National Personal Trainer Awareness Day is observed every year on January second with a day to honor the experts who assist us with keeping our goals high. 

As the new year begins, one of the most popular resolutions of every year is getting fit, and hence comes the popular demand for personal training comes for the rescue. Their tasks are not exclusively to inspire us, yet to ensure we figure out how to function our bodies securely. As much as lack of motivation keeps us from our goals, the inappropriate use of equipment can lead to injuries which again can become a reason for getting demotivated. 

So we have for you an exclusive series about the Best Personal Trainers sharing their views on fitness and health.

Shreeharsh Deshmukh, Trainer, and Nutritionist, The Fit problem, is an ISSA certified trainer and a nutritionist who has a passion for fitness and training with evidence-based knowledge.

The Fit Problem enables clients' fitness journeys and transformations, customized strength training, lean conditioning, and nutrition planning while working online with clients as well as providing 1-1 personal training.

Fitness impacts health

Shreeharsh explains, “Sickness can be understood in many ways. But I think it has the biggest impact on health. When we look at the concept of body weight, and body fat management, there are numerous studies that have now linked obesity with excessive body fat or being overweight to heart disease like high blood pressure, diabetes and this also means that they start affecting other organs, like high BP or diabetes may start affecting your kidney health, so there is a direct impact of fitness and health. Also, we must understand, especially as we age that the muscles are one of the two organs in the body, that has the power to regenerate, the other being skin. So everything else starts aging with time. So if we keep working out, keep training, since training, keeps our cardiovascular activity going, I think we actually stay younger. So in that way as well, fitness impacts health,” he says.

Fitness does not happen instantly

Shreeharsh sheds light on the subject, “The challenge we have today is that we are living in a generation where everything happens instantly on a device. From shopping to ordering food, things happen instantly. But there are certain things in life that do not happen very fast. Fitness is one of them and people need to understand that patience is going to be the biggest virtue. Many times what is good for the short term may not be good in the longer run, for example, when an obese person goes on a crash diet, drops 20 kgs and feels great about life may not look that great because you end up dropping a lot of water weight and muscle and then it rebounds and actually ends up with more than the original weight which we call that yo-yo eating or yo-yo dieting. Then there is another category of people who want to take performance-enhancing drugs, which I don't want to address specifically but I want to bring that up because the younger generation must understand that health and fitness is at least a 40-year game, and not a four-month game. So please play the long game and it will help,” he says.

Need to look at educational qualifications and fact-checking

Shreeharsh talks on the topic of quacks, “I think it is very common these days. Anybody who loses body weight and moves from obese to fit, think they are qualified to be a personal trainer and or nutritionist and you see this entire sort of activity happening on Instagram and Facebook, and other social media. But we need to look at educational qualifications and not just the fitness qualification. Because if an individual is going to have the discipline to know a subject area, they will also have basic graduation in the first place as the second ability of a personal trainer or a consultant is to cite studies as they give knowledge. We must make a differentiation between what we call anecdotal evidence which is something that goes along the lines of – someone tried a papaya diet and it worked for them and they will say that it will work for everybody, but it may not and most likely it will not, so this is anecdotal evidence - what is true for one may not be true for like hundreds of other people. This has to be mediated by something we call statistical evidence. So there are very credible websites for everything related to nutrition, workout, supplements which provide a lot of evidence-based research. So when somebody gives you advice, check the actual figures because data doesn't lie. So the awareness has to come mainly from the consumers of this advice because you will have quacks,” he says.

Physical consultations are more effective

Shreeharsh shares his views on whether digital consultations have the same impact as physical ones, “If I have to give you a blanket answer, physical consultations are more effective. But we need to work with the world that we face right now. And I think what we also have to understand is the nature of the relationship between a trainer and a trainee. When you work with somebody remotely, we have to be in touch much more often than in person, face to face. So one of the things that happen is that the Smartphone becomes your working tool. I have got trainees who were working out and consulting with me, in the US and in the UK. So it helps us to bring motivation levels into the engagement because for me sitting here, the job of motivating somebody so far away is difficult.  Another thing to understand is that if you're in a digital training program, to make it work you have to bring motivation to the table as a trainee. Also as a trainer, I need to ensure that I am available 24x7 because at times people go out and wonder what to eat, send messages to ask what I should choose? You have to be able to provide that input as and when it is needed. So that is challenging to manage,” he says.

(Edited by Rabia Mistry Mulla)