ELITE PERSONAL TRAINING
Let me address the first problem. I want to start by saying that I have know many amazing trainers over the years. The problem is that I have managed and worked in enough gyms and health clubs to realize that this is the exception to the rule. When you hire a personal trainer you should assume that they know the answer to all of your questions. What if they told you that they became a personal trainer over the weekend through an online course? Would you have as much faith in them? That is the way that most personal trainers become certified. One of my former supervisors used to hire people with no experience, send them to an online test, and hire them if they passed. This test was a supposed national certification body. It required no reading, classwork, or on scene assessment. The big problem with this test was that it was very easy and you could take it as many times as you had to to pass. I was even required as a manager to help these people pass. The point is that just because someone claims to be a certified personal trainer, that does not mean that they have a clue as to how to best help you.
The second problem, money, really ties in with the first. The larger gym chains hire inexperienced personal trainers so that they can pay them less. These people are just happy to have the title of personal trainer. This puts most of the money in the gym owner's pocket with little reward or incentive to the trainer themselves. That is why most good trainers leave the industry. Most gym chains will not allow independent trainers to train clients in their facility. They do not want the competition with their own under-paid, under-experienced staff. You can not expect to get a good personal trainer for free or even cheaply. You have to understand that the trainer is only being paid while they are training a client. That is only a small portion of the work. Most of the actual work involves marketing and getting new clients. For a good trainer, training a client is fun and is second nature. The average person these days is so used to getting ripped off, and with good cause as I explained above, that it can be like pulling teeth to get them to sign up for some real training. This means that even though a trainer may be working eight hours a day, they might only be getting paid for three or four hours.
Knowledge is not cheap. It takes many years to become a great personal trainer. The main problem is that you will likely pay the same amount for an inexperienced trainer. Personal training is expensive and you don't always get what you pay for. Remember, if someone is trying to sell you a long term contract for personal training it is usually a bad decision. That company knows that you will not be seeing any quick results because their trainers do not know what they are doing. That company does not care about you, they just want your money. Most of the major gym chains work this way.