The Show Up Fitness Podcast
Join Chris Hitchko, author of 'How to Become A Successful Personal Trainer' VOL 2 and CEO of Show Up Fitness as he guides personal trainers towards success.
90% of personal trainers quit within 12-months in the USA, 18-months in the UK, Show Up Fitness is helping change those statistics. The Show Up Fitness CPT is one of the fastest growing PT certifications in the world with partnerships with over 500-gyms including Life Time Fitness, Equinox, Genesis, EoS, and numerous other elite partnerships.
This podcast focuses on refining trade, business, and people skills to help trainers excel in the fitness industry. Discover effective client programming, revenue generation, medical professional networking, and elite assessment strategies.
Learn how to become a successful Show Up Fitness CPT at www.showupfitness.com. Send your questions to Chris on Instagram @showupfitness or via email at info@showupfitness.com."
The Show Up Fitness Podcast
What Every Personal Trainer Needs to Know About Legal Protection
Send us a text if you want to be on the Podcast & explain why!
Professor Barabara Zabawa owner of wellnesslaw.com and author of
Quick & Easy Wellness Law: "No Fluff" Answers to Wellness Practitioners' Most Common Legal Questions & Law for Fitness Managers and Exercise Professionals
What's the real difference between certification and licensure? Can a waiver actually protect you from liability? Where exactly is the line between personal training and physical therapy? These are the critical questions facing fitness professionals in what legal expert Barbara Zabawa calls "the Wild West" of wellness law.
In this eye-opening conversation, Professor Zabawa—a wellness law specialist with 25 years of experience and author of "No More Wild West: The Need for Standards in the Wellness Industry"—cuts through the confusion surrounding fitness industry legalities. She reveals why certifications aren't legally required (despite what many believe), explains how gyms and insurance companies create private requirements that feel like legal mandates, and offers a sobering look at when waivers actually protect you—and when they absolutely don't.
The discussion takes a particularly practical turn when addressing scope of practice concerns. Zabawa describes the "ideal client" for non-licensed professionals and the red flags that should prompt referrals to licensed healthcare providers. For trainers working online, she shares a surprising legal risk many never consider: being held liable for visible hazards in your remote client's environment.
Perhaps most valuable is Zabawa's insight into why more injured clients don't sue their trainers (it's not what you think), and the specific steps fitness professionals can take to protect themselves legally. Whether you're a seasoned trainer or just starting your fitness career, this conversation provides crucial knowledge that could save your business and reputation.
Looking for more protection? Check out Professor Zabawa's book "Quick and Easy Well
Want to ask us a question? Email email info@showupfitness.com with the subject line PODCAST QUESTION to get your question answered live on the show!
Our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/showupfitnessinternship/?hl=en
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@showupfitnessinternship
Website: https://www.showupfitness.com/
Become a Personal Trainer Book (Amazon): https://www.amazon.com/How-Become-Personal-Trainer-Successful/dp/B08WS992F8
Show Up Fitness Internship & CPT: https://online.showupfitness.com/pages/online-show-up?utm_term=show%20up%20fitness
NASM study guide: ...
Howdy everybody and welcome back to the show fitness podcast. Today we have a special treat, professor Zabawa. Thank you for taking the time today to educate us when it comes to the legal aspects of the fitness industry.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm so glad that you invited me and happy to be here, chris.
Speaker 1:Well, most of the time when I have special guests on, I tell them to go and do your own research and learn about them. But you have a really special background. So I think it'd be great if you could just kind of tune us in on who you are and what you do, and then we'll get into the weeds and talking about certifications and law.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, as you just mentioned, I am a lawyer. My name is Barbara Zabawa and I specialize in wellness law, and that's my URL for my website, wellnesslawcom. I also teach law. I'm a tenure-track law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where I teach courses in health and wellness law, as well as contracts, and I've been practicing for over 20 years almost 25 years and the last 11, I've been doing wellness law exclusively, where I've been exploring the legal boundaries with different wellness practices coaching, personal training, yoga, nutrition, reiki, ayurveda, homeopathy, aromatherapy there's so many different types of practices that fall under the umbrella of wellness and they didn't really have much in terms of legal guidance and resources because, as a lawyer especially one who has practiced health care law as long as I have health care is highly regulated and has a lot of legal resources, because there's a lot of legal landmines and wellness is just kind of hanging out there on its own and not really being attended to by professionals like lawyers and others, who really just don't understand what's going on with wellness.
Speaker 2:It really is the Wild West, and that's one of my law review articles that I wrote just a year ago called no More Wild West the Need for Standards in the Wellness Industry and I've written a lot of different law review articles, but that one, it was about the Wild West aspect of it. There's also bias. I could talk about bias in the wellness industry racial, gender bias. I could talk about just the difference between wellness and health care and how the law treats those two things very differently and why does it treat it so differently? There's a lot of interesting legal compliance issues that circle around the whole wellness arena and I enjoy being an expert in that space.
