How to Choose a Personal Trainer – And How Not To

Trainer

It used to be that the services of personal trainers were restricted to professional athletes and hollywood stars. But nowadays, regular people like you and me can afford that personal training touch.

However, that raises a question. How exactly do you choose a personal trainer in order to get the best results? While personal training is now affordable for many, nobody wants to throw money away. Well, looking for someone that possesses a personal training certification is a good starting point.

While there are various certifications offered by a number of different organizations, and they vary in quality, at least the fact that the trainer took the time to get certified means they’re serious about their business, and probably planning to keep doing it for a while. More important than certification, however, is their knowledge, experience, and their personality.

As a matter of fact, once you have found someone who’s competent personal trainer fairfax va, personality may be the deciding factor on whether or not you get results from working with them. Regardless of how much knowledge they have, if you don’t like the way they communicate that knowledge, it’s not going to do you any good. In order to apply ourselves and exert the necessary effort, most of us need to work with a person we can get along with.

A great way to select a fitness trainer is through a personal recommendation. If the person making the recommendation has similar goals to you, all the better. If you’re a college age male who wants to add thirty pounds of muscle, a recommendation from a forty year old mom of three whose trainer helped her lose forty pounds of fat isn’t too relevant. It’s better than nothing, of course.

The one criteria that you don’t want to use when picking a personal trainer is to choose one because he looks like a pro bodybuilder, or because she looks like a world class fitness model, or whatever. Of course, you want anyone you select to walk the talk – so you do want them to look fit. But choosing one trainer from two or three prospective candidates based solely on their appearance is usually a big mistake. They just might be one of those people who can train haphazardly and ignore good nutrition and still look great, just because of their genetic inheritance. Therefore, they may lack the knowledge to train typical people. We all have different inherited capabilities for building muscle or losing fat – so don’t go on appearance alone. Consider it along with the trainer’s credentials, experience, personality, and any feedback you can garner from their current or past clients.

Finally, make sure any fitness trainer you select is certified in CPR and has liability insurance. That will probably never be needed, but you want the trainer to be prepared should a worst case scenario ever occur

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