Are you looking for a personal trainer for back pain? Perhaps you have someone in mind, but you want to make sure that they are the right person for the job. Or, you don’t have anyone in mind, and want to figure out for yourself what criteria to use to choose the right fitness trainer for back pain. After all, there are lots of fitness trainers out there. How can you tell that you’re making the right choice?
This article will help you do that. We’re going to cover:
- The 5 biggest mistakes that personal trainers make when training clients with lower back pain
- The 5 biggest mistakes that consumers make when choosing a personal trainer for their back pain
But if you just want to skip all that, and get our help with your lower back pain free, just fill out the application form on our home page, and we’ll get in touch with you.
Or, if you’d like to read my special report about how to improve low back pain, fill out the form below, and you’ll get the report in your inbox right away.
Biggest Mistakes Made by Personal Trainers for Back Pain
Most trainers have no specialized training or knowledge when it comes to getting low back pain free. So they’re generalists, and generalists don’t know as much as specialists. Although you might ask any random fitness trainer if they can help you with your low back pain, they might answer “yes”, but not be able to do a really good job. After all, you don’t just want a trainer. You want the best trainer you can find for low back pain.
Below, I’ll help you separate the generalists from the specialists, and make sure you find the best trainer for you.
Mistake #1: Not Assessing
As I’m often fond of saying, “if you’re not assessing, you are guessing.” I even wrote much more about this in my article on the importance of body measurements. The same goes for back pain. Back pain is a symptom, not a diagnosis. It doesn’t tell you what’s wrong. Just the consequence of something being wrong. But your back can hurt for a lot of different reasons, like:
- A hernia
- Degenerative disc disease
- Facet joint syndrome
- Deconditioning
…and others.
The exercises that are good for one back problem may be damaging to another. Hence the need for precision in exercise prescription, in order to get you pain free.
Another benefit to assessment is that sometimes, exercise doesn’t fully resolve the issue. It may help, but it won’t bring a complete resolution, and you might need a more hands-on therapy to get complete resolution.
Part of the reason for assessment is to know when the fintess trainer’s skillset is not the right one to get the job done, and they may need the help of a chiropractor, osteopath, or other manual practitioner.
Mistake #2: Giving the Same Exercises to Everyone
Piggybacking on the previous mistake of not assessing is giving the same exercises to everyone. If a fitness trainer is under the notion that all cases of low back pain are the same (mistaking diagnosis for symptom), they’ll give the exact same exercise program for everyone. But again, exercises that are good for some cases of low back pain can be damaging to other cases of back pain.
How can you know if a trainer gives the same exercises to everyone or they individualize things? Simply ask them “what’s your protocol for low back pain?”
If the answer just rolls off their tongue, and they just start listing exercises, walk away from that trainer. They could make your lower back pain worse.
However, if in response to that question, they say something along the lines of “I don’t have a protocol… every program is designed on an individual basis”, that’s good! This approach has a much higher probability of getting you pain free.
Mistake #3: Trying to Diagnose
Another mistake trainers often make is trying to diagnose a back problem. Legally, trainers are not allowed to diagnose. Diagnosis is supposed to be made by medical professionals, not fitness professionals. As the training of trainers does not involve diagnosis, if a trainer does diagnose, they are out of their scope of practice, unless that trainer is also certified as a chiropractor/physical therapist, or something else that allows diagnosis.
The reason that sometimes trainers try to diagnose is to sound smarter. I think acknowledging the limitations of your scope of practice is smart anyway, plus you don’t get into trouble if you give a diagnosis (especially if it’s the wrong diagnosis).
What a fitness trainer, however, is allowed to do is identify muscular imbalances, limitations in range of motion, and proprioceptive (body awareness) disruptions, and correct those.
Mistake #4: Not Identifying the Need for Psychotherapy
If someone’s pain is chronic, part of the approach for dealing with it is the traditional approach – exercise, and manual therapy. However, another part of the approach would be to deal with the mind. Why? Because the definition of chronic pain, which is this: “pain lasting 3-6 months beyond the normal healing time of the tissue.” In other words, the tissue has already healed. There’s no longer anything structurally wrong, and yet, there’s still pain.
Why would that be? As I outline in my article, Pain – It’s All In Your Head, your attitudes, knowledge, thoughts and feelings about your pain have a significant contribution to the severity and duration of your pain.
If the need for psychotherapy is not assessed, a referral to a psychotherapist will not be made, and therefore, pain will continue much longer than it should, and may never go away. Your physical attempts at becoming pain free are only about half on point. Certain people may need psychotherapy to get there. And certain people do not.
Mistake #5: Not Addressing Ergonomics
You could do everything right in the gym, but if the way that your table, or computer, or bed or couch are set up is not right for your body, you’ll undo all your hard work in the gym.
After all, just compare what has the bigger impact: the 1 hour that you spend in the gym, or the 8 hours that you spend sitting at your desk, or the 8 hours that you spend sleeping?
Ideally, your trainer assesses your ergonomics outside of the gym, so that you complement the work you do in the gym with the way your body moves outside the gym.
