I’m a physical therapist (DPT) and strength & conditioning specialist (CSCS), which means that I’m an absolute geek for all things movement, fitness and health. My years of personal training in gyms, athlete performance facilities and clinics have absolutely enriched my life in so many ways. I’m beyond thankful to say that many of those I’ve trained have told me that their time spent with me has done the same for them.
So, the purpose of this article is to let you know some of the great benefits that tend to take place when working with a personal trainer for your health and fitness goals.
Benefits of hiring a personal trainer include reduced risk of injury, improved confidence and knowledge with exercise, effective workouts, accountability, individualized regimens, less intimidation in the gym, an improved support system, personal fitness testing, progress tracking and much more.
There are, of course, many more benefits than just the ones listed within this article. However, the ones outlined in this post are some of the more extensive and more prominent benefits that can apply to almost anyone who would like to sign up for personal training.
Alright, let’s check out some of these benefits!
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Benefit 1: Safety – Learn correct form & technique
Benefit 2: Improved exercise & movement confidence
Benefit 3: Effective workouts & Less trial and error with programs
Benefit 4: Help you train around pain and injuries
Benefit 5: Collaborates with other health professionals
Benefit 6: Reduced intimidation in the gym
Benefit 7: Accountability
Benefit 8: Accelerated learning on health & wellness
Benefit 9: Acts as a support system
Benefit 10: Meet other individuals & get plugged in
Benefit 11: Fitness testing to track results
Benefit 12: Individualized programming
Of course, if you’re wanting to make sure you hire the best personal trainer for YOU and your needs, be sure to check out my article: How To Find AND Hire the Right Personal Trainer For YOU | Expert Tips, where I break everything that you need to know down in detail.
And, if you need to know how often you should workout with your trainer, check out my other article: How Often Should You Workout With A Personal Trainer? | The Formula
Keep in mind that the knowledge and abilities of each personal trainer can vary based on several factors, so be sure that you have selected the best personal trainer for you (as mentioned above). So long as you have done this, you should have access to all of the following benefits along with many more!
Benefit 1: Safety – Learn correct form & technique
Everything starts with safety, hence this being the first benefit on the list. Any good trainer who works with clients will have the general knowledge required to know how to keep you safe and help avoid potential injuries, especially if you’re wanting to do free weight exercises.
It often takes a set of eyes other than your own to determine if your body movement and execution for each of your exercises is adequate. Personal trainers know what to look for with many exercises. As a result, they can step in and offer insight and provide corrections for common errors that may rob you of your workout benefits — or worse — errors that can cause pain and injury.
A good trainer will also help you understand the general concepts and components of ideal movement exercises, which will provide you with knowledge for future exercises if you’re no longer with your trainer. Being able to master fundamental movements will provide you with a solid base for staying safe with many other exercises you may do, especially with more advanced exercises.
Benefit 2: Improved exercise & movement confidence
Learning proper movement and exercise techniques can be a process, but it’s one that should be enjoyable, empowering and thus, rewarding. If you feel you lack confidence in general with exercising or with the world of health and wellness in general, a personal trainer will help you overcome this issue.
Working out and exercising is hard to enjoy when you’re not sure if you’re doing things in an effective manner. However, like anything else in life, activities become much more enjoyable when you’re confident with what you’re doing. This is where a personal trainer can make a profound difference.
Personal trainers are great at explaining the required concepts of fitness, movement, health, and wellness that can take a lot of the uncertainty or overwhelming feelings out of the equation.
Many people are actually interested in learning how to become more active, stronger, fitter and healthier, but never start (or quickly give up) due to conflicting advice thrown around on the internet and in various fitness communities.
Whether you want to improve confidence with your abilities, knowledge, or both, the right personal trainer will act like a pillar that you can lean on to gain the required confidence that you’re after. And when you’re more confident with what you’re doing, you are far more likely to continue your pursuits and thus more likely to succeed!
Benefit 3: Effective workouts & less trial and error with programs
No one likes spending weeks and months on end with their fitness pursuits only to find out that they’ve been doing ineffective workouts. While you want to have safe workouts (benefit 1), you also want to have effective workouts based on your individual goals.
A personal trainer will know how to design workouts that are effective for your goals (and abilities). While learning by trial and error can indeed teach you some great lessons and gems of anecdotal knowledge (provided you stay safe at all times), this is a process that can take years and often at the expense of lost workout benefits.
