There are some things that your personal trainer should always be doing to make sure that you’re burning fat, getting stronger, and staying healthy. There are also some things that your personal trainer should never do, no matter what.

In this article, we are going to walk you through seven of the things that your personal trainer should never ever be doing.

A lot of people really like the feeling of muscle soreness after the workout. The issue is muscle soreness is not an actual indicator of progress and if your personal trainer is telling you that the more sore you are, the more effective your workout was you need to get a new trainer. That doesn’t mean anything other than you’re sore.

What you need to do is track your progress from a fat loss perspective, from a strength perspective, from how you look perspective, etc. Muscle soreness is one thing but it’s completely separate from an actual effective workout.

Bosu ball squats

With the rise of functional training, it’s been really trendy for personal trainers to have their clients get on Bosu balls or other unstable surfaces and do things like squats, overhead press, and single leg balancing – all under the idea that it’s going to improve your functional strength. Here’s the problem. When they say functional strength, they say it’s going to improve your balance and help you function better in everyday life. Our question is… when do you ever find yourself on an unstable surface in life, keeping in mind that ice isn’t even an unstable surface. Ice is slippery, but never in life unless you’re on a boat all the time, do you ever have to stabilize yourself! So this isn’t functional in any way shape or form, it’s really just dangerous. You’d be much better off if you’re doing squats on a stable surface and getting strong without worrying about falling off and hurting your knee, your hip, your back or breaking your neck.

Fat spot reduction

If you want to lose fat at specific parts of your body, what’s really important to remember is you can’t pick and choose where your body loses fat and when. It’s a myth and it’s called spot reduction. Basically, what it means is you can’t do a triceps exercise and expect to lose fat in your triceps and you can’t do an ab crunch and expect to lose fat in your abs. Your body chooses. That doesn’t mean you won’t lose fat everywhere you want, all it means is that as long as your training, nutrition, and sleep is on point, you will lose fat everywhere you want. It’s just going to happen in the order that your body decides.

Box jumps for cardio

If you want to get faster, more explosive, and more athletic, box jumps are one of the best exercises you can do. But there is a very important distinction to make between doing an exercise to be more explosive and doing an exercise to burn more fat and more calories. If your goal is to burn more fat and more calories, you should not be doing box jumps because the more reps you do and the longer you do it, the more likely you are to hurt yourself. I would much rather you come over to the side and do a different bodyweight exercises like alternating lunges – where you aren’t putting your joints or your body at risk and you can still do it for a long period of time, jack your heart rate up, boost your metabolism, burn more calories, and burn more fat without the risk of getting injured.

Lifting heavy weights makes women bulky

There’s a handful of personal trainers who say things like “women shouldn’t lift heavy weights” – like weights heavier than three pounds because they think that’s gonna make women big and bulky. This is simply comical because most women’s purses weigh more than three pounds. Lifting heavy weights isn’t all the sudden going to make a woman big and bulky and stack on slabs of muscle. Plain and simple, lifting heavy weights and strength training is gonna help women get leaner, boost their metabolism, get more defined, and build more confidence. Every woman should be doing some type of targeted strength training. In the end, you pay the cost of personal training, so, you decide what’s good for your overall wellbeing or not.

No pain, no gain

Is working out supposed to tickle? No. You should be working hard, you should be sweating, and you should even be a little bit uncomfortable. But if your personal trainer is telling you “no pain no gain” with the idea that you should be pushing through serious actual legitimate pain or injury or destroying your body, you need to get a new personal trainer.

Getting mad at you for asking questions

This is the most important. If your personal trainer gets mad at you when you ask why you’re doing something, you need to find a new personal trainer because what this all boils down to is it’s all about you, your health, and your happiness. If you’re hiring someone and putting enough trust in someone to let them take you through this journey, it’s not only something they should do, it’s your personal trainer’s responsibility to encourage and facilitate you asking questions and them showing you and walking you through what and why they’re doing certain things. If your personal trainer isn’t letting you do that, you need to find another one.