The Real Benefits of Personal Training

By: John Mozas, President and Chief Operating Officer

I changed my mind about personal trainers after the second time I tore my ACL. The first time happened in university during a soccer game. The orthopaedic surgeon who performed my ACL reconstruction predicted the repair would last 20 years. To a university student, 20 years seems like a lifetime. But those two decades went by pretty quickly. Almost as though the surgeon had planted a time bomb in my knee, 20 years later nearly to the day, I was playing squash and I planted, turned—and there it went.

One of the orthopaedic surgeons who looked at my knee this time figured my cartilage was so damaged an ACL repair wouldn’t solve my issue. I had been playing soccer in a league, plus some squash and pick-up basketball. Now I couldn’t do any of those things. Pretty quickly it became apparent the sports had been keeping me fit. My suits started to not fit as well. I didn’t have as much energy during the day. Then, at night, I had too much nervous energy to sleep.

The problem, of course, was physical activity: I needed more. I started working out with a personal trainer. We’d just started that business at Medcan, and I wanted to test the people we hired. Had you asked me whether I needed a personal trainer, I would have said no. Like a lot of people who have played competitive sports, I didn’t think I needed a trainer. I thought I already knew how to work out.

Working out with a trainer can lead to better results.

I soon realized how wrong I was. From the start we staffed our fitness team with the top talent available—certified professionals with the people skills necessary to determine how best to motivate our clients. I learned about form and technique, and the importance of surprising your muscles. Managing your own fitness regimen, I now realize, is a bit like acting for yourself in a legal proceeding. It’s possible—but you’re better off using the advice of a professional.

Using a trainer also was key to helping me commit to a fitness regimen. Hire a trainer, and suddenly your workout is an appointment—one you have to call to cancel. Health psychologists have long realized there’s a big difference between intending to start exercising, say, three times a week, and actually showing up at the gym on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. There’s even a name for the difference: The intention-behavior gap.(i) Studies have shown that making appointments with personal trainers can help to bridge that gap. One recent study of university students, for example, showed that people who tended to work out with trainers were a lot more likely to still be exercising after a term’s end.(ii)

Working out with a trainer also makes you work out harder. For example, the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research published a study that tracked exercise regimens for women who worked with a trainer, and solo; the trainer group chose higher weights, were able to lift more, and rated their exertion levels higher when asked how much they exerted themselves.(iii) Another study in the same journal involved a 12-week exercise regimen conducted by male Australian rugby players. Both groups increased their strength over the 12 weeks, but the supervised group increased strength significantly more—in bench press, for example, the supervised group increased their strength by about 30%, double the 15% increase experienced by the unsupervised rugby players.(iv)

I’ve been working out with a personal trainer for a long time now. Medcan Fitness has grown substantially in the last five years. Our fitness practice started with three personal trainers and a 700-square-foot room. Now, it’s 35 personal trainers using a 10,000-square-foot facility. You can see me in there three or four times a week, working out with one of three different Medcan trainers (Brendan Fox, Duane Swift and Trevor Osborne).

I sleep better than I used to. My clothes fit better. I eat a little more, I guess to feed the engine. But I pay more attention to what I eat. I believe that’s another effect of working out regularly: it’s a catalyst for developing a healthier lifestyle. In fact, I’m such a convert to working out with a personal trainer that I’m planning on giving out Medcan Personal Training Sessions as gifts over the holidays. After all, what’s a better gift than good health?

Want to learn more about Medcan Fitness? Click here, or call John Vizzini at 416-350-5687 to schedule an appointment today.