We spoke to three personal trainers who work with clients one-on-one and through group classes to get their insider tips: Niamh Fitzgerald from Lift Training Studios, Paul Byrne from BodyByrne Fitness and Pat Divilly who previously set up his own gym and now runs online classes.
Here are the top things they wish you knew.
1 Everyone starts off intimidated, but trainers don't expect you to be a gym god from day one
All three trainers acknowledge that people are nervous when they first start, and that’s okay. You’re coming to them for help and they know that.
“The gym is an intimidating place for people, just because they maybe haven’t played sport or been active in quite some time. There’s a fear there and people are self-conscious,” says Divilly.
“All my stuff was group-based, and we would do regular nights out, barbecues, get-togethers, and we also did online forums for people to communicate with each other outside class. I wanted them to feel like they were part of a team, part of something more than just fitness.”
For Fitzgerald, small things make a big difference on the intimidation front. “There’s often a lack of confidence coming in; a fear people are looking at them. My studio here doesn’t have any mirrors or anything like that so people are less self-conscious,” she says.
2 Losing weight doesn't have to be your primary goal
While most people will have weight loss or aesthetic goals, you can get a personal trainer for any reason. “Everyone comes in with a different goal. A lot of people think people come in to train and lose weight and tone up, but that’s not necessarily the thing.
“I’ve got a lot of clients who come in because they’ve got gastro problems, confidence issues, or they just want to get fit,” says Fitzgerald.
In fact, figuring out what your reason is, whether it’s weight-related or not, is very important, says Divilly. “You have to have a ‘why’, a strong ‘why’ for your goal. Most people get caught in the ‘how’. How am I going to lose five stone? How am I going to run a marathon? That gets people bogged down; it gets people stressed; it gets people overwhelmed.
“If you can come up with a compelling ‘why’ before the ‘how’, then the how will take care of itself.”
3 Their job isn't to get you the biggest results in the shortest time
Nothing is that easy. Sustainability is key, says Byrne. “The most important thing is a sustainable lifestyle change. Do the small changes and stick to them. It will work. It takes a bit longer but it is sustainable. There’s no point dropping a pile of weight fast and then you have a pizza and you’re wearing the pizza the next day. Tiny, tiny changes mean you can have a pizza and you don’t see it the next day because your body will use it up for energy.”
4 You don't have to train every day. In fact, it might do you more harm if you do
Between two and four sessions a week is the general consensus, and forget spending hours on the treadmill. “Overtraining is an issue for some people, and injuries are likely to happen then,” says Divilly.
“I see a lot of people who spend hours on the treadmill or on the ropes, but I’d be a believer that short and intense works better. If you’re doing a tough session, you shouldn’t be able to do more than 40 minutes and that’s going to burn calories and elevate your metabolism. If you spend hours on the treadmill at a steady pace, it’s more impact on your joints and it raises your cortisol, your stress hormone, which leads to holding belly fat,” he says.
5No one is going to push you further than you can go
The trainers want you to achieve your goals, but not at the cost of you hurting yourself. “You have to walk before you can run and I’d be very conscious of that. You don’t want people coming in trying to lift ridiculous amounts of weight starting off and then they’re injured and can’t train for six months. What’s the point in that? We want people to be able to train three or four times a week and enjoy it,” says Fitzgerald.
6Losing three stone won't make you happy
Attaching your happiness to a weight goal will keep you miserable while you get to it, says Divilly. “A lot of people will join the gym and think, right, when I lose three stone, I’m going to be happy. They set themselves up to be miserable until they lose that weight.
“You need to have a blend of celebrating your little wins, being grateful for the progress you’re making, and also having something to keep you somewhat focused.
“Most people will overestimate what they can do in a month, but underestimate what they can do in six months. I always tell people 1 per cent improvement every time you come to the gym. If you train a few times a week, a tiny improvement in each of those sessions would be huge.
7The trainers are probably going to ask about what you're eating
“You really are what you eat and you can’t out-train a bad diet,” says Byrne. “You can burn only so many calories, and let’s say, in a really hard workout, you burn 600 calories. If you’re having four pints of beer later that day and a few chocolate bars, you’ve taken in 1,000 calories. If you’re getting more calories in, you’re not losing weight.”
8You're fooling only yourself if you lie about it
“We can totally tell. Everyone lies, and we know. The big problem is the evening time, when people shut down and go home and they crave that bit of sugar. They have their meal and they have a biscuit and once they start, they go, ‘Ah I’ll start again tomorrow.’ I’ve been around the block so I know straight away. I’ve seen it all, from movie stars lying to athletes lying,” says Byrne.
It’s most beneficial to be honest, according to Fitzgerald, who says while she will hold you accountable, there’s no judgment. “We’re all adults. They’re not letting me down personally, I mean, they’re the ones putting in the work. It’s their body. It’s not my abdominals that are struggling or my organs or whatever,” she says.
9 That doesn't mean you can't enjoy your life Trainers are not sent to this earth to take away nice things. "If people are out and having food or whatever, and everyone's having dessert, we'd encourage that. If you have it, just get back on track. You don't want guilt around food because that leads to more psychological problems than anything else," says Fitzgerald.
10 It isn't all protein shakes from here on "Everyone comes in here and asks do I have to start eating protein bars and drinking six protein shakes a day?" says Fitzgerald. "Absolutely not. People think if they're building muscle, they have to eat loads of protein and they'll have to go and get loads of supplements. That's not the case at all. I'm very focused on eating real food."
11 Trainers are human and don't want to work out sometimes too Personal trainers love exercise more than most, but that doesn't mean getting out of bed and into the gym is easy. Achievable goals and seeing progress can keep people on track.
“Every day, I have to motivate myself, but I don’t stop because I don’t want to get out of shape or lose strength or lose fitness,” says Byrne. “The best motivation you can give someone is when they start seeing the results of what they’re doing. If people see clothes fitting them better, they’re feeling good and dying to get more. They lose motivation if they’re getting nothing out of it.”
Divilly says: “I’d have all the same struggles as my clients so I can empathise with them. I’m very busy, I travel a lot. I don’t have access to gyms all the time. I get dips in motivation. I lose interest. One of the things that served me was always having a goal. At the moment I’m training for a triathlon, which is something different for me. I signed up for the triathlon, so I can hold myself accountable.”
12 Not every trainer will scream at you or wants to make you sick
You might have an image in your head of an army commander-style trainer screaming at you to work until your body gives up, but that’s good for no one, says Byrne.
“I hate that. You can motivate other ways. Standing beside someone screaming ‘Come on! Get faster! More!’ won’t work. You can motivate them by saying ‘Come on, you can do it, you’re doing really well, yes, we’re there, we’re there, really good.’ That works way better than ‘Four more! Three more!’ ”
“Some new trainers boast about making their clients puke in a session,” says Divilly. “It’s crazy because they need to remember these people are scared of exercise. If you make them enjoy it, that’s how they stay consistent. A good trainer isn’t going to make you crippled or sick.”
13 They want you to grow up and move on, when you’re ready
Personal trainers get excited seeing your confidence grow under their training. “A lot of people think once you have a personal trainer you have to have one for life, but my job is to educate people so they can go off and if they want to join a commercial gym for whatever reason, they can,” says Fitzgerald. “We have helped them build that confidence to be able to go there. That’s great to see, people having that confidence.”
