Your body deserves the best! You wouldn’t fix a filling without a visit to the dentist, or try a new hairstyle without the expertise of a good hair stylist. So, when it comes to toning up and trimming down why leave it to chance and get second best results?
The benefits of Personal Training include:
Individualised programme – You are unique and therefore your fitness plan should be. If you follow the same fitness programme as everyone, it will be down to luck if you achieve your specific goal. To ensure you are doing the right things for you, you should undergo specific assessments, including Flexibility Tests, Manual Muscle Testing, Static and Dynamic Assessments, all which provide information to gain a solid starting point for your fitness.
Time Efficiency in the Gym – Personal Trainers help you focus on results and stop wasting your time doing inefficient workouts. Certain exercises give a totally different response in the body to others and therefore produce a different result. A Personal Trainer can manipulate the variables to produce the best results for you. A strong short term and long term plan will help you get maximum results in minimum time.
Improved Technical Skills – Practice makes perfect – WRONG. Perfect practices makes perfect! One of the biggest problems within the gym is technical competence in exercise. For instance, many people haven’t been taught to lift weight or run correctly therefore are not gaining the maximum benefits from their workout. Personal training will allow you to learn more about the muscles in your body, the exercises that target those muscles and how to do those exercises with great form.
Motivation – One of the main reasons people benefit from a Personal Trainer is that they wont lose motivation to stick with a consistent exercise programme. Certified Personal Trainers can provide structure and accountability, and help you develop a lifestyle that encourages health.
Introducing exercise – If you are an absolute beginner, a Personal Trainer is the ultimate fitness coach. A good trainer will introduce you to a very simple, effective routine and build efficiently so before you know it, you have the confidence and knowledge to decide what is right for you. Knowing how to set up a balanced schedule that includes all the activities you need to do can be confusing. The great thing about a trainer is that he can help you maximise your time while helping you stay within your own limits so you don’t overdo it.
Break through plateaus – If you are stuck in the same routine or you’ve been exercising consistently for several weeks or months and aren’t seeing the changes you would like, a Personal Trainer is the perfect solution. They will provide variety, direction and guidance. A trainer can bring a fresh perspective and new ideas to challenge your body and help you see where you could make changes to create more effective workouts.
Workout Safely – A Personal Trainer watches your form, monitors your vital signs and can provide objective feedback about your limits and strengths. Most of us tend to ignore some of the subtle signals our body provides. We either push through pain or give up too soon. Because a Personal Trainer can watch what you are doing while you are doing it, they can help push you or slow you down as necessary.
When beginning or continuing an exercise programme you have to ask yourself what is the outcome you expect, by when are you looking to achieving the goal and how committed are you in reaching your targets.
To achieve your goal you need a plan. If you are investing time and money into that plan, surely you want the best plan for YOUR body. It is important to note that not all exercise tell your body to achieve your goals, as not all exercises are equal.
Fitness Trainers differ in opinions of the best training methods and effective exercises. It’s rather like someone taking you on a journey from London to Paris. Someone says taking the train is quickest, another would say the car or a plane. However, without correct directions you can go around in circles or go completely the wrong way.
At Evolution Fitness we only use exercises that are scientifically proven to make the biggest changes in your body and thus giving you the quickest results. If a Fitness Trainer makes you do flashy, entertaining exercises it is more for their ego rather than helping you reach your goals or anywhere near your potential. Usually this type of trainer will need to change exercises every week, which negates rapid strength gains as the nervous system has to learn the movement before significant improvement occurs.
A comprehensive fitness program should consider:
Individual Differences
Postural Imbalances
Your gym experience
Your exercise experience
Minor and Major injury history
Physical effects of your job
Lifestyle Stressors
This is not a comprehensive list but each has a major influence on your choice or selection of exercise and consequently your health.
Consider this, if you went to your doctors and without speaking to you or assessing you he gave you a bottle of pills and sent you on your way. Wouldn’t you question his ability to improve your health?
Well, exercise can have a significant effect on your health, both positive and negative. Poor Selection of exercise can limit and diminish progress, cause injury or pain in both the long and short term. For example, if your posture is poor and you don’t correct or improve it, then the joint can wear down over time, just as if the tracking in your car is not aligned, the tyre can wear.
If a trainer hands you a sheet of exercises that they give to everyone they train in the gym, then this is like the doctor handing out pills without assessing you and your individual differences and needs, it’s just down to luck if you reach your goals.
To ensure you are on the right track for YOUR body, at Evolution Fitness we deliver a comprehensive assessment procedure which includes:
Body Fat Testing – using callipers
For an accurate reading, a 12 site calliper test is necessary, this is due to machines providing inaccurate and easily manipulated scores.
Structural Balance – A poorly balanced body will never be able to reach its potential due to inhibitory factors and will have higher incidences of injuries.
Structural Balance testing provides us with the information where you have weakness in your body, and therefore an accurate starting point for your training.
Flexibility Assessments – Tight muscles can cause pain and discomfort but will also limit your ability to make strength, muscle size or fat loss gains. Having your body in better alignment, or optimal joint positioning provides sound structural support.
Most people, due to work, sit down for approximately 8 hours a day. This tells your muscles to adapt to that position over a period of time. Consequently this changes the tension in the muscles making some weak and some tight. This in turn can change spinal curves which can lead to pain. Without corrective flexibility the body has no reason to change its posture. Flexibility assessments inform us where you are most inflexible and which essential stretches you require to correct that.
Kinetic Chain Assessment – Assessment of weaknesses and inflexibility provide the majority of the information to formulate your individual programme. However, studying your dynamic posture and a person’s skill level completes the picture.
Poor movement patterns can also be related to low or inhibited neural drive, adhesions between muscle to muscle, adhesions between muscle to connective tissue, adhesions between muscle to nerve tissue or poor motor control and reciprocal inhibition.
Your initial consultation is tailored to your needs. It can last between 1.5 to 4 hours and you may require two sessions to be comprehensive. The data collected will provide the most complete overview of you body, highlighting strengths, weaknesses and deficiencies.