What makes a good personal trainer?

A good starting point is to ask for recommendations. It is very likely you know people who are or have used personal trainers in the past.

Being able to ask for recommendations, maybe from friends and family can help you gain honest opinions on a personal trainer’s skill and ability.

As with all recommendations, you need to take it with a pinch of salt. The person making the recommendation may have a different training style to you, different goals or may not even know what makes a decent PT. You need to think to yourself - can that person actually recommend a good personal trainer?

You also need to be careful asking online, say on Facebook, as the people making the recommendation could be biased and recommend their own friends or family with little knowledge of how good they actually are.

As everyone has different aims and objects when it comes to training, you need to make sure that a PTs style and programmes align with what you want to achieve.

If they’ve only ever trained bodybuilders and you’re looking for rehab, maybe they’re not the right fit for you.

However, if they’ve trained a variety of clients, they’ll have more bandwidth of experience to pull progressions and regressions from.

Having over 13 years’ worth of experience and worked with clients with bad backs and knee issues right up to action sport Red Bull athletes we have quite some experience and knowledge to develop bespoke training programmes our clients.

Before you go looking for a PT, you need to have a clear understanding of what you what to achieve from your fitness programme. Without knowing this, you will find it hard to choose the right PT to help you achieve your goals. Armed with this knowledge you can then ask a potential PT the right questions;

• Are they all weights or all kettlebells?
• Are they all strength training?
• Are they all weight loss?
• Are they a bit of everything?
• Do they offer one to one or team building programmes?

If the answers to these questions match what you want to achieve, then they may be a good option to consider.

As with all professionals, here are S3 Fitness we are constantly evolving and improving. When we first opened, we focussed mainly on TRX.  Through self-development and reflection, we came to the realisation that it’s the right piece of equipment for the right exercise for the individual client that is the make or break of any fitness program.

So, an important question to ask is – is the personal trainer adaptive to your needs?

If a PT pigeonholes you or all their training to one piece of kit or system that doesn’t quite fit your goals, it may be worth looking elsewhere.

The PT should ask you for feedback, if it’s their way or the highway and they’re not asking you how are you on the day, or what you think of the exercises then only getting their side of the story is not beneficial for you.

Without asking for feedback a personal trainer with not be able to adjust any and all exercises to suit their client’s needs.

A decent PT will always be checking form and asking how you are and what was the exercise like? If their status symbol is how sick you felt after a session or if you couldn’t sit on the toilet the next few days then it may be worth avoiding this training style.

What is the why? Everything you do in a personal training session should have a thought process and a reason behind it. If the PT can’t justify why they’re doing all the exercises, there needs to be a rethink.

This comes down to your own personal preference, are you data driven and like stats and figures or are you more relaxed in tracking progress and go with how you look and feel?

Whichever you prefer, a good personal trainer should always track your progress to enable them to change and adapt your programme to keep you healthy and safe whilst maximising results.

You should ask how they track your performance and achievements.

Is written down, is it made up on the fly, can you see a record of weights, exercise, sets or reps?

If your personal trainer covers all those bases, they’re pretty high up there on the decency scale.

The key takeaway from this article is, choosing the right personal trainer for your goals comes down to how well they fit to your needs. Can you see them pushing you and motivating you to get to the next level? Are their programmes and training styles likely to motivate you to train hard and consistently? 

If the answer is yes, you may well have found a good personal trainer for you.

If you’re looking for a personal trainer, we would be happy to help, we can offer sessions at S3 Fitness or if you’re not able to get to us we can deliver our training via our app and it’s all customisable to you.

We’re here to help you Move, Look, Feel and Play Better.