Personal trainer in Dubai: how to choose one, and how to keep going between sessions

What to check before hiring a personal trainer in Dubai

REPs UAE is the public register of exercise professionals in the United Arab Emirates. According to REPs UAE, registration is not a nationwide legal requirement, but the Dubai and Abu Dhabi Sports Councils have issued circulars making it mandatory for instructors working in health clubs and fitness facilities. It is the first thing to check, and you can check it yourself: the register lets anyone search for a trainer by name.

To register as a personal trainer, REPs UAE asks for a recognised personal-training qualification at Level 3 or equivalent and a current first aid and CPR certificate. Members renew by logging about 20 hours of continuing professional development every two years. The register's code of ethics also asks them to screen clients before exercise, to work within their competence and to refer clients to another professional when a need lies outside it.

Once two trainers are both registered, a few plain questions separate them:

• The starting point. Do they measure where you start, and how will you both know you are progressing?
• The health screening. Do they ask you to complete a questionnaire before the first intense session?
• The reasoning. Can they explain why they chose this exercise, this load, this volume?
• The limits. Will they say "that is not my field, see a doctor or a physiotherapist" when it applies?
• The logistics. How are a reschedule, a cancellation or a change of place handled?

The guide to choosing a personal trainer goes through each criterion in detail.

Home, hotel, office, gym or outdoors: which format suits you

Many residential buildings in Dubai have a gym, and many trainers travel to their clients. The right place is mostly the one that will get you there every week:

• At home or in your building's gym. No commute, and an appointment at your door is hard to dodge. Equipment can be limited, which a good trainer makes up for with bodyweight work, bands and light dumbbells.
• In a hotel. Useful if you travel or host visitors often. A room is enough for a full session, as our hotel room workout shows.
• At the office. A lunchtime or end-of-day session, where the building's gym allows it.
• In a gym. More equipment and heavier loads, but a journey to plan. The calculator on this page estimates the travel time a trainer who comes to you saves, using your own figures.
• Outdoors. Beaches, parks and running tracks are at their best in the cooler winter months, provided the hours are chosen with care.

Training through the Dubai summer

Heat changes how people train in Dubai. The international consensus on training in the heat, published by Racinais and colleagues in 2015, names acclimatisation as the most important measure: repeated exercise in the heat over one to two weeks. The American College of Sports Medicine notes that fatigue sets in sooner as it gets hotter, and that exertional heat stroke can affect people who seem perfectly healthy.

In practice, most summer sessions move to air-conditioned spaces, or outdoors at dawn and after sunset. A careful trainer lowers the intensity, plans for water and knows the signs that mean stop. According to the NHS, heatstroke shows as hot skin that is no longer sweating, fast breathing and pulse, and confusion, and it is an emergency. The guide to training in the heat and the one on hydration set out the precautions in full.

What a personal trainer actually adds

The evidence is encouraging, though limited. In a twelve-week trial by Mazzetti and colleagues, moderately trained men supervised directly by a personal trainer increased their training loads faster and gained more strength on the squat and bench press than men following the same programme alone. The trial was small, with 20 participants. In older adults, a meta-analysis by Lacroix and colleagues found that supervised strength and balance training improved those qualities more than unsupervised programmes.

The American College of Sports Medicine also notes that supervision by an experienced instructor can improve the adoption of exercise and adherence to it. That is the heart of the matter. The World Health Organization recommends that adults do 150 to 300 minutes of moderate activity a week, plus muscle strengthening on at least two days. One or two sessions with a trainer do not cover that on their own; the rest of the week matters as much as the hour you spend together. Our guide to how much exercise per week shows what a full week looks like.

The real challenge: consistency between sessions

Lack of time is among the barriers to exercise people report most often, as a review of time-efficient strength training by Iversen and colleagues notes. The difficulty is rarely knowing what to do. It is doing it every week, including when work, travel or the heat get in the way. The guide on how to make exercise a habit offers practical ways to protect your sessions.

Take an example, offered only as an illustration: Sam sees a trainer every Saturday morning. During the week he plans to go for a run, then Tuesday slips, and Thursday too. Each Saturday session starts almost from scratch. With two short guided workouts in the week, and friends who can see whether he did them, his hour with the trainer would go into progress rather than catching up.

Never Skip Club: the app that keeps you training, with or without a trainer

Never Skip Club is a free app for training regularly and challenging your friends. It works on the web today; the iPhone app is coming to the App Store, with Android after it.

• A guided workout in one minute. Choose the body area, the level (Easy, Medium or Intense), the length (20, 30 or 45 minutes), the place (gym, hotel or home) and the equipment you have. The app builds five to six exercises, shown as animations, and you log your sets.
• A crew of three to seven friends. Together you set a rhythm, for example four sessions a week, over one week, one month or three months. A session counts when it lasts 30 minutes or more.
• A leaderboard for consistency. It compares the sessions done with the sessions agreed. Doing extra earns no points: what wins is keeping the rhythm.
• A story to share. Your week can be shared on Instagram or WhatsApp, which makes the next session harder to skip.

Booking a session with a coach from our network

When you want an expert eye, to fix a movement, start lifting or restart your progress, the app lets you book a session with a coach from our network: at home, in a hotel, at the office or in a gym. You can change or cancel the booking up to 24 hours before, and the coach leaves a session report in the app, alongside your guided workouts.

The network is still growing. If no coach is available in your area or city yet, send your request anyway: the network is expanding. And whichever trainer you end up working with, check their REPs UAE registration.

Before you start

The American College of Sports Medicine's 2015 screening model looks at three things: how active you are now, any signs or known disease of the heart, metabolism or kidneys, and the intensity you plan to reach. The PAR-Q+ questionnaire is the international standard for that first step.

If you have chest pain, fainting, known heart, metabolic or kidney disease, or take medicines that affect heart rate, ask your doctor before you start. A trainer works alongside your doctor, not instead of one.

Start this week

The simplest move is to begin before you have found the perfect trainer. Create your free account, run a first guided workout of 20 or 30 minutes, then invite two or three friends to form a crew with a rhythm you can all keep. When you want an expert eye, find a coach in our network. Already have an account? Sign in.