Fall can be a profitable time of year to get business starting back again! When summer comes around, clients take the time to enjoy vacations and pleasant weather at the expense of structured exercise. Fall is a great time to run special promotions and training packages to get clients back into the swing of working out.
If your clients have taken a good chunk of time off during the summer, then chances are they may be looking to invest in training on a budget. Focus on offering affordable training packages. Although discounted private training is a common promotion, partner and group training options will be a lot more wallet-friendly. If you don’t offer partner and group training, consider adding it to your portfolio of services. For pricing partner and group training, a general guideline to follow would be time and a half for partner training and double-time for group training. For example, if you typically charge $50/hour for private training, partner training pricing would be $75/hour split between two clients, while group training would be $100/hour shared among three or more participants.
If you all ready offer these semi-private training services, consider running a themed or goal-oriented workshop series. Fall can be a great time to exercise outdoors. An outdoor boot camp at a local park or as part of a weekend series of short hikes are a couple workshops you can run to attract outdoor-oriented exercisers. Workshops can also be structured around fitness goals shared among group members. Circuit training with bouts of high intensity exercises, free weight instruction, and functional training for winter sports are workshop ideas designed for fat loss, strength, and sports-specific goals.
Deciding what specific workshop series to use will depend on your specific clientele. Review PAR-Q’s and ask your clients to refresh your memory on their goals and activities of interest in order to determine what themed workshop to run. Also consider what training environments or tools are readily available to you—is there a park local to you and/or clients, do you have portable equipment to increase variety for outdoor training sessions? What space constraints at your facility should you keep in mind to determine how many clients you can accommodate for small group training? Try to strike a balance between planning ahead and being creative with workshops, and your clients will be more than happy to work with you in a budget-friendly, but effective exercise setting.
Filed under: Exercise Programming, Flexibility, For Trainers, Special Populations
Flexibility programming for the pre-natal client poses challenges distinctive from clients with general fitness goals. The body of the pre-natal client undergoes several key biomechanical and hormonal changes that will affect flexibility work. Body mass increases affect center of gravity, making any flexibility exercise requiring balance-work not only difficult, but potentially dangerous for expecting mothers. Additionally, as the lower back will have to bear new weight, it’s necessary to avoid overloading the back during flexibility and overall training sessions. Lastly, one notable hormonal change to keep in mind is the increased levels of estrogen, progesterone, and relaxin, which cause connective tissue to loosen, compromising joint stability. This is another reason to avoid exercises that overload the lower back considering that joint instability can create an additional strain on sacroiliac and hip joints.
When designing flexibility and exercise programs for pregnant clients, ACOG has one important recommendation to keep in mind. For the pre-natal client, staying healthy during pregnancy is the most important thing–the priority is to continue being healthy, not to increase fitness as strenuous, vigorous challenges can often put the mother and unborn child in danger. For flexibility, avoiding most dynamic flexibility exercises along with deep stretches and extension of joints is not recommended as most of these exercises require the client to take stretches to a maximum, causing stress to the pregnant woman’s body. Stick to seated or supine stretches for safety and to achieve mild stretches in targeting muscle groups. However, keep in mind that after the first trimester, it is often recommended to avoid supine exercises because in a supine position, blood and oxygen flow is reduced to the baby due to a depressed superior vena cava. If you are do include supine exercises after the first trimester, try to have your client lie on their side in between recovery periods of sets.
Once your client has delivered her baby, keep in mind that it can take up to six weeks for biomechanical and hormonal changes due to pregnancy to return to pre-pregnancy states. Be sure to continue with seated/supine flexibility exercises, and gradually work up to active and dynamic flexibility depending on your individual client’s fitness level.
Agility tests have often been used exclusively for athletes as most athletic activity involves changing direction in a controlled, efficient manner. But considering the nature of everyday activity, agility is relevant to all exercisers. Everyday motion involves changing direction efficiently: getting into and out of your car or desk chair at work, keeping up with small children, and even some housework. These activities may not require quick movement characteristic of sports, but they do require the body to switch direction efficiently, making agility play an important role in everyday movement and injury prevention. The more efficient a body is in its ability to change direction, the more prepared it will be for such instances, hopefully reducing the risk of injury.
