How Personal Training Has Changed the Way People Approach Fitness Goals

Several things shifted in the personal training realm. Before it was commonplace, people didn’t think it applied to them unless they were multimillionaires or professional athletes. Before it became a thing, the mindset shifted of what physical fitness even was, no longer was it simply how to look better and drop a couple of pounds, but how to understand the process better and reach goals quicker. Personal training helped foster this connection in the peacefulness of the last decade.

Before Accessible Coaching

People cobbled plans together from YouTube channels, magazine covers, or the dude next to them on the treadmill. They got subpar results, hurt themselves, and gave up before they got anywhere. Not because they didn’t work hard enough, but because they were inefficiently working hard enough.

The rise of online personal training has exponentially exposed more people to accessible coaching as location is no longer a viable excuse. If someone wants to get in shape at a gym halfway across town, who cares? As long as there’s a trained professional with applicable skills to put them in the right direction, daily programming, check-ins and accountability can all exist virtually. Sometimes it’s even more accessible this way for consistency than it ever was in person.

What this type of programming does, and how it shifts people’s mindset, is reduces the guesswork. No longer are they just showing up and hoping for the best at the moment. Now it’s essential because there’s a guided plan with intention, progressive overload, rest days for recovery, days with skill acquisition. The minute people realize this is for a reason instead of arbitrary numbers, they stop doing what feels good and go with the flow.

Goals Are Generic Now More Personal

Another thing people have observed over time is that the goals clients bring to trainers are increasingly more personalized. Once upon a time, goals were simple, lose weight, look toned. Now it’s finish a half marathon without wanting to cry on the last three miles. It’s, I’m strong enough to pick my child up without jeopardizing my back. It’s about getting back into soccer after tearing my ACL.

This is a good thing. The more unrealistic goals keep people invested since they’re tangible instead of hypothetical. The trainer who gets someone back into football post-knee injury has a clear goal in mind versus “I just want to lose weight.” It’s a different conversation.

Personal training has taught people what they want for themselves for a change instead of an assumed obligation.

Educational Component Impacts Life Moving Forward on Their Own

One of the less-discussed elements of a good trainer is that they take themselves out of the equation eventually. They encourage a healthy co-dependent relationship based on teaching the client how best to manage their own body; when to push through vs when to let something go; how nutrition influences daily life; and why sleep is better for us than people give credit.

This educated component has transformed how people feel about exercise when they’ve moved on their own. Someone who’s trained with a great trainer for six months approaches exercise differently than someone who hasn’t; they’re less likely to fall for gimmicky programming that promises fastest results, and more likely to stay committed to sustainable workout/nutrition endeavors, and they’re even better off to handle setbacks instead of throwing in the towel.

That knowledge lasts. It’s important years down the line when someone hasn’t trained with their trainer for eons.

Accountability is More Important Than They Think

People don’t realize how much accountability is important until it’s in their faces in a healthy environment. The fact that someone else will check in about this week’s training session adds an ironic boost to effort, their effort not from fear, but from gratefulness that someone is looking out for their best interest and wanting them to have the best outcome possible.

That check-in mentality encouraged by personal training allows people to be real with themselves. Whether that’s keeping a food journal, writing down what they accomplished in a session or providing that information at the end-of-week session for follow-up. Awareness of self creates change.

Personal Training Changes Relationships Forever

Finally, perhaps the greatest change personal training brings is how people feel and understand exercise in and of itself. For many, exercise is punishment; it’s reconciliation for how much they ate last night, or for how complacently lazy they’ve become in midlife.

This mindset is incredibly dangerous. It makes movement feel like a chore, like they have to exercise instead of wanting to.

Good coaching fosters the opposite relationship by connecting exercise and movement with performance, health, ability, and enjoyment as opposed to guilt or aesthetic appreciation. Those who’ve felt that connection will carry it with them, from here on out, they’ll work out because they want to, not because they’ve been forced to.

That’s how personal training changes lives outside the gym.