Everyone’s different
One thing I’m finding really fascinating about working in personal training is the chance to appreciate how different everyone is. I’ve been talking with several people training-related things lately and every story is different. Some people just want to get the body moving more. Some people want to lose a little bit of weight to feel more confident. Some people want to lose a lot of weight to deal with health problems. Some people care about the short term. Some people are more concerned about getting good habits in place now to make sure they’re in good shape when they get up there in years. Some people have medical conditions, other people…well, actually, it seems that everyone I’ve talked to has at least some sort of medical problem, it’s just a question of what kind of problem and what the severity is.
Some people are very self-motivated and just need some guidance on what exercises are best to do. Some people hate exercise and the challenge is to find a way to make it interesting for them. Some people know exactly what to do but are just lacking the discipline to stick with it and need someone to hold them accountable. I really like the process of meeting people, learning their story, and finding out how best to help them and tailor something to them specifically rather than just giving some sort of cookie-cutter solution.
In the midst of all these differences, there is one similarity. Nearly everyone I’ve talked with has expressed a preference for exercising outdoors. This is something I hadn’t really thought about much before I started working with people, but now I’m starting to think more about ways to do outdoor workouts for those who are interested. The two biggest hurdles for me are in equipment/safety logistics and in getting adequately insured for outdoor training. From the little bit of research I’ve done thus far, it sounds like most boilerplate liability insurance plans for trainers do not cover outdoor training.
