strength – Fittie Over 40

How to choose and work with a personal trainer

Thought about hiring a personal trainer but are unsure where to start? This post is for you. A lot of people talk themselves out of working with a coach, worried that they are not fit enough (a bit like tidying up your house before the cleaner arrives!), or are afraid of the gym or of being shouted at: blame bad memories of school sports in my case. The reality is really the same as making any investment. You need to decide what you want, do some research into what is available in your price range and start asking for recommendations.

Getting the right ‘fit’

Far from a personal training session being a clinically-delivered set of instructions with someone watching you sweat, your hour should be spent with someone whose company you enjoy. If you don’t have rapport with your coach and they don’t try to establish a connection with you, look elsewhere. If you enjoy being shouted at, then that’s your call and plenty of trainers will do that for you!

Ultimately, a good trainer should be a valuable source of support and someone who is invested in helping you to achieve your goals. They should not value your transformation photos (absolutely not compulsory, by the way) as a marker of how good they are at their job, but meet you where you are and establish the right pace of progress for you.

Look at their website and get a feel for their approach. If you are looking to get fit post-natal or are trying to get healthy after a bout of illness, then look for a trainer with experience in these areas. Find a trainer with life experience, empathy and a roster of similar clients. For example, I don’t do body transformations, although I can recommended good trainers who do. I have found my niche working with people who hated exercise in the past, are very overweight and need an empathetic, more moderate approach based on more than just numbers and data, as well as clients with complex health needs, older clients (in fitness parlance, the over 50s, even though I’m 46 myself!) and so on. If you want me to get you in bikini shape by crash dieting and running you into the ground, I’ll pass on you as a client. Beware of a trainer who claims they can offer you everything: go to someone who specialises in what you need and with whom you can connect.

Trial sessions

Many trainers offer a trial session, but please don’t expect this to be free of charge. We all work by the hour, so you may be asked to pay a small fee to cover the venue hire or, in my case, the chat to discuss your goals and to see if we suit each other is free but you will start being charged once we enter the gym and I am paying to use the space.

Working with your trainer

Getting the best from personal training requires commitment on both sides.

A few basics:

– be on time and make sure you have eaten appropriately to fuel your session and get the most out of it. A small carbohydrate snack a couple of hours beforehand will do it if you are between main meals. My pet hate is underfuelled clients who are too tired to work out effectively. Similarly, turn up hungover at your own risk. If you know you are training, you owe it to yourself to turn up in a fit state to get the most for your £40 or so per hour. Your trainer probably won’t be sympathetic!

– pay your bills on time. Hourly-paid freelancers need to maintain cash flow so please don’t make us wait until the last minute to pay for your sessions. Expect to pay in advance and to lose your payment if you cancel shortly before a session; make sure you know your trainer’s terms and conditions. We need to pay our bills, too.

–if we are helping you with your nutrition, be honest about what you eat and drink. It’s obvious to us that if you are not losing weight, in 99% of cases you are eating more than you think or are reporting. Help us to help you. We are not allowed to give you meal plans (only state registered dietitians can do this legally) so please don’t ask for one, but we can give you guidelines. Remember that our job is to keep you accountable so don’t be offended when we challenge you or call you out for not sticking to what you promised to do.

– remember that we are not on 24 hour duty. If you need to ask a question, send an email rather than texting or calling. I’ve had clients calling on weekends and texting even after I’ve gone to bed. Please respect our boundaries. Many trainers offer support outside of sessions by email, but don’t expect immediate replies or responses outside of normal office hours.

– your trainer should discuss what you want to achieve and how often you can train before they agree to take you on. From then on, your sessions should be tailored to move you towards those goals and not be generic ‘cookie cutter’ training that could apply to anyone. A good trainer should be able to adapt around injury, pregnancy and change a session at the last minute if you are not performing and need something different. That said, it’s our responsibility to help you get fitter and healthier, and we work on a principle called ‘progressive overload’ so be prepared to work harder as time goes on and feel challenged. You will be expected to complete a health questionnaire (PAR-Q) and sign some kind of informed consent or waiver so that all parties are aware of any risks involved.

