False Grandeur of the Fitness Industry

Sunday, December 18, 2011 1:21 AM Posted by Phill Wright
Labels: , , , , 0 comments
They say love your job and love your life. Well, I do love working in the fitness industry having changed careers in 2007 and I most certainly love my life. It was a big step for myself and a huge leap of faith initially as I went straight into self employed Personal Training having never sold a thing previously.

My previous background was rather specialised in a very different direction as an Arabic Interpreter and Intelligence Operator for the Forces. My interviewer when I first stepped into PT was right when he said that the skills from my previous experience was going to prove highly useful although at the time, I didn't fully share that confidence. I just knew how to be me and have stuck with that ever since.

As an industry, fitness is relatively juvenile and still finding its feet with regulation only being fully in place for around 10 years. Research is constantly unwinding and rewriting our methods and practices. With such radical changes constantly hitting industry professionals, one of the most crucial fundamentals of maintaining our credibility is professionalism and integrity. Ensuring that our practices and guidance are honest, factual and proven. In my mind, one of the most frustrating observations is the over-glorification of specific trains of thought.

Of course to advertise and market effectively, there needs to be engagement that creates desire but there becomes a point when morally, a more factually based analysis would leave readers with a much clearer understanding and without false expectations. Making such grand statements can leave other commercial organisations feeling the need to equal or surpass their marketing promise resulting in a significant disparity between a customers perception and the reality.

A much more impartial reflection of innovations is key for clarity and an absolute must on the part of regulatory bodies and industry leaders.

Finally, to maintain industry-wide integrity, a level of professional respect is needed, I'll elaborate. There are methods of conditioning and practices within the industry that I don't fully agree with. In fact, there are some modes that I feel cause more damage than good. However, without clinical research to back my argument, I am merely expressing my opinion. Irrespectively, to maintain my own integrity, I should demonstrate a degree of respect and acknowledgement for the subject of my discussion. The number of times, blogs or articles begin with "I'll tell you the real truth about..." or go on to slate certain trains of thought is quite surprising. Especially with a clear absence of clinical back up. What they really mean is "here are my thoughts on..."

To progress the industry and demand the respect from our counter-industries, a certain decorum is vital from all parts, regulatory bodies, awarding bodies, training providers, fitness professionals and indeed anyone representing the fitness world.
Location: Leeds Leeds

Listening to your body

Friday, December 16, 2011 2:00 AM Posted by Phill Wright
, 0 comments
Fitness professionals and enthusiasts are well aware that recovery is the key to enjoying the benefits of exercise. My question is, do professionals know how much recovery is needed to actually allow the body to compensate from the damage it has just been exposed to? How can you confidently know that the body is ready for another training session, be it intense or moderate? Of course, general feeling can be a useful barometer for knowing whether you're ready to slog it out again but the truth is, it's the nervous system that should be listened to in order to discover recovery time.
The two arms of the autonomic nervous system; sympathetic and parasympathetic. In simple terms, the sympathetic is like the accelerator pedal in your car, speeding up your body, internal systems and function; whereas your parasympathetic is like your brake pedal, slowing things down.

At any one time, they are both in operation providing balance and maintaining healthy function. Exercise generally arrives in conjunction with the stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system and the PNS allows us to fully recover. However, do we accurately know when this has occurred or is it guess work?
Many athletes tune into their resting heart rate as an indicative measure of recovery on the notion that a return to a normal resting heart rate represents recovery. Sounds simple enough right? Well, unfortunately not. Sympathetic overload (i.e. overtraining) can be identified by a lowering in resting heart rate which may appear initially as a positive adaptation to exercise.

Another way in which athletes tend to manage recovery is by their planning. Typically having a light training day or a total rest day after a heavy or intense session. Is this enough? Whilst theoretically it makes sense, the body's response to training isn't always predictable. Sometimes the nervous system takes longer to recover from varying degrees of overreaching in training, not even considering muscular recovery.

My point is, periodisation of training programmes isn't enough. Careful and continual monitoring of training responses is absolutely necessary to allow the body sufficient time to recover. There are more accurate and simple methods of monitoring responses so that you as trainers and clients are able to be more selective about when to train. We're looking forward to launching our advanced fitness testing course in 2012 which covers much more on this.

Are you motivating your clients?

Sunday, November 27, 2011 11:09 AM Posted by Phill Wright
, 0 comments
Phill Wright, Director, Creating Chaos


As personal trainers, the very top of our job descriptions reads 'motivational'...but the question is, are you actually motivational. To be able to accurately answer this question, you'd need to be able to answer a couple of questions:

  • How are your clients motivated?
  • How do you motivate clients?
  • How do you tailor your style to fit each of your clients?

Knowing how your clients are motivated is absolutely paramount. It's very difficult to motivate someone without knowing the true things that actually drive them. Some people are motivated by achievement and reaching goals, others are driven by having recognition and approval from others. Read more on these. The reality is that we all show different elements of each in different environments. Understanding how your clients are driven in terms of health and fitness could make your life a million times easier when keeping them going.

