Why Hire A Trainer?
If you’ve come across this you’re probably thinking about hiring a trainer.
I’d like to lay out a convincing argument for why I believe you should absolutely do that, why I think it’s the best investment you’ll ever make, and what a good trainer will provide you with.
First a few things to think about:
- All the money in the world means next to nothing if you don’t have the health to enjoy it.
- You live your life once. Why not live it as the best, highest energy, fittest, vibrant, version of yourself? Your body is moldable. Your mind is moldable. You have the ability to create the level of health you envision for yourself.
- It is never too late to start. Your time is valuable, so maximize it.
- Its always hard to start, we get caught up thinking about how challenging and difficult the entire journey will be. This frequently leads to us to wanting to retreat back into our comfortable shell of complacency when confronted with an adventure that can change the course of our life. No one that’s ran a marathon ever started with one, they took the first few strides, found the passion for it, and slowly built up from there. Once you get started I’m confident you’ll be mentally strong enough to keep pushing towards your goals. I want to see you take control and create your own heroes journey.
Okay, so what does a good trainer do for you?
A good trainer is going to guarantee you progress towards your goals, they’re going to maximize your time in the gym getting you to your goal as fast as safely possible, take the stress and guesswork of programming off of you, and they’re going to give you the support you need to continually challenge yourself in the gym as well as in changing your lifestyle behaviors outside the gym to help you achieve your vision.
There are 4 general areas of their expertise
1) Exercise Prescription
2) Psychological Assistance
3) Behavior Change
4) Health Education
Exercise Prescription
This is a personal trainers bread and butter. It’s where they spend most of their time building their education and refining their practice to create the optimal training system to get you to your goals as safely and effectively as possible.
A good trainer has many things to take into account to build the optimal training program for you.
They will sit down with you and listen very closely to your personal goals. They’ll take your medical history, injury history, and training history. Perform an assessment on your current capabilities to learn your strengths and weaknesses. Then taking into account your availability and frequency of training they will create a workout routine for you to follow that will include multiple different phases of exercise progression and wind up with you reaching your end goal with multiple smaller goals along the way.
This routine will be supported by the scientific principles of training to all but guarantee you progress if you do your part in the process.
The routine will maximize and optimize the development of the machinery within your own body:
Your 3 energy systems (Anaerobic alactic, Anaerobic lactic, and Aerobic System)
Your nervous system
Your muscle mass, tendon elasticity and durability, and your bone density
Your endocrine system,
Your cardiovascular system
Your biomechanics (strength, speed, power)
Your Movement Patterns (exercise technique, stabilization patterns)
In addition to all of these factors it will also take into account your recoverability to avoid setbacks making sure that the training is sustainable, doesn’t burn you out, or injure you.
This is done primarily through control of the volume of the work that you do, the intensity of it, and the frequency you train.
They will make sure the exercises are as safe as possible for you based off of everything they find in their assessment and address your weaknesses (posture, movement deficiencies, mobility, muscular imbalances, injury history).
Then they’ll teach you how to perform them with perfect form for maximum safety.
On top of that they will have the ability to adapt the program and plan daily based on your daily energy levels, health and readiness to keep your progress as optimal as possible. Knowing when to push you for more or when its time to back off.
This will help you avoiding plateaus and inconsistent results,
They should also readily refer you out to other experts for assistance when an injury or issue is beyond their scope of practice.
You can potentially do all of this by yourself but it would be incredibly difficult, take a lot of knowledge/study, and would almost certainly not be as efficient.
There is a reason most trainers also have trainers of their own.
Psychological Assistance
Many people hire a trainer because they know they need the mental support, motivation, and accountability that they bring.
A good trainer will provide that and much more.
It’s hard to drag yourself out of your bed or off of your couch and into the gym.
A trainer is an accountability partner. You’ll have feelings of guilt for missing a session, and the financial incentive to keep continually showing up.
They will motivate you and push you safely beyond your normal self imposed limitations to help you get performances you might never achievable on your own. Understanding your drives and underlying motivations they will push your buttons at the right time to pull more out of you when it matters most.
