No, no... I'm a strength trainer.

The other day my girlfriend mentioned that she has stopped referring to me as a 'personal trainer'. Whenever she did this she would then get the follow up question of whether or not I work at 24 hour fitness. Of course she knows that this is a question that will send me off on a tirade of epic proportions no matter how much I try to bite back my discontent with the state of the industry. So she has begun referring to me as a 'strength trainer', and the 24 hour fitness interrogatives have ceased. Thank god. What is a personal trainer anyway? I think it actually makes sense for most trainers to carry this incredibly vague title. Hey, I can personally train you in how to best eat chicken McNuggets, or how to do a rockin' set of cable flyes. No, no... I'm a strength trainer. Or as Will Williams RKC Team Leader takes it a step further I could be an 'Authentic Strength Trainer'. Yeah, I like the sound of that.
You are what you decide you will be. Strength trainers do not get certified via weekend courses or by mail. They find themselves in dark gyms or dusty fields suffering through another lesson learned in pain. They trudge through learning the origin and insertion of the interspinales. They do not vanish on you for two months to go snow boarding or surfing. They do not tone down the training program out of fear you will think it is too hard and quit. If you wanted it easy and ineffective you would work with a personal trainer. One can be a personal trainer of ineffectiveness and potential injury as well as fitness and health.
Or Strength.

TSC Pre-test

I was pretty happy with how this went, considering how slipshod my training has been, and that my hands were wrecked for a few weeks. No excuses though, it is what it is.
I have to work out some deadlift issues. I think it's mostly psychological. I got stopped at 365 pounds, then brought it down to 335 and pulled it without too much difficulty. Key is that I had one of the trainers at Equinox who's a friend of mine watch me pull it. It's not a big mystery that you work harder in competition and when you're being observed. Reportedly I kept my back pretty straight, which I'm happy about. This was also sans chalk, so grip was an issue.
I definitely slacked on the snatches, so I think I can work it up to 90, possibly 95 or 100. We'll see.
I hate pull-ups. I actually get a feeling of despair before doing them.
Here it is:

Pull-Ups- 15
Deadlift- 335 lbs.
24 kilo snatches in 5 minutes- 80