How do you select the best Personal Trainer?

You only have to scroll through your newsfeed or spend 5 mins in your gym in order to be greeted by a plethora of Personal Trainers. They all look great, and they all have clients telling you how good they are, but which one is right for you? Let’s get right to it, as I can help you figure that out!

The only place we can start is at the beginning, that for me, and for many others, is online vs face to face quandary.

Let’s discuss the pros and cons of each.

Face to face personal training - this is where you meet with a trainer in the flesh and they take you through a workout.

Pros

⁃ Great for those who feel having a person there will be a motivator or encourage adherence

⁃ Often chosen by individuals who want or need coaching on form, this is real-time when in person

⁃ Many people simply feel happier and more comfortable working with someone face to face as this is what they are familiar, hence, it’s within their comfort zone (you know, that little zone that makes you feel all warm and safe but sometimes maybe stops you from doing things that are pretty excellent)

Cons

⁃ Choice is limited if you are only looking for a PT who works in your gym. They may all be great, not so great or somewhere in the middle

⁃ Session day and times are limited to what the PT has available. Peak times are usually pretty full quickly, for a solid PT so you may have to eat into family or relaxation time (boooooo)

⁃ There is a risk you may become dependant in the PT, rather than learning to go on your own when ready as you feel you need that person there (fyi, you don’t)

⁃ Depending on the PT, you may not have access to ask your PT for advice or support outside of session hours

⁃ High costs per hour, which could limit the number of sessions you can afford

⁃ You may not get a programme or nutrition plan, it could just be ad hoc sessions with no plan or structure provided outside of those sessions so you are pretty lost when your PT isn’t there

Online Personal Training - this involves working with a PT via a non-face to face communication method. This could be via emails, video, calls, Skype / Zoom or an app.

Pros

⁃ You can train when you want

⁃ Likely to support 7 days a week

⁃ There are a lot of very good online trainers out there, so you aren’t limited by selecting from a small pool of trainers—you want to work with the best coach in the UK, you can!

⁃ Many online coaches have testimonials online which give you a flavour of their results and service

⁃ It’s cost-effective and the costs vary very widely, bear in mind as with most things in life, you get what you pay for, as a general rule. You get 7 days of support for perhaps the equivalent of 1-2 face to face sessions per week

⁃ Modern technology makes it very, very effective to communicate and coach from a distance and a good online PT will have all the right tools and processes in place to support this

⁃ You get a training programme and nutrition plan AND you have a plan to get you where you want to be, not just a short-sighted programme (if you work with a good PT, that is, but we’ll talk a bit more about that in a minute, hold your horses)

Cons

⁃ I naturally think online PT is an incredible and cost-effective way to work with some of the best coaches in the world. For me, the only con is linked to the third pro for face to face PT. Some individuals just love that tangible face to face PT model, although I am very sure, if they give it a go, they would love online too!

Hopefully, this has given you enough knowledge to mull over which model would work best for you. You should take time to think about it before you commit, you need to be bought in if you are to give it your all and get the results you want.

So, how do you select the right PT? In my opinion, regardless of whether you choose face to face or online, the traits and service of a good PT are the same, the only difference is in the delivery of that service.

Hallmarks of a good Personal Trainer

I’m going to start with interpersonal skills. So, of course, they need to have skills directly linked to the programming, planning, coaching and nutrition (which we’ll get to) but I feel it’s important for them to also have the right interpersonal and for you to be able to work with them and build a great relationship with them so there is a good level of trust, respect and honesty. A damn good PT should have the following in their armoury:

Excellent communication skills - they need to be able to articulate and express themselves in a clear and concise manner. Can they listen as well as they talk? Can they explain complex information in a simple to digest manner? If they can, this will help you get to where you want to be. 

You should also be looking for patience, diplomacy and honesty, there needs to be a good balance of the latter two. You might take time to learn a certain exercise, or get to grips with tools like MyFitnessPal and you want to be supported on that educational path, not made to feel silly or slow. Honesty and diplomacy go hand in hand. You want a PT who will give you the honest answers and feedback, but there are of course right and wrong ways to do this. A good PT will pretty quickly figure out what motivates you and they should ensure that feedback is given in a way that encourages rather than discourages.

