With the recent surge of New Year weight-loss media, all ranging from established TV shows we’ve come to expect and new shows with even more outrageous caricatures of Personal Trainers in them, to the wave of adverts from big brand ‘Diet’ solutions fronted by women who almost certainly have never used the system and then every second magazine espousing the new magic diet/food/pill that will see you shedding 3 stone in a fortnight, it really is no wonder that people are ‘lost in the wilderness’ when it comes to looking after themselves.
What my focus is for this particular ‘Soapbox’ is the TV shows, now not all the shows are bad and I know for a fact some of the Trainers are outstanding as I actually know them, I think the problem is the TV production companies want to create some extreme television, so you have characters looking like a Dominatrix, The Hulk and an albino Mr T, putting people through torturous workouts, shouting in their faces and not showing any of the intelligence, compassion or empathy that a good Trainer would show.
I’d bet my house that in a normal environment these TV Trainers don’t act the same as when the cameras are rolling!
What does this mean for the masses?
Well I think it’s counter-productive because all you end up with is thousands if not millions of people saying ‘sod that, I’m not going to a Trainer if that’s how they treat you’, then A LOT of people who would benefit from some supervised exercise, miss out.
The TV companies do a great job in getting the Fitness Industry some much needed exposure but sadly their method of glorifying the ‘Drill Sergeant’ results in a poor hit rate when it comes to positive perception of an industry that can and should be able to help so many people.
In my experience both as a 1:1 Personal Trainer and as a group PT Instructor the workouts, results and stories that go on every day would make brilliant television and would paint a much prettier picture of what really happens inside a facility that is dedicated to people’s health, weight loss and well-being.
Let’s hope over time these shows get less cartoon-like and more ‘real-world’ so they become an advert rather than the current situation of negative press.
Don’t hold your breath though
Paul Glazby