If you’re spending good money on a personal trainer, you want to get the most out of your money (and physical effort). While training can be a considerable financial investment for many individuals, it can yield significant dividends if done with an ideal frequency. If the frequency of sessions isn’t ideal, however, results may be lacking, and you may feel that your money and effort were not well spent.

As a general rule, beginners should workout with a trainer twice a week to ensure steady physical progress and optimal learning pace. Working once a week with a trainer still yields benefits, but twice a week will speed up progress while helping you to stay within your budget if finances are tight.

This is by no means a universal rule, as there are plenty of factors to consider (covered within this article). If you want to know ideal frequencies based on various other common factors to consider, be sure to keep on reading!

As well, selecting the right personal trainer for YOU is a critical first step to take when signing up for personal training, as the right trainer will drastically improve your chances of staying committed to a healthy lifestyle, finding meaning in your workouts and meeting your overall health and wellness goals.

So, be sure to check out my article How To Find AND Hire the Right Personal Trainer For YOU | Expert Tips, where I break down everything you need to know to pick the best trainer for you!

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Picking the ideal frequency based on budget and goals
Other powerful frequency factors to consider
Should the session frequency ever change?
Final thoughts

Related article: Tips From A Pro: 12 Benefits to Hiring A Personal Trainer

Picking the ideal frequency based on budget and goals

I’m a big believer in the importance of practicing a physically healthy lifestyle AND in practicing financial responsibility. As a result, there’s a delicate dance that can occur when balancing out personal trainer frequency to maximize results but while staying within a budget. I’ve included a very simple chart below as a super concise overview.

Be sure to read the subheadings beneath the chart if you want further specifics.

If budget is not an issue for you

If budget is of little concern or no relevance to you, training session frequency with your trainer can be whatever you’d like it to be. Typically, even when I worked with clients in the past who had more money than they knew what to do with, I’d stop them at three sessions per week when training with me.

The reason being that many of these sessions were not based around learning and mastering movement as much as they were just based around intense workouts. If you plan on having a trainer for more than three physically demanding sessions a week, have your trainer program in some recovery-based, mobility-based or lower intensity-based sessions for any additional sessions that week.

If budget is a BIG issue for you

I know what it’s like to not have funds for something you genuinely want to pursue or for what you find to be deeply important.

Here are some critical factors to consider if you want to sign up for personal training and get the most out of it while feeling very hesitant about dropping the money on a trainer:

• You CAN learn how to workout and exercise through other means, but it should never come at the expense of compromising safety. Ask friends you trust, purchase some exercise books, etc. Trial and error with certain aspects of learning how to exercise is just fine so long as it never compromises your physical safety. If you’re not sure about something, don’t do it! Save those sorts of things for sessions with a trainer.
  
  
• If you need to hire a trainer specifically to know where to start with physical training and want to stay safe in the process, remember that this is a prudent investment to make. In no way will this be wasted money. Start with one session per week. You can learn a lot in a single session each week, and you can increase the frequency when your budget allows.

How your training goals can determine personal training frequency

People sign up for personal training for various reasons, and many of the reasons greatly influence the importance of the frequency of training with your trainer. I’ve included a very simple chart below for a simple overview, but read the following points beneath it for further elaboration.

Further elaboration based on the information in the above chart:

• Suppose your primary goal is simply to learn the basics of exercises, use workout equipment, etc. In that case, your frequency will determine the rate at which you’re exposed to and become familiar with these features. Since not much else is at stake, you can choose the best frequency for you. If you plan on learning enough to be confident on your own, one or two sessions a week for a few weeks might be all that it takes before you’re comfortable “going it alone” in the gym.
  
  
• If your primary goal is to be held accountable (i.e., you don’t need much education, have decent workout experience and just need someone to push you hard), you’ll likely want more than one session a week but no more than three.
  
  
• If your primary goal is physical change (weight loss, strength gain, etc.) while continuing to hone your exercise technique and confidence, twice a week is a sweet spot that will likely work best. This will allow you to do one or two workouts on your own each week while having two other guided sessions, which will help you learn and make fitness improvements at an ideal rate.

Other powerful frequency factors to consider

While the factors in the previous section are the most common factors that strongly influence the ideal frequency of trainer-based sessions, some other factors are worth considering:

How many times a week are you willing or comfortable to workout on your own?

