I've touched briefly on a personal training experience in another post. He was great but way too expensive.

I would like to throw out this post explaining the amazing purpose of having a personal trainer and how to know if you have a good one! This is all opinion based.

BUT FIRST, MY BACKGROUND WITH PERSONAL TRAINERS

My background with personal trainers is not that big, in the last 4 years I've used 2 (free trial ones) and two that were paid for. I never thought I needed one. My first personal trainer, in 2014, was hired to help me lose some weight for my wedding. I was doing a boot camp class that I found out about through a friend and my friend and I started doing personal training with the instructor together (kept the price down) and it was awesome! Having that one on one advice and that extra push was great. This was right when I started bodybuilding too so having the extra guidance was helpful. That was when I learned the usefulness of personal trainers, but to also know that not everything they tell you is fully acccurate. Once I moved, the training sessions became too hard to make since they were around 30-45 minutes away. After that I didn’t have a personal trainer in the gym until beginning of 2017. At the time I had grown bored with my own routine and had gained more weight than I liked. He was knowledgeable and great motivation. I used him during my gyms Get Fit Challenge and won the gym.
Now I no longer use him due to scheduling conflicts (although I'd go back in a heartbeat if I could fit into his schedule). My work recently had a health fair that offered 3 free days and a personal training session. In this post I talk about that training session. I did not sign up for that gym and trainer due to the cost being too high but I found another gym in walking distance of work that offered what the other gym did and upon signing up I received 4 free personal training sessions!!!

Today was the first session and we focused on lower body. I LOVE learning new things from trainers (especially when it's free...). So below I'll share some items that i find important when looking to hire a trainer:

• Know your goals & make sure your trainer is qualified for them

I've heard too many stories of people and seen too many situations of people who have signed up with a trainer on the spot because they were available but had no background on what the trainee wanted to focus on. A lot of commercial gyms will do that, LA Fitness and Xsport being 2 examples in Illinois.

• Research the trainers at your gym

It's not just the trainers who need to figure out how to meet your goals, you're reliable too. There are two ways to do this. If you're a new member of a gym, like myself currently, ask for a consultation or a free trial training session. They really can't say No if they're a good gym looking to make money off you. If they say No it means their trainers are probably not great and just want your money. If you're a current member watch the trainers at your gym. I did sign up for a trainer at Xsport (gym mentioned above) because I had seen how he trained other people and knew it would fit my goals.

• Learn from them and, if needed, use them as an excuse to get to the gym

There are 2 types of people in this world. One type uses a trainer to build more knowledge in the gym and the second type uses the trainer to get themselves to the gym. It doesn't matter where you fall, but it's good to do both. I love going to the gym, so I fall into the first category, but it's okay to fall into both.

I hope this helps and gets you motivated to seek out a trainer or start thinking about it! Our health is important. It keeps us a live!