Comment by prirun | Hacker News Reader

Comment by prirun | Hacker News Reader

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I started working out 6 months ago for the first time, with a personal trainer. I had tried a few times to do it on my own or with a friend, but with a friend it's too hard to coordinate schedules, and without a pro, it's too easy to get hurt (tore my shoulder up the first day and it took a year to sort of heal).

Hiring a good trainer has lots of advantages:

- you don't have to think about what you need to do

- they show you safe vs unsafe movements and keep you safe during training

- it's an appointment, so you're less likely to miss. My trainer doesn't normally charge for missed appointments (too nice IMO) but I pay by the month so I have to pay if I miss

- my trainer creates several circuits of 3-5 exercises and they are done 3-5 times each. The circuits are designed so that different muscles are used in each exercise, ie, "active resting", so an entire workout can fit in a half an hour for example.

If you have the funds, highly recommend hiring a trainer. Now I actually enjoy working out 4x a week for 45 minutes.

I used a personal trainer for 3 years and I can't say I'd really recommend it. Definitely had it's advantages, but too many disadvantages to be worth the cost.

High turnover - I had about six different trainers during that time.

They all picked some random exercises for me to do whereas I'd rather have a well thought out schedule.

They are all flakey, lots of appointments cancelled last minute for "family emergencies."

Two asked me out on dates. I guess this would be an advantage for some, but I was interested in getting fit, not picking up men.

One was kinda mean to me.

I found going to yoga classes MUCH more useful.

I'm using a trainer at a private gym. He owns the gym. Way different I think from going to a large commercial gym where they hire kids off the street, give them a few classes, and call them personal trainers.

Sounds like you had bad trainers. Definitely wouldn't recommend that. Finding a good one on the other hand is easily one of the best investments you can make.

Yes and a good, educated trainer might be more expensive than you might think (or feel comfortable with initially).

Working out with a PT also really helped me a lot. We work out outside, twice a week. Someone's waiting for me, which completely fixes the motivation problem for me. I'm still not someone who's naturally good at sports, but I've missed maybe 5 workouts in 3 years max (excepting vacations, sickness). I couldn't keep a routine before.

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