Personal Trainers: Do They Really Help?

Many people want to gain weight. Many want to loose weight. And there is a whole industry of fitness professionals who work very hard to help people achieve such goals. But over three decades after the first fitness boom centered around recreational jogging, then bodybuilding and high-impact aerobics, the scientific as well as anecdotal evidence is that that simply does not work. The body is much more complex than simply not eating so much or working out more.

As a former ACSM and YMCA certified personal trainer, I have to confess that I have done my share of ballyhooing despite the facts. Clients come to us fitness professionals with the hope that we can help, but it is an open secret that the open question is one of how much - and in most cases, we cannot help that much.

Those properly motivated will achieve their goals with or without our help; our help makes it easier, and faster and more fun, but ultimately success really does reside with the client. Honestly speaking, some seventy-five to ninety percent of any successful result would be due to the client alone. The trainer encourages and advises but is otherwise limited in power. After all, clients take off, go on vacations, and just plain cheat, eating what they shouldn’t and not doing what they should.

Moreover, much of what can be accomplished is entirely genetic. That’s right, I said genetic: just as you were destined to be a certain height, so too are you destined to carry a certain amount of muscle - or not. It’s almost all genetics. But that’s not to say that there is no place for human grit and determination, for no one absolutely knows his or her genetics - and there is only one way to find out. So understand that your efforts only count for so much, but they will count and must be made whole-heartedly!