Personal Trainers are, of course educated in how to use equipment properly, complete the exercises using good technique and how to design an effective exercise regime. However, so are gym instructors. So why should you consider using a personal trainer as opposed to utilising the knowledge of your gym staff?

Personal trainers have a higher level of education. A gym instructor only needs a Register of Exercise Professionals level 2 qualification. Whereas a personal trainer needs R.E.Ps level 3 qualifications. Personal trainers are there for you and you alone during your session. They are flexible in their availability and are there to help you reach your goals in a completely personal and custom made way! You have more contact with a personal trainer, such as their business number or email address, meaning if you have any queries you can contact them and they will get back to you. In a gym, clients often feel that they don’t deal with the same member of staff and they get passed around. This can be particularly hard for those of low confidence and find it difficult to discuss their reasons for being in the gym on a regular basis. Gym instructors are also often restricted to the equipment and the purposes of the space they have to hand, restricting the variety of exercises they can provide. They also have a severe lack of time and often, it seems, teaching technique and matching exercises to the individual is often overlooked.

Below I have listed some of a long list of qualities that make for a good personal trainer. Consider these when thinking about your current personal trainer. I feel at this time it is necessary to state that Total Effect Exercise Ltd Personal Trainers carry all these attributes:

Time:  When you use the services of a personal trainer you are paying for their time. They work with you on a one to one basis. The time that you have arranged with them is for you to get the most out of. A good personal trainer will make sure that the session will allow you to work towards your goals. You will have the time to ask questions and discuss any worries or new goals. These are rarely possible on a regular basis in a gym due to the responsibilities of the gym staff while on shift. The session is about you and your goals, not what the personal trainer is worrying about.

Motivation: A good Personal Trainer knows that one of their major and arguably the most important roles is to motivate their client. They need to be receptive to the client’s feelings, body language and speech and understand how to motivate that individual in a way that works for them. They will be energetic and keen to keep you on your path to your goals. They will be able to push you farther than you perhaps thought you could go. They will be able to give you reasons for the exercises you’re performing and link these into your goals.

Understanding: They will be empathetic to your needs and feelings and use this skill to motivate you. Arguably a good personal trainer will be someone who has had similar goals to you in the past, understand your personal reasoning behind these goals and know how to get there. They will also understand why you don’t do or don’t want to do certain things due to your confidence, lack of knowledge etc.

Non Judgemental: A good personal trainer will NEVER judge a client for the goals that they have. However a good personal trainer will make sure that the goals that you are working towards are safe, realistic and achievable!

Originality: A good personal trainer will offer something a little different. Be it a new type of exercise, have a different twist on a boring exercise, or offer a different price package.

Resourceful: A good personal trainer will be able to utilise not only equipment they have available to them but the space around them. A good personal trainer will be able to give their client an effective workout in a room with only furniture in it and no equipment, a park, or even your office! They should have a large back catalogue of possible exercises, workouts etc for equipment or even general household items.

Education: Every client should be able to leave their one to one session feeling like they have learned something. A good personal trainer will of course be well educated in health and exercise, preferably with a wide range of knowledge, including other areas linked indirectly to exercise. A personal trainer will not just take the client through a workout and not explain why they are doing this particular exercise. They will educate you in the correct technique to ensure little or no chance of injury. Most importantly your personal trainer will teach you good habits so you can continue with your healthy lifestyle out with your sessions, which will only enhance the results you achieve and allow you to maintain them.

Energy/ Enthusiasm: Your personal trainer will, of course, have energy! They don’t need to be crazily  over energetic or be jumping around you but they do need to be awake and at least be enthusiastic enough to motivate you in the session.

Follow ups: A good personal trainer shouldn’t just turn up for your session then leave you wondering what to do until your next session. Your personal trainer should be offering you advice on exercising in between sessions, healthy eating plans, advice on where to get good exercise clothing etc etc.

These are only some of the qualities of a good personal trainer. How do you tell if you have a good personal trainer? Well answer these questions:

Do you feel that you’re reaching your goals?

Do you feel that your sessions are worth the money?!

If the answer is yes to one or both of these questions then you have a good personal trainer. If you have answered no to one of these, talk to your trainer, explain why you think you’re not reaching your goals or that the sessions aren’t worth the money and a good personal trainer will alter how they go about their sessions! Alternatively come to Total Effect Exercise Ltd and you can be rest assured that your personal trainer will carry all of the above qualities and more!

Book in for your FREE 30 minute initial consultation and we can discuss what works for you.

In this article Laura from Total Effect Exercise will discuss nutrition and how it should always be considered important and just how easy it really is to make your diet work for you.

There is so much information out there and so many recommendations for good nutrition and your diet. So why do most people not know/understand or follow these?

I personally think it’s because there is too much. It gets confusing to know exactly what the right things are to follow. I also think that convenience and busyness is a big factor in today’s dietary faults.

