Just the other day I heard some really good news: there is talk of regulating the guru world from personal training to prep guys and nutritionists. I was giddy and have been waiting for this for a very long time. Of course, I read it on Facebook and I have heard talk of this in the past but without anything terribly concrete coming of it. This time it seems different. I was not surprised to see that quite a few people were vehemently opposed to it. Damn right they are – I would be too if I had no fucking clue what I was doing and was trying to make a living with no experience or credentials. Yup, this one is going to piss off a lot of people. Shocker, I know.
There is no good reason to be against regulation of this particular field. I am about as anti-government involvement as you can get, but I still think there are some things that simply need to be regulated, and this is one of them. Almost every other field has regulations and this one should be no different. People are up in arms about it because regulation means the herd will be thinned — and it has needed to be thinned for a very long time.
There are people out there that have no credentials but are damn good at what they do. I get it. I have no paper credentials myself, but have been doing what I do quite well for a very long time. Still, we are the exception to the rule because there are just too many people in this flooded sea of turds that not only don’t have any qualifications but aren’t even a legitimate tax-paying business. Over and over I tell people that if you want to be taken seriously, you need to take what you do seriously. Money usually wins out over logic and professionalism, unfortunately.
This might sound a little rough but hear me out: If you are running a faux business and not paying taxes like the rest of us, you are an unpatriotic piece of shit. Normal United States citizens pay taxes; we don’t necessarily enjoy it but it is our duty—our obligation—as Americans to do so. When I am sitting over here making my monthly EFTPS payments and your ass is at Texas De Brazil with shawty (the cool way to say shorty – you know, your boo), pretending you’re not boojie, I’m over here pissed off, parting with hard-earned money that goes straight to the gubment (another cool way to say government — clearly you are getting a lesson on cool today). In fact, the rest of us that pay our taxes consistently and without fail, are all pissed off. Hopefully, the free ride on 24s in your incredibly cliché’ Hummer is over. (And don’t argue that Hummers aren’t cliché because they sooo are in bodybuilding.)
See, the sea of turds has been too big for too long. The people that consider this field legitimate, want it to be legitimized. We aren’t milking it for every dollar we can, we are making a living on our reputation and knowledge, feeding our kids, paying mortgages and investing. We aren’t pretending to be loaded, and we are dealing with quarterlies, keeping shareholder and director meeting minutes current, and dealing with bitchy CPAs that chastise us for trying to write off a pair of tickets to a baseball game that we swear we did business with a client. Can't a guy get a write off every now and then?
Please, regulate the hell out of this industry and not only will the legitimate trainers and prep guys be left standing, but the people that are looking for quality instruction and knowledge don’t have to sift through a sea of garbage risking getting ripped off, scammed, or possibly even worse: finding their health in imperilment. Even if the industry doesn’t get regulated now, it will.
It will, because sooner or later someone is going to kill somebody due to their ignorance (and arrogance) and then there will be no way around regulation. Everyone knows that most times nothing gets done until someone dies or gets hurt. Enjoy that meal at Morton’s because eventually, you will either be paying taxes and running a legitimate business, or you will be finding a real job.
And, trust me, real jobs SUCK. Just sayin’.
Still, some baseline of competence/knowledge needs to be established where someone has the ability to do so much harm as idiot trainers do. Look at the recent Planet Fitness fiasco. Is regulation THE answer? No, but it's a decent start.
You are right: no regulation cuts into trainer's bottom lines - absolutely. They are competing with too many people that they shouldn't be competing with.
When it comes to human health, there should be some regulation. Ex: Every Fitness/Bikini Model in Texas is basically convinced to wolf down shit tons of different drugs. THAT is wrong and dangerous. It may be inconvenient to believe, but it happens everywhere not just in my state.
Plus, the majority of these rinky dink trainers have a better shot in the corporate world and would probably make more money. They're just lazy and would rather have them performing DB Front Raises on a Bosu Ball and collecting their cash. It's a joke and there are millions of them out there.
Lets also not forget, if there were LESS trainers and coaches and the ones that were around were far more professional, knowledgeable and licensed/certified; they would make A LOT MORE MONEY! The industry is saturated, you can find a trainer on the street corner. Get my point? The REAL trainers and coaches would profit significantly and the scrubs would wash out.
