Meridian Gyms | Amazing Trainers

Meridian Gyms | Amazing Trainers

Hello this is Brett Denton with Kvell fitness and nutrition. We have gyms in Boise so Boise gyms and also and Meridian Idaho which we call our Meridian gyms and so today we’re going to talk about what you want to be looking for when you’re looking for a personal trainer. Now this is specifically a personal trainer not necessarily a group fitness class or a group type of a situation. This is specifically when you’re looking to spend a decent amount of money and hire a personal trainer. And so there are a few things you want to pay attention to and really make sure that are in place before you pull the trigger and end up signing on the dotted line in hiring anybody to be your personal trainer. So a personal trainer is somebody who trained you in a one on one type of format. They’re going to create a customized program for you in your individual needs and goals. And so this is what we are going to talk about today. Now this is not again somebody who is coaching you from a distance or who is coaching you in a group training session. But somebody who is doing one on one training sessions with you and customize program design. All right. So number one you want to make sure that the people that you are going to hire or are thinking about hiring for your personal training services are people who are well educated so well educated meaning they either have a college degree along with certifications in specific areas that interest you or they have plenty of knowledge certifications and experience to be able to make sure that you’re getting the results you need. You know personal training is a very easy to career to get into early all you have to do is say your personal trainer and start training people you don’t have any. You don’t have to have at least in the United States don’t have to have any type of certifications any type of degrees. Anything along those lines. Meridian Gyms So in the United States you could very well have a personal trainer who is vastly under qualified to be training anybody. So you want to make sure that you understand fully what their background and education is now personal trainers don’t necessarily need to have a college degree to be good at personal training nor do they need to have certifications per se to be good at personal training some personal trainers in fact a lot of personal trainers who started you know personal training industry many years ago weren’t necessarily qualified with certifications and degrees. You know they just knew what they were doing they knew how the body worked. They knew how to get people results. They knew how to do it in a healthy way. And that’s really ultimately what you’re looking for. Now does it help if somebody has a college degree. Yeah probably it does. Does it help with house and certifications. Yeah probably helps a little bit. But again you can go out and get a certification and still not know anything. You can get a college degree and still not know how to train people. As a matter of fact at our gyms we get a lot of people who have master’s degrees in exercise science but they couldn’t train somebody if their life depended on it in a way that’s going to get them the results. And so just because somebody has degrees also doesn’t mean that they can actually training. And so you want to make sure that you understand the personal trainers education how they got there and then they need to be able to demonstrate that to you in a way that you understand and that you are happy with. All right. So that’s number one. Number two when you try to hire a personal trainer you want to make sure that it’s somebody who has experience training people you know. So again if somebody is freshly minted with a master’s degree in exercise science this doesn’t necessarily mean that they know how to train anybody or that they’ve had any training experience in the past. Right. So you never want to get a newbie who hasn’t actually trained people. If you’re going to be spending your hard earned dollars on them right you want to have somebody who’s been training for at least five years and they’ve spent a good amount of time honing their craft. Meridian Gyms And learning how to write programs and understanding how to correct people and understanding the proper way to do movements because without this you know you’re likely to get hurt or at minimum you’re going to have a program that’s not built correctly for you and you’re not going to be doing things correctly. And a lot of times it’s all such a back. Instead I get you anywhere forward or anywhere further towards your goals.

