| Ilene |
04-26-2007 08:30 AM |
How To Pick A Personal Trainer
A thread was started on the confusion over what to look for in a Personal Trainer... I took the best of that thread and made it a sticky
Quote:
Originally Posted by Meg
(Post 1668810)
The price for an hour of personal training is really variable - anywhere from $30 to $100+ if you're in NYC or California or have a big name trainer.
My gym has five levels of training, with five prices, depending on the trainer's experience and credentials. But it's all negotiable! Think of it as buying a car. Tell them you can't afford it and I'll bet you'll see a price drop. ;)
My gym also runs specials - 3 sessions for $99 is common. The goal is to get you hooked and sign you up for more, of course. But it's a great way to get started. :)
What I really want to emphasize to anyone who's thinking of getting a trainer is that you're in the driver's seat. Tell the trainer what you want and expect for your money. Don't let the trainer push you around and try to make you conform to his or her goals.
I wrote this up for a friend who was thinking of getting a personal trainer - maybe it will help you?
Quote:
How To Pick A Personal Trainer
Begin by looking at the trainer’s certification(s). Some of the widely recognized, reputable certifications are ACE, ISSA, NASM, ACSM, and NSCS, among others. But a certification really doesn't tell you much about the person and how they would train you. So it's only a starting point.
Go into this the way you'd go into any consumer transaction. You're the customer and will be investing a fairly significant sum of money. Don't be pressured into a decision! Ballys tells us that people always buy on the basis of emotion - try not to fall into that trap. Take your time, be rational and thoughtful.
Sometimes it's a good idea to initially watch the trainers interacting with their clients (who looks bored, who's paying attention, who uses cookie cutter workouts for all their clients) and talk to existing clients. Or start off by talking to whomever is in charge of the trainers, briefly set out your goals, and ask to meet with someone who that person thinks who work compatitively with you. Specify if you'd feel more comfortable with a woman trainer.
When you meet with a potential trainer, it should be all about YOU and your goals, not about them. Don't be dazzled by someone's credentials, list of initials after their name, or being on the cover of some magazine. The first thing I always ask is: what are a client's goals - where would they like to be in six months or a year? These should be YOUR goals, not what a trainer thinks your goals should be.
After I hear someone's goals, I then talk about how we're going to achieve them with a weekly plan of nutrition, cardio, and weights. Ask for specifics, not vague generalities. Ask questions! See how knowledgeable the trainer is about nutrition (some know nothing). You've been around the diet and fitness world long enough to evaluate what you might hear - you know what makes sense and what to run screaming from.
Look for a sense of rapport with the trainer. Is he/she easy to talk to? Does he/she understand your goals? Can you see working with this person over the long term? Would he/she make working out fun? Trust your gut instincts here.
Assuming all is clicking so far, don't even consider buying without actually working out with the trainer. You want someone who will push you but not kill you, and that's sometimes a hard line to walk. Some trainers consider it a point of honor to try to cripple all clients, which is absurd and dangerous.
Make sure the trainer is watching and correcting you as you do an exercise, not gazing around the gym. Pay attention to see if it’s someone who just counts reps or someone who watches YOU and judges how hard to push. You want a trainer who can read your mind and know when to push and when to back off. When it’s over, ask yourself if it was fun? Was it a better workout than you could ever achieve on your own? Did you learn anything?
Every workout should be individualized and customized to help you achieve YOUR goals. I have a huge beef with trainers who use the same workouts with all their clients, or worse, the same workouts week after week with individual clients. Like it's Leg Day and you automatically do the same routine. Boring!! I keep track of all my workouts on my computer so that we never repeat a workout – we rarely even repeat exercises since there’s always a way to change them up and make them new and different.
If your gym is anything like my Ballys, they’ll try to pressure you into buying a big package of sessions right off the bat. It’s usually cheaper to buy a lot at once, but my suggestion is to resist and only buy a few – like four or six or whatever is offered. That way you can work out with the trainer for a few weeks and have a much better sense of whether this is someone who you want to continue with over the long term.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Meg
In my opinion, both weightlifting and cardio are essential for fat loss. Cardio is your big calorie burner and my advice to clients is at least 30 minutes, 5 - 6 times a week. It sounds exactly like what you're doing, so keep it up!
As you get more advanced doing cardio (in other words, when it starts getting easier), think about adding in some interval training. If you haven't run into that before, it's moderate intensity cardio (70 - 85% of your max heart rate) with quick high intensity bursts (85 - 90% of max HR). A number of recent studies show that we burn more fat that way and it elevates our metabolisms for the rest of the day, so we're burning more calories all day.
Weightlifting (or resistance training, same thing) is equally important for weight loss. If we lose weight without exercising with weights, studies show that up to 40% is lost muscle and that's a bad thing. Muscle is the calorie burner in our bodies (think of it as little furnaces ) and the less muscle we have, the lower our metabolisms are and the fewer calories we need in a day to maintain. Without resistance exercise (weightlifting), you'll get to goal with a low metabolism and a body that looks like jello - and who wants that? With weightlifting, you'll be smaller and tighter, with a faster metabolism.
To keep your metabolism running high during and after weight loss, you want to be sustaining and even building muscle mass. And we do that by lifting weights or using weight machines. We all have problem areas but we can't spot reduce, unfortunately. So my recommendation is to start with a full-body workout, three times a week. Pick an exercise for each of the muscle groups - legs, back, chest, shoulders, biceps, triceps, and abs - and do 2 - 3 sets of 12 - 15 reps for each exercise.
I worked with a personal trainer and highly recommend it, if only to learn basic form and how to put a program together. But if that's out of the question, there are some good sites listed in the 'stickys' in the Ladies Who Lift forum to give you ideas about putting together a workout if you can't afford a trainer. I especially want to direct you to Exrx.net and Fitsite because they have little videos demonstrating how to do each exercise correctly.
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