If, like us, you need an extra bit of a push at the gym (or encouragement to go in the first place), hiring a personal trainer can be a great way to up your fitness levels.
The gym can be a daunting place and it’s not always clear how certain machines work or whether you’re doing an exercise correctly, so having a PT can also be a much-needed confidence boost.
But how do you make sure your PT is the right person for you? Well, HuffPost UK spoke to Samuel Quinn, personal training lead at Nuffield Health to find out.
They should NEVER compare you to another client
“One of the golden rules that a good personal trainer follows is that we must never compare a client to someone else – there is no such thing as one size fits all,” explains Quinn.
Your personal trainer should be well aware that a client’s results are dependent on the individual so if you’re on the lookout for a new personal trainer (and a good one!) make sure that they book in a consultation session with you first.
According to Quinn, within this they should take into consideration your age, genetics, previous exercise experience, gender, body composition, injury status and motivation – this should then be used to build an effective plan specifically tailored to you.
“Promising transformational results that another individual has achieved can be very detrimental if they are not replicated, it can set unrealistic or unattainable results which can then impact motivations and engagement,” Quinn adds.
“A good personal trainer should encourage you/their clients to be realistic with their goals, confident in their own ability and enjoy their own fitness journey and not compare them to others. With the rise of social media; body dysmorphia, eating disorders, and mental health problems at an all-time high, so it’s imperative that a personal trainer focusses on the individual, empowering, guiding and educating them on how to be the best most confident, happiest, and healthiest version of themselves.”
They should track and monitor your progress
According to Quinn, if your PT isn’t keeping you well aware of your progress, don’t expect success in reaching your goals.
“To deliver transformational results a successful we must know what variables a client needs to track to achieve various results such as increasing strength, adding muscle, improving cardiovascular fitness or reducing body fat percentage.
“Contrary to popular belief, it’s not just about numbers on a scale and, as the expert, we need to be communicating that effectively,” he explains.
Quinn says that this is why it’s so important that a client feels comfortable collaborating with their PT – “We’re often so much more than the stereotype of just working people to the bone (although we can if this is a goal!) but there are those that are still focusing on weight and plates rather than the bigger picture.”
Because progress can come in many different forms, Quinn believes it’s important to establish what is important to you in order to identify the most useful things to track in order to ensure maximal compliance to keep you following your plan.
“If a client finds it stressful or difficult to track a certain measure or finds it psychologically detrimental to be weighed and measured weekly then we absolutely should not be enforcing these methods. Again, this is a conversation that must be had openly and altered if it’s not delivering a desired outcome,” he says.
They should practice what they preach
“When observing a personal training session, you see the client doing all the work, and the PT making observations and giving coaching points, which can give the illusion that we can dish it out but we can’t take. This isn’t true – a personal trainer must always practice what they preach,” says Quinn.
The expert explains that a huge part of being a successful personal trainer is so much more than just working out with a client – by providing lifestyle advice and designing and implementing nutrition and exercise programmes to ultimately guide clients to build healthy habits, it is essential that a personal trainer can follow their own advice.
“What a lot of people don’t realise, is that it’s actually very difficult to do this,” adds Quinn.
“We need to keep on top of what our clients needs are, altering or updating tailored sessions and plans to ensure we are delivering the desired results, whilst also getting enough quality sleep (8 hours is a must!), hitting our step count, exercise three times per week, batch cooking a week’s meal prep, keeping on top of new research and training and we also have to juggle this with a personal life – it’s a lot.”
As Quinn sums it up – a personal trainer does not need to be a puritan, but must ‘not be a hypocrite.’