Introduction
I treat all of my clients as individuals. After all, that’s the whole point of a personal training programme. However, I’m sure that prospective clients will be pleased to know that I work within a carefully planned structure, which gives us the best chance of making steady progress from day one. Here’s an insight into what to expect from a personal training programme with The Complete Health Coach.
Before your first personal training session
I offer all prospective new clients a free health consultation. I first ask you to complete the health consultation form, which covers all aspects of lifestyle, including medical history and your health and fitness goals. Once I have read the form, we arrange for a call, usually on the phone but sometimes in person, so we can talk about your lifestyle, what you want to achieve from a personal training programme, and how we will start to go about it. This is also the point at which you can ask me any questions you may have about my professional history, qualifications, and experience.
Having taken all that information on board, I start to plan for our first personal training session together. This may include some further research into any medical issue that you may have, how this is affected by exercise, and how exercise can help to improve the condition. I then write the plan for session 1, which I offer as a one-off trial session.
What to expect from session 1
This is really a “get to know” you workout where I will assess your exercise abilities and limitations in the context of what you have already told me in completing the health consultation. It isn’t too strenuous and there is plenty of time to pause and ask questions.
Building foundational fitness in sessions 2 to 10
Having completed the first workout session, we are then ready to push on and start to improve the elements of health and fitness that are important to you.
From session 2 onwards, I will help you to build a foundation of strength, which will help you to increase the amount of exercise that you will do week-by-week, keeping the risk of injury low in the process. These workouts flow smoothly as we have already completed the exploratory phase in workout 1. Based on how you cope with each successive workout, I will introduce new and more challenging exercises each week to steadily increase the volume and intensity.
Review and planning for the next 10 weeks
After 10 sessions, usually over 10 weeks, you will have built a solid base of strength and fitness. This is a great time to pause and reflect on how far you have come and to plan the best way to build on this fitness foundation, always bearing in mind your own health status and goals. There are 3 things to focus on during this review phase:
- Working out what your weekly fitness regime will look like.
- Introducing upper body, abdominal, and core strength exercises.
- Deciding on whether or not to add a second personal training session each week.
The long term outlook
Naturally, it is difficult to predict how each client and myself will work together over the longer term. This will depend upon how each person reacts to the fitness work that they have done and other lifestyle factors, such as illness or a busy period of work, that have influenced progress along the way.
For some clients, 2 x 10-week blocks of personal training sessions will be enough for them to have built a regular exercise habit that they can continue on their own. When the client decides this I am happy to let them go on their journey as I will have done my job. Other clients really want us to continue our close work together on a regular basis, which I am also delighted to commit to.
If this sounds like a health and fitness programme that will work for you then please visit the Contact page to get in touch with me directly, if you haven’t already done so.
