When I go back through my own experience of being a new trainer, the first thought that came to my mind when I was let loose with my first few clients was: Oh my God, I don’t know where to start. I have these people’s lives in my hand! That sent me on a lifelong quest to learn as much as possible about to become a better trainer, how to understand bodies better and as a result to be more appropriate in my choice of exercise to give my clients the most bang for their buck. To me this still is and always will be a huge responsibility. Just imagine a brand new client comes and gets given exercises and/or weights they are not ready for. Their movement is most likely restricted due to their work (sitting at a computer or in a truck). Many years of not really doing any exercise contribute to the mix. Then an inexperienced trainer doesn’t understand this and expects these clients to perform some ‘trendy’ exercise using some trendy tool, just to be seen to keep up with what else is happening in the fitness industry. Kettlebells are one one of those tools. It scares me when I hear some of my clients and other associates describe some of the things they have been asked to do. One such instance was when I myself volunteered to be a’client’ for a new trainer we were looking to employ at one of the gyms. She asked me to do some burpees among other things. I advised her that I needed her to show me how (since I was the’client’). What I saw was dangerous to say the least. She had no strength to even hold her middle together, so if she had kept going she would have ended up with a very sore back indeed. So I as the ‘client’ had no chance of doing it right.
What scares me even more is the fact that even though it is becoming far more widely known that safe and effective use of Kettlebells is being taught best through the RKC system, trainers -so I have been told- have heard about it, perhaps know of an RKC trained person in their area and still choose to ignore that they could improve their understanding of kettle bell training and proceed to train their clients like that young trainer I had the fortune to assess. The only thing that changed in this situation is the choice of tool and exercise. As a client you have every right to question the integrity of an exercise. If your trainer can’t give you a good explanation why your back hurts when you do a particular exercise, and can’t fix the movement for you, if it was me I would look for a better solution regarding a trainer. In the end it’s your body, you pay to improve the way it works, not to break it down.