I’ve been a personal trainer since 2006, interviewed probably 400 personal trainers to work for my company, and have been in countless gyms over those decades. So you can bet that I’ve seen my fair share of personal trainers.

Because my mind likes to classify things, I’m going to describe the different kinds of personal trainers out there. If you have a trainer, or are considering hiring one, you might recognize what you have, and what you actually want. Sometimes these categories overlap. A trainer can be enthusiastic, friendly and technically excellent. The trouble starts when the personality takes over and the training becomes an afterthought.

And hey, if this article sounds cynical and jaded, that’s because it is 😊

 

The Cheerleader

The cheerleader is the “golden retriever” of personal training. They have a ton of enthusiasm. You can literally do no wrong. You’re lifting a weight well below your capabilities? They’ll cheer you on. You’re exercising less than you need to? They’ll cheer you on.

Although this doesn’t apply universally, my general observation is that while cheerleaders are very enthusiastic, they often lack technical skill and knowledge of proper exercise programming.

By “technical skill”, I mean an understanding of anatomy, exercise physiology and biomechanics.

By “proper exercise programming”, I mean an understanding of how to write an exercise program. It is my belief that there should be a good justification for every variable of an exercise program, like:

  • Exercise selection: there are a million different exercises for any given body part. But you’re only going to do 1-2 exercises for a specific body part. There needs to be a good justification for why those 1-2 exercises were selected and not others.
  • The number of repetitions.
  • The amount of weight used.
  • The order of the exercises.
  • The range of motion chosen.

 

The cheerleader rarely thinks that deeply or scientifically. Enthusiasm is their middle name.

 

The Life Coach/Therapist

This personal trainer gives you life advice that you didn’t ask for. Sometimes it’s a motivational speech. Sometimes it’s a blueprint for fixing your relationship, your career, or whatever else came up between sets.

They may mean well. They like to feel useful, and sometimes a client genuinely appreciates having someone to talk to. There’s nothing wrong with listening.

But somewhere along the way, the workout becomes background noise. You came in for stronger legs and left with advice about your marriage. Your legs are still waiting.

A personal trainer can be supportive without appointing themselves your life coach or therapist. The exercise should still get the attention you’re paying for.

 

The Programmer/Strategist

The third kind of personal trainer is the programmer or strategist. This person actually has a written program for you. They don’t just show up each day, look at what equipment is available, and go with that, without a plan.

This type of personal trainer knows their anatomy and physiology cold, and has excellent exercise programming knowledge.

The occasional pitfall of this kind of trainer is that they sometimes treat people like robots. They occasionally have a hard time compromising between what’s optimal from an exercise perspective vs. what the client is willing to do. For instance, it’s certainly optimal to exercise even when you’re on vacation. But many clients aren’t willing to do that. The programmer/strategist sometimes doesn’t know how to handle that situation.

My opinion is that a personal trainer should simply inform the client as to what’s optimal, but let the client make the final decision. The trainer doesn’t need to force their values on the client.

Again, exceptions exist. I’m not saying that every programmer/strategist is like that, but this is just my observation.

 

The Friend

This type of personal trainer wants to be buddy-buddies with you. They want to hang out, go to the movies, talk about each other’s favourite hobbies and TV shows, and just be BFFs (best friends forever).

Now, don’t get me wrong – occasionally friendships do develop between clients and personal trainers, and I’ve been invited to my fair share of birthday parties, anniversaries, and unfortunately, even funerals.

But this trainer needs to remember the main reason they were hired: to train the client, and get them to their goal. Any friendship is a bonus and secondary.

 

The Drill Sergeant

This is the personal trainer who believes in high intensity, all the time, no matter what. This is the person who confuses difficulty with effectiveness.

In my opinion a personal trainer’s job requires both safety and effectiveness. Difficulty for the sake of difficulty doesn’t make sense.

There’s an appropriate level of difficulty for every person, and it’s not “maximal difficulty on every set of every workout.”

Every set, rep and exercise is a careful consideration of the risk:reward ratio. The benefit to great difficulty is that it’s a powerful stimulus for progress. But there are a few drawbacks as well:

  • The risk of injury rises under fatigue
  • There are increased recovery demands. So you might squeeze out 10% more reps, but slow down your recovery by 20% (hypothetically). Is that really worth it?
  • The risk of burnout rises

 

For the vast majority of people, that level of intensity is not just unnecessary, but potentially harmful. These personal trainers forget that their job is to make their clients’ lives better, not worse.