Testing agility agility in clients with chronic pain poses some challenges. Most traditional agility tests like the T Test and Hexagon Test require hops, shuffles, and running, which are often too stressful on all ready aching joints. The Edgren Side Step test is a good alternative to traditional agility tests as it involves stepping quickly while changing direction. Depending on the severity of a client’s symptoms or their cardiovascular fitness level, you may want to adjust the length between each mark. Rather than spacing each mark three feet apart, try 18 inches apart or use individual rungs of an ABC ladder to delineate distances between each mark. Whether or not you use the original evaluation or a modification, the Edgren test will provide a good benchmark for measuring progress in agility.
Similar to agility, coordination, although not a typical fitness component, is an important aspect of everyday physical movement. There is no definitive test for coordination, so completing a simple exercise should give you a good idea of your client’s level of coordination. A simple exercise like tossing a small stability ball while your client is standing is a good way to measure and improve hand-eye coordination–this activity can serve as both a test and exercise. Observe the relative ease or difficulty your client may have in catching the ball, and be sure to record these observations as they will provide a starting point from which to improve. Coordination deteriorates with age and inactivity, so including related drills in an exercise program will help in improving neuromuscular efficiency: the ability of the body’s nervous system to transmit signals to the muscular system to initiate movement (yes, this is just another fancy way of describing coordination!).
Filed under: Exercise Tips, For Clients and Devoted Exercisers, Seasonal Exercise
So you’re having trouble exercising before and after work? Why not try to include something during work? Your lunch-break may be a good time to get some exercise on your way to pick up some fuel. For this mid-day workout, you’ll have to get outside on a mild, sunny day. You’ll take a break from work, loosen up, get some fresh air, and relax a little bit.
Be sure to set aside 20-30 minutes for a power-walk or moderate stroll. Start easy for 5 minutes for a warm-up, and then try a couple static stretches for your calves, hamstrings, and quadriceps, and hip flexors. Your legs will be thankful after hours of sitting at your desk, tight from immobility. Once you’ve stretched out, walk for another 15-20 minutes and repeat the same stretches you did for your warm-up. Depending on your fitness level, this may be a good active recovery session or cardio routine. Try it a couple times a week, throw it into your current exercise program as it relates to your goals, or do it whenever you can take a short break from work, and you’ll find yourself improving your flexibility and maybe even cardiovascular fitness!
Testing strength and cardiovascular fitness for clients with chronic pain will require some creativity and adjustments on a case-by-case basis. Since traditional strength implements like free weights, cables, and sometimes even tubing can be too strenuous on joints for clients with chronic pain, bodyweight exercises may be more appropriate as they can help us assess relative strength and muscular endurance. Although push-ups and squats are not absolute strength tests, establishing a benchmark to measure progress in muscular endurance is often a more reasonable and relevant assessment to clients with chronic pain than maxing out. It’s very unlikely that your chronic pain clients will want to improve their 1 RM, but they will most likely need to increase the endurance of typically fatigued muscles.
For testing cardiorespiratory or cardiovascular fitness, assessments like the mile-run and even step test are too rigorous for chronic pain patients. Still, evaluating cardiovascular fitness is important for all clients as this fitness component provides a good gauge for overall fitness. We can establish a benchmark for clients with chronic pain through a modification of the conventional step test.
Before starting the step test, be sure to measure the client’s resting heart rate. Depending on the severity of a client’s symptoms, try the step test for anywhere from 10 seconds to a minute; be sure the selected time-frame will be challenging, but not exhausting. Immediately after completing the step test, measure the client’s pulse, and after the client has rested for one minute, measure the pulse again to see how much they have recovered. In a traditional step test, you would wait a minute before estimating a client’s heart rate and plug that number into an equation to determine cardiovascular efficiency. By measuring their heart rate right after the step test, you can get a good idea of how intensely they may be working with respect to their max heart rate. You can also observe how quickly (or efficiently) their cardiovascular system may be in returning close to their resting heart rate through comparing their pulse right after the step test to their heart rate after a minute of rest. This will be especially helpful in cardio programming for a very deconditioned client that may be drained after walking for a minute (or even less!). You will be able to use results from their step test to determine appropriate work:rest ratios to improve cardiovascular fitness and endurance over the course of their training.
