If you’re considering joining a boot camp in Vancouver, check to make sure it’s fully guaranteed. Only the most reputable boot camp companies stand behind their service with an unconditional money-back guarantee.

Note the “unconditional” part of the guarantee.

Be careful of the countless boot camp companies in Vancouver that promote a money-back guarantee, but include a bunch of fine print. For example, today I stumbled accross a Vancouver boot camp website that heavily promoted their guarantee, but included the following fine print:

(money-back guarantee for clients training with 3, 4, or 5x per week in their first month only. Attendance for every class, food log and exercise journal required for refund)

99% of my Vancouver boot camp customers miss at least one workout during a 4-week program, so as far as I’m considered the aforementioned guarantee is completely worthless. And that’s not even taking into consideration the food log and exercise journal, which are probably so tedious that no one will bother with them.

The guarantee I include with my Vancouver boot camp program is 100% unconditional. Zero fine print. Try one workout, or all twelve, and if you’re not thrilled with the workouts and with your results, just let me know and I’ll gladly refund your entire purchase price. No hard feelings.

I did an interview tonight for CBC Radio about the Vancouver Park Board’s recent decision to start requiring Vancouver boot camp operators to have permits in order to run classes in Vancouver parks.

I love the new permit policy because it will create much more structure and organization for local boot camp businesses.

A few weeks ago I was at Coopers Park and to my utter astonishment, I saw a local personal trainer running a kickboxing boot camp directly on the narrow Yaletown seawall. People trying to walk along the seawall had to duck and weave around a crowd of people doing kickboxing. It was embarrassing for me as a fellow boot camp operator.

Back to the CBC Radio interview, I was absolutely floored tonight when I heard the aforementioned trainer (also being interviewed) whining about the new permit policy because (among other reasons) his kickboxing boot camp is out of people’s way and isn’t causing anyone any trouble. Wow. I only wish I would have filmed a bit of his seawall kickboxing workout, including the countless men, women, and children (and dogs) that had to shimmy their way around all the kicking and punching.

It’s a good thing the Vancouver Parks Board is now regulating boot camps because clearly most trainers in Vancouver do not possess the common sense and good judgement needed to determine an appropriate (i.e. unintrusive) location to run their outdoor boot camp programs.

I was just talking to my sister (personal trainer in Maple Ridge), and I told her the story about the personal trainer I saw at the gym the other day.

My sister had her own story for me about a new client she recently started training. According to the client, her previous personal trainer (in Vancouver) put her on the recumbent bike for the first 35 minutes of every session (while the trainer just walked around the gym talking to people).

It’s hard to find value in a $100 (yes, that’s how much the trainer charged) personal training session when your trainer leaves you on a cardio machine for over half the session.

Unfortunately, these stories are very common. It’s incredibly hard to find a personal trainer in Vancouver that’s passionate about fitness and truly dedicated to helping their clients reach and exceed all of their fitness goals.

For elite personal training in Vancouver from motivated and passionate trainers who are as excited about your success as you are, visit my Personal Training Vancouver website.

I never cease to be amazed by the seemingly unlimited ways that my fellow personal trainers can disappoint me.

I recently got a membership at a local gym, and I was there doing a workout this afternoon and I saw a personal trainer who I had previously only ever seen online on his website and YouTube videos.

Based on what I saw of him online, I had thought that he was a decent personal trainer.

Today I saw him training a client, and although I wasn’t intently watching him, the times that I did happen to glance over at him, he was usually checking his Blackberry, and in one case actually typing on it. This was during the personal training session. Amazing.

If I paid my hard-earned money for a personal training session and my trainer was more concerned with his Blackberry than my workout, I’d never train with that person again. Ever.

And if one of my employees ever takes out their Blackberry while they’re supposed to be running my Vancouver boot camp program, that will be the last boot camp workout that person ever runs for me.

In the past few weeks I’ve participated in a couple of personal trainer led group workouts in Vancouver. One workout in particular was a bit of a disaster, with a variety of very pointless (and in one case dangerous) exercises.

By far the most pointless exercise in the workout was a resistance band lateral raise (nothing wrong with that) while standing on a balance board (there’s the problem).

If you’ve never exercised on a balance board before, then congratulations, you’ve managed to avoid one of the most pointless pieces of exercise equipment ever created.

I knew the balance board exercise was going to be a complete waste of time when the trainer couldn’t even demonstrate the exercise properly. She got on the balance board and tried in vain to balance on it while demonstrating a lateral raise. Painful to watch.

You know you’re being asked to perform a goofy exercise when it’s so off the wall that your trainer can’t even demonstrate it properly.

Unless you’re a professional log roller, tightrope walker, or are training for a competition involving standing on a balance board, there’s absolutely no reason to use such a pointless piece of equipment during your workouts.

And if your personal trainer gets you standing on a balance board during your workout, it may be time to find a new (and competent) personal trainer.

Btw, the “dangerous” exercise I mentioned earlier involved setting up three BOSU’s in a row and having people do tuck jumps from one BOSU to the next. Unbelievable.

Besides being completely pointless, that’s an ankle inversion sprain waiting to happen, with the very real possibility of much more serious injuries. There are truly some incompetent personal trainers out there. Beware.