Eight good reasons for investing in hiring a Personal Trainer …

Even though we as Americans live in a country that relies heavily on service industries as an important part of our economy, we don’t hire a lot of people for services that aren’t a “need.”

For example, to maintain our health, we all need a doctor, so we “hire” one.

To maintain our dental health, we “hire” a dentist.

To maintain our mental health, we hire a clinical therapist.

Most of us need a professional tax preparer to complete our taxes each year.

We hire a mechanic to fix our cars when they break down.

We “hire” barbers and stylists to cut our hair, people in food establishments to cook our food, and we might pay someone to mow our lawns, maintain our pools, or repair our appliances.

In most cases, if we’re hiring someone – whether directly or indirectly – it’s either to meet a need or for something we desire.

Of all the people you could hire to benefit you significantly in a deeply personal but important way, hiring a professional Personal Trainer to help you get and stay fit is one of the best investments you could make. That’s because few things in your entire lifetime will be as important to and for you as your physical fitness and health. There’s no one better educated and capable of helping you get and stay fit than a qualified, certified, skilled Personal Trainer. In that case, hiring a Personal Trainer is actually an investment in your physical well-being.

Still hesitant? Let me give you eight good reasons why hiring a Personal Trainer is an investment worth making:

1. Expertise. I’ve seen it hundreds of times on the faces of people who just signed up for a gym membership and show up for their first workout … they don’t have the slightest idea of how to exercise! Yes, you can go to a gym full of exercise equipment, but the average person does not know how to exercise effectively, efficiently, safely, and in a way to accomplish their fitness goals, or how to design whole exercise programs, even if just for themselves. By hiring a Personal Trainer, you put to work someone who directs all of their expertise in physical fitness to helping you achieve your specific fitness goals.

2. Effective goals. Beyond “lose weight,” many people struggle at fully verbalizing their personal fitness goals, or at knowing what should be the right objectives for their own physical fitness. A Personal Trainer will help you set goals that will effectively meet your physical needs, teach and lead you in how to achieve those goals, and keep you on track in attaining your goals throughout the training process.

3. Personalized program. Precisely what it will take for you to achieve your personal fitness goals is something that is very individual. What John did to lose weight and develop lean muscle may look differently than what you’ll have to do for a similar objective. There may be similarities in fitness programs, but knowing what John needs and you don’t, and what you need and John doesn’t, is why you hire a professional! A Personal Trainer will develop for you a complete training program designed to take you where you’re at now to your end objective. That program will not be static, but will factor in the need to regularly change things up to avoid plateaus and to keep you progressing from one level of fitness to another. The program can also include personal preferences … you prefer a gym environment? A Personal Trainer can help you reach your goals by using the gym equipment while teaching you proper use and form, or can design a program of functional exercises (largely without equipment) in the gym. Don’t like the gym environment? Many Personal Trainers can take you outdoors to parks for your workouts, and some may be willing to train you in your own home. Prefer a mix? A Personal Trainer can design programs that incorporate variety while still being effective in achieving results … ever used kettle bells? Or ever do a serious row machine regimen? How about incorporating swimming? Variety can make workouts more fun, but they also have to get you to where you want to go.

4. Productive and efficient. So many personal training clients I worked with in the past came to me only after months of their own sweaty workout efforts in the gym with little to no results. At least they didn’t give up! Instead of quitting because their own efforts to reach their goals failed, they hired me to train them. Personal Trainers design a training strategy to help their clients be as productive and efficient at reaching their goals as possible. For example, something as simple as teaching clients proper form in every exercise actually maximizes the efficiency and productivity of each movement — that is why you see Personal Trainers watching every exercise rep their clients make. A client may have read in a fitness magazine about some benefit of a stationary bike, but a Personal Trainer can help them understand they’ll have to spend twice the time and go double the distance on a bike than they would by using an elliptical machine, and even a standard treadmill is more productive and efficient.

5. Safety. There’s a right way and multiple wrong ways to move our bodies and purposely engage resistance (whether with weights, bands, etc.) so that it benefits our bodies. Personal Trainers ensure their clients always exercise in a way that is safe and not result in injury.

6. Challenge. I think one of the greatest values of a professional Personal Trainer is their ability to insightfully and positively challenge their clients. That’s because so often in life we do not make big, difficult, or “challenging” changes in our lives unless we are persistently challenged to do so. Personal Trainers challenge their clients from the start of program design through every exercise movement needed to finish the program and achieve their goals.

7. Encouragement. A “soccer mom” I was training came into the gym one day with a serious expression on her face and a not-so-happy tone in her voice. “I’ve gained two pounds!” she exclaimed. While weight loss was only a small part of her overall fitness goals, I had to explain to her that the serious resistance training program she had engaged in to develop lean muscle was starting to show results and she was seeing a little weight from that lean muscle. I explained to her during the early phase of her training not to focus on what her scale told her, but to look at the inches she was losing. Eventually she would both develop lean muscle (“tone up”)and reduce her weight, but initially she would need to measure part of her gains in inches lost. A skilled Personal Trainer will know how to encourage their clients through all of the rigors involved in achieving their personal fitness objectives.

8. Accountability. You probably know some people who have a level of self-discipline that will keep them from entertaining attempts at trying to cut corners, skip workouts, or otherwise waiver in any way from the steadfast execution of their fitness program … but you probably don’t know many of them! Providing firm accountability from start to finish of a client’s fitness program is an invaluable part of the contribution fitness professionals make to your personal fitness.

If you need or want to get fit, stay fit, need sport-specific training, or have some specific type of fitness objective you would like to accomplish, consider hiring a certified, experienced Personal Trainer. In most cases, it will be a positive experience that is well worth the money you spend.

Scotty