With the new EGYM equipment introducing the ability to have these machines do most of the work for you during exercise, it can feel like personal training is being left in the past.
This standpoint can appeal to some people. If someone can just scan a wristband and it has all their information stored within it, they don’t have a need for a trainer.
However, that’s an unfair assessment of what a personal trainer is according to Parker Eberly, a personal trainer at Georgia Southern.
Eberly has been a personal trainer for four years and thinks that personal training can be enhanced by EGYM, but never replaced.
“I love teaching people, I don’t think the EGYM will replace that,” Eberly said. “Sometimes people just need somebody to talk to when they work out, EGYM can’t do that.”
Eberly isn’t alone in this thinking either. Jonathan Davis, assistant director of Georgia Southern’s student accessibility resource center, agrees that while these machines can be a plus for students who have trouble going to the gym, it won’t replace the trainer.
“I can definitely see it being a plus, I just don’t know that the student does that same sort of work with a personal trainer,” Davis said.
While Davis did mention that the game aspect of the machines can help those who have issues with staying consistent, the machines don’t really rise to what he sees as a true accommodation for students.
Davis did speak on the fact, however, that the remote access that trainers are gaining through the EGYM app does allow more accessibility to students who can be intimidated by a personal accountability system.
“Sometimes it can be intimidating having that accountability person to be like, ‘hey, weren’t you supposed to work out twice a week at least? You didn’t do that’ so that may make some people less likely to go follow that meeting,” Davis said. “It definitely has the potential to augment and support physical fitness for individuals with or without disabilities as well as having that real time accountability."
Even with this accountability baked into the EGYM, Hannah Halavin, a personal trainer at Georgia Southern, points out that even though it can help people be accountable, it can’t truly develop them.
“To go from a good trainer to a great trainer, goes into client development, understanding people and actually connecting with them in different ways,” Halavin said.
With all this talk, it seems like trainers are totally against these machines, but that simply isn’t the case.
“I don’t have to count, I find that being so much harder where I'm like ‘okay make sure you’re breathing, make sure we’re leaning back a little bit more’ and then making sure that I have to count as well too,” Halavin said. “I can truly focus on my client without the extra fluff and overworking them.”
Halavin and Eberly both agree that these machines are a great tool to use for anyone at any experience level, just not a straight replacement.
Eberly even sees this technology of electromagnetic resistance as the new wave of replacing old gym equipment.
“I think one day it can get rid of the complete pully system you have with the cables,” Eberly said. “Using those magnets, using that range of motion, having all the features that it has to offer, you can do a lot more than what you can push on your own.”
The main proposal trainers are looking at is what their jobs will look like in the years to come. It can be a popular assumption that they would become more facilitators or nutritionists, things a machine can’t do, but that is far from the truth according to Halavin.
“Never a nutritionist, you cannot become a nutritionist as a personal trainer,” Halavin said. “I’d hate to be the person to say, “creatine’s going to be great for you or you should try Oxy Shredder’ and not know their history or health factors.”
Ultimately though, whether the EGYM becomes an industry standard or just a cool thing some gyms have, trainers are always going to be around.
“In the personal trainer industry as a whole, I don’t think it’ll replace,” Eberly said.