Passionate about fitness and with a sociable personality, a career as a personal trainer is the perfect combination for Matt McKenna.
"It's like doing what I love every day."
“I always enjoyed training people when I was at school. Even before I was a personal trainer, I always liked training people. I would say I am quite a people person, so I enjoy chatting to people every day and I like helping people progress. It’s like doing what I love every day.”
Matt McKenna is a personal trainer in Newcastle at The Gym-Gosforth and Gosforth Central Park, available whether you want a 1-2-1 session or want to train as part of a group.
Everybody exercises for their own reasons, and it is no different for Matt’s clients. Some want to gain muscle and strength, some want to lose weight, whilst others reasoning isn’t linked to physical improvement and instead mental health.
For Matt, one of his favourite parts of being a personal trainer is seeing this progress – no matter what the reason is. What comes as an added bonus is the friendships he is able to form with his clients.
“You literally just have chat with people every day. I’m pretty much friends with all my clients which is awesome.”
As with all jobs however, being a personal trainer comes with its challenges.
“I’ve got quite a few clients who struggle with anxiety. Sometimes it is quite hard to bring people out their shell if they are not feeling great or especially if they are in a gym environment where it can be intimidating. It can be challenging to pitch it at the right level.”
This hurdle is easily forgotten though when rewarded with the pride of knowing that the sessions are helping a person in achieving their goal.
Matt’s advice for anyone wanting to follow in his footsteps is simple: “Do it – it’s awesome.”
Aside from his glowing report of the job, Matt did offer some guidance for future personal trainers.
“You don’t just rock up and train people and then just forget it. You’ve got to think of what you are offering outside of the personal training sessions. Like I don’t just do a session then say right good luck see you next week.”
Matt’s training doesn’t end when the session does. He offers a training plan and ensures he checks in with his clients to see how it is going.
"Your muscle can’t tell if it is a can of baked beans or if it’s a dumbbell at the gym."
Each workout and training programme is created based on the client, depending on their ability and what they want from the workout.
“If someone is just starting out, you don’t even need a really specific training programme. You want to be focussing on form – make sure what we are doing is safe and then you can add the weights up and start to put together a more complicated programme… I use google sheets, for example, to programme in all the sets and reps and weights. Once they are on it, they take the programme a little bit more serious.”
Additional to google sheets, Matt shared how else he keeps his clients motivated.
“I would say I’m quite a positive person to be around the majority of the time or at least that’s what they tell me. Have a bit of chat in the session. Not too much – you don’t want more chat than training. But in between sets you want to make it as fun as possible. You don’t want it to be just standing around waiting for the next set.
I use programmes for their training in their own time as well. I literally say message me when you’ve done that or tag me, so I know you are training outside of my sessions as well.
Keep it varied but also standards, so you know you are making progress. You want to be able to see progress. If you don’t know you are making progress, then it’s not motivating.”
As expected, the current pandemic has caused complications for personal trainers. Matt had to quickly adapt to the new circumstances when England entered its first national lockdown.
“I moved over as many people who were interested to one on one zoom sessions, using whatever equipment they had – it might be body weight, it might be resistance bands, some people have their own home gyms. Some people I’m getting them to put water bottles in carrier bags and use those as weights. Your muscle can’t tell if it is a can of baked beans or if it’s a dumbbell at the gym."
England’s second lockdown has allowed a bit more freedom, and Matt has decided to embrace the outdoors.
“This lockdown I’ve taken it a bit more like my office is Gosforth Central Park. I had the gazebo up the other day. I want to make it as comfortable for people as possible and take the gym to the park.”
Matt’s personal training still has more exciting prospects to come in the future. With the potential of creating a digital platform to expand his training, introducing nutrition to the programme, and envisioning even having a home gym to train his clients in, he has plenty to look forward too.
To find out more about Matt McKenna, click here or follow mattmckennapt on Instagram.
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