What Makes a Good Trainer?

What defines a “good” personal trainer? Of course that depends on whose eyes you look through. Are you a good trainer because you are superficially attractive? Because you are an ex-professional athlete? Do your certifications make you a good trainer? Maybe you think you’re a good trainer because you can count repetitions, or because you can motivate your client and yell at them to push through the set? What about if you make them extremely sore for days? Or maybe you can hold a conversation for the entire hour?

I believe that a good personal trainer is an open-minded individual who has the knowledge and experience to look at details from all angles. Regarding exercise myths, opinions, and biases, this person can distinguish truth from trend. A good personal trainer is someone who is always looking to enhance her level of education and views her profession as a passion, not a fill-in or last resort job. This personal trainer must not only commit to herself, her profession, and her clients, but also to the pursuit of knowledge. She must be willing to question and investigate his/her methods. Great trainers must rely on proof and validity.

There are many different types of clients out there, and each may look for something specific from his/her trainer or workout. The question we personal trainers should ask is: what are we doing that suits our clients best interests? Are we taking into account their goals, capabilities, structure, threshold, and tolerance levels? We must give them 100% undivided attention. Clients don’t keep coming back for the results. You retain them by providing them with a one of a kind exercise experience.

The Role of Precision

While training clients, what are we supposed to be looking for? Do we simply show our client an exercise and have them mimic us? Do we tell them to do fifteen repetitions, make them start with point A and end with point B, and ignore everything that takes place in between?

If clients depend on us as exercise professionals to ensure they’re getting the most out of each and every workout, I say our duty lies in enforcing control and precision. Just because the end ranges of motion are critical doesn’t mean that everything else is less important. And that doesn’t mean a client’s structure, her neuromuscular influences, her accustomed level of activity, her body awareness, and her ability to adapt shouldn’t be factored in. From my Resistance Training Specialist notebook: “The outcome of an exercise will only be as good as the precision with which the motion is performed.… It all boils down to the quality of each individual rep; it doesn’t matter how many you do if they all suck!” When we prioritize control, we can tally actual progress and work toward increasing the challenge. Without control or precision, we compromise the standard, rendering measurements of progress useless/unreliable, while undermining the efficiency and quality of a workout. It’s only after the client demonstrates automaticity, or autopilot, that we should add another level of difficulty.

On the other hand, we don’t want to be completely obsessive with instruction. We need to allow the client time to acquire sensory input, adapt and respond to the task at hand, and orchestrate a solution to that specific challenge. If we obsessively correct, we may see diminishing returns in the outcome. Allowing the client time to learn, tracking micro-progress, and gradually building their skill with precision is key to long term progress.

Strategic Variety Beats Choreography

Instead of picking out a canned, pre-planned exercise routine and spending a session watching, counting, and maintaining conversation, a trainer should be trying to visualize what is occurring inside of the body of their client. All people have structural differences (i.e. bones, joints, contractile/non-contractile tissue) that need to be taken into account when designing an exercise regimen; cookie cutter exercises published in magazines or websites serve to perpetuate inaccurate beliefs about our bodies and the personal training industry.

As trainers, we need to re-evaluate our methods and our understanding of the human body. Exercise is invasive to the body. It’s not about what’s occurring superficially; it’s about the forces applied within, like resistance and torque. Keeping in mind the goal of a specific exercise, we must constantly ensure proper joint forces, position, and motion (if any). Things continuously change during the progression of an entire repetition; clients deserve our undivided attention to monitor and, if need be, correct their exercise. We are responsible for minimizing mechanical wear (contact surfaces of joints) by strategically varying activities. This is an awesome role to play—we have the power and knowledge to actually change and alter joint forces!

If you can give clients a one-of-a-kind positive experience with long-lasting benefits, that’s pretty amazing. Chances are they wouldn’t find that just anywhere; if a trainer lacks a certain degree of knowledge, experience, or commitment, they’re coming up short.