A consideration which has helped me in the change of my diet is thinking about what we ate before there were shops, take aways and general modern convenience! We were grazers, we ate seeds, nuts, berries, vegetables and if we were lucky meat when we started out. Think about this when considering what the ideal things to put in your shopping basket are.

To keep the changes to your diet simple and attainable take one part at a time i.e. one stage a week and get a hold on that first.  This way you won’t start changing too many things about your diet and find it too much to change in one go.

One thing, however that you MUST change straight away if you’re guilty of it is FAD DIETS!! Stop them right now! Why am I ranting about this? Well lets begin:

In order to sort our diets out we need to look at what’s WRONG with our western diet as it stands and workout what we need to do to make it RIGHT.

A typical western diet:

1. High calorific content
2. High in saturated fats
3. Lots of processed foods
4. Few nutrients
5. Few fresh ingredients

How can we sort these problems out?

High calorie diets

It really does come down to the simple fact of if you eat more calories than you burn you will put weight on, and vice versa. So thinking about your calorie content is important.

Recommended calorie consumption for women is 2000 per day and 2500 per day for men.

Most people do over eat, because of large portions and also because of the high calorie content of a lot of our common foods.

To stop this from affecting your weight and health consider roughly how many calories you are eating a day. It’s fairly easy to do now because of the nutritional information on foods.

At the same time consider how much exercise you are taking part in each day. If you are not meeting the recommendations of 3 sessions of 20 mins a week for exercise and 30 mins a day on most days of the week for activity, try to ensure you are staying below the recommended calorie intake.

If you are over consuming and/or are wishing to lose weight cutting your daily calorie intake by 10% will allow you to start to decrease your daily intake without any major dieting or negative effects on your metabolism.

A more general way to do this is to cut your portion size by a third. Start with your evening meal first.  Always use a gradual approach.

Saturated Fats

A lot of our diets in the western world include a lot of saturated fats. Fat on a whole is a good thing to consume; it’s something we need in our diet.  However we DON’T need or want SATURATED fats. These fats can’t be broken down by the body.  They are sticky and cling onto the walls of your arteries and can cause blockages. Something you really want to avoid!!

To cut saturated fats out of your diet in an easy way, look at the nutritional content of the food you are picking. Always choose the packet that has the LEAST SATURATED FAT content, this is more important that the total fats content.

Processed Food

A lot of our foods are highly processed, e.g. including preservatives, refined and added salts/sugars/flavourings. When food is processed and includes additives the nutritional content is often compromised. Often we are just consuming high calorific foods with no real nutrition for our bodies.

In order to aim for a more healthy, less processed diet (think Neanderthal man) think about how natural the food is you are eating. E.g. seeded breads are far more natural and less processed than white bread, brown rice before white, fresh cuts of meat or on the bone meats, not reconstituted or processed meats.  Picking the brown rice over the white rice etc will help improve your diets.

A simple way to ensure than you are eating healthily is to consider the Glycemic Index of the foods you are consuming.  The Glycemic Index (GI) is a ranking of foods based on their overall effect on blood sugar levels. Slowly absorbed foods have a low GI rating and are the preferred choice as they will release the energy from the food more slowly and provide your body with energy more efficiently than high GI foods. In general the less processed, less sugary and more natural foods are ranked in the lower half of the index.

To decide what foods will be best visit http://www.the-gi-diet.org/lowgifoods/ for a list of low GI foods. There are also books available from Waterstones that have a comprehensive and in depth list of foods from both supermarkets and food chains.

Fresh Food

As already discussed our foods today are often highly processed and don’t include a lot of nutrients e.g. vitamins, minerals, and essentials like poly-unsaturated fats, fibre etc.  A good rule to follow when looking to consume more nutritional foods is to look to include as much colour as you can on your plate, e.g. fruits, veg and fresh sauces.  The more varied the colour is on your plate, in general the more nutrients you’ll consume.

Try when you can to buy as many fresh ingredients as you can. There are so many deals now in supermarkets that you can buy fresh and cheap. To avoid a lot of waste try and plan one or two days in advance and only buy for those days. Smaller more regular shops should help you save some money and avoid throwing away as much waste.

Hopefully these tips have helped you understand not only some of the ways that our diet has gone wrong but also how you can change that around.

Use as many external sources for information as you can, such as the BBC Good Food website for ideas, the GI lists available online and any other healthy eating outlets you can find.

But most importantly just try and make HEALTHY CHOICES!

Examples are: choose the packet with lower saturated fats and less calories

Choose vegetable based sauces over cream/cheese sauces.

When eating out, ask for a smaller portion, or don’t be afraid to leave some leftovers on the plate once you are full.

Avoid sugary foods and drinks

DON’T skip breakfast!  – you won’t turn your metabolism on.

DON’T wait until you are starving to eat! – your body will just store the food as fat.

Have a drink of water first before you snack as initial hunger feelings can often be a sign of thirst – snack on fruit.

Often on the first session I have with a client I take certain measurements to make sure I have a better understanding of what’s going on inside my client and how they are made up,  therefore getting an early idea of the directions my sessions may need to follow.

