There's an epidemic in the fitness industry, but it's one where you're only going to get sick if you're misguided enough to volunteer to be infected. Yes, I said "volunteer."

I'm talking about the scores of guys who want to be considered experts without ever having coached or trained anyone. Hell, most of these guys have never even played a sport before, and some of them don't even train. I'm talking about guys who believe the hype about how you can go on the internet, start dispensing meaningless training and nutritional advice you've never used on anyone, and make loads of money and have people kissing your ass.

Trust me, it doesn't happen that way.

Look at the most successful "internet personality" trainers on the internet. Yes, it would be nice to be able to rake in money online selling products and services and memberships on websites like they do, but before you go about doing that, you have to look at the common thread with the guys who are doing this. When you do, you're realize they're ALL FOR REAL.

They've played sports. They've trained. They own gyms. They've made sacrifices to do what they love. They were in the business of training and coaching people for years, learning their ass from their elbow, before they started spouting off about how they're doing something different from what everyone else is doing. You see, some guys ARE doing different things in the industry, but they're doing these things because they have years of experience and they've noticed trends in the results they get with the hundreds and thousands of people they've worked with.

When you volunteer to listen to - and put your training and nutrition - in the hands of people who've never "done it," you're doing yourself a grave disservice. You're also diving headfirst into everything that's wrong with this industry - "football trainers" who've never played nor coached football, "gurus" who've never broken a sweat in the gym, and frauds who claim they're making millions online from the safety of their mom's basement. These people are a living, breathing insult to everyone who's actually done something in this industry, so before you invest your time, money and fitness in someone who's promising you the sun, the moon and the stars, take a look at where they've been and what they've done.

I'm changing my program.

I'm not doing this because I'm unhappy with what I've been doing. I'm doing it because I've been leaning more and more, these days, toward making a return to competitive powerlifting, and because my training has been going very well lately. I'll give you a little history here.

I've been doing the same thing for about two years. The program I've been working off is something I designed for myself in order to gain strength and size like a "regular guy." What this means is that I'm a normal guy with a job and responsibilities, and all I've wanted has been to get in and out of the gym in an hour or less while still making progress. I haven't been competing in anything -- not football, not bodybuilding and not powerlifting.

Without getting into specifics, I'm changing things around to gear my training more toward competitive powerlifting -- to specifically increase my bench, squat and deadlift numbers so I can compete at meets and get my total where I want it on the platform. I'm blogging about this today because thinking about the changes I'm making, and the reasoning behind them, has made me consider some things regarding why people change their programs. There are a few rules I think people should follow when they embark on any program, and I think they'll help you if you're not making progress right now.

1. Think Long Term
Too many people try programs out for a few weeks, fail to make progress, then move on to something else - especially here in the internet age when so much training information is so readily available. In order to experience success on any program, you need to take the time to allow your body to adapt to the changes you're making. It's just that simple. Whenever you try out a new program, figure you're going to be doing it for at least a year, otherwise you're not giving it a fair shake and you're going nowhere. This doesn't mean you can't change your exercises or your rep schemes, but if you're not using something of the same "general spirit" on a consistent basis, you're not giving yourself a chance to improve.

2. Know What You Want
I'm switching things up because I have a specific goal in mind - success on the powerlifting platform. In order to make a program work, you have to know what you're getting into, and you have to have an end in mind. You might get bigger doing Westside, but it's a primarily a strength program. You might get stronger doing DC training, but it's mainly a bodybuilding program designed to build mass. I've seen way too many people start programs for the wrong reasons - because the programs "look cool" - then fail to realize the ultimate objective of what they're doing. Then they switch to something else and waste a month of their lives. That's not what you want.

3. Read and Research
#2 segues nicely into #3, because you need to know exactly what programs do and how to work them before you start. And because all the information you'll ever need is already "out here," there's no excuse for ignorantly wandering into the gym, grabbing a barbell and claiming you're on some well-known program without getting the results you're after. I'm not saying it's easy, but there's no excuse nowadays for being unprepared or under-researched. It's all out there for you.