So you know and you hired a personal trainer you want to make sure that it’s somebody who has at least five years of personal training experience of training actual people and getting them results. The other thing about the hiring a personal trainer who has experience as personal training is a very skill based type of a service. Right. You can’t just go take an exam and all of a sudden be a great personal trainer. You have to have experience. You have to be in the trenches you have to learn what it takes to train somebody. And this simply takes time. There’s no shortcut to it. The more sessions you train the more people you work with the better you’re going to get at it. So you know when you talk about personal training it’s really an art and a skill. And the really good ones got that way by doing a lot of hours training and coaching people in training sessions. Guess that’s number two. Make sure that your personal trainer is somebody who has experience and the more usually the better in this arena. And then another thing that you want to look for when hiring a personal trainer is personality. Right. So you got to make sure that the personality is going to match yours. Not every personal trainer is going to have the personality that you want. All right so there are some personal trainers out there that are very upbeat. They’re very cheery. Meridian Gyms They’re more like a cheerleader. They’re going to motivate you to keep going. And then those personal trainers who are way more businesslike right. Meridian Gyms You come in. You do your session and then you leave. And then there’s other personal trainers who are way better at the touchy feely you know more like a counseling session type of personal trainer. Meridian Gyms And it really depends on what you’re looking for and then really your your way of being right if you like to talk a lot that you want to find a personal trainer who either likes to talk a lot with you or likes to listen if you’re more of the business type. You just want to get in and get out then you need to find a personal trainer who is very businesslike. Right. They understand that your time is short and they’re going to Gidgee and getting the most efficient workout possible not waste time with chit chat and get the job done right if you really need somebody who’s going to always be upbeat always be motivating you always be kind of that cheerleader that that coach in your corner. Meridian Gyms You know they need to find a personal trainer like that. So it really depends on what you want and what your personality is like and that’s who you want to look for when you’re looking for a personal trainer. The last thing you want to do is hire a personal trainer. Whether your you’re the person you want doesn’t jibe with who this person is because it’s not going to last very long. And when you hire personal trainer you want to hire somebody that is going to be with for a long period of time because that’s where you’re going to get maximum results. All right. All right. The fourth thing that you want look at when you’re hiring a personal trainer is their physique. Right. And so there’s a lot of people out there claiming to be personal trainers who aren’t in shape. Right. And not only are they not in shape they’re grossly out of shape. And this is not a person that you want to hire. If this person purports to know a lot about health fitness getting in shape then they should be in shape right. They can’t use the excuse of they’re not in shape for whatever reason they should be in shape. And so you want to make sure that you look at them and say hey is this somebody that I know practice what they preach. Right now other words that they’re telling me to eat healthy and exercise and do all these things to reach this specific goal. Are they doing similar things. Now this isn’t the case all across the board right. So if you have a personal trainer who is very good at training athletes but they’re not an athlete themself Well that’s a little different story. Right. If you have a personal trainer who is training professional athletes but they’re not a professional athlete themself that’s OK. And that’s likely to be the case more often than not. But they should be in shape where they should have a general physical appearance of being in shape. They should have a low body fat percentage. They should be moderately strong. They should be healthy. They should have a vitality about them you should be able to tell that they’re healthy. Right. And that’s the biggest thing. So if you look at the person that you’re going hire and this is not somebody who you

