As the old saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt. In training it also leads to boredom, lack of results, lack of motivation and in worst cases, injury.

This article outlines ways of training that you perhaps hadn’t thought of, or were unsure about. (more…)

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One of the common reasons I hear for why people don’t dedicate time to exercise and looking after themselves is the poor excuse of “I can’t be bothered”, or “I’m too busy” Personally, I believe these are weak excuses – I work 6-7 days most weeks, often over 12 hours and still find time to fit in exercise and enough time to prepare healthy meals. (more…)

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I am currently learning to play golf. To do this, I have been taking lessons from a golf coach. I believe in allowing a professional to do a job they are trained to do. When I wanted to learn to drive, I went to a driving instructor. I could have been taught by family members, but opted for a professional instead. When I am injured, I take the advice of a physiotherapist. If I required accounts advice, I would speak to an accountant. The point is, there are people who know their subject far better than I do, so I speak to them about my needs in their field.

This belief extends to my professional life. As you would expect, I am a big believer in Personal Training, and think more people should look seriously at the effects having a Personal Trainer could have on their health and fitness.

So often, people want to be fitter, leaner, stronger etc, yet don’t take the advice of a Personal Trainer. They either join the gym with a friend, or take the advice from a guy in work who has been going to the gym for a few years – it is more often than not a case of the blind leading the blind. In many ways they are just shooting in the dark, hoping to find the road to weight loss. More often than not, their approach doesn’t work; they lose focus and interest, give up exercise and haven’t lost a pound (not in weight, anyway!) By taking the advice of a Personal Trainer in the first instance they would have had their plan set out from the start and knew they were on the right path to weight loss.

Before we go any further, I will stress that just because a person has passed their Personal Training exams, it doesn’t make them a good Personal Trainer. Over the last 10 years I have been in and around many gyms and have seen some brilliant Personal Trainers, but they are far outweighed by the crap the fitness education industry seems to churn out on a daily basis. There is so much more to Personal Training than knowing exercises – people need to be inspired, motivation, enjoy their sessions and want their questions answered. Without these auxiliary skills you may as well write off the Personal Trainer and keep searching.
As my career has evolved, so has my approach. I suppose like any profession, when I first qualified I was full of theoretical knowledge, but experience hadn’t kicked in. I didn’t fully know the effects of what I was doing, I hadn’t experienced the psychology of coaching someone through a long term project, and I hadn’t had the opportunity to try new things and chart the results. As time passes though, you learn more, read more, experience more and you begin to shape how you work.

I now focus my approach on improving all round health, not just fitness. My understanding of biomechanics and the role of the musculoskeletal system has improved, my exercise programmes are more balanced and allow for better performance, improved fitness, better posture, reduced injury risk, better injury management and a massive increase in overall health. These skills have come with client experience and practical application of techniques – these aren’t the kind of things you can read about in books.

In my opinion, it is these additional skills that set apart a fitness instructor and a Personal Trainer. Personal Training should be just that – PERSONAL to you and your needs. Any idiot can tell you to lift a weight a thousand times or run until you drop – so what? Those aren’t the skills you are paying for. A good Personal Trainer is an investment in your health, your wellbeing and your future. If you want to be screamed and shouted at to run and carry things, join the army. If you want a strategic, well-planned and effective training regime, hire a Personal Trainer.

Personal Trainers should ensure that your programme is in line with your goals and needs, but structured so they evolve at the right pace. I often tell people you can’t build a house on sand – it is all well and good wanting to achieve a particular goal, but if you are carrying injuries, your posture is awful and you haven’t done any exercise in months then we have to look at the bigger picture – let’s get a solid base of curing the injuries, perfecting the posture, improving the base level fitness and getting the techniques right. From there we can work on achieving the levels of fitness and the body conditioning you could have only dreamed of previously. If you try and work hard with a body that can’t cope, you are heading down a bad road from the start.

So what exactly should a Personal Trainer do? A Personal Trainer should start with posture and muscle imbalance checks, consult you on your diet, put together nutritional plans, take measurements and body composition results and help you set realistic targets and goals. From there they should be looking at fitness testing and putting together plans to start you on the road to your goals. Remember this is a process – it took you your whole life to develop the body you currently have, it will take work to change it.

But what if you can’t afford the services of a Personal Trainer full time? I never said a Personal Trainer needs to supervise every session you do. I have clients I see once per week, I have clients I see three times per week. I used to have clients I saw once per month to ensure they were keeping on top of their training, checking their progress and setting them their training plans for the next month. I would also ensure they were out of their bad habits from a technique point of view, and keep them running along smoothly. You can still gain some of the benefits of Personal Training by having a monthly session, so don’t think of Personal Training as a benefit for the rich only – anyone can benefit, and you can’t put a price on your health.

If you are interested in starting a fitness improvement plan, take seriously the effect that a good Personal Trainer can have. In reality the price isn’t much – many people spend more on a weekend in the pub than a Personal Trainer would charge for a month of sessions!

Think about that next time you wake up with a hangover and are £200 poorer after a heavy weekend…

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Training is in constant evolution. The search for bigger, faster, stronger, leaner and healthier never ends and constantly throws up a new approach. Ironically, many of these approaches are merely variations on a centuries-old theme. Rather than look snootily down on these re-inventions of old methods, we should look more at what we have learnt this time around, and how new knowledge can improve old methods. (more…)

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This section is to show you how I train, giving you the opportunity to tag along and give your feedback on how you have found the training, leave comments or ask questions.
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