The main point here is that you have to give everything you try the full treatment. You need to learn as much as you can about what you're doing, then give it ample time to "take." If you don't, you'll spend the next five years just like everyone else you see in the gym - chasing your tail and going nowhere.

You know who you are. I'm not going to name the gym, but you train at a place in North Hollywood, California. You're about 5'8", 190, you look like Sam Kinison - only in worse shape - and you're probably the most annoying dude I've ever encountered in a gym. This is for you. You're a tool, and I hope you read this...

The Story

So, I'm in my corner in the squat rack minding my own business when this guy comes over to the scalloped rack next to me with a gym bag. He bends over, pulls a bottle of Windex out of his bag and starts spraying everything down - the rack, the plates, and the two barbells he brought over.

He then proceeds to put two 45 pound plates on each barbell, setting one on the floor and one in position to squat with. Then he drops two tens on the floor so he can squat - the utility of this is STILL lost on me - with his heels on them. So, now he has s--t all over the floor, and the entire back corner of the gym REEKS of Windex, which is not exactly what I want to be inhaling when I'm working my ass off and need to breathe.

The first thing he does is a set of ten quarter-squats, with a ridiculously close stance. Then he racks the barbell and immediately does a set of ten deadlifts. Not impressive at all, obviously, but not the worst thing I've ever seen. At least he's "training legs," right?

Sure, but then he does something I've absolutely NEVER seen before. When he finished deadlifting, he immediately SAT DOWN ON THE BARBELL. And that's where he rested. SITTING DOWN ON THE BARBELL THAT WAS ON THE FLOOR.

He did this three times, and then he picked up all his stuff and walked away, leaving the loaded barbell and the tens on the floor, and the loaded barbell in the rack. He didn't come back.

This entire sequence was so wrong on so many levels that I don't even know where to begin. What the hell was the purpose of the Windex, and why wouldn't you then clean the barbell again AFTER you had your ass all over it? Did he think he was cleaning up after all the other tools who sit on barbells?

I have a new idea, spurred by my morbid curiosity with these people. From now on, in commercial gyms, I'm just going to randomly walk up to people and ask them questions:

"What are you doing?"

"Why are you doing that?"

"Why did you just do that?"

I really, really, really need to know what these people are thinking.

Since I started this job with Muscle and Fitness, I've been training in a cheesy commercial gym for the first time in my life. Mind you, I'm not blaming Muscle and Fitness for this - it's just that I've moved to an area of California where I don't have too many training choices and had to choose a gym where "regular" people train. It's all about geographical proximity out here. LA traffic is so lousy that if you have to drive anywhere out of your comfort zone on a regular basis, you're kind of screwed.

Anyway, this has given me the opportunity - some would call it the misfortune - to observe a whole slew of garden variety commercial gym personal trainers in their natural habitat, and what I've seen so far is, let's just say, cause for concern. So much so that it actually makes me feel sorry for the poor souls who come to these guys thinking they're going to have their workout/nutrition/aesthetics problems solved in any way, shape or form.

I've seen two massive problems thus far: crappy exercise technique and a complete lack of assessment of the physical capabilities - strengths and weaknesses - of clients. The exercise technique thing absolutely kills me, and it goes back to what I've been writing about regarding the adoption of exercises and "gimmicks" that trainers don't even know how to use. An example of this at my gym happens when trainers try to use some warped, distorted version of box jumps with their clients.

Every trainer in the place does the same exact thing. They take an adjustable height flat bench and have their clients jump on it. I know I'm generalizing here, but I'm going to take a guess and say they're doing this because they saw it on YouTube and it looks cool. Chances are they've never taken part in an extended plyometric program, they've never learned the proper form for a jump or a landing, and they have no clue how to set the height of a jump, the total volume of jumps or where jumps fit into an effective program.

They simply say, "Let's go jump!" And everyone does it dead wrong.

The other thing that irritates me is watching people who can barely even walk and chew gum at the same time doing load-bearing exercises while the trainer sips a latte and screws around with his iPhone.