There’s no rule saying that you can only step foot in the gym if you’re with your personal trainer. In fact, so long as you’re comfortable (and it’s safe for you) to workout/exercise on your own, many trainers will encourage you to get in a session or two each week all by yourself. Sometimes these will be more basic or lower intensity sessions (since your trainer isn’t there to guide or correct you), but they are still very beneficial sessions!

Pro tip: I often did this with my clients as a means for them to “practice” the concepts and exercises we would run through in our trainer-based sessions. Again, I would only have them do exercises and movements that I knew they’d be safe doing and had confidence with doing as well. I programmed their “solo” sessions accordingly and made sure each one would be safe and beneficial. Then, they would come back the next session and show me the improvements that the “practice” had made.

If you’re not yet comfortable being on your own, get as many sessions in as required before you and your trainer are confident to try some workouts all by yourself. As you gain more confidence, you may find it appropriate to scale back your training frequency if your budget is rather tight.

Are you able to purchase your training sessions in a package of some kind?

When you sign up for personal training, many gyms will have package offers where the cost of each personal training session decreases as you purchase more sessions upfront.

If getting two or more sessions in per week is very important to you, yet you remain on a tight budget, a package that offers a higher number of sessions (likely all purchased upfront) at a slightly overall less expensive cost-per-session rate may be an excellent purchase to make, as this will allow you to get more sessions in each week while saving some money in the long run.

As an example: if you’re able to purchase fifty sessions, you’ll likely find that training twice or three times per week with your trainer is much more feasible than if you’re only able to purchase, say, ten sessions.

So, be sure to ask your gym if they have package offers when considering hiring a personal trainer, and if so, see if there is a package offer that strikes a sweet spot between the number of overall sessions and cost-per-session if you’re wanting a lot of personal training on a tighter budget.

How often are you realistically able to get to the gym or facility each week?

Plenty of people have the best of intentions with making it to the gym a certain number of times per week. Still, many of those individuals have a hard time following through (either consistently or at all).

Life can get in the way when it comes to meeting up with your trainer on a consistent basis. As a result, you should consider how feasible it really is (and committed you are) with making sure you can stick with your targeted frequency.

If you have to cancel sessions at the last moment, you may be charged for that session due to short notice. As a result, it may be better to start with a lower weekly frequency, but one you’re confident that you can commit to and maintain a specific frequency for a given period of time, commit to it and don’t look back!

Make sure that you can realistically commit to the training frequency that you desire. If in doubt, start on a lower frequency until you know you’re able to increase the frequency without having to worry about cancelling and missing sessions.

Should the session frequency ever change?

For those who are inexperienced with gym-based environments, physical training and all the other aspects that come with working out, it’s worth knowing that session frequency with your personal trainer is often the highest at the beginning of your journey.

This is due to the nature of inexperience; there is a whole bunch of information to learn. The basics can range from proper movement and exercise form, learning how to use exercise equipment, how to exercise at the right intensity, and so much more.

However, the weekly session frequency for working with your trainer by no means has to be static; frequency often decreases as time goes on for those who want to train with their trainer for the foreseeable future while being respectful of their budget.

As you begin to master and fully comprehend such factors, you may find that your confidence grows to the point at which you’re relatively comfortable with scaling back your sessions with your trainer. A good trainer should fully appreciate and even expect this for many of their clients, based on the needs and goals of that particular client.

If budget isn’t an issue, keep your session frequency at twice per week; otherwise, don’t worry about scaling it back as your confidence grows.

Pro tip: For many of my clients who wanted to learn the basics and get to the point of being confident to train on their own, I’d often start with twice a week for a couple of months to ensure all basics were covered. I would then regress the frequency to once a week, then ultimately to every couple of weeks to simply “check-in” and make sure things were still good. After that point, they’d be confident to be on their own and come back to me when they needed a new program or wanted to learn more advanced techniques with their training.

Final thoughts

If you’re interested in signing up for personal training, you want to get the most out of your time with your trainer. Getting the most out of this time can be influenced by your budget, your personal goals and the overall frequency for which you work with your trainer.

There’s no rule set in stone for the perfect frequency to work with your trainer each week. Still, for the vast majority of individuals, two sessions per week will hit the sweet spot between maximizing the rate of physical benefits while being respectful of a personal budget.