Exercise is a key ingredient in a healthy lifestyle. Unfortunately, knowing the proper way to exercise for your age, ability, fitness goals, and injuries can be complicated. If you’re going about it alone, be prepared to weed through bad information in search of the answers. However, even if you’re fortunate enough to have the budget to hire a personal trainer, there’s still the problem of choosing between dozens, if not hundreds of personal trainers. How does one choose the right personal trainer for them? Simple: look for these 5 qualities of the best personal trainers.
1. They have education over Instagram hype
In the age of social media, anybody can pose as an expert and promote themselves as such. While researching, you need to make sure you can view their education background so you can be sure they’re qualified to take you through a workout program.
“Unfortunately, the fitness industry isn’t very well regulated and there is no governing body that forces trainers to have certain credentials. This can be very dangerous for the unsuspecting client. Unlike searching for attorneys or doctors that you know have the proper college degree and credentials, you may be working with a trainer that has an online certification they passed over the weekend. Ideally, you really want to look for a personal trainer that has a college degree in exercise in addition to a nationally recognized certification from organizations like the NSCA, ACE, ACSM, and NASM, just to name a few,” says Brian Maher, owner of Philly Personal Training, a private personal training gym in Philadelphia.
2. They adapt to each individual client
This scene is all too common in many gyms: a personal trainer taking a 73-year-old woman through the same workout packed with heavy lunges, squats, and deadlifts he or she just had for a 23 year old athlete. The best personal trainers don’t take the same workouts and apply them to every client. Instead, they adapt to each individual client’s fitness levels, age, goals, and more to create a completely customized program that will give that individual the results they’re looking for. Which leads us to our next quality of the best personal trainers.
3. They’re expert listeners
If your prospective personal trainer begins your first conversation by telling you about the great results you’ll get before asking you anything about you, be wary. The best personal trainers know how to listen to you as the client first. After all, how will a personal trainer know what they can help you with if they don’t even know what your goals are or what injuries you may be experiencing? There’s a great deal of information a trainer will need to know before coming up with any sort of workout programming. Being a great listener will come in handy once you’re a client as well. There will be workouts where something may feel off or you may feel more sore or more tired. A good personal trainer will take that information and adjust your workouts accordingly.
4. They’re great teachers
The best personal trainers aren’t trainers who simply show you exercise form. While hearing all the technical terms of human biomechanics and physiology can sound impressive to the average person, it means nothing if you don’t understand what it really means. The best trainers will teach you everything they know about an exercise and break it down into terms you can understand so you can take that information into the gym with you when you work out on your own.
5. They’re passionate about their job
“Not only are the best personal trainers great teachers, they also love to teach. Any trainer who is willing to teach you everything they know about exercise is a trainer who is truly passionate about what they do, and a passionate trainer is going to care so much more about your results than a trainer who isn’t passionate. When you have a trainer that really cares about you and your results, you have someone on your team who’s going to make sure you reach your goal,” Maher adds.
Where can you find personal trainers who possess all these qualities? The expert personal training staff at Philly Personal Training was created with all of these qualities and more in mind. At Philly Personal Training, you’ll be matched with an attentive, passionate expert in exercise science who will guide you to reach your desired fitness goals. Every personal trainer on staff has a 4-year college degree in exercise in addition to a nationally recognized personal training certification, so you can be sure you’re working with a real expert. If you’re looking for more proof, check out Philly Personal Training’s Yelp and Google business listings to read reviews on how Philly Personal Training has helped thousands of Philadelphia residents reach their goals. For more information on Philly Personal Training, check out their website at www.phillypersonaltraining.com.