The one thing trainers need to keep in mind is that you have to watch EVERYTHING when you're training someone. The entire workout is an assessment, and the programming process is dynamic, meaning you need to keep a close eye on your clients' strengths and weaknesses, take notes, and adjust their programs based on what your eyes are telling you. If my client is squatting and he's completely bent over two reps in, he needs work on his lower back and his hamstrings. If he's dry humping the air when he stands up, his abs need work. If he can't keep his balance, maybe he doesn't need a bar on his back at all.

These little key points exist with virtually every movement clients perform in the gym, but the trainers at my gym aren't watching. They're cheerleading and grandstanding. That's about all they do, and it's sad. It's all about laziness and separating you from your money with the least effort possible.

If you're going to do something for a living, you may as well at least try to do it right, no?

I've been around training for the better part of 25 years, and there are some set-in-stone, unshakable conclusions I've come to regarding the weight room. Sure, I'm always trying to learn more in order to get bigger and stronger, but there are a few things I've established for myself that won't ever change no matter how much evidence I see to the contrary - although, to be fair, if something is established as gym law for me, chances are I won't be seeing much evidence to the contrary anyway. It takes years to form these conclusions, and at this point, it'll take years to un-form them. And, quite frankly, I don't really think I want to.

Here's rule #1 for me: I don't take training advice from people who don't train.

The only exception to this rule is that I'll listen to old-school guys who've been big and strong, and HAVE trained, but currently can't for medical reasons. That's about it. If you're under the age of, say, 80, and you're healthy, you'd better currently be training in order for me to listen, otherwise we can't possibly understand one another. You can't understand athletes because you've voluntarily given up on being one, so you can't presume to tell anyone else how to be one.

When you're looking for someone to coach or train you, here are the criteria you should be using (and if you're a trainer, here are some things you should be thinking about):

Has this person ever done what he or she is trying to tell me how to do?
If I want to get bigger, I'll go to a big guy and ask him how he got there. If I want to bench 405 pounds, I'll go to a guy who's done it and ask him for his road map. If I'm training for a bodybuilding contest, I'll go to a guy who has done one and succeeded. Don't even get me started about the training of football players. I also want to go to someone who's helped other people achieve these goals before I ever came along.

Assuming this person has done what he or she is trying to tell me how to do, does he or she know how to individualize a program to get YOU there?
This, my friends, is the problem with the first question. You can't just go to a guy and copy what he did to get big or strong or bench 405, because everyone is different, and what worked for him may not necessarily work for you. What you need to know is whether he's smart enough to see what YOU need to get where you need to go. That's where experience comes into play. The best trainers around will be right on point when it comes to individualizing your program for you. This takes experience as both an athlete AND a coach/trainer. I'll get into the ways trainers can do this better in future posts.

What I'm talking about here, at least for now, is experimentation. I'm just speaking for myself here, but even when I held jobs that had nothing to do with training, it was still the last thing I thought about when I went to sleep at night, and the first thing I thought about when I woke up in the morning. I'm in this industry mainly because I have a very narrow mind. Aside from the obvious - family, friends, etc - I really have no other interests and never have. Sports and training have always underpinned everything I've ever done in life.

And as a result of all the nights - decades worth - we've spent thinking up new s--t to do in the gym and new ways to train, guys like me have learned a few things that you maybe can't find in your personal training certification manual or the latest study from some exercise lab.

Long story short, if you're gonna tell people what to do, you'd better have done it yourself. 

I've been turning into something of a self-parody lately when I comment on what trainers and so-called "coaches" do with athletes, especially when it comes to football. When someone tells me, "So and so trains that defensive end from the Panthers," my reaction is always the same:

"Oh, he trains football players? Who'd he play for?"

"I don't think he ever played football," they'll say.

"Really? Then what qualifies him to TRAIN football players?"

You see, I don't necessarily think you have to have played football at a high level to train high level football players, but you at least need to have some understand of the biodynamic and bioenergetic demands of the sport. The best understanding of this comes from playing the actual sport. The next best understanding of this comes through examining time-motion studies of the different positions on the field, or by doing such studies yourself.

How do you do this?

