Working with your own coach can be a significant investment even with hourly rates differing vastly across regions and countries you are still paying a fair amount of money for the expert knowledge that will help you achieve your health and fitness goals and look after one of, if not, THE most important assets you have your body.

So how should you choose a trainer and what are the things you need to look out for, ask them and receive from them?

First and foremost, you MUST ensure your trainer is fully and properly qualified. This means they should hold, at the very least:

1) A CPR certification if you do have any accidents or problems your coach must know how to deal with them and ensure your safety at all times.

2) A recognised fitness/personal training qualification this obviously differs from country to country and there are only a few internationally-recognised qualifications. Most countries have a self-regulating body in the UK this is REPS (the Register of Exercise Professionals) and you should ensure your coach is registered here before you even consider hiring them. If in doubt, ask your trainer which qualifications they have most wont be offended but will be keen to show them off.

Once you are satisfied they hold the necessary basic qualifications, here are a few pointers to look out for. A good versus a bad coach should:

1. Ideally hold additional qualifications and be updating these all the time. As our scientific knowledge about the body increases, the methods with which we train the body change. If your trainer qualified 5 years ago but has done no further qualifications since, it's likely their training methods & knowledge will be out of date. A leader in health & fitness training is the CHEK Institute - their practitioners work with some of the world's top athletes, including PGA Golfers and Olympians. A CHEK-trained coach (even at the basic level) will usually be far more highly qualified than the personal trainer with a "typical" national training qualification.

2. Address more than just your fitness levels & give you more than just a fitness programme. Exercise is only a small part of what makes us "fit" and "healthy". To help you achieve your health & fitness goals, your coach should address several areas of your life - your nutrition & eating habits, sleep patterns, stress levels - all of these affect & determine how likely you are to achieve your goals and if not addressed, can prevent you from attaining optimum levels of health & fitness.

3. Perform some initial assessments. In order to help you get where you want to be, your coach must know where you are starting from. You should be asked to complete a PAR-Q (Physical Activity Readiness questionnaire) at a minimum to ensure your safety & ability to perform exercise and your trainer should perform some basic tests such as weight, blood pressure, perhaps body composition, girth measurements, lung capacity and aerobic fitness or strength. If more qualified, additional assessments such as postural analysis, spinal curve measurements and abdominal wall function should be tested to design a more accurate programme. And if your coach is really good, they will assess your physiological load levels to determine what type of exercise (strength training, cardio, meditation, stretching) your body is currently able to cope with. This is essential if you want to know whether what youve paid them has been worth it if you cant see the progress or differences working with a coach has made because they forgot to measure a baseline when you started with them, then although you may feel fitter, slimmer or stronger you wont have hard facts & figures to prove it.

4. Discuss your goals with you and adjust any unrealistic expectations you may have. To get your business, a trainer may promise that you will lose half a stone of fat in 2 weeks or youll get the body of your dreams in a month even though youve never exercised before and are 3 stone overweight this does you no good. You will have unrealistic expectations & goals from the outset and will be much more likely to become de-motivated & disillusioned when you realise you havent lost a stone in a week. Whilst a good trainer will not discourage you from your ultimate goals, they should at least educate you on the realistic progressions you are likely to make.

5. Design a programme that is tailored especially to your needs and your body. This may sound obvious but I have seen plenty of trainers run through identical training sessions with every one of their clients. This ties in with the third point if they havent completed assessments & initial tests on you, then they wont know what your individual needs are. You are paying them to provide you with a fully customised service thats why its called personal training !

6. Track your progress at every session & be working to a periodisation plan you may not see them carrying a clipboard or doing this during the session but your trainer should know when they need to adjust your programme and what adjustments to make. If theyve been winging your sessions and havent been planning & tracking your progress, how will they know what adjustments to make after a few weeks? They should have designed & be following a periodised training plan to ensure you are achieving your goals during each phase of your training.

7. Show you how to exercise safely & correctly again this may seem a given but if your trainer gives you a programme and then just leaves you to it, they are putting you at risk and not only will you probably struggle to achieve your goals without their attention, you may even injure yourself. Similarly, if they are supervising you, they should constantly be giving you tips, adjustments or even just positive affirmations that you are performing your exercises correctly not watching the sport on TV or chatting to other staff & clients in the gym.

All of the above are nothing however, if you dont actually get on with your coach! They may be the most highly qualified person you can find but if spending an hour with them (sometimes 3 or more times a week) is like spending an hour in the dentists chair or worse, then you probably arent going to get the full benefit of working with that trainer. They dont have to be your best buddy, just ensure that you feel comfortable with them, can trust them and that you do enjoy your sessions in a masochistic kind of way!