Become a Certified Personal Trainer
ISSA

At about 400 B.C., Hippocrates wrote the following:

Eating alone will not keep a man well: he must also take exercise. For food and exercise, while possessing opposite qualities, yet work together to produce health …and it is necessary, as it appears, to discern the power of various exercises, both natural exercises and artificial, to know which of them tends to increase flesh and which to lessen it; and not only this, but also to proportion exercise to bulk of food, to the constitution of the patient, to the age of the individual...

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In addition consider the following. Of all the leaders our nation has ever had President Theodore Roosevelt was one of the strongest – physically and mentally. However he did not start that way. As a child, he was puny and very sickly. He had debilitating asthma, poor eyesight and was extremely thin. When he was twelve years old his father told him,

You have the mind, but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should. You must make the body.

Theodore Roosevelt began spending every day building his body as well as his mind and did that for the rest of his life. He worked out with weights, hiked, ice-skated, hunted rowed, rode horseback and boxed. As history can attest to, Theodore Roosevelt’s strength in mind and body contributed to his strength in leadership for our country.

Another great leader of our nation was President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Kennedy like Roosevelt touted the benefits of physical activity for optimal health.

“Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.”

Notwithstanding the following contentions, the profession of personal training is a relatively new field, which continues to expand and redefine itself and the context of its boundaries. Prior to the early 1980s, no minimal requirements existed that qualified or identified one as a personal trainer. Those who engaged in training were still an esoteric group with many early trainers learning about training solely through personal experiences in the gym. This lack of a minimal requirement inspired Dr. Sal Arria and Dr. Fred Hatfield to pioneer a personal fitness trainer certification that would merge in gym experience with practical and applied sciences.

Who is a Personal Trainer?

Today a personal fitness trainer can be defined as an individual who educates and trains clients in the performance of safe and appropriate exercises to effectively lead their clients to optimal health. Personal trainers can be either self-employed or employed by health clubs, physicians’ offices, physical therapy clinics, wellness centers, hospitals, rehabilitation facilities and private studios.

Who Wants Personal Training?

Since 1998, the number of Americans belonging to health clubs has grown twenty-three percent or seven million members according to the 2002 IHRSA/ASD Health Club Trend Report. Health club membership among children under eighteen years of age has jumped by one-hundred-and-eight-seven percent since 1987. The number of clients considering personal training services continues to grow. The American Sports Data Inc., a company that specializes in sports and fitness research since 1983, projected that 4,021,000 people in the United States alone paid for personal training services in 1998. The survey revealed the following:

• Three out of Five clients are women
• Clients report an average of 18 sessions with a trainer
• Clients paid an average fee of $34.00 per session
• Average Household Income of Clients
  • Under $25,000 18%
  • $25,000 - $49,999 20%
  • $50,000 - $74,999 20%
  • $75,000 and up 42%
• Average Sessions used in 12 months
  • 1 – 6 47%
  • 7 – 11 12%
  • 12 – 24 11%
  • 25 – 49 8%
  • 50 + 11%
  • Not Reported 11%
• Number of Sessions Clients used by Age
  • 6 – 11 years old 22 sessions
  • 12 –17 26 sessions
  • 18 – 34 15 sessions
  • 35 – 54 14 sessions
  • 55 + 24 sessions

These statistics support the growing trend and need for personal training services. While those 4,021,000 individuals who purchased personal training services are sold on the need for personal training, why is personal training a necessity?

Why Personal Training is Necessary?

The Office of the Surgeon General released its Report on Physical Activity and Health in 1996. The report strongly supports the role of physical activity for good health and prevention of major health problems. The National Institutes of Health released a Consensus Statement on the importance of physical activity for cardiovascular health. The Healthy People 2000 objectives list physical activity and fitness as the first of twenty-two priority areas. The American Heart Association included physical inactivity and low fitness levels as primary risk factors along with smoking hypertension and high cholesterol.

Unfortunately even with the resounding benefits of physical activity and fitness being touted and reported, America is currently undergoing an obesity epidemic with twenty-five percent of Americans still remaining sedentary. This would equate to one out of four Americans still being sedentary. To make matters worse, the federal resources and funds for physical activity have lagged far behind other aspects of health. Health and physical education in our schools are a low priority and are often the first programs to be cut in schools.

Consider the following as well. Americans spend more than $600 billion dollars annually for health care. This meteoric figure translates into an expenditure of almost $3,000 for every individual in the entire population. Regrettably, this financial commitment neither has shown signs of abating, nor has it produced totally acceptable results with regard to treating a wide variety of chronic health problems.

