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You also can cut costs by signing up for joint sessions with a friend. The

trainer may charge slightly more than the regular hourly fee, but split two

ways, your session is still a deal. You won’t get quite as much attention from

the trainer, but teaming up with a friend may make a session affordable. Try

to choose a friend who’s at the same fitness level as you or who has similar

fitness goals. If you’re training for a marathon and your friend is a linebacker

getting ready for football season, the trainer is going to have a tough time

serving both your needs at once.

Another way to save money is to do a half-hour of cardio exercise on your

own (see Part III of this book) with a program designed but not supervised by

your trainer, and then hook up with the trainer for a half-hour of weight train-

ing. This is a service primarily offered by gym trainers, as opposed to trainers

who come to your home.

52 Part I: Getting Your Butt off the Couch

Cybertrainers

If you’re not big on human contact, if you want

to save money, or if you just can’t get enough of

technology, you may be interested in hiring an

Internet trainer. We can’t really call these “per-

sonal” trainers, because you never actually

come face-to-face with a person, but many of

these Web sites offer more individualized

advice than you can get from a book or a video

(or a lousy human trainer). But watch out: Some

of these sites are a rip-off.

Most programs start by asking you questions

about your health, your goals, and your current

workouts. The better ones also ask you to per-

form some basic at-home fitness tests, similar

to those we describe in Chapter 2, and then

enter the results online. The really bad ones ask

you for little more than your credit-card number.

After you plug in all this info, your cybertrainer

sends you a workout routine with suggested

exercises, sets, and repetitions. Usually, you

can download videos demonstrating how to

perform each recommended exercise. Or, you

can go to an exercise database, click on any

number of exercises for a particular muscle

group, and watch a demonstration. You can

print out the routine and take it with you to the

gym, or tack it up on the wall at home. If you

plug in your workouts, you get feedback —

allegedly from an actual human being — on

how you’re progressing. For example, the

trainer may suggest that you increase your

weight or try a new shoulder exercise.

The Internet training program Web sites we like

best, http://personaltraining.org

and http://www.physicalgenius.com, offer work-

outs designed by trainers who seem to know

what they’re doing. Physical Genius lets you

download programs into a handheld device that

you can carry to the gym. You have to pay a

couple hundred dollars for the device, which

you order through the site.

Expect to pay up to $500 for four months of

cybertraining. Watch out for programs that

charge $100 a session and those with exercise

descriptions written in jargonese. Pay attention

to the credentials of the trainers who are sup-

posed to have designed the routines.

To find an Internet trainer other than the two we

list, enter “online personal trainer,” “workout

programs,” or “weight-training programs” into

Google or some other search engine.