One of our clients, Anne, had chronic hip pain. But after her trainer, Brian assessed her ergonomics, the pain went away completely (in addition to the work they did in the gym).
Biggest Mistakes Consumers Make When Choosing a Trainer for Back Pain
Very often, as consumers, whenever we’re shopping for something we’ve never bought before, we think that all things in that category are the same, and therefore, the only difference is price. If you’ve never shopped for a computer before, you think all computers are the same. If you’ve never shopped for a massage therapist before, you think all massage therapists are the same. Same goes for personal training. If you’ve never shopped for personal training before, you think all trainers are the same. But just like there are differences between computers, cars, homes, etc., there are also differences between trainers.
Here are mistakes to avoid when choosing a personal training coach:
Mistake #1: Looking for the Cheapest Trainer
I’m guessing that you probably don’t buy the cheapest computer or the cheapest car. And that’s likely because there are other features that are important to you that raise the price. But you’re OK with a higher price, because for you, those features are worth it.
Same thing with personal training. You usually shop for the cheapest thing when you don’t know what criteria to look for.
It’s especially important to have criteria in mind for a personal training coach, because you’re hiring a person to help you with lower back pain. Do you really want the cheapest one you can find?
Generally speaking, personal trainers that charge very low rates do so because they don’t feel they can compete on quality, so they feel the need to compete on price.
Hire the cheapest trainer, and you’re playing Russian roulette – maybe they’re good, maybe they’re not, and maybe they’ll cause your lower back pain to get even worse.
That’s not to say that an expensive trainer is a home run, but usually, more expensive personal trainers are more expensive for a reason: more experience, more certifications, more success stories. Also, the more expensive trainer may be a specialist (in lower back pain, for instance), whereas the cheaper trainer may be a generalist (they do everything kind of so-so, but nothing really well).
The basic message is to have criteria in mind other than price. Not to say that price is not important (it is), but it shouldn’t be your only criteria. It’s better to see a higher quality trainer once a week, than a lower quality trainer 3 times a week.
Mistake #2: Expecting a Diagnosis
As mentioned earlier, trainers are legally not allowed to diagnose, so expecting a diagnosis from a trainer would lead you to disappointment.
Again, what trainers are allowed to do is identify imbalances in strength, limitations in range of motion, and proprioceptive (body awareness) disruptions.
Trainers can also take the diagnosis from another healthcare professional, and build a program around that.
But they’re not allowed to diagnose.
Mistake #3: Confusing a Personal Trainer with a Physical Therapist
There are certain things that a trainer can do, and there are certain things that a physical therapist can do. A physical therapist can do a lot of things that a trainer can’t, like:
- Manual manipulations of different joints
- Acupuncture
- Laser
- Hot packs/cold packs
- Soft tissue release
The one big overlap between trainers and physical therapists is exercise. Both of them are allowed to recommend exercise. However, a trainer who is a specialist in lower back pain will be better than a physical therapist when it comes to exercise, because all that a trainer has to work with is exercise. So a trainer lives and breathes exercise and exercise alone when it comes to lower back pain. A physical therapist needs to split their attention between all these other things (soft tissue release, acupuncture, etc.).
Nonetheless, exercise is a very large part of the treatment, but it’s not the only part, so you may need additional work from a physical therapist/chiropractor/osteopath.
Mistake #4: Confusing Likeability with Competence
Many trainers are positive, enthusiastic, outgoing individuals. They’re generally speaking, nice, likeable people. However, just because they’re likeable doesn’t mean they’re competent. A lot of trainers confuse passion with skill. Just because they’re passionate about fitness doesn’t mean they have the skill to help you with your lower back pain.
Skill comes from education (both formal and informal), analyzing what they’re currently doing with clients, and how it’s working, and looking for ways to get better. In one article, I wrote about the best seminars I’ve taken and what I learned. Ideally, if you ask your trainer about this, it pops to mind right away. If they say they haven’t taken any seminars, or they take the bare minimum necessary to not lose their certification, that’s a big red flag.
Mistake #5: Not Seeing if the Trainer Has Other Clients Who’ve Improved Their Back Pain
You want a trainer who didn’t just take a course, and sounds good when you talk to them, but actually a trainer who can point to real-life people whose back pain they’ve improved. In our case, we have plenty of case studies, like:
- Santha, who was able to drop 8 dress sizes and improve her sleep as a result of getting rid of her back pain
- Iris, who lost 12 pounds, and stopped the pain killers as a result of eliminating her back pain
- Gord, who significantly reduced his back pain after years of unsuccessful attempts.
…and many others.
Of course, if you’re their first back pain client, you want them to disclose that, so that you know that you’re OK with it.
If you feel like you’d like our own help with your back pain, you can fill out the application form on our home page, and we can chat for free, to see whether we can help you. If we can, we’ll let you know. If we can’t, we’ll let you know who can.
Or, if you’d like to download a special report about how to improve back pain, enter your email below, and the report will be emailed to you right away. In the report, you will learn:
- Different reasons for lower back pain (and why they all need a different approach)
- The 6 biggest mistakes when it comes to getting rid of back pain
- The 4 assessments used to help figure out the root cause of back pain
