Do You Need a Personal Trainer? 4 Signs It May Help

Let’s face it: Personal trainers are expensive. By the time you’ve forked over money for a monthly gym membership, fresh workout attire, well-researched nutritional supplements, and the gas to get you to and from the gym, the idea of handing over $50 or more dollars an hour for the services of a personal trainer is enough to make you physically nauseous.  

Fortunately, even if you’ve never worked out  before, there is enough information in the public domain that you can probably piece together a half decent workout on your own. Sadly, in many cases, this simply won’t be enough to sustain your progress. So what are the telltale signs that you truly require the services of a personal trainer, at least temporarily?

You have problems with accountability

Despite having the best of intentions, and no matter how many promises or resolutions they’ve made over the years, some people simply have difficulty summoning the motivation required to visit the gym or to exercise when they know they should, regardless of the location they find themselves in.

If you fall into this category, it can be helpful to know that there is someone waiting for you at an appointed hour, standing by your gym’s front desk holding a stopwatch and a clipboard, who is going to be thoroughly peeved if you don’t stroll through the front door as scheduled.

Then again, you may fall into the category of people who have no issues walking through the gym’s entrance, but can never seem to buckle down and focus on making the most out of their training time. In this scenario, a trainer will not only assign your training tasks, but also minimize the time you spend scrolling on your phone when you should be grinding your way through sets of lunges.

You have difficulties replicating proper form

At the risk of sounding insulting, there is a subset of people who simply aren’t blessed with tremendous coordination. This can be owed to several factors, including a lack of muscle development during youth, abnormal limb length, multi-year stretches of time in between periods of serious training activity, and a host of others.

Regardless as to the specific reasons for your lack of physical and spatial mastery, if you fall into this category, you may have loads of trouble effectively replicating workout movements and methods that you see demonstrated in online videos, or in the training sessions taking place around you.

Fortunately, a knowledgeable personal trainer can walk you through the proper performance of each exercise, while providing instructions that will teach you how to engage and activate the muscle groups targeted by each movement. Your relationship with your personal trainer may only last for a few introductory sessions, but this can be an invaluable orientation process so that you can be assured that you are doing everything correctly.

You find it challenging to adapt and scale your workouts

If you’re still completing the same workout routine that your high school physical education teacher provided you with when you were 15 years old, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. However, if you find that your physique seems to have hit plateaus in areas where you would like to spur greater growth, it might be time to change things up.

If you schedule a session with a personal trainer and explain your goals and desired outcomes, they can help you craft a few workout routines, and chart a plan to progressively overload your muscles as they adapt to the resistance, and the plan becomes less challenging. 

Not only that, that trainer can also explain the physiological reasons why your habit of performing one high-repetition set to failure for each muscle group isn’t providing you with the result you want. They can also teach you how to mirror the person across the weight room from you who trains one muscle group each day with several intense, low-rep sets that hit the same muscles from a variety of angles.

You need assistance to squeeze every last ounce of effort out of your training

If you have a general plan to get more fit, you may not need the reassuring presence of a personal trainer near you every time you go to the gym, if at all. Still, you should know that many of the most elite bodybuilders in the world call upon the services of personal trainers multiple times per week so that there is someone present to constantly coax more out of them.

Your intended takeaway from this observation is that there is value in having a trainer around even if you’re a certified expert when it comes to exercise. Also, some goals can only be achieved with assistance from others. Even if you’re excellent at working out, you may need someone to spot you on the weight bench, to assist you with drop sets, or to call out time intervals while you sprint past them.

Sure, a training partner can assist you with some of these needs from time to time, but you can’t always count on the presence of unpaid help. In situations like these, where you need to achieve results rapidly, or you need the benefits of every competitive edge you can acquire, a personal trainer can be the difference between success and failure.

Money well spent?

In the end, deciding whether or not a personal trainer is worth the price you paid is probably going to be determined by your outcomes. When you look at it that way, your satisfaction may be at least somewhat dependent upon the quality of the trainer you select. 

Still, if the trainers around you are certified, seem to know what they’re talking about, and happen to possess physiques that you wouldn't mind owning yourself, they are probably well suited to answer your questions and guide you toward an improved understanding of fitness. 

Summary

1. Not everyone needs a personal trainer, but there are certain circumstances and conditions that might identify you as someone who does.

2. A personal trainer can be beneficial if you find it challenging to show up at the gym on time, or at all.

3. Personal trainers can help you ensure that you’re performing exercises with the proper form, and thereby maximizing your training outcomes.

4. If you need to upgrade or improve your workout by adding new exercises, a personal trainer can teach you those exercises and help you incorporate them.

5. A personal trainer can help you sustain the intensity of your workouts at a high level, which is why many elite bodybuilders still make use of trainers’ services.