What To Expect from a Vitruvian Fitness Private Fitness Consultation

Tom Wigginton • October 9, 2018

Congratulations! You’ve signed up for personal training. Let’s get started.

When you made the decision to hire a personal trainer, it’s safe to say it’s because you need or want to make some changes in your life that you need help with. Depending on your goals, some of the changes and choices you’ll make may feel overwhelming. Thankfully, the expert trainers at Vitruvian Fitness will make achieving those goals easier. And it all starts at your very first session. Here’s what to expect from your private fitness consultation:

Expect to get personal

They call it “personal” training for a reason. When you schedule a private fitness consultation, you’re taking the first step to a wholly customized experience every time you enter the gym. In order to do that, your trainer needs to get to know you – in pretty significant detail. What is your exercise history? What types of training have you done before? What type of results did you get? What did you like? What didn’t you like? Who did you work with before? What did you like or dislike about them?

Do you have a background in athletics – recreational or competitive? Are you currently participating in any athletic, sporting, or otherwise recreational activity? How satisfied are you with your performance?

The more detailed you can be about your experiences with fitness, the better. Don’t be afraid to be honest! We’re here to make sure that you’re motivated and engaged every time you come to the gym, especially when that means avoiding styles that you know don’t work for you.

Along with your fitness history, your personal trainer needs to understand your medical background. Disclosing any injuries, surgeries, and specific health concerns helps him or her develop a plan that will work with you instead of against you. For women, this may also include talking about medical issues related to childbirth and your pelvic floor.

Expect to talk about your goals

Earl Nightingale said, “All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press on to your destination.” Steven Covey said, “Begin with the end in mind.” Tom Wigginton asks, “What are you here for?”

No matter what you’re reaching for, it’s important to set goals with your personal trainer as a means to measure your growth. Your fitness goals don’t need to be exclusively about the numbers, either. It’s just as valid and worthy to aim for feeling better, moving better, or having less pain as it is to aim for improving your performance in a triathlon. Your goal may even be something incredibly specific, and that’s fine, too. What’s important is that you know what you want to work toward.

And it’s totally okay if you don’t know how to quantify your goals in the beginning. As you begin to experience what progress looks like, you can begin to set some measurable goals to help design your road map. While you may change them over time, having a base from which to start is key to measuring your success.

At Vitruvian Fitness, you’ll do a movement assessment called the Functional Movement Screen.

Your personal trainer needs to understand how well you’re capable of moving to know where to begin. When you schedule a private fitness consultation, our expert personal trainers will assess where you are and where you can improve. The Functional Movement Screen™ is an excellent tool that a personal trainer should use to help customize your fitness plan. The screen will show where you excel and where you have room to improve, and what, if anything, needs to be fixed before you start to add volume and intensity to your program. You wouldn’t jump on the highway in your car if your brakes didn’t work well, would you? Don’t do the same with your body. In the end, this will help you make steady, uninterrupted progress toward achieving your goals in a healthier, more productive way.

Expect to build a partnership

When you have a private fitness consultation, you should, first and foremost, be looking to create a working relationship with an expert. The trainer with whom you work should be empathetic and compassionate, with an awareness of where you are in your life and how that can impact your fitness. A great personal trainer doesn’t shame or bully her or his clients; instead, she or he builds a lasting partnership based on empathy, mutual enthusiasm for achieving your goals, and an awareness of your needs. A great personal trainer will not use any shame-based sale techniques to sell a program to you. After all, a great personal trainer is there to help you take care of yourself; shame holds no place in the path to physical fitness.

At Vitruvian Fitness, our team of experts is dedicated to providing clients with unmatched personal training built on trust, kindness, and knowledge. Scheduling a private fitness consultation with one of the talented trainers on our team is a great way to take the next step in your fitness journey.

< Older Post

Newer Post >

You might also enjoy these posts . . .

Cardio for Life: From Daily Dabblers to Podium Seekers

By Tom Wigginton • May 30, 2025

How to build a cardio plan that matches your goals—whether you're in it to win it or just want to feel 10 years younger. Nobody wants to rust out too early and yet, not everybody wants to race either. Most people fall somewhere in between. Maybe you’re not chasing a podium, but you are chasing longevity and quality of life. Or, maybe you’re not training for a triathlon, but you do like to enjoy a long hike without needing three days to recover. Or maybe you are chasing podiums, glory, and fame! In any case, that's great! In part 1 of this series, we talked about Why Cardio Matters . In part 2, we talked about gauging your effort levels by Decoding Your Training Zones . If you haven’t read those, you will find them helpful. Whether your goal is vitality , confidence , or competition , there’s a cardio plan that fits. The trick is structuring it smartly based on what your body needs and your life allows.

