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The Legalities of Emergency Care

Legal & Risk Management
By Sean Riley, MS, JD

The Legalities of Emergency Care
Understand your risks and responsibilities. As a personal trainer, you work with a variety of populations, from seniors to athletes. This diversity perpetuates a number of legal issues, particularly with regard to emergency care. With the senior population, you must be able to identify the symptoms of, and remedies for…

Respecting Your Boundaries

Legal & Risk Management
By Sean Riley, MS, JD

Respecting Your Boundaries
Always remember, your job is to design exercise programs– not to treat, diagnose or prescribe. Study after study has demonstrated that regular physical activity is important to good health. In an attempt to promote clients’ well-being, personal fitness trainers (PFTs) may find themselves involved in activities that can blur…

Managing Vicarious Liability

As a fitness manager, you recognize that certain acts result in legal liability. Injuries caused by worn flooring surfaces, equipment malfunctions and inappropriate program designs exemplify what acts have legal…

Why You Need Legal Education

Legal & Risk Management
By Sean Riley, MS, JD

Why You Need Legal Education

You have a vital role to play in guaranteeing the quality of your profession.

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Switch on your television set in the middle of the day and you are guaranteed to find three things: soap operas, talk shows and courtroom programs. The fairly recent proliferation of the last type of programming is just one indication that A…

Tricks of the Trade

There have been several occasions on which I have refused to work with a specific client. Once, I was meeting with a potential client and discovered that her goal was to lose 15 pounds in the next month. There was no talking this client out of this goal and into a more sensible, slower weight loss plan. She was adamant that if I just gave her the exercise plan,

Do You Know Your Scope of Practice?

As the U.S. and other countries search for new ways to reduce healthcare costs, the need to improve disease prevention and management strategies grows stronger.

Reward Carries Risk: A Liability Update

According to the 2003 IDEA Trendwatch Survey, three different kinds of personal training topped the list of general fitness trends: one-to-one training, partner training (two clients sharing one trainer), and…

When Clients Feel Pain

exercise

rx

By Greg Roskopf, MA

When Clients Feel Pain
How can you identify muscle imbalances that contribute to discomfort or distress?

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s personal fitness trainers, we recognize our role as specialists in exercise maintenance. On a daily basis, we set up exercise programs designed to help our clients reach their fitness goals. With the educational background and the skills we possess, trai…

Invading My Personal Space, Problem Solver

What do I do if a class participant does not appreciate the fact that I have set boundaries around my personal life? Most of my participants understand I am their instructor, not their counselor, best friend or mom. But every so often someone comes along who asks intimate questions, waylays me when I work out, comes early and stays late to chat about personal troubles, or queries other staff and members about me. In one extreme case I even had a client who developed an obvious crush on me and became a major nuisance.