I have to agree that most of the PT I see are a complete joke. Theres this one stick man trainer who trains his clients exclusively with rubber bands?? They have a whole gym full of state of the art resistance equipment and this dork has his clients do a rubber band workout? What a shame and disservice to the client. Plus the douche will take up half the gym with this training method. He hooks the bands up to equipment and then the sillyness begins. There was this one trainer we called him Fabio, he was the pretty boy type and of course some girls just had to have Fabio train them. Well this guy would mope around the gym like he could care less all the time. One day I was on the eliptical and this guy walked up to his young woman client (who was so excited to be trained by the hot Fabio) like he just woke up, then he says "I gotta get out of this place" all depressed, this is before they started the workout! I was thinking this chick is paying this asshole to train and motivate her? some people are so stupid.
I agree with the guy who said the gym does dictate how they train clients as I knew a good trainer there who taught the basics and this guy was a huge BB, he did a good job and new how to get results for anybody in the gym, but the gym wanted him to start the balls and bands and he said nope, they said, too bad goodbye. What a shame cause this guy was really good.
Bottom line its about getting as much money out of the clients for as long as they can. If someone can read, look at pictures and have the desire they can train themselves you will make some mistakes but thats how you learn best.