3 Reasons Why Personal Training At A Big Gym is A Big No-No

Personal Trainers are all over Tallahassee!

There are personal trainers that work at Gold’s Gym, YouFit, Premier, and Planet Fitness.

There are trainers that will come to you, and trainers that set up in a different location each week.

If you’ve read some of my other articles about hiring a personal trainer then you know that the best have their own studio dedicated to personal training.

I’m going to clue you in to 3 reasons why finding a personal trainer at the same place you have a gym membership is a bad idea.

1. Billy, The New Guy

Do you know who gets clients at the local health club? The new trainers, because the established, experienced trainers don’t have any room for new people! This means you’ll likely get paired up with Billy, who despite his passion and physique, has only been a trainer for 3 weeks. Big gyms are famous for hiring inexperienced trainers because of high employee turnover rate.

Billy (poor Billy) isn’t going to understand why you just can’t meal prep and eat perfectly, because Billy is a college student with no responsibilities. He won’t understand that you haven’t worked out in 10 years, and you’re going to need to ease back into things.

There is a world of difference between one person doing an exercise, and that person having enough experience to teach someone (you) how to move correctly to avoid injury. An experienced personal trainer knows their craft so well they can articulate 30 different ways to set your shoulders down and back. It takes 100’s of hours to learn those different cues through trial and error. Do you see those last words? Trial and error? Don’t be someone’s practice client. Don’t be their error.

2. Their Facility Sucks

Let me tell you a secret about the big gyms these days: they stay open because of donations. I’m not talking about the Salvation Army or Goodwill. I’m talking about people that pay $10 for a gym membership each month but never go. The only way they can stay open with rates that low is to sell memberships to people that don’t use the gym. A lot of them. You could go as far to say they are designed to discourage people from actually using their memberships.

Do you know how else they stay open? By paying their employees the lowest possible wages (in effect attracting low talent/inexperienced individuals), and doing the bare minimum equipment maintenance.

These gyms aren’t designed to deliver health & fitness. They are designed to extract as much money as possible from members while giving as few dollars as possible back.

Find a company that specializes in personal training. Find a personal training studio with top notch equipment & professional trainers.

3. Prime Time

Gym Prime Times are from 11-1, and 4-7. These are the hours of the day when the gym is beyond capacity. The hours where you realize the gym only has the capacity for 2,000 members, but they’ve sold 6,000 memberships to be able to pay the bills.

Try to get a piece of equipment during these hours. I dare you. Squat rack? Get in line. Bench press on Monday? Try again on Thursday.

Oh, you want to alternate two exercises to make an efficient use of your personal training session? Not happening. I guarantee those dumbbells are taken when you come back  from lunges.

What does this mean for you? It means you can’t do the exercises you need to do to improve when someone else is using the machine you wanted. It means your sessions are inefficient because you can only do one exercise at a time instead of alternating 2 or even 3 exercises.

When you get to the point that you are ready to hire a personal trainer in Tallahassee be sure to do some research. Read some reviews.

Here’s an article to get you started on finding the best personal trainer for you.

A good trainer will improve your health. A bad trainer can ruin your health.