5 Reasons to Get Excited

Written on October 29, 2008 at 8:18 pm, by Eric Cressey

5 Reasons to Get Excited

Reason #1: If you’re a fitness professional, the simple fact that you are reading this newsletter puts you ahead of most of your peers.

A few weekends ago, Mike Robertson and I went to a seminar where – out of about 175 folks in attendance – the two of us were probably the only non-physical therapists. Truth be told, the seminar organizers didn’t mandate that attendees be PTs – and they haven’t in the 25+ years that they’ve been putting on great events like this.

During the talk, one of the presenters remarked (and yes, this is a quote – and it was directed to all the physical therapists in the audience) “there is absolutely no reason for any of you to ever refer out to a fitness trainer. You can do everything they do.”

You’d think that Mike and I – as possible the closest things to trainers in the audience – would have gotten a little miffed on behalf of our profession. Truthfully, though – almost as if we shared some sixth sense – we looked at one another, shrugged, and nodded in agreement with him. As a gross generalization, it’s the truth: there are a lot of instances where people would be better off training on their own post-rehab than they would be with a trainer, as a large percentage of trainers are grossly misinformed. We have seen some crazy stuff (I elaborated on a great example HERE).

Need proof? The title of the seminar was “A Unique Approach to the Shoulder, Knee, and Spine.” I’m pretty sure that trainers deal with shoulders, knees, and spines every day – just like physical therapists. And, I can guarantee that there were more personal trainers with 100 miles of this event than there were physical therapists – yet there wasn’t a single personal trainer in attendance.

Then, let’s put it in dollars and cents. If you go to salary.com and compare the median annual benefits, 401K, and salary package total, here’s what you see:

Physical Therapist:$97,373
Personal Trainer: $73,692
Fitness Trainer: $55,262

Think about it this way: if you were a physical therapist, would you refer out to someone if you weren’t confident in their abilities to bridge the gap with the work you’d done? If they screw up a post-rehab patient, it reflects back on you and makes you look bad in a doctor’s eyes – and that’s a doctor you’re probably trying to win over – sometimes with expensive marketing pitches! It’s a “safer” play to simply not refer out to a personal trainer, as you can assume that they make less than you, have less education, and don’t understand what you do (as evidenced by seminar attendance like this; you don’t interact with them at all).

We know that this isn’t always the case; there are certainly a lot of people out there who break from this stereotype. Still, if you are a personal trainer, it’s to your advantage to get as smart as you possibly can with respect to getting/keeping people healthy – and you should pat yourself on the back for reading newsletters like this. And, to take it a step further, you should work to cultivate good relationships with physical therapists and doctors; I know that it has been a huge part of our success at Cressey Performance. It’s been a goal of mine in my writing and product creation (particularly Building the Efficient Athlete) to do more education for personal trainers and strength coaches.

This leads me to… Reason #2: It looks like we’re going to offer mentorships on a limited basis at Cressey Performance. Last week alone, I had three different people (each of whom stopped by to check out our facility for a single-day) tell me that Cressey Performance needs to get with the program and offer mentorships. To be honest, it’s something I’ve been pondering for the past month or so, and we’re really thinking about putting something special together. Itt would be tight-knit: no more than 6-8 attendees at a time. If you want to learn about functional anatomy, training folks around injuries, preventing injuries, managing overhead throwing athletes, or a host of other topics, it’ll be a good fit for you. Plan on training hard while you’re in town, too; we don’t coddle people. If you’d be interested in something like this, drop us an email at cresseyperformance@gmail.com and let us know. Our first offering will likely be January of 2009.

Reason #3: I had a new article published at T-Nation last week; check it out:

22 More Random Thoughts

Reason #4: A Free Research Review Sampler

The Research Review Service is an online, subscription-based service for exercise specialists and manual therapists looking to stay current on emerging scientific literature. Each week, these folks review and contextualize a newly published, peer-reviewed article in the area of chiropractic, physiotherapy, rehabilitation, sports injuries, acupuncture, or exercise sciences. All reviews (now over 160 of them) are posted in the growing Research Review Service online database, which is fully keyword searchable. This week, Dr. Shawn Thistle, founder and president, has made a sample available at no charge to our readers. You can download it HERE.

If you like it and want more information, visit www.researchreviewservice.com, or email Dr. Thistle at shawn@researchreviewservice.com. Enjoy!

Reason #5: New Blog Content
Maximum Strength and Interval Training
Intermittent Fasting: New Diet Solution or Passing Fad?
Random Friday Thoughts

All the Best,

EC

One Response to “5 Reasons to Get Excited”

1. Radford Says:
   March 11th, 2009 at 3:50 am

   Every time i come here I am not dissapointed, nice post