Body Positive Health & Fitness - Personal Training

Someone asked me the other day, with fitness information, programs and videos so readily available online, why do people still work with personal trainers?

These are some of the things I've heard from clients:

🔸️making a commitment to their goals and plans without relying on always feeling motivated (who does? 😆) - the time is booked and they just have to show up
🔸️they already do lots of thinking and planning at home and work - they don't want to overthink their movement sessions, it's nice having someone else be a guide
🔸️some time out of the week that is just about them doing something for themselves
🔸️there's a lot of information out there, and also a lot of misinformation - and it's a lot to sift through. A trainer can cut through all of that and give them the information that's relevant to them
🔸️some people genuinely don't enjoy exercise in and of itself, but know it's important for their wellbeing, and find it easier and more pleasant to do with someone else there alongside them
🔸️personalised sessions that are adapted to how they're feeling in the present moment, as well as working around any injuries they might have

If you work with a trainer, be that me or someone else, I'm curious to hear why it works for you...

Because feeling good isn't always that easy, I find it helpful to keep a list of what helps in a place where it's easy to see - whether that's on the wall or saved in my phone.

I'm due to update my self-care list this week, so I wondered if anyone would like to join me and do it in community?

No cost, no having to share what you're writing down, no advice about what should be on there - just setting some time aside to think and write, together.

Thursday May 14th, 7.30pm AEST on Zoom.

To join us just go to my website, click on the "book a session with me" tab and you'll find the link to confirm you're coming. Once you're booked in you'll get the zoom link. You'll also get a reminder email an hour before the event.

You can do it while eating dinner or in your pyjamas, and chat with others while you write if you like or just turn the sound off and know you've got some virtual company/body doubling while you write your list.

Feel free to DM me with any questions :)

I've had some really nice conversations with clients lately about things they're finding easier because of our training.
-less out of breath getting to work
-less knee pain
-being able to dance for longer

Helping people find greater ease in doing the things that are important to them is what is interesting to me about fitness training, not what people look like in their bathers (I'm sure everyone looks lovely though).

Training is cool because our bodies adapt to what we do in training and increase their capacity over time, so we can make difficult things easier in our day to day lives.

Approached that way, it's a real act of self care.

Every time I look at my Facebook profile I'm reminded that a guy who used to volunteer at the disability support centre I worked at in 2011 before I became a PT left a bad rating on this page and I've never found out if it was by accident or he was secretly mad at me for 15 years 🤣🤣 What the hell Tony 😂

Anyway if you want to leave me a nice review to cancel that cursed one out that would be great 😅

In fact, if we zoom out, doing something for a long time is mostly just keeping a habit of starting again when we've stopped.

If you've taken a break from some of the activities you normally enjoy or find helpful, no matter how long it's been, you can start again, and again.

You don't have to do it all at once either - small steps that build back up over time is usually the best way to get back to where we were.

Need a hand getting back into fitness stuff? I'd love to help. You can book a complimentary initial consult any time :)

How fit is fit enough?

The first part of this to unpack is the difference between engaging in fitness activities for health, and engaging in fitness activities for performance-based reasons.

On the health side of things, we already have guidelines for this, and they're more about how much time we spend time DOING active things and the type of active things we spend time doing, than they are about what we should be able to DO ie perform per se.

I note that there are sometimes studies that come out claiming that being able to do this or that is correlated with greater longevity, but they often have so many confounding factors or such niche study groups that they're rarely very helpful (eg do you live longer if you can do more pushups or are you more likely to live longer if you're well and able-bodied enough to be able to train to do more pushups? And is data from the New York Fire Brigade really relevant to your 90yo nan?)

On the performance side of things, we can think of fitness as something akin to "suitable capacity". This is of course going to vary from person to person, because what we will need the suitable capacity for will vary wildly.

Competitive rock climber? Long distance swimmer? Person who enjoys gardening? Community firefighter? Parent of three small children? Hobby iceskater? Regular person who wants to reduce their risk of tripping over? About to go on an overseas trip that will involve lots of walking and stairs? Someone who just really wants to do chinups? Someone who wants to be ready to go on a hike at a moment's notice?

Basically, the key is to work out what tasks you need to perform, and what skills and strengths you'll need to perform those tasks - both for your everyday life and for whatever you do for fun and work, and that will help you determine what "fit enough" will look like for you.

Some things need you to be strong enough to lift a heavy thing a few times, some things need you to be able to hold a small weight in position for a long time, some things require you to balance precariously while performing complex motor tasks and so on. If you give your body progressively scaled versions of the things it needs to be able to do, it will adapt over time and develop that capacity (oversimplification but that's the gist).

Of course, with some exceptions, there are ways we can modify not just our capacity but also the tasks - and decide whether we want to be strong enough to lug 4 bags of sand to the other end of our backyard by hand, or whether we want to buy a wheelbarrow or a dolly, or pay someone else to do the task for us.

You get to decide what "fit enough" looks like for you, and that also includes deciding how much time and effort you want to or are able to put into developing your physical capacity.

Unfortunately that's not as catchy as "the 5 fitness benchmarks you should be able to hit by 40" but it is also a lot more empowering because after all, it's your body and your life.

Even if it's just dancing at home - but you could also consider classes (online or in person, live or recorded) or just going for a boogie with your pals.

There's also emerging evidence that dance might be one of the best forms of exercise for psychological and cognitive wellbeing.

And it's good for us in sooooo many ways. Bone density, mood, fresh air and connection to nature if we do it outdoors, heart, lungs, leg muscles, social connection if we do it with a friend or say hello to local people we pass (on this note, weak social ties are very good for our mental wellbeing, have a google)