Reasons to Hire A Personal Trainer (and How to Find the Right One)
Key Takeaways:
A personal trainer is a fitness professional who combines their physical fitness and exercise expertise with interpersonal and motivational skills to guide clients through customized workout routines.
Hiring a personal trainer could help remove the guesswork of strength training, improve what you’re doing, and provide specialized support for chronic or transient health conditions like diabetes, obesity, and heart disease..
Look out for credentials, personality, coaching style, and experience before committing.
Personal trainers. You’ve seen them.
In gyms (of course), around gyms (promotional events), and on your TikTok’s “For You” page (featuring either theirs or their clients’ chiseled physiques). But while you know personal trainers exist, chances are, like most people, you’re less familiar with why you’d hire one.
After all, the reasons why you shouldn’t hire a personal trainer are often more obvious and/or pressing.
Cost, for example. Personal training sessions can be expensive. Next up is the scheduling bit — finding a time in your packed-like-Bishan-MRT-station-during-peak-hours calendar that works for both parties is problematic, to put it mildly. Plus, there’s also this argument (or a variation of it): “It’s just dumbbells and machines. It can’t be that difficult to figure out.”
So … why? Is there a good reason to hire a personal trainer despite the above? There is. In fact, there are multiple ones. Learn what they are in this article.
What does a personal trainer do?
Contrary to popular belief, a personal trainer isn’t your ordinary “workout buddy” who helps you load/unload barbells, count your reps, and spot your lifts as you grind out that last rep.
To be sure, yes. They do all that. But they’re also fitness professionals equipped with the specialized knowledge and expertise needed to:
Create personalized, safe, and effective exercise programs designed to help you achieve your health and/or fitness goals
Keep you motivated and engaged long enough to see measurable results
Provide the appropriate movement cues to you to help you activate target muscles, prevent injury, and, ultimately, get the most out of an exercise
Are you starting to have a vague appreciation of how a personal trainer could add value to your life? Good. Let’s expand on those good vibes.
Reasons to hire a personal trainer
#1: Get started
“Adults should engage in moderate-intensity muscle-strengthening activities targeting the major muscle groups at least twice weekly,” per Singapore Physical Activity Guidelines (SPAG).
Sounds simple enough … until you start asking:
What counts as “moderate intensity”? How many exercises should I do in a single session? How many sets and reps per exercise?
Which are the major muscle groups? Do shoulders count? What about the calves? Also, which exercise hits what? (E.g., should you count the Romanian deadlift as a lower back or posterior chain strengthening exercise?)
A personal trainer eliminates guesswork by designing a customized “plug-and-play” workout plan that details the exact exercises, sets, and reps you should do.
They can also teach you how to perform exercises with good form and modify them when necessary — e.g., exercise regressions, so you build the foundational motor control and strength needed to perform a specific movement.
Beyond the technical bit, hiring a personal trainer also has a significant psychological upside.
Through their guidance, you’re confident that you know what you’re doing, and this dispels the unwarranted but 100% understandable and common exercise fear that other, more experienced lifters are making fun of you in the gym.
#2: Improve what you’re doing
But what if you already know what you’re doing in the gym?
Well, there are still several compelling reasons to hire a personal trainer, even if you’ve been consistently resistance training and perfectly capable of identifying the “correct” attachment to use for the lat pulldown (lat bar), overhead tricep extensions (tricep rope), and glute kickbacks (ankle cuff) on the cable machine.
Fine-tune your form
Are there any exercises you’re struggling with? Maybe it’s the barbell back squat — you can’t get good depth (parallel or lower).
Or perhaps it’s the machine chest press. No matter how you toggle the settings, you feel the movement in your front delts instead of your chest.
You could film yourself to analyze your form, but in most cases, you’d still be left floundering because 1) you don’t know what you’re looking for and 2) the lack of real-time feedback adds a layer of difficulty to tweaking your form.
A good personal trainer changes that by pinpointing what’s wrong with your movement, providing coaching cues as you lift, and guiding you through mobility work where necessary to help you finally get it right.
Work on muscular imbalances
Imagine reaching for your phone or taking that first step on a flight of stairs. Which hand and leg did you picture?
