Something that happens when you offer “in person” personal training services is that you get enquiries from at least a handful of people who will only train if someone is literally standing over them.
I’d blissfully forgotten about this in the eight-ish years since I last had a Real World offer. But alas, the last week has seen many emerge from the woodwork.
Why is this a problem? Surely it would make sense from a business standpoint to attract co-dependents clients who are willing to fork out for three, four, or even five PT sessions per week?
Truth is, it would probably be very good for my wallet (at least in the short term).
But what is good for my wallet is not always good for the person who is so generously contributing towards its fattening. Because, ultimately, that person is never going to have to engage their brain and think critically about their training if I am holding their hand through each and every one of their sessions.
This causes a lot of problems, particularly where the longevity of their newfound commitment to training is concerned.
For example, they will be completely unable to adjust their routine if, say, they’ve got less time to train that day or they’re not feeling great or even if some piece of equipment they want to use is occupied.
The result?
They’ll fall off the wagon shortly after they stop paying for sessions. And that’s only if they don’t stop immediately because paying someone to be their comfort chinchilla was the only reason they were training at all.
Either way, whatever progress was made will be swiftly lost, and that person will find themselves precisely where they were before they started, if not in a worse physical and psychological condition caused by their rationalisation hamsters spinning something to the effect of:
“I worked really hard for nothing so obviously training doesn’t work because if it did work I would have gotten results because I worked really hard.”
Followed by a few days of binging on pizza, cheesecake, and whatever ultra-processed slop counts as food these days they can get their hands on while lounging about on the sofa in a soiled tracksuit to make themselves “feel better”.
Harsh?
Perhaps I am being a little cruel, but what I am saying is true enough in most cases.
And anyway, there’s nothing I can do to help people like this – even if I wanted to.
As Jess so aptly put it:
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“Even at my fattest and laziest, I’d have been fine with one in-person personal training session per week and doing the remainder of my workouts by myself because I’m not hopeless.”
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We don’t do hopeless here, that is for sure.
Only those who are willing and able to take ownership of their training will benefit from what I teach and how I teach it.
On that note:
If you would like to learn how to write safe, sustainable programmes using methods almost lost to the mists of time, my biased recommendation is that you purchase “Silver Era Secrets” to work with me on this personally and privately for the next three months.
The programme is quite expensive (£1200), so certainly not for anyone who is feeling the pinch.
But otherwise, I think you will struggle to find a more unequivocal approach (again, I am biased).
Here are the details:
https://philtyreman.co.uk/programme/
Thank you,
Phil Tyreman
P.S. The programme I have linked above is fully remote. However, as I mentioned my in person offering I’d be dumb not to shill it. So, if you are within a commutable distance of Goole (specifically, DN14 8BD) and you would like to learn more about working with me in the flesh, reply to this email saying as such and I shall furnish you with the info.