It’s not always easy to find a personal trainer you match well with, but that shouldn’t stop you from getting fitness results.
Having a personal trainer is proven to improve training consistency and help you reach your fitness goals (for more on that, you should see what my past and current clients had to say about their training experience).
You may not be able to completely replace a professional personal trainer, but there are a number of PT habits you can copy to boost your own gym performance and results.
1. Track Your Fitness Progress
One of the easiest but most powerful services I provide for my clients is note-taking. I record how many sets and reps they perform, how much weight they lift, what exercises they perform, and any useful context. I also make notes for the next time we repeat that workout.
It may not seem like an exciting step to add to your training process, but you’d be amazed at how many people don’t do this. The notes from one session dramatically affect how we progress in the next session, providing important context on the journey towards fitness results.
Record your performance during your rest periods; that way, you won’t forget what you’ve done. Personally, I like using a notepad for this process, which I then transfer over to my clients’ online programmes. However, you could also use a notes app on your phone. The easier it is to look over old information, the better.
2. Keep Your Goals in Mind
These days, you can barely unlock your phone without seeing an influencer or brand telling you what workouts and exercises you need to be doing. It’s easy to feel like a kid in a sweet shop, spoilt for choice. Alternatively, it can make you feel like a deer in the headlights, afraid of making the wrong move!
Unfortunately, not every exercise option is created equally. When personal trainers design your training plan, YOU are the deciding factor for a lot of training decisions. We choose the approach that is most likely to help you reach the fitness results you want. For example: if you have a history of back pain and want a stronger back, we’ll prioritise that training over something else like HIIT workouts.
Whenever you’re making a decision about your training, keep your end goal in mind.
As well as using your goals to guide your big-picture decisions, they can help you on a micro-level too. Your goals can have an impact on how you perform in each session. You can perform the same exercise in two very different ways based on what outcomes you’re training for.
Make sure you’ve written your fitness goals down somewhere, in order of importance. Refer back to them whenever you’re stuck on a training decision, needing some direction for the next set, or you’re looking for some motivation.
3. Book an Appointment for Yourself
Personal training boosts your training consistency. Enhanced training consistency improves your chances of reaching your fitness goals; it’s that simple. One of the reasons for this increase in consistency is that you’ve booked an appointment at the gym. It’s very difficult to miss an appointment at a set time and day, with a professional that you’ve paid for. By comparison, skipping the solo workout that you were thinking of doing later is easy.
It shouldn’t really work this way; after all, you’re training for you, not for your coach. You can flip the script by booking an appointment with yourself. Improve your chances of achieving those workout results by making a non-negotiable gym slot in your diary. Yes, there will always be things in life that are more important than the gym, but you can still hold yourself accountable by making a realistic, non-negotiable commitment to your fitness goals.
If you have a consistent weekly routine it should be easier to choose when these appointments will fit in your diary. If you have a fairly fluid weekly schedule, then book your gym sessions a week in advance. Set aside some time on Sundays for this planning process.
Summary
I’d be doing a disservice to myself and all my fellow trainers if I pretended you could completely replace a personal trainer with a few simple organisational habits.
However, you can get closer to the fitness results you want by employing these soft skills that the top trainers use.
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