You go to football games with a stopwatch and see what they're doing. You talk to football coaches. You do a biomechanical analysis of the movements your clients have to perform on the field and you get them stronger, faster and more coordinated in these movements because you've learned how to coach them and can detect flaws. You have a detailed understanding of "transfer" and a solid grip on how everything you're doing in the gym translates to on-field performance, as opposed to the "This is hard and looks sort of like what he does when he plays, so it must be good."

Too many of these coaches don't do this. From my perspective, you have two kinds of guys training football players: hardcore dudes with tattoos who think getting stronger and throwing 200 pounds of chain on a barbell will get a kid a scholarship, and skinny little dudes with polo shirts who think putting players on Bosu balls will make them hit harder.

And I'm not even addressing the prevalent mentality among way too many trainers who don't even give a s--t whether their guys actually contribute to their teams as long as they're "training right."

For now, just think of it this way: there's always a place (a major place) in every program for sport-specific movements. The stronger a football player is in holding and exploding out of specific positions, the better he'll be. Learn to coach these positions, and learn where they're best utilized in an effective program.

I just decided to start a new feature on this blog. Like, just now. It's called What Not To Do, and it was inspired by the astounding feats of workout creativity to which I'm treated every time I go to the gym. I'll throw in a What Not To Do every time I see one of these. I have a really good eye for this crap, so after a while there should be plenty of information you can use to avoid being a tool at the gym.

Let's begin, shall we?

Do not do walk into the gym, do that cheesy arm-swinging "warm-up," then commence curling an empty barbell.

Look around your gym. At least eight out of ten guys will come into the gym doing this, and it's absolutely ridiculous. They swing their arms back and forth - almost into the self-hug position - and then start doing curls with "warm-up weight," as if anyone needs to warm up to do freakin' curls.

Question: Can't you guys think of anything else to do? Like maybe squatting? Or deadlifting? Or push-pressing? Or even benching?

Oh yeah...you all bench. Some of you do it five times a week, although this makes sense if you're planning on being what we call a "lightbulb," i.e., a guy who doesn't train legs.

Right...you have a bad knee. Sorry.

I'll keep this short and sweet for today. Simply put, don't do this s--t. It looks stupid and it does nothing, and unless you're a bodybuilder who needs the extra work, you shouldn't be leading off a workout with barbell curls if you haven't put in the work you need to put in - with heavy compound lifts, cardio, HIIT, and everything else a grown man needs to get jacked, strong and ripped.

Better yet, try this. Remove all dedicated bicep exercises from your programming. Throw in pull-ups, heavy dumbbell rows, heavy chest-supported rows, and whatever other heavy pulling exercises you can think of for your lats. Do this for six months, then walk over the the dumbbell rack, pick up a dumbbell that's 30 pounds heavier than what you're doing now, and start doing hammer curls.

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

It's the most vivid memory of my football career, and perhaps the most embarrassing - unless you count the time I whiffed on a tackle and grabbed air, but we'll skip that one for now. I was playing inside linebacker and recognized a reverse. The entire defense was flowing to the right, but I recognized the play from all the film I'd watched, and stayed home. Everything was in slow motion, and I was about to blow the play up and get on Sportscenter.

I took an angle and chased the flanker toward the sideline. There was NO WAY he'd be able to turn the corner on me. Two more steps and I had his ass...one more...

And then he was GONE.

I turned around, and the guy was twenty yards down the field. I'm not kidding. Twenty yards. I had never seen anyone put himself in overdrive like that. It was almost like he was baiting me - waiting for me to get just THAT close, then go into warp speed. It was simultaneously embarrassing, humiliating and fascinating.

Now, in my own defense, the guy who'd "wished" me went on to win an Olympic gold medal in a sprint event and spent a number of years in the NFL, and I'd defy any of YOU to catch him. Trust me, you couldn't unless your name was Usain Bolt, in which case you could catch him but wouldn't know what to do after that.

