How I work with your Personal Trainer at Tony Schwartz Bodywork LLC

Some people ask me about the team approach to healthcare in the context of what is commonly termed as: “alternative healthcare”. The team approach is becoming more and more important in American healthcare and the reason that it is is because healthcare from traditional sources like hospitals and other aftercare services are becoming increasingly more expensive and are also becoming harder and harder to access because health insurance providers limit the amount of care a person can receive within their yearly allotment according to their contracts. And you might say that a personal trainer is outside of the traditional healthcare sources that it is part of the “alternative healthcare” system and that I would agree with but the team approach still includes them and they do play a role in your good health.

I want to take a moment to help people better understand what a personal trainer really does within their scope of practice. A personal trainer is someone who is professionally educated to assist a healthy person with medical clearance to exercise to set goals and provide meaningful instruction on the proper way to do exercises as well as to create exercise routine customized to the person being trained. Most often a persons goals will revolve around things like weight loss, muscle toning, or strength training. A good personal trainer or always listen and be attentive to you during and between the training sessions.

My role is to work with your current exercise routines or help to answer questions as to any concerns I might have about starting an exercise regiment with a personal trainer. Some of those questions or concerns may be in regards to old injuries or chronic tightness in certain areas of the body and how those should be talked about with the personal trainer themselves upon your first visit. Some questions also commonly revolve around what I might think of a particular exercise routine and if that will tighten up the muscles too much in certain areas causing the possibility of injury. Let's look at those two questions in depth the first one I would tell people that it's OK to ask questions and I'll do my best to answer them to the best of my ability most often I find that some questions are outside of my scope of practice however I will try to give people qualities I would look for in a good personal trainer. The second question is a little trickier and involves a great area when people have areas that are out of balance people to have concerns about re-injuring an old injury. Most of the time I find that peoples caution is reasonable but unnecessary. My role is to help prevent those compensations from getting worse and so if I feel there is a real concern I will suggest to people to hold off on personal training until we can fully address the tight tissue. In some circumstances clients have asked me to write a brief about any chronic tight areas or past medical issues that should be in their intake form I normally do this free of charge but it's not mean it's a diagnosis it means that it's something I believe a personal trainer should investigate and take into account when designing an exercise routine.

When someone comes in who is already working with a personal trainer I will often times ask what their current activity level is and when specifically they are working on with their personal trainer as goals. Personal trainers are not typically certified independently to do massage work they are also typically not certified to do any type of correct of exercises those are typically reserved for physical therapy. Usually but I tend to find is that there is some kind of soreness that people experience especially at the beginning of a personal training regiment I would consider this very normal for most people and the perfect time to get body work done. Of course like any session it's important to get a proper intake which will include a body scan this body scan will include a walking assessment, standing assessment, and diagnostic palpation. The we will make goals of our own and look at what kind of a plan we need to come up with. Sometimes we need to talk about sports massage being a regular part of our sessions or Myoskeletal Alignment Technique or MAT from Erik Dalton. We may also need to discuss other members of the team like a chiropractor or standard chiropractic care and if there's a possibility of a past injury becoming a further disruption we can also talk about looking to your regular doctor for physical therapy.