Hiring the right personal trainer can be extremely tricky! There are many things to consider before finding someone to assist you with your fitness goals! Here are a few things you should consider before hiring a personal trainer:
1. What experience does your trainer have?
It’s important to find a trainer that has a degree of experience when it comes to your fitness goals. One way to determine this is to look at the trainer’s current roster of clients or look at any previous clients’ testimonials. This will indicate how successful they are with those clients and their fitness goals.
2. Does your trainer specialize in the area of fitness you’re looking to train in?
There are countless ways of working out – bodybuilding, boxing, running, CrossFit, etc. Your trainer needs to have experience in and ideally specialize in that type of fitness in order for you to accomplish your goals. If your trainer isn’t teaching you what you want or need to learn, it will set you back from your fitness goals.
3. How flexible is your trainer’s schedule?
You need to make sure that you align with your trainer about the level of schedule flexibility for your sessions. Some trainers are more rigid about this than others, so it’s a good thing to figure out right away. Scheduling your sessions could look like a standing appointment every Monday, Wednesday, & Friday at 6 am, or it could be a text in the morning, asking for a 7 pm slot that day. Have this conversation out of the gate to make sure you can have your sessions in a way that works best for both you and your trainer.
4. Does your trainer cater to your unique body and/or injuries?
If you’re injured or have body complications from a past injury, you NEED to tell your trainer and you need to do so BEFORE you start your workouts. You are putting yourself at great risk trying to work through an injury as if everything is normal. If you’ve had a surgery, something aches or hurts, or you know that a part of your body hurts when going through a specific movement, listen to your body and TELL YOUR TRAINER! They should be able to create a program around your specific body and make sure you are working out in a safe way. If they can’t, you should consider finding a trainer that can. Modifying a movement or even an entire fitness program to make it safe for your body isn’t “taking the easy way out” or “cheating” — get rid of that mentality.
5. Do you and your trainer align on a personal level?
To put it simply — do you get along with your trainer? There needs to be a certain level of friendship between a client and their trainer, as you embark on a fitness journey together. It’s a lot more difficult to show up to your workouts if you don’t like who you’re working out with. The sessions should be a balance of doing a hard workout and having fun with your trainer as you do it! You want a trainer who wants you to accomplish your goals just as much as you do.
