A member in his fifties came back four months after a knee operation, with clearance to train and no idea what he was allowed to do.
The first thing we did was ask for his physiotherapist's plan, and then actually speak to her. We did not write a programme. We delivered hers, with a trainer present for every session for the first eight weeks, and we sent her a short note every fortnight saying what had been done and what he had said about it.
Twice she told us to stop something we would have progressed. Both times she was right and one of those was a movement he was keen on.
Eleven months later he squats his own body weight, trains three times a week without supervision, and comes at two in the afternoon when the floor is quiet and a trainer has time to look at him.
We put this on the page because the request we get most often from people in his position is for a rehabilitation programme, and the answer is always no. What a gym can do well is deliver somebody else's plan properly, which is a real service and a much smaller claim.
