Personal Training

Today we started off on the elliptical for 10 minutes.  I don't know what it is about the elliptical, but her heart rate takes forever to increase, whereas with other machines, it gets up pretty quickly.  I'm sure part of it is just the intensity that she's doing on the elliptical.  Usually, we do level 6 or so on a hill program or something similar.  I don't think that increasing the level is what she needs, I think she just needs to increase her RPMs, which I've said to her a few times, but I think she just gets tired.  We'll see, I just need to push her a little more I think because I know she can do it...I've just got to make her!  After that we walked on the treadmill for 15 minutes.  I did 2.7 mph and 6.5% incline for five minutes, then 3.3 mph at 4.0% incline for five minutes, then 2.8 mph at 6.5% incline for another five minutes.  She wanted to try to run again after this, so I increased the speed a little quicker this time so that she ended up jogging for about 40 seconds.  She seems to do really well with this and isn't breathing too hard.  Even when I look at her heart rate, it doesn't seem to be jumping up really rapidly or anything, so that's definitely a good sign.  I think that watching her heart rate is a VERY necessary part of my training since she's had 3 immediate family members die of heart attacks before they were 50.  After that we did a 3 minute cool down.  Our last exercise was the bike for 8 minutes.  Her heart rate stays pretty low (~140ish) or so when we bike, so it's a good thing to do last. 

Personal Training - client 1

OH MAN...I was SO pumped today when I started my client off on the treadmill and she said that she wanted to try to run the last minute.  That is a HUGE step in our training...she's usually trying to take breaks all the time and take the easy way out, but lately, i've noticed that she can do a lot more than she says the can and she's been pushing herself harder.  It's been really great to watch her make such huge improvements in her overall fitness level, regardless of weight change.  I know that her main goal is to lose weight, and we're working on it...some weeks are better than others, but I think that even just improving her overall fitness level is still a very necessary change.  I am anxious to see how her second fitness test goes compared to the first one.  I really feel like she's made some great gains both cardiovascularly and muscularly.  It'll definitely be interesting to see.  Anyway, back to her running...We did 15 minutes on the treadmill at 2.8 mph and a 6.0% incline.  At 14 minutes, I lowered the incline to 0% and increased the speed until she was at a light jog (4.2 mph).  By the time I got the speed increased, we were already at about 14:40, so she ran for right at 20 seconds, which i was SO proud of...We'll try it again next time and see what happens!

Men's basketball

The whole men's basketball thing has been a little hectic for right now.  I'm not sure what exactly is going on with their team practice, but I've been going to the redshirt workout.  There are only 4 guys that participate in this workout, but they seem to be doing well.  They're definitely a little lazy, but I think since there are so many of us in there watching them, they work a little harder than they do when the whole team is in there.  I think they know that when everyone's there, we can't watch all of them all the time so they have room to slack off. 

Brian and Doc came up with their workout, but the guys definitely don't seem to like it.  I think all of the exercises they're doing are pretty good for even just a baseline strength program.  These guys need a lot of coaching as far as normal lifts go and things of that sort.  They appear to be strong, but a lot of times, when they're corrected in their form, they can't do the lifts through the full range of motion.  One particular thing I've noticed is just their balance.  When we have them do the chest press with the pulleys (in a lunge) they're wobbling all over the place, but they're getting better.  It's interesting to me how correcting their form and having them do the right techniqe changes the whole dynamic of the lift.

