Personal trainers can be a God-send. A good personal trainer gets you and your fitness goals and can help you figure out how to get to where you want to be in terms of fitness levels and stay motivated throughout the journey. Remember, though: not all personal trainers are created equal. If you are looking for a professional to help you make your fitness goals a reality, here are some things to look out for and avoid.

1. Someone whose coaching style doesn’t work for you

Just as there are different ways of teaching Maths or leading a team at work, each personal trainer will have their own coaching style. Some sports psychologists have described the two main categories of coaching styles as ‘fierce vs. friendly’, and personal trainers will usually favour one opposite of that spectrum over the other. While some people respond well to the stereotypical military bootcamp style of personal training, where the coach yells at their client to motivate them to keep going, other people are put off by this technique and prefer a much more reasoned approach. You need to find the coaching style which will work best for you and then narrow down your search for a personal trainer accordingly.

2. Someone who thinks that one size fits all

Beyond the issue of coaching styles, different people will have different fitness goals and different life circumstances, which will affect the way they go about getting fitter. For example, the folks at Truth Fitness specialise in helping business leaders and their teams gain better fitness and general health levels, and their approach will differ from somebody else who specialises in coaching single parents of toddlers, for instance, or older retired people. Each demographic will have different levels of general health, income, and time available, which will affect how much they can pay their trainer and how long the programme might need to be and what a realistic goal might look like for them. There’s no point choosing a personal trainer who thinks that one approach will work for absolutely everybody, so shop around for someone who gets you and your specific circumstances.

3.  Someone who has unrealistic expectations of you

A related point is that you and your personal trainer need to agree from the start of your working relationship on what the ultimate fitness goals are for you and what strategies you are going to employ to help you get there. Those goals and strategies need to be realistic in terms of the timeline, the price you will incur, and the levels of effort you will need to put in. For instance, a realistic muscle growth target for a natural bodybuilder is 1-2 lbs per week, and there would be no point signing up with a personal trainer who insists on setting a weekly muscle growth goal of 6 lbs, for example, as that might not be sustainable for your situation and might mean that you are pushed too hard, which could lead to injuries.