Speaker 1:I love it. You have quite the credentials and that's a great topic to start talking about right now. Because, as a trainer of 20 years, one of the most common questions I get from aspiring trainers is what certification I should get. And for the longest time I would just say you don't actually need a certification. But that kind of turned people away and it's oh yes, you do, you have to have it because it shows that you're qualified. But the barrier for entry into this field is extremely low and, as you were saying, you don't need a certification. So could you maybe talk a little bit more on that and like it's the wild wild west and we'll go from there and it's the wild wild west and we'll go from there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great question and issue, important one to understand. It's very nuanced. So a lot of people hear these words license, certification, accreditation, registration and they don't really understand the legal difference between those words. But they do have different legal meanings. And the word license is something that means in the health and wellness space that you need that credential, a license, before you can even go out and start practicing, as whatever it is that you've trained to be. So a physician can go to medical school, graduate with high honors, but if they don't have a license issued by the state in which they're going to reside and see patients, they can't practice medicine, even if they have the degree, it doesn't matter. You need the license. It's a prerequisite, and that's the case for most health care professionals nurses, pharmacists, physical therapists, physicians they all need a license before they can practice. But there are plenty of professionals out there who don't need a license to practice. So the state isn't involved at all in saying when you can practice, how you can practice. You're just sort of under the radar.
Speaker 2:But to fill in some gaps, there are certification programs. These are usually issued by private organizations that charge you money to earn a certification, but does the state government or federal government care if you have it or not? No, if you don't have a certification, you're not going to get a phone call or a letter from a state government board, a licensing board, to tell you to stop practicing because you're practicing without the credential required by law. Certifications are essentially voluntary from a legal standpoint. Now, just because it's voluntary from a legal standpoint doesn't mean that some organizations employers, for example, or maybe even liability insurance companies might require you to have a certain certification because they view that certification. The employer say it's a fitness center, gym views a certain certification as evidence that you have been trained in a way that they appreciate. So they want their employees to have a certain certification before they hire them. And so it's a private rule, if you will, but not one that's going to send you to jail or cause you to have a fine from the government because you didn't have a certain credential before you started to practice. So certifications are not legally required, but they may be expected by industry stakeholders. And again, liability insurers are another one that might require their insurers to have the people who are delivering services to have certain credentials. So if a gym has a lot of malpractice insurance, which they should all should have liability, general liability and liability insurance for the employees. That liability insurance company might say we'll cover you for injuries that are caused in your gym, but only if your employees meet these kinds of standards. Or if they meet these kinds of standards, we'll give you a break on your policy cost of your policy. So there may be some things in the background that employees don't know what's going on between the gym and their insurance company, or maybe their shareholders. There may be all kinds of different people or organizations that are creating these expectations that you have a certain certification, but it's not legally required.
Speaker 2:And then, just to round it out, accreditation is something that is not done for people, it's done for organizations or programs. So accreditation is a stamp of approval by some body that goes around and decides if this program, this educational program, this school is worthy of their seal of approval, and if so, they get an accreditation designation from that entity. And then registration is another kind of credential. You might be required to register with the state. For example, though you don't need a license, the state might require you to register, or you might be registered to be a member of an organization. So registration is another credential that is sometimes discussed but usually not a legal requirement Sometimes, but not usually. Yeah, that's the landscape of the different credentials that are out there.
Speaker 1:It's always that lawyer speak where it's always kind of that gray area. It's about saying the right thing and I know that we've gone through. We initiated the accreditation process but it really starts getting political because it just costs a lot of money and there's really not even a third party that looks at the education material. If you write the check and it's big enough, then they'll give you that stamp and so, unfortunately, you will have some big gyms that will say things like oh, we want you to get this quote unquote certification because it's accredited, but yet that accreditation really doesn't even mean much when it comes to the quality of the trainer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that happens a lot, that you know. It just becomes a money grab for a lot of people and it's not as trustworthy as one might want to believe it is. So, yeah, I can't deny that that happens.