– finally, and this may seem strange but it is an issue, please don’t flirt with your trainer. Our work with you can be intimate as we take an interest in our clients and train you in very close physical proximity, but it will make things uncomfortable if you: comment on our bodies; flirt with us; buy us inappropriate gifts – all things that have happened to myself and my colleagues. Most of us have partners and we observe careful boundaries when working with you to avoid accusations of harassment. Make me feel uncomfortable and you won’t be my client for long.

But it’s so expensive

Yes, I understand that personal training is a luxury and not a necessity in most people’s budgets. The Bristol average for an hour of PT is about £40. If you gave up your daily takeaway cappuccino, that would cover two PT sessions per month. You have to weigh up what is important to you and think about where you can best invest your money. I am on a budget myself but still have my own coach to motivate me and keep me in great shape for working with my own clients. Hiring a trainer could be the crucial difference between succeeding or failing again with your fitness goals. Take advantage of block bookings to save money, or have a 1:1 then use your trainer’s online programme, if they offer one. It’s often much cheaper, requires more motivation on your part but should still be tailored to your needs. Mine is just £50 per month.

And there you have it. Those are my top tips for finding the right trainer for you and making your relationship with them work. You can find me at www.brainboxcoaching.co.uk if you think I’m the best trainer for you. Get in touch and we can discuss!

Why yoga shouldn’t be your only form of fitness

I’ve been in love with yoga since 1987 when I picked up a copy of Teach Yourself Yoga from the Uxbridge branch of WH Smith aged only 16, and starting contorting myself on my bedroom floor while being grossed out by the dhauti cleansing practices involving swallowing lengths of cotton.

Yoga has certainly increased dramatically in popularity in the UK and US since the 80s and I ended up training to be a yoga teacher myself at the age of 42, after deciding to focus on a kinder and more compassionate form of movement after years of bruising martial arts. Guiding my clients through group and individual practices and seeing them grow in confidence remains one of the most enjoyable and rewarding aspects of my work.

Is yoga really about fitness?

The older I get, the more I view my practice as a form of mental relaxation and focus and less of a physical discipline. Yes, I use it to stretch and maintain the body of which I demand a great deal each day, as well to devise ideas for teaching my classes, but I mainly see it as a quiet place to go and switch off, rather than as a way to bust some bendy moves.

Like most people, I came to it initially for the physicality and to achieve some of the more impressive poses, but it has become a much more spiritual practice for me over time, which is what many yogis will argue what yoga is in essence: something driven by mental discipline and not by physical accomplishment. It does grate on me personally to see yoga advertised as giving you a tight tush or as a form of calorie-burning exercise. That’s definitely not in Patanjali’s Sutras as a benefit of regular practice and there many ways to lift your butt without calling it ‘yoga’.

The way in which you choose to practise is up to you, of course but, if you use yoga as your primary form of fitness or just to improve flexibility, this post invites you to rethink your approach.

There are three aspects of complete fitness

To have a fit body means having a healthy heart and good cardiovascular capacity, muscular strength and power, and flexibility. Most people neglect one or two of these in the pursuit of their favourite sport. For example, runners will often underestimate the benefits of strength training for their stability, while those who focus on lifting can neglect their cardio. The majority of my clients confess to forgetting to add stretching to their weekly programmes to develop or maintain flexibility.

To be fair, how you train needs to be appropriate to your goals, so we need to work out programmes proportionate to those. A runner will always need to focus primarily on running with shorter weight training and stretching sessions, and a lifter isn’t training to race. However, they will benefit from doing metabolic sessions occasionally by not resting between sets and getting their heart rate up.

Which aspects of fitness can yoga support?