The most consistent situation that occurs includes myself describing to the client what they’re own body is made up of – i.e. muscles, fat etc and what the measurements, (body fat %, lean muscle mass etc) mean. Very few, in fact almost no client knows this information themselves already.  So for this article I want to discuss in simple detail what you’re made up of and how you can make your body work for you!

First of all I’d like to alter a well known phrase: ‘My body is my temple.’ This is a great phrase as it encourages you to take care of your body. However, I want you to now use the phrase ‘My body is my engine.’ I want you to look at your own body and think of it as an engine that is ticking over efficiently and healthily enough to keep you fit and happy!

For an engine, your body, to run it needs fuel so food is a major factor in the healthy and effective running of your ‘engine’ and this will be discussed in depth in ‘The EASY way to make food work for you’, which you can find on this website.

However for this article I am going to put it as simply as it can be put: If you consume more calories than you burn you’ll put on weight, increasing your body fat %.  If you consume less, you’ll lose weight and if you consume and burn an equal amount you’ll maintain your current weight.

What we are really concerned about is your body composition – what your body is made out of and how altering this can help you lose weight, maintain weight and just be generally more healthy.

The two components of the body we are going to discuss are fat and muscle, or your store cupboard and your engine, and how the volume of each in your body can affect your exercise plans:

Fat: Fat is the storage system, protector and insulator for the body.  It is used to protect our organs and insulate our bodies, maintaining our core temperature. However your body fat’s main job is to store energy as a reserve so that in cases of survival the body will be able to last longer.  In starvation the body literally starts to eat itself to stay alive, starting with body fat. The more body fat you have the more energy you have stored and potentially the longer you’d survive. However in today’s western society it is unnecessary to have a ‘just in case’ energy store and the detrimental side effects of having high body fat far out weight the benefits.

Muscle: Lean skeletal muscle is the ‘engine’ of the body and also the reason for our movement and body shape (minus the fat).  Muscle provides us with the ability to move and perform day – to – day tasks and also most extraordinary tasks (strong men, sprinters, long jumpers etc).  In general terms the more muscular you are the more ‘healthy’ and/or fit you are considered to be… and in most cases you’d be right!!

So what do we want our bodies to consist of? The simple answer: more muscle, less fat!!

Why is this? Well one of the reasons is your Rest Metabolic Rate (RMR).  This is one of the ways you burn calories, specifically the rate at which you burn calories (energy) to survive, i.e. to breathe, pump blood around the body, produce hormones etc. This form of energy expenditure accounts for around 65 – 75% of your calories burned. It’s the lazy man’s way of burning calories!!!

To make sure that your RMR is at its optimum level one of the ways to increase this, i.e. burn more calories while doing nothing is to increase your muscle mass.  Why? Because for 1 kg of muscle up to around 120 kcal can be burned a day AT REST while a kilogram of fat will burn only around 20 kcal a day!

An extremely simple example is:

If two people of the same weight lay sleeping for 24 hours, person 1 with 10kg of muscle, 1 kg of fat and person 2 with 5 kg of muscle and 6kg of fat:

Person 1 will burn around 1220kcal in 24 hours doing nothing but sleeping.

Person 2 will burn around 720kcal in 24 hours doing nothing but sleeping.

Your muscle is simply an engine, burning calories of its own accord while you get on with your life!

This is one of the key reasons why exercise is an important part of life. Yes reducing body fat just by dieting will help you be healthier BUT it doesn’t help you maintain or increase your muscle mass! Exercise is the only way to do that. The more muscle you have in your body the more of an engine your body becomes.  Your RMR will increase and you will burn more calories per day without doing any extra work!

This is the reason why getting your body composition measured is an important step to understanding WHY you are the way you are and HOW you can change this for the better.

Exercise regimes should always include weight bearing exercise which encourages muscle gain and development.  Cardio machines such as spin bikes and treadmills are good for this is they increase your fitness and help burn fat at the same time.

Weights and resistance machines must also be considered and included. REMEMBER ladies, weight lifting doesn’t automatically mean big muscles!! Keep the reps to 3 sets of 15 reps and you’ll increase your lean muscle mass and tone up while gaining little size.

So to conclude:

Where possible get a body composition measurement done. Healthy body fat % measurements differ when you look at specifics e.g. age, sex etc but in general terms a healthy body fat % for women is between 20 – 25 % and for men between 10 – 15%.

High % Body fat, Low muscle mass – Exercise regime to include muscle building exercises and cardio to reduce body fat.  Reduce dietary fats, increase protein intake.

High % body fat, healthy muscle mass – Exercise should include cardio to reduce fat, weight lifting to maintain muscle, define and/or increase strength.  Reduce dietary fats and maintain, increase protein intake.

healthy measurements – continue with exercise regime, have more freedom and fun with it. Maintain healthy diet, avoid increasing fats.

Thanks all so much for your interest and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.

(source : Calorie counter – Collins gem 2009.)