Speaker 1:And so I'll be interested to hear more about from your professional standpoint in the future. If we were to appoint you the lawmaker of the fitness industry, what type of standards would you like to see personal trainers go through? Because, as we were discussing earlier, it is kind of the wild wild west. There's so many certifications. It's like what do I do? And then people will come across a big marketing firm and this one says that we're the gold standard standard and this one says no, we're the gold standard. And so people will spend thousands and thousands of dollars and at the end of it they think they're ready to start training, but they're really not prepared.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, well, I mean for me. I mean there's all kinds of course requirements or expectations that personal trainers should follow, because they are dealing with people and people's movements, people with all kinds of different abilities and, of course, the risk of injury is very high. And anytime you ask someone to move especially people who are wanting to get in shape, and they're not, you know, they've been sedentary or they're new to fitness, and so the risk of injury is really really high. And so, yeah, I'm not going to go into I'm not a personal trainer by training, so I don't know all of the anatomy and all the different physical risks of injury. But I can say, from a legal standpoint, what personal trainers and anyone who's in wellness wants to be keenly aware of is understanding where your client is coming from, why are they there and how are you able to help them get to where they want to go If they are sick or injured already.
Speaker 2:That's a big red flag that you might want to, um, refer them to someone else, like a physical therapist or someone who has more depth of knowledge on how to work with people who are injured or ill. Um, and you might. You're probably not the best choice. The ideal clients people who don't have licenses and work in the wellness field in some capacity is the individual who feels empowered, is not there to get an injury or illness fixed, but they are very motivated and they are looking for someone to just kind of give them that nudge, give them some guidance, give them some direction on how they can achieve what it is that they have as their vision for improved well-being. That's the ideal client, you know. That said, you still might have people with injuries that you're going to ask them to do movements that might exacerbate those injuries and so knowing that in advance and determining whether you feel comfortable your training can address that is going to be something you want to consider very, very carefully before moving forward working with that client.
Speaker 1:And that's a hot topic in the industry because the line of the scope of practice it's kind of vague and you're going to have someone who comes in and they have some shoulder issues and it's show up a really prideful because we have great teams. We highly suggest every trainer to have a therapist, have a dietitian on your team so you know when in doubt you refer out. But that that line can be kind of hazy and so what would be, what would be the ramification from a legal standpoint if you, if you're doing something that maybe that person should have been working with someone who had a license like a physical therapist and you were to hurt someone? Where does having a contract? You have someone sign a waiver people think that, oh, I'm not liable anymore. I'm okay, they signed this waiver. But it's a little more complex than that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, the effectiveness of a waiver is going to boil down to how well did your client understand that waiver and what they were waiving. You know, did you explain it to them? Was it easily visible? What does it exactly waive? You know you can't waive intentional conduct, you can't waive gross negligent conduct, and so you know, was it carefully written to exclude that kind of conduct? And you know, did you exceed what they consented to you doing?
Speaker 2:So there are so many things. Yes, contracts help, for sure, but you have to be able to use them effectively. You have to still explain things to your client so they understand what they're risking and they assume that risk. They have to be aware that that's a real risk and they choose to go forward anyway. So all of those facts would play into any sort of negligence or malpractice kind of claim. Is you know, did you sit down and talk with them? Did you explain what the risks were? Did they sign the document after you've explained what the risks were and they had a chance to ask questions, or was it done in a very hurried fashion without any thought? Those are the facts that are going to really make or break a lot of these malpractice cases.
Speaker 1:And when I read some of the case examples that go to the Supreme Court and the vocabulary is very esoteric for a simpleton like myself, but it's very common to see things such as they didn't go through the assessment, there was gross negligence, because they just kind of skipped over that and then they started doing a bunch of high intense exercise and the client eventually said, like you know, I'm a little tired, I want to rest.
Speaker 2:And they say no, more, more, more, and then that's when a big lawsuit will come to fruition, lurking there in the background and not ignore it, because your reputation, your client's life all kind of depend on that, on those very important details.
Speaker 1:I know it's important for trainers to have a waiver, but would there be a suggestion from you to optimize that wording? If they were to look for a legal support or a lawyer to review some stuff, what would your suggestions be in that regard?
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, I mean, I I think working with someone who's familiar with what you do is really important. Um, and so of people are now getting stuff off of ChatGPT and asking ChatGPT to write a waiver, like one of my recent videos that I recorded. Do you really trust what that answer is, that you got from Google or that you got from ChatGPT? How do you know that you can trust it? How do you know? That's the big question. And did you even ask the right question? Like, did you, you know, ask the right question?
Speaker 2:Like you know, google and ChatGPT are only as good as the questions you ask, and that's where people who have spent their lives training in a specific area know what to ask. They know what you don't know, and so trying to substitute things that you have no way of judging if it's answering the question that you need to be answered is really risky. Especially know different educational programs and whatnot. But to ask it questions relating to your health or relating to your legal liability, when the answers are so very important to be accurate and trustworthy, I'm not sure that that's the smartest way to approach it.
Speaker 1:And you were alluding to it earlier, with the kind of the standard for certain professions doctors and lawyers you have to go through certain courses and pass the bar or get the licensure that's required. Why don't you think that the wellness industry, when it comes to personal trainers, has that equal entry standard where it's like you pass this test and now you are an actual licensed professional? Why don't you think trainers have that and we're focused so much on certifications?
