How to find a decent Personal Trainer?

[BarefootDawsy]

Hi all,

So my wife came up to me today and told me that she's going to take the plunge into weight training (yay!). The tricky bit is that she's not very confident in it as she's never done anything like that before. Ideally I'd like to find a personal trainer for her to walk her through the movements and do a proper assessment, etc. The problem is I don't know where to start ot find one.

I'm the only person I know outside of NF that has ever even considered lifting weights (and I learned what I know from here) so word of mouth is out of the question. The PT's at the gym are pretty machine-focused from the sounds of it...so how do you find a decent one (ideally a woman too)?

Any ideas?

[Guest Carjack]

Make it clear exactly what kind of trainer you want and what they can teach. Ask for a strength coach who has at least one of these:

Is into heavy weight lifting of free weights.

Has a musclehead friendly cert like CSCS or RKC. These aren't necessary for a good trainer but the guys who hold them tend to focus on athleticism.

Has experience training young athletes.

Trainers at large gyms tend to each specialize in one thing, so there's most likely at least one guy who knows his way around the squat, deadlift and bench press, then a few cardio machine freaks and bosu ball athletes. When you see the guys teaching proper free weight lifts and they know what they're doing, you should ask them if they're trainers.

If you just ask for any random trainer to spot her form, you'll most likely get the dumbest idiot in the gym teaching round back lateral twisting deadlifts.

[BarefootDawsy]

Thanks Carjack, the gym she goes to is small and has only a few staff trainers, but I'll give them a ring to see what the go is.