Personal Training

Almost every, if not every gym has one or more fitness instructors, but not every instructor is a certified personal trainer, in fact for you to be an instructor you do not have to own a personal trainer degree. Everybody that has been to a gym or is currently a member of one has some sort of an idea of what an fitness instructor is. As the representatives of this new species called "personal trainer"are still relatively few but increasing quite rapidly, I'm going to introduce you to their characteristics.

What is personal training?

This is when a person stands next to another person that is sweating and panting and encourages him to sweat and pant even more. Or so it seems.

Personal coaching is a new kind of animal - it doesn't bite nor growl, in fact it is quite strong, agile, resilient. And smart. Supposedly.

What is a personal trainer?

Personal means personal - when you workout out this person will be with you, beside you, beside you and nowhere else. Of course, not until death do you part, but at least the end of the workout. A personal trainer won't do small talk with the hot chick doing leg curls while you're doing your heavy squats or won't on the phone talking with his girlfriend while you're busting your ass on the bench, or at least a good one is not supposed to do that.

A Personal Trainer:

• Is someone who understands your needs, sees your options and helps you achieve your goals. These goals might be like :having more energy, feeling better, muscle gain, strength gain, fat loss etc. it depends on the case. Sometimes practitioners have desires that are well beyond their capabilities - then the coach's job is first increase the athlete's capabilities.
• A person with excellent knowledge of bio mechanics and kinesiology (ie someone who understands the functions of the various muscles, their qualities and properties and hence - the movement of the whole body). That, combined with his knowledge on which type of training is required for the event in question and a training suitable for the athlete grants a higher quality to the methods a personal trainer uses.
• A person that possesses excellent technique of execution of most movements. This is one of the most important characteristics for a personal trainer, a man can teach you what he can do, so you can do it as well as he can, but a man can't teach you what he does not know. Of course, there are exceptions, but they are rather rare, and usually it comes to coaches who were much better, but at some point they had to stop due to an injury (for example).personal trainer degree online
• A person that possess knowledge about nutrition, human physiology and biochemistry. Or at least, it is advisable to have that knowledge because there is no way to hard for a long time without quality recovery. There is no way to hard and with quality without being in good health. A good health and a quality recovery can't exist without good nutrition. For our good nutrition, however, it is necessary for us to know the body well enough, to know which foods will helps us reach our goals.personal trainer school online
• A person that is a good psychologist.By a"good psychologist" i don't mean that one will tell athletes to lie comfortably on the bench and then an hour he will hear your complaints about the your boss, traffic, weather, etc. and help you with your relationship problems Yes, you can have those moments, but the job of the trainer is to make it so that the nothing interferes with your training, a personal trainer should not share his problems with you as well, he can't tell you how his own boss is busting his balls every day or tell you how his wife is cheating on him etc.A good coach will not stress you with his problems he is there to encourage you and motivate you not stress you further.
• A person that will choose the best for your current physical and mental state. As I mentioned above - the intensity should be regulated to fit your current possibilities (because one day we can be at 100% and the next we can be at 5) the direction remains -he/she is to to satisfy your needs and desires. On the other hand, your personal trainer as a good psychologist should be able to sense your emotional state and know whether it is better to annihilate your body to clear your head of the crap that it has collected through the day . Or is it a better idea perform a simple toning workout because your stress has already exceeded the limit of what you can take.
• It is advisable for the coach to be familiar with the structural balance of the body. This is because most people's daily life nowadays is related to sitting on chairs and furniture which is quite often related to computer work. This leads to muscle inactivity, muscle tightness and muscle weakness in certain parts of the body (usually abdominal, waist and shoulder girdle), which in it's own turn leads to muscle imbalance that often carries health risks. A distinctive muscle imbalance may prevent us from safely executing a movement or even cause an injury that prevents us from fully or stop us from training for awhile.

Personal Training Certificates

I'll talk a little about how you can get a personal training certificate for those that are just curious or want to actually own one.
As it is now one can get a certificate even at home.
For example you can even apply to online personal trainer courses and get a personal trainer degree online by taking online personal trainer certification programs.
There are personal training colleges and also various personal trainer courses etc.
There are many organizations that offer certificates make sure you do your research before applying to one.
I don't want to get really into this topic in this post, i might cover it in a completely separate post in the future.




Above all, a personal trainer should be a role model! And that is perhaps is the most important feature because  for you to train people to get in shape, you first need to be fit. To train people to become stronger, you first need to be strong. To train people to build muscle, you need to have plenty of your own. To train people to burn fat, you must have burned your own unnessesary one first.
The difference between personal trainers can be from heaven to earth.Those are the characteristics that i believe a good personal trainer should have.
(sources:bbteam)
(pictures:fralinca.ca)