would think is healthy or at the top of their game and that’s probably not a person that you want to hire. All right. And then when you go to hire a personal trainer. Another thing that you want to look at is price right. Price is important. And a lot of times the more somebody costs the better they are. That’s not always the case but it can be the case quite often in personal training and the personal training area arena. And this is especially true if all else is equal rights of the amount of experience is equal if the education is equal. You know if all the things that equal from between a few trainers yet one person has a higher price. It’s probably because they are more in demand because their time is a lot tighter. So they can charge more money. And so this is probably a person that you want to think about over the others if you can afford it. Now here’s the other side of that you want to figure out what you actually can afford before you start talking to these trainers in the first place because if you can’t afford trainers compensation over the long run it doesn’t make a lot of sense to get involved in that relationship in the first place. You want to find a fitness program or a personal trainer or a group fitness class that you can do for the long term because it’s really in the long term where the magic happens. Right. When you start doing something for a long period of time that’s when you start reaping the maximum rewards. Tell it like when you buy a car. Right so if you buy a car on a loan then you’re not really getting a good deal until you’ve paid that loan off and that’s the long run that’s a longer approach. Right and this is what you want to do with personal trainer or any fitness program. You really want to be in it for the long term because that’s when you’re gonna start reaping the rewards. All right. So those are the main reasons are the main things that you want to be looking for when hiring a personal trainer. Meridian Gyms One other thing that you want to think about is what type of intake process do they have. Are they sit down and evaluating exactly what your goals are. Are they taking a look at your current move patterns. Meridian Gyms Are they really getting to know you. Are they just going to read you some cookie cutter program. All right. Because if they’re going to write you some cookie cutter program then they better not be charging a whole lot of money. Now there’s not a lot of things wrong with cookie cutter programs for most people because in this day and age most of those cookie cutter programs are able to be adjusted and customized slightly to fit your individual needs. And there doesn’t need to be some long laborious process unless you have some specific needs or issues that need to be worked around so maybe have some knee issues from soul shoulder issues or some other orthopedic issues but your personal trainers should know what your goals are and this should know your wife. So in other words they should know why you want to accomplish those goals. If they don’t take the time to understand this then they probably not going to be as invested in you as they should be. And this could be a red flag right off the bat. And so you want to take a look at what their analysis and intake process is and if you’re feel like their intake process is very thorough and in-depth and you feel good that they know about you. What your goals are and what you want to accomplish and what your limitations are. That’s a good sign and that’s a good step in the right direction. Again you’re spending a pretty decent amount of money on a personal trainer no matter what. You know some personal trainers charge anywhere from 30 dollars an hour and other ones you know depending on the part of the country you’re in can be up in the 100 200 dollar per hour range. So you’re going to spend a lot of money on these personal trainers and so you want to make sure that the personal trainer knows you go and you want to make sure that you feel good about the personal trainer because you’re new spending a lot of money and a lot of time on them. Meridian Gyms And so that’s a lot of resources that are going towards this one person. Meridian Gyms Want to make sure that it’s the right person. And the last thing you want to talk about with your personal trainer is what type of agreements they have yet. Some personal trainers will walk in for a year. Some of them will go month a month. Some of them will do a package. You know you can buy 12 pack 12 pack 36 pack Sedra and you want to make sure the cancellation policy is in those types of things. So you want to make sure that your finances and you are protected. And you also want to make sure that you’re really ready for this type of a commitment.

Right. Don’t spend money just to spend money. Make sure that you’re ready for this type of event. And one way you can do that is simply to start working out on your own. However many days you’re planning on working out with a personal trainer. Right. And so. Pick let’s say three months let’s say for three months while you’re interviewing personal trainers. You start working out at the gym or at your house three days a week and you work out consistently three days a week to prove to yourself that you’re serious and you’re committed to this don’t hire personal trainer for an accountability reason. Right now that is something that they’re going to provide for sure and without a doubt. But what ends up happening is people end up losing a lot of money are wasting money because they think that the trainer is going to help them hold them accountable and they are. The problem is you still have to show up. In other words you used to have to put your shoes on get in the car and drive to see the personal trainer. Meridian Gyms No personal trainer is going to come to your house and take you to the gym. Now of course there is personal trainers who do come to your house and that is easier for you. So if this is the type of accountability that you need then you want to find a personal trainer who’s going to travel to you. Bring the equipment to your house and if this makes it easier for you then by all means use it because when it comes to fitness the easier it is for you the more likely that you are to do it. And so if one of the barriers is you actually getting to the gym or getting to wherever your personal trainer trains then find a personal trainer who is going to come right to your house you don’t have to worry about it or some personal trainers to come right to your office. All right they’ll meet you where you are. And that takes just yet one other excuse out of it. Right. And so you want to get rid of as many excuses as you can and some personal trainers can help you do this. But again you want to make sure that you’re looking at all these things as you’re evaluating these personal trainers. Now we at our Boise gyms and our Meridian gyms don’t actually provide personal training we do provide what we call large group personal training. And so in other words everybody does the same type of training session or the same type of workout. Meridian Gyms But there’s different levels and that workout so we could have an 83 year old grandma in training right next to a Navy SEAL. And they’re doing a slightly different workout so they’re doing slightly different levels of a squat move it as an example. And so they both can get a killer workout and a workout that is customized just for them but without paying the high price tag of a personal trainer. Now of course there are some benefits to having a personal trainer over doing group fitness training session like ours. But for most people the price break is significant enough that those benefits aren’t as important as the price break. Right. The price break that we get far outweighs any benefits they could get from a personal trainer. All right guys. Well that is it. If you’re ever in Boise come out to our Boise Jim’s or our Meridian Jim’s. And until then get out there and compel.