5 BENEFITS TO PERSONAL TRAINING
Table of Contents:
- Personal trainers keep you motivated
- Committing to personal training holds you personally and financially accountable
- Experience takes valuable time, research and constant learning
- Not all of your previous experience training is good
- Personal trainers are mentors and the experience they share is life lasting knowledge
1. Personal trainers keep you motivated
If you are interested in personal training there must be a motivating factor at play, otherwise you would’t be considering it. One job of a personal trainer is to dig out what that reason is and chances are that you already know what that reason is.
That main motivating factor, however, may not be enough on its own for you to pursue your health and fitness journey alone. Personal trainers are responsible for learning about and implementing internal and external motivating factors.
Aside from physically cheering you on and encouraging you with positive reinforcement, an experienced and knowledgeable personal trainer has studied and knows how to apply both motivating factors in order for you to continue making progress towards your goals.
Internal motivating factors are usually more challenging to accomplish but have longer lasting results. These motivating factors come from within and require a deeper look to analyze the bigger picture of your goal. For example: you want to achieve a healthy bodyweight so you can live a longer and healthier life.
External motivating factors are usually easier to come by but are more fleeting. These factors come from outside and are not within your control. For example: you want to lose weight for an upcoming vacation so everyone can see how good you look.
In both instances you are achieving the same results but the motivating reasons behind them are much different. Once the vacation is over, you no longer have a need to maintain your weight loss and in turn will be much harder to stay motivated. However, if your goal is to lose weight for your future well being, it will always be a constant motivating factor as long as you are living.
2. Committing to personal training holds you personally and financially accountable
Motivation and accountability go hand in hand. As we discussed, motivation is a very important driving factor to be successful at achieving your goals, but what do you do when you have no obvious reason to be motivated? When motivation is nonexistent, accountability is a great way to force you to do something when you have no drive to otherwise do so.
It is said that if you pay for something you are more likely to take it seriously, and rightfully so, because you have something at stake. All of the information you could ever want for exercising is available for free online, so why then do people not utilize this free information?
When you make the conscious decision to pay for something, more than money is on the line. For most people, money is earned and it took a serious effort and amount of time to do so. So, when you purchase something you are not just trading a piece of paper for a service, you are trading all of those things it took to be able to pay for that good or service.
For most people that financial accountability then becomes a self constructed form of motivation. It no longer becomes a simple choice of whether you feel like working out or not, you can either decide to waste your money or suck it up and do what you set out to achieve.
Another important aspect of accountability is a sense of strong morals. When you commit to hiring a personal trainer you are making an agreement with yourself and someone else dedicated to helping you achieve your goals. It is now your obligation to hold up your end of the agreement and make the effort to show up and put in the work required, just like your trainer is for you.
3. Experience takes valuable time, research and constant learning
Having someone who knows exactly what they are talking about is an invaluable resource. They have already taken the time to learn about something, made mistakes through trial and error and achieved success while continuing to improve their craft.
As we mentioned above, time and money are intertwined and your time is valuable. While you may be perfectly capable of taking the time it takes and experiencing the setbacks required to learn, it is guaranteed that you will see results much faster having someone who does it for a living teach you.
You can be confident in knowing that, although it may require a serious investment on your end, it will be well worth it for the results you achieve and the time and effort you will save along the way.
4. Not all of your previous experience training is good
Often times experience is lumped together with credibility, however, if that experience is not quality experience it may as well be as good as inexperience.
Chances are you have probably heard someone say, “I know what I am talking about, I have done this for X amount of years.” but what if they were doing it wrong the whole time?
Gyms are unfortunately populated with this type of experience and it can be observed over a period of time. Even though you may see the same people day after day and year after year, their physique never really seems to improve.
There is a simple explanation for is, monkey see, monkey do. Not to discredit of anyone who engages in this type of behavior, but often times the monkey we see is doing it WRONG!
While visual learning is a valuable method to learn, it is only reserved for observing those that truly know what they are doing. Sure, those avid gym goers have all the intentions and dedication to achieve results, however, they ultimately end up just spinning their wheels and fail to make progress.
More importantly though, exercising is not something that is vey forgiving to being performed incorrectly. There are serious consequences to practicing bad form when exercising. Bad form can lead to injuries, which can at the very least, temporarily force you to take time off to heal and recover. At worst case, permanently prevent you from working out altogether.
5. Personal trainers are mentors and the experience they share is life lasting knowledge
In order to achieve your goals in the fastest way possible it is always advisable to find a mentor. A valuable mentor can not only cut down the time it takes to achieve your results, but may very well be the reason you succeed in the first place.
When most people come across obstacles and road blocks it may be hard to overcome and continue forward. Sometimes those obstacles are enough to stop us dead in our tracks and retreat back to where we came from. An obvious measure of this can be seen by the large percentages of businesses that start up, fail.
I will confidently venture to say it is impossible for anyone to have a successful health and fitness lifestyle without experiencing some kind of obstacle or setback. With so many variables in life: work, sickness, injury, mood, weather, family or friend matters… the list goes on, it is 100 percent conceivable that you too will face obstacles.
Not only have personal trainers experienced these for themselves, they also experience them with their clients. Their job is to keep you motivated and on track to achieve your goals, no matter what obstacles are thrown your way.
While you may still continue to see your personal trainer from time to time as a source of external motivation, once you have achieved your goals and acquired the necessary knowledge to do so, you no longer NEED your personal trainer. And while your personal trainer enjoys the financial benefit they receive from you, their ultimate goal should be your success and encourage you to continue on your own once you feel confident.
In return, if you feel your fitness mentor has guided you well, you should pay it forward and recommend as many people to hire them so they too can achieve the success you received from their guidance.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article!
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If you are located in Charleston, SC please check out my homepage for in person personal training. Or if you are located elsewhere I have pre designed workout programs available, design custom workouts for you or online personal training options available. Thanks! And feel free to comment below what your thoughts are on the above topics discussed!