We-must-practice-to-be professionals

Practice

Professionals such as medical doctors and lawyers do not learn their trade in school. This is why it is called a practice. Formal education sets a foundation but is not the end all and be all of professions. Practice is training, exercise, and preparation. This is no coincidence either. We all must prepare for the demands of what is to come. Trainers, lawyers, and medical doctors learn by doing. Lawyers and medical doctors must be licensed and trainers are only certified; this must change. There is little formal education available for trainers; this must change. Fitness training and strength and conditioning are obstacles. Unpracticed and unprofessional people are running the show; this must change.

Medical school includes the induction of a lot of information. Anatomy and physiology are complex and dynamic. I study Kinesiological sciences daily and have my Bachelor’s degree. I left college after two years Jurassic Park. The most fascinating part of anatomy and physiology is the simple fact that our nervous systems are not sophisticated enough to grasp its own complexity. Medical doctors need to rehearse, daily, just to understand the complexities of the human body. They need to take information in and realize that the current information may not be current next year. This dynamic is commendable. Training science is more stable.

to pursue an athletic career. Upon my return I decided to take anatomy and physiology again. Renal physiology had changed almost completely over my ten year hiatus. This is why I made the decision to take this class again. Life finds a way is a line from

Lawyers have to practice and individualize each case as well. Laws change, clients change, and a lawyer needs to know how to navigate the needs of the situation. A good lawyer does not know all of the law. A good lawyer knows where to find the laws needed to solve the problem or create a counter-point. Practice allows a lawyer to analyze the complexities of the language, logic, and laws. We need lawyers to understand and represent our position relative to the language in written laws. Logic is the basis of the law. There only

needs to be one counter-point, in logic, for a statement to be considered false. Lawyers create arguments. The argument is either true of not. I hope you can afford a good lawyer if you ever need one. These people actually believe their positions when they take a stance. Training science is more exact; logical (OJ was guilty!).

Training is a science and an art just like the law or medicine. We have very exact science in kinesiology. The clinicians will disagree since this is how they earn grants. The science on strength and conditioning is done. It was done thirty years ago. I do not foresee any of the people publishing anything in this country challenging

this statement. Their hearts are not in it. They are not passionate about anything but applause and beautiful acclaim.  They are looking for the easy way out with the biggest paycheck. This is laziness just like fitness training. One cannot get stronger athletically with a fraction of bodyweight; no athlete trained with kettlebells until the 1990s. The Soviet scientists did the best strength work to date. This information is available if one seeks it out. Find it, study it, and make your athletes better. It is this simple. The art is individualization. There is one correct way for each weightlifter/athlete to do each lift. This is fixed in bio-mechanics. The art is finding the positioning required by each lifter’s leverages, activation patterns, muscle types, and this does not even mention psychology or intelligence. All this and more must be considered to realize excellence.

Who will you trust trainer A or trainer B?

Trainer A:

·        Believes 110 lbs is heavy enough to get strong for everyone

·        Focus is dialed in on the business of training and never studies training science and thus, no data is available to discard bad information

·        Looks fit but is fragile

·        Injured himself doing a squat improperly and re-classified the squat as a bad exercise; no data

·        Appears confident

·        Went to school and earned a business degree

·        Calls himself the professor and has never studied anything off-line

·        Trains business people

Trainer B:

·        Stronger than most athletes, at age forty-seven

·        Type 1 diabetic since the age of two

·        Entering ninth grade weighs eighty-nine pounds at four feet eleven inches

·        Participated in a world championships as a 90 kgs lifter

·        Soft spoken while supremely confident

·        Trains anyone who wants to make improvements including a two time national champion weightlifter

·         Has never been injured over a thirty year career at the top level of sports

·        Studies sports science daily; ample data

Did you answer the question? Who is a trainer and who is a business person? That combination does not exist yet. There is not time to practice and to make a living. Training is not a profession yet. Fitness trainers are the obstacle. They are uneducated and unprofessional as a group. Does your lawyer only study online? I rest my point. We must make training a profession and get rid of all the dead weight. Improving the human

body is health care. Medicine is sick care. Bringing all three together we need to make a law, license trainers, and test them with the same regularity and code of practice as medical doctors and lawyers. Trainers need to be licensed, insured, and practice the craft. Formal education is necessary and unavailable. Licensing is not a reality as long as business people are in charge of certification.  Insurance exists but these companies will insure anyone.

Training is time consuming. When I was highly competitive I literally lived in the gym. I trained up to sixteen times each week. I ate 11,000 kcal per day. I slept ten hours per day. I worked as a trainer enough to pay all my bills. In those days we, the trainers, ran the training departments. Businesses had not realized that there were highly energetic people passionate about their work. The business people took our industry over and capitalized on our passion. Now, nobody makes a living training thirty hours per week. Most fitness trainers have other jobs and work in excess of two full time jobs each week to make a living wage. The company

takes the lions share and makes the trainers do ALL OF THE WORK. No help is given by the company. The new business people who manage fitness centers are working the training staff to death. Much like railroad workers from the 1800s. One dies and another is waiting to replace them. I am all for profits. America is founded on this concept. Pay those doing the work fairly.

Let’s make training the profession it needs to be. We can formalize the amount of time spent working in another’s organization. We can make it a partnership. It does not matter what we do as long as we change the organization and get the business people from other fields out of our business. Make the trainers the highest earners in the field. We are the heart and soul of the industry. We can eliminate the aliens who make fitness a used car dealership. We must grow into genuine health care. If professional trainers coalesce with medical doctors aligning efforts we can make insurance companies act properly.

Practice makes perfect if the practice is perfect. I do not want to be perfect. Perfectionism is a short road to disappointment. We need to practice our craft and make thoughts automatic. We practice to make decisions on the fly. We have already considered the situation many times in PRACTICE. Training needs to become a profession. Would you hire a medical doctor who had never studied the human body? Would you hire a lawyer who cannot read? Do not hire a personal trainer who has never trained for anything! We need to make our practice a profession.

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