Singapore Personal Trainer | FAQ’s On Hiring A Personal Trainer In Singapore

A new client told me that prior to signing for my company’s services, she had met a few personal trainers in Singapore (both from fitness clubs and also freelancers) for consultation.

Like the majority of people who hire personal trainers, she wanted to lose weight and so she decided to do personal training. She said she had one before back in the UK but only got minimal results.

When I asked her what her trainer gave her, she said “Well, we do a lot of running over there. It was quite OK. Even though I hate running he was always there to motivate me.”

I asked further, “So after meeting a couple of trainers here in Singapore for consultation, what was their strategy?”

“All of them said that if I wanted to lose weight I’d need to do more cardio. And I guess this is true. Right?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More cardio = Results?

 

————————

These are the common questions I get when I meet prospective clients. I just have to shake my head in disbelief thinking about how backdated and uninformed most personal trainers are.

If you’re thinking of hiring one, do yourself a favour and download this checklist.

If you have any questions, leave me a comment at the box below!

Ask any personal trainer in Singapore on whether you should or should not consume food after 6pm and I’d bet my last dollar that there’s still quite a number of them who’d still believe in this nutrition myth.

Granted, the body doesn’t really need that much calories prior to bed time because we are in “hibernation” mode when we sleep. But… (there’s always a but huh?) to always keep our body’s metabolism stoked, we’d need to feed our bodies every 3 to 4 hours.

A simple strategy we could use is to have the biggest meal at breakfast and as the day closes in, we end with our last meal as the smallest one. And YES, you CAN consume food right before you go to sleep.

Question is what kinds of foods?

The best would have to be a combination of a protein source and a fat source.  Eg. some cottage cheese with natural peanut butter or mixed nuts.

You see, our bodies were built to handle carbs earlier in the day (or post workout when our insulin sensitivity is high and all glucose coming from the sugars will be transported to where you want them to be, muscles and not fat cells).  The rest of the day should be fats and protein. In fact if you are sedentary, (i.e. seating on your lazy rears all the time) youdo not deserve any carbs!

And at every meal, you should be getting some protein source. Protein scores high on satiety level so you could be having 200 calories worth of protei and that could fill you up pretty good.

“Oh no! But won’t I get fat eating fat?”

Well, if it’s not hydrogenated fats (fried stuffs and processed foods that comes in colorful boxes), most natural fat sources are OK. though you should try having a good 1/3 split of saturated fat, mono-unsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats respectively.

Now, I know on one hand we have the carb fearing crowd and on the other the fat fearing crowd. And I can hear you guys whispering…

“Why don’t we just eat only protein? Voila!”

Not so fast boys and gals. If you consume just protein, the amino acids from the protein will be converted into glucose (or sugar or carbs) via a process called gluconeogenesis. So, inadvertently, you are running on glucose for energy.

So why don’t we just keep it simple?

• Have your largest meal as the 1st one
• Smallest meal as the last one
• Protein at every meal
• Carbs only at breakfast and post workout
• Fats at every meal that has no carbs

Easy?  OK, now go have your dinner!

If you go to a restaurant and ordered steak and a side salad, what would you expect to get?

A steak and a side salad… right?

If you go to Amazon.com and ordered a hair dryer what would you expect to receive?

A hair dryer… right?

Ok, to clear the confusion (well I’m not trying to confuse you here) let me explain; I am just trying to give you an analogy.

When you hire a personal trainer, what do you expect to get? You don’t expect to get a personal trainer..right? It’s not the same as ordering steak and side salad or buying a hair dryer over the internet. What you expect is to reach your goals. Or in better words, RESULTS.

The reason you hire a trainer is to get results!

So listen up. Which personal trainer you hire is going to affect what kind of results you are going to get. Why? Because you hire a personal trainer and expect results, which are intangible. And trust me, results WILL vary. A LOT… Steak and dryer are tangible products so you know what you will get ultimately. Well, not with personal training results.

A few tips on which personal trainer you should (or should not) hire and why:

• Years of experience is not a good indicator of whether the personal is competent or not. I’ve seen rookies performing better than veteran trainers.

• Total number of clients trained would be a better gauge than years. More clients means more demand (though doesn’t apply in EVERY case). Use your own discretion. Try to get a personal trainer who have trained at least 30 clients.

• Of course, if you want more accuracy you should compare total hours of training experience. But one in a million personal trainers would actually keep track of those details.

• Check if he’s got testimonials to prove that he has delivered results to his past clients. Before/after pictures, video/audio testimonials or written testimonials would be good to have a look at.

• Or if he’s confident of his services, there shouldn’t be a problem to speak to one of his clients directly. With permission of course.

• Certifications, I would say are the worst indicator for hiring a personal trainer. Nowadays, anyone can get a personal training certification pretty easily. Even you, yes YOU! So don’t bother too much with a trainer’s certificate. he can have 20 certificates and don’t know jack but another trainer with one certificate can be 10 times better.

• With that, there are only 2 that I recommend that makes the cut. NSCA-CSCS or OPTS-CPT

• Pricing may or may not be a good indicator either but it does give a rough idea on how much demand the personal trainer has. Anything thats more than $120 would be considered high demand.

• And the biggie…… Does the personal trainer have a 100% money back guarantee? This would easily separate the elite from the average personal trainers. It’s how much confidence he has on his service to back it up with a money back guarantee.

OK, hope these tips will be useful for your personal trainer scouting. So which one should you hire? You already know the ‘whys’ …. Now it’s up to you to decide on the ‘which’.

All the best!

PS: Get this checklist for a good head start: How To Choose A Personal Trainer