Hi Steemians!
If you haven't ever trained with personal trainer, you probably have friends who tried. It's very trendy to have a trainer, all stars and celebities have, and it's getting more and more popular, and amount of personal trainers in society is increasing.
Before you start looking for your trainer, you will probably ask yourself few questions:
1. Should I even think about it?
Yes. People train with personal trainers for many reasons like lack of motivation, lack of knowledge, lack of technique, preparing for competitions, disabilities, and also just because they can. Is it for you? If you are in poor physical condition, you don't know how to reach your goal, you never trained - definitely yes. If you are in general physically active but nothing is changing - also yes, with few hours with trainer you will learn much more an much quicker than if you would try to do all this on your own. And probably you will avoid contusions.
2. Why does it cost so much?
Because they also want to have normal salary. Some people are machines, and they can train all day long, but not forever. Most of professionals can have 4-5 good quality trainings per day. Except that, they must constantly invest in their own trainings, diet, physiotherapists, renting a studio or paying to the gym and investing in courses which are very expensive. If you count how much it takes to be actually good personal trainer, it's not a cheap game.
3. How to choose a good trainer?
Ask, check social media, look for recomendations. Only remember: good trainer is not this one who made your friend lose a lot of weight in 3 months and now she is anemic and has metabolic problems, it's not this one who kills you on the training so much that you can't move, it's not the one who has the prettiest social media pictures! Sometimes it's not even the one who has personal trainer certificate! Maybe he has many others and he is putting his knowledge all together. It's not the one with the biggest muscles. It will be the one who will take care of you, will adjust the training to you, help with diet and make it really personal. If he is checking facebook or chewing a gum while you sweat, kick him in the ass.
Of course having an university degree will be a big plus, but it shouldn't be the thing that makes you decide about choosing someone or not. If it's important to you, look for graduates of everything related to physical education, physiotherapists and dietitians.
4. What should I expect on my first training?
Well trainers have two strategies. On first training they will or: convince you to start training with them and make you tired, or will already start fixing your bad habits. How come?
First of all: the interview.
Good trainer won't start training before asking you about your current activity, diet, lifestyle, disabilities, health problems, setting up a goal and measuring you. The conversation itself can take even more than half hour, if it was skipped, don't bother with this trainer.
After warm up, good trainer should make you few tests, that will check your general condition, mobility and stability. What does it mean? He will try to track your movement patterns, looking for places to improve. We usually sit all day, so we have weakened back muscles, and shortened pectorals and hip adductors. Good trainer will start with streightening your core, showing you how to move, giving you full mobility where it's needed and working on stability where you lose it. It will be under the mask of your goal that is loosing or gaining weight - it doesn't really matter. Your body will follow. Depending on how bad it is, if you are experienced and active before, maybe two weeks - a month will be enough to teach you how to properly move and control your body, but sometimes it's even half year of work.
If you don't know if you have full correct motion range in some part of your body and you never trained with weigths, and trainer is giving you weights before you start controling mass of your own body, run away! Placing weight on something that doesn't work well is the easiest way to break it.
5. How fast can I lose/gain weight?
Actually very fast, but if you wan't to do it healthy it shoudln't be more than 0,5kg per week. Exceptions are allowed for vey owerweight people, who may lose up to few kilograms during first months of total lifestyle makeover. When can I expect results? Well if you never trained before, I would reccomend to check your stats after 6 weeks, usually for the first month never really happens (nothing visible for first sight), and new starters have problems with discipline.* I would say that for average person 1kg per month is reasonable amount.* Loosing weight this way will make your body get slowly adjusted to it and shouldnt affect your metabolism. Gaining weight this way will allow you to slowly build muscle mass without getting too fat.
6. What should I take with me?
Comfortable clothes, clean sport shoes, towel, big bottle of water and a lot of courage. If you have recent health check results, take them too and show to your trainer. Don't worry to open and talk about your goals and fears, you are doing first step to something great!
7. How long will I train with a trainer?
As long as you feel it's helping you. If you are more experienced, maybe it's good idea to meet with trainer only from time to time to check progress and learn new things. Don't be scared to go to many different trainers on the begining to see if you like this way of cooperation and if it really works for you. It doesn't have to be the best solution for everyone :)
Do you have your experience with personal trainers? Was it good or bad? And why? Let me know in the comments!