Working one-on-one with a fitness coach is something that many people struggle to come to terms with, in the era of ad-supported EVERYTHING many gym-goers are given access to free workout routines and tutorials online and in magazines, making the prospect of hiring an expert seem expensive and unnecessary.
But as the saying goes: “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”. Fitness training as an industry is booming, and with good reason. The time and money you put into working with a trainer isn’t spent, it’s INVESTED.
In brief, here’s why:
- Time is money, working with an expert will have you seeing results faster, with less effort.
- A good coach will educate you as much as train you, that knowledge will serve you for the rest of your life.
- Injuries in the gym are depressingly common, and almost always the result of using the wrong form, or choosing bad exercises. Time spent injured is also time you can’t train, meaning you’re losing the results you’ve been working for.
- Success in the gym often flows into other parts of your life, people report feeling happier, more energetic, and more confident.
- There is no money better spent than investing in your health, it’s not about living as long as possible, it’s about making the years you do live as GOOD as possible.
Read on below for a deeper explanation.
Time is money
One of the MOST common arguments against working with a coach is the expense, and to be sure when you’re looking down the barrel of $60, $70, even $80 per hour, the mind starts to think over what other uses that money could be put towards. This problem is magnified by the variety of “budget” options available, a gym membership and program written by the social media celebrity of the day will probably only set you back $20 per week, and seems like a very attractive option by comparison.
But this is a great example of false economy. The first question you have to ask yourself is, what’s your time worth to you? $20/hour? $30/hour? What would you be making if you spent that time working instead of training? Going to the gym 3 times a week for 6 months is a big investment of your time, thousands of dollars of opportunity cost, and something you’d definitely want to see a good return on. And yet so many people quit in this time because they just don’t get the results they want. I’m sure you personally know a few people who went to the gym for a while then quit because they just couldn’t shift the fat, or didn’t build the strength and muscle they wanted.
And this is where a trainer comes in. If you have zero experience with fitness and nutrition, working on your own you can probably expect to make about zero progress in your first month. 15+ hours of you time down the drain, nothing to show for it. Your body needs to be stressed the right way to make it develop, the same way a student needs to be challenged in order to learn. With a trainer, you’re making progress in your first 10 minutes, using exercises selected to achieve YOUR goals, nutrition advice tailored for YOUR needs, not a generic program that’s designed to be easy to teach (that’s a dirty secret of the online fitness industry, the exercises are chosen to be easy to mimic, not for their effectiveness).
On top of that, nobody expects you to work with a trainer for the rest of your life, which leads us into point number 2…
Fitness coaching is an education
Now this is where we unfortunately need to start using the of qualifier a “good” coach. Certainly, there are plenty of extremely average coaches out there, and the argument can definitely be made that money spent on these people is not getting you the value you deserve.
A GOOD coach will not simply be directing you to “lift these weights”, “eat this food”, “run this far”, a GOOD coach will be helping you build a fundamental understanding of how the human body functions as you train. Your understanding of human anatomy will improve, you’ll learn how to select the right foods to eat at the right times rather than suffering through a “diet”, and eventually you’ll graduate to a level where you can progress your training and physical development on your own. Like any good teacher, a good fitness coach will also inspire you to learn more, and the knowledge you gain will allow you to better understand fitness information you come across, and sort the facts from all the misinformation.
At that point you can start to exploit the budget options, training in the gym using the right exercises with good form, managing your own goal setting and nutrition, and if you choose to join fitness classes or boot camps you’ll be able to make the most of the exercise with your brand-new knowledge of how the body works. This is something you carry with you for life, even if you fall off the wagon (and even trainers themselves do sometimes) you’ll be able to put things back together quickly and easily.
Stressing the body too much or in the wrong ways can lead to injuries though, so it’s important to remember that with the expertise of a coach to guide you…
Injuries can be avoided
A really common reason people avoid the gym is fear of injury, which is ABSOLUTELY INSANE when you realise that all of the worst injuries you’re likely to get come specifically from NOT exercising. Heart attacks, strokes, lifestyle diseases, chronic joint injuries, breaks from osteoporosis, even damage from unexpected accidents can be prevented or mitigated by strengthening the body.
But exercising incorrectly is dangerous, especially when it comes to lifting weights- which any good exercise program will have you doing, even if your goal is to lose weight (that’s a story for another post). Muscles need resistance in order to grow, and as they grow they need more resistance. At light weights, you can get away with performing an exercise incorrectly, but as you increase the weight your risk increases too, until eventually… POP, you’re off to the doctor (and if you think a trainer is expensive, wait until you see what a physiotherapist charges!)