Speaker 2:Oh well, that's a whole other podcast, I think.
Speaker 2:I think I have very strong feelings and thoughts about licensure and whether it's a good idea to have licensure to begin with.
Speaker 2:Maybe for physicians, yes, it's important. But once you become licensed, you realize like, oh, now I have to follow all these rules and I can only practice where I have a license and I, you know, I'm subject to all of the scrutiny and I have to pay fees every year to the licensing board. And it's in the healthcare world. You know. You're like, maybe you can have insurance, but now you're going to have to be subject to all of these federal and state laws that oversee insurance claims processing, like HIPAA, like fraud and abuse laws, like insurance contractual provisions and you are under a microscope, which is why there's so many healthcare professionals physicians, nurses, physical therapists, pharmacists I hear from all of them who are jumping ship and going into wellness because it doesn't have licensure, because licensure impedes national practice and so many people want to work online and work remote and see people from wherever who are located wherever globally, and you can't do that as a licensed professional period. You can't.
Speaker 2:Unless you have a license in every single place that your patients are located, that your patients are located, but I don't recommend that because that's a can of worms that I've seen too many clients get penalized by because they had too many licenses and it's it's not easy to navigate.
Speaker 1:And, as you're saying, it's probably a whole other podcast but people, fitness professionals will debate on, you know, is that something that industry will go towards eventually? And I think that I think it's absolutely not going to happen, just because of the fact that you'll also find that gyms will probably have to start paying a higher level to their trainers and so, from a financial standpoint, it's not going to be the best for the pocketbooks of the big corporate gyms.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's all it's. Usually, when a profession is seeking licensure, it's not because of quality and safety, it's because of money.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm Money is an interesting thing, and so you mentioned something about online, and a lot of trainers do get into that online space. What would you recommend for them to make sure that they can cover their bases to the best possible degree?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean you want to make sure that you're using and and is reliable, right, um, and just be aware that I mean uh, you, you, you could be held liable. Uh, if you see a trip hazard on the camera of your clients, you know, in the view of your client's room that they're working out with you in. Just make sure that you, that area looks safe for them, because I've heard that there were cases a case at least where someone tripped and fell and blamed the fitness professional on the other end of the camera to that they didn't, they weren't warned about that trip hazard.
Speaker 1:So interesting? Very, yeah, and I know that I've met with a lot of physical therapists who they will credit their whole entire practice almost to trainers who have hurt clients and they've now had to go to therapy. And so why don't you think there are more lawsuits from a general population standard, with people getting hurt from trainers?
Speaker 2:Well, lawsuits are expensive to bring right. They're not easy to bring. You have to find an attorney who will probably work on a contingency fee basis and think it's a good enough case, that there's a good chance of them winning. And so, if there are any mitigating factors on the personal trainer's end, like I did, explain this to them, they did consent, they understood the risk and they went forward. Anyway, like I was talking about earlier, An attorney is going to look at that and say I'm not sure, I'm not sure the jury would rule in our favor given those kinds of facts. So yeah, I mean it's a long slog and lawsuits just don't. They're not easy things to pursue and they're not cheap.
Speaker 1:No, they're not cheap, and so I really appreciate your time today and I know you've written some some great textbooks. Is there some resources that you could suggest for trainers that they wanted to get into the weeds a little bit more?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I create well, so I wrote. I've written several books.
Speaker 2:My latest one is Quick and Easy Wellness Law, available on Amazon, and I also have a membership program through wellnesslawcom for wellness practitioners who want to just have that added layer of security in what they're doing from a legal and business standpoint. So, as a wellness law member, you get access to legal chat that's available 24-7, that I trained and I monitor, and it's specifically geared towards health and wellness, compliance and business questions, so you don't have to wait for a lawyer to get back to you. You can actually just type it in the chat and get a response. It's also going to have a community chat so you can share best practices and questions with other wellness practitioners as well as wellness lawyers who are involved, and you get access to special member resources educational videos, you get free continuing education courses that are available on the website continuing education courses that are available on the website and you get a 25% discount right now on any legal templates that you might need, including disclaimers, website disclaimers, waivers of liability, language services agreements. All of that stuff is available for wellness industry professionals.
Speaker 1:That's absolutely fantastic. I love that. I'll have to dig into that a little deeper, because that is something that I think trainers should definitely subscribe to and get involved with, because you don't want to guess in that regard, you want to make sure you're covering all your bases, and who not better to do it than the experts such as yourself?
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much, Chris. This has been a delight and I wish everyone good luck with their wellness and fitness business journeys.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, thank you very much, Professor. Have a great rest of the day.
Speaker 2:Thank you.