Some people go for personal training, and after a few sessions or a few months they stop. Some people go for personal training, and they keep going for years – three years, seven years, 15 years.
Why the Difference Motivation ?
Why do you go for personal training in the first place? If you use personal training to lose weight, and you do lose weight – and you keep off your excess weight by good nutrition and exercise at home, good for you. Mission accomplished.
If you go for personal training in the spring to look better for summer, if your motivation is to look a bit more trim with muscles toned and maybe tanned, you are a short term user of personal training, and maybe a repeat short term user.
If your goal is fitness, strength, cardiovascular conditioning, flexibility – take your choice – you probably are a long-term client for personal training. If you want to realize any of these goals, then personal training is a part of your weekly routine indefinitely. You have to keep going.
But Do You Want to?
Is your motivation short term;
Maybe not, Maybe you start with those long-term goals, but you don’t last for the long term. Of course, you may find that your personal trainer doesn’t meet your expectations, somehow, and you drop out. We don’t think that happens at Bench Gym Personal Training.
What Would Keep Your Motivation At a High Level for the Long Term?
Here is a string of ideas. See which ones appeal to you.
Make Each Session With Your Personal Trainer is at Least in Part a New Experience, For Example:
You do new exercises week by week. You find novelty.
You increase the resistance (dumbbells, barbells, bands, machines) in order to focus for a time on strength.
You increase the number of repetitions to focus for a time on endurance.
You adjust your focus to a different set of muscles, not just the ever-present biceps, triceps, hamstring, quadriceps. Why not front core VS back core, forearms, calves?
You add flexibility to your list of exercises. Yoga-type lunges.
You add balance to your list of exercises. Curls on one foot.
You set Measurable but Modest Goals, And You Track Your Progress
Set a stopwatch to measure how long you hold the forearm plank.
Count the number rope-skips you do toward your goal.
Count the number of push-ups you do compared to your trainer’s your trainer’s goal for you.
Engage Your Personal Trainer in Conversation
About fitness, of course – what is that muscle called? What muscles do this exercise affect?
Maybe also about nutrition and health; he or she has training in these domains.
Or about topics of mutual interest that are more social. Your trainer might be a friend of sorts, not just a distanced professional.
Talk to Your Fellow Trainees
The gym isn’t a social club, but you don’t need to be anonymous, either.
At your home workouts, you are alone; in the gym you are with others, so share a few tips
Most importantly, you are a personal training long termer if you know that personal training for fitness is a life-long enterprise. You maintain your motivation because for you personal training is enjoyable.
It is physically challenging, and it is rewarding when you see your progress. For you it is also sociable. You want to go for training each time, you look forward to it. You and your trainer made it that way.
