Let me start by saying that personal trainers aren’t cheap. For a decent one, expect to pay anywhere from $60 – $100/hour, though you can often take advantage of sales and discounts. Before you quit reading, however, hiring a personal trainer should been seen as an investment in your health. The way I figure it, you can pay significantly less up front to be healthy and strong, or you can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in rehabilitation and recovery after a heart attack, stroke or injury caused by poor lifestyle habits. In fact, it is my opinion that healthcare plans should cover the cost of training as preventative medicine.
What should you look for in a trainer? I completely lucked out with mine. I had zero clue as to what a personal trainer really did let alone the qualities I should look for, so I went to the front desk of my gym and said, “I want someone to make me stronger.” Fortunately, I was paired with my amazing trainer. As in any field, there are great trainers and horrible ones. A personal trainer should have a certification with an accredited organization, at the very least. Mine has a B.S. in Fitness and Nutrition, and it shows. She’s also a fitness nerd; lives, breathes and eats all things health related and shares that love with me and her other clients. Whoever you hire should have a lot of enthusiasm for their profession.
A good personal trainer shouldn’t just tell you what exercises to do, but she should be able to teach. In addition, she should be able to help you modify exercises based upon your current mobility, flexibility and other criteria. She should have extensive knowledge about anatomy and body mechanics in order to develop comprehensive exercise plans and help you handle any pain or discomfort while training.
I train twice a week with my trainer, and four days without. My trainer developed a plan of exercises for me to do when we are not training together. I had pain in my left hip from a fracture sustained several years ago; after videotaping me performing certain exercises, she developed a corrective and strengthening program to ease the pain and within a week, it vanished. I was severely under eating and due to her knowledge of nutrition, she helped me increase my caloric intake from 700 to 1900+/day while continuing to lose 1-2lbs per week.
I think gender matters when choosing a personal trainer. While I believe that trainers can certainly adequately train those of the opposite gender, I prefer having a female trainer. She understands the unique challenges being female poses. She understands the role that hormones can play in weight fluctuations and often talks me down when I discover *gasp* that I’ve gained a pound in a day (water weight, not true weight). She knows the challenges of being a female weightlifter, the attitudes we face from men (whether overt or covert) and that women’s bodies operate differently; one size definitely does not fit all.
Personality is important as well. You don’t have to be best friends but you should definitely choose a trainer with whom you’ll get along well. You’re going to spend a significant amount of time with this person every week doing difficult and exhausting things, so at the very minimum you need to have a cordial relationship. If you don’t like each other, it’s not going to work out.
A good trainer should be intuitive. My trainer is excellent at knowing when I’m just being a whiny baby and when my body has truly reached its limit. It goes without saying that they should also be supportive. They are there to help lift you up when you’re feeling discouraged and to provide motivation when you can’t seem to muster up enough for yourself.
That said, it’s a reciprocal relationship. Be kind to your trainer, it’s never okay to verbally abuse them. Yes, sometimes they make you do things that make you feel like crap but always remember that they’re doing it to help you improve yourself. You need to be respectful of that and of them. Sometimes I call my trainer mean or a brat. She also understands that I’m not really serious and I do try to show that I appreciate everything she does for me.
Trainers aren’t mind readers. If something is causing you pain, you need to tell them. A good trainer will never make you push through pain and will usually try to get to the bottom of why you are hurting. Remember that muscle burn is not the same as pain…you want your muscles to burn but anything stabby or sharp needs to be brought to their attention right away.
You need to try your best, all the time. You don’t have to be perfect by any stretch of the imagination but you need to put forth effort. Trainers can do a lot for you; they can guide and teach and direct. But they can’t do the work for you, as much as that would be awesome! You will get as much out of training as you give; and the more you give, the more results you get.
Lastly, trust your trainer. Mine has told me to do a lot of things that made me raise my eyebrow at her, but not once has she steered me wrong. I have yet to sustain an injury following her advice (knock on wood) or gain weight despite the fact that I was convinced that eating more would make me balloon out. Following her advice, posture changes have eased lower back pain, combining protein meals with higher carb foods have kept my blood sugars stable and eating more has increased my metabolism dramatically. She’s helped me with psychological struggles surrounding weight loss/gain and has cheered me up when I’ve felt that my progress stalled.
A great trainer is an invaluable health resource!!
My Journey to Health 