 

The Influencer

The influencer is the personal trainer who has their camera out, and recording their client, no matter what the client is doing.

This personal trainer prioritizes optics, novelty and branding over effectiveness. Exercises get chosen because they look good on camera, not because they’re effective. Suddenly, getting the right camera angle matters more than getting you to your goal.

This one really rubs me the wrong way, because they’re using their client as a prop in a marketing campaign. And the client is paying for it. If the trainer is going to spend the session recording that client, and putting that on social media, presumably to acquire more clients (even though it’s largely ineffective, although that’s a rant for another time), then the trainer should be paying the client – not the other way around.

For the entire duration of the session, the client should be the most important person in the world. They’re top priority. Not the trainer’s social media following.

 

The Corrective Exercise Guru

This is the personal trainer who wants to be a physiotherapist, and sees dysfunction everywhere they look.

They treat their client like a patient… even when the personal training client never complained about any pain or dysfunction. This personal trainer will find dysfunction where there is none.

Then, they’ll spend the majority of the session doing activation, mobility work, and correcting tiny, insignificant imbalances, when none of it is about the client’s goal.

It’s funny how some personal trainers want to be physiotherapists, but physiotherapists want to be personal trainers. At physiotherapy conferences, and in physical therapy research, it’s been known for a couple of decades now that general strength training is equally (or more) effective than specific physio exercises for rehab. One large meta-analysis of 18 studies showed that there was no difference in effectiveness between rehab and general strength training for chronic low back pain, neck pain and knee osteoarthritis. Don’t get me wrong – there’s a time and place for very specific physio exercises, but that’s a story for another article.

These trainers are usually well-intentioned. They’re trying to improve what they genuinely believe is dysfunction… even though the research shows that things like flat feet, high arches, scoliosis, leg length discrepancies, and others are not pathology. They’re simply variations of normal anatomy (I have an entire article coming out about that in the future). Some people have brown hair, others red hair, others black hair, and others blond. None of those are dysfunctional.

And no, I’m not saying that all cases of scoliosis, flat feet, high arches and leg length discrepancies are normal. But you have to go pretty far outside the norm to get to a point where one of these is truly dysfunctional. For instance, most people find out that they have scoliosis when they get an X-ray for something completely unrelated. The scoliosis wasn’t bothering them. It’s really not a problem until the spinal curvature gets to be more than 15-30 degrees. Again, an article for another time.

 

The Professional

Finally, we reach what I think is the epitome of personal training – the professional. They blend the best parts of the other types, but leave out the not-so-good parts.

This personal trainer is excited and enthusiastic to see their clients. They’re looking forward to progressing their client. But they’re objective. They’re positive when it’s objectively justified, and provide helpful corrections when the technique is off, or when a client has an incorrect idea about fitness or nutrition.

They don’t have blind optimism or blind pessimism. When they think that a client can realistically achieve the goal that they’ve set out, they’ll say so. When they think that a client’s goal is either unrealistic or impossible, they’ll say so as well.

They also have good emotional intelligence – training with them is not just effective because of the results the clients get, it’s also fun. The trainer is personable, knows things about the client besides body measurements and weights lifted. They’re also accommodating and understanding. When a client goes on vacation, they give them the choice to exercise or not. Some personal trainers believe that fitness should be prioritized above everything else – family, social events, work, everything.

The professional understands that their priorities are not the client’s priorities necessarily. Just because the professional may never eat out and exercises on vacations doesn’t mean they force it on their clients. They understand that their clients are adults, with the ability to make their own decisions.

They’re also results-oriented. They know their anatomy, physiology and biomechanics cold. If the client is curious, the trainer enthusiastically explains the finer points of the program to them, the rationale behind them, etc. On the other hand, if the client comes to the trainer so that they don’t have to think, and they don’t care about the deeper reasons behind exercise selection, muscles worked, etc., the trainer doesn’t bore them with details about program design.

Because of this knowledge, the trainer is looking for progress on a regular basis. Both in the short-term (from workout to workout), and in the long term (by taking measurements of whatever is relevant to the client. If the client wants to lose body fat, the trainer measures body fat. If the client wants to reduce joint pain, the trainer measures joint pain. If the client wants to improve bone density, the trainer asks the client to go to an imaging centre and get a DEXA scan).

So, which kind of personal trainer do you have or want? You should expect someone who can explain the plan, track your progress, and keep your goals at the centre of the sessions. Enthusiasm, friendship and a good conversation are all welcome. Just make sure you’re getting the personal training you’re paying for.