7 Lies Bad Personal Trainers Tell Their Clients

Bad personal trainers are more common than heat in Florida and snow in Alaska.

Everyone knows a trainer or fitness “guru” who promises unrealistic results or just simply doesn’t know what he is doing. While there are a lot of trainers like me that make sure their clients get great results safely, unfortunately there are also a lot of really bad personal trainers out there.

Look out for these 7 lies bad personal trainers tell their clients and comment below if you know of any more.

1) You can definitely lose 30lbs in 30 days (FALSE!)

If you hear a trainer say they can produce quick weight loss in a few days or weeks– RUN!

Seriously.

Bad personal trainers will sacrifice your health, time, and money to fake results by using starvation and dehydration methods– just to get a TEMPORARY CHANGE. You will gain the weight back and they might gain me clients by using you as a false testimonial.

Other bad personal trainers will make those claims knowing you won’t really get the results but they know how good that sounds to you so you fork over the cash. The only really thing getting thinner is your bank account from paying a bad personal trainer.

Look out for claims like:

2) No Pain No Gain (FALSE!)

“Pain is weakness leaving the body” Arnold Scheartzeneggar said. From one of the most influential bodybuilders in history came saying like “No pain no gain” so he surely must’ve been right, right?

Wrong. It’s just a bunch of macho mumbojumbo.

While Arnold was jacked, he wasn’t a medical professional who understood physiology and he definitely wasn’t a 35 year old mother just looking to lose a few pounds.

Trainers love push their clients but bad personal trainers will push a client way past their work capacity and ability to produce safe movement. Bad trainers think that by getting the client to profusely sweat while overexerting themselves makes them as a trainer look good.

There is no need for a trainer to kill their clients with overbearing exercise as results come from consistency in the long run, not extreme intensity in one session. 

Not only will pushing client’s past their limits increase risk of injury and decrease likelihood of results, it may even reduce adherence to their program, causing them to quit before they reach their goal.

Be sure that your trainer pushes you within your limits as I do with all my online clients! 

3) If you go hard enough in the gym, you can eat what you want on the weekends (FALSE!)

The weekends are not rest days from diets. Often, bad personal trainers will advise you to eat as you please on the weekends because you had a great week of training. A cheat meal here and there is completely fine but multiple cheat days, or days full of cheating from morning to night, present a problem.

A good week of training can be messed up by 1-2 days of bad eating.

Bad trainers often down-play the importance of nutrition either because they aren’t aware or because their own arrogance in their ignorance thinking 1-3 30 min workouts will replace an extra 2000-4000 calories consumed on the weekends.

A good trainer will have a detailed nutrition plan for their clients. I make sure each client is using my private nutrition app and hitting their numbers daily so that we get a new BEFORE and after pic every week. 

4) Every work out has planned progression and carefully crafted exercise selection (FALSE!)

Working in the gym industry for awhile, I can personally tell you that the workout logs at these big box gyms are usually faked, made up right before you get there, or even someone else’s.

Bad trainers rarely plan workout progression and make up things to do on the spot so that you “feel the burn” but probably won’t ever see the burn.

In order to truly progress in the gym, you need a progressive training program. Each of my clients have a planned program with progression in them and those programs completely change every 3 weeks!

5) Crunches will help you to lose belly fat (FALSE!)

To an unknowing gym-goer, crunches and fancy ab workouts seen on instagram seem like the go-to exercise for shredding up your midsection and spot reducing stubborn belly fat. This belief that you can crunch yourself to a lean six pack is very far from the truth.

The truth is— there are no ab exercises that will help you lose belly fat. NONE!

Spot reduction, or losing body fat from a specifically targeted area, is not a real thing. Losing body fat requires that you are in a calorie deficit, burning more calories than you take in (More on this in my ebook). A few crunches will not make you leaner in your abdominal area. And while it is ok to train abs, it is not ok to do them every day or dangerously.

Muscle requires rest time to build. Abs are not excluded from this fact. Doing abs daily may keep you farther from your ideal body goals.

Also, repetitive, loaded spinal flexion like a crunch can cause numerous back problems overtime like bulging and herniated discs, disc degeneration, and ultimately back pain. There are much safer ways of training your core without sacrificing spinal hygiene— your trainer SHOULD know that.

Having abs is nice but not at the cost of debilitating back pain and reduced quality of life.

6) The scale doesn’t need to change as long as you feel better (FALSE!)

Many times, trainers will say “you are building muscle and losing fat so screw the scale!” While this maybe a very small likelihood, the scale is a good tool to track progress when combined with other tools.

If you are eating less than you are burning like you should, weight gain is not an option. In order to gain weight you need to be taking in more calories than you burn. While a sudden increase in carb intake my cause fluid retention, if you are on a weight loss program not losing weight and not noticing changes in the mirror, chances are, your trainer is lying to you and doesn’t care that his methods just aren’t working.

There are few conditions that disallow for weight loss without carefully planned and methodical change in nutritional intake regularly so if you notice you are going weeks with results on the scale or in the mirror, reevaluate your trainer and plan.

7) Weight training with a trainer is more important than nutrition (FALSE!)

This is the ultimate sales tactic of a personal trainer at a big box gym. They show you some oddly constructed pyramid of importance, saying weight training is #1.

Well it isn’t.

Weight loss only occurs in a calorie deficit as I stated above. If you eat more than you need to and lift weights, not only will you not lose weight but you will likely gain weight. It is very common for trainers to ignore nutritional advice past “eat healthy” and focus solely on weight training for 30 minutes.

While there is tremendous value in having guidance in the gym, it is not a necessity sas they state. Simple workout programs combined with correct dieting strategies custom to your needs are enough to facilitate fat loss.

And if he only seeks to destroy you in the gym to make it seem like he is needed, run. Weight training shouldn’t be unbearably painful or cause excruciating soreness. Any crappy training can make you do 100 burpees and have you sore for days. A truly knowledgable trainer progresses you so that you reduce injury risk while optimizing muscle growth and calorie expenditure. Too much damage from exercise will cause your body more harm than good and delay the time it takes to reach your goal.