Decoding Training Zones: What They Are and Why They Matter

By Tom Wigginton • May 23, 2025

How you can train smarter to live longer, live better, and stay active and independent — maybe into your 90s or 100s. In our previous article, Why Cardio Matters , we talked about the benefits of doing cardio (like living longer) and introduced you to a few terms that might have been new: Zone 2, VO₂ Max, and lactate clearance. We also offered a general recommendation for how much cardio to do weekly. This article takes the next step: breaking down how the intensity you work at affects the benefits you get from each training session. The science of exercising is rich, complex, exciting, and overwhelming. Besides the fact that it is indeed complicated, it’s made worse by having acronyms for everything, buzzy catchphrases, and intimidating fitness personalities. This is where I’m going to try to make this easier to understand, convey why you should care, and encourage you to add cardio to your daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal lifestyles.

Why Cardio Matters: Fitness, Longevity, and What Most People Miss

By Tom Wigginton • May 16, 2025

“Doing cardio.” What even does that mean? For some people, it’s hopping on the rower, bike, ski erg, treadmill, or elliptical and checking the box for however long Tom said to do it, then sneaking out before anyone asks questions. Others train for sanity. It helps manage stress, clear the mind, and release a flood of feel-good chemistry. Also in this category are people who actually just love to run, bike, swim, or play sportsball purely for the fun. And then there are those training for performance—to win races, set PRs, and push personal limits. All of this is cardio. And yet, when you zoom out and look at the data, it becomes clear that cardiovascular fitness does something that has a very measurable outcome: it extends your lifespan . And while we’ve all heard that cardio is good for your heart, most people don’t realize just how deep that benefit runs. And as in the case of so many other aspects of life, the broader public often benefits from the insights that trickle down from elite performance research. So whether you're reluctantly doing cardio or chasing a vibe, you’re tapping into the same physiological systems that turn podium-seekers into podium winners.

How to Select the Right Weight for Each Lift

By Tom Wigginton • May 9, 2025

Question: “How do I select a weight for an exercise, and when should I go up?” We get this question literally several times every single day. And the answer isn't just “go heavier.” The answer is: it depends. Heavier is better—when heavier is appropriate. Sometimes you should go lighter and move faster. Sometimes you should go longer with the same weight. Sometimes you shouldn’t lift at all. Smart weight selection is about clarity, context, and responsiveness. Here’s how we think through it: 1. Is the Movement High-Quality? Before anything else, we ask: Are you doing the movement well? This is Phase 3 work— movement mastery . If you’re still learning the pattern, ironing out inefficiencies, or rebuilding capacity post-injury, weight selection should support technical precision. That means: Moving in clean lines Feeling the right muscles Owning each rep from start to finish

Strength Training and Prostate Cancer: What the Research Says — and How to Get Started

By Tom Wigginton • May 9, 2025

A prostate cancer diagnosis can feel like a loss of control. Treatments like hormone therapy or radiation are often necessary and effective, but they can come with side effects that chip away at quality of life — fatigue, muscle loss, weight gain, anxiety, and more. But there’s a growing body of research that points to something powerful you can control: your strength. Strength Training as a Therapeutic Tool Over the past decade, studies have consistently shown that regular, structured exercise — particularly strength training — can improve outcomes for men with prostate cancer. Here’s what the science tells us:

What People Really Want In The Gym

By Tom Wigginton • May 2, 2025

And How We Get You There In my experience as a personal trainer and strength coach, most people who walk through our doors don’t arrive with crystal-clear goals on their first day. They don’t know which muscles to train or which mobility restrictions to fix. They might know a few exercise names, but they’re unsure how to do them properly—or how it all fits into a bigger plan. But they do know one thing: They want to bridge a fitness gap and feel better about how they move and how they feel about themselves. Generally, people will tell us they want to be: Stronger—even if they can’t quite define that. More confident—even if it’s been a long time since they felt that way. More energetic and more at home in a body t hey’re proud of. Ask around and you’ll hear the same hopes over and over again: “I want to trim this midsection.” “I want to stop tweaking my back.” “I want to hike, bike, and ski without needing two days to recover.” “I want to keep up with my kids—or my grandkids.” “I just want to feel like me again.”