Give Trainers a Role in Rehab
By: Ulrik Larsen
Ulrik Larsen puts the case for upskilling personal trainers to take on injury management
In recent months SIB has been debating the strengths and weaknesses of the sports physiotherapy profession, and particular the relative roles of physios and fitness trainers. For me, this is far more than just an academic debate, as it goes to the heart of work I am currently developing, as a sports physio, with the Australian personal trainer industry.
My own thinking is based on five years of extensive involvement with personal trainers and their clients, exposure to the machinations of personal trainer management systems, and work that I have done educating trainers in in-service forums and now in a new in-depth modular course that I have developed, called `Rehab Trainer`.
What follows is a SWOT analysis (strengths. weaknesses, threats and opportunities) of the Australian personal trainer industry. I cannot claim that the analysis will hold equality true for other countries, but I suspect there will be many aspects that others will recognize in their own domestic situations. My hope is that this kind of debate, and in professional development initiatives such as `Rehab Trainer`, will help to push the sports therapy world on into increasingly productive collaboration and satisfactory outcomes for our clients.
Strengths
In Australia the personal trainer industry is booming. There are new gyms popping up all over the place; quality gyms/health clubs are expanding rapidly and positioning themselves for further growth; and educational institutions are consequently enjoying huge demand for their Certificate III and IV personal training graduate courses.
There has clearly been a big increase in the proportion of gym-goers wanting to work with a personal trainer on their fitness programs. The average user attending a health club seems to view their exercise, and even having a personal trainer , as an integral part of a healthy lifestyle, rather than it being a luxury that they won’t afford.
My own situation in Queensland bears out this trend. I am part of a large multi-disciplinary sports medicine clinic that serves as `pit crew` to a massive gym next door. There, 20 to 30 personal trainers ply their trade around the clock, for 5,000 fitness-seeking mums and dads, plumbers, corporate executives, and even the odd athlete. And everyone seems to win.
These days’ clients tend to focus as much on maintaining physical health as on having a `great` body. Personal training has become a lot more than your basic machines and exercises; it encompasses a vast selection of outdoor activities, functional exercises, flexibility and core stability regimes, and new equipment designed to push the body in new ways toward optimal state.
From my perspective as a sports physio-therapist working hard to keep the clients on track with their chosen fitness regimes, the arrangement gives me no end of satisfaction, because the dovetailing of the allied health and the personal trainer profession result in a rapid return to training for injures body parts.
Anecdotally there is no question in my mind that an injured client who belongs to a gym and is a regular exerciser with a personal trainer is much more likely to be motivated in their injury rehab. They are also therefore less likely to become over-dependant on the clinician to give them temporary feel-good treatments.
I am spending a lot more time with clients these days in the gym, watching them do a particular exercise, or discussing with a personal trainer the poor technique or poor movement issues that are intimately connected to the client’s pathology. With a personal trainer on board, the client is much more likely to keep up their training, even in a modified form, until an injured body part becomes functional again