The Advantages of Working With a Personal Training at a Private Studio

Personal Training has become a popular service today.  You can easily find a trainer to help you reach your fitness goals all over the place.  You will see trainers working with gym members, teaching outside at beaches and parks, or you can even have a trainer visit you at your home to work.  You can get great results from any of these methods.  The main concern is that you have a certified trainer that is keeping you motivated.  On top of all of these places to work with a trainer, private studios are popping up more and more.  Are these better than other places to train?

While anywhere you can train with a certified personal trainer will be beneficial, working at a private studio can have the most appeal.  First we can look at the type of trainers that you will find at a gym and a studio.  Let me start by explain there are many great trainers that work at gyms and will be very successful.  However, many gyms will hire trainers by walking the floor and finding members that look the part.  They have these members pass their own certification and put them out on the floor to start training others.  The main problem with this is even though they are probably in great shape and know a little bit about fitness, they mostly know about training themselves.  They probably do not have much experience working with special populations/conditions such as diabetics, hypertension, low back pain, and arthritis.  If you see a trainer that is constantly training each client he or she has with the same routine for each of them, they may be guilty of this. 

Even if the trainer has a certification and some experience the club will not do very much to enhance their education.  Their main concern is that the trainer is selling personal training packages and supplements.  They spend most of the time teaching the trainer how to be a better salesperson, not a better fitness professional.  As long as their sales numbers are up it does not matter if they are a good trainer or not.  Those are the ones who will be promoted to managers to teach others how to sell, not how to train. 

Most studios want to pride themselves in having the best personal trainers in their respective areas.  In order to do this trainers that are hired are interviewed and tested to make sure they are representative of the facility.  Most trainers that work at a studio do view fitness as a career and not as a part time job.  These individuals will take their job seriously and constantly strive to learn more and do a better job.  When you meet with your trainer you should hear them mention that they attend different conferences and events to show you that they are trying to improve their service for you. 

A higher level of trainer is only one benefit of working in a training studio.  If you have ever tried working out at a club in January at around 6pm you will understand my next point.  Gyms get crowded.  Imagine you could kick everyone out of the gym and have the whole place to yourself with maybe one or two others working out at the same time.  This essentially is what a studio can offer.  You will not have all the equipment that a gym would, but you will have what you need as well as a trainer showing you new exercises you never thought existed.  Not only is this convenient for you but your trainer will be able to help you better.  A trainer at a gym might write up a great workout for you but then find out all the equipment that he or she was going to use is being occupied.  Now they have to think on the fly and put together another program that was not really what they wanted to do. 

Along with the crowd come the distractions.  This can be very frustrating.  You are trying to work with your trainer and someone keeps asking him or her questions during your paid session.  This puts the trainer in a very awkward position.  They want to help the person but they do not want to neglect you.  Or you see a friend and they want to talk to you.  Now you trainer is getting frustrated because you are wasting some of your workout time.  With less people around you can do much more in a smaller amount of time. 

I am obviously biased since I work out of a studio.  I have worked in many different locations.  I worked at the big health club, in home, and outside with clients.  You can find great trainers in all different locations.  If you are looking for a trainer who has a career in fitness not just a part time job you might want to check out some local studios.  Often times they are the same rates as health clubs except you won’t have membership fees.  Check it out for yourself and see the difference.  Most studios will offer a free session to test it out.  Why not take advantage of it?  If you like your gym better you can always go back.  I promise though, once you’ve workout in a studio you will not want to go back.