Do you need a personal trainer?

Personal trainers are not just for elite athletes and body builders, but also for anyone who is serious about achieving results.

Resistance training is a lot more complicated than jogging or riding a bicycle and the correct technique does not come naturally.

Hiring a personal trainer therefore reduces the risk of injury while guaranteeing guidance on how to use weight training to achieve one’s training goals.

Four times National Amateur Body Building Association of South Africa masters body building champion and Umhlanga based personal trainer, Grant McDonald, said the point of hiring a personal trainer is to get the maximum results for the time spent training.

He said resistance training was all about combining repetitions, speed, number of sets and the weight.

“Different training goals require different variations and combinations of repetitions, speed, sets and weight,” said McDonald.

Most people struggle to get out of bed early for a gym session, especially in winter when the sun only rises after 6.30am.

The accountability that exists in hiring a personal trainer makes it easier to commit to training sessions and to be consistent in one’s training.

“After a hard day at work, people are mentally tired and many of my clients enjoy not having to think for themselves in the gym,” said McDonald.

He said a personal trainer is also useful as a spotter when working out with heavy weights to the point of muscle failure.

A training partner may decide to miss a session, leaving you without a spotter and unable to train properly, but a personal trainer is guaranteed to show up.

The all too familiar “battle of the bulge” can be overcome with the expert guidance of a personal trainer.

McDonald said people sometimes walk slower on the treadmill than they did in a shopping mall and then tell themselves that they have had a sufficient workout.

“That would not happen when training with a professional.”

“People who want to lose weight do not need to go on a diet. Their trainer is there to give them nutritional guidance so that they are able to make healthy food choices to supplement their hard work in the gym and get maximum results,” he said.

He said on the social side, it was also easier to make friends at the gym if you trained with a well-connected personal trainer.

Hiring a trainer should not necessarily be a lifetime commitment.

A good personal trainer’s goal should not be to retain clients forever, but to train them so that they are able to eventually continue training on their own.

McDonald calls it “evangelise, disciplenise, immobilise”.