Personal Trainer Advice
Starting a fitness program is one of the best things you can do for your health. While the benefits are too great to list with just one blog post, most people just don’t know where or how to start.
Well… im here to help 🙋♂️
Step 1: Start SLOW
This goes for everyone starting a new fitness program. Weather your an ex athlete, used to be an avid gym goer or never stepped foot into a gym in your life. Start sloooooow. Stick with machines at the beginning. Let your muscles get used to the weight, time under tension, contracting and relaxing and of course, dealing with new muscle soreness following the days after.
Step 2: Function Before Strength
This is the most crucial step because if not done properly (or not at all) will almost certainly lead to injury sooner or later. In fact almost all exercise injuries stem from disfunction. When starting a new program you want to make sure you have good stability through a full range of motion before progressing. Spend the first 2-4 weeks focusing on stabilization exercises to get those intricate muscles around your joints used to stabilizing those joints. The last thing you want is for your knee to become unstable while squatting 225 pounds. OUCH!
Start by adding instability to regular exercises with a much lighter weight like…
- Squats on a BoSu ball
- single leg overhead press
- single leg Romanian deadlifts
- stability ball exercises
and so on…
Step 3: Don’t jump levels, take the stairs!
Now that you’ve improved your stability your ready to transition to more complex exercises. But where most people get it wrong is they jump to the next level instead of progressing step by step. Which is the smart thing to do because remember… NEVER add strength to disfunction.
Moving forward start by adding staple exercises to your stabilization exercises in a compound set fashion like so.
- Bench press to stability ball bench press
- leg press to BoSu squats
- Cable rows to single leg bent over rows
- lateral raises to stability ball overhead press
And always start with the main exercise BEFORE the stability exercise to prevent injury.
Step 4: Repeat Step 2 every few months
Make sure you continue to incorporate stabilization exercises into your regular training program. This can be done every couple of months and can help with things like range of motion, recovery, blood circulation, and breaking through plateaus.
Step 5: Always Seek Knowledge From Experts
The fitness and nutrition industry is still in its infancy stages as far as knowledge goes. Us as a human species have been around for thousands of years but fitness and exercise nutrition didn’t become a major topic until the early 1900’s. This means new knowledge in the subject is always being discovered. In fact its at such a rapid pace that if your not constantly studying, learning and implementing these new practices then you will not continue to grow.
But if your like most people and you don’t have the time to become a fitness and nutrition expert than seek out the expertise of one. Start reading on the subject or hire a personal trainer like me to help guide you to your fitness goals in the safest and fastest way possible. If your interested just fill out the “Free Trial” box on the home page and lets see if were a good fit for each other.
Talk soon!
– Chris