I've put some thought into this over the years, trying to figure out how I could have made myself fast enough to make that play, and what I've realized is that there's no way on earth I ever could have. All the box squats, parachute runs, sled pulls, Bosu balls and kettlebells in the world weren't catching this dude. I could have trained in a multi-million dollar facility with an internationally known trainer, getting my anaerobic threshold tested daily, eating nothing but hydrolyzed protein shakes and shooting winstrol, and there was NO WAY I was making that play.

Why?

Because this dude was a freak, and I wasn't. Conversely, this guy could have trained in his basement and played in the NFL for ten years. Why? Because he was freakish enough to make the Olympic team and freakish enough to play in the league, and genetically predisposed to do everything a LOT faster than the rest of us.

I have news for you: these guys are OUT THERE, and there are plenty of them. They're called "professional athletes." And what we have in the fitness industry these days is another epidemic where so-called speed and strength coaches get these guys in their gyms AFTER they've already made good, then plaster them all over their websites and claim to be responsible for their success.

My personal favorites here are the so-called "Combine specialists." You take a freak who's had an All-American career in college, train him for three weeks and get a couple of reps on his 225 pound bench reps test, then take credit when the guy wins a Super Bowl ring five years later. Trust me, it happens.

Having been a high school football coach for years, and having actually built numerous athletes from the ground up, this is a major pet peeve of mine: trainers who take an already finished product and claim some hand in its success. I know this industry is all about marketing, which is what we talk about all the time here at the magazine, but this still chaps my ass, because a lot of the guys taking credit for athletes' accomplishments have the wool pulled over the eyes of a lot of people.

What does this mean to you, the reader?

It means you should go into any examination of a trainer or coach's credentials with a healthy dose of skepticism. Do you want to know what an athlete is doing now? Or would you rather learn how that athlete got where he is? If the latter question is more of what you're looking for, take your research a step further and see who's getting them there, as opposed to who's looking after them once they're already millionaires. 

Expanding a bit on my last post, I'm going to tell you what most personal trainers don't want you to know: that you have access to the same information they do.

Over the past, say, five years or so, there's been a proliferation of "new" training methods and tools that's been spurred primarily by the internet. The list of "innovations" is endless: bands, chains, pulling sleds, pushing sleds, tire flipping, kettlebells, battle ropes, dynamic warm-ups, etc, etc, etc...

Where do trainers learn about this stuff? Well, occasionally it's by word of mouth, from seminars, or because they already train at gyms that are more progressive than what's typical. Most times, however, they're getting their information from the internet. They log onto the YouTube channels of some of the so-called celebrity trainers out there, see them doing a whole bunch of cool stuff with their clients, then take this cool stuff into their own businesses and use it on their clients.

I have a few issues with this, as usual. For argument's sake, let's say your personal trainer tells you it's time to incorporate box squats into your routine. He's seen all the world class powerlifters and football players doing them online, he's heard the arguments about how box squats save your knees and how they interrupt the stretch reflex at the bottom of the lift, so he goes out and buys a box - or, more commonly, wheels a bench over to a scalloped squat rack - and tells you to sit down and stand up with a bar on your back.

Now, box squats - as well as a lot of other "innovative" fitness stuff - are great, but there are a few questions you should ask when your trainer decides to incorporate something you've never seen before:

Has he or she ever done this type of training before?
You can read all the books, go to all the seminars and watch YouTube videos until you're blue in the face, but there are things you pick up from doing things for a few years that you can't get from listening to lectures or watching others. If your trainer hasn't done the style of training he or she is trying to foist on you for at least a year, he or she has no business incorporating it into your program.

Where did your trainer get his/her information?
The best place to get training information is from the source, and when you find the source, you need to read every word of what's written, then go out and work the movements in question in your own workouts, hopefully under the guidance of a highly qualified coach who's learned whatever he knows directly from the source of the information. Too many trainers watch a few YouTube videos, throw exercises into clients' training with no idea how to perform the moves - much less program them intelligently - and get decidedly less-than-optimal results. From my vantage point, this is an epidemic in this industry. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, unless the imitation is so painfully warped that it looks nothing like the original product and stalls the progress of your clients.