With a personal trainer, you can gain a lot of confidence (benefit 2) with your workout or exercise regimens and not just your general movement confidence. It’s a lot easier to put in hard work with your training when you know it’s with a regimen or program that is effective and individualized for your goals and abilities.
A good trainer will know how to program an exercise program for you that aligns with your goals and training abilities while ensuring it’s grounded in exercise science and physiology principles. This affords you the ability to waste less time and energy wondering if your program or exercise regiment is effective and to instead double-down on your efforts with your individualized workout program.
Benefit 4: Help you train around pain and injuries
While personal trainers can’t evaluate or diagnose your injuries, good personal trainers know how to train around any issues that you may be having. Often, they can select exercises that help you to reduce or eliminate your pain or dysfunction altogether.
The extent of the ability for your trainer to know how to select such exercises can vary based on their knowledge, credentialing and experience. Still, even an entry-level trainer will help you to find effective ways to train around your aches and pains rather than trying to blatantly train through them.
Trainers can show you how to do proper warm-ups, cool downs, select the appropriate exercise intensity for your workouts or activities, and can offer you plenty of alternative exercises or other pieces of equipment that allow you to train in similar ways without the aches and pains you may experience with an offending movement.
Not only does this keep you safe while allowing you to keep training, but it also helps you to learn and get familiar with plenty of other excellent exercises and equipment you can use on your fitness journey.
Benefit 5: Collaborates with other health professionals
Most people have some sort of nagging pain or discomfort at one time or another that prevents them from doing the exercises or activities that they’d like to do. Personal trainers know this, and in addition to helping you train around these issues, they can also collaborate with other healthcare professionals on your behalf. (This is something that I used to do constantly with my clients before becoming a physical therapist).
A good personal trainer will (with your consent) reach out to any other healthcare professional you’re working with and get their professional insight on what’s causing your pain or issue.
From there, they can use the expert opinion of that healthcare professional to collaborate to ensure that you’re doing the exercises and movements that are most appropriate. Your trainer will also be happy to let your healthcare provider know how their training is going and any issues they may see with your movement, exercise limitations, etc.
Benefit 6: Reduced intimidation in the gym
Unfortunately, for many people, the thought of setting foot into a gym all by themselves can be too intimidating to do so. Whether it’s due to feeling isolated while being surrounded by other “fitness junkies” and “meatheads” or surrounded by machines and equipment that they are unfamiliar with, it’s common to feel overwhelmed and intimidated in any sort of fitness-based environment.
Having a personal trainer at your side can be very reassuring for many people, especially when it comes to their first few times stepping foot into a gym or fitness facility.
As you work with your trainer, they will help you feel less intimidated with the general environment and serve as a valuable resource for helping you feel welcomed and right at home within the facility.
Fun fact: One of my favourite aspects of personal training has always been helping people feel welcomed and comfortable in any facility that I trained them within. Helping them to genuinely feel valued and welcomed within the facility was always a critical step in helping them to stay consistent, motivated and empowered with working towards their overall goals.
Benefit 7: Accountability
For many individuals who would like to get in shape or even just stay healthy, the limiting factor isn’t intimidation or lack of confidence; for many, it’s simply a matter of lacking accountability.
While training partners or “gym buddies” can be a great way to stay accountable, not everyone is fortunate enough to have a friend or peer who shares your desires to hit the gym and embark on a fitness journey.
A personal trainer, for many, is a necessity for ensuring that they stay accountable to their health and wellness pursuits. Whether their goals are to get stronger, leaner, or simply keep moving and stay active, having a personal trainer means that you’ve signed up for someone to hold you accountable.
A good personal trainer will help you in genuine ways with keeping you accountable and won’t “bully” you or guilt you into coming in for your workouts.
As personal trainers, we want you to succeed and to have the internal motivation to maintain your fitness pursuits. Still, we know that sometimes (especially when first starting out), it can be challenging to stay accountable for what you’ve set out to achieve. We know that, and we’re here to help in friendly and effective ways!
Benefit 8: Accelerated learning on health & wellness
Signing up for working with a personal trainer yields many more benefits than just learning how to have proper exercise form and how to use fitness equipment. When you have access to a personal trainer, you can ask them all sorts of questions about the various other aspects of health and wellness.
