What's Required to Be a Personal Trainer?

[OBoile]

[quote]Nominal Prospect wrote:

[quote]OBoile wrote:
Not when she weighs 112.[/quote]
So she’s under 15%? Then she should have a fully visible six pack. Why don’t you post a pic to prove it? Extraordinary claims…

[quote]OBoile wrote:
Especially since most women don’t store their bodyfat in their upper back. But logic has never stopped Nominal Prospect before.[/quote]
A) Please provide an example of when I posted something illogical. Go ahead, I dare ya.

B) Just because women don’t store the majority of their bodyfat in their upper backs doesn’t mean they have no body fat there. Women hold more body fat all around than men do.[/quote]

I do not have pictures of my wife posing, and if I did I certainly wouldn’t post them on the internet but yes she does have visible abs pre-contest. You’re welcome to look at her lift

Trish Squat 290

I challenge you to find the “extra natural padding” in her back that a skinny guy wouldn’t have.

As to your wild claims about female bodyfat levels, Body Fat Percentage: What Gets Measured Gets Managed - Sport Fitness Advisor apparently every gymnast is a freak as are most high/long jumpers. 15% isn’t as low as you seem to think it is and certainly not extraordinary.

As for a lack of logic, where to begin:

What most people think of as “gaining strength” is nothing more than subtle improvements in technique and the maximization of leverage.

What most people think of as “muscular hypertrophy” is nothing more than fluid engorgement of the muscle tissues due to high volume training and glycogen saturation.

Real contractile hypertrophy and neurological strength increases are exceedingly rare and take years to develop. Arthur Jones said as much.

If a 16 year old kid increases his squat from 250 to 300, is it because he’s improved his maximal force generation capacity or is he simply using reduced ROM? More likely than not, it’s the latter.

This is a beauty given that he is currently debating squat technique:

[quote]
I’m a glutton for punishment, but only the “right kind” of punishment. I hate “bad soreness”. I hate joint pain and connective tissue soreness. I avoid them at all costs. I want to completely annihilate my muscles but spare the joints entirely. To do this, I have developed extremely precise methods of training. The majority involving machines. You simply can’t train at a high intensity with free weights without beating yourself up. Machines, you can - if you are extremely careful.

Even though I train on machines with 100% isolation as my goal, there is never a single moment where I am not aware of every part of my body.

That’s the irony. “Isolation training” actually develops muscle control throughout the entire body. Compound or “functional” training does the exact opposite. It teaches you to throw your entire body into every lift without thinking. Humans are “compound lifters” by their default neural programming. Thus, isolation lifting represents a more advantaged stage of training, a higher state of neural awareness.[/quote]

Note how he says “I hate joint pain and connective tissue soreness” (i.e. tendonitis). Later IN THE EXACT SAME THREAD HE SAYS THE FOLLOWING:

Speaking of Poliquin, let’s listen to him weigh in on this topic:

Unless athletes start complaining of tendonitis, they’re not training hard enough. They should train until they’re literally depressed, then back off.

In other words, if you’re not making progress in the gym, smash yourself into the ground for two weeks Ã?¢?? purposefully overtrain until you’re mentally depressed and your body is about to shut down Ã?¢?? then take five days off. When you come back into the gym, you’ll hit new personal bests.

Hypertrophy, for example, is an adaptation to a biological stress. If something doesn’t kill you, then the more you put stress on it, the more it’ll adapt. If the .22 caliber doesn’t work, use a .50 caliber.

• Charles Poliquin, The Super-Accumulation Program

I agree with Poliquin and Poliquin agrees with me.

http://tnation.tmuscle.com/free_online_forum/sports_body_training_performance_bodybuilding/is_soreness_necessary_for_growth?id=2206566&pageNo=5 for anyone who wants to read the thread (its full of gems).

Anyway, I’ve fed the troll enough. Once again, if you need a pad for your squat, you are doing it incorrectly.

Edit: Okay, a few more… I couldn’t resist:

Speed and [relative] strength are not opposing qualities.

Performance and appearance are.

The only people who attain a muscular appearance from performance-oriented training are <5’8 midgets from China/Bulgaria and women (also midgets).

What do you think bodybuilding style training is? Very simple:

Isolation and Exhaustion

[quote]
The only type of training that can legitimately transform someone’s appearance is bodybuilding (hypertrophy) style training.[/quote]

The pump IS fluid hypertrophy.

Lifting increasingly heavy loads on one exercise means that you are improving your technique. It is not a function of hypertrophy and does not result in hypertrophy, more often than not.

[quote]
Bodybuilders go to failure…all the time. [/quote]

The only way to stimulate hypertrophy is through isolation and exhaustion. Machine training is, by far, the most effective way to accomplish this, but there is no reason why it can’t be done with any other training method. It will simply take much, much longer.

[quote]

1. The only people who can see improvements across multiple areas of the fitness spectrum are TOTAL beginners.
   [/quote] I guess a coach potato isn’t a beginner since:

No, you need to specialize to improve, period. It makes no difference if the improvement is from average coach potato to slightly fit gym goer, or top-20 athlete to top 5 athlete.

[quote]
The bottom line is that gaining “mass” adds strength and fat is very much a part of mass, and a hell of a lot easier to add than genuine contractile tissue. [/quote]

[quote]
I understand better than most trainers that performance and appearance exist at opposite ends of the spectrum. [/quote]

Earlier in this thread, I quoted Dave Tate giving his opinion on the best methods for hypertrophy.

His advice largely mirrored my own, despite the fact that we both reached our conclusions independently.

Fatties think that every guy with low BF% looks the same, lol.

