My clients have often been asked, “Do you think it is worth all of the money you pay your trainer?”
To answer that, let’s first lay out the benefits of hiring a personal fitness trainer.
Preventive Healthcare
It’s not popular with the majority of society, but exercise prevents things from going wrong.
Exercise is the regular maintenance you should do to keep your body running well. Just like you would change the oil on your vehicle every so often, you should do the same with your body.
But what does this mean in the real world? This means looking at your hip range of motion and seeing that you’ve still got the ability to fully stand up and bend over. If you don’t, then work out a program and get it back to where it should be.
A personal fitness trainer can assess the hip and prescribe a very simple program to loosen it back up to where it should be.
This is just a hip. There are many, many things that can go wrong with the body that a fitness trainer can help you with. I’ve written plenty of these mini-programs to help people.
This is one example of muscles being loosened up and strengthened across one joint. But that could prevent years of pain and a hip replacement later on down the line.
That’s what I mean when I say preventive healthcare.
You can prevent the hip replacement by getting your hip assessed and by doing the program written out for you by a personal fitness trainer.
Run the numbers on how much a hip replacement costs versus a few hours of time with a personal trainer.
Your Education
Personal fitness trainers can teach you things.
In fact, I make it a point to teach every one of my clients as much as I can.
My goal is to teach every client so much that they no longer need me as their fitness trainer and they can exercise on their own. I don’t just correct them on points of form, but really teach them the concept of each movement so they can think with it. To me, this seems like the only way to make sure they don’t get hurt.
It is a bit backwards to try to work yourself out of the job, but I have actually retained more clients by doing that. They have a free source of information when they’ve hired me for that hour and if I don’t know what they are asking about, I do my best to go and find out.
Look, your body doesn’t come with a manual. It is kind of a goofy and evolving subject and it is split across all specialties. Like, if you have back pain you can go see a doctor, a chiropractor, a physical therapist, an acupuncturist or whoever you want.
The more anatomy you know, the more exercises you’ve learned and can perform, the more you will be in tune with your body and know whether or not a specific pain is something to worry about. You’ll be able to take that knowledge and teach your kids and your friends.
You’re not just paying for a trainer to “work you hard,” you’re paying to get knowledge that you can use.
And it works better for everyone if you show up, not just ready to perform, but ready to learn.
Just think of this: If you work with a trainer for 3 days per week over the course of 2 months, and he teaches you to be proficient at 10 new exercises each day, you can go from knowing nothing to knowing 240 different exercises.
That is one hell of a jump start.
Putting a Price on Health and Happiness
You’ve heard the saying, “At least you have your health.”
But, what do you say when you don’t have your health? In the back of your mind, you’ll be thinking, “Maybe I should have hired a fitness trainer.”
Most people agree that family is something worth living for. Being there for them and being able to get around properly is pretty much priceless. If you were to ask someone – who can only walk with a walker – watching their grandchildren play around, “How much would you give right now to run around with them?” It would be a lot more than the fees that a personal fitness trainer charges.
I guarantee it.
Special Cases
In college I took a course called “Special Populations.” I never knew how valuable that would be.
You just don’t know how many people are missing arms, had surgeries, or had birth defects until they offer you money to train them the right way.
When I was new, this was overwhelming. I had to really make sure I knew what was going on with the client and be in touch with their doctor. As I got more familiar with the drill and I stopped being surprised at the amount of things that can go wrong, it got easier. As a trainer, you finally get to a point where you say, “I’ve helped someone like that before.”
Training diabetics is a whole subject with detailed instructions that you need to know to safely train them. What to do in case they drop down and pass out is the primary thing to know. Then you should know what could cause that situation and how to prevent it.
Same goes with any other condition, whether it is high blood pressure, low blood pressure, narcolepsy, missing limbs, heart murmurs, scoliosis and the whole array of human ailments.
Trainers learn how to train these special situations one at a time and get good at working with people who have them.
If you have any one or a combination of these, talk with a few trainers until you find one who fully understands it and wants to work with you. You’ll know who it is. He’ll say, “Oh, yes I’ve had three people with that condition. Our medical kit has a ____ and a ____ in case we need to use it and I trained on its administration in the First Aid class we take for our certifications.”
Whoever says that, hire them to train you. Your life will be better. It will be money well spent.
Exercise and Depression
This doesn’t get advertised on TV because it doesn’t make Big Pharma any money, but exercise absolutely helps depression.
You don’t have to be on the edge of suicide to go see a fitness trainer. But if you’re feeling like you are in a funk or like your life is kind of stuck in a rut – hire a trainer.
Nothing gets your day going like getting out of bed and doing a full workout before work. By the time you get there, you feel 10,000 times more productive than everyone else. And they see it, too.
Your bosses see it. You then end up getting promoted and it completely pays for itself.
And you feel better. There’s a sense of accomplishment in doing physical labor, especially if you sit at a desk and think all day.
All of these studies say the same thing: Go move something heavy around for a while and you’ll feel better.
Trainers Will Ask More of You
A trainer is a source of motivation. It’s your insurance that when you are in the gym, you will be productive and not waste your time or your money.
As a fitness trainer, I know what people are capable of. I’ve seen enough people of different ages, body types and levels of ability. I know what they really are capable of and I hold them to it.
No normal person would ever make himself do what I ask my clients to do. Your trainer will make you do things that you just wouldn’t even think of doing. You didn’t see it as even being possible.
At the end of the day, you’ve achieved something impossible.
How much is that worth?
Conclusion
A personal fitness trainer makes your goals become reality.
I really wish that this whole realm of prevention (i.e. going to the gym) was as funded by the government as all of the other programs they fund when you don’t get enough exercise. Sounds kind of backwards, doesn’t it?
There’s a saying that goes, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” That’s an understatement.
Your health and happiness are worth something and I’m showing you where you can spend a little money and get a lot of health and happiness back.
So find a trainer and get on with it.
