It’s all in the name (plus, a brief physics lesson)

My first post, “Getting Started”, was about the origin of the idea for inerTRAIN. Since then, several people have asked me where the name “inerTRAIN” came from and what it means… so I figured I’d write a quick post on it this week.

It took me a couple of months to come up with something that I thought was a good name to call an online personal training site… something that rolled off the tongue, something that was unique, and something that also had some (hidden) meaning… plus, I had to find a website URL that wasn’t taken yet (which may have been the harder part)…

Then one day it just came to me. I was thinking about what training was all about, and what ideas came to mind when I think of fitness, personal training, and specifically the clients that are training. One thing I kept coming back to was the idea of motion… constant motion. And then, without warning, the nerd inside of me woke up and I reverted back to my study of physics years ago, and specifically to Newton’s Laws of Motion.

Newton’s First Law of Motion (also known as “The Law of Inertia”) states that a body in motion will remain in motion. When I thought more about this, the image that came to mind for me was a person working out with his or her personal trainer, and how a good personal trainer keeps moving and motivating his or her clients… what a great analogy!

But it gets even better… the second part of the Law of Inertia says that a body at rest will remain at rest, unless acted upon by an outside force. I could see in my mind a couch potato sitting with a bowl of potato chips watching TV… and the outside force (the personal trainer) entering the scene to motivate this person to get moving and to provide guidance on leading a healthier lifestyle!

So, the entire Law of Inertia aligned perfectly with my vision of personal training!

From there, my initial thought was to call the website “Inertia Training”. But, as I kept saying it over and over again in my mind, I started abbreviating it to “inerTRAIN”, and finally that is what stuck!

There you have it… the origin of “inerTRAIN” and a mini physics lesson all in one.