Why You Need to be Prepared to Avoid Injuring Your Older Clients

I’m fond of watching older adults train and improve themselves. I believe learning and growth are lifelong vocations, and we must constantly thrive to improve ourselves no matter the age. With this said, a video on my news feed caught my attention because of the older adults featured in it. What also caught my attention was the terrible body alignment they were allowed to use while performing their techniques.

I was perplexed by what I was seeing; older women performing deadlifts and other weight bearing activities with poor alignment, yet there were supposedly qualified fitness professionals standing around them. I feel safety and ensuring proper alignment should be one of the hallmarks of an exercise routine with older adults. Why no one picked up on this concept before releasing the video is concerning.

We have to do better than this

I hope this comes as a wake-up call for all trainers and health officials who prescribe exercise to their clients. If you’re not paying attention to their body alignment, you’re hurting them and allowing them to hurt themselves. Every session that goes by without you explaining and reinforcing what’s required of them to maintain a safe body alignment is another step closer to them incurring an injury.

Please keep in mind, the risk of injury is greater for older adults. So, if you work with older adults, safety and proper alignment are a must and should never be overlooked. Older adults are already at a stage in their life where they’re more prone to suffer from some form of bone or other health related issue. The worst thing you could do is solve one issue and simultaneously aggravate another by teaching them the right exercises in poor alignment.

These professionals are obviously unprepared

I’m sure you’ve been reading a number of my newsletter posts, so it may come as no surprise when I reiterate the importance of being prepared. Prepared professionals make fewer mistakes. These professionals are better prepared to work with their clients and injuries are less likely to happen as a result.

Professionals who ignore proper posture and body alignment are more likely to hurt their clients

If you ignore your client’s posture and body alignment, you’re more likely to hurt them. It’s a bold statement, but I stand by it because it’s important that we realize this and become more aware of the issue. An increasing amount of people are suffering from low back and neck related pain, but some professionals are ignoring some of the root causes for these issues and adding to the problem.

This is your call to action

If you see videos like the one I mentioned, say something. Don’t allow things like this to pass because there are people regularly being exposed to these sorts of programs. The scary part is they could be doing more harm than good or, as stated before, trying to solve one issue but aggravating another.

Here’s the take away

If you don’t want to be one of those unprepared professionals, you need to start training yourself to spot these posture problems and correct them. If you’re not trained to do this, it’s time you upped your game. The fitness and health industry will continue to evolve. If you plan to continue working in it, you need to diversify what you’re offering and continue educating yourself to become the best you could be.

I’m going to go out on a limb and introduce you to our partner, Educational Fitness Solutions. They’re currently offering a professional online program titled: Personal Training and Group Exercise Training for Older Adults, that teaches you how to work with older adults and design exercise programs that will benefit them. The program also has some added benefits, but I’ll leave that for them to explain.

Check out the program here >>