Being a NYC personal trainer there are some hurdles that we ALL need to adjust accordingly for. Each gym has it’s own culture, rules, and limitations. For instance when I had a 20k facility in long island, everything flowed well because the coaches and athletes were well trained and worked together for efficiency. If one Coach needed the turf, we’d switch on to the track, if another needed the platform the other would work in etc… It worked efficiently because we were a team.
NYC Personal Training
Unfortunately it’s much different in Manhattan, especially with the abundant of trainers that are also models/actors/artists/writers/promoters/insert some other random field. Most private personal training gyms have multiple independent personal trainers and sports performance coaches under one roof. While some gyms are great others are just plain awful, which can cause havoc for those that do not understand basic gym etiquette.
Example: It’s squat day and both squat rack are taken, you’d think that in most instances you can work in right? Well what if the personal trainer has the client squatting with a 15lb training bar with + chains?! What do you do? And most of all why the hell did anyone hire this type of personal trainer?
These type of situations come up ALL too often so hopefully this will help in some way.
Rule #1: Don’t Use ALL the basic equipment (bench, squat rack, platform) during peak hours. While your program may utilize all 3 points, you’re going to have to either share it all and slow down your crazy little circuit or you can change it up to be more efficient for the space- and efficient with your programming= sign of a good trainer. When there’s 10 trainers = 20 total people occupying a 1,000 sq facility, I would suggest you become more efficient. Bottom line: Learn to program correctly based on the gym layout and time (peak or off peak)
Rule #2: The squat rack is for squatting The other day I had to change the program a bit, thanks to an amazingly professional personal trainer that was doing stability ball leg curls and val slides in the squat rack. Mind you all these things he could’ve done anywhere else, especially since there’s big ass sign that states: “ALL FLOOR WORK HERE” in the opposite side of the room. Bottom line: Be aware of your surroundings and follow the damn rules- there’s a sign of God sake.
Rule #3 Be Flexible I get SUPER irritated when personal trainers occupy limited equipment for exercises that can be done anywhere else. For instance, my client had MAX bench day, so of course he was amped up. He worked all summer to lead to this, to PR going into his senior season strong! But of course the benches were taken, no worries, we’ll work in. We asked one trainer and he was adamant to not let anyone work in. The other one wasn’t even benching, he was doing hop overs…so I asked kindly if he could use the 10 unoccupied benches in the dumbbell area. Well we ended up doing a good amount of prep work because both trainers were dumbasses, I mean “flexible”. 😉 Bottom line: basic manners dude, if you’re not utilizing the equipment for what it’s used for and can do your exercise in another spot, go to the other spot.
Rule #4 Clean Up It’s pretty self explanatory, if your client is a sweaty mess, you may need to wipe down the equipment after use. Once you’re done with the bar, how about you unload?
Rule #5 Common sense While everything above stated is common sense, frankly I think this just needs to be stated. Use common sense when you’re in the gym. If my client is foam rolling in the warm up area, that states “WARM UP AREA” maybe you shouldn’t have your clients do shuttle runs…if my client is doing heavy ass farmers walk up down a clear walk way, maybe you shouldn’t puff up your chest and try to play chicken with him? While this is meant to be somewhat of a comical post, these are all sadly real situations that have happened…sad…
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