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.

Club Meeting

We had our third club meeting last night.  At this meeting we discussed t-shirts and when they'll be in, doing a 5k possibly in November (the money raised from this race would be used for a potential conference in Orlando, FL), COHS superlatives, and a few other little things.  Overall it was a productive meeting, we updated people on their point totals and made sure everyone was up-to-date on happenings of the club.

Personal Training - client 1

Last night I did another training session with Client 1.  We started off on the treadmill.  I sent her a workout plan to do on days that we don't meet, so she wanted to go through it so she could make sure she was doing it right.  We started the treadmill at 3.0 mph and I had her walk on it for 15 minutes.  I figured she probably wouldn't be able to go the entire 15 minutes without resting, so I wasn't surprised when she rested at each 5 mintue mark.  her rest time was only one minute, so I feel like the effectiveness of the increased speed was not altered too much.  I also had her incline the treadmill to 1.5%.  I think I might increase the incline, since that's an easy way to increase METs, but it doesn't necessarily make it too much harder.  We'll see. 

We also did the bike for 10 minutes.  I've been having her do level 5 for 7 or 8 minutes, but we did 10 minutes on level 3 on the around the world program.  I've decided that I think this program will be better off for her in the long run because it's got differing resistance and it's not just flat biking.  She did say that it was much harder for her than just doing level 5 with no hills or anything. 

After that, we went to the weight room and she did the same exercises she's been doing, but we increased her shoulder press weight to 7.5 pounds.  I feel like she could increase even more than that, but I will probably just increase it gradually.  She's getting very good about knowing what to do and how to do different exercises.  It's been interesting watching her adapt to these changes. 

For the last 5 minutes, we did the elliptical for 5 minutes straight.  She's getting better at the elliptical which is good because I think it's probably better for her joints since there's not as much impact!

5k Meeting with Doc

I've had several meeting with Doc this week about the Halloween Hustle.  The nursing students are hosting their own 5k that is taking place 2 weeks before the Halloween Hustle would have been, so we're not supposed to be doing our race.  Anyway, I've been meeting with Doc to figure out what he wants to do about the whole race situation.  GCANS wants us to help them out with the race with timing at the finish and whatnot, but we realized that their race is scheduled for the Saturday of fall break.  We were discussing the fact that they're not going to get nearly as many people there since most people will be going out of town.  Anyway, today, I met with some of the GCANS reps to see if they would consider postponing their race 2 weeks and joining in our race on October 24.  They said that they've already done too much advertising in the newspapers and radio stations that it would be difficult to reach everyone and tell them about the delay.  That being said, they're going to keep their race scheduled for the 10th and not worry about the number of people they have...we'll see how it turns up!

Men's Basketball - ropes

We've been watching the men's basketball team do the ropes with Brian and Doc once a week.  A lot of times, I'm not sure if the guys are just being lazy or if they are as tired as they act.  They make even the easy ropes seem like they're the hardest thing ever.  Their attitudes are awful sometimes, too.  I don't know what it is, but it just drives me nuts to watch these guys being lazy!  Oh well, maybe next time they'll be a little better... It's just irritating to watch college athletes slack off at something that's supposed to be improving their performance...you'd think they would want to get better.  Who knows!

Personal Training - Client 2

My personal training for client 2 has been going really well!  It's a little difficult to tell how much progress she's making, since we haven't weighed her lately and we didn't take any measurements.  I suppose since her goal is not necessarily weight loss, but moreso just toning up, we don't need to weigh her.  She appears to be getting stronger, and i think a lot of this has to do with neural adaptations since she doesn't typically do any kind of resistance training.  We've been able to gradually increase the weight that she's been using and she seems to be adapting to it very well.  She says that while she's doing certain exercises, her muscles feel very fatigued, but then she's never sore the next day.  This makes me think that she could be working a lot harder than she is right now, so I'm going to see if I can increase her weight a little more since it's been a few weeks and she should be pretty used to the exercises by now. 

