Should you work with a personal trainer or a fitness consultant? I’ve been both for the last decade and I’m about to tell you my thoughts. Personal training, fitness coaching and fitness consulting all involve working one on one with a fitness professional. The relationship in each case can be quite different. Personal trainers are the most common to work with so let’s start there.
Personal Training
Personal training is where a client meets up with a trainer to perform exercise. Sometimes this is done in a gym or studio and other times it’s done at a client’s home. I have been personal training professionally for over 10 years so I have a lot of experience in this realm. My first clients met me at a small fitness studio I leased. We performed various activities like lifting weights, stretching and using cardio equipment. This was all well and good and my clients received high quality workouts.
One major issue with the personal training model was apparent really early on. Most people were coming to me for weight loss. Exercise does play a role in weight loss but the majority of losing weight stems from what people eat. Very little of my personal training certification focused on what people ate. Even less, if any, focused on people’s habits and behavior. Habits and behavior are largely responsible for our food choices.
As time went on, I began to focus on how to influence what people ate. Knowledge on what to eat was usually not the issue. Almost all of my clientele held advanced degrees in their respective fields. They had a general idea of what was healthy and what was not. Most people actually do have an idea about what foods are healthy. The hard part was changing behavior to incorporate these healthy foods and eliminate bad ones.
Fitness Coaching
Since shooting this video I have started to use the terms fitness coaching and fitness consulting interchangeably. The fitness coaching I was referring to in the video is more of a static program that a fitness coach helps you through. In my experience I’ve seen coaches lay out very specific workout and eating routines. Most people have success on these programs when they follow them.
My one major beef (vegan beef) I have with the type of fitness coaching in the video is that it’s usually not sustainable. Coaches give their clients per-determined meals to eat with very little room for variance. I mean who is really going to stop going out to eat forever? Workouts are overkill and are much too brutal to be continued without someone pushing hard for their completion.
Like I mentioned earlier, I am now using fitness coaching interchangeably with fitness consulting. I don’t want to get caught up in semantics and definitions. The goal is to help people live their visions! With that said let’s dive into fitness consulting.
Fitness Consulting
The major differentiator for fitness consulting is how dynamic it is. Fitness consulting has no pre-set plan. Although there are common themes that overlap from one client to the next, each client is going to receive truly individualized attention.
For instance, one of the core tools used in fitness consulting is the Lose It app. A client may be against using the app for some reason or really struggle with using it. If that’s the case there are alternatives that can be used for that client. For a client who is against using the app, we may do daily weigh-ins instead. For the client who struggles with the app, we may start with just logging the fist item consumed in the day. There isn’t a strict program where a client has to do one thing or else. Fitness consulting’s adaptiveness provides many paths to desired results.
The cell phone has revolutionized the fitness profession because it allows professionals to be with their clients in real time. Prior to heavy cell phone usage I had clients keep food logs in physical notebooks. By the time I saw a client it may have been several days since they logged certain foods. How effective was my feedback if it came days after the behavior? Keeping a tight feedback loop is critical to changing behavior. Now that I have fitness consulting clients using the Lose It app, I can see what they’re eating in real time and give them feedback in real time as well. Technology has truly changed the game.
After Fitness Consulting
Another beautiful part about fitness consulting is the long term time horizon that’s taken into account. Current fitness consulting packages can last 8, 4 or 2 weeks. 8 weeks is enough time to see some initial results but it won’t be enough time for a client to realize their vision. Fitness consulting recognizes that living a vision is synonymous with living a lifestyle. Clients are taught how to engineer their lives for success even beyond the consulting period.
Think of fitness consulting as an on-ramp to the expressway. The expressway never ends because it represents a lifestyle. Get where I’m going with this? Fitness consulting might just be a one time 8 week experience. It’s designed to be that if it has to be. But someone can always come back to fitness consulting if they exit the expressway to hit a McDonald’s and then need help getting back on. Okay enough with the analogy. My point is that even though fitness consulting is a set number of weeks, it’s aim is for the long term. Fitness consulting gives someone the tools to have long term success!