What to Look For in a Personal Trainer, According to One (Filmed)

TL;DR: Watch how a trainer starts, not how hard they push. Peter Santos, five years into coaching, says the tell comes before your first working set: a good trainer primes your core, glutes, and shoulders, checks your range of motion, and asks about your day, your food, and your hydration. Put straight onto a machine with no warm-up? His advice on camera: fire them immediately. The full 39-minute interview is below.

From the Fit Local trainer interview series. Interview published February 2026; post published August 2026.

Fit Local founder Conley Miller sits down with trainer Peter Santos for 39 minutes and asks the questions a profile page never answers: what he refuses to compromise, what clients actually struggle with, and what someone should look for in a trainer beyond certifications. The series exists because the personal part of personal training is the part a directory listing cannot show you.

Who is Peter Santos?

Peter Santos has coached for five years. He got certified the hard way: studying for the exam at the front desk of the climbing gym where he worked, while in engineering school.

Climbing also shaped his method. He started with bad form, leaned on raw strength, and developed elbow tendonitis. Fixing his own body pushed him into corrective exercise, and, in his words, "I started looking at longevity."

Before coaching he worked as a prison guard, as an ABA therapist with kids with autism, and as an audio engineer. "I've lived countless lives," he says. Coaching is the one that stuck: "This is what I'm meant to do."

He is also open about why he connects with people who struggle. He grew up with an eating disorder, and he brings that history into the room as empathy, not a lecture. "I get you, I understand you." Later in the interview he says it even more plainly: "I see myself in my clients."

Today he serves in the Army Reserve, wants to pursue physical therapy for the military, and coaches a book that runs from people prepping for Navy boot camp to clients 60 and up.

What should you look for in a trainer beyond certifications?

Conley asks the exact question. Peter's answer is one word: warm-ups.

"Make sure they're priming your core, they're priming your glutes, they're priming your shoulders, making sure they're checking range of motion."

And if a trainer walks you straight to the chest press machine or under a barbell in minute one? "Fire them immediately."

The second half of his answer has nothing to do with exercises: "make sure that they're asking you about your day, if you've eaten, if you're hydrated." Then the line that sums up the whole standard: "Make sure that they care and they're not just going through the motions."

Behind the warm-up rule sits the real skill: assessment. Give Peter a lunge and he is not watching the lunge. "I'm going to look from your feet all the way up to your shoulders to see what's happening." If something is off and cannot be fixed in a few minutes, he swaps in a movement that works the same muscles and comes back to it later, because, as he puts it, "we're not doctors." What he will claim: "I'm really good at modifying anything and everything."

What separates a good workout from a hard workout?

Asked what he refuses to compromise as a coach, Peter answers: "Giving somebody a hard workout versus a good workout."

Plenty of people want to sweat and push the heaviest weight every session. He has watched where that goes: it "leads to injuries, leads to exhaustion, leads to bad recovery."

A good workout is different. It is assessed, adjusted, and built for the person in front of him. "You could easily find a workout on YouTube, but you're coming to me to make you something for you."

His own two words for his coaching style: "patient and thorough."

If you want to see what that standard looks like inside a real hour of coaching, we also filmed what a real personal training session looks like with another coach in this series.

What does a good trainer do with your expectations?

Asked for the most common problem across his training history, Peter gives one word again: expectations.

The classic version, in his telling: "I want to lose 30 pounds in 3 weeks." Social media sells the sprint. Peter coaches the long game. He steers new clients off the scale early, and months later hears the line he waits for: "I haven't lost weight, but I've lost inches."

His consistency rule has the same shape: "consistency isn't a straight line." A bad week does not erase you. The picture that matters is years long.

And when a client's head becomes the limit, he coaches that too. His favorite move when someone says "I can't do this" in the middle of a heavy set: "I didn't realize you couldn't do something you were literally doing right now."

If big promises are what pushed you away from trainers before, the same verify-first logic runs through how to choose a personal trainer without signing a contract.

Who does coaching like this fit?

Peter's answer to who he works best with is short: "Motivated individuals." He means it literally: "They could come in here with a broken leg. If they're motivated, we will find a way."

His deepest lanes are the ones most trainers skip. Older adults, 60 and up, where the goal is "less about dropping the 50 lbs and more about being able to get up off the floor, being able to learn how to squat, pick things up off the ground." And military and first responder prep, where he watches for the injuries bad form causes. Injury prevention is his favorite part of the job.

Then he says the thing you almost never hear a trainer say out loud: "I want to be able to give people the tools they need to continue without me."

A coach confident enough to make himself optional does not need to lock you into anything. That is the standard behind How booking works, no contract on our side: one session at a time, earned, not owed.

What does he want clients to feel? "Happy that they showed up. Happy that they worked out. Happy that they get to come back." And if he does the job right, what do they walk away with beyond fitness? His answer is one word: gratitude.

The checklist: six things to check before you book

Use Peter's interview as a vetting screen for any trainer you are considering:

1. Warm-up first. Priming for your core, glutes, and shoulders, plus a range-of-motion check, before any loading. Straight onto a machine is a fail.
2. They watch you move. One movement should get a feet-to-shoulders read, not a box tick.
3. They modify on the spot. Pain or a form break gets a same-muscles substitute, not a push-through.
4. Good beats hard. Ask how they think about intensity. Sweat-every-session programming is the red flag; recovery-aware programming is the tell.
5. They explain the why. Peter keeps the research behind his programming and shows it when clients ask.
6. They care. Your day, your food, your hydration. A trainer who never asks is going through the motions.

The rest of the vetting questions, plus how to compare coaches side by side, live in how to find a personal trainer in Austin. If budget is the open question, start with what a personal trainer costs in Austin.

Trainers: this is the flywheel

Peter's advice to new trainers in the interview is blunt: "Always learn." Drop the ego early: five years in, he calls his own first three years bad, on camera, unprompted. Get a mentor. Find a niche and serve it.

This post is also a demonstration. A filmed interview did for Peter what no bio paragraph can: 39 minutes of his actual standards, in his own words, in front of every client shopping for exactly his style of coaching. That is the Get Featured program, and the playbook for turning that kind of proof into a full client book is in how to get personal training clients in Austin.

Frequently asked

Who is Peter Santos?

Peter Santos is a personal trainer featured in the Fit Local interview series, with five years of coaching behind him. He got certified while working the front desk of a climbing gym during engineering school, serves in the Army Reserve, and wants to pursue physical therapy for the military. He coaches a range that runs from people prepping for Navy boot camp to clients 60 and up, with injury prevention at the center of his method.

What should you look for in a personal trainer beyond certifications?

Watch the start of the session. Peter Santos points to warm-ups first: a good trainer primes your core, glutes, and shoulders and checks your range of motion before loading you. He also says to make sure the trainer asks about your day, whether you have eaten, and whether you are hydrated. A trainer who cares coaches differently from one going through the motions, and his on-camera advice for a trainer who skips the warm-up is to fire them immediately.

What is the difference between a hard workout and a good workout?

A hard workout chases sweat and heavy weight for its own sake, which Peter Santos says leads to injuries, exhaustion, and bad recovery. A good workout is assessed, modified in the moment, and built for the person in front of the coach. As he puts it in the interview: you could easily find a workout on YouTube, but you are coming to him to make you something for you.