Attempts to identify the factors which have been major contributions to this virtual epidemic of medical problems have produced a litany of probable reasons why such a large number of individuals are so apparently unhealthy; poor eating habits, a sedentary lifestyle, stress, poor health habits (i.e., smoking), ad infinitum. At the same time, a number of studies have been undertaken to identify what, if anything, can be done to diminish either the number or the severity of medical problems affecting the public. These studies have provided considerable evidence that exercise has substantial medicinal benefits for individuals of all ages.

Two of the most widely publicized efforts to investigate the possible relationship between exercise and disease were longitudinal studies, each of which involved more than 10,000 subjects. Several years ago, in a renowned study of 17,000 Harvard graduates, Ralph Paffenbarger, M.D., found that men who expended approximately 300 calories a day; the equivalent of walking briskly for 45 minutes, reduced their death rates from all causes by an extraordinary 28% and lived an average of more than two years longer than their sedentary former classmates. A more recent study conducted by Steven Blair, P.E.D., of the Institute of Aerobics Research in Dallas documented the fact that a relatively modest amount of exercise has a significant effect on the mortality rate of both men and women. The higher the fitness level, the lower the death rate (after the data was adjusted for age differences between subjects in this eight-year investigation of 13,344 individuals). An analysis of the extensive data yielded by both studies suggests one inescapable conclusion … Exercise Is Medicine!

Accepting the premise that regular exercise can play a key role in reducing your risk of incurring a medical problem and in decreasing your ultimate costs for health care is a critical step. Despite the vast number of individuals who lead a sedentary lifestyle, the need for and the value of exercising on a regular basis is an irrefutable fact of life (and death). For example, Paffenbarger concluded after a detailed review of the results of his long-term investigation that not exercising had the equivalent impact on your health as smoking one and one-half packs of cigarettes a day. Fortunately, with few exceptions, most people are too sensible to ever consider ravaging their health by smoking excessively. Unfortunately, many of these same people fail to recognize the extraordinary benefits of exercise in preventing and treating medical problems.

Any listing of the medical problems and health-related conditions that
can be at least partially treated and controlled by exercise would be
extensive. Among the most significant of these health concerns and the
manner in which exercise is thought to help alleviate each condition are
the following:

• Allergies. Exercise is one of the body's most efficient ways to control nasal congestion (and the accompanying discomfort of restricted nasal blood flow).
• Angina. Regular aerobic exercise dilates vessels, increasing blood flow— thereby improving your body's ability to extract oxygen from the bloodstream.
• Anxiety. Exercise triggers the release of mood-altering chemicals in the brain.
• Arthritis. By forcing a skeletal joint to move, exercise induces the manufacture of synovial fluid and helps to distribute it over the cartilage and to force it to circulate throughout the joint space.
• Back Pain. Exercise helps to both strengthen the abdominal muscles and the lower back extensor muscles and stretch the hamstring muscles.
• Bursitis and Tendonitis. Exercise can strengthen the tendons— enabling them to handle greater loads without being injured.
• Cancer. Exercise helps you maintain your ideal body weight and helps keep your level of body fat to a minimum.
• Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Exercise helps build up the muscles in your wrists and forearms— thereby reducing the stress on your arms, elbows, and hands.
• Cholesterol. Exercise will raise your level of HDL (the "good" cholesterol) in the blood and help lower your level of LDL— the undesirable lipoprotein.
• Constipation. Exercise helps strengthen the abdominal muscles, thereby making it easier to pass a stool.
• Depression. Exercise helps speed metabolism and deliver more oxygen to the brain; the improved level of circulation in the brain tends to enhance your mood.
• Diabetes. Exercise helps lower excess blood sugar levels, strengthen your muscles and heart, improve your circulation, and reduce stress.
• Fatigue. Exercise can help alleviate the fatigue-causing effects of stress, poor circulation and blood oxygenation, bad posture, and poor breathing habits.
• Glaucoma. Exercise helps relieve intraocular hypertension— the pressure buildup on the eyeball that heralds the onset of glaucoma.
• Headaches. Exercise helps force the brain to secrete more of the body's opiate-like, pain-dampening chemicals (e.g., endorphins and enkephalins).
• Heart Disease. Exercise helps promote many changes that collectively lower your risk of heart disease— a decrease in body fat, a decrease in LDL, an increase in the efficiency of the heart and lungs, a decrease in blood pressure, and a lowered heart rate.
• High Blood Pressure. Exercise reduces the level of stress-related chemicals in the bloodstream that constrict arteries and veins, increases the release of endorphins, raises the level of HDL in the bloodstream, lowers your resting heart rate (over time), improves the responsiveness of your blood vessels (over time), and helps reduce your blood pressure by keeping you leaner.
• Insomnia. Exercise helps reduce muscular tension and stress.
• Intermittent Claudication. Exercise helps improve peripheral circulation and increase your ability to tolerate pain.
• Knee Problems. Exercise helps strengthen the structures attendant to the knee— muscles, tendons, and ligaments— thereby facilitating the ability of the knee to withstand stress.
• Lung Disease. Exercise helps strengthen the muscles associated with breathing and helps boost the oxygen level in your blood.
• Memory Problems. Exercise helps to improve your cognitive ability by increasing the blood and oxygen flow to your brain.
• Menstrual Problems and PMS. Exercise helps to control the hormonal imbalances often associated with PMS by increasing the release of beta-endorphins.
• Osteoporosis. Exercise promotes bone density— thereby lowering an individual's risk of suffering a bone fracture.
• Overweight Problems. Exercise suppresses your appetite, increases your metabolic rate, burns fat, increases lean muscle mass, and improves your level of self-esteem.
• Varicose Veins. Exercise can help control the level of discomfort caused by existing varicose veins and help you prevent getting any additional varicose veins

