Although hesitant to write this review, my husband and I feel it's important to share our experience with Sean as our personal trainer. We are refraining from disclosing specific details as they would contain a lot of personal information about Sean's life.
Sean was our first experience with a personal trainer and seemed to be the perfect trainer until a little after the refund deadline passed. We paid $7,000 for a year's worth of sessions. Instead, we received 6 months' worth of excuses, unprofessionalism, and disappointment. More, Sean began treating us like his therapists and regularly vented about his personal issues during our sessions. These complaints about his other clients, peers, and even his family made us dread our workouts and mentally drained us.
Summary of the issues we encountered during our time with Espirito Fitness:
* Last-minute cancellations or requests to switch session timeslots to accommodate other clients; these changes almost always included personal hardship excuses that made it difficult for us to decline, even when it was inconvenient for our own schedules.
* Impersonal training through the use of pre-made videos on the Trainerize app, which did not cater to our specific needs; it made our "personal training" feel like a cookie-cutter program and a way for Sean to juggle a large number of clients simultaneously.
* Neglect to update the app regularly and when the app was updated it would often include the incorrect workouts, equipment type, etc.
* Overloading his schedule with too many clients resulting in us needing to regularly accommodate him for his lack of planning.
* Lack of focus during sessions; miscounting sets, losing attention to our form, gossiping, or forgetting what workouts we were doing to name some examples.
* Failure to provide fundamental knowledge about lifting and nutrition as promised even after an entire 6 months.
* Unprofessional behavior; treating us more like friends than clients and taking advantage of our kindness in the process.
* Due to the uncomfortable drama between Sean and his peers at his previous gym, we opted to switch to a different gym when he left, even though our prior gym was more convenient and preferable.
* Limited check-ins.
* Inability to customize our workouts to our lifestyle and goals.
We acknowledge our own accountability in the situation. We did not consistently use the Trainerize app, skipped some sessions, and took a break from working out for a week due to extenuating circumstances. Most skipped sessions were attributed to a lack of mental capacity to be Sean's "therapist" after a long day of work so, we would opt to work out on our own. Moreover, the app was not customized to our equipment and was rarely updated, making it inconvenient to use. Finally, we did not send progress pictures as we did not want to give Sean undue credit for our progress.
At the 3-month mark, we had a conversation with Sean about his lack of professionalism. While he made some small improvements for a few weeks, we soon began to experience the same issues again. We had a second conversation with him at the 6-month mark, and although he promised to change, he did not follow through. We eventually realized that we wouldn't be able to achieve our fitness goals with him as our trainer and requested a refund for the remaining 6 months of our sessions or for the ability to be able to work with a different trainer. Unfortunately, Sean instead gaslit our experience with him. He refused to offer any fair compromise, leaving us disappointed and frustrated.
We terminated our client-trainer partnership with Sean right away, and since then, we have experienced relief and majorly improved well-being. We were unaware of the extent to which working with Sean was impacting our mental health until we cut our losses and left. read more
