Tips for success from a former personal trainer.
Tis the season for renewing commitments to personal growth. And for many people, that means a renewed commitment to “getting in shape,” whatever that may mean for each of us.
Yesterday, my friend Alex wrote a very thoughtful Facebook post about fitness that I engaged with, and that sparked a personal phone call based on some specific questions he had about his personal fitness journey. Because we live about 600 miles apart, and I can’t personally assess his fitness relative to his goals, I couldn’t offer any specific advice on exercise selection and progression. So, the conversation became less about his personal fitness goals, and more about how to select a personal trainer who can help guide him on his journey.
Who this article is for: In my time as a personal trainer, and in my decades of experience in competitive and recreational fitness, I’ve found that the people I see in the gym in my age group (born late 60s- early 70s), break down into roughly four groups:
- The first group I call the Lost Boys/Girls. They go to a personal trainer, or more frequently a group fitness class, because either they want to do something for their fitness (something usually being better than nothing), or they want to be able to tell the story that they have a personal trainer/fitness group. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I see these folks week in and week out, for many years, generally doing the same stuff at the same intensity and making little or no progress.
- The second group are the Socializers. They seem to have a personal trainer because it gets them out of the house and they have someone to talk to for 30 minutes 3x per week. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
- The third group are the Gray-Haired Warriors. These are usually former competitive athletes of some variety who have a solid knowledge of how to train and eat for results. They set goals and make progress. They never work with a trainer, and almost never have a work-out partner. These lone eagles come in the gym, nearly every day, and just get the work done. They are typically in the top 5-10% in fitness in their gym, and for their age group, they are even more exceptional. They also have been in your gym long enough to know who the good trainers are and who the idiots are. Their advice is probably a cheat code to finding the right one.
- The fourth group are the folks who really want to make progress toward some specific fitness goals, usually something like “I want to improve my health and fitness so that I can remain healthy and engaged in life as I get older.” But they don’t have the background of our gray-haired warriors and aren’t sure where to start. If they don’t find a Gray-Haired Warrior mentor or a really good trainer, they usually end up in the first group, but longing for more.
This article is for the people in the last group. You are highly competent in most aspects of your life, but you want to get better at being physically fit. The problem is that 92% of personal trainers are terrible, it’s really hard to find one who isn’t, and you want to avoid slipping into the purgatory of group one.
How to Select a Personal Trainer
So how do you find a great personal trainer? One who won’t just walk you to a series of machines and tell you to do 3 sets of 10, while they guffaw at the latest TikTok trending video and mumble the occasional empty word of detached praise? One who won’t try to indoctrinate you into their particular cult-like fitness niche, whether it matches your goals or not? One who won’t program idiotic, injurious movements with little benefit other than having been featured on the latest color glossy magazine cover?
Interview. I know those three free training session coupons are burning a hole in your pocket, but before your first training session, interview the trainer. After all, this is the person you want to help you achieve goals that are important to you, and not hurt you in the process. They work for you. A good trainer will be more than happy to discuss what your fitness goals are, why they are important to you, what your fitness history is, and what limiting factors you may have (injuries, old and new, mobility challenges, medical limitations, etc.). If they aren’t happy to have this conversation, move on to the next candidate. The trainer should listen actively, and should ask clarifying questions to ensure they understand. They should be able to restate what you told them. These sound like simple communication things (and they are), but they are critically important.
Red flags at this step: not willing to have the conversation, including we’ll talk about this after we get started; failure to listen actively and attentively; attempts to shoe-horn your goals into their preferred program.
Yellow flags at this step: offers simplistic advice without assessing your fitness (see next step); talks excessively about their credentials (beyond something like – yes, I can help you with that).
Assessment. After your prospective trainer passes your interview, schedule the first training session. A good trainer will use this first session to assess your ability across the relevant aspects of fitness relative to your goals. For weight lifting, they should assess your basic movement patterns, including at a minimum a basic squat movement, a basic hip hinge movement, a horizontal pressing movement, a vertical pressing movement, a vertical pulling movement, and a horizontal pulling movement. These assessments should be done initially with no load or minimal load (unless you have a decent training history – like a couple of years in the gym). A thorough assessment may require adding load to see where form begins to break, but should not approach a maximal effort. For monostructural cardio (running, biking, rowing, etc.), a few minutes of moderate Zone 2 effort should be sufficient to assess a beginning trainee. The goal of this training session is not to induce a training response. It is to assess the starting point.
Red flags at this step: trainer doesn’t do an assessment (this can be sorted out during the interview while discussing the first session); trainer tries to use machines to do the assessment (cable type machines are OK for pulling movements); trainer ignores any injuries you reported and insists that you do painful movements.