Even from a client's perspective this won't help much. Certain commercial gyms put you through a 2 day class to certify you and the USPA offers a powerlifting coach cert now. Your avg Joe can't tell shit from Shinola on certs value already so I don't see how gov't regulation would make it any clearer.
Like some other readers I have my doubts that the cert will be the pinnacle of high quality training knowledge (like how the food pyramid was thrown around for so long by the US Gov) but at least all the bullshit trainers can at long last know how much they suck.
It might not be the best solution, but like Skip said if it can help fix the problem even a little bit, it's a step in the right direction.
Not only that, but you'll end up codifying bad advice. Next thing you know we'll end up with national fitness guidelines that are even worse than the government-pushed food pyramid that helped make the US fat.
Am I willing to see another person shot by police for disobeying this law?
In this case, I would have to say no. Noone should be shot by police, no matter how piss poor their training skills, how weak they are, or how long they make clients balance on a bosu ball.
Therefore, this field needs to remain government free.
Sure, the current state of affairs reflects poorly on our society, but you have to deal with the way government is now, not the way you hope they might become in the future.
What would happen to your business if the APTA was the governing body and decided that deadlifts or valsalva were inherently unsafe- that everyone licensed as a 'personal trainer' or 'S&C coach' who performed a deadlift with their clients was at risk of a fine or losing their certification?
And what would be enough? A Bachelor's degree? Will that improve the knowledge base... or will it cheapen the degree as universities flood the market offering programs to meet the new wave of must-certify-now professionals? 300 hours of free internship/coaching instruction? Who will be the first wave qualified to instruct?
The devil's in the details, and the potential for abuse outweighs the benefit of regulation.
Someone like yourself that asks a lot of good questions would be someone that I would hope would be involved in the process of figuring out what type of regulation and what type of qualifications someone would need.
If the government regulates the fitness industry then people like you (the author) or Rippetoe or the many others who have have no certification and established themselves as being good at what they do will be out of work because the bureaucracy won't allow you to work if they think your methods are wrong or you didn't jump through their hoops. This will leading to people gaming the system and writing on the exams what the exam makers want to see, even if it's total garbage - just like what happens now with all those mostly useless fitness certifications. So not only will regulation not change anything, this non-change will make things worse.
I do, however, agree with the motivation for your proposal. Something does need to be done but I don't think government regulation is the answer. Maybe Dave Tate regulation is.
Keep in mind that I have said that I would support regulation but I have no idea what that regulation would look like or how it would work best. That would obviously be quite complicated. What is nice is all of the dialogue around this topic based on my article.
Well, you are humble enough to say that you don't know what ideal regulations would look like, but here's a few thoughts:
First, rather than prohibiting people from operating as traininers, the government could just issue pieces of paper that say something like "If we were going to forcibly prevent some people from being trainers, we wouldn't stop Skip Hill, who we recognize as competent." Clients who feel better about stuff when it has government approval could insist on only hiring people with that piece of paper.
Of course there will always be a risk that the government would use the wrong standards but the beauty of this approach is that if the government turned out not to be a credible certifier of competence, clients could ignore the piece of paper from the government.
Since this approach doesn't require the use of police or courts in the same way as licensing, it could be done by private organizations. That means other organizations could also issue similar pieces of paper to indicate competence. Actually, this is already happening today and there is even some competition between different organizations that certify trainers. Maybe a government agency could do an even better job, but it's hard to imagine why that would be the case. If such an agency were to exist, the people who would work to create the standards would be the same people who wind up creating standards for private certifications today.
But if the government turns out to be the best at identifying competence, trainees could take advantage of that. At the same time if the government turns out to be lousy at identifying competence, trainees would have the option to turn to other certifying authorities. This arrangement would be no worse than, and possibly better than, regulation that comes in the form of a mandatory license to offer fitness training services. By the way, with the exception that right now only private parties currently offer such certifications, this is exactly what we have now.
If you think about it, you can imagine scenarios in which regulation would make things worse and you can imagine scenarios in which regulation would make things better than they are now. What leads you to believe that the real life result if regulation would be in the latter category?
Your argument went from decent to absurd in one long paragraph. Your point is taken but poorly made.