Stuff to Read While You’re Pretending to Work
1. 21 Food Rules Every Guy Should Follow– Nate Green
More often than not, when it comes to “dialing in” the diet, most guys (and girls) fail miserably. You would think it’s rocket science the way most people treat it. Here’s a great post by Nate Green summarizing a few key points with regards to how, when, where, and what you should eat. Bon appetit!
2. Throw Away Your Scale– some guy named Gentilcore
Just wanted to bring back a little old school flavor. This is an article that I had originally penned for The Boston Herald, but they big leagued me and never used it. I posted it on my blog (back when I blogged for them), and figured I’d re-post it here. Again. Cause I can.
3. Assessing Our Assessments– Nick Tumminello
I was talking shop with one of our interns yesterday, and the topic of assessments came up. As luck would have it, when I got home last night, I decided to catch up on some reading and came across the above blog post by Nick.
If you’re not assessing, you’re guessing. As someone who gets paid to get people results, it goes without saying that the initial assessment (whatever that may entail) is kind of a big deal. What’s more, if you’re a personal trainer or strength coach, how in the world do you expect to write a program geared specifically for your client if you’re not taking him/her through some form of assessment in the first place?
All told, however, it’s important to know when to refer out. Coincidentally this is why Eric, Brian, and myself have made it a point of surrounding ourselves with people who are much smarter than us. We know our limits and are more than happy to refer out when necessary. Unfortunately, many personal trainers fail to understand that they’re not physical therapists and try to work outside their scope of practice, let alone expertise.
Worse still, they’ll take a client through an assessment and take the most inane finding-right pinky toe pronates, for example- and spend two weeks trying to fix it with an assortment of “corrective exercises.” Meanwhile, said client is 30 lbs overweight, has the mobility of a 2×4, and can’t walk more than ten steps without keeling over from exhaustion. How about, you know, actually training them?
In the end, as personal trainers and strength coaches, it’s imperative that you recognize dysfunction. I’d go so far as to say that’s part of your job. Nonetheless, it’s also important to realize your limitations and understand there is a scope of practice. That’s not to say we shouldn’t continue to try to bridge the gap between the strength and conditioning world and the physical therapy world. I just think it’s a dangerous slope to travel when you have personal trainers thinking they’re Shirley Sahrmann after having read one book.
