3 Important factors about Personal Trainers (Part 1)

Are you looking to lose some weight? Become lean or nicely toned? Increase your lean muscle mass? Bulk up? Be healthier and fit? Use the equipments in your gym to achieve your fitness goals? Be motivated to keep up with your fitness and health regiment? Then you are more likely to attain your goals and succeed by engaging the services of a competent and qualified personal trainer.

With so much being said in magazines, books, shows, and by "buddies" who tell you 105 things you should do or not do to look and feel better, it becomes hard to decide what you really need to do for yourself to reach your fitness goals. Beside most of what you read or hear in this regard are general principle because what may work for "John" may not necessarily work for "Jack" even though they may look the same. You have to consider age, genetics, physical composition, eating habits, and so on. As a result getting a personal trainer will indeed be helpful, specific and less time consuming, enjoyable and fun.

Something you should realize about personal trainers is that except for Australia as of present, majority of personal trainers around the world do not have a regulatory, standardization and governing body that monitors and controls the etiquette's and practices of personal trainers. Hence you are investing your time, energy and money to achieve your fitness goals by entrusting the services of a professional that you hope knows what he or she is doing. Of recent though, some countries are trying to standardize, and govern personal training. There are many things to consider when choosing a personal trainer. As a personal trainer I suggest that you start out with these three;

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE: What college or university did your trainer attend? What was his or her focal studies? kinesiology? Physical and Health Education? Health Sciences? What ever the area of studies how long ago was it? How many training certifications does he or she have? It is highly important that a trainer keeps up to date with recent fitness and health studies and is certified yearly or regularly to ensure that he or she is current with Research and Development. For example recently certified CPR and First Aid personal trainers should know that as of late 2006, Canadian health and safety standards instructs that chest compression for resuscitation are NO LONGER 15 but 20 compressions!!
If your trainer makes you use the Roman Chair with weights for hyper-extensions YOU SHOULD BE WORRIED!! What really causes problems and injury to the body is the angle of leverage and pressure put on the tissues and spine. Add improper use of weights to the equation and you have a recipe for disaster. In fact, gyms should not have that "future back crippling" piece of equipment in their establishment. Gyms that do have it show lack of consideration for their clients and their inability to keep up with recent fitness developments. For more on this visit www.plyomax.com under the heading core strength where I quote Dr. Stuart McGill Professor of Spine Biomechanics from his recently published book "ULTIMATE BACK FITNESS AND PERFOMANCE" or read his book. Dr. McGill book is the latest in Back exercise research.
There are many more facts recently released that show the errors of "old school training" and "old school machines" backed my years of Research and Development.
How many years experience does your trainer have in his/her field? A professional personal trainer should have a collection of testimonials from previous clients he/she has trained or is training to give you confidence in his/her ability. If you are spending time, effort and money, you should be getting the best.