Are the positive effects that result from exercising regularly worth the required effort? Absolutely. Should you make exercise an integral part of your daily regimen? Of course, you should. In countless ways, your life may depend on it. The meteoric rise of health care and health problems makes your success as a personal trainer predictable.

Implications for Certified Fitness Trainer Professionals

The need for personal training services continues to grow. As future ISSA fitness professionals it is imperative that we keep up with the ever-changing and evolving recommendations for health and physical fitness that have a direct application for fitness programs and exercise recommendations. With the emergence of the latest technologies information regarding health and fitness is easily accessible. However, because of the nature of the media’s use of vague and brief headlines in conjunction with radio and TV sound bites that provide only limited, confusing and often conflicting recommendations, it is important that we can help our clients, friends and family members put each new study or report in proper perspective. Personal trainers today are committed to a long-term career in health and fitness and are increasing their knowledge through additional certifications in post-rehabilitation, corporate wellness, youth fitness, senior fitness, and pre and post-natal specializations to better serve their clients in achieving and living the fitness lifestyle. As you can see, we as personal trainers have an inherent responsibility to positively shaping and influencing the health and fitness attitudes of those around us and it is our hope that individually and collectively we can bring health and fitness to the masses and make the dream of optimal health a reality for all.

What should a Personal Trainer Know?

As the industry continues to expand its boundaries and the realm of scientific knowledge concerning the human response and adaptation to exercise continues to grow, it is essential that personal fitness trainers are competent in:

• Exercise Programming
• Exercise Physiology
• Functional Anatomy and Biomechanics
• Assessments and Fitness Testing
• Nutrition and Weight Management
• Basic Emergency Procedures and Safety
• Program Administration
• Human Behavior/Motivation

Our ability as fitness professionals to educate and effectively draw our clients into the fitness lifestyle and optimal health comes from a plan that is based in the aforementioned areas as well as the knowledge of muscular, cardiopulmonary and metabolic adaptations. These adaptations are known as the training effect. The "training effect" is our body's adaptation to the learned and expected stress imposed by physical activity. Our bodies begin to change at the cellular level, allowing more energy to be released with less oxygen. Your heart and capillaries become stronger and more dispersed in order to allow a more efficient flow of oxygen and nutrients. Your muscles, tendons and bones involved with this activity also strengthen to accommodate a better proficiency at performing this activity. In time your body releases unnecessary fat from its frame and your stride and gait become more efficient. Your resting heat rate and blood pressure drop. These adaptations can be achieved through an educated trainer who can develop an appropriate fitness and health plan.

The plan must include the basic principles of fitness training: overload, specificity, individual differences, reversibility, periodization, rest, over-training, and stimulus variability. The plan requires a thorough understanding of the major muscles of the body and how they work and an understanding of metabolism; how the body converts food energy into other forms of energy the body can use at rest and during exercise. Additionally, we must learn about the function and regulation of the lungs, heart, blood vessels, hormones, brain, and nerves, as well as the weight control and temperature regulation systems at rest and during exercise. Once we have the knowledge and support to develop a comprehensive, individualized and periodized plans that effectively produce the training effect, then we will be able to effectively draw our friends, family members and future clients into the fitness lifestyle and optimal health.

Dr. Sal Arria and Dr. Fred Hatfield had a vision to pioneer a personal fitness trainer certification that would merge in gym experience with practical and applied sciences more than fifteen years ago to share the benefits of the fitness lifestyle with the masses. As the profession continues to grow and expand it boundaries, for the ISSA trainer of today and the ISSA trainer of tomorrow education and support is vital. It is the hope and vision of the ISSA that through this course text and the support provided by the entire ISSA staff, our trainers will be well rounded and more educated than in the past and will be knowledgeable on exercise and how it relates to optimal health and fitness.