I know what your trying to do, but your doing them wrong. That will destroy your back.”
Me: “I’ve been doing them for a while now, and never had any problems.”
Him(raising voice): “I’m a NURSE, and I’m telling you not to do them!!”
Me: “Uhh, okay.”
He walked away, and I stood there for a minute feeling confused. Then I did them anyway. Cause f*ck him.[/quote]
I have to add to this. I was working out in the gym at the Navy Yard in DC, another Captain (USMC) and I were doing split jerks and some fat ass runs over to us and tells us if we don’t get weight belts on, we will have to leave. We told him to go away.
He was the “Personal Trainer” who the Navy hired to train all the fat staff pogues at the Navy Yard (I’m a Marine Corps Staff Pogue, so I am much cooler than a navy staff pogue).
We overheard him telling people how dangerous our training was and how we didn’t know what we were doing.
We would start doing one-arm or regular snatches with whatever weight was around as soon as we saw him in the gym from that point on.
I only glanced at this thread, so don’t know if this was posted already.
There’s this reality show called “Taking it Off” which airs on TV in Canada, where a bunch of obese people (over 200 lbs women, and over 300 lb men) are trying to lose weight over the course of a few months. Surprisingly they are making a lot of progress despite a far from perfect training and eating program (though small changes definitely are helping them). The so called “experts” on this show are a bunch of morons.
Two people on the show mentioned to the “trainer” that they bought an elliptical machine to use at home and how much they enjoy using it, and actually use it 40 minutes at a time. The trainer jumps on their back saying “Only fat people use ellipticals. They’re good for nothing - they’re not functional, they don’t teach you to run better or bike better. The ONLY thing they’re good for is calorie burning.” (Isn’t that their primary goal??
And it does increase aerobic threshold. On top of that, if it gets them moving, they should be encouraged to keep at it.) That trainer really knows how to motivate people (sarcastic). The people on the show ended up feeling like fools for “wasting” their money on an expensive machine.
im a junior in high school and i was working out my biceps really hard one day. i did this exercise where you put 10s on a barbell and you and your buddy do a program. you do 1 rep, hand it off and he does 2. then you get it back and do 3 all the way up to 10 and back down to 1. we did 3 sets of these and after that this sophomore was like “Dude, do some curls! Its so hard now!” i did 1 and said nonono, my biceps are gonna explode. i came in next day, idiot tore both his biceps. he was out for a couple weeks. moron.
[quote]DooMMOoD wrote:
im a junior in high school and i was working out my biceps really hard one day. i did this exercise where you put 10s on a barbell and you and your buddy do a program. you do 1 rep, hand it off and he does 2. then you get it back and do 3 all the way up to 10 and back down to 1. we did 3 sets of these and after that this sophomore was like “Dude, do some curls! Its so hard now!” i did 1 and said nonono, my biceps are gonna explode. i came in next day, idiot tore both his biceps. he was out for a couple weeks. moron. [/quote]
So you were working out your biceps really hard one day? And you said nonono my biceps are gonna explode?
Meanwhile the guy that was working out next to you is in the ‘squat rack curls’ thread talking about these two young idiots he heard the other day.
well at least that wasnt a couple days ago. i have since seen the light of T-Nation and am slowly learning how to not be stupid. which is hard. and besides. i have intact biceps,
I was in grade 8 and we were starting the “weight training unit” so we would be in the weight room for about 6 weeks. It was the first day in the weight room and our gym teacher starts off by telling us- " some people don’t have the genetics to make gains, some people like myself could lift weights all the time and never get any bigger so don’t be dissapointed if you don’t see results"
You know, sometimes it isn’t what these idiotic trainers SAY… its the damn STARES they give! Most of you should know what I’m talking about… that sideways, lingering, “what the hell does this fool think he’s doing,” glance they give you.
It usually happens when you’re doing some kind of crazy, stupid, pointless exercise like deadlifts or squats. And you’ll often get it when you’re lifting more than 100 pounds in ANYTHING.
I can relate to the stares and snickering. You should see the looks on their faces when I do one arm dumbbell snatches and dumbbell front squats. One trainer asked me, “What body part are you working there?” In reference to power snatches. I said, “Body-part? Well, mostly I feel it in my prostate.”
Damn am I glad I just got a job as a personal trainer at World Health Club in Edmonton.
As an employee they expect me to pursue a ridiculous number of certifications, which WHC will pay for. They include, but are not limited to:
Twist™ Sports Conditioning (the Canadian separated-at-birth twin of Renegade Conditioning)
NCCP Level I Olympic Lifting Coach certification
Medical Exercise Specialist
I had my second job interview today. My job was to instruct the club manager, posing as an intermediate trainer, in proper technique in her, wait for it guys, FULL barbell squats in a squatting cage, incline bench press with a REAL BARBELL, cable rows, dynamic and PNF stretching among other techniques/methods.
