My recent adventure in health care - all while covered by $10k/yr insurance:

$1100 MRI

$450 for 20 minute urgent care visit for ruptured eardrum

$355 for specialist for eardrum

$180 for demoral shot at urgent care

$135 for office visit for results of MRI

$380 for epipin prescription for daughter with allergies.

Before, when I had a similar plan coverage for $5k/yr that got ended by obamacare:

$400 for school vaccinations that they originally told me ways covered.

$16,000 for kid in NICU (cost without insurance was $44,000).

Lots of other stuff, office visits, physicals, etc. I now get school vaccines for <$50 at the clinic where the poors go because there is no proof of income required.

I also pay out of pocket for dental. I don't have a problem paying for my medical care. I have an issue with the value of the insurance.

1)a) If they are advocates of squats but point you to the smith machine.
6) If during any workout/exercise they point you to the smith machine unless it is to do some inverted rows or to put your towel on.

And right on cue, I get another bill from the ER physician, one which I paid 3 weeks ago. So now I gotta call and deal with this ****. *****.

Dude next epipen ask if they have coupons. The pharmacist saved me 100 with that.

I for sure thought you were going to say that if they even call themselves a "personal trainer" that's a strike. IIRC, according to skelebro, a person who has the knowledge and ability to train you well is correctly called a "coach".

I haven't paid for it yet, I rejected it yesterday cuz it expires in January. They are getting me one that expires in a year. I'll ask about the coupon. Thanks for the tip.

between 9 and 11 usually

I would say it depends on one's goals. Yes, a coach is the best route due to knowledge and ability. The General Public (as per original question) doesn't really care about that and only need a personal trainer. I personally would only seek out a coach, as that is what I would need to get better.

Isn't test HIGHEST in the morning (hence morning wood) and goes down during the day? AFAIK the downside to morning workouts is just mobility / being warmed up / etc since you've been in bed for x hours.

Nope, cortisol is highest in the AM. There's this article which explains the drawbacks: http://www.liftbigeatbig.com/2013/04...n-morning.html . The more I think about it, the less I think it matters.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I don't believe it matters more than like 1%. Just seems awesome for beating rush hour traffic purposes and getting it out of the way/getting home earlier purposes.

ETA: "getting it out of the way" - Not implying that I don't greatly look forward to the workout, but it would just be convenient for social life purposes...

I find it the opposite. Getting up early enough to do the workout prior to going to work makes me want to be in bed a lot earlier than if I workout after work.

This is very weird to me because there a like a zillion articles saying highest in the AM. I don't know how good of a source liftbigeatbig is though...

ETA - 10 second pubmed search for reference:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20560706

Good Q. Obviously there's a ton of examples of things that trainers do or say that are 100% indefensible and should result in immediate termination of the relationship. But it's kind of hard to separate the trainer's true intention from the way they speak to their new client, because people are stupid and need things to be black and white in order to not be intimidated/offended. For example saying "I don't really like squats for new clients" isn't necessarily a deal breaker because the trainer could know that the client has mobility, weight, or injury issues that would prevent them from squatting correctly. The trainer may just be trying to avoid singling out the client the way "you're too fat to squat right now, your recent patella sprain would likely explode if you got anywhere near parallel" would.

I can think of a few phrases that should under no circumstance ever be uttered by a trainer except to explain why the concept is bull****:

1. "Fat burning zone"
2. "Deep knee bends"
3. "Press ups" (which strongly indicates the trainer is not North American)
4. "Toning"
5. "Superfood"

They're really not supposed to. AFAIK most standard insurance packages for personal trainers don't cover supplementation or nutrition counseling, unless the trainer is also a certified nutritionist or registered dietitian.

For a standard physical (no blood work) I'd pay somewhere between $2 and $5. As I see it the doctor added value in the following ways:

1. She listened to my heart. I assume that she has been trained on the sound of heart irregularities beyond what I could learn in 15 minutes from youtube.
2. She listened to me breathe. Same general assumption.

The following were of literally zero value to me, and actually lowered the amount that I would pay because they were a waste of my time:

1. Asking how I had been feeling recently
2. Measuring my height
3. Measuring my weight
4. Calculating my BMI and informing me that I'm overweight
5. Asking how much I drink/smoke
6. Asking if I have a history of chronic diseases in my family, then doing nothing with the information I gave her
7. Checking me for testicular cancer
8. Lecturing me about the importance of exercise after I told her what my activity levels were
9. Asking me about my diet
10. Taking my blood pressure
11. Taking my pulse
etc, etc

I would've gladly paid an additional $100 for a blood test that gave me an in-depth summary of various performance impacting hormones. This is essentially what I asked for (total and free testosterone and estradiol). The test that they wound up running had no breakdown of any sex hormones, and basically just told me that I have high total cholesterol because my HDL cholesterol is high. Cool. Value added $1.

Just the tip?

Oh, a health insurance discussion.

Odd. I am in the sea now.

For the record I wouldn't necessarily shy away at any of those trainer red flags. I can see a universe where if I were a trainer I would throw around words involving fads and gimmicks just because I needed the business (even if I ultimately delivered a different product).

Interesting. I have been operating under the impression that cortisol and test were inversely correlated, but I'm not sure where I picked up that info from.

DF II,

Why was the checking for testicular cancer zero (or negative) value? I'm assuming you mean that you're confident in checking yourself periodically, but I'm not sure it is not something else.

Nope, that's pretty much it. If there were a quick and easy mammogram-like test for balls I could see some value in getting one of those as a part of a yearly physical.

But having a 60 year old woman fondle my balls for about 5 seconds definitely provides no detection value beyond what I'm capable of. And the fact that she clearly enjoyed it really just drove home the point of how little I was getting out of the whole appointment as the patient.

Should have just asked her to do it longer so you could get something out of it.

Sounds like she wanted a tip. Perhaps you can refer crashjr to her and he can get a discount. Win/win.

Nothing wrong with just a tip imo.

seriously a ****ing monkey could program better than castro

Cha has said that working out in the morning is bad for your back. I don't remember the excct argument, but it is something about fluid needing a few hours to drain after waking up.