3+ Questions to Ask A Personal Trainer When Starting Strength & Fitness Training
Starting strength and fitness training can be daunting. Working with a personal trainer in your local community can improve the safety and effectiveness of your workouts and make it very enjoyable! Finding someone you can trust with your health is critical, and it all starts with a conversation.
In our conversation with Evan Mather (Owner & Trainer, Custom Fit), we learn what to ask a personal trainer you are considering working with. Here are a few highlights from the interview with the full transcript below.
Highlights:
Find a personality match with your trainer. After all, you’ll be spending a lot of time together!
Ask for a sample program they’d create for a new client like you.
Feeling sore is not a good way to judge the quality of your workout.
A trainer can do visual checks on your form. Take it a step further and get coaching on what good form should feel like, especially if an exercise doesn’t feel natural.
Full Transcript:
What questions should you ask a potential personal trainer?
1. Personality Fit (0:02)
Are you vibing with this person? Do you want to spend time with this person? There's got to be a personality fit. Yes, you obviously have got to be in a close location, it's got to be convenient, it's got to be a nice studio. But you have to really enjoy the person you're working with. I always think about some of my clients that come very consistently three to four times a week. It's like they see their significant other and then they see their trainer.
2. Education & Experience (0:24)
Have they only been in a big box gym? Have they only been in a training studio? Have they been doing this for a year? Have they been doing this for 10 years? What experience do they have not only in a professional setting but also what kind of educational experience do they have? Do they have a Kinesiology degree? Do they have these five certifications? I think the certifications people get kind of wrapped up into and there are some better certifications than other ones but a lot of this industry you learn a lot from just having that level of experience more than the certification. The kind of certifications you can get on your own NASM (National Academy of Sports Medicine) is a pretty good one and American Council on Exercise (ACE) is the acronym is another really great one.
3. Training Style (1:07)
What is this person's training style? If there's somebody that's doing CrossFit or there's somebody that's training geriatrics or there's somebody that's just kind of doing a functional range sort of thing. So if you can see what kind of style they have and see if that fits with your goals that would be something I would definitely ask. On that note the second question to follow up with that is if you could get a sample of the program that they would create for a new client. Are they able to change things on the fly if you come in with an injury or you come in with a discomfort or you're just really tired on your lower body from doing some leg stuff? Are they going to be able to adapt the program for the day to kind of help with you?
What’s the best way to evaluate how broad and deep a trainer’s toolkit is? (1:47)
You could ask the direct question—how how many different lunge options can you think of? From a training perspective you know the example that I like to think about is if I go to see a masseuse. The first time I see them it's going to be a very general massage but if I go see a masseuse three times a week for a year they're going to know my body just as well as I do and I think the same thing is happening with personal training. It's like the the first few workouts it's more of the trainer and the client just trying to get a feel for each other and trying to see where the strengths and weaknesses are. But just like you know, you come to see Pete three times a week for a year he's going to know (especially if he's if he's paying attention) where your strengths are where your weakness are or what you like and what you dislike. So I think as a trainer there is a fine balance between giving the clients what they want and giving the clients what they need. You know we never want to as a trainer project our own image of health and fitness onto clients because you know what I would do with you would probably be different than what I would do with my 93y old client and so our job as a trainer is to get clients to to to the end result which is whatever their goal is in the most efficient, effective, and safe way possible. So there's going to be some stuff where you know we've got to do this and you might not like it, but I think there are many, many ways to do those sorts of things and have the client like it at the same time. It just takes a little bit of time for the trainer to develop what the client preferences are.
How can someone achieve variety in workouts, if that’s what they want? (3:22)
There are an infinite amount of core stabilization exercises. Even though everyday might be a different exercise, it's still actually kind of the same thing it's just a different form of core stabilization. I think if you can find a good trainer who has a variety of exercises in their repertoire, the program won't seem the same every time even though it actually kind of is. I think once again this is something that as a client you should just think about what you enjoy doing and if you're the type of person that just runs the same loop every day for your exercise well then maybe your your your deal is finding somebody that can kind of have a program that is very structured it's kind of doing a lot of the same exercises you know every other day whereas if you're somebody that's you know used to running that goes on different different Trails every day you're probably going to want somebody that uh you know has a little bit more variety to their programming yeah so and once again just like any service it's a one-on-one service so you know you're you're paying for this and so you're the boss it's like you've got to decide what works for you and then be able to communicate that to the trainer and then rely on their expertise to design a program and you know uh control the tempo control the intensity control the Reps the sets the weights record everything and so then if you're you're away you can you know easily get some programs to do when you're not at the gym
What should someone expect from a trainer in initial sessions? (4:43)
When I have a new client, I'm almost annoying in how many questions that I ask during the training session—how hard is this on a scale one to five, how does this feel, is this is this comfortable for you? It just gives me background on where their strengths and where their weaknesses are. So any information that clients can provide to trainers even if they don't ask it because they just haven't been thinking about it or maybe they're just don't know much about the pelvic floor or something like that. But any information that you can provide if it is a good trainer, they're going to do their own research and they're going to find the answer and they're going to figure out how to create the most developed program.
