Personal Trainer Singapore – Coach Jonathan Wong

I have no clue why this is called the “football” bar. But from the point of view as a coach and personal trainer, it is a great piece of equipment to have in a gym or training center.

It looks like a normal barbell except that it has handles that are diagonal to the bar (see pic below) this allows the hands to be in a position that puts less stress on shoulders.

Shoulder injuries are a problem. In fact it is so prevalent that I just had a staff education session to teach our trainers more about how to handle personal training clients with current or former shoulder injuries.

Here Are Our Trainers Learning How To Find And Release Trigger Points That Cause Shoulder Pain

The grip of the football bar allows exercise to be performed with less stress on shoulders, preventing injury.

I got 4 of these football bars for our new training center (the biggest and best private gym in Singapore) due to be open in August 2009!

Also, because of the number of people with pre-existing shoulder injuries (they didn’t get them from training with us!) this kind of modified bar is a necessity. It allows training “around” the injury so that the rest of the body doesn’t get weak. We can train and get strong even while a client is going through our 16 week shoulder rehab program that fixes the causes of the injury.

We work from very simple to very advanced injury prevention routines that “bullet proof” your shoulder from future injury and make you stronger than ever. Golfers, tennis guys and anybody who does anything where pushing, throwing or swinging is involved can benefit.

In my Singapore personal training center I do the soft tissue work. I read all about therapy and massage and am planning to learn Active Release Technique next year. I have recently had to “strip” several basketball and martial art’s clients knees of scar tissue on their ligaments.

This is caused by lots of starts and stops and it causes irritating pain that does not get better and does not get worse. I had this problem myself till I got Coach Poliquin to help me fix it last month in Australia.

But for the past few days I was dealing with my own scar tissue of a different kind. It’s scar tissue from 29 years ago! I had a hernia operation as a baby and there was a scar from the operation.

One side of that scar (just below belly button) was “stiffer” than the other side, the skin and the fat beneath it was just hard and tight. I had to break it up with my thumbs and fingers. It HURT for 3 days! But now, just a week later, the entire area is soft and moves like it should!

So take care of your scar tissue. It makes life alot better. Any traumatic or overuse situation can cause it. In fact even over doing static stretching can cause it!

To be technically excellent a personal trainer in Singapore or elsewhere will need to have good understanding of:

• Biomechanics (how the body moves in space)
• Kinesiology (how the joints move etc)
• Nutrition
• Endocrinology (hormonal system)
• Manual Therapy (massage, rehab, trigger point work etc)
• Injury Prevention
• Performance Enhancement

And I’ll probably think of more if I really sat down to do it. The body is such an awesome piece of creation that we will probably never get to the end of it.

Oh yeah, don’t forget that it’s not just good enough to know. A personal trainer must distill out the important points and teach/coach them to a client.

I believe all this is too much to teach in any reasonable amount of time. It needs to be learnt over years of consistent study and practice. This cannot be driven by any certification. It has to come from an intrinsic sense of excellence. Being the very best that you can be.

I know I’m not perfect but I do want to make the best use of whatever God given ability I have. If that means spending several hundred bucks a month on books, dvds, seminars etc. So be it.

“Who we are is God’s gift to us, who we become is our gift to God” so we might as well be the best we can be!

Maybe one day personal training will be a professional qualification. That will be a happy day for the fitness industry. But meanwhile I will “act as if” that means that I will “act as if” we are a professional organization and industry. That is how things come into being eventually.