Personal Training Hiatus

Ever since I was a little kid, I've always known that I wanted to be a personal trainer.

I've always been on the go, I love science, I love the fitness scene, and I can remember being absolutely captivated by peoples' stories of weight loss and what it took for them to get there.

It was in high school that I recognized just how much physical activity caused even the most shy guy in the class to finally open up and be themselves, even if just for an hour.

And so, I went to college, getting my degree in exercise science, and taking a job as a personal trainer right afterwards.

I absolutely love it.

And so, it was kind of hard to put in my two weeks notice today at the gym I've worked at the past year and a half.

I ended up taking a full time job as an exercise physiologist for my hospital (a job I absolutely adore), and grad school has really begun to ramp up as I prepare for the final stretch. When you add those two things on top of personal training, I was consistently working 10-12 hour days, which I quickly discovered you can't do forever.

Am I glad to be able to clear a little room off of my plate so that I can finally breathe again? Absolutely. It was getting to the point where I had little time other than just to sleep and work. My own workouts went down the tube, my studying suffered, I found myself irritable, and it was making it so I barely had anytime to spend with Yellowhed.

I had to make a choice, but I sure do hope I'll be able to get back to it someday.

I've been talking about that with a guy at work lately. Both of us want to someday open our own gyms, and personally, I'd love to open a personal training studio as well. But if you want that to happen, you have to have a leeeeetle bit of working capital.

And so, I save.

I don't know. We'll see what happens.

Do I absolutely love being an exercise physiologist? Yes. Did I absolutely love being a personal trainer? Yes. However, I've also come to terms with the fact that I have limits, and so, personal training has been put on the backburner.

Maybe I'll get back into it after grad school?

Parents Are Weird

Parents are weird.

At least new parents are.

I guess I'm at the age where a lot of my friends begin to have kids of their own, and I get the opportunity to observe how that little diaper head changes their lives forever.

Just this past Christmas break, I walk past one of my friends at a party who's changing his kid's nasty diaper down in the basement.

I didn't realize he was down there, and so I wasn't sure if diaper changing was a public endeavor or not. I was just about to leave when he said,

"Parenthood is great, man. I can't even begin to describe it to ya."

Yeah, you can start once you finish wiping feces off of that little guy's butt.

The same deal just happened the other day at a dinner we had with some friends from church.

They're telling me all about how they wake up at least 5x/night, how their baby cries all the time, and how high maintenance kids are, all while their smallest continued to throw applesauce all over the floor.

Yet despite all of this, they still were able to say that parenthood was easily one of the best experiences of their lives so far.

I don't know, maybe I'll understand it someday, but for now, new parents are weird.

Grad School Internships

Grad School: "Hey! Come to our school! You can work around your busy work schedule with our classes, learn a lot about what you're interested in, and meet people from all walks of life!"

Me: "Well, gollygee! That sounds swell! Sign me up!"

*2 years later*

Grad School: "Oh, btw. You have to quit your job that you worked forever to get and absolutely adore to do an unpaid internship for 3 months for us."

Me: "What?"

Grad School: "For no pay."

Me: "Huh?"

Grad School: "AND you have to pay us $2000 to get credit for that internship."

Me: *uncontrollable sobbing*

What Ticks Me Off

I whole-heartedly believe that personal training is a noble field. We study the tools and techniques to help people live healthier, better, and hopefully longer lives. 

Incredible back pain? 

There's personal trainers out there that can help.

Need to lose 50 pounds to get your blood sugars back under control?

Personal trainers can help.

Knee pain that's keeping you from living life?

We can help with that too.

Though we're certainly not physical therapists, we can still help to strengthen parts of peoples' bodies to get them to where they want to be. Though we're not counselors, we're always there to help people blow off a little steam after work. 

I take my job seriously.

And that's why when I hear of other "trainers" abusing my field, it disgusts me.

Pushing your clients to only eat 1300 calories the rest of your life, giving your clients injectable steroids, working at another studio for 3 days just to take pictures of their set up before you quit and set up your facility the exact same way, treating clients like crap and ditching them last second when more "important" clients come in, and only letting your clients eat one meal a day are not the characteristics of a true trainer.

Ugg.

People deserve better than that.