Why Fitness Industry Norms are Harmful to Personal Trainers & Their Clients
Working Out Outside the Box: What’s Accepted isn’t Always Right
Working outside the fitness industry box is beneficial for you, your clients, and the industry as a whole. I may choose unorthodox moves, but they’re effective!
Like any industry, the fitness industry has its own set of approved norms, and issues that go along with those norms. If you want to see me get into some of them, check out my posts on the ridiculousness of fitness buzzwords, or why this clean eating craze is literally that: crazy.
There are lots of problems with the fitness industry as it is, from discrimination, to false information, to exercise norms, which is what I’ll be getting into today. Like most normative behavior, when you do something outside the set of approved actions or beliefs, you often receive pushback.
It’s beyond time the fitness world stops intimidating its community into following an outdated rule book on what are “acceptable” exercise modalities.
Why I Broke, and Keep Breaking, Fitness Industry Norms
A quick story. Before I started my own personal training service, I used to work at a Pilates studio. I vividly remember being on the floor with a client one day when my boss, an instructor I respected and had learned a lot from, posed this question: “What kind of weird stuff is Ashley doing today?”
She said this very loudly, in front of not only my client, but also other colleagues and their clients within earshot.
I was so embarrassed I felt like I shrank into my skin. Were my workouts “weird?” Was my exercise selection somehow inappropriate? What did my client now think of me as a trainer? What did my colleagues think?
When creating the workouts I was performing that day, I had carefully considered the person in front of me and their needs. Whenever they struggled to feel the exercise in the desired muscles, I came up with a different way to execute the movement so they could target the right muscles and get the result we wanted.
My boss walked by and simply saw an exercise she didn’t recognize. In the classical Pilates world, deviating from the standard is basically high treason. Betrayal to the King: Mr. Joe Pilates.
Joe was a genius. Truly. He was way ahead of his time and created a method that combines smart movement, mobility, and variability in a way no other person or method has to date (though yoga may be a close second). Pilates is a method that I love and still continue to integrate into my personal practice and private training.
Personal Fitness Training is Just That: Personal!
There’s something to be said for legacy and learning something wholeheartedly. When I work with a professional in any field, I’d want to be sure they really understand it and know how to apply it to help me. After all, I wouldn’t go see a doctor who’s only allowed to prescribe baby aspirin.
However, if allegiance is pledged to a man who was born in 1883 rather than the client who is paying you to help them and standing in front of you in the flesh—in the year 2020—well, you might have some questions to ask yourself.
Exercise selection is something professionals in the industry discuss and argue over and draw Venn diagrams about (yes, we’re nerds, we know.) And that’s for one big reason: exercise selection is the “personal” part of Personal Training.
Questioning Fitness Norms Can Improve Your Training
I’m now grateful for the question my boss asked me, because that embarrassing moment was a huge turning point for me as a professional.
In that moment I determined that I had to give myself permission to teach the person in front of me in order to help them as much as I could (as my master trainers had taught me)—no matter who judged me or what they thought about it.
ALL exercises are CONTEXT SPECIFIC. This was also when I decided that I needed to understand more about all of the other various methods of exercise so I could truly give the best service to my clients, and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.
If my reason for suggesting an exercise is “because that’s what Joe did,”—that’s just a bad reason. It reflects no deeper understanding of the actual method or the desired outcome, let alone the needs of my client. I realized something invaluable: normal people don’t care if they’re being taught a certain style of Pilates!
They care if they’re feeling better, looking better, and performing better. As they should!
Forcing Fitness Industry Norms on Trainers and Customers Helps No One
I now have a running joke with many of my clients where mid-workout I’ll say: “This isn’t Pilates. This is just shit Ashley made up.” (It’s actually been recommended to me that I buy the domain ShitAshleyMadeUp.com, and I might consider it!)
Now I pull from all the methods that I’ve learned from to create a truly unique experience with a singular focus: getting clients to feel empowered through education and experience so they can move through their life with confidence.
Results are the name of the game, and just because you’re following or teaching one exercise modality doesn’t mean you’ll get their faster.
One of the things I like to say is that you have to to pick a team. You don’t have to only cycle, or only do Pilates, or only weight lift, just like you don’t have to only be macro, only be paleo, or only be vegan.
Choosing what works for you, or choosing what works for your individual clients, personally, is where the results will come from. Not from following an often arbitrary set of fitness industry norms that can be harmful to both personal trainers, and their clients.
If you don’t make your personal training personal, you’re not helping anyone. Sticking to a set of rules, just because they’re a set of rule, doesn’t mean your clients will see results and feel better about themselves and their bodies.
It’s okay to color outside of the lines and make stuff up. I’ve had years of training and nutrition experience, which means I know safely what moves to combine, create, and use for specific people. You really just have to know what you’re trying to achieve, and why that “made up stuff” will work to get you what you want.
To do that, setting goals is an important part of the journey, so head here next to figure out how to make the best goals for you.
Have any questions? Want to see moves what will actually work for you? Fill out this short contact form and we can get started!
About Ashley Brown:
Ashley is a Pilates instructor and personal trainer in NYC who specializes in biomechanics and exercise nutrition for women. She uses the science behind exercise physiology to empower her in-person and remote clients to lead healthy, happy lives. Her passion project is sharing this information through her blog, which focuses on Lifestyle, Exercise, Active recovery, and Nutrition and serves as the backbone for her online health and fitness programs. She aims to get this information into the hands of as many women as possible so they can feel stronger and more confident in their bodies!