Questions To Ask Before Hiring A Personal Trainer.

Questions to ask Before hiring A personal trainer:

1. Having a Consultation

First and foremost, before we get to questions you should be asking before hiring a personal trainer, it is important that you have a consultation before you jump straight into training!

Any legitimate certified personal trainer should be conducting a consultation prior to training in order to gain important, necessary, information about you before they start.

A consultation consists of things like: medical history (very important), past and current injuries, reasons for interest in hiring a personal trainer and more.

If they do not conduct a consultation, take caution!

2. Who are you certified with?

While there is no legal requirement for a personal trainer to be certified, it is highly encouraged. Doing so proves that a serious effort was put forth in becoming a personal trainer.

It requires time, dedication and passing a test that certifies they have at least some valuable relevant information about exercising.

When asking who they are certified with, here are some acronyms to listen for:

ACE (American Council on Exercise)

NASM (National Academy of Sports Medicine)

ISSA (International Sports Sciences Association)

NCSF (National Council on Strength and Fitness)

These are just are just a few, to mention, that are more widely known and accepted, the most important thing to note is if they are certified or not.

3. How long have you been training?

While it is better for your trainer to have more experience rather than less, everyone has to start somewhere. Although they may have recently just started personal training, personal experience can be equally as valuable.

Before I started personal training I had over 10 years of personal experience, averaging around 6 days per week. Not to mention the countless hours spent in constant desire to learn new techniques, watch videos of other professionals and experimenting and testing on my own.

10 years of personal or professional training likely shows that someone knows what they are talking about but it is definitely not required. We recommend though, that your personal trainer has at least 5 years of personal experience or 1 year of mentored professional experience alongside 2 or more years of personal experience.

4. What do you specialize in/what is your style of training?

During your consultation you will likely be asked what your goals are for training. This allows the trainer to understand your expectations.

Personal trainers also have to function as salesmen in order to receive business, however, this doesn’t mean they should accept all business.

Generally, the most common goals for exercising are to lose weight and build muscle. Any half decent trainer should easily be able to achieve this. But, how they go about it is a different story.

If, for example, you ask them their method of doing so they may reply by saying they focus on HIIT workouts with compound movements. If that is not something you are interested in doing, this is an easy way to see if your goals are aligned.

Personally, at Aesthetically Fit, for fat loss/muscle building we train conventional/bodybuilding style in order to achieve an aesthetically balanced looking physique. We do not do compound HIIT workouts. For instance, if a client asked was interested in powerlifting, inherently this is a conflict of our interests.

While some aspects of bodybuilding align with powerlifting, they are far more different than they are similar. One focuses on high reps/sets with lower weights while the other focuses on low reps/sets with high weights.

5. Create a lasting habit

In order to build successful habits with exercising, it is important that you enjoy whatever training style you choose. It is something we recommend doing for the rest of your life so it is important it is something you can stick with.

Not everything we try we enjoy, so if you don’t enjoy the style of training a personal trainer employs, try another one! They should take no offense that you don’t enjoy the same style of training and hopefully have a community of colleagues that they can point you in the right direction.

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!