Choosing the right personal trainer is an important decision. Recent statistics indicate that time-crunched individuals are increasingly willing to allocate more financial resources to enlist a certified personal trainer to improve their health, fitness and overall well being.

Though no one is perfect, a personal trainer should be the shining example of a version of what you desire to achieve yourself through pursuing a fitness-oriented lifestyle. To help find the best match when choosing a trainer, I’ve laid out 5 Things to carefully look for before making your decision:

1. They Look Like A Personal Trainer

You wouldn’t get your haircut from an unkempt person with a bad haircut themselves would you? Though this seems like a no-brainer, it’s an incredibly common sight within gyms and training facilities today: people being trained by people who appear visibly out of shape themselves. I’m not suggesting that a trainer need be excessively muscular and lean, but typically a person who is highly active and regularly maintains an exemplary diet often looks athletic to the eye. A personal trainer should no doubt look the part. Personal trainers fail to look like personal trainers for a variety of reasons, but the most common ones are:

a) they don’t set aside enough time for their own personal fitness. Ask yourself: If a trainer cannot manage to incorporate their own personal fitness into a busy schedule, how can they show you how to effectively do it? and…

b) simply put, they don’t eat properly. A trainer can rack up an impressive stack of training certifications, but if they can’t hold themselves accountable to methodically eating healthy, how can they expect you to do so? Given that diet is a MAJOR factor in creating positive physical change you seek, a personal trainer must lead by example by eating great his or herself.

Step one is finding someone who walks the walk and appears to practice what they preach by wearing athleticism and dietary adherence on their skin every day.

 

2. They’ve Built A Career Through Personal Training

Learning how to drive a car before getting on the road is important, but the ones who have been driving a car for years have likely learned how to do it better through having spent more valuable time behind the wheel. The same thing goes for personal training; years of practical, hands-on work typically makes for a more qualified coach and the best one to get you to those goals faster (and more safely). Through developing a time-proven ‘system of doing things’, veterans of the PT game have a history of creating successful change in past clientele. They can draw from a vast mental Rolodex of experiences to successfully apply the best concepts and techniques towards new clients to overcome potential obstacles.

Today, the fitness industry is also awash with trainers that are multitasking as a side hustle. A part-time personal trainer is typically in it simply for some some extra scratch, and is generally only as partially focused as the ones who have parlayed their passion into a full-time, around-the-clock career. Chances are, an experienced personal trainer has previously worked with clientele who have had similar needs and goals to your own. When choosing a personal trainer, it’s best to track down an experienced one who’s built a solid reputation and a system for creating positive change as a full-time passion, instead of someone doing it on the side or just moonlighting between jobs.

 

3. They’re Strong At Coaching

Some college and university professors are brilliant at their field of study, but are ineffectual at properly teaching and conveying the content to the students. Similarly, there’s plenty of personal trainers who are super active and appear to be in top physical shape, but cannot effectively teach and ‘get inside the head’ of the ones whom they train. Empathy is the power to understand perspectives other than your own – and is an essential teaching skill for a personal trainer to effectively connect with, motivate and transform a client physically and mentally.

After achieving a level of superior physical fitness themselves, many inexperienced or misguided trainers automatically expect that all of their clients should be capable of doing the same, which is dead wrong. Your needs are not cookie-cutter to all the others. Look for a trainer that will personalize and curtail a program specific to your needs and goals and can better understand where you’re coming from. Training should be challenging, but also fun, for a good trainer needn’t be a bloodthirsty, screaming drill sergeant – which brings me to Thing To Look For #4….

 

4. They Go Beyond Just Training

Though any trainer with a certification can routinely administer a challenging, sweat-soaked workout, not all of them will provide a complete set of tools to improve your lifestyle when you step outside the gym. Weight loss and muscle gain occur more so during the time spent before and after the gym, primarily ‘at the dinner table’ or while asleep. Getting fit and healthy requires that the other integral 66% of the equation – nutrition and rest – are being carefully adhered to when not training. A good trainer will provide an in-depth around-the-clock blueprint to keep a client constantly improving through properly structuring their complete fitness lifestyle.

Unfortunately, many trainers view their job as merely a ‘pay-per hour’ position that doesn’t go much beyond simply providing a decent hour-long workout. Truth is, it’s much more than that. A good trainer is on call before and after a workout to keep you constantly heading in the right direction towards your optimal health. Though you may see a trainer for on average 3 hours in a given week, its actually the remaining 165 hours that matter the most when he or she is not training you. For faster results, enlist a trainer that sees his or her job as more being of a fitness lifestyle manager than merely a drill sergeant.

 

5. They Specialize in Something

A lot of misguided trainers will often take a new training certification course and then all of a sudden have each of their clients doing nothing but swinging kettlebells for the duration of an hour. The beauty of fitness is that there is an ever-expanding wealth of training methods to draw from. There are new ones popping up literally every month. Problem is, many trainers tend to get lost in jumping on board the latest fitness trends when really it’s many of the the age-old ‘tried and tested’ exercises that are shown to provide the greatest benefit, especially when it’s the basics that the average client needs most as a foundation to their training first.

Sometimes it takes a while for a trainer to really carve out a special niche. Some never manage to at all. When enlisting a trainer, avoid a ‘jack of all trades and master of none’ approach and instead opt for one that has developed a form of reputation and has become ‘known’ for something, be it weight loss, building muscle, injury rehabilitation, sport-specific training or maybe readying a client for a marathon. Get yourself that trainer that specializes in what you’re setting out to accomplish most.

 

The Final Rep

A good personal trainer should have the ability to structure and manage the fitness lifestyles of their clients while effectively managing their own. Though a good trainer should certainly look the part, they should also have a successful system of coaching to take you to your best in the shortest time period and in the safest way possible – all while remembering to make your fitness fun too.