But that’s completely avoidable if you train correctly. Even women, who tend to be more resistant to the idea of lifting weights, are capable of lifting 150+kg (yes, one-five-zero kilograms) off the floor with absolutely no pain, when they’re coached and progressed correctly. While moving that kind of weight isn’t everyone’s goal, it’s important to remember that you don’t need anywhere near that kind of weight to cause an injury when your form is wrong.
By working with a coach you can nail down the movement of every exercise you do, which will not only keep you safe, it will help you see MUCH greater results for EXACTLY the same amount of effort. A great example can be found in something as simple as a squat. If you ask an average person to do 5 squats, odds are they’ll drop their body straight down, their knees will only reach an angle of about 45 degrees, and they’ll be rolling forward onto their toes to stay balanced. A coach will have you sit back into the squat to load up the glutes and hamstrings, hit the correct depth so the femur reaches parallel with the floor, and push the hips through to generate power.
If none of that made sense to you, that’s fine! And it’s most of my point here, because the difference in effort between those two exercises is almost nil, but the difference in effect on your body, and the progress towards your goals, is HUGE! And that’s important, because…
Success in the gym is contagious
Physical exercise is one of the best things you can do for self-improvement, the benefits are too numerous to count and range from your general health improvements like BMI and blood pressure, through increases in energy and focus, to more abstract enhancements like problem-solving ability and even happiness.
But did you know it can literally make you more successful? A study published in the June 2012 Journal of Labour Research connected regular exercise in the gym with a 9% increase in earnings compared to similar people who didn’t exercise, even when controlling for body shape. That equals an extra $3000 per year at the minimum wage, and an extra $7000 at the Australian average wage. And if you classify success as happiness, a 2016 study by the University of Cambridge used wearable fitness trackers and smartphone surveys to track 10,000 participants exercise habits and emotional states, finding that the more exercise a person did the happier they were, with peak happiness reported around the times they were doing or had just completed exercise. The improvements were found to be present in nearly every participant regardless of if they were generally happy or not.
But this all boils down to effectiveness. If your training doesn’t work you won’t experience the physical and psychological benefits of exercise. Even worse, you’re spending time, energy and emotional capital doing it, which really is the worst of both worlds. The investment in a coach is therefore not just an investment in your health and fitness, it’s an investment in your career, in your earnings potential, in your future happiness. Not to disparage the health benefits either, because if you ask anyone suffering a chronic illness they’ll tell you…
There is no greater investment than your health
A lack of physical training is one of the greatest risk factors for serious disease, full stop. Beyond the well-known lifestyle diseases like heart attack, stroke, diabetes and many forms of cancer, a sedentary lifestyle has been shown to contribute to osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s disease, atherosclerosis, asthma, and many degenerative joint injuries. Exercise shouldn’t be looked at as something that improves your health, instead, a lack of exercise is something that ACTIVELY MAKES YOU SICK.
The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about mankind, offered a quote from the British author James J. Lackard: “in youth he sacrifices his health for money, and in age he sacrifices his money to recoup his health (.…) he lives as if he is never going to die, and dies never having lived”. It’s a poignant reminder to make the most of every day, but it also reminds us that we don’t value our health until it begins to fail us, and by that time it’s generally too late, having ignored the many warning signs our bodies give us in the form of minor illnesses, aches and pains, exhaustion and even depression. To add to the point made above about physiotherapists? They might be expensive, but oncologists, cardiologists and surgeons are on another level entirely.
It’s easy to dismiss these diseases as future problems, too far away to be concerned about, but reality is catching up to us. The average age for a type-2 diabetes diagnosis is now in the 40s and falling, with younger onset linked to a higher risk of kidney and nervous system damage. It’s not only serious illnesses affected either, a study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that fit individuals reported 43% fewer symptoms of respiratory illness (coughs, sneezes, fever), and even those with symptoms on average reported 32% lower severity. Not to mention while you’re sick you’re missing events, losing money, and feeling miserable.
A stitch in time saves nine, and a little money spent on learning how to move the body, how to feed it quality nutrition, and how to correctly care for your muscles and joints can prevent decades of illness, avoid untold thousands of dollars in medical bills, and mitigate a dramatic reduction in quality of life. Not only that, many people report beginning to enjoy exercise after working with a trainer for a few months, and turning necessary exercise from a chore into a hobby is just another factor that justifies the expense.
So bite the bullet today, invest in the most valuable asset you’ll ever own, and can never replace. You’ll feel healthier, happier, more successful, and you’ll learn skills for life.
Stay tuned for more articles.
Got a burning question you want answered? Email Jeremy@betterlivingfitness.com.au or find us on Facebook.