A personal trainer has many benefits but how to pick the one that suits you? Today we'll see how to choose a trainer that helps you reach your goals and avoid wasting money on the wrong trainer. We'll do this with some questions, so stick with us for the next ones.
Nothing's worse than wasting time and effort at the gym and then realizing after your first check that you haven't changed anything, or you're working hard but see no results in your body or health that match the effort. So you need a personal trainer, but watch out since some trainers are bad and waste your time and money too.
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What do you need from your personal trainer?
First, you need to realize that your diet is the main factor in reaching your goal. Some people spend 60 to 90 minutes at the gym with a trainer but don't keep healthy habits the rest of the day. You need to organize your meals and know exactly what your diet needs. Your trainer should help you make this plan or at least tell you what vitamins and nutrients you might need.
You should set your goal clearly before choosing your personal trainer. Is it to lose weight, gain weight, maintain weight, or just help you follow a healthy lifestyle?
Or maybe you want your trainer to teach you how to lift weights or run a marathon in a specific time. These goals make picking the right trainer easier. Make sure your trainer has helped many people reach that goal multiple times because a weightlifting coach doesn’t necessarily know much about weight loss or marathon training.
For example, a weightlifting trainer should teach you how to do exercises correctly and what weights to lift gradually, giving you fast results and helping you reach your goal in a healthy way.
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How do you find a good personal trainer?
Blindly accepting a trainer will make you get stuck with the wrong one. You can avoid this by checking some things your trainer will do, like asking about your medical history, if you worked out before, if you have any injuries, vitamin deficiencies, or health issues. Professional trainers ask all these before setting any plan for you.
You need to know how the trainer achieves clients' goals, their experience, and discuss realistic expectations for a month. They shouldn't give crazy promises just to impress you. The trainer must know that changing your lifestyle is also part of their job.
Here are some points you should know right after choosing your trainer. Don’t hesitate to stop training with them if you feel they’re unprofessional or won’t help you reach your goals in a healthy way.
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What signs prove this trainer is bad?
1. Some trainers only care that their clients don’t get tired at all, no training or cutting back on lots of sweets or unhealthy food. This won’t help you reach your goals and doesn’t show a proper healthy plan.
2. The trainer sets a plan that doesn’t fit your level. Many trainers give the same plan to all their clients without considering their level or goals. So you get beginner, intermediate, and advanced exercises mixed up. This shows the trainer doesn’t respect clients and won’t help you reach your goals.
3. Some trainers try to impress clients by giving many hard and complex exercises to beginners or intermediate level, then blame them for not following the plan and not reaching the goal. That’s the trainer’s fault, not the client’s.
4. If you and your trainer agree you'll work out at home, the exercises should be doable at home with some available tools, and shouldn't need lots of gear or equipment you don't have.
5. The exercises should always help you get better and push your level up. So you should feel some challenge, not that it's super easy. If it’s too easy, it won’t do much for you.
6. If your trainer makes you rely on just one exercise or only work one body area, that’s a mistake they make thinking they’re meeting your expectations. This is wrong and you shouldn’t keep training with them.
7. Some trainers just care about getting paid but don’t follow up with their clients, answer questions, or track progress toward goals. If your trainer is like this, you should cancel your subscription right away.
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What certificates should your personal trainer have?
There are some certificates a trainer needs to have to be considered good. So I’ll tell you about some of these certificates and why they matter:
1-NSCA :It’s a certificate from the National Strength and Conditioning Association.
2- ACSM: American College of Sports Medicine.
3- NASM: National Academy of Sports Medicine.
4- ACE: American Council on Exercise.
5- NPTI: National Personal Training Institute.
All these certificates don't guarantee the trainer is good, but you should check the points mentioned earlier along with the certificate, so the trainer has studied all cases and knows how to handle them well. You should know the trainer's certificates and qualifications first, because these things save you a lot of time and money later.
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Do personal trainers really deserve the money?
There are many factors that determine the cost of a personal trainer including:
1- Time and number of follow-up days per week.
2- The type of training you get.
3- The goals you want to achieve during the training period.
4- A personal trainer from a gym is different from an online personal trainer.
Don't just think about cost, think about the results you'll get for the cost. Maybe you'll find a cheap trainer but they won't get you the results you want or give everyone the same workout plan. Always remember you pay the trainer for their expertise, not just their time with you.
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What are the pros and cons of an online personal trainer?
Personal training, like anything, has some pros and cons. Let's start with the advantages of an online personal trainer:
1- Freedom to schedule your workout times
You decide the workout times that fit your life, and your trainer sets a plan for those times. But with gym trainers, you have to agree on times that fit their schedule.
2- Lots of nutritional guidance
Many online trainers give plenty of nutrition advice and help you set a diet. Gym trainers usually only focus on you during workouts, nothing more.
3- Availability most of the time
Online personal trainers set aside enough time to answer all their clients' questions, but many gym trainers don’t make this time easily available.
Drawbacks of personal trainers online
1- Easy to cheat
An online personal trainer can't really check if you're doing the exercises right, and it's easy to lie to them. Some trainers find ways to follow up that cut down on cheating. That's what sets one trainer apart from another.
2- Instantly verifying the trainer's competence
You can check a regular trainer's skills by asking someone who's trained with them. But online, it's not that easy. So you have to try them out for a while to be sure about their experience and pay attention to many details.
3- The gym environment motivates you
Being at the gym sometimes pushes you to start and finish your workout even on lazy days or cold weather. The trainer can shout at you to keep going, but an online personal trainer can't do that.
