Get Your Money’s Worth From Personal Training

This is gonna be the best year of your life for fitness. You’ve made up your mind. You don’t quite know what that means, but it’s gonna include hiring a professional to give you direction. Great!

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I’m a big fan of hiring trainers. You only get one body. Treat it well. A trainer won’t guarantee your success, nor can a trainer promise freedom from injury, but the investment is still worth it.

A trainer takes the complexity of exercise science then boils it down into a customized program for only you. That is if you hire the right one.

Read this: Hiring a Personal Trainer: Head Fake Behaviors

Start by finding the right trainer for you, then spend the money you deserve to spend, and plan to be a good student. You’re gonna drain every last drop of value from this investment with this plan.

Research Trainers

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Finding the right trainer is less about what everybody else thinks, but more about what you think. Take your time.

Read this: To Find the Right Trainer Employ the Five…

Certifications matter, but they aren’t everything. Your trainer should have a certification from an organization that requires renewals. The trainer should be able to speak about the certification with enthusiasm, even allude to hands-on development, not just book work.

More important than qualifications, you have to trust your trainer. You don’t have to like her (him), but you have to have trust. If you don’t, you’ll never do a thing she asks, even if you have the best intentions.

Spend The Right Money

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The right trainer is not the most expensive. Don’t assume the high-priced trainer is worth all that scratch. I’ve known many overpriced trainers over the years, banking on the you-get-what-you-pay-for assumtion.

Let celebrities pay top dollar. Unless you live in Manhattan, your trainer shouldn’t cost more than $60 per session.

She should also not be the bargain basement special. Obviously, you have to afford your trainer, so work within your budget, but don’t let small variances in price, like $5-10 per session, sway you.

Expensive sessions are not worth what you get, but super-cheap sessions should raise flags. Beware. You’ll spend between $30-60 for the right trainer in most cases.

Buy a Notebook (Use it)

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Once you decide on your trainer, get yourself a notebook. You’re gonna take notes, lotsa notes.

By notebook, I mean pulp, a paper, and glue notebook. Don’t try to be that client, the one typing into a smartphone. Not only will you look like a jerk, you won’t absorb the information as well as if you write it down. Leave your electronics in your car, locker or at home.

Obviously, you will not always be able to write in your notebook. You can let your trainer hold it or write in it too. Don’t leave any sessions without writing down some notes about what you worked on, what went well, what is your homework.

Do Your Homework Every Day

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A good trainer will give you homework. It won’t be much, maybe some dietary changes or drills you need to run. Write them in your notebook, put the in your calendar, set reminders, do them.

When you fail to complete these assignments, your trainer may scold you, but that’s not who you’re letting down. Remember, your already decided this was gonna be your year for fitness.

Be a good student. Hang on every word of your trainer. Do your work like your life depends on it. (It may.)

Arrive On Time For Sessions

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If you are on time, you’re late. Get to the meeting place before your session, with enough time to be ready at your start time.

Default to your trainer’s coaching about how to arrive, but usually, you’ll want to warm up. That doesn’t include the trek from your car the trainer’s desk. You need a good ten-minutes or so to warm up. You should be warm enough to move, and ready with your towel and notebook.

If your trainer is late, then you’ve skipped a step. Go back to square one. You have the wrong trainer.

You don’t have to see your trainer every day, but you should see that person as often every week as you can afford. If money is an issue, train in bursts.

Don’t savor your sessions. Buy packages of training, burn them fast, then work solo until you have enough scratch to buy more.

On your last session, make an appointment to meet with your trainer again down the road, just to check in if not buy more sessions. Then dig back in. By this time next year you’re are gonna own the gym