Most of us have a dominant side that is stronger than the other, and we can unknowingly preferentially load it more on bilateral exercises (e.g., primarily relying on your right lat to get the weight up on the chest-supported row machine).
Over time, this “reinforces” the muscular imbalance; the stronger side gets stronger, and the weaker side gets weaker.
For the majority, the concern here isn’t that it’ll make you lose favor with the judges in a bodybuilding competition (since one side will be noticeably bigger than the other) but rather that it places increased stress on your joints and sets you up for injuries.
By including unilateral work that’s individualized to your needs, a personal trainer could help effectively correct and prevent muscular imbalances.
Keep things fresh
After a few months or years in the gym, slipping into a comfortable routine is easy.
Same exercises. Same weight. Same number of sets and reps. A plateau. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with a lack of progress (especially since you’re not aiming to join a powerlifting meet any time soon), things can get a little … stale. Unexciting.
And that’s when your shoulder devil may start whispering, “What’s the point of going to the change? Nothing’s changing — you might as well quit.” Dangerous.
How does a personal trainer help?
They find ways to challenge you and keep your workouts fresh (e.g., swap out exercises, increase the number of reps, and reduce your rest times), depriving your shoulder devil of the opportunity to discourage you.
#3: Accountability and motivation
On a closely related note, personal trainers can help you stay on track with your health and/or fitness goal even as your life circumstances change.
Because personal trainers are often well-versed in behavior change theories (e.g., the transtheoretical model of behavior change), they can tailor their approach to your unique needs.
Let’s say you’d have to travel a lot for work starting next month.
You may think that sticking to a regular exercise routine would become impossible, but a personal trainer could work closely with you to figure out a plan that works for you, for example:
Time-efficient bodyweight HIIT workouts in the mornings
Requesting your employer to reimburse gym passes when you’re overseas (if possible)
When you have a personal trainer who only wants the best for you standing in your corner, it’s tough not to feel like you can do anything you put your mind to.
#4: Support for chronic health conditions or life stage
If you live with a chronic health condition (e.g., obesity, where your BMI is greater than or equal to 27.5, and type 2 diabetes), are pregnant, or postpartum, strength training can feel scary.
Should you be placing so much stress on your joints? What if you overexert and run into hypoglycemia? Are hip thrusts safe during pregnancy? Is bracing OK for your pelvic floor muscles pre- or post-birth?
This is where a “special populations personal trainer’ comes in.
These certified fitness professionals are trained to safely address the fitness needs of individuals with specific medical or transient conditions. They’ll know how to complement (note: not replace) your primary healthcare provider’s treatment plan and recommendations to improve your health outcomes.
Finding a personal trainer who’s right for you
Interested in hiring a personal trainer but afraid you’ll have to kiss too many “frogs” before finding “The One”? Here are a few tips that’ll help make the search a more enjoyable process:
Know what you want. In-person or online sessions? What’s your primary goal? Lose weight? Build muscle? Or work on specific movements? You should also be realistic about your budget.
Check their credentials. At a minimum, a personal trainer should have a personal training certification from an accredited organization (e.g., NSCA, ACE, and NASM). Their CPR, AED/First-Aid certifications, and professional liability insurance should also be up to date.
Ask if they’ve worked with clients like you. How long have they been a personal trainer? Have they worked with clients who have had similar goals or health conditions? If possible, get them to share in detail — and ideally with proof — how they’ve helped individuals like you achieve their goals.
Get a sense of their communication and coaching style. Encourage them to walk you through a typical workout session briefly; does it align with what you like or want?
If you have already signed up for our holistic NOVI Optimum Plus weight loss program and would like to maintain your weight through a health coach-guided exercise and diet plan, NOVI PT Plus is for you.
NOVI PT Plus helps through:
Creating and guiding you through personalized exercise routines and dietary plans that prioritize your safety and well-being, while helping you achieve your goals.
Holistic guidance and genuine care, using the NOVI Method. With our ongoing remote support, you will be motivated throughout the program.
Data-based program adjustments to help you achieve your goals in a quicker time.