The First Experience with My Personal Trainer

I have never had a personal trainer before. I’ve been to fitness classes, and small group training sessions, but never had a one-on-one workout with a trainer, where it was all about me, and me only.

I have to say, it intimidated me at first. In a spin class or bootcamp, you can hide in the back, or camouflage yourself amongst the other attendees, and push yourself as you see fit on that particular day. (We all know some days are easier than others!)

With a personal trainer, there is nowhere to hide, which I felt could be a good thing and a bad thing. One the one hand, I really wanted someone to kick my butt, and help me get into shape; on the other hand, I feared being yelled at, or feeling as if I wasn’t pushing hard enough, or failing at it somehow.

Touring the Gym

Do you ever feel like a fish out of water when entering a new gym facility? Yeah. I always do. That’s why I was delighted when the first experience I had with the gym, was going in for a tour of the facilities, to sign paperwork, and to schedule some time with the trainer. This visit made me feel more comfortable walking into the gym the next week. It really helps to get a lay of the land before your first workout, so you don’t walk around lost for the first 10 minutes. I highly recommend requesting this from your gym, if they don’t offer it outright.

Taking My Body Stats Measurements

When I first met with the trainer one-on-one, we did an assessment. She weighed me, measured my biceps, quads, calves, etc, and used calipers to calculate my body fat percentage. As you can probably guess, some of these things might make you feel a bit awkward–but we were in a private room where it was just her and I, so I did not feel self-conscious at all. My trainer made me feel comfortable at all times. The measurements were placed into my Trainerize profile, so that we can both check back in a few weeks, or a few months, to see if anything has progressed.

Sharing My Fitness Goals with My Personal Trainer

We also talked about my fitness goals. I consider myself a healthy, relatively fit person. I eat well for the most part, and I try do cardio a few times a week–usually running or cycling, and even try to squeeze in some walking during the work day. I have lower back issues, so one of my main goals is to increase my core strength, so that other parts of my body don’t over-compensate for the weak parts and cause more damage. My legs are already quite strong, so I also want to strengthen and tone the other parts of my body, particularly my mid-section, and arms.

My trainer was very encouraging, and claimed that we were going to have a lot of fun training together. She was excited that I wanted to worth on strength! This made me excited, too, and I couldn’t wait for my first training session.

Assessing My Capabilities

After the measurements were done, we went into the gym to assess my capabilities for strength and body-weight exercises. We went through things like: can you balance on one foot, can you do a push-up, a pull-up, a plank, etc. I’ve done all of these exercises before, so I passed with flying colors!

My enthusiasm for this training thing was growing. Once we got through the assessment, she gave me a few minor exercises to do, since we had a bit of time left in our hour together. It was a small workout, but she had me doing the bench-press and a few other things. Five sets of five reps doesn’t sound like much, but when you haven’t worked out it in a while, it can leave you pretty shaky!

All in all, my first experience with my trainer was a great one, and I can’t wait for my first full workout session.

To be continued….