The dangerous sub clinical consequences of online personal training.

After 40 years in exercise and nutrition, it never ceases to amaze me what witless and precarious claims are made concerning exercise forms and alleged results.

The eminently flawed practice of offering online personal training is probably one of the most reckless of recent times.

So called 'personalised 'exercise programing sent to you on your computer by someone often hundreds of miles away,is something widely accepted now, but its possible consequences beggar belief!

Some simple plain common sense is required and it's not rocket science!

Point 1.
Every person moves differently within their genetic/personal ranges of motion, so no two people anywhere are the same. Each person having different strong and weak points within their capabilities and movement patterns.

Point 2.
At any given point in their lives, people will have biomechanical idiosynchrasies that prevail, such as small degrees of lordosis, scoliosis, kyphosis. perhaps small degrees of patella shift/tracking or a distorted gait pattern, etc, etc, etc. The vast selection of negative 'starting point' factors that need awareness of before exercising, is truly awesome.

Point 3.
So these people unknowingly having very minor problems at that time are then 'approved' by the distant trainer and given set exercises to do.The trainer has not seen or met them, has no idea of their physical condition other than brief questionnaires (and sometimes none!)and proceeds to give them exercise prescription!

It is more than a little possible, than the e mail exercise plan, could significantly escalate the sub-clinical to the clinical due to the ignorance of the exercises recommended to that client 'blind'.

Such a scenario is unbelievably peppered with damage possibility,as without a Range of Motion Test to establish beforehand the total biomechanical 'ins and outs' of a person's physique,even personal training provided 'in the flesh' face to face' is not personal training at all.

Again, in simple common sense...how can it be........it will only be 'blanket exercise' which could be given to anyone of the same age group and general background with the same common goal. There is no 'real' personal knowledge at all, of the person's Biomechanics beforehand, so what's personal about it? ...except someone standing there watching only you...that's the only thing personal about it!

To term it personal training is professionally incorrect as it is only supervised exercise and that's the situation face to face, let alone done completely 'blind' on a computer screen.

It is a disturbing fact anyway, that probably over 95% of even 'qualified ' personal trainers, do not have the knowledge, depth of qualification or expertise to perform this full procedure and it is this very element that validates the 'personal' in 'personal training' almost everywhere.

It's some small consolation, that done face to face, a trainer has at least some idea of obvious postural shift and some idea of blatantly unacceptable exercise form. However, with a trainer in Scotland sending off programs to a client in Cornwall, never having met them, or examined them for just simple safety reasons alone, this ridiculous online personal training scenario is little more than a 'sub-clinical micro trauma' fest, with the client, sooner or later, suffering inevitable negative consequences.

Alan Gordon