By Paula Mitten, owner of Durga Yoga Studio.
There are so many benefits to having a personal trainer that everyone should try it at least once in their life! So many of us set goals and plan to get fit, improve our personal fitness, lose weight or just join a class to get out of the house but that motivation can wear off fast and we need to find ways to keep ourselves on track. Having a personal trainer can be very helpful in keeping you focused on your new journey. Here are my top 8 benefits of having a personal trainer.
1. Motivation and Support
We are all capable of so much more than we believe! When you fee like giving up, when you have had a bad week, when you are tired or you don't see any progress for a week or two, your personal trainer will be invaluable to keep you going, reminding you how far you have come and getting you focused on your short and long term goals again.
2. Accountability
For me, one of the biggest reasons anyone needs a personal trainer is to keep them accountable. Whether you are a complete newbie to fitness training or you are a trainer yourself, if you don't have anyone to answer to, you will struggle to stay on track! As my good friend Niamh Shaper, personal trainer at Fitness at the BodyShaper says, "A cheat meal can turn into a cheat day, and into a cheat week" and in no time your plan has gone out the window and you find yourself "starting again" two or three months down the line.
Even if things snowball into a "bad week", as soon as you check back in with your personal trainer you will get back on track. It won't feel like a huge task and it won't feel like starting again, it will simply be getting back to normal.
3. Myth Busting
We all have ideas about fitness or diet that are either out dated, old wives tales or simply not true. Your personal trainer will bust any myths that you have and back their knowledge up with evidence based research, helping you to learn the best way to improve your health and fitness without any doubts creeping into the back of your mind.
4. Fitness Strategy
The most relevant types of exercises are those that build stamina, suppleness, strength, and speed.
Stamina is gained through aerobic fitness. In order to improve cardiovascular efficiency, we need to include aerobic exercise (aerobic exercise requires pumping of oxygenated blood by the heart to deliver oxygen to working muscles, it stimulates the heart rate and the breathing rate increases).
Research shows that above average fitness can be maintained with regular workouts 3-4 times a week.
FACT - there will be a significant reduction in fitness after 2 weeks of inactivity and approximately 50% loss of fitness after 4-6 weeks.
Anaerobic exercise (short-lasting, high-intensity activity, where your body's demand for oxygen exceeds the oxygen supply available) include weight lifting, sprints, hill climbing. Interval training or any hard bursts of exercise. Anaerobic exercise will develop strength, speed and power, increase fat free mass, improve posture, condition muscles specifically for sports performance and rehabilitate muscles or joints following injury. This type of exercise is incredibly important for women as we age. Our metabolic rate, muscle mass and bone density decrease with age, but resistance training will help to counteract this action.
FACT - Programs designed for fat loss should be carried out 4-6 times per week for 20-60 minutes.
Your trainer will work out the most efficient way for you to achieve your goals without spending your life at the gym or running the roads.
Many personal trainers will devise 30 minute programs you can do 3-5 times a week, meaning you are guaranteed to have the time to fit it into your busy schedule and see amazing results.
Remember training can be a very effective way to care for your mental health too.
5. Diet Education
Very few of us have a very good education when it comes to food. What we think is a healthy diet quite possibly is not and for many people we don't know much about what is "hidden" in our everyday food or about the quality of our food. We can consume way more calories than we think in high calorie drinks or hidden sugars and it can be hard to tell the difference between good carbs and bad carbs.
A personal trainer will ask you to keep a food diary, logging everything that passes your lips (including the food from the kid's plate or samples during cooking) and will then explain to you where you could make changes. They will often give you diet plans in the beginning for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks to ensure you are consuming the right foods, or they may give you lists of ideas to work from and food/drinks to avoid.
This is a great way to eat well, whilst also eating plenty and not feel like you are on a "diet". Once you get the hang of it you will know exactly what to eat and you won't need to follow plans or count calories forever more.
6. Alignment/Technique
It is always useful to have someone watching your alignment or technique to ensure you are getting the best results and avoiding injury. They will push you out of your comfort zone without allowing your form to suffer. This is something that we just can't do by ourselves. If we train on our own, we usually stop before we get to our edge or we push on and sacrifice technique in the process.
7. Progress Tracking
Your personal trainer will know your goals. They can track weight (which often isn't the best way to judge progress) but will also track body measurements and if they are really amazing will take photos of you from front, side and behind. This is a fantastic way to see change in the body. The scales is only one piece of a very complex puzzle. A personal trainer will track your progress during training to ensure that you are building strength, flexibility and endurance. These are all extremely motivating ways to keep you on track and sticking to the plan.
8. Variety is the Spice of Life!
You can get very bored working out on your own and get stuck in the rut of doing the same things every time you train. A trainer will keep things interesting, change your workouts, challenging your muscle memory and your mind.
Paula is a busy, self-employed mother of two, who runs her own yoga studio and teacher training school. She believes in strongly supporting her yoga practice with fitness training. Paula has been training with personal trainers on and off since 2009 and has included fitness training as part of her own training since 2003. For more information on her classes and teacher training visit www.durga.ie
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