The 3 Reasons Why Your Primary Healthcare Provider Is Your Personal Trainer

A lot has changed in American healthcare over the past 50 years.

Despite the tremendous progress in medicine and research, we're not only spending more and getting less from our system, but we're sicker than ever before.

How could this be?

You wouldn't be wrong if you called this system of ours a feedback loop from hell.

We're told to see our doctor *blank* times per year for check-ups and the average blood panel. We get unsatisfactory and often inaccurate feedback and recommendations (such as prematurely putting us on a statin for high total cholesterol or beta-blockers for hypertension). Then, we go on living without any real juice to draw value from.

This process repeats for years and years until, for many of us, finally, one of your blood markers is high, you get sick, or you're injured.

Then, you're tossed into a system that throws drugs, surgeries, and startling bills at you to get you back to a new baseline (that baseline often being worse, not better, than before).

It's a system that essentially has us driving blindfolded in an unknown direction. Then, we finally drive off a cliff and the ambulances and doctors are waiting for us at the bottom to patch us up.

This needs to change.

And the change needs to be, and is, coming from the front lines, with Personal Trainers.

Personal Trainers are doing the real work to help health-conscious people learn a new way to live where the power is back in their hands.

Here's how they are doing it.

1. We're Educating People

When was the last time your primary care physician dropped some knowledge on you that made you think twice?

When was the last time you felt like you were let in on some tranformative information that empowered you to do something different than your norm?

Unless you're one of the rare few with an exceptional PCP, it's not happening.

The best Personal Trainers bring the latest information from research and anecdotes to the people they serve.

• The importance of strength and muscle, and how to foster it

• The truth behind foods and the food system

• The impact that stress has on your body and ways to offload it

• Being able to properly interpret blood panels so you know what numbers actually matter and which are junk

• How to manage and address physical pain without spending prolonged periods in PT

The list goes on. What's most important about this fact is that knowledge is what gifts us the ability to make better decisions for ourselves. So without education, we're left with blindfolds on our faces, possibly living a life on it's way towards poor health outcomes as we age.

2. We Offer Timely, Realistic Exercise & Nutrition Recommendations

When was the last time your doctor or PCP followed up their question on whether or not you're exercising or eating right with a detailed plan, fit for you, on how to incorporate into your lifestyle?

Answer: They never do.

And even if they did, I don't see many of these professionals being in the kind of physical shape to be prescribing information appropriately (sadly, many just don't walk the walk).

As soon as you come face-to-face with a Personal Trainer, they're asking you questions related to your fitness, nutrition, and health history with more vigor and care than you could find in an office or clinic. And the best of them are able to follow up with recommendations on how to start your journey forward from where you're at.

This leads to the final point...

3. We Actually Know You

In regards to discussing your health, how important is it to you to work with someone that knows more about you than just the numbers that pop up on a spreadsheets or are answered in a questionnaire?

Personal Trainers know you, well, personally :)

We learn about not just your health history and the important markers taken from an assessment (these are vitally important, but it just can't end there), we also learn about your lifestyle habits, personality, short and long-term goals, and the obstacles of your everyday life that may be impeding whichever plan you intend to put into place.

In short, we're able to hold you accountable to the actions that will make real change in your life and support you in taking preventative measures so you're far less likely to drive off that cliff and into the feedback loop from hell.

Who do you have in your corner with your best interests in mind and helping you shatter your fitness and lifestyle obstacles?