On the outside personal coaching looks like a seductive offer – someone is going to tell you exactly how to eat and train to get extraterrestrial results. However, do you really need a personal trainer to get good results?
“YES”
If you are a super lucky person, you may end up finding a good personal trainer without an agenda who could save you a lot of time and stop you from going in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, similar personal trainers are really hard to find, just like everything rare and valuable.
“NO”
In general, personal trainers suck. They only want your money and push all kinds of mainstream nonsense in you.
Truth be told, most PTs do nothing more than select a bunch of exercises for you and count your reps. They cannot even teach you how to squat, bench and deadlift properly because they can’t do that themselves or don’t have enough experience teaching others.
Unless you have someone in mind, it’s better to do it yourself instead of falling into a trap and pay someone to count your reps for you. If you are new to training, you can start by doing your own research. You may lose some time learning on your own, but you will get to know yourself and save some money.
Can I learn everything by myself?
In this day and age, you could. There’s plenty of information as well as educational videos on YouTube. When you couple that with your personal experience, you will know more than the local personal trainers in 6 months time. Training is not that complicated. Your main priorities should be to learn the basic exercises and how to prevent muscle imbalances and injuries.
What about learning how to squat and deadlift? It seems complicated.
If you have someone experienced to show you how to do those two, it would be nice. However, most personal trainers don’t know how to squat and the deadlift correctly. They avoid doing those exercises with clients too. PTs prefer to have you squeezing the machines while they’re hunting booty in the gym.
A good approach is to first learn the theory on your own and then record yourself and post your videos for evaluation on an online training forum. Depending on your situation, this strategy could be even more helpful than hiring a personal trainer.
