OK, help.

[vass]

How do I find a personal trainer? I've read Krista's article, but it only seems to cover what I should look for in a trainer, not how I find such a person.


I have a shortlist of things I want in a trainer:

- has real knowledge and experience with psychiatric issues (must not be freaked out when I burst into tears every time I hit failure point)
- is not a bully
- is not a relentless positive thinker
- has experience with very overfat beginners and PCOS and blood sugar issues and joint pain and hypertension and eating disorders and poor kinesthetic learning
- offers a personalised plan, not prefab
- will dictate a prefab eating plan to me over my dead body.
- believes in free weights and large full-body low-to-medium rep heavy weights, not tiny little 1kg dumbells from here to eternity, or nothing but machines.
- trains that way zirself and knows what good form looks like and how to teach it
- does not assume I'm an idiot because I'm overfat, or that I won't have opinions of my own about training and exercise
- it would be an advantage if they're experienced at taking body fat percentage skinfold tests.
- it would also be an advantage if they're williing to train me in my local gym (which is open 24-7 and is well equipped with free weights, kettlebells, weight machines, and as many cardio machines as anyone could want. But I don't know where the squat rack is or how to use it on my own.)

I know I'm basically a nightmare to train. Nobody wants an opinionated fatty who bursts into tears when she can't do something. Also I have OCD and brain fog, and the two combined make counting reps really difficult for me. Basically the only thing I've got going for me, as far as a trainer is concerned, is that because I'm very big and basically completely untrained at the moment, they can expect massive improvements in the beginning. (My BMI is at least 48.7 and might be higher - my scales don't go high enough to measure my weight. Neither do my endocrinologist's scales. Which might mean I'm too heavy for the cardio equipment - I don't know. I'm certainly too heavy for an assisted pull-up machine.)

And I won't conform to an eating plan. (If they give me general eating habits to follow, like "eat fibrous carbs with every meal", I'll do that. If they tell me I should eat a macro diet of 40:40:20, I'll do that. If they want me to follow the Atkins induction plan, I'll do that. What I won't do is take a menu plan from them dictating "breakfast: two Vita-Brits with half a cup of skim milk and half a banana, 6 almonds, black coffee," and follow it exactly. I refuse to have no choice at all in my diet.) Besides, I'm a vegetarian, and that's not going to change just to make their job easier. That's right, no fish oil supplements. I know that makes it harder, and I'm sorry, but I just won't.

Also, I want results. My parents have a trainer, and they've been lifting exactly the same weight, for the same number of reps, for two years now. As far as I can tell, all their trainer is doing is making sure they show up. My results don't have to be spectacular, but I do have to be lifting heavier a year from when I start.

So yeah, I have an attitude problem as well. And the psych issues mean that it would be harder for me than for the average person to go around interviewing every trainer in Melbourne until I find the right one.

How do I find a trainer? Where do I ask? I know that in Australia they should be registered with Fitness Australia and have a TAFE certificate III or IV (I know what those TAFE certificates involve and how long it takes to get one, and I am not impressed.) But how do I even find someone with that certification, let alone someone with the qualities I need? I asked at the gym, and they gave me a session with one of their trainers, and he told me the wrong time and blamed me, and gave me a prefab diet sheet without a single meal that I could eat, and didn't know how to modify it for a vegetarian (for that matter, I don't think it was a very good sign that his diet sheet was the same for everyone, regardless of caloric needs.) I just don't know where else to ask. I think putting an ad in Craigslist would be a really bad idea. Help?

Comments

[umbo]

I don't have any information about Australia, and I can tell you that I found my trainer through a lot of luck, but I can also tell you that trainers like this do exist, because the one I work with meets basically all your criteria. For me, I signed up for a free session with a trainer at my gym and had an absolutely horrible experience. I complained to the fitness manager. She gave me another session with herself, then set me up with someone she thought would be a better fit. That person's been my trainer since February; she left the gym because of its hard-sell attitude (she actually cares and listens when her trainees tell her they can't afford to increase their number of sessions) and now trains me at the gym at my apartment complex for less than she was charging at the other gym.

I would think that any trainer worth his or her salt would give you a free session to try them out and see if they're a good fit. Good luck!

[damned_colonial]

Start with your gym. Ask them if they have any recs. Post on local forums asking for recs.

FWIW, I have many of the same things as you -- fat, metabolism fuckedupness, mental health problems, weird learning style -- and I found two excellent trainers at Fitness First (in Sydney and Melbourne respectively) so it's not too hard.

My magic words were "functional fitness". Tell them that's what you want, and ask them to hook you up with a trainer who does that. They may eyebrow at you and say, "what do you mean by that?" Tell them your macro-goals, and tell them the sort of exercise you like doing. For me, I usually say "I love lifting heavy things, and I like it low tech... how big is your heaviest medicine ball?" "Medicine ball" is basically a shibboleth for the kind of trainer I like (and suspect you might like too) -- people who are into that tend to be the sort of people I want to deal with.

Wrt the mental health stuff... it's the hardest thing I've found. I *hate* bursting into tears on my trainer so much, and it's pretty impossible to find someone who actually would have proper qualifications to deal with that. The best I've managed is to be as up-front as possible and tell them as much as I can about what's going on in my head, and remind myself that they probably have clients burst into tears on them all the damn time. FWIW I've never seen a trainer who didn't have a handy stash of kleenex somewhere.

Something that might be non-obvious, but I think would work well for you maybe... I have always had male trainers and really liked working with them. That seems anti-intuitive in a way (I usually prefer women for other health stuff, eg. my dentist and everything) but actually it worked well because they tend to be better about real weight-lifting, more likely to work with people who have fitness goals rather than appearance goals, etc. The one funny incident was my 2nd trainer, who I don't think had worked with butch women before? He used to apologise to me if the pullup bar was rough (um, that's for friction! it's meant to be like that!) until I told him that I was in favour of building calluses. Or one time I missed a catch and got smacked in the face with a medicine ball and you could see he was all D: D: D: and convinced I'd freak out and I laughed and said, "It's just a fat lip, I'll tell people I was in a fight." ... anyway eventually he got used to me and stopped apologising if I broke a nail or something ;) He was a good trainer, incredibly form-obsessed. He worked out of Victoria Gardens Fitness First. I might be able to dig up his details if you wanted.