The boss...

I am a trained professional.  This means that I know about fitness in general, along with techniques for losing weight, building muscles, increasing flexibility, and all that good stuff.  What I am NOT is an expert on anyone else’s specific body.

 

We are all unique.  My quirks are not anybody else’s.  No one else has to work around my own personal problems, injury history, anxieties (I hear that collective sigh of relief from way over here!).  I can be the most empathetic person on the planet, but I will never be able to feel anyone else’s pain in a real sense.

 

Because of this, I am never the boss of anybody else’s workout.  I make suggestions and I use my knowledge and experience to guide clients through exercises as safely as possible, but only my clients know when something hurts a bad way.  I can make observations and reasonable inferences about when my clients are reaching limits.  There are times when I certainly tell folks that they are done with a particular exercise.  It’s even more important to note that there are times when my clients need to tell me that they are done—I welcome hearing that and I respect clients’ decisions.

 

I will always encourage clients to go as far as they can.  That’s my job.  But clients have a job, too, and that includes saying stop when their bodies are done.