How Do You Hire A Personal Trainer?

Q: I’ve been following you on social media for a while and would love for you to be my personal trainer. But unfortunately, you probably live far, far away from me and no advances in technology have been made that make it possible for you to get me into shape here while you’re all the way over there, wherever there is. Drats! So instead, how do I hire a trainer near me who I don’t know as much about?

A: For the record, I live in San Diego.¹

Live elsewhere?

Well, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it but there’s this thing called the “internet” that you’re using at this very moment to read this off whatever fancy device it’s being displayed on. It’s thanks to this “internet” that people all the way over here can communicate with people all the way over there and why I have clients scattered all over the place through my remote coaching service.

That’s right, personal training can be offered by way of that thing you just found out about called the “internet” because it allows for the sending and receipt of videos, photos, and messages that provide me with the means to track progress, provide feedback, make adjustments, and do other things that are part of the experience of having a personal trainer. The benefit of that setup is that remote coaching is considerably cheaper than in-person training and there’s more schedule flexibility because you’re not locked into specific dates and times that you have to meet with your trainer to work out. If you’d like more information on how remote coaching works, it just so happens that you can also use that thing called the “internet” to click HERE and be automagically taken to the page on my website that details everything there is to know about my online coaching program!²

As for finding a trainer closer to you, this can be done by going to the gym and getting a personal trainer on staff or using the “internet” to search Craigslist, local Facebook groups, review sites like Yelp, and apps like Thumbtack to find independent trainers in the area who operate out of a gym that’s central to you or are open to traveling. Even better is to ask your friends, family, or coworkers for recommendations of any trainer they’ve hired before.

Now, there are many things to look for in a personal trainer but the most important are probably education and hands-on experience, which can be supported with references and testimonials from past and present clients who have the same or similar goals as you. Once you find someone with those qualifications that you’re interested in working with, what you should do next is treat the situation exactly like any other job hiring process involving an employer and potential employee because the employer-employee relationship is exactly what the client-trainer relationship is.

That means that you should interview a trainer before you hire them, like a boss or manager does before they hire a new worker. You tell the trainer your experience, injury history, goals, and other pertinent information.³ The trainer then tells you how they can help you with your specific circumstances. If the trainer’s plan of action agrees with you, as well as such things like their philosophy and demeanor, then you hire them for the job. If not, you continue the hiring process by interviewing other trainers until you find one you’re comfortable with.

As an illustration, let’s say there’s a global pandemic and everything — EVERYTHING!!! — shuts down.⁴ With you quarantined indoors with nowhere to go, you begin working out at home doing bodyweight type shit to help break up the monotony of you working from home. After a number of months of being stuck inside, restaurants, gyms, malls, your office, and other establishments that closed down start opening up again. With “normal” life resuming, you decide that you want to maintain your new active lifestyle. However, you want to start lifting because, you know, FUCK CALISTHENICS!!! Well, you look at some programs and Strong Curves catches your fancy. But wait, you’ve never lifted a day in your life and don’t have the first clue about weight training. Bummer!

But wait, the light bulb goes off in your head to hire a personal trainer for a few sessions to help you learn how to perform the exercise movements that make up Bret Contreras’ Strong Curves program. So that’s when you start looking for a trainer and because you read this article on what to look for when hiring one, you find a trainer who satisfies a good many of the things I went out of my way to detail specifically for you because I’m clairvoyant like that.

Now, when you sit down to talk to this prospective trainer, one of the things you’d mention is that all you want them to do is teach you what’s associated with Strong Curves. Some trainers might take exception with teaching you another trainer’s routine, others won’t. If this trainer in question takes issue with your exampled request, then keep interviewing trainers until you find someone who recognizes that you call the shots because you’re the one footing the bill. Hiring a trainer is really that simple!

Because you’re essentially hiring a trainer for a job, it should make sense to have an interview to assess suitability. That said, it’s understandable why you may not have known that given the fact that I imagine you’ve never had to go to a job interview because your career in the distribution and selling of narcotics isn’t a field of work where that type of vetting process is used!

Now, does anyone else have a fitness or nutrition question of their own that they want to ask?

Glossary: exercise, fitness, goal, gym, nutrition, personal trainer, program, routine, work out

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Monster Longe

Monster Longe is a personal trainer in San Diego. He has been lifting weights for +25 years and training clients in the gym and online for about half of that time. When not working with clients or making content that's easy to read, understand, and apply to everyday life, he enjoys long walks and leaving buildings crushed and entire city blocks decimated in his wake.

How Do You Hire A Personal Trainer?

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