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The answer to this may seem obvious but a study was done http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/will-i-get-a-better-workout-if-i-hire-a-personal-trainer/article1555090/

In summary they felt that people with a trainer pushed themselves harder or lifted heavier weights. Over the long term this will lead to improved results. I think this article was on the money but I think saying a personal trainer will help you lift heavier weights sells our services a bit short.  My personal (and in this case professional opinion as well) is that there are three areas where trainers assist clients in seeing optimal results:

1) Accountability- a good trainer will will hold you accountable in your session to meet the performance standard you have set in your previous workouts. Additionally, a good trainer will hold you accountable to do workouts on your own. Having someone check up that you are doing your running program between workouts will motivate you and help with your consistency. Some trainers have further training in nutrition and can provide accountability and motivation in this area as well. I have my Holistic Lifestyle and Nutrition Coaching certification through the CHEK institute(http://www.chekinstitute.com/HLC )and highly recommend working with a trainer or coach with this designation. This certification gets past the Canada Food Guide and into individualized nutritional needs through metabolic typing and also covers sleep and wake cycles, stress, proper digestion and more.

2) Knowledge- A good personal trainer will be able to offer you a more challenging selection of exercises than you can come up with on your own. The average person will select some exercises that they know and enjoy and occasionally increase the weights when they feel they can. A good personal trainer will obviously increase the weights as necessary, but will also make the exercise itself harder. This can be done by adding a balance or stability component, choosing a more complex movement pattern, changing loading pattern (such as lifting with one side and holding with the other).These are just some of the things trainers can do to make the workout more challenging by making the exercises themselves more challenging, in addition to increasing the load. If the load is increasing and the exercise is getting more challenging this is often referred to as double progression.  A good personal trainer will select modifications and loading patterns that are in-line with the clients main goals. Unfortunately I often see trainers miss the boat on this and change the exercises to look cool and are not aligned with the clients main goal and time commitments (i.e. weight loss client that comes 2x a week spending entire sessions learning how to do cleans. Cleans are a great exercise and very technical, a weight loss client needs to be moving not standing around and learning fine details of tough techniques)

3) Motivation- A good coach can and will motivate you in the session to give your most in that workout. Additionally, they should be helping you stay motivated by regularly assessing your fitness, setting goals based on those measurements and then re-assessing. To see an example of our testing you can check out the client experience blog at http://www.precisionathletics.ca/my-journey-to-fitness-personal-assesment/

I feel this area is missed by most people without a coach, along with allot of coaches who do not assess . My personal opinion is that coaches who do not assess are afraid that if they do not get results they will get fired. I personally find when clients are assessed and they do not see they results they wanted it provides a great opportunity to look at  ”why they missed the target”. I have coached 100’s of people who felt they “eat healthy”. yet after busting their butt on our training program (and we push people hard) they did not lose as much fat as they wanted. We re-assessed and they were disappointed. Most of these people were then able to admit there was room to improve their nutrition. After keeping a food log we found that “I eat healthy” is really I occasionally eat healthy food but with no regularity and often skip meals. At Precision Athletics Vancouver we regularly offer incentives and contests to help motivate our clients and friends to help motivate them to train a bit harder and eat a bit cleaner.  For some examples of results possible check out the results of our 21 day fat-loss challenge at http://www.precisionathletics.ca/march-fat-loss-challenge-winners-announced/

Here is an example of a client that saw some results with one of our classes. I recently started a heavy lifting class at the gym in the Vision Critical building. I did a free seminar on heavy lifting and explained the benefits of proper technique and how improving strength would benefit peoples overall performance. I ended up with six students who were willing to meet 1 x per week to get group coaching on the heavy lifts: Squat, dead-lift and pressing. We had our first meet after 6 weeks and saw some amazing results. These guys are benefiting from all three aspects : accountability- they get homework and meet each week with each other to spot and make sure it gets done , knowledge- they get coached every week on technique, motivation- we have regular meets where they can test themselves and measure their progress.

Andy adds 110 lbs to his 1 Rm dead-lift in 6 weeks

.I am impressed with the results from this group in only 6 weeks, looking forward to assessing progress again in 6 more.

Craig Boyd is one of Vancouver’s top personal trainers, boot camp, and CrossFit  instructors. Check out his websites http://www.precisionathletics.ca/ and http://www.precision-bootcampvancouver.com