PT Red Flags
It’s a pretty well known fact that the personal training industry is generally fairly unregulated, with shall we say a significant range of quality of PTs. As a simplistic generalisation, if you plotted out quality of PTs in a bell curve you’d get a rather asymptomatic curve with bottom of the barrel PTs all to common, the median PT being not very good either, and a minority of PTs actually doing their jobs.
In Australia specifically, the fitness industry is extremely oversaturated.
In no particular order, here are the top 3 red flags from PTs to watch out for.
1. Promoting co-dependency
This is arguably the sneakiest and there’s certainly merit in some of the following actions.
The most common way a PT subtly tries to get the client to be co-dependent is excessive touching.
Some classics include:
- Having random contact with your back every rep you squat
- Resting their hands on your traps for every rep of a lat pulldown
2. Noceboing
the myth of perfect form
3. Gimmicks
- Kneeling 1-arm cable lat pulldowns
- Rotational landmine twists with a catch on the other arm
- Lunge with DBs overhead
- Anything with the bosu ball
- Long complex warm-ups and cooldowns with lots of isometric bodyweight holds
These excessively compl