Why is your trainer making you do this?
There's a certain - and unfortunate - "coolness" factor when it comes to some of these newfangled training processes. Many trainers I've observed simply want people to see them doing something innovative. They'll introduce some new exercise, or some gimmick, for the sole purpose of having a crowd of people notice them doing something outside the box. They think people in their gym will say, "Hey! Phil the Trainer has that guy tap dancing on a stability ball with chains around his neck and a kettlebell on his head! How cutting edge! I'd better write that guy a check fast!"

Think about it...

One of the reasons I came on board here at M&F was to act as a BS detector for a lot of the erroneous training information that seems to be so prevalent on the internet and elsewhere. I'm honored to have this blog on this site, because I've been a M&F reader since I was a kid, but I'm also thankful for the opportunity to use over a decade of hard-earned experience in the coaching and training business to help this website put out quality, real world training advice.

When you're doing the right things, it'll save you time and money, and it will save you a whole lot of aggravation when you learn how to cut through all the nonsense out there. And believe me, there's a ton of it.

The first thing I'd like to address in my inaugural post here on my M&F blog is the personal training industry. I've been an athlete, and worked as a personal trainer, a strength and conditioning coach and an actual sport coach, and I have some serious thoughts on the matter, some of which probably aren't fit for print in a public forum. As I've already said in this post - and as I've been saying ad nauseum here at Weider (they're probably sick of me by now) - there's so much crap people have to cut through in this industry to get to what works that I really have no idea how people can get off their asses and get in shape nowadays.

That said, here's a list of criteria I suggest you think about when you're either looking for advice on the internet or thinking of spending your hard-earned money on a personal trainer.

1. Who have they trained?
I won't name names here - although I wish I could - but there are a ton of "gurus" out there putting forth information on the internet who haven't trained anyone and haven't gotten results for anyone. All they really have is the benefit of a good web designer and photographer, and they try to "slick" you with promises of "explosiveness" and "sport-specific speed." Do your research. See who they've trained, and more importantly, if they claim to have trained a big name athlete, see how long they trained them and what resulted from that specific training.

2. Builder or babysitter?
If you go on a website, see a picture of a famous athlete and read a whole bunch of text about how this trainer has worked with this athlete and how great everything is, take things a step further and think about whether this trainer is the one who actually GOT the athlete where he or she currently is. Some athletes are natural-born freaks who make professional leagues, then move to new cities and end up in gyms where trainers work with them for a month then take credit for their careers. Find out who builds these guys and learn to recognize the babysitters for what they are.

3. What can they do?
One thing I've always prided myself on, as a coach and trainer, is my own athletic ability. If I want to increase an athlete's bench press from 225 to 315, or 365 to 405, I know how to do it because I've done it myself, FOR myself. There are things you learn in the process of training yourself and being an athlete that you can't learn from seminars, certifications and textbooks. Always be skeptical of taking lifting advice from trainers who can't lift more than you and never have.

4. Beware of gimmicks.
There have been so many "innovations" in the fitness industry over the past few years that it's been nearly impossible to keep track of what's what. Innovation is a wonderful thing, but not always, because what happens is this: trainers want to do whatever they can to get clients, so they'll introduce all sorts of newfangled crap to their businesses, with no idea how to properly program the stuff into a solid regimen. When you want to try something new with a trainer, do your research. See who's been doing the stuff, see what their results have been, and find out exactly where this sort of thing fits into a good training program.

5. When all else fails (or even before), trust the old school.
There's a reason people have been benching, squatting and deadlifting for so many years. It's because the stuff works, even for bodybuilders. Sure, it's not glamorous and it's not as sexy as most people want, but the general idea, at least how I see it, is to put in the unglamorous work INSIDE the gym, so you can look good and show off your results OUTSIDE the gym. Sometimes that's not as complicated as people try to make it.

The whole point I try to make people is that the information is out there, and it's not hard to find. Say what you will about performance enhancing substances, but the old Soviet sports system had it right. They experimented on this stuff with literally thousands of athletes, and they found training parameters that hold true universally. I'll touch on this in later blog posts, but the gist of it is this: know where your advice is coming from.