I know I’m really late to this conversation, but one of the hardest things about being a personal trainer is the stereotype that they are all clueless bc so many of them do dumb stuff. The main problem is the bar to entry is super low and almost anyone could get a PT certification. My advise would be in addition to finding someone who has competed, look for trainers with a CSCS (certified strength and conditioning specialist) and/or education in the field. The CSCS is the gold standard in the field requires a degree and the test is much harder than the PT tests.

After watching some John Jewett videos on the topic of pre-contest dieting and on cardio, I've decided I'm dropping cardio down to 5x30minutes per week and just cranking up steps. 15k step minimum but I could easily be getting up to 20k. Some of this will be post-training as sometimes in the morning I just feel tired and/or scheduling makes it difficult to get it in during the morning. I'm going to put my refeeds on Sundays (off lifting) and do just 30 minutes cardio fasted and 10-12k steps on that day and mostly just chill out and rinse off some fatigue. I'll shoot for "only" 600-700g carbs but go ahead and include a fairly large 1.5k cheat meal at the end of the day. Probably one of those fancy burgers or some sort of pasta dish from Cheesecake factory idk.


Regarding personal training, yeah it's a bitch when you do know what you're doing because of so much information asymmetry between you and the audience. They can't differentiate between good and bad trainers and could easily get turned off just seeing one trainer in your gym doing something that even a more intelligent normal person would realize is stupid.

I'm building up more and more online clients but still not charging anyone anything. I'd really like to get more posing clients as so many people are atrocious posers. I consider myself "above average" but far from good or elite in this respect and I've taught 2 guys how to pose starting from zero and find it a lot of fun. I have huge respect for the posing coaches as that's an exceptionally difficult skill to learn and to teach and really has no ceiling. These two guys are insanely impressive and have clearly spent thousands of hours refining this. https://www.instagram.com/cb317fitness/ https://www.instagram.com/kylianortegaperez/ I plan to hire one or both at some point when I'm offseason and have more time and energy to learn to pose.

Most of my "lifter" clients have preconceived notions about what correct training is and don't want my training recommendations but do want my diet/cardio/supplementation/PED consultations. That's a problem i myself had.. always thinking I knew everything there was to know about optimal training. Getting former powerlifting guys to acknowledge the relatively poor stimulus-to-fatigue ratio of their favorite barbell lifts is an impossible task. I should know because I was one of these anti machine guys having come up through Rippetoe-ism

+1

If they let their cert lapse, they will clearly tell you why they did so.

What do you mean by cardio as opposed to "steps"? From what I gathered, most pre-contest cardio is mostly incline walking at this point? Which weirdly burns an obscene number of calories for the impact. (Kinda like swimming minus the ravenous hunger.)

I'm not too precise with it, but 120+hr = cardio.

sub 100 = walking

100-120 = ???

I am currently transitioning from doing personal training in person to primarily online. Mostly because as a military spouse it sucks having to change jobs every 2-3 years after building up your business. My last job was at a high end gym in VA comparable to a equinox where sessions with me were $130. Convincing those clients to train with me online for a couple hundred bucks instead of paying 1k+ a month was fairly easy, especially after working with most of them for a year or two. I started an LLC since I know train 12-15 of them online.

Seperate from that I’ve also been interviewing with online personal training companies/apps to train people remotely on a bigger scale. Working from home is appealing to me with young kids and the flexibility it allows and if I do that I won’t have to change jobs every time we move. You should def be charging people you are training, not sure why you are doing it for free.

Mostly because my clients are all China foreign expats who make between 40-60k usd/yr. I'm getting my first regular dude outside of China who's 25 and still new to lifting, pretty excited to work with somebody who's starting from scratch again. When people have a little bit of information they can be a lot more difficult to work with than when people are at 0.

Legs
leaning away db curls: 12.5kgx4 sets failure
Hamstring curls: 47.5kgx19, 13, 9
Between hamstring curl sets did 4 sets of leg extensions 20s
Toes elevated SLDL: 110kgx13, 10 now I feel it in my glutes, think I've got this figured out finally
Leg press: 4ppsx20, 15, 12
3 sets calf raises to failure on the leg press afterword

75 minutes
18k steps 0 cardio

Meal 1
250g salmon, a green apple

Meal 2
175g salmon, 200g sweet potato, 100g green beans

Meal 3
175g chicken breast, 200g sweet potato, green apple

Meal 4
80g cream of wheat, 300ml skim milk, 20mg honey, 1.5 scoop whey, banana, 4ius of humalog

Meal 5
175g salon, 200g sweet potato, 200g pineapple 3iu humalog, 10iu gh

Was a little light on veggies b/c I didn't make time to make them.

Oh I got my gh blood test results back from when I was in Thailand. The standard is to pin 10ius IM 3 hours before blood is drawn fasted. ****ing 29ng/dl which is absurdly high. But it's (Chinese) pharmacy grade and not being damaged in shipping because it's cold shipping in less than 48 hours.

Quarter turns and mandatories. Still not sure what I want to do for my favorite classic pose, but probably the twisting back double (colloquially known as the "Arnold" pose). Side tricep or front lat spread (not pictured here) could also be great options for my favorite classic pose. It's okay because I'm bare minimum 16 months out (maybe 20 months).

Front relaxed is all fiecked, forgot to tilt my hips back

looking very good

+1, pretty sick man