How to Select the Best Fitness Trainer for your Teenager
Hiring a qualified trainer for your teen reinforces healthy lifestyle habits.
Setting your teen on a path of movement and exercise can reap a breadth of physical and mental wellness benefits. It can also lead to frustration and injury if not approached with care. That’s where a fitness trainer can come in. But not just any fitness trainer.
Teens and their growing bodies handle physical demands differently than an adult body. Taking your teen to your favorite trainer may not be the best idea if they only work with adults.
By working with a well-qualified trainer that has experience with teens, you’re more likely to get quality results. A teen-focused trainer will be more in tune with the specific physical, mental and emotional needs of a teen. The result is less frustration, greater engagement and more success.
The beauty of fitness training today is there are a range of trainers and coaches available to match with your teen’s interests, ability and fitness level. If location or personal preference limits in-person sessions, access is easier than ever with plenty of virtual options online, offering convenient schedules and often more economical pricing.
Let’s first look at the benefits of hiring a fitness trainer for your teen, what to look for and finally, how to go about finding one that’s the best fit for her.
Why Hiring a Fitness Trainer Is Beneficial For your Teen
Let’s get real, while some teens are athletic and enjoy daily fitness, many teens are not so keen. They’d rather hang out on the sofa than a weight bench, and their idea of cardio is shopping at the mall with their friends. All of this is okay, but as they mature, it’s important to develop healthy habits and a positive mindset around fitness. Building an appreciation for fitness’ contribution to overall health and mental wellness will reinforce the benefits of a healthy lifestyle.
Fosters Enjoyment of Exercise
Sports and fitness can be intimidating or overwhelming. Feeling embarrassed and not knowing where to start often causes teens to just avoid it altogether. The good news is movement and exercise come in a variety of forms that can be enjoyed at any ability or fitness level.
If you’d like your teen to start exercising or try a new sport, don’t push her into a workout that she has no interest in. Let her choose an activity that fits her interests. Anything ranging from traditional weight-training to restorative yoga, or other movement-based activity in between, are all forms of exercise that will get her moving and strengthening her body. Let her pick what interests her and she’ll be more motivated to follow-through.
If your teen is already an athlete and wants to go to that next level, training can offer her the greater knowledge, technique or motivation she may need to get there.
This is where a well-matched trainer comes into play.
A skilled and engaging trainer can help your teen get in great shape while fostering a love of fitness, shifting it from a chore to an activity she enjoys, leveling up her skill and her confidence.
Instills Foundational Skills & Technique
From a skills perspective, a qualified trainer can teach your teen how to best approach her selected activity safely and effectively. This is a key fundamental in hiring a trainer. Learning proper form, physical dynamics, mental mindset, positive discipline, and self-care make up the foundation of a successful exercise program.
Foundational skills and techniques can be difficult to learn on her own but without them she’s at risk of injury, frustration or embarrassment, leading her to quit the chosen exercise or sport.
Teaches Goal Setting
A good fitness trainer will teach your daughter how to set personal goals based on her individual abilities and desires. Doing so allows her to create a purpose around her exercise and provide milestones for her to progressively reach. As she progresses, she’ll also be able to look back and see all she’s accomplished along the way providing a sense of accomplishment and improved self-esteem.
Provides Motivation and Self-Connection
A key to an effective trainer is one that shows your daughter how to tap into herself to effectively self-motivate and reach her goals, with a healthy and measured approach.
The more she learns to pay attention to her body, identifying what her body needs and how it’s feeling, the more she’ll be able to know when and how to motivate herself and push to that next level.
She’ll also be more in tune to her growing strength and fitness, building self-confidence and appreciation along the way. That’s a pretty good side-effect!
Contributes to Mental Wellness and Physical Health
We’ve long known that exercise and movement produce endorphins that make us feel good, strengthen muscles, promote weight loss, increase lung capacity, strengthen our hearts and many more positive health benefits.
But what we’ve learned in the last decade is even more reason to incorporate movement and exercise into our daily lives.
Exercise can significantly impact our mental wellness, our ability to manage stress, improve our gut health, and serve as a major role for improving or even eliminating serious conditions like Type 2 diabetes.