Personal Training

I trained client 1 again today.  We started with 6 minutes on the stairmaster on the interval program at level 5.  She was able to do two 3 minute bouts, which is pretty significant for her.  I like starting with the stairmaster because it really seems to get her heart rate up pretty quickly.  The machine said that she had burned 100 calories there, which is great for only 6 minutes, although I'm sure it might be a little high.  After that we did 12 minutes on the treadmill at 2.6 mph and a 6.5% incline.  Here, her heart rate stays around 155-160 or so.  She did a three minute cool down after that which allowed her heart rate to get down to about 110 or so before we began the elliptical.  She's not a huge fan of the elliptical, but I really think it's a good thing for her to get into since there's not nearly as much impact, so it'll definitely be better for her knees in the long run.  We did 10 minutes here on the hill program at level 5.  Again, her heart rate stays around 155 or so.  The last thing we did was a little different.  I wanted to see what her heart rate would do on the leg/arm ergometer.  We put it on level 5 of the progressive program for 5 minutes.  Her heart rate got up to about 140.  All in all, I guess it might be good for an end-of-the-workout exercise, but it didn't really seem to have much of an effect, so we'll see.  We may or may not do it again.  Who knows. 

When we added up all of the calories that the machines said she burned, we got right at 500.  I think thats a very reasonable goal for her.  If she could burn 500 calories even just 5 days a week I'm sure it would help her lose weight pretty quickly.  On top of just working out, though, she's got to make some diet changes.  All of this working out isn't going to do much if she's still consuming an extra 500-800 calories or so. 

Ropes Class

Jacob, David, Ashtyn, Katie Mack, and I went to Centennial to teach a general ropes class for whoever wants to do them.  We only set up a few stations since there weren't too many people there.  We did the power wave, basic wave, s wave, overhead swing, and internal/external circles.  We ran after every second station, which was a pretty good system, I thought.  Since some people in the group were not too experienced with the ropes, we only did 25 seconds at each station, which worked very well for most people.  Obviously, in a group, you're going to have a lot of people with different strength abilities and tolerances as far as time goes, but you want to make sure that everyone gets something out of it...that makes it a little difficult to figure out how long to go at each station.  Next week we'll see who's there and tailor it accordingly.

Personal Training - Client 1 - 10/14

Today I had my client warm up on the elliptical for 10 minutes on level 6 of the interval program.  Since she walks from her house to the depot, I don't feel like an actual warm up is necessary.  She usually does fairly well on the elliptical (no resting during the ten minutes).  After that we moved on to the treadmill.  Here, I had her walk at 2.7 mph at a 5.5% incline.  She did not rest until ten minutes, when her heart rate was at 155 bpm, which is right at 85% of her age predicted max heart rate.  She does a great job of pushing herself when doing any kind of cardio.  When she rests, she usually takes about a minute or a minute and fifteen seconds and her heart rate decreases pretty quickly.  It's been interesting to watch her increase the amount of time she can go before resting.  I'll be interested to see what her predicted VO2 max is when we do her second fitness test.  After the treadmill, we did ten minutes on the bike.  I have mixed feelings about the bike since it doesn't seem to be too difficult for her.  I think it hurts her legs more than it increases her heart rate.  Usually, she'll reach around 140 or so on the bike at level 7.  If I increase the level too much though, her legs burn too bad and she has to rest every few minutes.  All in all, I think it's better for her to be able to go the whole 10 minutes consecutively and keep her heartrate relatively elevated.

Personal Training - client 1

I was QUITE impressed with my client this session.  We began with ten minutes on the treadmill and she did the whole thing without stopping.  We did the preset interval program on the elliptical at level 6.  I think this is probably a good thing for her because it has her working pretty hard for a little bit at a time then gives her a little cooldown in between intervals.  Her heart rate got up 159, which is great for what we're doing.  We then did the treadmill at 2.6 mph at a 5.5% incline.  She did 15 minutes here and rested at 6 minutes and 12 minutes.  Her heartrate got up to about 150 or so before she rested.  We did the stairmaster last for 4 minutes continuously.  This is a pretty big accomplishment for her since she hates the stairmaster and usually rests in between each minute.  Now I know that she can do 4 minutes without resting.  Her heartrate gets up much higher on the stairmaster than anything else, which is why I like to integrate it into her training.  It's a lot lower impact than the treadmill, and since she has so much weight on her joints, I like to try to lessen the stress placed through her knees as much as possible while still getting a good cardio workout in.