Why Hire a Personal Trainer

The start of the New Year is a time to start fresh, leaving all bad habits behind and beginning newer, healthier habits.  Maybe your New Year’s resolution is to lose weight or eat healthier, maybe it is to lean out and look better.  If exercise is atop of your New Year’s resolution list, you ought to consider a personal trainer to help you complete your sought out goals.

Why Should you Hire a Personal Trainer?

A personal trainer is a skilled professional experienced in exercise and how it affects the physiology of the body.  Some trainers have extensive backgrounds in exercise science, exercise physiology, kinesiology, and athletic training.  Many of these rigorous college courses include materials such as biomechanics, cardiac and human physiology, stress testing, body composition analysis, and behavior change.  Wait, behavior change?  What does this have to do with personal training?

Personal trainers are experts on how to make the body stronger, faster, more flexible, and more efficient.  In addition, personal trainers need to understand the socialization involved with a lifestyle change.  Training a client is not as simple as “give me ten reps.” Changing behaviors is actually one of the most important elements in personal training.  Listed in the remaining portion of this article are some of the most crucial elements of why you should hire a personal trainer to help with any of your exercise needs and goals.

Motivation

Motivation is a huge aspect in exercise and body weight control.  In fact, intrinsic motivational factors have been demonstrated to be one of the most important factors in long term weight control [1].  One of the most common motivational factors for a large majority of the population is weight loss.  Many individuals are on the treadmill, elliptical, or spin bike in an effort to lose five or ten pounds to feel better and look better.  Recently, the American Medical Association listed obesity as a disease, leading millions of Americans to frantically begin an exercise program in order to fight the disease, but in light of this listing, many have been lost or have been unsuccessful in weight loss goals from exercising alone or trying to “do-it-yourself.”  This is where a personal trainer can be very helpful and needed; they help hold you accountable on a regular basis and will give valuable guidance towards your succession.

Efficiency

In a world designed on efficiency, exercise has been no stranger.  Research has been examining how individuals can exercise in a more efficient manner only to find that a 20 minute workout can be more efficient than a 60 minute workout.  Thanks in large part to high-intensity training (which was not very common a decade prior) individuals of varying age can experience beneficial effects from exercise in reduced time.  Even cardiac patients and those with heart failure have been known to improve significantly with a regular aerobic high-intensity interval training program.  If you are someone who enjoys and strives for the most efficient exercise out there, click here for some basic interval programs.  Personal trainers are experts in designing high-intensity interval programs and if fat loss, muscle gain, or health benefitting exercise is something you desire, you should consider hiring a personal trainer to design and help you through an efficient program.

Safety

Safety is one of the most important aspects in exercise training.  A muscular injury can cause a lifetime of setbacks and medical issues which can be devastating to some.  A personal trainer can help ensure proper form and technique to help you through some hard lifts (if weight lifting).  In addition, you are at most risk to injure your body when you are on your last couple of reps (when your muscles are working overtime) of strength or interval training, which is where a personal trainer can instruct and help through the hardest aspect of your workout.  Hiring a personal trainer for your workouts may be the safest thing you do for your body in 2015.

Final Word

A personal trainer can be used for any individual.  Trainers are more than qualified to work with post-heart attack patients (after physical therapy), stroke victims (after physical therapy), obese individuals, cancer patients, those seeking to add muscle, and individuals training for a half marathon.  There is no skill set needed to hire a trainer and it is always nice to have someone familiar with which to exercise.

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