Fitness Enhancement - Personal Trainer Gold Coast

It’s that time of year when anyone who watches channel 10’s Biggest Loser show is either inspired by the amazing success stories, or is completely scared off by exercise and Personal Trainers!

If you’ve trained with us before, you know that we’re not that scary and cruel, and I’m sure the Biggest Loser Trainers aren’t either when the cameras are turned off. However, the show puts in the minds of many Australians that a Personal Trainer’s answer to weight loss is putting you in lockdown, starving you, judging you’re every move and training you until you’re sick or worse. Sure many contestants get amazing short term results from the show, and some maintain this success, but at what price?

In the 2012 Australian series, after only a few weeks of exercise, 5 of the 16 contestants have injuries as a result of the exercises they’ve been given. That is over 30% of their clients injured in just a few weeks. And we’re not talking about a tender muscle, they are serious injuries. Injuries such as these on a middle-aged morbidly obese person can often cause life long problems. If, we as Personal Trainers, injured even 3% of our clients at Fitness Enhancement every few weeks, we’d be out of business - and so we should. So don’t worry, we won’t injure you (we won’t even make you cry), in fact since 1999 and across hundreds of thousands of Personal Training sessions we have NEVER injured a client.

So how come so many Biggest Loser contestants get injured?

Aren’t these apparently some of the best Personal Trainers in the country backed up by a team of Doctors, Physios and more? So how come they injure more clients then we (and thousands of other credible Personal Trainers Australia wide) do? There are lots of reasons, however in summary:

• High Impact – If you’re fairly fit, try picking up 50kg and jumping up and down with it, you’re knees will hate you for it! And if you’re 50kg overweight, don’t try it, just take our word for it! It’s so easy to avoid high impact and look after you joints!
• Inappropriate Exercises – Many of the exercises are designed for fit and strong people, not morbidly obese people who haven’t exercised for 10 plus years.
• High Risk Exercises – Jumping on a treadmill while it is already going at 20km/hr is dangerous. If you need further evidence, look up “Treadmill accident” on You Tube!
• No Means No - Sure it’s a Personal Trainer’s job push their client to levels they would never push themselves, and most people’s minds will give up before their body, but where do you draw the line?
• Intensity - The goal is to push a client to their limit not past it. Sometimes that extra rep is just one to many, it’s a Personal Trainers job to know that, and if in doubt, do one less – not five more.
• Technique – Bad technique results in you using the wrong muscles, the wrong way. If you’re so tired you can’t even stand up straight during an exercise, you’re asking for trouble from poor technique.
• Recovery – The show fails to show just how tired, sore and hungry the contestants would be all of the time. If you’re already at your limit, and you push it further, you will hit the wall, both physically and mentally.
• Pre-existing Injuries – Odds are most contestants had minor injuries to begin with. Most people their size do. All the more reason to be careful of all of the above points!

Now of course if they trained contestants the way they should be trained and cut out all the crazy exercises and drama, the show would be so boring no one would watch it. I guess channel 9 found that out with Excess Baggage which was a much more “normal“ approach to exercise and healthy eating, but painfully boring to watch!

Of course they’re all adults, they need serious help and it’s their choice to go to extremes. We also have clients we train to absolute extremes from extremely hard working fit clients we’ve had for 10 years to competitive fighters. However, we realise these extremes and the dangers of insinuating our typical out-of -shape client should train that way. Unfortunately the Biggest Loser portrays exercise and Personal Training as extreme and painful to the 50% of Australians that are overweight or obese, and the many people suffering from eating disorders and negative body image.  

The show isn’t just entertainment, it influences the health and weight of many of its children, teen and adult viewers and in the hunt for ratings, takes no social responsibility in how it may affect its viewers. Combine this with the typical poser image of Gyms and it’s easy to see why so many people never have the confidence to start, or if they do start, feel they have “failed” if they only lose a kilo a week.

So if you’ve been inspired, but a little scared off by the Biggest Loser, don’t be scared off by us. We’re not here to “break you,” we’re not here to yell at you for eating the wrong foods, and we’re certainly not here to unnecessarily increase the odds of injuring you. We’re here to solve the problems you’ve had on past programs and get you enjoying exercising whilst balancing the rest of your life. We’re here to help you lose weight for life, not three months.

Give us a call on 5596 6617 to see that exercise can actually be fun, yes even if you hate exercise!

P.S. Yes, we have had clients get comparable results to Biggest Loser contestants in a short time frame! The catch is - it’s so rare that we have a client that is able to financially commit to Personal Training for 10+ hours a week, not to mention the motivation, energy and day job they need to hold down as well! However, when a client does make that step, the results even blow us away – and every client finishes every session injury free with a smile on their face!