Really? I can't train my wife?!

What a joke! I was in the gym the other day, the gym I pay for a membership for my wife and I, helping my wife workout. I hesitate to use the word "train" at all, because really she just needs a little motivation (13 weeks prego will do require that) and some ideas about new workouts and exercises. So I was running her through a workout, at this stage a warm-up - some Samson stretches, jumping jacks, squat thrusts, etc. The workout was not even that strange - sumo deadlift high-pulls, push-ups, and lunges. 20 minute AMRAP. However, one of the trainers says to me quite pointedly, quite intentionally, obviously with meaning, "are you working out too, Steve?" I said, "No. I am just showing Austen a new workout." He says, "be careful, they don't allow independent trainers doing work in here." Ok, if it were a warning, then I totally appreciate it, and actually at the time, I was very thankful and just threw in a few sets of push-ups and burpees here and there to make it look like I was working out too, not just training her. But, damn. This really got me thinking and a little ticked off as the thought percolated. I am like, really dude, it's my wife. She's not paying me, she's not a "client" - WTF!?

I am now not sure if the fella was trying to help me or be a tool bag. 

Turns out, that for the past month or two this guy's good pal, also a trainer at this gym, was trying to get my wife to pay for some training in Kettlebell workouts. Well, a few problems with this. 1) why would she pay someone else to show her how to swing a kettlebell when I can do it for free? 2) Why would she pay to have someone show her how to use a kettlebell when the gym does not even make the kettlebells available. No, they are locked away in the secret personal trainer room where the average member cannot access that equipment. And finally, 3) why would she pay for training from a man who is obviously out of shape. The dude is fat. Fine, he can throw around a kettlebell, but what about looking the part?

I tend to think about shopping for personal training, not that I shop for that, like shopping for anything else. If a horse farmer started telling you all about "horse power" would you buy an engine from him? Would you buy health food products from this guy (LOL) or Kirsty Alley? Would you buy a cat from a puppy mill? Would you buy a fancy rat from a pet store that specialized in reptile sales? No! Hell NO! So why in the world do some trainers think that clients will sign up to pay (a lot) of money for personal training with an individual that looks ostensibly out of shape, or at the very least in worse shape then the people they are trying to gain as clients. How do these folks sleep at night? I've written about this before here. But thought I'd update it a little here, because of this past incident. Now the guy who "warned me" and I am greatful, because I'd hate to have lost my gym membership or something, is fit as a fiddle. Ripped, strong, muscular, etc. But he is one of 2, maybe 3 trainers that are in what I would refer to as "good shape". The other 3-4 are, well, turds. And as far as I can tell they aren't even gold plated! LOL. 

So, this got me thinking a bit. What's the strategy here? There must be some marketing scheme behind all this "mess" right? I think there is. Let me expound my hypothesis and see what you think. 

If I am a gym, and I want to get business from the largest possible most disbursed clientele around in order to rake in the $$ then I need to cater to people who are "serious" about working out and those that are what I've heard referred to as "fair weather worker outers" or "resolution lifters". I'll start by describing the first type of individual: The serious worker outer. These individuals have been dedicated to fitness for a while now. They are already generally fit, some very fit. They come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors: from marathoner to body builder to ex-collegiate athlete to the mom/dad who is just trying to keep up with his kids. They most likely do not need personal training. They've gotten this far on some good coaching, reading magazines like Men's Health, by watching and talking to others in the gym, or by simply having a "knack" for understanding their own kinesthetic sense of awareness and how musculature and exercise work. These are what we might call "naturals", right?   The second type of gym goer is not that fit. They might have joined, bought a membership as a new years resolution claiming, "This is going to be the year I knock off these 20 pesky pounds!" They might be the person who, one day looks in the mirror and then looks down at her plane tickets to Cancun and thinks, what am I going to look like in that bikini? They join for a completely different, acute (or short-lived) reason. They may not even appear to be in bad shape, although many do in my opinion. 

Knowing this, I think that the gyms target their clients with personal training - because to be honest that's where the real money is. Personal training is like the drinks at a restaurant and the membership fees are simply the meal. In case you did not know, most places make the majority of their profits off of drink orders and meals are designed to make people thirsty so that they can make more money off of drink orders. Cool, well sort of.  SO the membership just gets them in the door. Then they are approached, targeted, I would say by PT. It does not take Einstein to see where my thinking is here: if someone comes in and is reasonably fit, then approaching them with a fatty PT is stupid, moronic. This is what happened to my wife. My wife can back squat her body weight, bench press 3/4 - 2/3 her body weight, clean and jerk, snatch, and she can max overhead squat over 100 lbs. Oh and did I mention she's 13 weeks prego? Wrong approach strategy here. Rather folks who are already fit are generally approached (and I must admit that there is probably a reasonable rate of error based on some sort of signal detection theory, think loose clothing, prego belly, etc) by one of the two really fit trainers. One just looks like a great athlete and the other is a competitive body builder. "Yeah they look good, many people would want to 'look' like that!" Hell yeah! On the other hand, there are those folks - the resolutioners or fair weather fitters - that need attention too. Approaching them with someone who is obviously a real athlete could be very intimidating, right. That kind of mental discrepancy wreaks havoc with our minds. Let me give you an example where it often pops in and we loathe it. The car dealership. You walk in wanting to buy an updated model of your, say Toyota Corolla. The salesperson is not happy with that because the commission is low on that car. So they try to sell you the Sequoia or the Land Cruiser. Yeah, mucho dinero there. Your Bullshit detector goes bonkers and you head for another dealership. 

It's a clever little scheme (and I mean scheme in it's proper definitional sense, not the Dr. Evil sense) to target the ends of the fitness spectrum. An additional added benefit of this strategy by gyms is that those individuals in the middle 68% of the distribution will usually fall in one of three categories (in my experience and humble opinion): 1) they will be happy with where they are and their $25 / month gym membership and not care to do any personal training; 2) be impressed by the ever present fit personal trainer and desire to look like or be as strong as them which results in them seeking training by someone better than them; and 3) be intimidated by the super fit trainers and default to the turd trainer with the idea that once they get a little fitter then they will feel more comfortable training with the fit trainer. Ingenious, not ever sure it's been planned, scheme, IMHO. 

At the end of the day, I feel really honoured that my wife would even want me to train her - not sure what end of the spectrum I fall in from the above discussion, but I do feel like I've become fitter and am pleased she trusts me and respects me to train her. And the fact that the folks at the gym think it's bogus for me to do so, is well just upsetting. Sorry, turd, she'd rather train with her old (and by old I mean aged) man then you....