The Training Corner: A New Guest Column Series on Personal Training

Meet Jennifer Green, a student at Benedictine University and part of their Clinical Exercise Physiology Master’s Program. Prior to moving to Illinois she attended Central Michigan University and received her B.S. with a major in Health Fitness and Rehabilitative programs. She has served as a lab assistant for both universities as well as a personal trainer for the Benedictine University Healthier Body Challenge. Jennifer is also working as an exercise specialist at Villa St. Benedict in their Performance Enhancement Center as well as currently interning with NCPAD for the Fall of 2009.

Personal training may seem routine to some individuals. However, I have had the unique opportunity to train many clients that have health or physical challenges or obstacles to overcome. I have worked with individuals with Parkinson’s disease, those with shattered bones due to osteoporosis and falls, as well as hip replacements, double knee replacements, and more. While the goals may be the same for these individuals as other clients, it is the process of reaching those goals that is different. As a team, the trainer and client may need to overcome the initial fear of starting an exercise program as well as find activities that can be safe and beneficial. This column series will be based on several experiences that I have had with training individuals and the challenges that we have had to address in order to meet their goals. I will be focusing on training adaptations, appropriate goal-setting, and basic strategies applied in order to help these individuals succeed.

Tune in next month for an article about my experience training the aging population and how I addressed health-related conditions that are often associated with aging in the exercise program.

This fact sheet was last updated on 06-04-2009.