Yoga will help to develop and maintain flexibility and, depending on the style being practised and level of effort applied, can absolutely improve strength through all those vinyasas, chaturangas and warrior poses. However, where yoga can’t help if you are trying to build complete fitness is with cardio. Yoga practices have been measured and shown not to push the heart rate into the zones which increase cardiovascular capacity. You may feel a little out of breath during all those jump backs and transitions, but it’s nothing compared to the cardio workout you would get from running even at a conversational pace for the same amount of time. To gain any additional cardiovascular fitness through yoga means you would have to been relatively unfit to start with.

While yoga can increase flexibility and strength, it will not give you cardiovascular fitness, which contributes to your overall health in important ways, including decreasing the risk of coronary heart disease and stroke, as well as the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. So get running, on your bike, into the pool or find any other kind of activity you enjoy to really get your heart rate up. Yoga, I’m afraid, isn’t enough on its own.

Does yoga burn calories?

If you’re looking to burn calories, choose a different form of movement. Yoga burns surprisingly few calories even during a fairly vigorous practice and, even if you’re sweating your way through hot yoga, any immediate weight lost is water, which will be regained throughout the day as you eat and drink.

As a fitness professional with a lean muscle mass of 38% and weighing about 56.5 kg, I still only burn about one calorie per minute practising yoga, and just a little more in a very dynamic practice. That’s about 35-40 calories during a moderate 30 minute session and 50-60 for a tougher practice of the same duration. A 35-40 minute run sees me burning around 350 calories by contrast.

That’s not to say that yoga is not a worthwhile form of physical activity but you need to be realistic about what you can achieve.

What does yoga actually do for you?

There are however many excellent reasons to practise yoga!

– increased range of motion and flexibility. Practised regularly, yoga can help to undo some of the damage done if you have a sedentary job and to complement and balance out repetitive movement patterns in sport. It will not, however, permanently lengthen your muscles. They will retract to their original size and shape post-practice but, over time, you will be training your nervous system to relax your muscles more readily. Note that most athletes require a degree of tension through the muscles for propulsive and explosive power. For example, super-flexible hamstrings are not a runner’s friend. Keep everything in balance.

– increased core stability and overall strength. Working with your body weight and challenging your balance can strengthen the muscles around the lumbo-pelvic hip complex, abdominals and spine. You also get some upper body work if you regularly practise chaturanga. However, you need to complement all the pushing work in yoga with pulling movements, so get on the rowing machine, perform bent over rows or use a TRX system for pull ups.

– greater focus and mental well-being. Yoga’s attention to the breath and its meditation practices, as well as broader mindfulness-based work, are being recognised as beneficial for mental health, in terms of helping to manage anxiety and pain. Learning to control the breath and relax is also hugely beneficial to many sports when training at lactate threshold or when working anaerobically. It has helped me enormously since I started learning to swim in February and with the cardiovascular demands of boxing.

Next steps

If you decide to attend yoga classes to increase your flexibility, then be prepared to learn to meditate and do breath work, too. It all comes as part of a more spiritual practice. If that doesn’t appeal, then you don’t have to practise yoga at all to improve your range of movement. Pilates could also work for you and there has been a recent increase in the number of mobility classes available in gyms.

You can look on YouTube for videos helping with stretching and mobility, as well as lots of free yoga content. I would also highly recommend a 1:1 with a qualified teacher to look at some of the basic postures to bs sure that you don’t reinforce any movement imbalances and actually create a problem.

Yoga is often touted as a miracle cure for a wide range of movement problems as well as mental and physical ailments. But like any discipline, it has its limits and should be seen as appropriate in some scenarios and maybe even irrelevant in others. What it can’t be is a complete movement and fitness system. It never evolved to be such a thing, no matter what modernmarketing may tell you, but its benefits can be significant and potentially life-enhancing, if you are willing to embrace it as more than some fancy moves.

www.brainboxcoaching.co.uk

Why you need a balanced exercise plan

I’m doing some corporate talks about getting started with fitness next month and one of the most important elements to consider when beginning a new training regime is finding balance across your activities. Most of us tend to just focus on one primary form of training and forget to build ourselves up in other areas, so it’s important to look at what your body needs beyond what you enjoy doing most.

