Whether you're just starting out or an experienced gym-goer looking for incremental gains. A Personal Trainer can unlock a world of knowledge, experience and support, helping you reach your full potential.
In this article, we break down 3 reasons why you should consider investing in a Personal Trainer:
- Consistency
- Managing Goals and Progress
- Support Away From The Gym
We’ll show you why you probably won’t get the same results on your own. And how tapping in to the mind of an experienced PT can set you up for a lifetime of fitness and health.
Consistency
Consistency is the most important part of your fitness journey. Think of consistency as the foundation for your new house. Just as a bad foundation leads to problems with your house, being inconsistent with your training will lead to poor results.
Fitness is built on a foundation of consistency and to do that, we need to focus on 3 things:
Enjoyment is a piece of the consistency puzzle many people ignore, or fail to realise is possible. And it’s a great way to spot the difference between a good trainer and a bad one. An inexperienced PT will give you exercises they think is best, with no regard for whether you enjoy it or not. When you say “I hate running” they’ll put you on a treadmill to “work on your weakness”. Nonsense.
A good PT will understand what exercises you enjoy more than others. They'll build your plans around them. If you hate running, but need to get your heart rate up - a good trainer will get you rowing, cycling, rucking or swimming.
We want you to enjoy the gym. We want exercise to become a habit, not a chore. With or without a trainer. Helping you find enjoyment in the process is crucial to your consistency. A good trainer will help you find it.
Accountability is showing up. Even when you don’t feel like it. Especially when you don’t feel like it. And while in a perfect world, you would have the willpower to be accountable to yourself, this is rarely the case. Willpower is overrated. We need to force ourselves to be accountable, until it becomes a habit.
Hiring a Personal Trainer forces that accountability. How? Because if you don’t show up, you’re letting someone else down. And if that’s not enough, you’ll lose money. Not losing money is a great motivator.
Don’t think of it as paying for a service. Instead, think of it as paying to become more accountable to your future self.
Not Getting Hurt is, obviously, crucial to being consistent in the gym. Gym injuries can be anything from pulling a muscle to getting crushed under a bar. For your fitness journey to be consistent, you must avoid getting injured.
A 2015 study found more than a third of gym injuries came from “overexertion / strenuous / unnatural movements”. In other words - pushing beyond your limits and poor “form”.
"Form" is gym-speak for your technique on a given exercise. Like how to correctly, and safely, perform a squat movement, or a dead-lift.
A Personal Trainer will teach you correct form and help you find your limits. They maximise the benefit of each exercise while reducing the chance of you getting hurt.
When it comes to consistency, willpower and motivation are overrated. You need a system. Personal Training provides that system. It makes training enjoyable, forces you to be accountable and prevents injuries.
Goals And Progress
When it comes to getting fit, Goal setting and Managing Progress is essential. Many beginners believe results come from more repetitions (reps) of the same exercise. That’s not true. Variety is crucial - as is the timing of variety. To get the most out of the gym, you need to train smart, with a focus on short-term milestones.
Where a good PT shines is in their approach to setting your goals. Rather than arbitrary goals like “I want to lose weight”, your goals should be targeted, and broken down across a shorter time-frames.
It’s ok to want to lose weight, but what does that actually mean? Do you want to Burn Fat? Get Stronger? Improve flexibility? Get Faster? Change your Body Composition? They all involve “losing weight”, but require a completely different approach to exercise.
A good PT will help you figure out what’s most important over the long term, then create short-term goals to get you there.
Just as important, is varying your workout routine at the right time.
There will be times (especially if training alone) when your progress will slow down, or even stop. You can go from losing 1kg a week in the beginning, to nothing over a month. Or adding 5-10% to your lifts each week, to not being able to progress at all.
You’ve plateaued.
And plateauing isn’t bad, if you know how to deal with it. But if you don’t, it can be immensely frustrating and demotivating.
A good trainer can get you around plateaus, usually before they happen. By adjusting your workouts every 6 to 8 weeks (or so), an experienced trainer will keep you progressing. They may introduce new exercises for a specific muscle group, or adjust your reps and sets. Completely tailored to you and your goals. Personal Training.
The amount of exercise knowledge and experience a Trainer builds over time is a gold mine. Being exposed to it has the potential to change your life.
Life Outside The Gym
There's a generally accepted rule in the fitness world that says “weight loss is 75% diet and 25% exercise”. Meaning, when it comes to losing weight - you can’t out-train a bad diet. What you eat matters. A lot.
But that does not mean you should ignore exercise and just focus on your diet. Why? Because “losing weight” should not be the goal.
Losing weight through dieting alone will take that weight from fat and muscle. Losing body fat is good. Losing muscle mass is not. Especially as we age.
It’s estimated that after the age of 30, we naturally lose up to 1% of our muscle-mass each year. Now fast forward to when you’re older. Getting out of a chair. Carrying your groceries. Playing with your grandchildren. It’s muscle that allows your body to do those things safely, and confidently. To be more stable. To feel less pain. Regular exercise, at any age, is how we build and preserve that muscle.
And so the goal, at least for most people who want to “lose weight”, is actually to burn fat, whilst building muscle.
The problem we have, however, is contending with the minefield of health and diet advice in the world. It’s like drinking from a firehose. Conflicting advice. Friends telling you you’re doing it wrong. Choosing the right meal on a menu, without feeling social pressure. Following the loudest people on instagram, even when they’re usually the wrongest people on Instagram. Should I fast? Will women get too bulky if they life weights?
It never ends…
A dedicated and experienced Personal Trainer is your sounding board. Your way of having questions answered and confusion resolved. They’ll help you prioritise the most important things. Like getting better sleep. Eating more protein. Cutting out foods you thought were healthy (bye bye Sushi).
With a PT, anything confusing you today, can be resolved tomorrow.
Rounding It Out
Think of Personal Training not as an “expense”, but as an investment. A night out is an expense. A new outfit is an expense. Let’s not put a price on our health.
Personal Training is an investment in to your future self. In to the person you want to become. The best version of you. Its like investing in education, or learning new skills to improve your career. These types of personal investments propel your life in new directions, inspiring others around you. Are you a source of inspiration to your friends? Your parents? Your children?
VIVO PT can show you how.