It might seem a bit counterintuitive because I have been an online trainer for over twenty years. That being said, I am just being honest with you. If you have or can develop these five traits, you will not need my expertise, experience, or knowledge, or anyone else's for that matter.

I will concede that someone could still save a lot of time by hiring an experienced trainer. Someone like myself, who has trained hundreds of people over the last two decades, can fast-track a client's knowledge. At the same time, if you have the patience and want to learn how to train yourself, these are the five things you should focus on and save your hard-earned money.

1. Track Everything

I will start with the simplest of all the variables. Anyone can do this, and it takes absolutely no skill, knowledge, or experience. It is, however, tedious. The thing is, you should be tracking everything, anyway, whether you are working with a trainer or not. I guarantee that a good trainer will have you keeping detailed notes of everything.

You will need to track your training so that you have detailed notes of volume, frequency, and intensity. You will also need to note feedback from your workouts, including weights, reps, the total amount of sets, how you felt before and after training, how long it took to recover from that workout, etc.

RECENT: Team SKIP Training Protocol of 2022

Tracking your nutrition is a must, as well. No one will be successful with a diet if they are not monitoring macros, calories, timing of meals, etc.

Detailed notes about supplementation are vital, as well.

2. Allow Enough Time to Evaluate Your Progress

Being patient and allowing time for your body to adjust is typically one of the things that a lot of people do poorly. If you have a plan in place that is well thought out, you will need enough time to evaluate whether it is successful. Too many people break this rule and start changing variables too soon. If you create a training plan to train yourself and change it in two weeks, more time will be needed to evaluate the effectiveness of the plan.

A diet differs from a training plan in that you may have to make adjustments sooner. However, the core ideology of the dieting program should remain the same. If you use a specific macro ratio, you might need to adjust calories up or down after a week or two, and that is fine. Completely overhauling the dieting method by going from higher carbohydrates and low fats to moderate fats and moderate carbohydrate intake is veering away from the method you decided to use only a couple of weeks ago. 

I plan for 10-12 weeks at a minimum to fully assess whether a training schedule or diet plan is successful. You might have a different time frame of more or less time than 10-12 weeks. Whatever the time period you set, stick to it, adjust, and make only minor adjustments throughout while keeping the same methodology for the duration.

3. Keep Variables Consistent

This one is huge; it might be the most important of the five steps I am discussing. Keeping variables as consistent as possible will allow for more accurate evaluation when you train yourself. And equally as important, consistent variables will allow for the adjustments you make to be accurately measured or assessed as to whether they are negatively or positively impacting the outcome.

To explain it differently: if you change five things (variables) at one time with your training plan, you will not have a very good idea about which variables positively or negatively impacted the outcome. You will know that you either progressed or did not progress, but you only learn something if you know WHY.

On the other hand, if you only change one or two variables, you will be very clear about what worked and what did not work. Good trainers will almost always make changes by only changing one or two variables simultaneously. Good trainers have learned, over years of training themselves and their clients, that this is the best way to know what the next adjustment will be. 

4. Be Realistic and Honest

You absolutely must be able to accurately and honestly assess yourself and your progress (or lack thereof) when you train yourself. We have all seen those people on social media who routinely claim that this is their "best condition yet," even when some of us can see that this is NOT their best condition. A lot of us see what we want to see, and we evaluate our progress to fit our narrative. Why? 

Because it takes guts to admit that all your hard work and effort may not have resulted in a better outcome, nothing is more stabbing than sacrificing the time and effort needed only to come up short. It is very easy to claim we have improved because social media is an echo chamber. We are constantly patted on the back by our "friends," who almost always agree with us to be supportive. 

A trainer will be brutally honest with you. They have to because your progress and success are their responsibility, and it is their name or brand on the line if they do not deliver. If you can be brutally honest when you train yourself and accurately assess your reflection in the mirror or progress pictures, you will not need someone else to do that for you. Make no mistake, though, it is harder than most people think it is.

5. Remove Emotion 

Emotion must be removed from the equation to assess your progress accurately. This is why trainers are honest; they have an obligation to call it as they see it because their reputation is on the line. Trainers are not emotionless, but a trainer’s obligation is to make sure the client is progressing. We need clients who can execute. If the client executes flawlessly and is still not progressing, the plan needs to be adjusted.

Our progress in this "sport" (oh, how I hate calling it a sport) is something that most of us take personally. We carry our progress around 24/7 for all to see. When we are not progressing or in as good of a condition as we want to be, we take this personally. It is attached to us—not just physically but psychologically. That is why telling ourselves we are not progressing is hard to accept, and it is not always easy to hear from a trainer.

At least when we hear it from a trainer, we do not have to question it because any sensical person knows that your trainer would love to tell you that you are progressing. A trainer gains nothing by lying to you. In short, if your trainer tells you you are not progressing, take it as fact. It is pretty much non-negotiable. Make sure you can be honest when you train yourself.

Final Thoughts

I did not say the five things listed above would be easy to master. I only said that if you could master these five things, you would not need to pay a trainer. 

In my forty years of training, I have never hired a trainer. On the one hand, I am proud of that; I am a sink-or-swim kind of guy. On the other hand, I admit that had I worked with trainers in my early years, I could have saved a lot of time trying to figure out the best way to learn what worked for me and what did not work. I spent years experimenting and using trial and error. Because of this, I reached a point where I was not only able to assess my own progress accurately, but I also got to the point that I was so good at it that I could work with clients and teach them the same things. This saved them a ton of time that I wish I could have saved myself.

You have the tools. The question is whether you want to spend the time or the money. Some would argue that they are one and the same—Just Sayin’.

Ken “Skip” Hill has been involved in the sport of bodybuilding for almost forty years and competing for twenty-plus years. Born and raised in Michigan, he spent 21 years calling Colorado home with his wife and their four children. He and his wife traded the mountains for the beach four years ago, relocating to South Florida. His primary focus is nutrition and supplementation, but he is called upon for his years of training experience, as well. He started doing online contest prep in 2001 and is considered one of the original contest prep guys (when the bodybuilding message boards were still in their infancy). Skip’s track record with competitive bodybuilders is well-respected, and he also does sport-specific conditioning, including professional athletes.