If you are in the market for a trainer it’s important to find a high-quality trainer to help you achieve your goals. In the world of fitness influencers and fitness professionals, it’s important to be able to spot the difference between the two. It’s easy for someone to have success on their personal fitness journey and then share that with others thinking that they know what is best for everyone, but the reality of the situation is that what works for one person, may not work the same way for another person. There are also a lot of people on social media now who share their fitness journey more for accountability than anything else, but a lot of people will see someone sharing their fitness journey and their workouts and jump on to follow along. This is why I feel so strongly about educating people about what to look for to spot the highest-quality trainers in the industry.
Education
Education is, in my opinion, the biggest indicator of a quality trainer. In Canada, there are post-secondary options in the fitness field. You can pursue a diploma in Fitness & Health Promotion or a degree in Kinesiology or Human Kinetics. Personally, I’m always looking for trainers who have some form of post-secondary education in anatomy, physiology and biomechanics. The reality of weekend courses is that you can’t learn all of these things in a weekend. Those courses typically give you a very basic understanding, but it’s not enough to work with people who have all sorts of different needs. Pursuing post-secondary education and then taking these courses always looks better. When you are learning these concepts in shorter courses then you already have an understanding of these topics with your diploma or degree. When looking for trainers I would encourage you to ask your trainers where their education is or what their qualifications are. Those of us in the industry who have post-secondary education in addition to our certifications will have no problem talking to you about our certifications. There are also some certifications (CSEP or NSCA) that you can’t challenge unless you have post-secondary education which can make these certifications an easy spot if your trainers are certified through one of these organizations. If you encounter a trainer who doesn’t have any sort of certification I would encourage you to reconsider working with them. Ask the questions, it’s important for you to get the most out of your training programs and your trainer.
Client Specific Programming
This is one of the hallmarks of influencer versus fitness professional. Typically with fitness influencers you have them prescribing fitness programs that worked for them and they usually mimic the training style of the trainer. While there is nothing wrong with training people in similar ways to how you train, if it’s not appropriate for them, why bother. Fitness professionals understand what works and what doesn’t with regards to different training styles, so regardless of how they train themselves they can be match their programming to what their clients actually need. If you are a Crossfit athlete for example, and a beginner walks in the door with no resistance training experience you should not be throwing them immediately into cleans or snatches. If this is their goal, then you will want to start with the basic concepts and work from there. The idea behind personal training is to keep programming client specific but without adequate education and understanding most people default to what they know which is typically their personal training style.
Collaborative Approach
Trainers who take a collaborative approach with their clients are typically higher educated coaches. Just because a program is perfect on paper doesn’t mean that it’s perfect for your client or that your client is going to do it. It’s important to include things that your client enjoys in their program. Whether that is including specific exercises or styles of training. I’m not saying that you’re client has to enjoy every single exercise or every single workout, but if they enjoy the majority of them then they are much more likely to continue with the exercise. Ideally we want to avoid telling clients exactly what they need to do in order to meet their goals and instead act as a guide towards that, while allowing clients to have input as well. This is called the collaborative approach and it is typically the best way to achieve consistency with clients.
Holistic Approach
Educated trainers also realize that fitness goals are not just about what you are doing in the gym. Of course most trainers understand that exercise and nutrition go hand-in-hand, but there’s more to it than that. Great coaches will also focus on aspects of sleep and stress management incorporating things like mindfulness, self-care and more. We see the best results overall when all of these things work together. You can be training well and eating healthy, but if your only sleeping 3 hours a night, you are not going to be seeing the benefits in the same way as if you were getting 7-9 hours of quality sleep. All areas of our clients lives need to work together for the best results. This doesn’t mean that you can’t still get results if not everything is perfect, but it gives us an opportunity to educate our clients on this instead of just pointing out that they aren’t getting the results.
It’s important to look for a coach that makes the most sense for you. Having high-quality education and holistic approaches to training are important components of great trainers, but you also have to ensure that what they teach works for you. Most great coaches don’t pretend to be experts at everything. This doesn’t mean that we can’t work with you and learn, but it’s hard to be an expert in everything related to the fitness and health world because there is so much to know. Be wary of coaches who don’t seem to have a niche and notice the approach they take. If it’s not working for you, make changes. A great coach understands that they may not be the trainer for every client and that’s okay.
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