These days, so many people pose as ‘self-styled’ fitness gurus but few of them have any real qualification or experience in health and fitness. You should pick a fitness trainer who would guide you in the right direction and not the wrong one; a trainer who doesn’t guide you properly doesn’t do any good either to himself or you.
So how do you separate a professional from an amateur or charlatan? No idea is foolproof, but I hope the two tips below would save you a lot of frustration down the road.
Are they qualified enough: Don’t you check a doctor’s credentials before paying him his fees? Then why should it be any different with fitness trainers? You should thoroughly research the credentials of a fitness trainer before hiring him. While credentials are not always a good indicator of the results you could receive from the trainer (I know several highly qualified but horrible trainers), it is still a decent indicator of the trainer’s level of experience and education.
More important than formal education is informal education. You know, science is not static; it evolves constantly, with new theories and research materials being added to its database almost everyday. As such, any trainer worth his salt, no matter how much educated he is, would keep himself up to date with the latest fitness tricks and techniques. Does your preferred trainer fit this criterion?
Are they experienced enough: Experience and qualification are two different things: the first comes from formal education and training, while the latter comes from real world experience. Before selecting a trainer, you need to enquire about how many clients he has trained in the past and more importantly, how many have benefited from and recommend him. These are crucial things you need to know before you pay a trainer with your hard earned cash.
Are they mature and pleasant to work with: If your trainer is immature or too stern, you cannot benefit much from his training. If on the other hand, he is warm, pleasant, patient and flexible, he could become the ideal trainer for you. Since fitness is a long-term investment involving both time and money, make sure that you choose a trainer with whom you could work for a long time.
Lastly, keep in mind that it is not always that a student is only as good as his tutor; in the field of academics, you might have noticed that the students who are sincere and hardworking reach beyond the expected level of wisdom, while other students of the same tutor would continue to reel under the dark abyss of illiteracy and ignorance.
The same is true in case of fitness training. If you want a good fitness trainer, you need to be a good trainee yourself. You should be punctual, obedient, attentive, patient and disciplined. Unless you are a good student willing to make yourself fit and healthy, you could never become fit no matter how good your trainer is.
