Picture a trainee walking into a commercial gym for a "complimentary" first PT session. Thirty minutes of training. Thirty minutes of "package presentation." Charts. Discounts expiring tomorrow. Emotional pressure. They walk out with a £4,000 contract and a slightly bruised ego.
The commercial gym personal-training model is structured as: free or low-cost first session → assessment → package proposal → sales close. That structure isn't always corrupt — many gym PTs are genuinely qualified — but the incentive in session one is to close the sale, not to coach you well. Which means your first session has to function as YOUR interview of THEM, not just theirs of you.
Inside this one
- Seven questions to ask in session one — substantive, not script-bait.
- Red and green flag checklists for evaluating a coach in real time.
- The supervised-training evidence: ~40% greater strength gains with qualified supervision (Mazzetti 2000).
- After-session decision framework: 24+ hours, references, comparison.
- Pocket reference card. Master Bibliography with peer-reviewed citations.
The standard it is held to
Every factual claim in this volume names its source, and every claim carries a confidence grade — settled, strong, emerging or contested. Where the evidence is thin, the text says so. How it’s made, in full → · What we’ve got wrong →