What Is A Personal Trainer
For a long time I have searched for a better descriptive word or phrase for what I do other than ‘Personal Trainer’. When someone asks what I do and I tell them, “I have a personal training business”, the reactions and responses are almost like clockwork. Most of the time someone will respond with a self deprecating comment about how they need to get back in the gym and lose some weight. Other times they reply with a story about a personal trainer they had and, I hate to say, most of those stories are not about positive experiences.
Here’s the thing though: I totally get it. I started working for a company called Beachbody about 16 years ago. They make exercise videos for various types of workouts. The last time I checked, their most popular one was the P90X series, but the Insanity workouts were also quite popular. I even worked on their last installment, P90X3, and am in one of their videos. For the fitness world it was an interesting place to work. We all know about workout fads that come and go, and are interested in hearing about the “next big thing” in fitness. Working at Beachbody was interesting because they were the ones coming up with and then pushing the “next big thing”. It never hurts to be the guy selling soap when you’re telling people how important it is to wash your hands.
I suppose the appeal was having exercise videos where anyone could watch and workout with a “personal trainer”. They tell you what to do, for how long, and that you can’t stop until they say it’s over. They say things like, “no pain, no gain”, and “pain is just weakness leaving the body”. Nobody ever accused them of being wordsmiths.
Personal Trainer, 101
In the beginning of my career I was definitely a “personal trainer”. My job was to push you through a workout, make you sweat, possibly hate me, and then send you on your way, tired and sore. When you start working at a gym, that’s just what you do, they’re not really training you to be a better trainer, they’re training you to be a better sales person. It’s not about how good you are, it’s about how much training you can sell. And there are a lot of catchy phrases and slogans that can sound good if you frame them in the right way at the right moment in the conversation to make it seem like you really know what you’re talking about.
But here’s the thing. Like with any job, it takes time, dedication, and effort to increase your scope of knowledge and abilities and become better at what you do. But as I worked through the fitness world though, I found that this desire and effort to get better and learn more was typically the exception to the rule rather than the industry standard. And thus began my dissatisfaction with the broad, vague, and somewhat polarizing term, “personal trainer”.
What Do I Really Do
Like I said, for a long time I’ve tried to come up with a better term for what it is I do.
Exercise specialist. Pain resolution practitioner. Fitness coach. Human Movement Expert. Health Advisor. Therapist. I’m kidding about the last one, but also kinda not. A pretty decent amount of talk therapy goes on during any given training session. I think it just has to do with being a good listener, myself.
But none of these really give a better understanding of what I do, but I guess that’s also because an association is generally built into a word or phrase, and for better or worse, “personal trainer” was a recognizable term. Even if what it conjured up for most people wasn’t accurate at all for what I do. So you see my dilemma.
It turns out that just pushing someone through a workout so they feel tired and sore and “like they worked out”, generally isn’t a very good approach to exercise. I fully understand that for some people, that’s all they want, but that definitely should not be the job you hire a personal trainer for.
What Makes A Good Personal Trainer
The first thing I would say that makes a good personal trainer is someone who does not have a “one size fits all” approach. While there are certain fundamental exercises that pretty much everyone should be able to do, a good personal trainer understands that they have to figure out where each individual client is at, what their current capabilities are, where they are lacking or what limitations they have, and be able to build a program for that specific person with those things in mind. If you just push someone through a workout that they can’t handle, more than likely they’re just going to get hurt, and then they might not be able to workout at all.
Equally important is a trainer who knows what they are doing. I can’t stress this enough. There are a ton of catchy phrases and idioms and whatever else out there, but if your trainer is telling you something and it doesn’t make sense and they can’t explain it to you so it makes total sense, it is highly likely this is not a good trainer. The fundamentals of movement and exercise and lifting are all based in physics. This basically breaks down into your ability to move yourself (and probably a weight) through space while maintaining your balance, stability, and control. Understanding this and being able to explain to someone how to position themselves in relation to gravity for optimal leverage and control is fundamental. It’s math. There’s no secret to it.
A good trainer can explain pretty much everything in down to earth terms. They should be able to explain why the exercises they’re having you do are important for you, what affect it’s creating for your body and why that’s positive, and if you have a question and they don’t know the answer, they should openly tell you, “I don’t know”. And probably follow it up with, “I’ll read up on it”, or something to that effect. But no one knows everything. No one should expect someone to know everything. And no one should be dishonest about not knowing something.
Another key thing that I would say makes a really good personal trainer is one that is a problem solver. Everyone has different lifestyles, hobbies, jobs, and reasons for why their bodies move the way they do. This means that there are particular reasons for why you might have pain or discomfort where you do, or why certain exercises or movements are hard for you. And a good personal trainer should have the ability to assess all of those things in order to figure out what might be causing your problem. Sometimes it’s not an easy fix, or there are multiple factors converging to create an issue, therefore you want someone who is good at problem solving in order to come up with pragmatic and actionable solutions. As anyone with a body knows, aches and pains are just a given. And they are also often a huge barrier to being able to exercise or be active in general. One of my certifications is “Corrective Exercise Specialist”, and while this is a very helpful tool in addressing joint and muscle pain issues for clients, being able to recognize the intricacies of an individual’s lifestyle to find root causes for each problem is really where a good personal trainer is most effective.
Lastly, I would say a good personal trainer is one who educates you. While some people might like the accountability of having a personal trainer, or prefer to have someone program their workouts for them so they don’t have to, your trainer should still be teaching you about proper form, lifting mechanics, and effective program design for the day their client wants to spread their wings and fly. This really should be the main goal of every good personal trainer. Teaching you how to do it on your own.
There are certainly many other factors that make a personal trainer good. Being able to listen to your clients concerns, having empathy, and probably being enjoyable to be around are a few others. An hour can feel pretty long if you don’t like the company of the person you’re spending it with. But that’s also relative. You’re not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. But if being a good listener and having empathy is just you being yourself, that’s really what most people are looking for.
While I wasn’t able to come up with a better term to describe what I do, hopefully this post will give you some insight into what a good personal trainer should be able to do, and what you should be able to expect from your personal trainer. Feel free to ask a question or drop a comment!