Personal, yes, but trainers?

I don't know about you, but the whole "personal trainer" thing has to be one of the biggest scams in the field of fitness today. I have never come across so many fucking idiots in my life who merely go and get "certified" by some bullshit or crooked organization and then pass themselves off as "legitimate" pros. I'll go on the record here and say that I've also run across many people�over and over again, by shifting from "drive" to "reverse" and back again�that do know their shit, but they're in the minority. Finding a legitimate personal trainer is like finding a stripper with real tits�rare, but oh-so delightful.

I just love the little acronyms that so many of these reprobates attach to their names, too. They act like they're MDs or PhDs or something! Many of these choads live on the Internet. The hubris involved in this is mind boggling! I tell you, there needs to be some way of legitimizing these people. Just taking a weekend course and throwing letters after your name doesn't cut it. I think that people with actual, honest-to-goodness experience in the field are going to do a much better job than some squab nuts pig plooker who just bought and paid for his new career. I couldn't even begin to hazard a guess as to what these acronyms stand for, but I do have a list of special ones that are near and dear to my heart:

IAASF

A very well-known training certification organization, the letters stand for "I am a stupid fuck." Personally, I think it's a strange title for a certification, but I suppose that it describes its members adequately. This is, of course, the volume leader in the industry!

ISAIMPH

The official certification center for all the fat-fuck trainers out there, it stands for "I stick anything in my pie hole." If you're like me, you're flabbergasted at the number of porkers who "train" people. What's this shit about? Why would anyone go to some obese slab of ham for personal training, let alone nutritional advice? It must be the same reason that 95% of all the registered dietitians out there are obese, too!

I remember talking to a particular RD in Florida about my dialysis diet. I didn't hear a word she said. I just couldn't keep my eyes off all the powdered sugar around her mouth. I mean, this cow, no doubt, had been cut from the offensive line of the Dolphins the day before and had tried to drown her sorrows in donuts. All I could picture was her bent over the ball with Dan Marino's hands up her rectum! Rectum? Shit, it damn near killed him.

LMCASTYCSMT

This organization caters mainly to women, but it has a few male members, too. It stands for "Look, my clothes are so tight, you can see my twat." Luckily, most of the women in this organization have pretty good bodies. The men obviously don't have twats or, for that matter, penises, so they walk around backward and hope that people mistake their buttholes for twats.

IAAPIDCIYCSMT

A sister company of LMCASTYCSMT above, it stands for "I am a pig�I don't care if you can see my twat." A lot of you probably won't believe me, but I've actually seen this one on business cards! To belong to this organization, you need to pass an arduous test. The certification committee scrapes the Jell-O-like fat from a dozen canned hams onto the wooden floor of an aerobics studio. They then dress it in fuchsia spandex. The IAAPIDCIYCSMT wannabe then walks in. If the committee can't distinguish between the two, certification is granted.

MBITBTRMP

The men's version of IAAPIDCIYCSMT, of course, stands for "My belly is too big to reach my penis." Why anyone would want to advertise this one is beyond me. One of the members works at my gym. Whenever he's not training anyone, he walks around asking people if they'd please take a look down there and make sure that his penis is still there. And, if he finds someone who's particularly friendly, he asks him or her to describe it, seeing that he hasn't actually caught sight of the little son-of-a-gun since 1989.

Personally, I'd find not being able to reach or see my penis a big problem. How would I piss? Would I have to rig up a system of pulleys and levers, or would I let it flop around unrestricted, like some wayward fire hose? How would I jerk off? A couple of hockey sticks taped together might do the trick.

WCIGHASFWTI

This is a very common group that's generally unisex. Otherwise known as "When can I go home and stop fucking with this idiot," this organization certifies the uninterested. I'm sure that you've seen many of its members. The trainer spends all of his or her time looking at himself in the mirror, just dying to get this client over and done with so that he can go to the tanning salon. Meanwhile, the client has long since expired because the barbell got stuck on his neck and he or she choked to death. This is a business where you should care about people, so it's too bad that many trainers see things this way.

There are a lot of professional personal trainers at my gym, and I don't even know what organizations most of them belong to. They're pretty sad cases, regardless. One of my favorites is someone who we call "The obese sleeve roller." I love this guy, I really do. He wears his same special pants every day. I think that they were part of Bozo the Clown's Fat Boy collection, as they're the only things that will fit around his elephantine waist. He hikes them up pretty high, and he always has a pager. I suspect that the only time it goes off is when the grocery store is having a sale and they need to contact their best customers.

The best part about TOSR is that he thinks he's the shit! No matter what shirt he has on, he has to roll the sleeves way up. He does this about every 30 seconds or so to expose his 17-inch arms, over half of which is pure blubber. I think that he uses these anacondas to fend off the other hefty boys at the grocery store.

This guy even has the effrontery to pose in front of the mirrors! Soon after, the gym removed all of the mirrors so that members would never have to experience this kind of horror. The best part of TOSR is that he thinks he's a tough guy and walks around with a look on his face that makes you think he's out to kick Mike Tyson's ass. What information he passes along to his clients is beyond me. There's no doubt that this guy knows nothing about training and even less about nutrition.

The next guy is my hero. Let's call him "Mike Minuscule." Actually, Mikey is a decent bodybuilder. His downfall is his lack of brains and integrity. I guess I really can't fault him too much, as there's better than a 90% chance that his Ma and Pa were brother and sister. Inbreeding isn't pretty. If you don't agree, just look at the Royal family!

Mikey was going to try and pass off the "natural" thing to people, but all along he bragged to everyone about the shit he was taking. This bung muffin actually entered and won a local natural show here in Phoenix. What the fuck is that about? After another member of the gym exposed him for being a fraud, he attacked the guy, even though he weighed 100 pounds more than his victim. Not only is this guy a coward for entering a natural show, but he doesn't even have the balls to go after someone closer to his own size.

Then there's "Stripper Man." This guy is out of control. I've actually seen him walk up to women and give them a picture of himself. He has a decent build, but he's kind of slow. He carries a calculator around so he can figure out how much weight needs to go on either side of the bar so it won't tip over. He's also a member of the "Polio Leg Society." I've never understood why so many people who have decent or even great upper bodies don't train their legs. I realize that legs are a bitch to train, but I'd think that the constant ridicule of everyone asking where the leg braces are today would be enough to get one of these guys under a squat rack.

My last trainer is one of those hippo-like women. Now, it's her own business if she's heavy, but it seems a little odd that this person would believe that she had some knowledge to pass on to clients. I call her "Momma, oh, Momma, I can sit on you and take your life! Again, why people go to her is a mystery. She has to be close to 400 pounds. When she does leg extensions, she has to line up two of 'em just so she can sit down. If this wasn't bad enough, she trains her clients using nothing but adductor/abductor movements for lower body and lifting only three-ounce dumbbells for the upper body. No one ever loses weight, but they just keep coming.

All kidding aside, for the most part, certification companies popped up with good intentions. But there are just too many types of certifications out there that operate with virtually no regulation. The standards have dropped so far that most people have no idea in which one they should enroll. Hell, I'm thinking of opening up my own personal training certification company. There are no men allowed, though. It's women only, and the only thing a girl needs to do to get the certificate is to pay me $500 and give me a rim job. I think it'll be a hit!!

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"Mr. Phillips, are you honestly telling me that people are really going to believe that I'm the 'before,' and he's the 'after'?"

Bikinimom, could you fill him in on them, they're the worse! Try not to let that lazy eye get in the way of your typing

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"BITCH! You can't do this to me!" Silvio