running with a personal trainerSo you finally decided to take the plunge and hire a personal trainer…we’re glad you took our advice! While you can’t go wrong with a personal trainer, there’s a few details you need to understand before you start your consultation and regular sessions with them. While this blog shouldn’t scare you, it should however, prepare you to take on each meeting with your personal trainer with an open mindset and an optimistic outlook.

They’re Going To Ask A LOT Of Questions: The first session you have with your personal trainer will be the most informative session, for the both of you. In order for your trainer to customize your personal plan, they need to know everything in terms of health goals, fitness goals, and health and exercise history. Remember they want to personalize your workout and get to know who the person is they are helping. Throughout your sessions, they’re still going to ask you things such as how you’re feeling, how the workouts are going, if the meal plans are easy to follow along, and so on. Be sure to give them honest answers so they can tweak where necessary.

A Fitness Test: This should happen after they get to know you. This fitness test allows the trainer to see where you currently are in your fitness journey so they can give you a plan that accommodates your current situation before they build to the hard stuff. The test will help both you and your trainer to come up with short term and long term fitness goals that are realistic and reachable.

They Can Be Intimidating: Everyone is an expert at what they are good at, and that doesn’t exclude personal trainers. Don’t be offended when they keep telling you your form is wrong when you perform weight training sets. The only reason they do this is to help you prevent injuries from happening. You won’t have a personal trainer forever, so you need to know proper form for when you’re in the gym by yourself.

They Will Push You Until You Get Better: Don’t think this is going to be a walk in the park. The purpose of a personal trainer is to help you get better, quicker, faster, and stronger. And that’s exactly what they’re going to do. When you work out by yourself, you may run as hard as you can for a little while, but you’ll eventually reduce that speed right when it gets hard, telling yourself, “I can’t do that.” A trainer will stand in front of the treadmill encouraging you to run that last three tenths of a mile as fast as you did the first 1.7 miles. They will scream and shout as you come up from your squat position with an explosion. They will do this because they know running two miles at eight miles an hour or squatting 150 pounds is exactly what you want, so they make sure it happens. You’ll get tired, you’ll get sore, you’ll probably get annoyed with your trainer, but you’ll realize you can achieve all of your goals and beat your personal records all because you worked hard. And you can thank your trainer for that.

Their Plan Goes Further Than The Gym: It’s 30% gym, and 70% diet, and your trainer is going to tell you roughly the same thing. Along with your workout plan, they should put you on a meal plan or give you some ideas of what you should eat in order to maximize results. In the beginning of this program, they will take your height, weight, and body composition and go from there on your macros: proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. This is a good learning experience for you because you can understand the importance of hitting your macros and how to sustain a healthy life, for the rest of your life.

Balance Fitness has their eyes on the prize when it comes to a healthy lifestyle, and we’re here to help you out in any way to achieve your goals. Give us a call at (650) 348-1259 for our San Mateo location, (408) 244-3010 for our Santa Clara location, or contact us online today with any questions about gym equipment, consulting, or just to say hey!