The Personal Trainer Project

𝗪𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐈𝐅 𝐁𝐈𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐈𝐂𝐒 𝗪𝐀𝐒𝐍’𝐓 𝐀𝐒 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐈𝐃𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐀𝐒 𝐈𝐓 𝐒𝐄𝐄𝐌𝐒?⁣

One of my pet peeves is educators vomiting half the pages of a technical dictionary onto the small silver screen of Instagram.

Sure, mechanics has to have some of its own wordage, but far too often we have people say something like vector when they really just mean direction.

In which case, they should just say direction because it’s a word we all understand, whereas vector sounds like it was something concocted by some kind of Elon Musk figure in an attempt to obfuscate the point (see we can all use fancy words).

And look, even if you do know what the word vector means, that doesn’t mean the rest of the world or your audience does. And so, if I was to ask you to describe the concept simply, could you? If you can’t, that’s a problem if you call yourself an educator or communicator.

One of my favourite ways to try to communicate something seemingly complex is to find an every day example of it in action. That’s how we make sense of things we don’t yet understand.

Now, unless you happen to have had the worst childhood since Joseph Fritzel became a grandparent, I’m hoping you’ve been on a see-saw.

At the heart of it, all the terminology and the concepts of leverage and torque aren’t much more complex than understanding a see-saw.

On a see-saw, lighter things can overcome heavier things by simply being further away from the pivot point.

If you can staple that concept to the forefront of your mind, you’ll go a long way to grasping the foundations of exercise mechanics.

𝗪𝗢𝗥𝗞-𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗧-𝗣𝗟𝗔𝗬-𝗣𝗥𝗔𝗬

Balance, much like health, is a topic that almost everyone speaks about. A topic written on by folks as far apart as Mother Teresa and Ellen DeGeneres.

But almost none of them give any detail. And that’s a problem because plans without details aren’t really plans at all.

“We should catch up soon”, is a phrase you utter to people you have precisely zero plans to catch up with. Sure, it sounds like a plan, but it isn’t.

No, a plan sounds like this, it has specifics:

“We shall catch up tomorrow morning at 8am in the east wing of my uncle’s castle. I shall be wearing red and making the sign of the cross.”

So, in the name of providing something a little more specific, here we have another of Dan John’s gems.

Before any of you atheistic people start freaking out about the word pray, just insert the idea of spending time with beauty and solitude, and you’ll be fine. That phrase doesn’t really roll off the tongue though so I’ve stuck with pray.

A couple of quick notes on balance:

1️⃣ When it’s going well, we tend to forget about it. We’re only really reminded of its importance when we fall over. Increasing our awareness doesn’t stop us falling every now and then but it may stop us smashing our face off the coffee table when we do.

2️⃣ Balance at one point in life is not necessarily balance at another. Walking involves reacting to external changes. If we want to maintain our balance as we cross hilly terrain, we must continually adjust ourselves. If we don’t, we fall over. The same concept is true of life. Only this time, both the environment and the destination can, and should, change as we go through it. As Muhammad Ali famously said:

“The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.”

𝐍𝐄𝐑𝐃𝐆𝐀𝐒𝐌 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄

A PT is someone who applies forces to anatomy. Your job is, therefore, to understand both of those things.

How can I know what I’m doing to my client, if I have no idea what forces are involved? Am I not then doing something akin to advanced Zumba? In other words, teaching choreography. I move that here, there and wherever, not because I’ve a detailed understanding of what’s happening but because I followed the steps of someone I felt knew more than me.

A professional wants to be more than that. A professional needs to be more than that.

Machine analysis is a skill an exercise professional needs to develop if they wish to master their craft. Every machine is different, just like every client is different. A leg extension is the same as another leg extension is true in the same way that a human being is the same as another human being. They fit under the same umbrella, and there are certainly many similarities between them, but you must remember that Shaq is a human being in the same way Peter Dinklage is too. Things can be similar and yet very different.

Understanding what the machine in question presents for you and your client requires understanding.
So, let’s get to work. This one’s for you slightly more advanced folks, or for those who wish to be.

The key to understanding this is understanding the concept of an equilibrium of Torques.
There is a force at a certain distance on one side of an axis that is being fought by a force at a certain distance on the other side (in the sense that they are rotating in different directions).

It doesn’t matter how many axes a machine has, the process of discovering what w’re dealing with at each one is the same, it’s just moved sequentially along from axis one to axis two to axis three and so on.

This skill takes time to develop, but if you can, you’ll get to see inside the matrix. You’ll understand what forces you’re exposing your client to, and whether or not you think that’s appropriate for them.

If you want to learn how to go about doing this type of thing, check out the mechanics section of our education portal or get in touch for 1:1 mentoring, as I have space for 2 people.