Its a tough situation, and I've been there myself a number of years ago. You want to go to the gym and make progress, but you're not entirely sure about your form and don't want to hurt yourself or 'do things wrong'. On the other hand, funds are limited and paying for a PT can be a big outlay.

As I see it, you have a couple of compromise options:

One is to just pay for a few sessions, and really concentrate on getting him to guide you through good form and set up a program for you to follow. By the way, if he's not interested in this and will only sign you up as a committed ongoing client - find a new trainer!

The other option is to learn by trial and error (which btw is the route I took). The learning curve is longer, but cheaper. I spent a lot of time on-line searching through tutorials, exercise videos etc. I recorded my lifts in the gym when I could and tried to correct my form over time. Using a (good) coach in the beginning would have been a better option in the long run - but I also now realise that most PTs cant coach good lifting form anyway!

There are a number of good youtube resources now, not to mention the formcheck thread in the ETP group. If you do choose to go it alone there is still heaps of help out there.

This seems reasonable to me.

At our gym the majority of the trainers don't put people through a fitness assessment to point out how out of shape they are but honestly it wouldn't surprise me if tactics like that were used to try and generate sales.

I really feel for people who are in your (OP's) situation. You want guidance but you really don't know whether or not you're getting someone who is going to provide you what you are looking for.

In addition to the above, if you decide to hire a trainer I would be VERY clear what your goals are. If you want to use a trainer to learn how to squat and deadlift for example, be clear that this is what your goal is. And if the trainer is having you do things that aren't part of the goal, ask him or her why.

I would generally agree that it's cheaper to not hire a trainer provided that you are observant, resourceful, and do your homework. Few people meet all those criteria but if you can do so, you can get very far on your own.

Thank you. It was just tough to realize that by working out on my own for approximately 3 years now and "yo-yo dieting" (didn't realize I was YOYO dietingbut now I see that's all I was doing from learning from MFP) that I have basically been spinning my wheels in the mud and not getting anywhere, not getting any more fit and losing the same 10 lbs and regaining it over and over again. SO frustrating but at least it gives me a baseline where to start and I am focused on doing this the RIGHT way now.

What turned me off was he was pushing urgency on me -- saying I needed to decide by Friday, that I would need to pay a down payment and when I indicated it was just too expensive for my lifestyle he would make cuts to the amount of sessions to make it more affordable but still quite astronomical. I'm talking like a $500 down payment, with a biweekly cost of just over $200. Unfortunately, this is just completely out of my budget, and I would suspect it would be for a lot of people.

I think I'll try and do what has been suggested -- maybe I can sign up for 4-5 initial sessions to get into a good routine, work on form and using machines correctly, before I am hopefully able to branch off on my own.

What I also didn't like was that he said things like in order to see results I would need to change up my routine every 2 weeks which is another reason a trainer would be a necessity -- whereas through looking at these forums, I just don't see how that could be true.

So now I've gained the 10 lbs or so I lost back but I had to - I couldn't go on, exercising 5-6 days a week and eating 1500-1600 calories without eating exercise cals back. I liked the way I looked but I had no energy and felt awful. I've been eating at maintenance or what I thought was my TDEE (and often above) since July now. Would you all recommend I continue to eat at TDEE for a bit longer, while going to the gym and hopefully starting a weight program?

Thanks for all the input so far!