IIt’s completely normal to be a little self-absorbed during personal training. After all, now is your time to focus on you, your goals, and your health.
Focus on your job as your personal trainer too. That said, putting some thought into what’s going on on one side of the squat rack can make their job easier and your training more effective.
Here’s what two personal trainers want all their clients to know: their pet peeves, trade secrets, and tips that help them improve their training.
1. Making the most of your course means being prepared
If you schedule a 50-minute session, your trainer has almost certainly prepared 50 minutes of practice for you. Anything you do to take up that time—like arriving late—will take away from your valuable workout time.
“One of the biggest annoyances for trainers is when clients are late,” says Daniel McKenna, CPT, a NASM-certified personal trainer and founder of the fitness app and community The Irish Yank. “Any personal trainer I know usually does two or three sessions in a row, so if you’re late, it affects your session.” McKenna recommends not only arriving on time, but arriving early and taking advantage of those extra hours. Time to warm up or go to the bathroom if needed.
Being prepared also means resting, hydrating, and refueling as much as possible. “I have clients come in at night and they haven’t eaten all day and they want to know why the elevator is closed,” McKenna said. “Then you see the other end of the spectrum, where customers come in, they drink six cups of coffee, and then they’re connected to the moon. Meet somewhere in the middle.
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For Equinox level 4 coach Nikita Fear, the key is to think of exercise as protected time. “Your whole day doesn’t necessarily revolve around exercise,” she says. “But what you do before and after will help prepare you for the future.”
2. But also know that you can be who you are.
That said, a good trainer should be able to meet your needs on any given day—whether you’re sleep-deprived, in pain, or distracted by personal matters.
“A personal trainer should have a plan A, B, C, D, E and F,” says McKenna. “Because depending on how the client is feeling that day, you may need to make changes. The information the client provides helps us figure out how to make adjustments if needed.
3. Please do not use mobile phones
Another pet peeve for McKenna: clients checking their phones during meetings. “When you don’t have that distraction, you can make the most of it,” he said, although he understands there are exceptions when it comes to contacting clients.
Also consider that “if you’re standing on your phone, it’s not going to be a good photo for other people in the gym.” In other words: try not to make your trainer look bad.
4. Your coach is curious for a reason
Meeting a personal trainer for the first time may feel more like an interview than a workout. They may have you fill out a questionnaire or ask you a number of questions about your health and lifestyle. Some of these questions may seem less relevant to your fitness goals—perhaps your trainer wants to know how many hours you sit at your desk each day or how much sleep you get.
While you don’t need to share anything you don’t feel comfortable talking about, know that your trainer is asking these questions for a reason. “I like to think of it as, ‘What does a day in your life look like?'” Fear said. “I ask a lot of questions, from lifestyle to orthopedic history to your goals. Sometimes people don’t think about that.
Fear adds that trainers are naturally curious. “Curiosity is key to client success and the key to our most effectiveness. So I would encourage them to develop that curiosity with their coaches.
5. The more specific your goals are, the better your trainer can help you
McKenna believes the best thing clients can do is to be very, very specific about their goals.
“If you come in and say, ‘I want to lose 10 pounds, I want to tone up,’ that’s the most generic answer you can give me — we can do anything,” he said. “If you say, ‘I want to do a pull-up,’ or ‘I want to run a 5K,’ that’s very specific and it gives us more direction. When you get there and hit it, you Know what works, whereas if you just do anything, you’re not really going anywhere, you’re just spinning in circles.
“The reason people come to us is to get an education, and a good trainer should educate the person so that after a while they know what to do without you.” —Daniel McKenna, CPT
6. It takes time to know the results
In a perfect world, after a few weeks of training, we would see a return on investment for our hard work with a personal trainer. But unfortunately, that’s not really how our bodies work, especially for those new to fitness, McKenna says.
“For any new client, it only takes about three months to educate them on the exercises we’re doing,” he said. It may take six months or even a year before you start to notice significant changes in your health. “I think one misconception is to have unrealistic expectations and it’s our responsibility as trainers to communicate how long this will take and that this is an investment.”
7. Your coaching price is non-negotiable
McKenna said it’s annoyingly common for new clients to try to negotiate pricing with a personal trainer.
“If you go to a lawyer and they give you a price, you say, ‘Are you willing to do this?'” he said. “No other profession has this problem, but for personal trainers, it happens 98% of the time. It’s a question of education — they may not see the value right away, but over time As time goes on, they’ll find it’s the best investment. You pay us now so you don’t have to pay doctor bills later; we’re working to empower you to deal with real-life situations.
8. Planning your meeting is more complicated than you think
One of the reasons personal training sessions cost so much: There are a ton of things your trainer needs to consider in order to make your session go smoothly.
In addition to understanding your body, abilities and goals, “we also have to be fully aware of how the client is feeling, all of their surroundings and the other people in the gym,” McKenna says. “You have to think about, if we’re doing this now and we want to use that bike but someone else is using it, how long do we have before we can use it, and if it’s not available, then what are we going to do instead? When There’s more to this than meets the eye as this man happily performs a few squats.
9. Your coach doesn’t know everything
Hopefully you are working with a personal trainer who is certified and an expert in their field. But unless they have additional qualifications, they are not a doctor, nutritionist or physiotherapist. Try not to ask them questions that are outside their area of expertise, and know that if they do think they are a know-it-all authority on health and wellness, that could be a bad sign.
“As a trainer, you’re always learning and improving,” McKenna said. “You have to have that humility.”
Fear agrees: “If I came to you and said, ‘This is the only way,’ I do think that’s a red flag,” she said. “Don’t hesitate to ask questions and don’t hesitate to challenge your coaches.”
Likewise, your trainer should not talk to you like you don’t know anything. “That’s the sign of a good personal trainer and a bad personal trainer—they don’t make people look stupid,” McKenna says. “The reason people come to us is to get an education, and a good trainer should educate the person so that after a while they know what to do without you.”