When you falter in your mental resilience or when you wind up in a mental slump they will pull you out of it, remind you about why you started to workout in the first place and your goals/motivations, force you to workout, and help you feel better. Giving you their youthful mental energy and leading by example they will pull out a side of you that you didn’t even know existed.
All of this will be done while making working out enjoyable, approachable, and sometimes even fun. The gym will feel like a totally welcoming and judgment free place where you feel confident in yourself and what you are doing. No longer will it feel daunting or overly complicated.
By removing the mental stress, time, and effort that comes with programming your own workouts they can help you shut off your brain in the gym and focus on just the workout in front of you.
They will give you what you need mentally to want to keep showing up. Do you need a firm push and a high standard? Do you need a fun and slower paced environment to build up your confidence?
The journey of your self development should be enjoyable and they will tailor your program to be something that you enjoy (at least most of the time). Having someone beside you throughout the workouts who you get along with, who sees the best parts of you and your efforts and points it out while calling you on your bullshit will make you want to keep showing up. Often you become close friends with your trainer after seeing each other sometimes more than you see your best friends.
They’re someone you’ll often find yourself venting your stress and frustrations to.
They’ll help introduce and connect you to others with similar values who are looking to continually better themselves. Helping to forge friendships along the way. Or they can do the opposite and help keep people away from you in the gym if wanted.
Beyond anything else the best psychological assistance they will give you is the increase in your confidence, strength, body image, and character. The improved relationship you have with your own mind and body coupled with the joy, freedom, and love for life that comes from being pain free, healthy, fit, and mobile.
Less anxiety, more energy, more focus, more intensity.
Behavior Change
Your trainer will be someone invested in you and your success. They have skin in the game when it comes to you and they will push themselves to help you make the changes you need.
They will lead by example. Prioritizing and valuing exercise, healthy living, a balanced lifestyle, and being someone that you can feel inspired/motivated by and strive to take some of their qualities into your own life.
This can be a game changer for you especially when other people in your life are not encouraging or supportive of these endeavors. It can be incredibly influential to help you break through the different generational curses on your family, the unhealthy behaviors and habits you’ve learned from them, or the sedentary lifestyle and resulting diseases that our modern society has cultivated for you.
They will be the positive voice on your shoulder leading you towards a positive healthy direction and your goals and away from some of the other influences you have in your life. They’ll advocate for positive decisions and be a healthy critic of others.
Knowing that you have a workout the next day and having an understanding of how a lack of sleep or staying out late drinking will affect it and make you feel during the workout can be a motivating factor to not partake in them.
Good goal setting will help you have realistically aligned expectations, maintain motivation, and get addicted to success/hitting your goals, which will help you make consistent changes in the long term. It will help to keep you accountable when you are slacking, lacking effort, commitment, and making excuses.
Providing you with helpful tips and advice to help you craft your living environment into one that will cultivate the life you desire for yourself. Helpful tricks of the trade and pointing out mindsets to adopt will help you to consistently hit your goals and make the changes you desire.
You will become a goal crushing, stress tolerance machine of a person who will carry these qualities into every aspect of your life, attacking it with energy and initiative. You’ll be doing all the activities and hobbies you want to do and are passionate about. You’ll become a leader by example for others in your own life.
Health Education
They will teach you slowly throughout the process about these areas of health.
Education on Nutrition. Learning the ins and outs of the foods that you put in your body and how to alter your nutritional decisions to help you achieve the goals and lifestyle that you’ve envisioned for yourself.
Calories, Macronutrient, Micronutrients, meal timing, healthy food selections. Teaching tricks of the trade to help make things easier on you and help you stay consistent and on track in the long term.
Education on Sleep. Helping you craft the environment and habits surrounding your sleep to maximize your recovery and energy levels so that you can take on life with vigor.
Education on healthy lifestyle and ergonomics. Understanding the safe and dangerous unconscious daily movements and exercises that you may be doing. Learning tip and tricks on how you can make small changes to your daily routines that will help create big health changes in your body in the long run. How you should be moving to get out of injury patterns and remain pain free in the long run.
