Choosing a Trainer
Both teach you to lift. One builds athletes for a season; the other builds ordinary adults for the rest of their lives. Here is what each is trained to do, and how to tell which one your goal calls for.
Craig ChapinNASM Certified Personal Trainer
You want to get stronger, and somewhere along the way you noticed two job titles that sound like the same thing. One says strength and conditioning coach. The other says personal trainer. So you typed strength and conditioning coach vs personal trainer to find out whether one is the serious option and the other is the watered-down one.
Neither is. They are built for different people. I have been a NASM Certified Personal Trainer since 2004 and have spent 20+ years training clients privately in South Tampa, collegiate athletes and new moms alike. I am a personal trainer, not a certified strength and conditioning coach, and I will tell you plainly below when you should go and find one of those instead of me.
A strength and conditioning coach prepares athletes to perform in a sport. The job usually lives in a high school, college or professional weight room, often with a whole team at once, and it is measured by what happens on the field.
A personal trainer works with the rest of us: adults whose goal is to feel better, look better, move without pain and keep doing that for decades. Usually one-on-one, usually with somebody who has not trained in a while, and almost always with something to work around: a desk job, a stiff back, a baby, a knee that complains on stairs.
It is also why I kept going after the certificate: 31 continuing-education courses on my record, most of them in older-adult training, injury and posture work, and high-intensity methods. A personal trainer’s job is harder to standardise than an athlete’s, because no two clients walk in with the same history.
The same barbell, two very different jobs:
The line between them is blurrier than the titles make it sound. A squat is a squat. Plenty of strength coaches train adults on the side, and a good personal trainer borrows from athletic training all the time: intervals, sled pushes, loaded carries, lifts strung together into circuits. Some of my own courses sit right on that line: “Strength and Conditioning for Seniors” (2017), “Designing Exercise Complexes” (2017) and “High Intensity Training: When Less Is More” (2019).
So the title on the business card matters less than what the person actually does with you. Do they test you before they load you? Do they watch every rep, or the clock? Do they change the plan when your back or your schedule changes? Those answers tell you more than any three letters after a name.
One thing neither of them is: a physical therapist. If something hurts, or you are recovering from an injury or surgery, the first stop is your doctor or a physical therapist. Training picks up where they leave off.
Find your goal. For most South Tampa adults, the answer is the same one.
A personal trainer
Weight loss is a habit problem before it is a programming problem: steady strength sessions, food you can keep eating and somebody expecting you on Tuesday morning. That is the whole of my weight loss training, and there is no season to peak for.
A personal trainer, once you are cleared
After your doctor or physical therapist clears you, the work is slow, careful core and hip strength, chosen around what your back tolerates that day. I wrote a whole guide to training with back pain.
A personal trainer
The lifts are the same ones an athlete does. What differs is where you start and how fast the weight goes up. Men can start on the strength training for men page, and the men over 50 guide goes further.
A personal trainer, after OB or midwife clearance
Deep core and pelvic floor first, then strength, in stages. Nothing about it looks like a team lift. The stages are on the postpartum training page.
A personal trainer
Leg strength and balance, tested before anything is loaded and progressed slowly. My guide for older adults covers how that starts.
A strength and conditioning coach
A high school or college athlete with a season, practices and a team should work with that program’s strength staff first. They know the sport, the schedule and how hard practice already is.
I have trained collegiate athletes alongside new moms, and I would still tell a varsity athlete to start with the team’s strength coach. That coach sees the practice plan, knows when the big games are and can manage the whole load. Adding a second lifting program on top of that, from somebody who cannot see the rest of the week, is how athletes end up tired at exactly the wrong time.
Look for a strength and conditioning coach if:
Everybody else, which is most people reading this, is better served by somebody whose whole job is the person in front of them rather than the team on the schedule.
Ask which one, from whom, and when it was last renewed. Then ask what they have studied since, because that is where the difference between trainers shows.
You want a real answer: balance, strength, flexibility, your history. “We will just see how you do” is not one.
One person, every rep, or somebody moving between a dozen people? Both can work. Know which you are paying for.
The honest answer is “when the last session went well.” Be wary of anyone with a fixed schedule for adding load that does not depend on you.
Stop, change the exercise, and send you to a doctor or physical therapist when it is more than ordinary soreness. Anyone who says “push through it” has answered for you.
I train every client myself, in person at Empire MMA and Fitness, 5006 S MacDill Ave in South Tampa, Monday–Friday, 5am–1pm. If you are looking for a personal trainer in South Tampa and your goal is in the personal trainer column above, that is what I do every weekday morning.
Private sessions are $60 for 30 minutes or $120 for 60 minutes, and the packages and prices are published. The first session is free. Book it here, and I will call you within 24 hours to set the time, or call me on 813-590-7226. Bring a friend if you like: if they come in for a session, you get another personal training session free.
Start Here
Tell me your goal and what your week looks like, get a body-fat reading and a fitness evaluation, and leave with a plan built for you rather than for a season. There is nothing to buy at the end of it.
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