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How many times have you started a fitness plan, only to fail in a storm of frustration? You don’t see the results you want, you feverishly start Googling “fitness classes near me”. Then, you quit and consign yourself to your couch, brooding over all the supposed barriers that are in your way.
What if you were told that all those barriers were not in your mind and it’s not your fault? They are in fact real barriers created due to a lack of understanding of training and exercise, and how to program and diet correctly. When it comes to gym and fitness goals, this is quite common. And, the solution is simple. When you understand more about the reasons your training program isn’t working, you can overcome them.
You’re not maintaining your form, which leads to lack of progress and injury
Practising bad form is something a lot of people do by accident. From a lack of focus to poor guidance, nobody exercises with poor form intentionally.
When you do, though, not only do you not maximise your results from the effort you’ve put in (i mean, you’re putting it in anyway, you may as well get rewarded for it), but you risk injuring yourself. When progress ins’t made, or an injury kicks in, you’re less likely to maintain the self-motivation required to follow a training regime. One example of this is deadlifting with weights and hurting your back. Is it likely that you’ll return to weight training following such an injury?
By using a personal trainer in Melbourne, you have someone to watch your form for you. Using a combination of their instruction and your growing intuition, you can avoid bad form.
You’re not creating unique goals or holding yourself accountable
Looking up “fitness classes near me” on Google is an excellent start for introducing yourself to exercise. But, as your requirements change, you might find that the classes you attend don’t help you reach your prime.
Using a personal trainer means you’ll work with a bespoke plan that changes as you do. Not only is this a faster route to getting what you want, but it’s also a more reliable one. Additionally, your trainer will hold you accountable, minimising the risk of too many cheat days.
You’re not maximising your training times
All humans are creatures of comfort. As such, once you start to feel the burn you might bow out of your routine. Unfortunately, this isn’t the way you’re going to build muscle.
Muscle builds when you place it under stress. To achieve this, you need to push yourself out of your comfort zone. When the fibres in your muscles encounter small tears, they repair and then grow bigger. While that’s quite a simplistic explanation, it does illustrate an example as to why you’re possibly not maximising your training times .
If you hire a personal trainer in Melbourne, they’ll push you outside of your comfort zone. For many people, a big challenge in the gym and fitness world is not understanding the difference between pain and discomfort. With the right knowledge and guidance, this is no longer an issue.
You’re pushing your limits, but you’re not targeting the right muscle groups
Muscles, tendons, and ligaments all work in tandem. As a result, you may work one muscle group, then feel the other one ache too, and assume that you’ve targeted every group you want to burn.
Although there’s a chance you’ve placed the second muscle group under minimal strain, you probably haven’t done enough to strengthen them. Usually, this second group is performing a supportive role, which means it encounters effort as the other one heals. One common example of this is back muscles starting to ache when the pelvic floor is weakening; it’s only happening because they’re in a compensatory role.
Programming is particularly significant here. It will allow you to hit every relevant body part and muscle group required or desired, but you have to know how, something a personal trainer can do for you.
With the guidance of a personal trainer, you can target and contour the muscles you have in mind. Again, this leads to quicker results.
Your training schedule isn’t flexible
Let’s say you are signing up to fitness classes. Or, your gym only opens at certain times. When either of these things clash with work or family responsibilities, your commitment will wane.
A personal trainer in Melbourne can work around you. Using the tools at their disposal, they’ll give you a gym experience that’s bespoke.
You’re not considering your mental health
Sometimes people fall away from their fitness programmes because they’re struggling with poor mental health. While most people are aware that exercise is an excellent form of releasing serotonin and dopamine, this often isn’t enough to spark motivation.
It’s worth understanding that motivation often doesn’t come to find you. Instead, you push yourself into the situation and eventually motivation develops. A bit like forming a habit. A good coach will help you adjust your mindset, training and eating habits.
If you are suffering with poor mental health, you may find that the motivation of a trainer is enough to get you into a good routine.
Nutrition that’s not in line with your training programme
Are you training as hard as you can, but you’re just not losing weight? From rewarding yourself with junk food to not having a sound understanding of the calories you’re eating, there are lots of reasons your nutrition isn’t in line with your training programme.
As the old adage goes, you can’t out-exercise a bad diet. This applies to more than just calories. One Harvard University study has revealed how students eating outside the home for the first time tend to consume 55% more calories than when they were eating at home. If such habits continue throughout adult life, it’s easy to see how nutritional intake might not be in line with someone’s fitness goals.
Personal trainers benefit from training in nutrition. Some will have networks with a dietitian. Using their training program and experience as an elite coach, your personal trainer can analyse your current intake and help you tweak your diet to make your fitness routine more effective.
You’re starting to plateau, and you don’t know how to climb
If you’ve experienced reasonable success with your gym and fitness sessions so far, it could be because you’re working from basic science. For example, if your initial goal was weight loss and you understand the absolute basic that is burning more calories than you’re putting in, it’s easy to feel as though you’ve nailed it.
When you do plateau, reducing your calories further and exercising more isn’t likely to be effective. Now that you’ve primed your body for different expectations, it may require
a professional analysis for you to continue losing weight and/or building muscle and strength.
As a beginner it’s easy to cut or burn a few calories and lose weight, or hit the weights and stimulate basic muscle growth. Your body has never been exposed to it before. But what do you do after that’s done and you’re not climbing? Have you kept a record of your diet and recorded your calorie intake? Have you recorded your exercise program? If you’re asking yourself how to do this, you probably should consider getting a personal trainer. If you are recording all this but still not making progress, are you doing it correctly? There’s so much information out there, how do you know what is right and what isn’t? Then you have to consider, just because it’s right for someone else it doesn’t mean it will be right for you.
Using the help of a personal trainer in Melbourne, you can step away from the plateau and continue climbing again, whether its strength training, hypertrophy, toning up, getting fitter or losing weight.
You don’t have the right information for meeting your body image goals
Celebrities and social media channels like Facebook and Instagram have created unrealistic expectations of what we should look like, and in how fast we can achieve it in.
Although the Internet and your friends at the gym are full of information, that information might not be right for you. That’s not to say that they’re espousing myths. But, they may be giving you advice that doesn’t match your personal circumstances.
Or, there is a chance they are wrong. For example, one of the commonest fitness myths is that you need a sports or energy drink to replenish lost electrolytes. While you do need to hydrate, physical states like hyponatraemia or hypokalaemia won’t occur with a proper fitness plan. Plus, all those sports drinks are packing a lot of sugar, which works against your nutrition goals.
A good personal trainer will help adjust your mindset, provide you with correct information and realistic goals which you will meet. This will in turn give you more motivation to work towards your health and fitness goals.
There’s not enough variety in your workouts
Finally, are you keeping yourself interested in your workout? Aside from maintaining your motivation, diversity challenges different muscle groups and keeps your body on its toes.
When you hire a personal trainer in Melbourne, they’ll create the variety for you. As a result, you can spend less time being creative, and more time focusing on your fitness goals.