"One size fits all" program discussions are all too common. "What if I modify 5/3/1 into a 1/3/5? Is that ok? What if I invert the Texas method with upside down hanging power cleans as my main lift with squats biweekly?" These discussions ought to be about "How do I find a personal trainer that is right for me so I can make sure I am making the most of my limited training time?"
I see it kind of like the "What is this huge lesion?" or "I really fucked up my ankle, internet doctor needed" kind of threads. I don't understand why people will pay perfectly good money for tons of clothing, frivolous drinks in bars, extra food, movies, and whatever else they spend their disposable cash on, but they will never hire a personal trainer.
Are people afraid of being on the hook and being unable to sever the relationship? It doesn't even have to be like a semi-permanent thing. Like when you go to a psychotherapist, they are invested in your continuing to believe that you need a therapist, and they will often times color the discussion to that extent. Only the best therapists will actually proactively say to you "ok, you're done, you don't need therapy anymore."
Some personal trainers are the same way. But there is a literal flood of online trainers available these days. If you grow tired of online instruction, you just stop payment, and stop communicating. How hard is that?
Maybe it's the glut factor itself--the act of finding a good provider of ANY kind of health care is often a daunting tasks. Even finding a primary care provider. But if people put as much energy into threads discussing and vetting the specializations and traits of personal trainers as they do creating threads asking for non-assessed advice, it'd be pretty easy, and very many people would end up with perfect matches.
And that is the very problem that mandates trainers in the first place--a lack of assessment. People pop up on the internet as little more than a forum username, and immediately tons of users begin recommending things to them without knowing anything at all about that person's age, weight, goals, injury history, muscle imbalances, sleep, diet, recovery capacity, hormone panel, personality and compliance characteristics, etc. Do people actually think none of this stuff matters?
Personalization is everything in athletic training. When you see someone on a forum saying "I've gotten great results on 5/3/1" or whatever else, if they are training themselves, you can pretty much guarantee that they made 10x the number of mistakes on that road than they WOULD have made if they had put a little time into finding an appropriate trainer and then taking advantage of that person's customized experience and expertise. And if they got great results, they probably could have gotten GREATER results.
Even if you are vain enough to think that you're just as good a trainer as someone who went to school for 4+ years and passed tests like the CSCS, you can't outrun the concept of the "blind self." Every person, no matter how self-aware and no matter how intelligent, suffers from blind spots in their knowledge about their own character, tendencies, strenths, and weaknesses. Because of this, a second pair of eyes can make a huge difference to even the most experienced of trainees.
Even the wise old trainer's trainer Dan John uses a personal trainer. Are you smarter than Dan--or just more stubborn?
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