Everybody Can Benefit From Personal Training
By: David Bidner, NCSF, PT Aide
From a novice to someone who has been working out for years. The importance and use for a personal trainer will vary from person to person. From my combined experience of being a personal trainer and a physical therapist aide for 3 years, I’d like to make some points about why everybody should invest in their overall wellness and health.
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The number one reason I have found that people want a personal trainer is for the accountability and motivation.
When a client invests into their health and schedule appointments, they almost always attend all their training sessions. When a client is kept accountable with their workouts and nutrition, they are setting themselves up for success. Personal trainers push clients to limits that they cannot achieve on their own. Having a personal trainer who can encourage and bring the best out of someone, sets a client up on the right path to achieving their goals. Personal trainers will believe in their clients even when the client cannot see hope. Sometimes a person just needs someone to believe in them to push through the pain, sweat, and tears. There’s nothing better than celebrating a client’s success!
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This is the most important reason someone should invest into a personal trainer. I cannot stress enough how important it is to have proper form in the gym.
It is very easy to hurt yourself in the gym. Personal trainers pay special attention to details to help you activate the correct muscles as well as cue a client to inhibit other muscles. Personal trainers can help someone build good neural muscular connections, allowing clients to become aware of their body. It is easy to over activate certain muscles while strengthening other muscles. For example, I have seen men over activate their upper traps while strengthening the back muscles. By doing so, they tend to have overly tight muscles that attach to their neck. This can lead to neck pain, horrible posture, or migraines. I myself have used YouTube to educate myself, but have also come across horrible advice. Remember, just because they look the part, it doesn’t mean that they know what’s best for a client. Finding great tips online doesn’t allow the client to receive feedback or corrections needed to properly do the exercise.
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With an abundance of information circulating the internet, it is hard to distinguish what is the “best” method to reach your fitness goals.
For someone who is new to fitness and health, it can become frustrating to figure out what works best for you. A personal trainer should continually educate themselves on health and wellness. They should also be kept up to date to what health fads or trends that are out in the fitness industry. This ensures that a client is given the safest and correct advice. Sometimes these fitness YouTube stars, nutrition plans, or infomercial programs can do more harm than good. It is our duty to provide and educate a client on how to take care of their health safely and provide clients with the safest and most accurate information in the industry.
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One on one attention is valuable when it comes to a client’s success.
A personal trainer will give you their 100% attention. This allows you to focus on the exercise without worrying about if your form and posture is correct. That is our job! Have you ever felt like everybody in the gym is watching you? I know I have dealt with insecurities of being judged in the gym. I remember being worried about whether people in the gym are looking at me and judging me. Having a personal trainer gives a client the confidence to focus on themselves rather than focusing on what people may think of them. Personal trainers should always strive to get their client comfortable enough to be independent in the gym. As a personal trainer, my goals are for my clients to gain the knowledge, experience, and confidence to be independent in the gym.
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Preventing injury goes hand in hand with making sure a client is properly doing the exercise correctly.
Personal trainers teach their clients on how to use the equipment safely and properly. Their job is base a client’s workout program around their everyday life, to0 prevent injury. We create a program that will increase a client’s flexibility, postural control, core strength, and balance based on a person’s daily life.
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I cannot forget bring attention to the reasoning behind the drive to work out in the first place.
Personal trainers may not be a 100% guaranteed to give you the results you are looking for, but more often than others a great trainer will do everything they can for you to reach your fitness goals. Investing in a trainer will get you the results that they cannot reach on their own. What keeps me motivated and accountable as a personal trainer is getting my clients to their fitness goals.
