Hey All, I’m trying to get motivated with exercise and I’ve thought time an time again about a personal trainer… has anybody else here had any previous experience with personal trainers? I understand at times they can be quite expensive and very demanding. Anyway, I’ve been watching the Personal Trainer videos on this site i found (i’m in Australia) and i’ve located a trainer i’m confident will help… It’s just a matter of taking the plunge! Is it better to do things myself or should i be buying my motivation is the premise of what i’m asking here…

Thanks,
Jenny.

Hmmm. . . . I never had a regular personal trainer but I did have someone who laid out a work-out plan for me in the beginning and then months later helped me up and tweak it. I thought it was a good experience, but the cost of a regular trainer was never something I could even afford or therefore consider. That said, my mom uses a trainer and loves every minute of it. She worked out on her own every day for 30 years and now that she’s had a trainer for the last 4 months she’ll never go back.

I think a trainer is a really personal thing, though. Buying motivation is a complicated topic. The motivation has to come from inside you somehow, if at first, enough to get a trainer. I think it’s important to make sure your personalities mesh and that you have a similar understanding about what you want to get out of your exercise. If you want to get healthier and have better endurance and your trainer thinks the way to do that is to make you lose weight and that’s the trainer’s focus, perhaps there’s an incompatibility there? (especially if you’re of the HAES mindset)

Whatever you decide, I’ll be interested to hear about it. If you’re looking for other sources of motivation for the exercise beyond a trainer pushing you, consider these.

Good luck!

Thanks for the reply… Was the person who helped you out a fitness professional? Yeah I think it has everything to do with personal trainers adding sort of a social element to fitness routines, which is what people enjoy. I mean even checking out some videos of fitness bootcamps make it look a lot funner… (mind you, i’m no where near there yet!)

I have the motivation inside me to lose weight, and I am exercising but what I struggle with is the ongoing routines… motivation is a lot easier because you can just tell yourself you have it, whereas exercising discipline and actually doing a workout is harder! At the moment the female PT i’m looking at is a corporate personal trainer in sydney, which is conveniently close to work. If i’m going to be getting motivated i may as well do it 5 days a week. I work in I.T so I think getting more active during the day will make me feel less tired at night…

Thanks for the blog resources, these are great. Things i’m definitely looking at:

~ More energy
~ Better sleep quality
~ Reduced muscle and joint stiffness

I’m think Pilates might go a long way for me here… anyway, I’ll keep you posted on how everything unfolds!

Jenny

Hey Jenny,

Sorry for the insanely tardy response - so rude of me, but I’m sure you know how it goes.

I’m glad that the resources around here are helping. It’s a lot of great advice, no doubt. One thing it doesn’t aim to promote, though, is weight loss, which is so often part of people’s fitness goals but the hardest to maintain and, at the end of the day, the one whose inability to maintain leads to disillusion and actually worse health overall, not only due to the damaging effects of weight-cycling, but also because people think there’s no point in moving if they’re not losing weight.

Pshah! I say. Moving for its own sake and for health should be the real goal. If weight loss is your goal, that’s certainly your prerogative, but I’d encourage you to look at these resources and activities and the pursuit of health and happiness as independent from weight loss because all of the other things you mentioned are good for you without weight being part of the equation.

As for my fitness trainer, he was a professional in the San Francisco Bay Area, and he was quite good. Great at motivating and enthusiasm and keeping the whole session engaging. Unfortunately, doing that long-term was not in the budget so he just would teach me what to do, I’d do it for a while, and then schedule another section at which point we’d learn how I could take next steps. One thing that was great about him was his lack of concern for weight and size, and his interest only in improving health through other means that have proven long term efficacy and satisfaction.

I hope that your pursuits at movement are working out and that you keep in mind how movement of any kind is positive and has positive effects - not just intense, long-term, sustained movement.

Good luck!