How can someone judge if they had a good workout? (5:22)
Some people have delayed onset muscle soreness. For me personally I get sore almost every single time I go to the gym no matter what I just get fatigued and sore where there's other people that don't have that at all so I think there's certain exercises that generally will make people more sore than not. I think pain during an exercise is something we definitely want to avoid um and so if that comes up you as a client you just got to be communicative about that. But I think you can't judge the effectiveness of a workout based off of how sore you are. Generally speaking, people that are new to strength training will be a little bit more sore in the beginning than people that are more experienced. But there's a lot that goes into it—hydration, electrolytes what food you've had, what type of body you have, what exercises you're doing, how new you are, etc. There's just a lot that goes into it so I always think it's a mistake for people to judge the effectiveness of a workout on how much they're sweating or how sore they are because you can make a lot of progress with a different variety of workouts that you know might be perceived as as as easy.
Are there certain exercises where people tend to have more difficulty getting the correct form? (6:31)
And so there's an aspect of coaching of teaching people what it feels like to be at depth or what it feels like to go all the way down or what it feels like to do a correct push-up and there's ways to progress that. You know learning how to do a proper barbell deadlift—some people pick it up really quickly and some people do not. But there's ways if you're a good trainer to structure the program and the exercise to progress people from a very basic point to a very advanced point.
How can someone better understand when specific muscles are being activated? (7:06)
A bicep curl for example—you're engaging your biceps any time you're pulling something off of the ground or you're you're you know doing any sort of pulling exercise. But if you've never done an exercise where you're specifically focusing on that muscle group, how would you know you know? That's where the balance of training comes into play—there's some exercises that are very specific, very precise. For example, you do a band walk. You know you got the little band around your knees and you’re taking side steps. You're just basically activating your medial glute and so that's a very specific muscle that you're activating whereas if you did you know a squat for example or a lunge it's like yeah you're activating your entire leg but it's it's it's hard to determine what. You just feel your leg whereas like when you do the band walk you can really feel it on the side of your hip there. So I think that would be an example of where like both of the muscles are being activated for both of those exercises, but with the bands, it's very specific and it's very targeted. So I think that the targeting of specific muscles helps new clients experience activation of those muscles if you will.
How do you get your kids involved in your workouts? (8:15)
I mean and you got to make it fun you know. So like I have got a TRX and I've got some fitness equipment at my house and so there's an exercise called a Thruster where basically you squat and then as you stand up you push dumbbells up in the air. So what I'll do is I'll hold my son or hold my daughter and I'll do a Thruster and I'll throw them up in the air so it's like I'm getting the exercise. I know what I'm doing, I know my form, and all they think is oh man I'm going to get thrown right now. So I think you know exposing children to the gym and exposing them to these exercises and for example you know I'll do like a you know a TRX pullup and I'll just have my son hold my chest and so it gives me weight like I've got an extra 40 pounds on me so it's like it adds the resistance but it he father and he us a good time anding out in a very structured way they don't know that but they see what we're doing and they they know what business we have and so I think it's it's a little bit easier for us to kind of expose our kids to that than somebody who who might not do that but you know just being able to have your kids see you exercise and see you make this a priority um just like when I was a kid my parents were big swimmers and so I would always go to swim I'm always in the water with them I'm always swimming with them and then I started getting into water polo and that was like my sport growing up um but it was just because that's what my parents did they swam so I just swam you know and so if I'm working out and I'm going to the gym and I'm just dragging my kids along that's that's what's that's what we're doing you know until you're 18 and so I'm at some point you'll they'll they will see the benefits of it and how it translates into sports um and just feeling good mentally physically that sort of thing awesome.