Bad Personal Trainer, Bad!

Okay, today's bad personal trainer fitness follie comes from a perky female trainer who was having her female client do bench presses.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't mind when personal trainers have women do bench presses - if they are ready. I generally will let women bench press when they can do 15 real pushups. And it was great when my girls would get excited about hitting 75, 85, or 95 pounds for sets of 8. Even had one girl hit 135. And no, they didn't get bulky.

Anyways, back to today's trainer. Here was her advice to her client...

"Never use clips on the end of the bar when you bench press, because if you get stuck at the bottom position, you can just tip the bar to one side and the weights will fall off and then you can tip the bar to the other side to get the rest of the weights off. Just be careful."

Genius advice. Call your lawyer now.

Listen, if that thought even comes to mind when you are training your client, just STOP doing bench presses and use dumbbell presses. Or more pushups.

But don't give the client the green light to dump the weights during a bench press. Get them to do something safer instead. Doesn't that just seem like common sense?

Ah well, so it goes in the personal trainer circus...

Here was my workout...Last day on the Original TT Workout. The legendary 2K3 program is next.

Warmup

Prisoner Squat
Forward Lunge
Shoulder Rotations
Upper back thingy from Bill Hartman
BB Row
BB RDL
BB OH Squat
Pushups
Hip Flexor Stretch
Chest Stretch
1-Leg RDL

OH Squat 65x2x5 (Had a pro strength coach by the office this week and we got talking about the Functional Movement Screen, and he explained why he uses OH Squats in almost every workout, as either a warmup or real exercise, so I'll be using them more often)

Workout
Power Clean 185x3

1A) Bench Press - 225x7,6,6
1B) Good Morning - 195x2x8, 135x12

2A) Seated Row - 210x3x8
2B) OH Squat 95x3x5

3) 3-Minute Arms Superset (Another dandy one here)

Train safe,

Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS

PS - You don't need to bench press to lose fat gain muscle

...but no matter how many times people "dis" the bench press, it's still a good time.