You can all see people tear into him here:
http://tnation.tmuscle.com/free_online_forum/sports_body_training_performance_bodybuilding_strength/does_anyone_believe_in_crosstraining?id=2283102&pageNo=4

[Crow]

[quote]OBoile wrote:

[quote]Nominal Prospect wrote:

[quote]OBoile wrote:
Not when she weighs 112.[/quote]
So she’s under 15%? Then she should have a fully visible six pack. Why don’t you post a pic to prove it? Extraordinary claims…

[quote]OBoile wrote:
Especially since most women don’t store their bodyfat in their upper back. But logic has never stopped Nominal Prospect before.[/quote]
A) Please provide an example of when I posted something illogical. Go ahead, I dare ya.

B) Just because women don’t store the majority of their bodyfat in their upper backs doesn’t mean they have no body fat there. Women hold more body fat all around than men do.[/quote]

I do not have pictures of my wife posing, and if I did I certainly wouldn’t post them on the internet but yes she does have visible abs pre-contest. You’re welcome to look at her lift

Trish Squat 290

I challenge you to find the “extra natural padding” in her back that a skinny guy wouldn’t have.

As to your wild claims about female bodyfat levels, Body Fat Percentage: What Gets Measured Gets Managed - Sport Fitness Advisor apparently every gymnast is a freak as are most high/long jumpers. 15% isn’t as low as you seem to think it is and certainly not extraordinary.

As for a lack of logic, where to begin:

What most people think of as “gaining strength” is nothing more than subtle improvements in technique and the maximization of leverage.

What most people think of as “muscular hypertrophy” is nothing more than fluid engorgement of the muscle tissues due to high volume training and glycogen saturation.

Real contractile hypertrophy and neurological strength increases are exceedingly rare and take years to develop. Arthur Jones said as much.

If a 16 year old kid increases his squat from 250 to 300, is it because he’s improved his maximal force generation capacity or is he simply using reduced ROM? More likely than not, it’s the latter.

This is a beauty given that he is currently debating squat technique:

[quote]
I’m a glutton for punishment, but only the “right kind” of punishment. I hate “bad soreness”. I hate joint pain and connective tissue soreness. I avoid them at all costs. I want to completely annihilate my muscles but spare the joints entirely. To do this, I have developed extremely precise methods of training. The majority involving machines. You simply can’t train at a high intensity with free weights without beating yourself up. Machines, you can - if you are extremely careful.

Even though I train on machines with 100% isolation as my goal, there is never a single moment where I am not aware of every part of my body.

That’s the irony. “Isolation training” actually develops muscle control throughout the entire body. Compound or “functional” training does the exact opposite. It teaches you to throw your entire body into every lift without thinking. Humans are “compound lifters” by their default neural programming. Thus, isolation lifting represents a more advantaged stage of training, a higher state of neural awareness.[/quote]

Note how he says “I hate joint pain and connective tissue soreness” (i.e. tendonitis). Later IN THE EXACT SAME THREAD HE SAYS THE FOLLOWING:

Speaking of Poliquin, let’s listen to him weigh in on this topic:

Unless athletes start complaining of tendonitis, they’re not training hard enough. They should train until they’re literally depressed, then back off.

In other words, if you’re not making progress in the gym, smash yourself into the ground for two weeks Ã?¢?? purposefully overtrain until you’re mentally depressed and your body is about to shut down Ã?¢?? then take five days off. When you come back into the gym, you’ll hit new personal bests.

Hypertrophy, for example, is an adaptation to a biological stress. If something doesn’t kill you, then the more you put stress on it, the more it’ll adapt. If the .22 caliber doesn’t work, use a .50 caliber.

• Charles Poliquin, The Super-Accumulation Program

I agree with Poliquin and Poliquin agrees with me.

http://tnation.tmuscle.com/free_online_forum/sports_body_training_performance_bodybuilding/is_soreness_necessary_for_growth?id=2206566&pageNo=5 for anyone who wants to read the thread (its full of gems).

Anyway, I’ve fed the troll enough. Once again, if you need a pad for your squat, you are doing it incorrectly.[/quote]

…and you’re a pussy!

[NIguy]

[quote]Extremepain wrote:
This is a serious question, not making fun of PT’s here. I was at the gym today and I see one of the male PT’s who is maybe 100 pounds showing a new guy how to squat. In the smith machine. To his credit though I did see them move over to the squat rack and YES, wait for it, actually use it for squats. i have to take points off because they used the pussy pad with like 50 pounds on the bar though.
But I see ass-hat trainers and I think “If that’s all it takes I could be a PT.” What’s involved in the certification? Cost?[/quote]

Everyone is a PT these days but very few actually know what the fuck they are doing. I have heard some amount of bullshit from supposed experts that I am convinced that the whole PT course is an utter load of bollox. There is nothing that you can learn on PT course that you cannot learn from google if you were so inclined, the PT certificate is something nice to put on your CV because it makes alot people think ‘oh he is a PT’ he must know his shit. I know of only 1 PT who wants to be muscular and actually is muscular, and guess what he breaks his own fucking rules. The rest are small self righteous bastards who think that if you aren’t doing things by the book you aren’t doing it right, most are afraid to train incase they overtrain or God forbid they might run the risk of injury. So instead they spend all day doing low risk workouts with no fucking return. I have actually had a PT try and talk me down for doing weight dips, or another who likes to go around telling people how person x is doing exercise y wrong yet person x is twice the size of the fucker talking shit to my face.

[Bunyip]

Anyone know the qualifications and requirements and how much it all costs to be a personal trainer in Australia?