Nick Berners-Price shares his life-changing journey, how exercise is the only disease-modifying therapy for Parkinson’s and why you should become a Parkinson’s specialist personal trainer
I’ve been personal training for 30 years. Even as a teenager, I was fascinated by the human body, how it worked and how it responded to different training. I have also had Multiple Sclerosis for nearly 20 years. My first symptoms appeared in 2006 when I lost the feeling in my legs for 18 months and my energy levels dropped so low I would get out of breath walking up a flight of stairs. My eldest son was less than a year old.
Ever since, I have had a very personal reason to research and develop the best systems available to help manage various medical conditions through exercise, nutrition and lifestyle. What I’ve found has been life changing for me and for many of the clients I work with who live with medical conditions.
Many personal trainers struggle to find their niche. This is understandable given that our jobs require us to be part psychologist, part therapist, part army instructor, part doctor, etc. And also given that our initial training doesn’t separate clients into different populations.
What we are primarily as personal trainers is experts at getting people to do more exercise. Whether that involves motivating them, removing the barriers they face, empathising with them, educating them … we do whatever it takes to get them exercising. We do that because we understand the power of exercise.
Human metabolism simply doesn’t work properly without exercise, as is so well explained in Herman Pontzer’s 2021 book Burn. Over millions of years of evolution, the human body has developed to require exercise on so many levels in order to be healthy. At a cellular level, we cannot function well without regular physical activity. As physical activity is increasingly removed from modern living, we are forced to try to squeeze the necessary effects from an ever-diminishing number of minutes each week.
As personal trainers, we are experts in getting people to exercise more, but also in attaining the maximum benefit from each minute of that exercise.
Experts in getting people to exercise is exactly what our society needs right now. Whether it be to help the long-term sick back to work, to help reduce the numbers of people with metabolic or cardiovascular conditions like diabetes and heart disease, to ease the strain on the NHS or to improve people’s mental health. The list of benefits is almost endless. If we could get people in the UK exercising more, we could solve so many of the problems we face as a society today.
Most personal trainers today focus their attentions and marketing on the ’aesthetic’ market. With so many people in the UK living with a medical condition, there is an opportunity for personal trainers to develop hugely rewarding career paths by becoming medical-condition specialists.
We’ve got an army of 25,000 personal trainers who could be doing this. The problem currently is that there is very little connection between us and the health service, social care, Department for Work and Pensions, etc. As an industry we must develop our regulation (CIMSPA Professional Status), make more use of CPD and Connect the Dots (CIMSPA conference September 2025). Then we must find a way to fund support for those people who need funding to work with us.
Exercise is still the only disease-modifying therapy for Parkinson’s.
The evidence for the efficacy of funding support for people to exercise is now in. The recent research into survival rates for people diagnosed with colon cancer, which compared those who worked with personal trainers and those who didn’t, tells the story. The control group were told that exercise was important and what they should do. The intervention group worked with personal trainers. The group that worked with personal trainers had a 37% improved survival rate after eight years! Personal trainers can save lives. Telling people what to do doesn’t work! You have to support them to actually do it.
The most common neurological condition in the world is Parkinson’s. There is currently no cure and no medication that can slow the progression of the condition. But exercise can. Exercise is still the only disease-modifying therapy for Parkinson’s. Yet there is very little exercise support built in to the NHS. Underfunded neuro-rehab teams are doing amazing work and getting the message across wherever they can, but there’s no systemic exercise support – or, in other words, personal training. Charities like Parkinson’s UK do an amazing job but, if the benefits provided by exercise were obtainable from a pill, the funding would be flowing freely through the NHS.
The first step to resolving some of these issues and progressing to a society that reaps the benefits of exercise is creating more exercise specialists with the necessary knowledge of specific medical conditions. The National Register of Parkinson’s Specialist Personal Trainers has been created to recruit and train an army of PTs across the UK able to work with the Parkinson’s community – and then make it easy for people with Parkinson’s to connect with them. This is a great start, offering the support that people with Parkinson’s need and personal trainers the opportunity to enhance their careers.
There is still the issue of funding. People with Parkinson’s can apply to charities to help them fund exercise. This can help, but we need funding mechanisms built into the NHS, together with real connection between these specialist PTs and the physios, nurses and other medical professionals currently working with people with Parkinson’s.
Improved links between the NHS, Department of Work and Pensions and the fitness industry offer such significant benefits to everybody. As an industry, we should all work together to help this come about.
The CIMSPA conference in September will address exactly this issue. Organisations like CIMSPA and FitPro will play a key role in helping our industry, and particularly personal trainers, to evolve and reap the benefits available from improved regulation, improved training and improved connection. Personal trainers who develop specialist skills and condition-specific qualifications will find hugely rewarding careers waiting for them, with many more clients and a lot less competition.
National Register of Parkinson’s Specialist Personal Trainers (NRPSPT) and FitPro have teamed up to offer NRPSPT members an exclusive 10% off FitPro’s CPD course; Parkinson’s Pro taught by expert Tim Webster. Find out more on why you should become a Parkinson’s specialist personal trainer here.
Nick Berners-Price
Nick Berners-Price is Managing Director of 4D Life Ltd and The National Register of Parkinson’s Specialist Personal Trainers: NRPSPT.org. He has over 30 years’ experience in the fitness industry as a personal trainer and business owner. He created 4D Fitness in 1998 and since then he and his team have been delivering leading edge health and fitness solutions across the full spectrum of the population.
Nick has also had Multiple Sclerosis since 2006. This has created a very personal desire to find the best solutions available to help people with medical conditions. He uses the Marginal Gains technique – the system that Sir Dave Brailsford used to propel British cycling to world leaders at the 2012 Olympics and Tour de France. It is now commonly used in business, sport and performance, but rarely applied to managing medical conditions.
4D Life Ltd have launched the National Register of Parkinson’s Specialist Personal Trainers, in partnership with Parkinson’s UK and supported by CIMSPA, FitPro and Cure Parkinson’s. The goal is to train and accredit Parkinson’s specialist trainers across the UK, and then make it easy for people with Parkinson’s to connect with them.
