How to Choose the Right Personal Trainer (5 Key Tips)

Given the amount of money that many people invest in their hair, nails, and other physical features, it makes sense that a lot of folks have no qualms about consistently investing money in their overall physiques. One of the most frequent forms of that investment comes through soliciting personal trainers to guide them along the path to improved health with valuable fitness and nutrition advice.

With that being said, shopping for the right personal trainer is far different from locating the right hair stylist, inasmuch as you’re also entrusting a trainer to provide you with valuable information and motivation. This is important, because you’re expected to continue to make improvements on your own time when you’re no longer under your trainer’s watchful eye, and directly receiving their instruction.

In essence, what you need to know is whether or not your trainer has the means to get you where you need to go, or if they’re going to leave you feeling like you’ve been cheated out of your time, your money, and the trust you misplaced in another human being.

With this in mind, here are five things you can do to ensure that you’re hiring the right personal trainer.

1. Identity your goal ahead of time

Some fitness goals are much easier to accomplish than others, and the simpler your health goal is, the easier it becomes to find a personal trainer that can steer you along the path to success.

For example, if you’re a stone-cold rookie in the weight room, and your goal is to lose 10 pounds while learning the fundamentals of resistance training, the majority of personal trainers can provide you with enough information and hands-on instruction to help you make significant strides toward accomplishing these goals in two months or less.  

On the other hand, your goal might be more ambitious, and along the lines of wanting to rapidly reconfigure your body and learn the intricacies of competitive weightlifting because you’ve been watching Olympic highlight videos. 

Since you wish to get in shape and train like a classic power athlete, you should be looking for a personal trainer with years of experience with highly technical barbell lifts. This is a case where if you identify your specific goals ahead of time, it will help you identify a trainer who can realistically assist you in achieving them.

2. Ask for certifications and references related to your goals

In certain gyms, it is 100 percent possible for a fit individual to walk in off the street, throw on a polo shirt, grab a clipboard, and start soliciting gym members for personal training sessions. This isn’t to suggest that those uncertified trainers can’t effectively train clients; some of the most knowledgeable and helpful people in many gyms frequently lack any certifications at all. 

To see if a trainer can help you, at a minimum, it would be a good idea to talk with a few of their clients about the strides they’ve made while working with their trainers. However, if you’re looking for a reasonable tiebreaker when deciding between personal trainers who appear to be of equivalent fitness levels and competencies, ask them what certifications they possess.

Whether the trainer is certified by one of the established certifying bodies within the training ecosystem, or by other organizations that can confirm that the trainer has demonstrated a certain standard of knowledge, all of this can help you to have greater confidence in the trainer you select. At least that way, you know that the advice and actions of your trainer have been backed by some sort of scientific consensus rather than simply being anecdotally based.

3. Determine if this is a short-term partnership or a long-term relationship

There is a steep social price to be paid for picking the wrong personal trainer and having a falling out with them. While there are situations where this can’t be avoided, sometimes it can be sidestepped if you have a few conversations with the trainer before you fork over the money for training sessions.

Sometimes, despite everyone’s best intentions, personalities simply don’t gel. If your health goal requires a long-term solution that needs to be administered under the tutelage of a personal trainer, it would behoove you to select one that you’re likely to get along with. This is why it can be vital to have a few conversations with your potential personal trainer ahead of time to gauge the likelihood for a synergistic relationship between the two of you.

The last thing you want to do is experience an awkward professional breakup with a personal trainer that is going to result in you having to leave your beloved, convenient gym in favor of another one several miles out of your way. That’s a steep price to pay for a voluntary partnership that has gone awry, so test the potential for that sort of falling out with a few preemptive discussions.

4. See how seriously the trainer takes their career

There are personal trainers who are world-class bodybuilders, fitness models, strength coaches, accomplished weekend warriors, and pure fitness enthusiasts. On the other hand, there are also personal trainers who are clearly using their training activities to make ends meet until something in their preferred career field becomes available to them, or because they’re full-time job in another field isn’t paying the bills.

With this being the reality of the training world, some of your research into finding a personal trainer should include a discussion of whether or not that trainer takes their training career seriously. Do they at least take their career as seriously as you intend to take your fitness quest? 

It can be very deflating to arrive at the gym feeling motivated for a rigorous training session only to have it abruptly canceled because your trainer is off on a job interview, an acting audition, or had to put in additional hours at their primary job.

If your goals can be achieved relatively quickly, or you don’t require long-term training services, then this may not be a major issue. However, if you desire consistency and commitment, you may not wish to enlist the aid of a trainer who views their interactions with you as either a side-gig, or as a short-term alternative to a better career option.

5. Watch them in action

Credential checks and preemptive interviews are helpful, but if you really want to see how your would-be personal trainer is likely to treat you, it’s a good idea to personally watch them in action. If you actually view their interactions with clients, you can project yourself into the same situations and decide whether or not you’d be comfortable with them. 

In addition to judging their training acumen, you should monitor other common actions of the trainer that are likely to influence your comfort level with them. Is the trainer too hands-on with clients? Is the trainer not hands-on enough? Will the trainer jump in and adequately demonstrate the exercises that they would like their clients to replicate, or do they take a passive approach?

These are important trainer tendencies to be cognizant of, but it is equally critical to monitor the trainer’s level of attentiveness to their clients. Are they remaining locked-in and engaged, and responding to the client throughout the training session, or are they stepping outside of their client’s line of sight and checking text messages on their phone? You might interpret these actions to mean that you were receiving a sub-par training experience, and that you were probably not getting your money’s worth. 

Remember, You’re the Boss

Having a personal trainer means that you temporarily surrender a portion of your control over your fitness routine to someone who is supposed to know better. While it may be true that nearly every personal trainer is more knowledgeable about fitness than you are, this alone is not enough to guarantee happy, healthy interactions with your personal trainer. 

If the most knowledgeable personal trainer in the world is unpleasant to be around, you’ll probably be very unmotivated to visit the gym. In this situation, you’d almost certainly be better off in the care of a less knowledgeable trainer whose presence encourages you to do the work you need to do. 

As always, the best workout is almost always the most effective workout that you’re actually willing to do consistently, and if the thought of meeting with your personal trainer doesn’t sustain your desires to become fitter and healthier, there’s a good chance that you should find a different trainer. 

Article Summary

1. Identify your goal and see if your trainer can help you achieve it.

2. See if your trainer has certifications that align with your goals.

3. Talk with your personal trainer to gauge if you can enjoy spending time with them.

4. Identify if the trainer has career ambitions that might compromise their service quality.

5. Watch the trainer in action and judge whether or not their actions might make you uncomfortable.