Starting your teen on that path now is essential to her long-term health and wellness.
What to Look for in a Fitness Trainer or Exercise Coach
Ok, so now that we’ve identified some important positive benefits and outcomes of working with a fitness trainer, let’s dive into evaluating and selecting the right one for your daughter.
Credentials
Verify the trainer’s credentials and ensure they’re up to date. Look for a reputable credential, how it applies to the training they’ll be doing with your daughter, and the skill or knowledge level of the credential.
Experience
You don’t necessarily need a highly-seasoned trainer who’s been doing this since the dawn of time, but you do want someone who has solid experience and knows how to work with teens and their growing bodies.
As teen girls develop, their hormones, bones, joints, muscular, and endurance levels are changing. It’s very important a trainer understands proper conditioning and loading of muscles and bones versus that of a fully developed adult. Having a clear understanding will inform the type and intensity of training provided.
If your daughter’s just starting out and needs an entry level introduction of a lessor technical form of exercise, getting it from a trainer who’s enthusiastic with less experience may be okay as long as they have the necessary credentials and the oversight of a more seasoned trainer.
On the other hand, if your daughter is an athlete looking for a higher level of performance or she’s starting out on weight training for the first time, an experienced and reputable trainer known for working with teens is the way to go.
Technical approach (form & technique)
For many organized sports and fitness programs, a qualified trainer can teach foundational technique and injury prevention. You’ll want to understand how the trainer approaches form and technique, how much attention they put on it, how is it incorporated into your teen’s workouts and how closely do they monitor as she progresses?
Fitness philosophy and approach
This is an often overlooked and misunderstood area, but it can make or break how well your daughter matches with her trainer.
This is where education, beliefs, personality, and experience blend together to set each trainer apart. Every trainer has a perspective on fitness and how they approach training.
When exploring prospective trainers, ask about their training style and philosophy. Are they focused first on form and function? What about performance and progress? Do they prefer repetition or variety? Do they push hard mentally and physically, or do they prefer a more gradual progression? Do they teach your daughter to self-motivate and push herself to that next level or do they believe it’s their job?
All these questions and more will help you identify if there’s a fit for your daughter, both from a personality perspective as well as compared with her fitness goals.
Process
What is the trainer’s initial intake process? Is there a preliminary meeting to gather details and understand your daughter’s health, her concerns or limitations, her physical condition, or any injuries, limitations or reconditioning that might be needed before getting into full workouts?
Also ask how the trainer progresses through a single session, as well as sessions over time. You’ll want to fully understand how the trainer incorporates your daughter’s physical condition and her goals with their program. This can eliminate misunderstandings or disappointments down the road.
Connection
Similar to a trainer’s experience, personal connection is another attribute that’s vitally important for your daughter to engage and stay committed to her new choice of exercise or fitness. As you explore trainers, take note of how they interact with your daughter. Do they get a full understanding of her needs and wants? Do they make an effort to get to know her, and make her feel comfortable in this new, and unfamiliar workout place?
Take note of qualities like, do they respect her, engage her in conversation that relaxes and opens her up, ask questions about her ability, interests and goals.
Also check in with your teen after meeting the prospective trainer, what were her takeaways, what did she like or dislike. Does she feel comfortable or uncomfortable? Inspired or bored? And, most of all, if you or your daughter have a gut feeling of unease or distrust, move on and find someone else.
Health and Nutrition Knowledge
While a fitness professional does not need to be certified in nutrition to train, it is important they have a basic understanding of nutrition as it relates to training teens. Many gyms today provide basic assessments of weight to muscle ratios, measurements and tracking to help her focus on physical strength, tone and muscular improvement rather than obsess over weight and body fat.
Occasional check-ins to track progress can be helpful but be cautious if too much emphasis is placed on body weight, calorie counting and BMI changes. An over-emphasis on numbers can lead to frustration with her progress, her body and feelings of failure.
A good trainer should help your daughter appreciate the body she’s been given, encourage her to eat nutrient rich foods starting with a plant-focused diet with plenty of healthy protein, carbs and fats. Her trainer can also support as a positive motivator to stay consistent with healthy eating as a way to nourish and fuel her workouts. But they should leave it there and suggest the help of a certified nutrition professional if your daughter is seeking more in-depth guidance.
