How to Know if Your Fitness Trainer is Awesome
In this article we are going to cover the foundation of an awesome fitness trainer. Maybe your trainer is good, maybe they are bad, but are they awesome?
Personal training is not cheap. It’s a luxury for most and not a necessity. If you are paying for a personal trainer, they better be worth their rate. I have seen lousy personal trainers charge $150+ a session and all they do is show up to the gym and put you through a glorified cardio session. I’ve known trainers who charge really high rates for online or in-home service, just to put you through a cookie-cutter session that they put everyone through.
Most people don’t know what they are paying for or why they are paying a trainer’s rates. We have put together this article to give you the criteria of what an awesome trainer looks like. This article will help set a standard for the type of trainer you will want to work with on your fitness journey.
There are a lot of good trainers, but unfortunately, there are more bad than good. For your personal trainer to be good, they must check the following boxes:
- Qualifications: If your trainer isn’t certified (ACE, NASM, ACSM, or other) then why are you listening to them? You want someone to teach you proper techniques and motivate you, yet they themselves aren’t motivated enough to put in the effort to get a certification? Hard pass.
- Communication skills: These skills have to be elite. Your trainer must be great at communicating to you what they need you to do. They must be a great listener, as to understand you, your needs, your goals and your limitations. They must be able to give you honest feedback, both good and bad. They must respect you and your space, regardless of how intimate personal training can be. And they must be responsive enough to your texts or emails regarding your fitness questions.
- Friendly: They don’t have to be your friend, but they have to be friendly and kind enough where you trust them and enjoy spending your session with them.
- Experience: Your trainer needs experience to be great at what they do. This allows them to take you where you want to go with confidence and direction.
- Professional: A good trainer should be punctual, organized, and maintain a professional demeanor during sessions.
- Knowledge of Nutrition: Having a basic understanding of nutrition is incredibly important for a personal trainer. They should be able to provide general guidance on your eating habits, as well as understanding how food affects the body so that you can reach your goals.
Now that we have established what a good personal trainer is, it’s time to describe what an awesome personal trainer is.
For a personal trainer to be awesome, irreplaceable and worth their weight in gold they must do the following:
- Goal Setting and Planning: Awesome trainers help set achievable goals, set reasonable expectations and are able to set a strong plan into motion to achieve these goals. You work towards your goal every session based off of a program that will help you reach said goals. Bad trainers just show up for a session with no real plan, get you to do a single, random workout that is not part of a long-term, goal-oriented program, then repeat this every session.
- Monitoring Progress: Monitoring progress is crucial for achieving your goal. An awesome trainer continues to monitor your progress weekly to ensure you continue to progress through your workouts and gradually work towards your goal.
- Tracking Progress: Tracking progress is also a trait of an awesome trainer. If you can track something and quantify it, you can progress it. Your trainer should be able to tell you not only what you did last session, but also how many repetitions you did and at what weight. By them knowing these numbers (data), they can continue to challenge you and continue to progress you – making you faster, stronger, burn more calories, etc. Bad trainers cross their fingers and hope you continue to see progress, yet when progress stops, they have no data and no answers.
- Adaptability: An awesome trainer can adapt their approach to accommodate your fitness level, health issues, injuries, lack of equipment, etc. If your trainer understands movement and exercise, you will always have a workout.
- Continued Professional Development: Awesome trainers look for ways to do this by reading books, attending workshops or conferences, or obtaining additional certifications. They naturally pursue knowledge to keep them sharp or up with the latest fitness trends. CECs (continuing education credits) are courses a trainer MUST take every two years that allows them to keep their certification active. CECs ensure that the trainer is continuing to learn a new skill or sharpen others. As a trainer, you don’t have obsess over knowledge, but it’s extremely helpful and highly reflective when you care enough to continue to master your craft.
The personal training industry is overflowing with subpar trainers that lack 75% of the criteria we just laid out for you. If you are looking for personal training, use this criteria to determine if your trainer is worth the money you are spending on them. Does your trainer know what they are doing or does it seem like they just show up to work? We gave you the info, the rest is up for you to decide. Trust your instincts and communicate openly with your trainer about your expectations and concerns. If you’re not seeing the desired results or feel uncomfortable, don’t hesitate to consider other options.
