Ori-Black font
Joseph (Joe) Gambino-red font
Ori: Hey Joseph, thanks for taking the time to come on and chat. Could you tell us about your background?
Joe: My background is personal training and strength and conditioning. I have been training for 7 years now primarily in the gym setting, focus on strength training and corrective exercise. I have combined 2 years experience of strength coach experience between Queens College, St. Johns and Brooklyn LIU mostly with men's and womens basketball
I am also kettlebell certified, have my CSCS and a degree in exercise science and nutrition from Queens College .I will be teaching a fitness through exercise and diet class at queens college this fall and I am in my second year of PT school
Ori: Very cool Joe, would you mind on expanding on your experience training the basketball teams, along with what got you interested in the field of Physical Therapy and Personal Training?
Joe: I was the assistant strength coach at queens college for about a year and a half and interned at LIU brooklyn and St. Johns prior to that job. I learned how to program design very well from those experiences. The interesting things that I saw were how impressively strong the D1 athletes are. I also got to see personality traits and how this affects players performances.
Some of the kids, you look at in the weight room and they are strong as hell, but mentally they are not that strong, so they slack off a bit, and then you find out that those players are coming off the bench or they end up under performing.
The reason I got into personal training was that I loved to learn about anatomy and different exercises when i was training myself at 17 years old so I enrolled in an exercise science and nutrition program after originally being a computer science major. After a year in the program i got certified by NASM.
And my experience training clients with injuries lead me to want to become a physical therapist. I have helped many clients over come injuries without physical therapy, and post physical therapy, but i knew if i had more knowledge id be able to do a better job.
I really enjoyed what I do, so I felt this would be the best way to take my talents to the next level to help more people enjoy a greater quality of life.
Ori: Very interesting, if you do not mind sharing, with the readers, how did you get the opportunity to teach at Queens College?
Joseph: The head of the program over at Queens, reached out to me. They like having old alumni from the program come back and teach, and they kept me in mind and reached out and asked if I was interested.
Ori: Awesome. How has your Physical Therapy education so far, after about 2 years of schooling, affected what you do as a trainer?
Joseph: Honestly, I think that my background makes me a stronger therapist as much as the other way around. PT school for my training life has made my assessments better, and my eyes better. This has not changed the way I go about things day to day though. My background gives me a different lens in which i look through school, where i do not sit there and learn the material. I sit there and see how what I am learning applies to what I do now. We will see how this all changes as I get more experience In PT, but my background in strength training and correctives is what I think will make me a great therapist.
I think the training field is weak because it is easy to get certs, and not everyone who gets the cert has the best intentions in mind. However, if trainers could work side by side with therapists, they would make each other look better as well as perform better. Does that make sense?
Ori: Perfect sense, that is exactly what I do. I think how I can relate everything I learn in school to training clients, working out, etc. I think it makes the learning process take longer, but the result is you truly learn the material and how to apply it instead of just knowing facts.
Joseph: Application is the best part. I want to become the best at evaluations and assessments.
Ori: Cool, there is clearly a cross over between what personal trainers do and what physical therapists do, since both look at movement and apply exercise protocols to help their clients. Is there anything specific that you think personal trainers are not taught that PT's are, and vice versa?
Joseph: There are cross overs between the two professions, but you are tought nothing fully worthwhile in the certs. NASM is kind of nice, because they talk about Janda and go into correctives for upper and lower cross syndrome, but you do not learn much. You need to learn that stuff from seminars and reading, along with practicing the stuff that you read before you teach it.
Ori: Yeah, how about the other way around, something that physical therapists could learn from personal trainers?
Joe: The post rehab work. Those trainers who are good at what they do take someone from baseline fitness to higher levels, so I fell that some of the exercise and techniques we use could be useful in the PT world, but most of that stuff is post rehab these days, especially with how insurance is. I will be better able to answer that when I am a PT.
Ori: Thanks so much Joe for taking the time out to chat. Folks, Joe is currently in his second year of his Doctoral degree in Physical Therapy at Touro College. You can learn more about Joe and contact him through his website;