Do you address the posterior chain and hip stability with your clients when you have them train the core?
Yikes Harold, you got a lot of responses with a whole lotta big words!!!
I think it looks there are a whole lot of great ideas but the key to all this personal training stuff is to make it understandable, important, and something the client is able to do. So to address your question, I’m gonna try and be simple, because it looks like technical has been addressed.
When I look at what you asked, I read it more as “How do I get my client more balanced, even if that isn’t what they are asking for?” I have a suspicion that YOU can see that there are some muscle imbalances from the front and the back half of the body. I am going to also guess that your CLIENT wants to work their “abs.” The good news is that two things kinda go together. The bad news is that the client is that the core isn’t worked the same way as clients traditionally think. So let’s see if we can piece this together and make it u usable.
We can’t ever let a client-trainer standoff exist. Only, to a certain degree should a client tell a trainer what they want. The trainer should be the person who evaluates and determines what course of action should be chosen. Knowing that, we are still in a precarious position because if that’s is no
client, there will be no trainer. With that being said, I think the whole key to being an effective trainer, is the initial session. This is a great time to allow the client the chance to paint a picture of what they want and for you to listen, but then also evaluate, assess and explain what the client needs. For me, I make it pretty obvious that I am switching gears when I do my verbal and structural assessments.
I will go joint by joint and learn everything that I can about my client, so that they understand that irregardless of their goal, my interest is making sure they don’t walk outta my sessions in worse shape (injured) than they came in. Next comes, the structural assessment in which I try to connect all the dots when it comes to linking all the body together with potential pains. This is really when YOU can shine in regards to your question and show the impact of a posterior-anterior imbalance. From this you can easily display how certain movements maybe contraindicated (I meant to use simpler words, so how about BAD). Being tactful with your words, your client will get the chance to respect what you see as far as what their body type is and how you can give them what they want.
With being said, there probably arent too many people on the planet that NEED a whole lotta spinal flexion exercises (actually, if you ever read McGill, you will think no one ever does!). You need your client to respect that you can help design them a program that will get them to see their abs, by eating a diet to lose fat and working the core with all sorts of planks, diagonal lifts and chopping patterns.