We've been doing a lot of our cardio outside.  I have her wear my heart rate monitor when we run outside and it's been really good to be able to see what her heart rate is at a certain time.  I've definitely noticed that with her, running outside is a LOT harder than running inside.  I believe that this is true for everyone, but inside, she can run at 6mph with 0 incline for 20 minutes and her heart rate doesn't ever go above 160 or so, but outside, her heart rate gets up to 175 or so sometimes.  With her being an ex soccer player, she has pretty good respiratory endurance.

I've really enjoyed doing weights with her because I can tell that she really wants to learn how to do different exercises properly.  She's pretty motivated to get toned up which makes things a lot easier!  Every time I introduce a new exercise to her, she's pretty eager to try it out.  We added a tricep exercise this week and she's loving it.  She says that she feels like doing these arm exercises will definitely help her arms tone up!

Personal Training - client 1

Well, we weighed client 1 in on Thursday and were not too happy with the results.  My client appears to have gained 3 pounds since her last weigh in.  Obviously, this could be due to a lot of different factors.  Anyone's weight fluctuates a good bit throughout the day, so her "weight gain" could have been just a fluctuation of her actual weight.  Regardless of why it happened, I decided that in addition to the written food diary that my client has been keeping, she's going to get an account at www.livestrong.com and track her calories on the daily plate. 

I was very excited to see that when my client came in today for her training session, she had researched the amount of calories that she should be consuming on a day to day basis and even used a website to figure out how many they recommended she eat per day to lose 2 pounds a week.  She also had found a website that she could track her calories on, but we later determined that livestrong is a little more accurate and has a wider variety of brands of food and whatnot.  Anyway, it'll be very interesting to see how her calorie tracking goes.  Hopefully we can figure out how to get some weight off.  She would definitely benefit from a reduction in her weight. 

I've also changed her program a little.  We were doing about 30 minutes of cardio each session with about 30 minutes of weights.  Now, I've changed it to 40 minutes of cardio and 20 minutes of weights.  I think this will be a bit more helpful in our attempt to lose weight.  A lot of the cardio we do is pretty low intensity, but I'm working on increasing the speed and incline (with treadmill) and the RPMs for the bike.  Sometimes we do 3 minutes at 2.7 mph at 1.5% incline then 2 minutes at 3.2 mph at 1.5% incline and repeat that for about 20 minutes.  I can definitely see an improvement in her performance already. 

Club Meeting

We had our second club meeting this week.  We discussed what color our t-shirts will be as well as the calendar for this semester.  We finally got all of our events figured out.  I gave everyone a calendar of all the events, a list of times the seniors are training in the depot (so that juniors will know when to come shadow), and a list of junior-senior buddies.  These buddies were developed so that if a junior has a question about anything, they have a senior to go to.  They don't necessarily have to shadow this person, but they can if they'd like.  We also collected dues at this meeting.  We'll be ordering shirts very soon, so we had to get the money to put in the bank account.

Personal Training

This week, my clients and I did some pretty great workouts!  I felt really great about the programs I've been coming up with for them.  For my client that's trying to lose weight, I've come up with a lot of intermittent training things we can do.  Doc sent me some articles about intermittent training and how it can help obese populations lose more weight that interval training.   Basically, you exercise them until their heart rate reaches a certain point, then you stop until it decreases to a certain level, then start again.  It'll be interesting to see if this works for my client.  We've been getting in about 30-40 minutes of cardio each training session which is a big improvement.  I would like to see her push herself a little more though.  Sometimes she takes a break in the middle of part of my intemittent training.  Her food diary is looking a little rough.  I'm going to have to have a talk with her about nutrition.  We've talked about it before, but this time it'll have to be a little more intense, I think.  We're trying to keep track of her weight, but after this week, I think we're just going to record it every other week.  We've been recording it every week, but this week we saw a slight increase in weight.  I think part of this could be due to her diet, but I'm sure another part of it could be due to normal fluctuations in weight.  We'll see.  I just don't want to discourage her from working out.  She really is working hard and I really want to see it pay off.  We're trying to get 20 pounds off by December.  I'm going to make it happen...somehow.

