A PhD in Pumpitude?

Had they worked in Washington, D.C., Dana Carvey's Hans and Kevin Nealon's Franz might have had to show proof they were educated enough to help all the weak little girly men try to turn their little spaghetti arms into muscle.

The D.C. city government was mulling a recommendation from its Board of Physical Therapy to require personal trainers be licensed, and to make the requirements for licensing be either a two-year college degree or some other kind of certification. So technically my headline sacrificed accuracy for alliteration; our favorite faux Austrians would only need an associate's degree under the rules the Board adopted.

Board members said their goal was to protect people from folks who might take money from unwitting folks in exchange for ineffective or even dangerous workout regimes. This sounds OK, until you realize that the Board of Physical Therapy is made up of licensed physical therapists -- people who might be interested in keeping a thumb on the scale when it came to who gets to tell people how to exercise.

The good people of Washington, D.C. (they exist. Who knew?) fussed at their city government about the idea that someone needs a college degree in order to say, "Just five more, man, come on, you can do it!" So the mayor booted the chair of the PT board, which saw the writing on the wall and adopted seriously scaled back regulations. The city council is considering a bill that would wipe the whole mess out in any event.

My little joke in the last paragraph and the SNL caricatures aside, personal trainers are often a big help. They don't always bring new knowledge to a client -- anyone who doesn't realize that eating better and exercising more is a good way to trim pounds and get healthier didn't pay attention to their otherwise sadistic gym teacher -- but they do provide encouragement in changing habits and standards to meet.  So I would want to see the good ones prosper and the bad ones languish, which I think is something that can happen without a group of folks with a vested interest in making being a trainer harder to do passing laws that make being a trainer harder to do.

Plus, this could set a dangerous precedent. My sampling of the internet reveals that many people represent themselves as bloggers when they can't write, aren't funny and wouldn't know satire if it smacked 'em on the fanny and said, "That'll be twenty bucks, sugar." Some agency could decide that bloggers should be licensed in order to protect people from lame humor, reviews of airport novels and Bollywood movies and grumpy cultural harrumphing. And then where would I be?