Personal Training: Wave of Destruction?

by Lou Schuler on Oct 5, 2007 10:20 AM EDT in News Comment 0 comments

Dr. Rock Positano, a surgeon in New York City, offers this advice about choosing a personal trainer in his blog on The Huffington Post:

A qualified and good personal trainer can help you build a great body, enhance your health and build self-confidence. But a bad trainer can cause more harm than good.

A good personal trainer will seek to enhance your strength, performance, endurance and flexibility, according to celebrity trainer Radu Teodorescu, also known as Radu, who has been in the field for more than two decades. "With personal training, someone makes sure you're doing the exercises right, realizing your full potential and making progress," he said.

Radu further adds "training can help some people change their behavior, develop character and build confidence."

But it doesn't come cheap. You're likely to shell out $75 to $300 dollars an hour, up to three times a week. Before you sign up, make sure the trainer is qualified. Poor training can result in permanent injury or make an existing orthopedic condition worse. "If your potential and individuality are not accurately analyzed, and if you are not taught in a scientific way, you can get hurt," said Radu. "Some trainers give the same program to everyone, and that can be dangerous."

Personally, I find it strange that Radu is pontificating about exercising "in a scientific way." About 10 years ago, I took one of Radu's group-conditioning classes in New York. I've played high school football, and done some extreme workouts in a lifetime of fitness pursuits. And I've never been as sore as I was in the days following that single workout with Radu. I felt like I was walking on peg legs. I had no sensation at all in my ankles and feet.

If that was a science-based workout program, I can only guess that it was from a really old textbook. Or maybe it's an entirely different field of scientific inquiry. Is there such a thing as sadophysiology?

Weekend blog meat

Is creatine the fountain of youth? No, of course not, although creatine seems to help boost the results of strength training in older lifters, so the combination of training and supplement use might turn back the clock a few years. This study from Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky's lab at McMaster University suggests that CLA supplementation, in conjunction with strength training and creatine, may add a fat-burning effect to the mix. The older men using the supplements gained an average of 4.6 pounds of muscle in six months of twice-a-week strength training. They also lost about four pounds of fat. Those taking the placebo gained about two pounds of muscle while losing less than a pound of fat. As you might expect, everyone got a lot stronger, with the supplements improving muscular endurance but not having a big impact on strength gains. (Hat tip: Anthony McInnis.)
If you can take yet another goofy study of siblings, we now learn that having an older brother, but not an older sister, can reduce your fertility. I absolutely cannot relate. I have an older brother and an older sister, as well as three younger brothers and one younger sister. As far as I can tell, all of us are ridiculously fertile. We're like a Monty Python routine. My youngest was conceived in a hot tub while we were using birth control. I had to get a vasectomy for the good of the planet.

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