How Your PT Can Deliver Better Outcomes With Your Help

The essence of delivering a personal training session is ensuring the relevance of the exercises and activities to each individual Client’s needs. Most personal trainers can to some extent perform a reasonably accurate visual assessment of a prospective Client’s physical capabilities and limitations , but information from the Client can ‘fine tune’ the PT’s evaluation and lead to a more efficient use of time.

At the introductory stage of a Client/PT relationship the PT will usually ask a series of questions designed to elicit information on the general health of the Client; any medical conditions or existing or ‘old’ injuries or strains; flexibility or lack of it etc. All responses would be computed to provide the PT with a picture of the capabilities or limitations of the Client so that the resulting exercise programme will be appropriate for them and not over-stretch them or cause any injury. 

This ‘Q & A’ stage of the relationship is invaluable and initiated by the PT. However, the best long-term results are experienced if an exchange of information between the PT and Client is ongoing during and between PT sessions.

Feedback is essential for the personal trainer to be able to tailor the plan for the optimum benefit of the Client. If you can be clear about what you want to achieve from your personal training sessions (you could make a list); being honest about your fitness and how much time and effort you want to invest can only help.

Although it’s important to “fuel” your body with food to ensure that your energy levels are up to the challenge, it’s probably not a good idea to have a heavy meal just before a training session. Try to restrict it to a ‘light bite’ of slow-releasing energy.  On the other hand, make sure you have plenty of drinking water available.

A key part of organising a personal training programme is (obviously) planning ahead, so if you can, make sure you have your diary/phone with you so you can at least pencil in the next few PT dates. This is also good for discipline because you then have it in your mind (and your diary!) to commit to the schedule of sessions.

Finally, don’t be afraid to do your own warm up in advance of starting the session with your PT. Once you know the routine a gentle “pre-warmup warmup” could set you up nicely for a productive session and further educe the risk of injury (particularly during these colder months!).

See you soon 😉