PERSONAL TRAINERS ARE FOR EVERYBODY
by David Gilks
In the professional sporting world, even the best of the best still have full time coaches. In other areas of life as well, such as business and personal development, the most successful people realize that expert coaching can make the difference between mere competence and mastery. Isn't it unusual that we can see the purpose of a coach in other aspects of our life but not necessarily in our fitness endeavours?
Although personal trainers are not seen as traditional coaches, in reality they are just that. How do you think every great athlete developed his or her skills? How do they continue to improve year in and year out? Most successful people have a mentor or coach to assist them in reaching their full potential, somebody that has already walked that very road of success. I'm not saying that you need a personal trainer all the time, but if you think that you are too knowledgeable or advanced to benefit from seeing a personal trainer, you're dead wrong!
If its your first time in a gym setting, you basically have a few choices - either to wing it by reading books and parroting what other people do, or you can talk to the local gym rat and run the risk of getting bad advice, or, you could hire a "qualified personal trainer " and develop good training and nutritional habits right from the beginning. It's a much better idea than trying to change bad habits and re-learn everything you thought you knew. As a beginner, consider hiring a "qualified trainer" for 8-16 weeks, long enough to learn the various fitness principles, equipment technologies, exercise techniques, and nutritional strategies required to become better equipped to produce lasting results. Periodic training sessions with a trainer later on will help ensure that you haven't gotten to far off track, and can be useful for learning new techniques.
You may have noticed that I refer to "qualified personal trainers". The reason I stress the qualified part is that many trainers are ill-equipped to give any advice other than being able to show you around the gym, naming the various pieces of equipment, and setting you up on a cookie-cutter program that is probably used for everybody. If you approached a golf pro and were trying to improve your game, would you get any benefit from the golf "pro" who owns clubs but wasn't really good at the game game? Having a trainer that is properly certified is important, but it doesn't stop there. Having book knowledge without applied knowledge is useless. There is a dangerously large population of the fitness industry that have little or no practical experience. Passing a fitness certification exam doesn't make you a qualified health and fitness instructor, any more than owning a set of golf clubs makes you Tiger Woods. Whatever your goals are, find a trainer who is a specialist in the very type of fitness program you are interested in.
Our specialty is helping people rehab old injuries and reintroducing fitness to those who have been out of the game for a while. Over the last 11 years I have personally logged around 80,000 hours of hands on training and have been personally involved in strength training for over 20 years. Whatever your fitness issue, we have the answer.