Many trainers will have the knowledge and ability to provide other insightful answers to commonly asked fitness-related questions that tend to come along for the ride when wanting to get stronger and healthier. And even if your trainer doesn’t have the answers, they should be able to point you in the right direction for getting the answers.
Having a resource that you trust can save you a lot of time and frustration when it comes to getting answers to the questions you may have with your general fitness pursuits. As the saying goes, knowledge is power. Having answers or insight to questions that you may have will save an extensive amount of time and energy that it could otherwise take to track down answers from a resource you trust.
Benefit 9: Acts as a support system
Sometimes you need someone in your corner who is supportive and empathetic with the amount of work it can take to make positive lifestyle changes. Unfortunately, not everyone has a network of supportive individuals to confide in, trust, and draw encouragement from when it comes to wanting to change their lifestyle and fitness for the better.
When you hire an excellent personal trainer, you will have someone in your corner who genuinely supports you with your desire to change for the better.
A support system or a supportive individual is everything when it comes to sustaining your efforts with any sort of change pertaining to a healthy lifestyle. A supportive individual (a personal trainer or otherwise) acts as a lifeline for fuelling your ongoing efforts to turn yourself into the new and upgraded version of yourself that you desire to be.
With the right personal trainer, you’ll gain access to a knowledgeable individual who will stand with you and support you with your physical pursuits.
Benefit 10: Meet other individuals & get plugged in
Since personal trainers make a living out of helping others attain their fitness goals, there’s a solid chance that they know some other individuals who have very similar goals, fitness abilities and even training schedules to yours.
As a result, a personal trainer can likely introduce you to one or more individuals whom you’d probably enjoy working out with or getting to know. As trainers, we know that our clients are more likely to succeed when they feel surrounded by like-minded individuals. Meeting new people, hearing their stories and getting to know their stories can be very empowering and enlightening.
You may even be able to do group personal training sessions, where your personal trainer trains you and one or more other similar individuals as a grouped session. These grouped sessions tend to save each individual a bit of money with each session while providing an excellent atmosphere for workouts and activity sessions.
Group training, when done with individuals who share similar abilities, goals and mindsets, is incredibly fun to be a part of and is a great way to make deep and even lasting social connections in the process.
Benefit 11: Fitness testing to track results
Working out and staying active can be enough of a chore on its own, especially when you’re new to the gym. Taking the time and effort to learn how to assess and then track your fitness results can add a lot of extra work to the process. And it only gets even more complicated when you’re not sure how to properly assess and re-assess the parameters required to monitor your overall improvements as time goes on.
Thankfully, a personal trainer can do all of this for you, taking out a lot of extra hassle and headache that can otherwise be required to accurately monitor your progress.
Benefit 12: Individualized programming
The more specific you are with your training goals, the more individualized your training and exercise regimen should be. While general exercise programs or training regimens can be effective, having a program that is individually detailed to your specific abilities and needs will take things one step further, helping you stay healthier during your training while ensuring more significant results.
A personal trainer will help customize a workout program based on your goals and any limitations, abilities, or unique factors that need to be accounted for. Every individual’s body has different factors that should be accounted for, ranging from current health status and previous injuries to desired training goals.
By having a regimen that is dialled into what your body specifically needs and can tolerate, you’re essentially getting a “custom fit” program, which is likely to make your training much safer, more effective, more meaningful and even more enjoyable!
Final thoughts
While there can be a lot to consider with whether or not it may be worthwhile for you to hire a personal trainer, there are plenty of great benefits you can receive if you opt to do so. The key will first be to find the right personal trainer for you (see my article, How To Find AND Hire the Right Personal Trainer For YOU | Expert Tips). Once you have done so, the benefits listed above within this article (along with many others) will be available to you to receive.
We all consider hiring a personal trainer for different reasons. Still, whatever your reason or reasons may be, there are plenty of great universal benefits that you will receive, no matter why you may have chosen to hire them.
Hi! I’m Jim Wittstrom, PT, DPT, CSCS, Pn1.
I am a physical therapist who is passionate about all things pertaining to strength & conditioning, human movement, injury prevention and rehabilitation. I created StrengthResurgence.com in order to help others become stronger and healthier. I also love helping aspiring students and therapists fulfill their dreams of becoming successful in school and within their clinical PT practice. Thanks for checking out my site!