Professionalism and a good level of knowledge are also fundamental. The PT should be professional and approachable in all lines of communication and it should be evident that they have appropriate levels of knowledge and experience. It’s ok if they don’t know the answer to everything, it’s ok if they want to research a topic you have asked about and then come back to you to discuss, but you should have a level of confidence that they understand the human body, training and nutrition enough to be able to educate and coach you.

Finally, on the interpersonal side of things, they need to have a personality that you gel with and you can work with, building rapport and respect. I like the high energy PTs whose passion for what they do really shines through via an energised, dynamic and enthusiastic manner—I find it infectious and I think my clients do too...yes, you got it, I am talking about me :)

Now to the stuff you expect me to talk about. What should be the outputs from a good PT?

Top of my list is….ta da da daaaa….a tailored programme!

A solid PT will provide you with a tailored programme, specific to you. And what do I mean by tailored and specific? It needs to be created with knowledge of:

• Your medical history

• Your training experience

• Your lifestyle

• Your activity levels

• Current eating habits or diet choices, such as vegetarian or vegan

• Feasible training frequency

• Equipment available to you (ie gym, home or other)

• Your likes and dislikes (ok so there is absolutely an element of you’ll get what is right for you and your goals rather than what you want, but a programme consisting of every exercise you hate is not a good starting place and the likelihood of you being consistent with it is low, very low)

• Your goals - how can a programme be created and focused if there isn’t an end goal? 

If you sign up with a PT and they give you a plan without covering all of the above with you at the beginning, you should be asking yourself whether you are with the right PT.

The programme should be varied, at an appropriate level for your training experience and you should be tracking your reps, sets and weights lifted, so you can see the progress you are making. Ideally, it’s in a user-friendly format, apps are great for this and the tool that I use. Having to use a pdf on your mobile or a printed plan is cumbersome when you are in the gym trying to train and having to fumble around with paper or try to zoom into images or spreadsheets that aren’t optimised for mobile.

We touched on this in the list above, but it warrants a bit more discussion. Goals. You may already have your goal in mind, which your PT should be able to help you refine into SMART objectives. But if not, your PT should be able to help your surface up what it is you want to achieve and get SMART goals in place. By having goals, you get a long term plan broken into chunks and your programme gets you to each milestone within the plan. You need a plan as well as a programme.

So, you have a goal, a plan to get there and a training programme. Excellent. This sounds like a good PT. A nutrition plan is next. Your nutrition fuels your training, which gets you to your goals, so it’s fundamental. Your PT should have asked all the right questions to understand what dietary approach is right for you, ie, gaining, losing or maintaining weight / muscle etc. So, what should your nutrition plan look like? There are lots of different dietary approaches out there, from my experience and nutritional education (which a good PT will have) an optimal approach is to follow a macro and calorie tracking plan. Your coach would give you a number of calories to consume and either % required for fats, carbs and protein or grams of these required per day. Then regularly feedback on your food diary, ensuring it’s not only a diet that’s conducive to your body composition goals but also conducive to your health. This is a solid, collaborative and healthy approach, which is teaching you good habits. This approach allows you the freedom to choose the meals you want so long as the meals consumed over the course of a day fit the calorie and macro metrics provided. 

The final attribute of a good PT follows on nicely from all of the above. They have asked all the right questions, helped you formulate goals, laid out a plan, provided a training programme and a solid nutrition plan. Ace. Now, a stellar PT would ensure that they check in with you regularly to understand how you are progressing in all of those areas, as well as how you feel in yourself—are you hungry, satisfied, energised, tired, happy, are you enjoying your programme? Anyone who has ever had a plan will know that plans change. Things change. Your PT needs to check in with you, at least weekly, to ensure that you are on track and to assess if that track is still the right one. Your training programme and nutrition will evolve and change as you evolve...although I do recommend that you stick to a training plan for at least 4 weeks without any big changes to it, because constant changes do make progress hard to track, assess and essentially mean you’re not following a plan.

I have some high standards right? But these are the standards the Fitness Industry should be aiming for and these are the standards I uphold and constantly try to improve on and take to the next level. You should have high expectations too. When you sign up with a PT you are investing in something that has the potential to literally change your life. How much would you be willing to spend on the body you’ve always wanted, increased confidence, improved health and to just feel awesome each day?

If you’re interested in working with me, then please check out my Online Personal Training service, it’s pretty awesome!