2 years and still no results?

I was having a chat with some friends the other day about the previous posting and the interesting topic on personal training in the gym came up. We were sharing some stories and I told my friends about some personal trainers who have been training some clients for over 2 years now, and they look the same today as they did 2 years back. I am not kidding.

One of my friends was shocked by this and said it�s impossible, as long as you are doing some amount of a workout, you are bound to see some results, so it is unbelievable that this is happening. He probably did see some results, but not enough for it to be noticeable. They are not extremely obese, but a little bit on the chubby side and have a pretty obvious belly problem.

I agree that after 2 years of training and no results, something is wrong somewhere. So, I have listed down several reasons as to why people don�t see results even though they have been with a personal trainer for 2 years.

1) No Progress � Lots of people start a routine and forget that they have to keep challenging themselves. For some reason, the personal trainer I am talking about has stopped increasing the resistance and making it more challenging. Maybe the client has some injury which prevents him from doing more, I can only guess at this moment
2) You are what you eat � This old saying is so true when it comes to fitness. Yes, the trainer has 1 full hour to train this person, but then for the next 23 hours, the trainer has no control. This is one of the limitations of personal training. It is missing that very important nutrition part. If you eat a lot of unhealthy food, 1 hour of training 3 times a week will only be a scratch in terms of impact. This guy could be drinking 4 to 5 times a week for all I know, hence the training has little or no effect
3) Burn Out � Burn out is very real and not just something in the mind. If you keep doing the same exercises everyday, eventually your body adapts and you will stop seeing results. This is why it is important to mix and match from time to time to confuse the body and keep seeing results.
4) The Personal Trainer really does not know what they are doing. Now I hate to say that, but you must admit, this is another posibility. Sometimes I see personal trainers doing stupid exercises and I wonder where they even got this idea from. Oh well.

So why do these clients stick with the Personal trainers if they are not seeing results? One person told me that sometimes these clients just want some one to talk to as they feel lonely. If you ask me, at about RM 100 per hour, that�s a very expensive price to pay just to have someone to talk to. I don�t know.

So what do you guys think. Please share your thoughts and look forward to hearing your comments.

PS: Please take a moment to answer the poll on the right. Since we are on the topic of personal trainers, I want to know, what is the most important quality that a personal trainer should have. So share your thoughts there too.