Yes, this IS a 24-hour-fatness-style health club.
For more advanced clients, I am fully EXPECTED to be teaching them POWER AND OLYMPIC LIFTS!
I deliberately mentioned it in the interview if there was anything wrong with squats or deadlifts, you know, to test them. They said I was fully expected to eventually progress all clients towards the safe and proper use of the basic, multi-joint barbell lifts.
I don’t have any pt quotes but I figured it wouldn’t be too off topic to put a vote in for the worst gym of all time.
The gym in my hometown (the ONLY gym ever since one burned down annd the other moved locations)has a pool, basketball and raquetball(sp?) courts, an indoor track and class rooms. The gym is all machines. No free weights at all. The only way to bench or squat is to use the smith machine. They have one in-house trainer and all his clients do ciruit training on the machines.
I firmly believe it should be within my legal rights to burn this building down.
[quote]AlbertaBeef wrote:
Damn am I glad I just got a job as a personal trainer at World Health Club in Edmonton.
As an employee they expect me to pursue a ridiculous number of certifications, which WHC will pay for. They include, but are not limited to:
Twist™ Sports Conditioning (the Canadian separated-at-birth twin of Renegade Conditioning)
NCCP Level I Olympic Lifting Coach certification
Medical Exercise Specialist
I had my second job interview today. My job was to instruct the club manager, posing as an intermediate trainer, in proper technique in her, wait for it guys, FULL barbell squats in a squatting cage, incline bench press with a REAL BARBELL, cable rows, dynamic and PNF stretching among other techniques/methods.
Yes, this IS a 24-hour-fatness-style health club.
For more advanced clients, I am fully EXPECTED to be teaching them POWER AND OLYMPIC LIFTS!
I deliberately mentioned it in the interview if there was anything wrong with squats or deadlifts, you know, to test them. They said I was fully expected to eventually progress all clients towards the safe and proper use of the basic, multi-joint barbell lifts.
But if I go on anymore I’ll just be bragging. ;)[/quote]
[quote]Monopoly19 wrote:
I used to train with a buddy at 24 hour. He has always had a very weak inner chest, and this was prob a 18 months into lifting for him. He asked one of the trainers what he could do to grow his inner chest. Her reply? “Eat more carbs”. She could not explain or go into detail, but she stated it several times avoiding our questions as to why. It was pretty fucking funny.
Monopoly[/quote]
Dunno if this hasn’t been mentioned yet, but there’s no such thing as an “inner chest” muscle. That’s just a myth. There’s there sternal and clavicular heads of the pectoralis major as well as the serratus anterior and pectoralis minor which are on the “outside” of the chest, around the lower part of the shoulder joint and by the armpit.
[quote]asianbabe wrote:
I only glanced at this thread, so don’t know if this was posted already.
There’s this reality show called “Taking it Off” which airs on TV in Canada, where a bunch of obese people (over 200 lbs women, and over 300 lb men) are trying to lose weight over the course of a few months. Surprisingly they are making a lot of progress despite a far from perfect training and eating program (though small changes definitely are helping them). The so called “experts” on this show are a bunch of morons.
Two people on the show mentioned to the “trainer” that they bought an elliptical machine to use at home and how much they enjoy using it, and actually use it 40 minutes at a time. The trainer jumps on their back saying “Only fat people use ellipticals. They’re good for nothing - they’re not functional, they don’t teach you to run better or bike better. The ONLY thing they’re good for is calorie burning.” (Isn’t that their primary goal??
And it does increase aerobic threshold. On top of that, if it gets them moving, they should be encouraged to keep at it.) That trainer really knows how to motivate people (sarcastic). The people on the show ended up feeling like fools for “wasting” their money on an expensive machine. [/quote]
I saw the exact same show and thought the trainer was moron as soon as I saw it. I wanna call those people and tell the trainer to shove it and keep at it on the elliptical. At their weight, your not worrying about how their losing weight as long as there not doing it by snorting coke or starving themselves.
This one isnt about trainers but rather about a friend of mine that is under the impression that he himself is a personal trainer and I think has aspirations to become one. And often I find him thinking that he knows a whole helluva lot.
“Hey guys, how can i work this right here?” He points to the underpart of his chin. He has a somewhat rounded chin and he said that he wanted to get rid of it and build alot of muscle up in it.
My other friend, without missing a beat, said:"Go grab one of those bars, stand in the open are in the gym and swing it around in a circle about 20 times.
