Personal Fitness Professional - May 2008 - (Page 14)

“Professionals” learn to create alliances. When appropriate, I’ll gladly create a triangle featuring myself, a nutritionist and the client as the three necessary points. At times, a series of medical professionals and a trainer become the allied team that can help a client move away from hypertensive or hyperglycemic conditions. 3. Personal trainers can cure disease. That pushed some buttons. A few people walked out. I’m sure they perceived me as arrogant and outside the realm of my own scope of practice. Those who walked out missed my explanation: The word “cure” can be deﬁned as “restore to health.” If we consider the word disease as a preﬁx and a noun (“dis-ease”), we can interpret it as the absence of ease. Every day, personal trainers are helping people alleviate joint pain, helping clients improve skeletal integrity, increase the eﬃciency of the heart and lungs and develop functional strength. To suggest that we can restore those who have lost a sense of “ease” in speciﬁc areas of their lives to a place where they feel healthy and functional would be readily embraced. The words “cure and disease” are so attached to medicine that many reject the notion that trainers have an unrecognized power. I would not dare suggest we step over the lines of medicine or nutrition, but the lines are not clearly deﬁned. Over the course of the next decade, as trainers gain professional respect and maintain a commitment to continued education, their place in the allied health ﬁeld gains greater recognition. What Is the Personal Trainer Capable Of? The debate continued, with the divide growing between those who said “never” and those who said “we must.” Before I brought the room back to a sense of unity, I wanted to push things just a bit further with the following series of statements: 1. Conventional medicine has been overtaken by the process of “diagnose and medicate.” 2. Many “patients” are given labels (i.e. hypothyroid) without being provided a sense that they can be proactive in attempting to improve their health. What Are Our Aspirations? Here is the question that took the discussion from “let’s debate” to “let’s ponder”: What do we strive to be? If we seek to be exercise facilitators, if the aspiration is limited to prescribing safe and eﬀective exercise, if we are to screen, assess, prescribe and monitor to motivate, inspire and coach, then the lines are far simpler to deﬁne. If, however, we seek to change people’s lives, to help them sort their way through the 21st century’s mazes of confusion, deception and misinformation, if we are to partner with our clients in taking Boot Camps are Popular Now you can Profit Boot Camp ChallengeSM is a complete turnkey business model that produces immediate income for you and results for your members. The perfect program to increase membership, increase retention and more importantly generate more revenue. For fitness facility owners and individual fitness professionals, Boot Camp ChallengeSM is a complete licensed program that includes staff training by certified instructors, complete workout plans, assessment tools and marketing programs. You can implement Boot Camp Challenge immediately. Don’t wait, 2008 is perfect for starting a new exciting program. www.bootcamp-challenge.com www.bootcamp- Learn about training programs and licenses in your area. 636-734-8594 636- 734- 14 MAY2008 · WWW.FIT-PRO.COM http://www.bootcamp-challenge.com http://WWW.FIT-PRO.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Personal Fitness Professional - May 2008

Personal Fitness Professional - May 2008 Contents Letter from the Editor, Writers Live Your Supertrainer Legacy Current Controversies Effective Employee Manuals Product Profiles The Coolest Training Zone The Making of a Top-Notch Boot Camp Instructor Mark Your Calendar Caffeine Exercise Spotlight Product Profiles New on the Market [Spotlight] Trish Muse

Personal Fitness Professional - May 2008

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