(With my client Linda in the studio at Sweaty Betty Bristol.)

The three pillars of fitness are: cardiovascular health, muscular strength, and flexibility and balance. Without addressing all three areas, you are potentially setting yourself up for mechanical imbalances that could lead to weaknesses that will impede your progress long term and maybe even cause injury.

For example, if you are a keen runner you may be very focused on putting in the miles, especially if you are training for a distance race. However, lack of overall muscle strength and specifically a lack of stability through the trunk can create an uneven distribution of force through your joints every time your foot strikes the ground. If you are running off road, you may be less able to deal with uneven terrain and correct your balance to avoid falls.

Runners often avoid strength training because they fear getting too heavy, but there’s no need to worry. Even some simple bodyweight exercises can help build stability without creating bulk. Developing strength and stiffness through the core (the area between your diaphragm and pelvis, including your back muscles) will add stability while running, especially through the lumbar spine and help avoid lower back pain, while strengthening the leg muscles builds greater stability through the hips, knees and ankles. These are all joints ripe for potential damage when you are performing a repetitive movement with a heavy load. You need strong joints and muscles working through the appropriate range of movement to decelerate with care and distribute the force meeting you upwards from the ground with every foot strike.

Stretching also needs to be part of an athlete’s training repertoire. My client Linda has been a runner for many years but coming to my HIIT classes and performing different movements like squats and lunges has shown very clearly how muscle imbalances have been created over time. Her left piriformis (under the gluteals) became overactive, tight and sore. An overactive muscle can cause painful spasms as well as little ‘knots’ or trigger points that need releasing through a static stretching programme & some myofascial tissue release using a foam roller or massage. Partner stretching with me has given Linda a great deal of relief.

11CC0BCF-E140-4F5E-BB39-4D024834B641

(Linda performing banded squats above to help strengthen her gluteals and correct the knee valgus you can see below on her right side.)

Linda’s focus on running also created a weakness in her gluteus medius on the right side, leading to weak abductors (the muscles that move the leg laterally away from the midline) and her right knee developed a tendency to knock in (valgus) while squatting. The quadriceps often take over when we run and weaker gluteal muscles can be a common problem as a result. A programme of activating and strengthening these underactive muscles now sees Linda performing squats with much improved alignment, strength and range of motion. She has been a clear example of how strength training helps to even out muscle imbalances, while stretching to relax overactive muscles has taken her out of pain and enabled her to perform a range of exercises safely and with better form.

So, if you want to train in a balanced way and avoid imbalances that can lead to injury, think about your week. Plan in the exercise you prioritise, maybe three runs. Then add a short stretching routine after each run, and two strength training sessions of 20-30 minutes. A programme of bodyweight exercise can be performed at home and doesn’t need the gym.

(Linda is 55 but can now perform some advanced bodyweight exercises and has developed a strong core which will help her running form.)

Now, if you’re a yoga bunny and think that your practice is giving you everything you need, then think again. As both a yoga teacher and fitness instructor, I can tell you that while you may have great strength and flexibility, even the most vigorous yoga practice will not increase your heart rate to the level it needs to achieve to really improve cardiovascular fitness. One or two HIIT sessions a week, or spin classes – whatever you can do – will help build all round health.

Because I’m seeing increasing numbers of clients with imbalances and injuries, I started studying a few months ago for a specialisation in corrective exercise with the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM). What I have learned so far has already enabled me to help personal training clients like Linda and has also started to change the way I teach yoga, looking at different ways in which to modify poses to suit people’s anatomy rather than getting them to conform to traditional alignment that may not be possible due to physical limitations. I’m incredibly grateful that I decided to study this programme and work more effectively and safely with my clients.

While my current clients are already benefiting from my increased knowledge base, I will be offering individual corrective exercise 1:1s when I qualify as a specialist service. In the meantime, please exercise safely and try to balance out your range of movement and activity.

http://www.brainboxcoaching.co.uk