Structure – A good Personal Trainer will create a highly structured program with goals and objectives. The trainer should have a good knowledge base to turn your goals into a step by step plan for achieving them. They will be able to determine how many days per week you should train, what exercises you should do, how hard you should be pushed, how long you need to recover, how much time should be spent on each area of the program, and how often you should be tested, measured, & assessed.

Safety – A good Personal Trainer should make your safety their highest priority. The trainer is an expert in exercise technique and should have the teaching skills to educate you on how to stimulate your musculoskeletal system in a safe and productive way. Experienced trainers have spent thousands of hours supervising clients and have keen instincts as to when a mistake is likely to happen so they can prevent any accidents or injuries from occurring.

Knowledge – Many people think they can create their own program based on following others social media posts, reading a magazine, book, or taking a friends advice. Magazines often give conflicting advice with each new issue they publish. Fitness magazines promote programs and services that are affiliated with the advertising sponsors of the magazine. They try to make ads for supplements and sponsored products look like legitimate research. Books can be helpful but a book cannot supervise you or answer your questions or deal with any unusual circumstances that may arise. Books tend to advise a “one size fits all” approach to training or nutrition which will only work for a small percentage of those who try it. Your friends may have good intentions but they are not professionally trained in sophisticated areas like: anatomy, physiology, exercise kinesiology, injury prevention, exercise psychology, or goal specific program design. Expert Personal Trainers have earned college degrees, obtained professional certifications, often have specialty designations for advanced training in specific areas, and years of field experience. They take many of the same courses that medical students take. They have seen clients with goals just like yours and have the expertise to create a program that will work.

Accountability – A Personal Trainer will usually expect a client to keep tracking tools like: a food log, exercise tracker, sleep tracker, etc… These tools allow the Personal Trainer to hold the client accountable for achieving success. A person who exercises on their own will rarely keep track of anything other than their bodyweight. Records and data on many variables are important for making decisions about how well the program is working or if changes need to be made to correct a program that is not achieving the desired result.

Motivation – Personal Trainers enter this career path because they really enjoy exercise and sharing their knowledge with others. The gym is a happy, upbeat place for them to express their personalities and share their passion for fitness with others. When a person tries to exercise alone they bear the full burden of getting themselves motivated to go into an environment that is often intimidating for them. They can feel isolated and unsure about what they are doing and if the time they are spending there is really worth the effort. A good Personal Trainer is like the ultimate training partner, gym buddy, motivator, and role model of health and fitness. It is very common for clients to feed off of the Personal Trainers energy to get them through the tough days when everything feels like a struggle.