After 40 years in Exercise, Injury and Nutrition, it never ceases to amaze me what claims are made concerning some exercise methods.
The eminently flawed practice of online personal training is probably one of the ‘classics’now freely available.
So called 'personalised 'exercise programming sent to you on your computer by someone often hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles away, is something widely advertised these days, but its possible consequences for a great many should be noted very carefully indeed!
Every person moves differently within their genetic/personal ranges of physical motion, so no two people anywhere are the same. Each person has different strong and weak points within their personal capabilities and physiological movement patterns.
At any given point in their lives, many people will have biomechanical idiosyncrasies that prevail. They can vary from small degrees of postural conditions such as lordosis, scoliosis or kyphosis, maybe a small degree of kneecap shift/tracking or a slightly imbalanced gait pattern, to a back niggle/misalignment. The selection of very possible negative 'starting point' factors that need to be noted for safety before exercising is extensive.
People, who have (often unknowingly) very minor problems, are then 'approved' by the distant trainer and given set exercises to do. The trainer has not seen or met them, has no proper, specific idea of their ‘in the flesh’ physical condition, other than a brief questionnaires (and sometimes none!) but proceeds to give them exercise prescription!
It is more than a little possible, than the online exercise plan, could significantly escalate the sub-clinical (something small you’re physically unaware of) to the clinical (something significant, you are aware of) due to the technical ignorance of the exercises recommended 'blind' from whatever distance away.
Video presentations are certainly no safety guarantee either. Regardless of how the exercise is visually demonstrated on a screen, if certain exercising people are not biomechanically suited for the exercise they’ve been given, they will perform them wrongly or not as they should be done, without even being aware that they’re doing so.
Such a scenario is peppered with future damage possibilities, as without at least a partial Range of Motion Test to establish beforehand the total biomechanical 'ins and outs' of a person's movements, it’s actually not ‘personal’ training in the accurate sense of the phrase
Again, just in basic common sense...how can it be?
It will only be 'blanket exercise’ that could be given to anyone of the same age group and general background with the same common goal. There is no 'real' personal knowledge of the person’s beforehand, so what's personal about it?
To term it personal training is professionally incorrect as it is only supervised exercise and without proper biomechanical testing by the trainer before a finger is lifted in any form of exercise at all, that's even the situation face to face with a trainer, let alone done completely 'blind' on a computer screen.
At least done face to face, a personal trainer would at least have some basic idea of obvious postural inconsistencies and see exercise forms that are blatantly incompatible with the bodies they’ve been ‘recommended’ for. However, with a trainer in Scotland sending off programs to a client in Cornwall, never having met them, or pre-tested them personally in any way, for just fundamental common sense reasons alone, this online personal training scenario is often a perfect hidden problem escalator for many. Quick results to whatever level, subtly creating the distinct possibilities of covert physical ‘costs’ surfacing some way down the line.
By all means exercise and get fit and healthy with personal training, but if you’re going to embark on such a journey guided only at a distance online, get yourself physically checked out locally first as an absolute must. This will allow you to go forward confidently and work for the results you’re after in a lot more safety and with as much assurance as possible; knowing you’re not going to end up with a back or knee problem thanks to someone guiding you from who knows how many miles away.
I speak from personal experience here, as last year I dealt with 43 people who had ‘suffered’ from online personal training formats and that’s just the people I had contact with in the course of my own work, so how many more out there! Get checked out first.
Alan Gordon.
