Say the words ‘personal trainer’ to practically anyone and immediately they conjure up in the mind a stereotype of lycra-clad or track-suited fit young guys and girls who hang around in gyms and get paid loads of money to smile at you and count to 10 a lot while you work out.
Sad, but true.
It seems that to the vast majority of the public, a personal trainer is little more than a highly paid rep counter who is merely biding his or her time while waiting for a better job offer to come along.
To make matters worse, the public’s perception is proven right more often than not by the increasingly rapid staff turnover in the high street gyms where trainers seem to come and go with alarming speed, leaving an endless conveyor belt of fresh-faced, newly qualified and largely inexperienced kids to take on the role of safeguarding the health and fitness of the general public.
Not good.
After all, at an average of £40-£50 an hour personal trainers are not cheap to work with. These are professional fees we’re talking about here and the public should, quite rightly, expect a professional level of service in return for handing over their hard-earned cash.
But before you fall prey to the thinking that personal training and fitness coaching is a waste of time and money, think again.
Behind the seemingly endless tide of the new and inexperienced graduates that personal training academies throw at the job market every few weeks are (and always have been) a core of highly motivated, highly knowledgeable, highly experienced and time-served professionals who provide a good bit more than inane encouragement of the ‘just one more rep’ variety.
These true professionals go beyond the basics to provide a truly integrated to health, fitness, nutrition, lifestyle and mindset making them, without a doubt, a truly formidable weapon in the battle of the bulge (or whatever other health and fitness goals you may be working toward).
For instance, a truly great master personal trainer can provide:
In depth assessments of posture, biomechanics, nutritional status, lifestyle habits and much more besides.
In fact, this elite of the personal training profession can best be summed up by their sincere and genuine belief that if you’re not assessing, you’re simply guessing and feel it both unfair and unethical to build a client program without knowing everything that may be keeping you from your goals.
A Detailed and In-Depth Structured Plan For The Achievement Of Your Goals
You can tell the caliber of a truly great personal trainer by the quality and clarity of the plans and programs that they put together to help you reach your health and fitness goals.
Not for them are the one-sided A4 handwritten ‘off the top of the head’ workouts that most industry newbies are seen stalking the floors of the high street gyms with; these guys create veritable masterpieces of planning that encompass everything from the training program itself to detailed prescriptions for nutrition, supplementation, hydration, sleep and literally everything that could possibly affect the goal.
A Tailor-Made Support Structure That Fits You To Your Goal And Works In Real Life
It’s all too easy for a novice trainer to create a ‘perfect picture’ workout plan, put pressure on the client to follow it and then blame and berate them every time they fall off the wagon but the truth is, people have real lives and real issues to contend with around their desire to achieve their health and fitness goals.
‘Stuff’ gets in the way and they find themselves reverting back to their default settings around health and fitness and before they know it their goals come screeching to a halt.
But not with the professional personal trainer they don’t!
Rather than being personally offended whenever their clients break one of their ten commandments, the master trainers both accept and expect that this will probably happen… and plan accordingly.
Blending a perfect mix of ‘what if’ planning that identifies problems BEFORE they arise along with the knowledge of when either a hug, a pat on the back or a kick in the butt is in order these trainers manage to achieve the seemingly impossible and keep their clients on track with a minimum of fuss.
An Accountability Structure That Makes Sticking To The Plan Easy And Giving Up A Tough Option Rather Than The Other Way Around
People quit too easily. This is a fact.
Life gets in the way, results happen slower than they hoped for and somehow, some way their drive to keep walking the path ebbs, wanes and falls off altogether.
A newbie trainer addresses this by hitting their clients with short, sharp doses of motivation that aim to steer the unruly client back on track.
The master trainer knows better than to use motivation as a tool and instead relies on the constant development of inspiration and belief that can come only from within the client themselves. The master reminds them daily about the goals they’ve set for themselves, the reasons they wanted to achieve it in the first place and how it will feel to finally get there.
They also know when to step in and remind the dubious that ‘my belief is greater than your doubt so borrow some from me if you must’.
Personal trainers are NOT all created equal. Results are NOT the same across the board. No two personal trainers, even if they graduated from the same academy, will share the same knowledge, skills, abilities or passions for what they do.
This is a fact.
If you’re even thinking about taking up the services of a personal trainer to help you achieve your health and fitness goals then ask yourself “Am I speaking with a newbie or a master?” before you even begin to think about taking them on.
Use what you’ve learned in this short article to help you answer that question and you could save yourself time, money and hassle and achieve your goals faster than ever before.
Or, of course, you could simply hire the first or cheapest personal trainer that comes along.
Your choice!
Dax Moy
The UK’s Leading Personal Trainer
and Fat Loss Expert
http://www.mylondonpersonaltrainer.com