NEXT: Agility/Coordination Assessments
Putting together flexibility assessments for a client with chronic pain is similar to assessment design for all other clients. Fitness evaluations are based on goals with consideration of any individual medical issues. Regardless of the goal a client with chronic pain will have, depending on the severity of their symptoms, it would be best to tweak some traditional fitness assessments.
Filed under: Exercise Tips, For Clients and Devoted Exercisers, Seasonal Exercise
Summer can be a great time to pick up an outdoor sport. Whether you’re a long-time athlete or a newbie to all sports, participating in a recreational past-time can be a good, healthy change of pace from traditional exercise. Local fitness and athletic centers often offer lessons and opportunities to compete in individual and team sports. But oftentimes the most convenient place to inquire about an outdoor team sports is at work.
Many companies have a softball team open to every employee, regardless of athletic experience. Signing up can provide you with a chance to socialize with other employees while getting in a light workout. Yes, as much fun as a sport can be and as demanding as many sports are, softball is not among the most physically strenuous ones. But with a good warm-up and quick cool-down, a softball game can be a good active recovery day where you can focus on improving flexibility, coordination, and maybe even speed and quickness.
To get in a warm-up before a game, you’ll want to get to the field at least 10 minutes before you’re scheduled to play. Jog a few laps around the diamond to warm up your core temperature and before you try any stretches. Once you’ve warmed-up, be sure to do some a couple sets of 10 reps for each of the following dynamic flexibility exercises: leg swings, standing twists, and forward lunges. The following pictures of leg swings are provided by Personal Training on the Net, a resource for personal trainers. Here’s how you complete a standing twist or rotation: stand tall with feet about hip-width apart. Extend your arms in front of you about shoulder height with you palms touching each other. From here, activate your abdominals and focus on engaging your core and hip muscles to twist your torso, left hip and knee to the right–almost as if you were swinging a baseball bat! Return to the start position, standing tall, with arms extended straight ahead. Repeat on the other side for a total of 10 reps.
These prep exercises should warm up muscle groups you can expect to use during the game. Enjoy playing, and once your time on the field is over, be sure to do some static stretches for your legs and shoulders.
Filed under: Exercise Programming, For Trainers, Networking, Special Populations
It’s common knowledge among trainers and fitness club owners that most clients join a gym and sign up for training to lose weight. But clients with common goals often have unique medical needs we have to consider when designing an appropriate exercise program. One of these medical needs include a wide range of chronic, debilitating pain conditions like arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and persistent back pain/sciatica.
In a recent issue of “Personal Fitness Professional,” Kaiser Serajuddin of GoHard Fitness defends planning training sessions as a great way to set yourself apart as a trainer. Having a program designed ahead of time along with in-session note-taking, he adds, may be time-consuming, but will pay off with a little patience. When clients and referrals notice the thought, effort, and extra time you put into devising an exercise plan, they will be more likely to pay a premium price for your services. Having a plan and updating it regularly will help in delivering high quality service and make a good, professional impression.
The ideas of planning a training session ahead of time as opposed to delivering one off the cuff have supporters on each side. When I first started out as a trainer, working for a large commercial club, we had to write summaries of training sessions with clients, but there was no obligation to write down a detailed program for each session. Computer access was limited when there were a dozen trainers sharing access to half as many computers, most of which were often exclusively used by membership sales reps. Planning sessions was often a personal objective completed off the clock.
Filed under: Exercise Tips, For Clients and Devoted Exercisers, Seasonal Exercise
It’s hard to keep your focus on exercise and healthy choices when you’re ready to kick back and enjoy the summer. Luckily enough, working out in the summer doesn’t have to be as burdensome as it was when you made those New Year’s Resolutions. In fact, summer may be the best and most convenient time of year to get some exercise relevant to your active lifestyle.
