When we look at health and fitness, there is a lot of good information out there to read, listen to, and digest. So, why is there a profession out there that their sole job is to teach people what they can learn on the internet? Well, when you put it that way there really does not seem to be a reason to why that is, but in short personal trainers are needed for two different reasons: weed out the bad information and make things personal and individualized. Now, there is a cost to personal training, which is the drawback that I also want to cover later but there is a reason to the cost.
I said I would give the short answer, but now you get the long one too.
Bear with me, as there is a lot to unpack and get into, with some strong opinions and educated viewpoints on my side.
To tackle the first part which is the bad information part, I want to start off with a question. Have you ever gone on WebMD to look up your symptoms and see what they tell you that you have? How accurate do you believe that diagnosis was? Probably not the greatest right, so think of Google and the internet as a whole as being the WebMD of fitness. Fitness, from a personal training perspective, is very subjective and solely depends on the individual coming in.
For example, a trainer would not program a basketball player to do a bunch of rotational movements that maybe a golf client would need as they are training for different sports, just like lateral training and jumping would not benefit a golfer in their sport to an extent. What the internet will give you is a “cookie cutter” way of doing things with some research that will give you a broad look into what some people need to do. In order to fully maximize your progress, however, you need to take different aspects of different programs to fit your needs and lifestyle. This leads into what mobility issues do you have? Are there any muscles that are not working properly? How is your form? These questions are crucial to understand so that we can maximize the return that you get on a health and fitness program.
Now I know what you are thinking, “ this dude is just trying to sell us on his product so that he can make more money. I can go through trial and error and find a way to get what I need done.“ While you are able to do this, let’s put this into a different perspective. For example, think of your body as a car. A machine that you want to be working well at all times so that you do not break down. Let’s say you are out buying a new car that is supposed to take you to work and to drop your kids off at school. When you go and buy this car, are you just going to buy the first one you see and hope it meets your needs or are you going to test drive it, find out any issues with the car, and then make sure you know what you want and if it will meet your needs before you buy it? That is the difference between a generic program and personal training
Personal training is about going to the goal that you have established and finding the best way to accomplish that goal from the start instead of getting a couple programs and hoping that it will fix the solution to your problem. So that you can be a well oiled machine, you need to treat your body in a way that allows for your individual structure and your individual body processes to run the best that they can.
Now, we get into the big deterrent that personal trainers face: money. With any great service comes a cost, but is it worth what personal trainers charge? Short answer, yes.
Long answer, well this may hurt some feelings but ultimately make sense.
There is always a way to get healthy no matter what, you can always go and walk or do bodyweight movements instead of getting weights, you can spend less on junk food and more on the healthier things. Now, this is where things get tricky. Many times, people see personal training as a luxury item, something that only people with some money can afford but this is not the case. Personal training is a necessity and not a luxury, and here is why. Going off of what was said previously, personal trainers take you where you are and customize something to fit your goals. Most of us have spent years in the industry either in school, taking certifications, or just training people in general to get the experience. With all of that education comes a cost.
On top of all of the education that trainers go through, there are different levels to their services and what they offer. For example, we offer training, nutritional guidance, sleep patterning, habit development, and then goal setting. What this allows for you to do is it takes all the guess work out of what you should be eating and when and allows for us to build a plan that works for you and your goals on all aspects of life from physical health and wellness to emotional/mental health and wellness. For some trainers, they just have you come in and workout and that’s it. For us, we want to give more because there is so much more to good health and wellness that just working out will not cover. Along with this, homework is usually provided to where you have to do stuff for the trainer whether that is sending a picture of your pantry or getting in a walk or another workout when you are not with them, something that shows that you are invested in your health as well.
We never want to tell people that personal training needs to be something that you buy and if you don’t you are wrong. this is not the case and is actually the opposite. We are just wanting to make people aware of what personal trainers do, why we do it, and then ultimately help people realize the sheer benefit that a healthy lifestyle can be. Our mission is to help as many people as we can understand that health and wellness drives us in everything that we do, and if we underperform in that area, then other areas of our lives start to fall apart and underperform as well.
Health and wellness is the key to a long and happy life and should be the primary focus of what we as a community and a society do to not only help ourselves, but to help others feel better physically and mentally as well.