After blood, sweat, tears and much deliberation, you have finally decided that despite your best efforts, you’re not really seeing the results that you’d like from your efforts training solo in the gym. So, you are going to bite the bullet and hire a new personal trainer – congratulations on your awesome decision! A personal trainer can help you to achieve your health and fitness goals in a fun and enjoyable way, providing expertise, motivation, support and guidance, whilst maximising your time spent training, preventing injury from happening and also helping you to see more consistent results. Before you begin personal training, here are three things to consider:
Making your own health, fitness, training, and well-being a top priority
So, you have made your selection and hired an awesomely fab personal trainer with the correct credentials – they have the qualifications, insurance, experience, and personality to suit you. Are you now willing to make your own health, fitness, training, and well-being a priority? If you can’t make this commitment to yourself and agree to it on a permanent basis, are you at least willing to do so for a set amount of time in the short-term, so that you can start seeing the results that you’re after? I’ve seen this countless times in people who start personal training with me and also those who make it along for a consultation – they/their health come way down their list of priorities behind work and family, and often hobbies and interests too. From experience I can say that it’s very difficult to get results if you’re not committed to making yourself and your training a priority and if you keep cancelling and letting other things get in the way of your training sessions. For top results, make yourself and your training a priority.
Being open and willing to follow the advice that you are paying for
Another thing to ask yourself before embarking on a new personal training regime is, ‘Are you willing to follow the advice that your trainer offers you so that you can achieve the goals that you’ve set together?’ It’s a good thing to consider isn’t it, paying for advice and then not following it will not likely lead you to where you want to go in the time-frame you’d like if at all. It is also a good attitude to question and try things on to see if they work for you and discarding that which does not. For best results, try to be open to following the advice that you are paying for.
Making diet and lifestyle adjustments
Any personal trainer worth their salt is going to probably want to have a discussion with you about your diet and lifestyle, because these are two key factors in any training programme. Let us say that you are seeing your personal trainer twice a week for 1 hour each session. That’s two hours of awesome and incredible motivation, guidance and instruction that should start having a very positive effect on you, in a fairly short amount of time, but what are you doing in the other 166 hours that make up a week? Are you doing two great training sessions and then eating and drinking far too much of the wrong foods whilst being sedentary for the rest of the week? Are you partying hard and eating out in restaurants lots on the weekends? Do you eat too many sugary snacks that you forget to put down on your food diary? You cannot realistically expect 2 hours with a trainer to un-do all these bad lifestyle habits and yet people do. They wonder why when they are training, they are not getting the results that they are after. Please consider making diet and lifestyle changes that will support and compliment your training efforts and not hider you if you decide to start personal training. You will be awfully glad you did when you are moving oh so well and walking around in the fit, strong, healthy, and flexible body of your dreams.
Claire Smith is a personal trainer in Muswell Hill, London. For this and all other personal training enquiries in Muswell Hill and surrounding areas, please contact Claire at info@clairesmithwellness.com