Men's basketball

So today for basketball, the guys did the ropes.  We had 20 stations set up for them.  In between each station the guys had to run a lap around Centennial.  I haven't seen too many teams do it where they're running in between each station.  Anyway, Doc showed all the guys how to do the proper technique at each station, but we were there more or less to make sure they were doing it correctly.   A lot of the guys started to get pretty lazy towards the end.  I'm sure a lot of that is because they were tired, but their technique was getting pretty sloppy.  We are also starting to keep track of the numbers of waves the guys are making with certain ropes and the number of push ups and things like that.  Coach says that he wants to be able to tell who is working hard and who's slacking off.  It'll be interesting to see how this strategy works out.  I think it's good in theory, but it'll be hard to tell who is at the beginning of the circuit and who's at the end.

Men's basketball

Basketball training has been going very well.  The guys are getting more and more used to the different exercises and their form is getting better and better.  I definitely don't have to correct them on nearly as much as when they first began.  You can definitely tell, however, that their form on certain things like dead lift and anything with a squatting motion in it is a little rough.  This is fairly common with basketball players.  They are nearing the end of the neural introductory phase so it'll be interesting to see what their next workout looks like.  I would imagine it will be much more sport specific.  We'll just have to see though.

Personal Training

So Wednesday was my fitness test for one of my clients and my second training session with my other client.  Overall, the fitness test went very well.  This client is pretty athletic as is, so we're focusing mainly on getting a little more toned and back into shape.  My second training session was great also.  We did a lot of the same things that we did last time but added some squats with the exercise ball.  She seems to be adapting well to this program.  Already, I can tell that she seems to be a little more comfortable with the exercises and whatnot.  I've encouraged her to keep a log of everything that she eats and drinks so that we can take a look at what changes we can make to help her lose a little more weight. 

On Thursday we had our third meeting.  She brought in her log of food and we looked at it.  There are definitely some aread where we can cut back and consume fewer calories fairly easily.  She seems to enjoy sweet tea and sodas, so even just cutting out a few of those will help.  The exercise program seems to be going great.  She seems to be very motivated to work out pretty hard.  I'm really enjoying my time with her so far!

Personal Training

I now have two clients who I will be training throughout the semester.  My two clients are very opposite and have very different goals.  I started off with both by having a consultation and getting to know them a little and learn what their goals are for their time with a personal trainer.  One of the girls wants to establish a workout routine where she feels she is working hard.  She wants to get a little more toned up and get back to the level of fitness she used to be at.  My other client has a goal of weight loss.  

I have done a fitness test on one of them so far and am planning on doing the other fitness test next week sometime when she is feeling better.  My first fitness test went well and we learned that cardiovascular endurance is definitely something we need to be working on.  We had our first training session today.  We began with some cardio on the treadmill as well as the bike.  We then went into the weight room and did some free weight exercises.  A lot of the exercises I am doing with her utilize her body weight instead of dumbells.  We did a few leg exercises as well as some arm exercises.  We then went back to the cardio room and finished up with a little time on the stairmaster and finally a cooldown on the treadmill at a very slow speed.  

My primary goal this session was just to see what she could handle and see what her experience with resistance training was.  I had to make a few corrections on her form with some of the exercises, but overall, she seemed to be doing great!  I'm excited to see how our training sessions progress!  I'm planning on keeping track of everything we do so that I can see the improvement and show her directly so she can see some results.  We will be keeping track of her weight also by measuring it every Thursday.  I'll be interested to see how long it will take us to reach her weight loss goals!

Basketball Weight Training

This semester, I've been working with the men's basketball team here at GCSU.  They have their weight room workouts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  Some of the exercise science majors have been going to the practices and helping them out with their form and technique of various exercises.  Right now they are in the neural introductory phase of training.  During this phase, they will be doing a lot of exercises that are a good introduction to the season.  All of these exercises will help the players to build a strong core and build up a base for some of the exercises they will be doing later.  It's been really interesting to watch how different the form is for each player.  Many of them complete the exercises with great form, but there are also a good number of them who do the exercises with substandard form.  It's our job to help correct these errors and keep the players from getting injured from bad form execution.  It'll be interesting to see the improvements that all of the players make throughout the year.  I've enjoyed helping them out so far and am very excited to see how things go!