Top 5 Traits of a High Quality Corona Del Mar Personal Trainer

If you’ve arrived on this page, it’s more than likely because you’re looking for a personal trainer in Corona Del Mar. Searching for a great personal trainer can be a grueling process if you don’t know what to look for. Often times, as a prospective training client, you will have to go through multiple sub-par trainers until you find one who you like, or even worse, one of two scenarios can happen: either you’ll give the sub-par trainer the benefit of the doubt and stick with him or her, setting yourself up for many months of lackluster training and potential injury, or you will develop such a distaste for trainers in general from your experience that you may decide never to hire one again.

All three of these scenarios are tragic, yet entirely avoidable. Having a knowledgable, professional trainer assisting you in your fitness goals can certainly mean the difference between success and failure. As opposed to the safety hazards that come with training under a crummy trainer, training with a high quality personal trainer will greatly reduce the chance of injury compared to working out alone or with someone unqualified. To avoid having to deal with sub par Corona Del Mar personal trainers, simply use the following five criteria during your search. If your prospective trainer satisfies each of the following requirements, then it is quite likely that they will be an excellent resource and help you achieve success beyond what you thought was possible. If they fail in one or more categories… well, run!

Corona Del Mar Personal Trainer Trait #1: Certified by a Nationally-Recognized Personal Training Certifying Agency

First and foremost, your trainer must be certified by a respectable certification agency, and by that I mean the certifying agency needs to be accredited by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCAA), which is the gold standard for the fitness industry. Recognition from the NCCA is extremely important—it means that the certification in question meets a set of standards, ensuring its legitimacy and that it is appropriate instruction for qualifying a health professional to train others. Many “certifications” are nothing more than open book, multiple choice tests someone can take in two hours on their home computer—this is unacceptable for someone you are trusting with your health and safety, not to mention expecting to help you get optimal results!

NCCA-accreddited certifications are closed-book, proctored exams that require many months (or even more) of studying to pass. There are only eight NCCA-accredited certification agencies, and they are NASM, ACE, NCSF, NFPT, NSCA, NESTA, ACSM and IFPA. If your trainer is not certified under one of these agencies, you are gambling with your safety, plain and simple. Even more horrifying is the fact that many Corona Del Mar personal trainers are not certified at all! Legally, all you need to be a trainer is trainer’s insurance! I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t go to a doctor without a medical license, and likewise, you shouldn’t go to an unqualified trainer, regardless of what they say about “experience over letters after my name.” The bottom line is, if someone cares about their profession, they should be continuing to educate themselves on the field and at a bare minimum this means getting and maintaining a quality certification.

Corona Del Mar Personal Trainer Trait #2: Has REAL, Verifiable Testimonials

This is embarrassing, but I would estimate that 80% of the personal training websites out there recycle the same 20-30 “testimonial” clients, sometimes with different names and different quotes, but the bottom line is, this means that these trainers are completely full of crap. No matter which way you cut it, they are making fake testimonials with people who have not only never trained with them, but also have not given them the right to use their likeness on their page (fake name or not). This means two things, that the “trainer” in question is either too inexperienced or too inept to have any quality testimonials of their own, and that they are ok with partaking in shady, unethical business practices to make more money.

I think this begs the question, do you really want to trust your health and wellness to someone like this? Do not be afraid to ask your prospective trainer if they can refer you to a current or past client who can share their story with you. Any trainer who truly has great success stories would be more than happy to do so, because honestly, great testimonial clients sell their training business better than the trainer ever could!

Corona Del Mar Personal Trainer Trait #3: Full Time Career, Not a Part Time Hobby

There are countless personal trainers in Corona Del Mar and Orange County in general who do personal training as a part time job because they can make an easy side income for a few hours of training each week, and typically bar tend or bounce at clubs at night and on the weekends. There are relatively few trainers in the area who have made training their full time career, because the truth is it takes a lot of work to build up the clientele necessary to support oneself as a full-time independent trainer.

As a client though, do you want to train with someone who views training as a hobby and who performs it simply because they make some good money doing it? I don’t know about you, but I would prefer to go to a professional trainer whose career and life purpose is centered around helping other people. Make sure that your trainer’s main focus in life is their personal training career, and that they are doing it for the right reasons—to help make their community healthier and longer living.

Corona Del Mar Personal Trainer Trait #4: Includes Nutritional Counseling

Unless a personal trainer also happens to be a licensed dietician, they are NOT qualified to prescribe diet plans to their clients, nor are they legally permitted to create meal plans designed to cure specific conditions or diseases. However, it is well within a personal trainer’s jurisdiction to provide nutritional counseling to their clients, and by that I mean they can discuss appropriate food choices, point clients to qualified sources for recommendations on macro and micronutrient intake, make recommendations on calorie ranges for reaching the clients’ goals and refer the clients to a qualified specialist if an issue comes up that is out of the trainer’s area of expertise.

Regardless of what other personal trainers may tell you, nutrition makes up 80% of the results you are going to see. If a trainer doesn’t include services that strongly-emphasize nutrition and doesn’t have the academic knowledge to back up his or her stance, then as a client, you are missing out on a huge portion of the proverbial fitness pie. That being said, the other side of the coin is just as detrimental—if you come across a trainer who acts like they are the ultimate source of knowledge on nutrition, you need to ask yourself if they are acting outside of their ethical and legal jurisdiction and if you would want to trust your health with such a person. A high quality trainer educates themselves in order to best serve their clients’ needs, but also has the humility and professional integrity to defer to more qualified specialists when the situation calls for it.

Corona Del Mar Personal Trainer Trait #5: Primarily Trains Clients Who Share Your Specific Goals

Let me ask you this hypothetical question: if you were shopping around for a plastic surgeon to get a nose job, would you rather go to one that ONLY does nose jobs and has a huge portfolio of client successes, or would you rather go to a plastic surgeon who performs all sorts of elective surgery and only has a handful of completed nose jobs in his or her portfolio? The same rule applies with fitness—go to the “specialist” with a ton of experience working with clients who share similar goals to yours over the “jack-of-all-trades” trainer who caters to all and specializes in nobody.

In addition to the significant chance that you will attain measurably better results with a specialist trainer over a generalist, the very nature of the specialist tends to mean that he or she will be more likely to have a network of other qualified specialists to refer you to for issues outside of his or her speciality. Having a team of experts at your disposal to properly address any issues you have is exponentially more valuable than having a single, egotistical source of self-proclaimed expertise.

Corona Del Mar is one of the Orange County communities served by Training Ground OC. If you have what it takes to be a Training Ground OC athlete, then we welcome you to sign up to become a member of our exclusive fitness community.

If you want to learn more about the services offered at our training facility, click here for a full list of our programs and services.

We also serve the following neighborhoods in Corona Del Mar: Corona Del Mar State Beach, Big Canyon Reservoir, Crystal Cove. We serve the following zip codes: 92625.

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