Sports medicine expert witnesses warn that the person you entrust your body may have little or no training in exercise science and physiology. “It’s scary,” says Walter Thompson, professor of kinesiology and health at Georgia State University in Atlanta. “My gosh, they license my haircutter, why not the person making me push 200 pounds over my head?” Both Thompson and Marc Rabinoff, chairman of the department of human performance at Denver’s Metropolitan State College, have seen cringe-worthy bodily damage in their roles as in personal-trainer injury cases.
“I’ve seen people permanently disabled by trainers,” Thompson says. “One case I did was when a personal trainer had someone exercise with one muscle group too much, and that person wound up in intensive care with rhabdomyolysis (muscle breakdown that leads to kidney failure). I’m seeing that more and more when I testify in court. People are getting hurt.”
Excerpted from TheSacramentoBee.