Fitness Instructors, Gyms, and Timing Your Workouts

Fitness Instructors:

I recommend that you seriously consider hiring a professional instructor for 12 sessions to show you proper procedures for form and cadence for each exercise. While these rudiments are not enough in and of them selves to advance you generally towards exceptional muscularity they will help, and remain essential to avoid injury.
Like in everything else there are a few excellent trainers and a lot of just get by types.


Who do you choose:

While a perspective trainer looks you over during an initial consultation, you should look them over, too. Look at their body, I am not saying they must be gods, but are they to thin, fat, or poorly developed - if so, this should be a red flag. Do they have good musculature, proportionality and symmetry?
In other words, a trainer should be into training him or herself.
A strong, well-developed, body and personality demonstrates by example passion, knowledge, and skill.

Scan a basic text on resistance training, make a few notes, and ask a few pertinent questions. Have the perspective trainer do an initial free consultation with you and check out the personal chemistry between the two of you. Discuss your goals; see at the very least if the trainer is informative and confident.

Confidence alone indicates that they feel they have a history of good results and satisfied clients. Get references from other club members who have trainers.

I personally never required another to motivate me, but if that’s what benefits you, go for it.
That’s good trainer 101.


Good Trainer, Bad Trainer:

I’ve met too many trainers, especially young ones, that think it’s fun to just beat up their clients with tough workouts. Unfortunately their philosophy remains that they must be great to make you this tired, reinforced too often by clients who believe the sole purpose of a trainer is to act like a drill instructor.

Again, every thing is relative, I am not saying a session shouldn’t be rigorous and challenging, but in my opinion you must find a trainer that understands your issues in terms of medical limitations, physical condition, temperament, age or old injuries.

A trainer should skillfully put you on a long and sustainable injury-free path towards continual development and help you around pertinent health or biomechanical issues.

A sign of a lazy or very limited trainer, and I’ve seen too many, is that their training sessions pretty much revolve around counting your reps and sets for you, often with very little meaningful input, like you’re so rich you need to hire some idiot to count up to ten for you.

Here’s a good rule of thumb. Ask yourself if the trainer you hire is indispensable to the quality of your workout sessions. Is that person educating you and in service to the advancement of each workout?
If you discover that you can work out just as effectively without that trainer, you can, and it’s time to move on.

You should feel that your trainer is essential and that without their support the quality of your workout would seriously diminish. A really good trainer is someone who demonstrates a deep knowledge of biomechanics towards strength building techniques. A serious trainer is worth their weight in gold especially if you’re a beginner; because they will see you through acclimation, enhance your physical performance by tactically incorporating proper form, core stength training, supplementation and proper diet.


Over-worked, Under-worked:

How often do you work a given muscle group?
Over-training your body remains destructive to the fibers in the muscles. Prolonged over-training can cause permanent damage and inhibit attaining the strength and volume you may aspire to. This sort of activity is hard on the immune system, in particular the kidneys as they have the job of filtering toxins secreted from the muscles, which is expressed in your body by some combination of exhaustion and charlie-horse or soreness.

Full recuperation remains the period in which lean body mass is enhanced and gains strength, definition and size. For better muscle development and sustained health, rest each muscle group until they are no longer sore or exhausted. I also recommend you stay out of the gym if sick or generally run down, as a workout at this time will only worsen your condition.

On the other side of things, if you are hitting a muscle group, say biceps, quads, or chest every other day or two, and those areas are not exhausted, tired or uncomfortably tight, that is telling you that your muscles are not recuperating from your workouts because you have nothing to recuperate from. In other words the level of resistance when you train is not challenging your muscle fibers. You are acclimated, you are at a plateau!

Integral to developing great musculature is to learn high intensity techniques with tactical recuperation periods, which I will discuss at great length later in this article.

Resistance training tears down muscle fibers. Lean body mass increases during rest periods. This tactical reciprocity, between training and recuperation, is what advances shape, size, and definition. The repetition of this process, involving each muscle group, over an extended time will transform the look, structure and composition of your entire physique.

While I have identified some critical aspects of getting started in the fitness experience the next part of this post will discuss training programs towards advanced high intensity training for those who may wish their greatest gains in muscle volume and definition. In other words develop greater muscle mass then ever before in relatively short time. Yes, and profoundly exceed your expectations!

I've been sitting on my butt too long, got to get to the gym!
Popeye

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