Collaboration
If your daughter is working with a Health and Nutrition Coach like myself, or a Dietitian, you’ll want to make sure the trainer has worked with similar professionals in the past and is willing to collaborate. By having both parties working together, the Trainer and Coach can ensure your daughter’s health and nutrition needs are being matched with the workouts and level of fitness she’s being called to perform. This takes the responsibility and time of managing it off your hands and lets the two experts guide her results.
Finding and Selecting a Qualified Fitness Trainer that Meets your Daughter’s Needs
Now that you have an idea of what to look for in a trainer, you’re probably wondering how you go about actually finding these professionals and going through the evaluation and selection process.
People often jump into training without much thought which can lead to frustration with results.
Before contacting anyone, take a few minutes to discuss priorities and goals.
Establish Priorities with your Daughter and let her take the lead
This is probably the most important part about the search and selection process.
1. Identify Goals & Exercise Priorities:
Take time to clearly understand your teen’s main goals for working with a trainer. It’s important she identifies what she’s looking for and feels comfortable taking on.
Identify the type of movement or exercise she’s seeking, what she wants to get out of it and why. This will help her think more deeply about her exercise and increase commitment.
Discuss her comfort level with in-person versus online, big gym versus small, 1:1 versus semi-private or group.
2. Create a “wants” list and a “must have” list to prioritize what’s most important and what might be flexible or forgone if needed.
3. Finally, have her lead the search and evaluation process. Creating a spreadsheet with her or use her identified criteria to create a checklist that will serve as a helpful guide while researching. Having her Ttake ownership of the process can help ensure her successful completion.
If she needs a little guidance along the way, provide it when requested but don’t take over. Task her with taking responsibility for finding a qualified professional she’ll like working with. This improves her commitment and provides empowering confidence knowing you’re trusting her to take the lead.
Find and Evaluate Qualified Professionals
1. Start by checking with friends, family and colleagues who you know actively participate in fitness themselves. Ask for referrals and their personal perspective of that referral.
Note: Don’t take personal opinion as fact but do take it into consideration as you evaluate the trainer and if those concerns or positive attributes apply to your needs.
Review the trainer’s website (if available), their social pages and any gym or professional affiliations they may have.
2. Next, perform an online search to find highly rated trainers.
Note: pay attention to how many ratings they received. A 5-star rating from 1 reviewer is not the same as a 5-star with 300 reviews.
Explore their profile, their fitness philosophy, experience with teens/young adult women for a potential fit.
Then explore the reviews to get a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses.
Online Trainers
If you’re looking for strictly an online training option, also utilize social networks to find and research trainers.
Comments from followers and reviewers are especially important to identify any potential concerns with how they provide training, results, or how they do business.
Notice if they have a strong community of followers who support one-another and interact on a frequent basis.
Online training requires a lot of self-motivation and personal commitment so having a supportive community can be especially helpful for a teen girl to stay engaged and motivated.
Note: be informed about flashy “celebrity” trainers who look great on the surface but may charge more, have complex programs, and be less accessible. They may not be right for your teen.
Schedule and Select
Once she has her list of trainers, meet again to take a moment to compare and contrast them.
1. Have your daughter evaluate against her original priorities and factor in any other criteria like distance, availability scheduling and cost. Narrow the list accordingly.
2. Contact her short list of trainers directly and ask to meet with them either over the phone or in person. Many trainers offer a free initial session where you can meet and they’ll perform an introductory evaluation of your daughter’s fitness.
If you schedule a free session, attend with your daughter and observe while the trainer works with her. Don’t intervene or ask questions until they’re done. This will give you the opportunity to observe how the trainer interacts and your daughter’s initial connection with him/her.
3. Once she’s met with or had a free session with her short list of trainers, discuss her preferences. Evaluate her most recent findings against her original criteria to ensure her final selection is in alignment.
Giving her leadership, tasking her with researching and evaluating priorities, and finally allowing her to make decisions based on sound, established criteria will go a long way in increasing her commitment as well as providing her with experience, skills and confidence she can apply to other challenges in her future.
Bonus!