So You Want to Hire a Personal Trainer

So you have decided that you would like to enlist the services of a personal trainer. Good decision we say! You can now expect to achieve faster results, become more efficient in your workouts and reduce the possibility of debilitating injuries in your life. But before you start, there needs to be a small analysis done of your current fitness levels which will help our trainers tailor make an intelligent and bespoke fitness programme to help you get into the shape of your dreams. Let us look at some of the parameters that we will need to check.

1. Your Fitness History

When you meet our fitness consultant for the first time, you will be asked to fill up a form that will contain questions about your health’s past. The answers that you provide will help us in quickly understanding the state of your general health. Keeping in consideration your current workout routines if any, we will also be able to gauge your risk of developing cardiovascular related ailments as wells as any physical limitations or medical conditions that you may have.

2. Your Heart Rate

Also known as your pulse, this is the number of times that your heart beats per minute. A healthy and active individual who works out or takes part in athletic or sporting activities will have a low resting heart rate. An efficient heart may only need to pump 60 times per minute to pump the same amount of blood through the body that an ailing heart would take 70 or more beats per minute to do the same. A healthy heart is one which does not have to strain and overwork itself thus saving wear and tear over the long term.

3. Blood Pressure

Blood pressure in simple terms means how clean and open your blood vessels are. A low BP count means that your heart does not have to work too hard to pump blood through your blood vessels around your body. Your blood pressure should ideally read 115 / 75 or below. You could be considered hypertensive (high blood pressure) if your reading is 140 / 90 and above in which case you should see a doctor immediately.

4. Cardiovascular Strength

One of the main aims of assessing your current cardiovascular fitness levels is to benchmark your current level of fitness and measure your progress as your fitness levels improve thus helping you to remain motivated. There are a number of cardiovascular tests that can be done. Our personal trainer will be best placed to design a goal-specific cardio fitness test for you.

5. Body Composition

A body composition analysis can paint a clear picture of your body’s overall fat-muscle ratio by telling you how much of your body weight is fat and how much of it is muscle. Over time, as your body fat levels decrease, you can be sure that your hard work is paying positive dividends!

6. Belt Line Measurements

As you get fitter and slimmer, your below measurements will slowly but surely reduce (and increase if you are building muscle mass) from the time that you first started your personal training sessions.

Neck: across the Adam’s apple

Chest: Across the broadest point

Arms: Biceps

Waist: Around the belly button

Thighs: Six inches above the knee caps

Calf: At the Widest Point

7. Strength

We will determine your strength because these original tests can then be compared with your strength as your fitness levels improve thereby improving your motivation. Strength tests can be specific. For e.g. a push up test, a squat test, a pull up test etc. Our personal trainers will work with you to record and coach you through the correct exercise technique to arrive at your first strength assessment.

8. Flexibility / Posture

If the muscles in your body are tight and inflexible, your body can be shaped out of alignment causing injuries and pain points in the shoulder, lower back, hips, knees and ankle areas. A postural assessment by our personal trainers will identify the inflexible and stiff muscles in your body so that corrective action can be taken during your fitness program to loosen up your muscles and re-align your body’s muscles and bones.

Author:

Aarti Khaitan is an accomplished personal trainer for functional fitness, mixed martial arts and yoga. With over ten years of experience in the fitness industry in Mumbai and having handled sales and in-house fitness and counseling for reputed gyms and fitness studios, she now handles corporate wellness and fitness solutions for Wellintra Fitness. Aarti can be reached on 98206 07875.