Hiring a personal trainer or fitness coach is a big deal.
Because a GOOD fitness trainer is someone who becomes your training PARTNER.
You both sweat and suffer together.
You fight and succeed together.
You share a muscular bond.
A bond that has signified brotherhood, honor, and sacrifice throughout the annals of human history.
Fitness coaching is not just coaching fitness.
It is the REAL life coaching.
Fitness coaching is not just watching a body and counting its reps. It is watching a human being struggle against weakness for the glory of strength.
Fitness coaching is not just helping someone lose weight. It is helping someone lose the weight of their stress.
Fitness coaching doesn’t just change the client – it should ALSO change the coach.
Keeping these ideals and constructs in mind:
here are the 5 things you need to know before or during your hiring of a personal trainer and/or fitness coach, as I prefer to be called.
1.Your Coach Should Have Solved:
The Problem For Himself That You Want Him To Solve For You. 99% of the fitness coaches who can help you with losing belly fat or overall fat – have NEVER BEEN FAT. This is so prevalent, and I believe is one of the reasons the fitness industry pushes you to starve yourself instead of minimizing the calorie deficit from restrictive dieting. Imagine a finance coach who was never poor. Or imagine a 7foot tall man teaching guys how to be confident at 5 feet tall or worse yet – teaching them how to act tall. I could devise many more thought experiments like this to show that fitness coaching cannot be done by someone who was born with the genetics to be fabulously fit with minimal effort. Could Einstein teach you how to be as smart as him?
No. Find a person who has been on the journey themselves – and then has done their due diligence in terms of attaining experience and knowledge in the real and theoretical world. Only hire someone who has done it physically and intellectually. Why? You are paying for this so expect the highest level of skill! You deserve it. Your body is too precious to take risks with.
2. Your Coach Needs To Have Clear Philosophy and System
The quintessential hallmark of a skilled master of craft is that he has codified his experience. Any fat-loss and fitness coach who has not systematized his methodology into a replicable tool is not taking his work seriously. The best pilots and surgeons have checklists and can write manuals and books on the intricacies of flying planes and performing open heart surgery. Because the intellectual professional is DRIVEN to put his ideas and thoughts into words and sentences. Not only reinforcing for himself his grasp of concepts but also ensuring that his method is seared into his subconscious mind so that he can operate intuitively to help his patient, clients, and customers.
3. Your Coach Needs To Be Older Than You
Whether it is mental or physical; if your fitness coach is TOO YOUNG – they simply don’t have the real-world life experience to help you. This is just the Universal truth of experience-based coaching. Years and years of helping hundreds upon hundreds of people teach you things that textbooks and language simply cannot articulate, grasp, or codify. Experience is priceless in the real world and there is a reason for that.
Don’t believe me? Test it. If your parent or child had to have life-saving surgery, would you hire a doctor fresh out of medical school with only 5 years of experience in the field – or would you hire a doctor with 25 years of experience in the field who has performed the life-saving procedure thousands of times? You know the right answer. And this is the criteria I use to assess ANYONE I hire for almost anything. I look for VAST experience – even though it costs more. Because it saves me time and reduces the risk of something going wrong.
There are many more traits, characteristics, and criteria that I would personally use for hiring a professional, but for personal fitness coaching these should be the top 3. My 20 years of experience having worked with over 2,000 clients and having trained over 4 dozen trainers has given me a unique perspective on this issue that I hope helps YOU find the best coach for YOU.
— Amir S.
