Hiring a personal trainer to help with your fitness regime used to be the preserve of the rich and famous but it’s increasingly becoming a more affordable way of motivating yourself into action.
Where Do You Find a Good Personal Trainer?
It’s a cliché but the absolute best way to get a good personal trainer is through word of mouth. Personal trainers are a bit like dentists in that the best ones are also oversubscribed, but if you know of someone who ‘s been seeing one and getting good results, he or she will usually only be too pleased to recommend them to you.
If you’re a member of a gym and need a bit of oomph to carry you through a lull in motivation, some clubs and gyms have their own staff available to hire as personal trainers, although it isn’t usually free. Gym staff are usually quite good at setting you goals and helping you with a workout but you won’t get the one to one personal attention that you get from a designated personal trainer if you use the freebie option.
Some fitness staff in gyms also have freelance personal training businesses on the side, which is a good thing for the gyms they belong to as usually they encourage their freelance fitness clients to use the facilities at the gym they work for anyway. It’s a good bet to use someone affiliated to a gym as you’ll know they have all of the appropriate training.
How Much Will a Personal Trainer Cost?
You can expect to pay around £25 an hour for any half decent personal trainer. It sounds like a lot, but they will give you one to one attention, tailor make a workout to your own personal preferences, and keep you motivated.
The benefit of having someone there to support you is that you feel like you’re letting them down if you don’t bother, and cancelling at the last minute isn’t acceptable. You could ask a friend to motivate you, but let’s be honest, you can just end up encouraging each other to skive off and go for a coffee instead. It’s in the personal trainer’s best interest to give you a fun, challenging workout and inspire you with good results.
What Will a Personal trainer do For Me?
Whatever you ask! Some personal trainers work just in the gym environment, some have equipment and will travel to your home for a home based workout. Others like to inspire clients with outdoor, fun workouts as well as mixing it up with indoor pursuits. You have to talk to the personal trainer that you hire and tell them what you enjoy, what your fitness goals are and what you hate doing.
A decent trainer will carry out a thorough assessment before setting any kind of fitness programme for you, to find out what you are capable of, your current fitness levels, strengths and weaknesses. This also sets a benchmark, a starting point for your regime that will inspire you when you look back and see how much you’ve improved over the course of the sessions.
What Qualifications Should I Look For?
There are several different personal training qualifications. YMCA qualifications are popular, and essentially, all fitness qualifications should conform at the very least the NVQ standard. If you hire a personal trainer who also works in a gym, you can expect them to be appropriately qualified, but you should still ask to see copies of their qualifications when you’re thinking about hiring a personal trainer, and don’t be afraid to ask and about how old the qualifications are or which body awarded them. Most personal trainers are proud of their qualifications and also like to keep up with the latest in fitness so that they can offer more to clients.
Personal trainers also need to be trained in CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) or hold a first aid certificate – and make sure that anyone you work with also has professional insurance that covers them for Civil Liability and Professional Indemnity. Hiring a personal trainer can be very rewarding and a fun, inspiring way to get fit. Just make sure that you don’t cut corners with the essentials such as training and insurance, and have fun!
