What you need to know when hiring a personal trainer

As a trainer in the fitness industry, I am going to give you the low down on what you need to look for and ask potential trainers you are trusting to get you the results you want injury free.

Firstly you need to identify what are your training goals? Do you want to lose weight, gain weight, build muscle or strength or do you have a performance goal?

Once you know exactly what you want to achieve then you should start looking. There are many options to choose from and you will generally find trainers at Big Box gyms, performance based or nieche specific facilities, mobile trainers and online trainers mainly on Instagram.

If you have a membership to a gym, more often then not you will have access to the gyms personal training team. Usually most trainers especially in the Australian fitness industry are sub-contractors and pay rent to work and have access to gym members and the gym equipment.

Some gyms have a different structure and pay their trainers as employees, usually a menial and inconsistent hourly award rate over double shifts to cover peak times.

Some trainers are required to run group classes as their rent to the gym or sometimes a combination of a couple of different payment methods.

There is a saying that you pay for what you get, and this holds true in personal training for the most part. Personal trainers on average can command between $60-$250 or more per hour. It can depend on many factors.

In saying this, personal training can be big business and there is alot of trainers on six-figure salaries from being in the gym all day. Sounds pretty cool huh?

Skill Level of Personal Trainers

These factors can include the skill level of the trainer and can also simply come down to their personal brand and what they look like and how well they can market themselves.

When picking your personal trainer, you need to do your research to make sure you are investing your money and time wisely. It can be a costly and painful mistake investing in the wrong trainer.

A personal trainer or coach needs to be knowledgable in different training methodologies, lifting technique, how to do lift and movement based assessments, orthopeadic and movement assessments.

Your program's exercises should be based on your orthopeadic profile, training goals and current training age and most importantly your trainer or coach needs to understand HOW to effectively troubleshoot technique and range of movement issues to injury proof your training.

The education standards for each personal trainer varies between each country but in Australia you only need a Certificate 4 in Fitness that you can usually finish in less than 6 months.

After completing my certification in 2013, even though I had been lifting weights for five years myself, I knew I needed further lifting, anatomy and rehabilitation education before I could start in the industry to really help people.

Following graduating to be a personal trainer I completed several CHEK certifications and trained with Donal and Cathy Carr at Place of CHI following two hip operations in 2013-2014 and have been studying for the past two and a half years with FMA Strength Institute. I consider myself a student for life.

However even if you do have a sport related degree, it does not always mean you know how to apply that knowledge with your clients. I have rehabilitated and re-trained movement patterns from trainers with sports science degrees because they understood what needs to be done in theory but not in practice! There is always going to be good and bad and sometimes awful in every industry.

Online Trainers

Moving right on to online trainers, and the best way to explain the pro's and con's of online training is that it depends.

It depends on the trainer, your training age and skill level and exercise experience, whether the program is tailored to you, your orthopeadic profile and whether you have any limitations or injuries. Nothing halts progress more than an injury!

The level of support you can get varies so be careful to check this out to make sure it is what you need before handing over your money.

Be careful of before and after pictures as well, recently I come across a service online that sells these pictures that alot of especially online trainers use for their marekting!

So how do you find a trainer who has these skills? Well you need to do your research! Ask questions like:

1. What sort of training and qualifications do you have?

2. What experience do you have with clients, what is your speciality?

3. How can you help me with my goals?

4. What sort of support will you be providing?

5. How long is my training commitment with you to achieve my goals? what happens after I achieve my goals?

6. What else outside of the gym do I need to do? Can you help me with nutrition, what other factors do I need to consider?

7. Ask any questions you feel relevant, see how the conversation flows. Are they paying attention to you or are they distracted?

These are all a good start, you can also look their presence on social media like Instagram or Facebook, Linkedin, fitness regulatory bodies and a website if they have one. Ask around with family, friends and collegues for recommendations.

Budget

Keep in mind that all of this is relative to your budget and how much you are willing to invest in learning correct technique, having expert advise and coaching or taking your lifting and performance to a new level.

You can't expect the gold standard on a boot strap budget. Trainers who have invested in themselves to provide you quality service and expertise will typically spend $15,000 or more each year in upskilling to be better and more skilled at their craft.

Your health, fitness and longevity are priceless assets and I would recommend spending a reasonable amout of money if you can to learn and be coached off a skilled trainer or coach.

If you are on a limited budget, ask the trainer if they run semi private training that you can split the cost with other people or find a good group training facility with sufficient skilled coaches available to help.

Hope this helps and all the best finding a trainer who fits your needs! happy lifting!