Seven Reasons for Firing – and Replacing – Your Personal Trainer
A good working relationship with your personal fitness trainer will make losing weight and staying in shape that much easier. It’s also going to make training a lot more fun. However, there are cases when, instead of motivating you and helping your cause, a personal trainer might actually be keeping you from achieving your training objectives, regardless of whether you’re a beginner or an experienced gym rat. Worse, he may be jeopardizing your health.
How do you know if it’s time to move on? What are the legitimate reasons for firing – and replacing – your personal trainer? Read below to find out the personal situations where you know it’s just not going – pun intended – to work out. Of course, it’s best practice to set up a meeting and talk about these issues first before you make your final decision.
Trainer is always late, or always cancels
Needless to say, your personal trainer should show up in scheduled sessions – or provide a reasonable excuse for either cancelling or showing up late. If the excuses pile up and the trainer seems to be tardy or busy more than half the time, or if he never seems to return your calls and messages, then you might want to start searching for a new guy to help you get on with the program. Trainers are supposed to bring accountability and motivation to your training; if he himself does not exemplify these virtues, you’ll know it’s time to move on.
Your program hasn’t changed
So you’ve been following an individualized workout program for six months, a program that’s supposed to be customized by your trainer to fit your fitness levels and objectives. You cannot wait to move on to the next level and try out new exercises. Has your trainer changed your program accordingly? Has he responded to your feedback? Has he introduced new exercises to challenge your body and accommodate the physical changes that it has gone through? Are your workouts even any different from that of his other clients? If your answer to all of these questions is “No”, then chances are you’ve ended up with a personal trainer who doesn’t care – a trainer who’s satisfied with implementing cookie-cutter programs. A good fitness trainer responds to his clients’ feedback, and adjusts programs based on what clients need and how they feel.
Your trainer has a roving eye
And by roving eye we mean he’s not paying any attention to your form or your reps. Who knows? Maybe your trainer digs the girl running on a treadmill next to you. Or maybe he’s too busy tweeting on his new iPhone. Or maybe he’s a regular at the gym in which you’re working out, and he needs to stop and say hi to friends throughout your whole session. It doesn’t really matter what it is; nothing can be more unfair to you as a client. Excuse the minor interruptions, but if your personal fitness trainer has an eye on everyone but you, that’s a good enough reason to fire and replace him.
Your trainer is an advertisement
An advertisement for supplements, that is. It’s perfectly all right for trainers to have business partnerships with gyms so that they are able to gently push these products to possibly interested clients, but when your personal trainer starts to annoy you with his hard sales talk and marketing buzzwords, and insists that you will not improve without his products, then talk to him about it and let him know that if you need medical advice, you have a doctor you can consult any time. Health and nutrition will always be an important facet of achieving optimum fitness levels, but a trainer who constantly puts pressure on you to buy is more a nuisance than a fitness guide.
You’re getting injured or fatigued
You may be working with the greatest personal trainer in the world and still get injured. But when you’re suffering from chronic fatigue, frequent colds and illness, constant body aches, and recurrent injuries, there’s a huge possibility that you’ve been working out in a way that hurts your body – and that your trainer has done nothing to correct it. Worse, he may not even be aware that something is wrong. A good personal trainer puts his client’s health at the top of his priorities, and knows how to strike the balance between under-training and overtraining.
Your trainer is taking advantage of you
Advantage can be taken in various ways; among them, financially and physically. If your personal trainer seems like he is only out to make money off of you by cutting your sessions short or overcharging you, if he keeps touching parts of your body unnecessarily, or if his flirtatious advances are getting in the way of your professional relationship, it’s time to move on and go find another personal trainer.
You’re ready to train on your own
Not all reasons for firing your personal trainer are negative. It may be the case that you have simply advanced enough to be able to train and work out on your own. A good trainer will also recognize if and when you are ready, and he will respect the decision should you choose to end your professional relationship.
