Do you think Personal Trainers should have their own Hall of Fame?
Personally, I don’t think so. I can understand why others might champion the idea, but for me personally, the idea doesn’t sit well. If there was a hall of fame for personal trainers, why not have one for postal workers, sanitation professionals, truck drivers, etc. All of these people provide an important service just as personal trainers do. Do we really need a hall of fame for every profession? Note the word “service” I used in the last sentence. As a personal trainer, I feel that this profession is innately about serving others and helping them achieve their goals. My satisfaction comes from seeing my clients succeed. It’s not about me at all. My clients are doing the work – I’m just providing the appropriate tools and motivation to point them in the right direction. I’d rather see a client hall of fame.
I would echo what Harris said. The fitness community is a broad one. And the days when personal trainers cared ONLY about strength and muscle mass are gone. Health and wellness, go hand in hand with physical culture. I am aligned with the mind body world, but consider the fitness community mine as well. IDEA feels like a home because it welcomes all who work to serve the cause of increasing health and fitness of the greater community.
I had a look at your site. What I noticed is that your experts are fairly weighted toward body building and the martial arts. These two things are well represented within the personal training, and fitness coaching, and fitness professional communities. But part of the strength of an organization like IDEA is its inclusiveness. Those of us with different backgrounds learn from and support each other.
The exact words IDEA uses to describe what they look for in their personal trainer of the year:
“The IDEA Personal Trainer Award recognizes an individual IDEA member who is a certified personal trainer spending at least 15 hours per week actually training clients one-on-one and has demonstrated exceptional leadership, business management, motivational and instructional skills, and who has inspired his or her clients to greater personal growth and a higher level of fitness.”
I think that last sentence is really important. The leader is not the one with the most press, or the most awards, or the most money, but the one serving the needs of the clients.
In a way the question is moot for me. I work in a very small and quiet way, and am happy to do that, grateful to be allowed to help whomever I can. But I honor those who are able to do more, and love that IDEA gives them the spotlight.
If your award is about how much the person has done to serve those who need it that is great. If the award is for those who manage to get famous or rich it would not matter to me. If the award recognizes that the bodies being trained are as important as the one doing the training, rather than buying into the cult of personality than I would be for it.
Baseline, Harris is right: you need to be very transparent about the metrics of the choice of recipients, and you need to find a way to take into account the varieties of training.
I think the others have said much with regards to your question. All are valid. But, in your question i see something positive. Much like the Global Peace Prize there is a strive to do the best you can for the work you do. Did the people do it to receive the Peace Prize? i doubt it. They did it because their heart was into what they were doing. Should individuals be recognized for their effort? My opinion is yes. I love to read of others success. It teaches much. And, I like to keep learning. However, if this ” Hall of Fame” is utilized as a money maker, like everything else, the validity will be of no real use to anyone. Brian
Ted,
Although it sounds like a great idea it’s very hard to implement it for all the above reasons. With so many philosophies, training styles, certifications and so many other factors to include in this answer, I found this an impossible task. We are not talking about professional sports players/athletes where it’s easy to tell who is the best or who are the top players because of their achievements and statistics. In our industry there is nothing to set as a standard that will distinguish one trainer form the other and even more to tell who is a ‘Hall of fame” candidate and who is not. In your mind, who would you consider a trainer worth of Hall of Fame? How far would you go? The trend in our industry is changing so fast that by the time I finish this answer there will be many more new trends created out there that one day they will be the main event in a conference or a symposium.
Would you consider a trainer who instructs only bodybuilding to be the standard that everyone else would measure up to? Or someone who teaches CrossFit? Or kettlebells? Or tactical fitness? Or obstacle course training? All of these training philosophies are so different that it’s almost impossible to know which one to choose as the rule that all others will have to be judged by. Having people in your board picking one trainer from another as the best trainer out there is a good way to chose among candidates who are judged against other trainers from a similar background. The only way I can think of solving this problem, is if you are choosing those trainers who have the most impact in their field. I’m not referring to the celebrity trainers, because I don’t believe those trainers are any better than many others in our industry (they just happened to be in the right place at the right time).
This is a subject that requires a lot of thought and research if you are going to be fair to those whom you are nominating and choosing to be the winners. Can you provide us the process you have in place in order to choose the best trainers out there? What are the factors you are considering or go by when looking for the “Hall of Fame” trainers?
Again, this is only my opinion.
Best,
Harris
This is a very subjective industry.
Personal training is so multifaceted that I wonder how you would be able to rank it.
As you know, we are an unregulated industry where “anything goes”, unfortunately.
You would have to have explicate guidelines along with judges that have been in the industry for many years to know what to look for.