Personal Trainers/BC Survivors

Hi Lisa,

Congrats! I will help you any way I can. Don't hesitate to contact me. I'm doing some continuing ed right now

katherine

I just got mine in the mail,Lisa - I need to open the book (havent done that yet)

 My email addy is mkibbetson@gmail.com Would love a study buddy too!

Mary

Lisa-

According to Glenda, the good witch, it' always best to start at the begining

After that, one step at a time, one day at a time. Remembering to breathe along the way! You can do this, sfter all that has gone on, this will be a piece of cake. Remember ... I get first appointment 

Elaine

I am a certified personal trainer. I currently am certified thru ISSA and NASM. However, there is little( if any) research on body building and training for BC survivors. You need to be careful with this and clients. Being certified does not qualify you to make decisions pertaining to individuals with complications due to surgery. Most woman should seek exercise guidelines from a qualified Physical Therapist that has all the patients medical history. Lymphademia is no joke and you don't want to be the one to trigger that. The guidelines I am aware of is, a person that has had node removal should never lift more than 5 pounds. For me personally that was never going to happen. I have been training for 20 years and have been gently increasing my resistance and just recently have been working with 20 pound dumbells. But that is me. Its frustrating because I want to be safe but with the little research in the area of body building its a crap shoot, Will this trigger LE or wont it? For me its something I NEED to do. Would I recommend this for clients that had node removal? NEVER. Its too risky. I do however do a lot of cardio, It is shown to reduce risks of cancer returning by 50%. This still is a soft study, but makes sense. 4-5 days a week for 30-60 minutes. I tend to lean toward the upside of that range. Bewbie is still sensitive so I choose low impact exercises. Step class, bike, stairclimber, cardio kickboxing, swimming and my new fav Latin Dance. I am addicted. I only incooperate weight training 3 days a week for now. And focus mainly on core and lower body. Baby steps with the upper body. Range of motion is important so anything that will increase flexibilty such as yoga and stretching is vital to help break up scar tissue and keep tendons and ligaments from shortening. I think scarf dancing would be a good activity for upper body. No clue where to find someone who teaches that. But it looks gentle and fluid with slow wide ranges of motion.

I agree there is a huge need but at the same time there is a huge liability in the area of LE if that is an area you want to "specialize" in. Make sure you also purchase insurance if you are in private practice.

Good luck

Shelly Jo, here's a page on exercise and lymphedema, with some links to more recent studies and guidelines. As you say, the medical folks -- doctors, lymphedema therapists -- should be the ones to weigh in on each individual's specific needs and risks, but there is a lot of interest in this topic in the lymphedema research community just not, so lots of new thoughts on this.

http://www.stepup-speakout.org/Exercise_and_lymphedema.htm

Hope that helps some,
Binney

That article basically re itterates everything i said. My main concerns lies mainly with the weight training and being liable. Unfortunalty its a risk for trainers. My personal attitude and how I train myself being a survivor with full axillary node removal are irrelevant when it comes to giving advice to a client under contract. 

 Bottom line is I would stay within that 5-10 pound guideline. 

Now I am off the the gym  

everyminute...I just started a Team Survivor Affiliate here.  Just got the website up and am working on starting our events.  I have surgery the end of this month, so I'll have to wait a while after that to start teaching classes agai!

EWB you can check out team survivor here www.teamsurvivor.org

Hey Lisa

The website is part of the www.teamsurvivor.org website.  So it just has the basic information for now.  I'm not sure who handles your part of the country, but when you are ready again, let me know and I'll contact Ronni!

 Lisa,

I am being the devils advocate here. You had mentioned in your original post that you wanted to be breast cancer specific. and you wanted to get certified, 

"I feel there is a huge need for fitness help that is specific to BC and other cancers." These my love are your words exactly.

 Now with that said, I do not disagree with you. You are missing my point. I for one have been doing tons of research and find lack of research in this area. The complications is becoming a personal trainer to fill this need and advertising as such. Now you say you are a breast cancer survivor. AS AM I. SO dont get in a lather over my technicalities over legal issues here. I have doing this for 20 years I have seen a lot. You really need to stay withing training guidelines and to this date there is no such guidelines in any of the acredited training certificates for medical recovery or cancer training. Thats all. I think what we really need to focus on is MORE research in fitness and recovery and specific issues such as LE. With out we are just "winging" it..

The requirements are rather stringent, but the American College of Sports Medicine has a new certification - Certified Cancer Exercise Trainer (CET).  Here are the requirements:

• An ACSM or NCCA-accredited certification AND
• Certification in Adult CPR & AED AND
• Bachelor's Degree (in any field) AND 500 hours of experience training older adults or individuals with chronic conditions    
  OR 10,000 hours of experience training older adults or individuals with chronic conditions

So, you would need to get another ACSM certification first (they have a personal trainer cert) and gain some experience, but it would be a great fit down the road.

http://www.acsm.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Certification/GetCertified/ACSMACSCertifiedCancerExerciseTrainer/ACSM_ACS_Certified_C.htm

I'm certified through ACSM as a registered clinical exercise physiologist, and will probably add this (once I'm no longer a student and actually have some income)

Hi Sharon,

I was taking Aromasin and went off of it because it caused me so much pain in my joints and especially in my hand and leg where I have lymphedema. I read on line where women were taking Darvocet and arthrisis drugs to counteract the pain. None of these were what I wanted to do.

What I found that finally helped is Cymbalta. It is an antidepressant that is prescribed for fibromalgia patient.  WOW!!! this has made all the difference in the world.

I went on Arimidex which i the same as Aromasin both are strong than Tamoxifen. I have no pain at all. I told my Oncologist and she was really amazed and was going to start reccommending it to clients that are havaing the joint pain.

It may not work for everybody the same but it might be worth asking about and trying.