Yellow flags during assessment: trainer attempts to correct form during the assessment, beyond the minimal necessary instruction for a novice to perform the assessed movement.
Programming. At this point, the trainer should be ready to recommend a program for you to follow that takes into account your goals, your current abilities, and any limitations. The program should incorporate elements to help you progress toward your goals. I’m being pretty non-specific here, because there are a multitude of possibilities, depending on the person. Some principles to consider:
- Is the program relatively simple? For most beginner and intermediate trainees, the program should be based on progressive overload and linear progressions. Unless you are an advanced or elite trainee, you don’t need wave periodization or more complex training methods. If you are advanced or elite, you know it already, and this article isn’t for you.
- For weight training, since this is where most people have questions, the program should be primarily based on compound (multi-joint) lifts or appropriate variants for the trainee. These are the same types of lifts discussed in the assessment section – squats, hip hinges, horizontal and vertical presses, horizontal and vertical pulls. If you have limitations that prevent you from performing any of these with non-injurious form, then the trainer should be designing a routine with progressions of the main lifts and/or related exercises to build the primary lift. For example, if a trainee can’t get into a safe initial position for a deadlift because they are unable to maintain a neutral spine position, the trainer should be looking at something like 45 degree back extensions and core bracing exercises to build the ability to maintain a neutral spine position before introducing the deadlift.
- Does the program integrate with your lifestyle? Is it achievable? For most people seeking general health and general purpose fitness, something like 2-3 days of weight training for 30-60 minutes, 2 hours per week of Zone 2 cardio, mobility work appropriate to the trainee, and maybe one session of high-intensity cardio (like a Tabata on the Air Bike) every week or two is more than sufficient.
- Did the trainer discuss nutrition as part of the plan? Did they go deeper than calories-in/calories out? Did they discuss that scale weight is only part of how you look and feel, and that losing 5 pounds of fat and also gaining 5 pounds of muscle will make most people look MUCH better than just losing 5 pounds of fat? Did they discuss realistic expectations for long-term fat loss (about 1 pound per week is sustainable) and muscle gain (about one pound per month for non-enhanced trainees)?
More Red Flags. I mention these because I see them ALL THE TIME in commercial gyms, largely because magazines and influencers, who are chasing clicks and follows, have discovered that flashy, complicated, fancy stuff sells over boring and effective hard work.
- Any trainer who wants you to deliberately be unstable with an external load (holding a weight of any type) should be summarily dismissed as your trainer. I could write an entire post about this particular flavor of personal trainer idiocy, but I won’t. I’ll just sum up thusly: 99% of the time they do this to improve the trainee’s balance, which they sometimes also sell as “strengthening the little stabilizer muscles.” While balance is an important component of fitness, I have found that being stronger naturally improves my balance, and if I need to work on balance as a skill there are programs, usually based in yoga or gymnastics, that are very effective without the disproportionate risk of doing balance under load. Why would you want to hold a heavy iron weight over some part of your anatomy, especially your teeth and throat, and then deliberately put yourself into an unstable position? Here are a few pictures of some of the dumb exercises I’m talking about:
If you are morbidly curious, you can find plenty of videos of people breaking ankles (bosu squats), breaking wrists when the ball pops (presses on the ball), and dropping the bar on their face/neck (feet up bench). In general, for beginning and intermediate trainees, these exercises are nothing but risk incurred for a reward that can be found elsewhere.
- Trainer doesn’t understand physiology/kinesiology. The simplest way to spot this red flag is if the trainer is trying to get you to move the weight in an ideal path relative to the exercise itself, and not relative to your particular proportions and leverages. If you aren’t sure, and you are struggling to execute an exercise as the trainer is instructing, ask the trainer: is there something I should be doing to adjust the exercise due to my proportions? They should be able to explain how your build/proportions/physiology relate to the exercise and what adjustments, if any, are necessary. If they pass this, then it may be that you don’t yet have the training experience, proprioception, or body awareness to translate their instructions into the actions they are seeking, and the trainer should adjust their cuing to help you make progress. If they get frustrated and head down the path of “you just don’t get it” or “you aren’t very coachable” or “I’ve never seen someone struggle with this before,” time to find a new trainer.
Conclusion. Selecting a trainer is difficult, because most of them are unqualified for the job, and those that do have official certifications are frequently still not skilled enough to help you without creating unnecessary risk. So the burden falls to you to find a good trainer. I’d encourage anyone to ask the advice of the most fit people in your gym – they will have a pretty good idea, and probably some pretty strong opinions, about who to avoid and who to seek out. Then apply this template to ensure a great fit.
In strength- S
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