As trainers, we have dozens of tools in our toolbox to draw upon. Which ones do you draw upon to assist your clients? Here's just a few ways in which you can offer continued purpose and drive to your client's journeys:
  • Applause - regular recognition and encouragement for their efforts
  • Training - not just the work load of exercise in their programme but also the process of learning. Be it about exercise, nutrition or lifestyle choices. After all, in an ideal world, your clients wouldn't need you would they?
  • Milestones - marking significant points in their journey with rewards (these don't need to cost)
  • Enjoyable environment - making sure sessions are enjoyable. If sessions are just hard work and not enjoyable, your client will attach un-enjoyment and possibly even suffering to their perception of exercise. Not a great idea and unlikely to increase the likelihood of clients exercising without you there
  • Themed sessions - To mark achievement, allow your client to decide on the content of a session (within reason) based on what they most enjoy
  • Social gatherings - ideal for group fitness environments. Getting clients together can forge new friendships and help boost confidence levels
  • Train the trainer day - Let your client train you. (Only if you're confident being having the roles reversed) This can be a really powerful tool. Not only will it let them get their own back, it will build huge rapport, show them that exercise can be just as hard for others as it is for them, build confidence, highlight how much they've learnt...the list goes on!!
So, going back to the original questions, how do you motivate clients and how do you tailor your style? Spending time in the initial consultation working out how clients are driven and how you can support this will make monumental differences to how positive, focussed, enthusiastic and determined your clients are.  Even if this doesn't come straight away, spending time as your relationship with clients continues adding to your understanding of their motivational hot buttons, you can only step closer and closer to keeping them happy, loyal and adding to the successful projects of your port folio.  

Functional training does not exist – Part One

Sunday, November 20, 2011 1:47 AM Posted by Phill Wright
, 2 comments

Paul Swainson, Master Personal Trainer

Functional training does not exist. For some that may be a controversial statement, for others it may be something you’ve heard before. By way of explanation, the specificity principle would suggest that to be truly functional, an exercise must match the actual function (let’s say a tennis serve for example) in terms of movement patterns, energy systems, environmental conditions, etc. Therefore by definition the only ‘true’ functional exercise is the sport or activity itself, e.g. an actual tennis serve. Indeed if you are training for something, it is necessarily different in quality to the actual function - any exercise that simply tries to replicate the movements or environment in a given sport is training for function. Even practicing the sport itself may not be classed as true function if we take psychological influences into account – the effects of motivation and state of mind on performing a tennis serve will no doubt be very different on a practice court behind closed doors compared to centre court at Wimbledon in front of thousands of spectators. 
So functional training is to a large extent a contradiction in terms, although the term persists as it is commonly used to describe training for function which is the next best thing to actual competition and so is arguably the best practical form of training for sports. All we can do is try to make the gap between training and actual function as small as possible, all the while making sure we are enhancing that function more than we would by simply playing the sport.
So how do we do that? We need to replicate the physiological, psychological and environmental conditions of an activity or sport as closely as possible. However we have established that the psychological conditions of competition are as yet impossible to recreate because if you’re not competing, you’re not competing! Environmental conditions can be replicated by, for example, training indoors or outdoors depending on the sport, on the same surfaces (grass/tarmac, etc) or in the same climate.
This leaves us with mimicking physiological conditions which the fitness industry has made leaps and bounds in over recent years with for example, the increasing use of whole body, integrated multi-planar movements.
What is interesting then, is that one of the most easily replicable physical aspects of sports is typically not factored into training. Almost all programmes will feature a series of individual exercises (even if they are integrated multi-plane ones), performed for a set number of repetitions. Yet in everyday life and sports the same movement pattern is not repeated 8, 10, 12 or 20 times in succession (e.g. a tennis serve is not performed more than twice consecutively unless the player is double faulting continually – and why would you want to get good at that?!). Granted there a few activities (e.g. walking, running and cycling) where a single movement pattern is repeated continuously, but what actually happens in most sports and activities is a variety of movements, in multiple planes, occurring in sequence. In tennis, a serve could be followed by two or three fast side steps, followed by a forehand, then perhaps a two or three step forward sprint. Would there be some functional benefit therefore, in recreating these biomechanical and metabolic demands on the body as closely as possible in training?
In Part 2 of this article, we will look at how we can incorporate such an approach into training to add a new dimension to function.
Functional training does not exist – Part Two
In part one of this article, we looked at how training, by definition, can never be truly functional as we can never perfectly recreate the physiological, psychological  and environmental conditions of, for example, a sport without performing or playing that sport itself. The best we can achieve is training for function.
We also identified that almost all sports involve a complex sequence of varying movements in multiple planes and so the traditional sets and reps training format may not be the most relevant approach.
Primal FlowTM aims to tackle this aspect of functionality, by linking together multiple patterns of movement over set time periods, rather than doing multiple repetitions of single patterns. The patterns reflect the vast range of movements the human body is capable of, from the simple (e.g. pushing, pulling, flexing) to the more complex (crawling, rotating, rolling).


Exposing the body to the endless possibilities of movement available allows it to move out of its comfort zone which in turn promotes adaptation and improvement in strength, endurance, injury resistance and conditioning.
This means Primal Flow TM not only has huge potential within sports performance, but also offers a unique new method of training for general fitness. The use of sequenced movements reduces the likelihood of pattern overload associated with traditional training methods, and as the system means that just body weight is a sufficient load for even experienced exercisers (just ask the Leeds Rhinos rugby league team how they felt after a Primal FlowTM session!), it’s a practical and free system for anyone to use. In addition, the use of multiple movement patterns recruits more muscle mass, leading to greater metabolic demands, which means accelerated fat loss and increased muscle tone.
Borne from a simple concept, Primal FlowTM is the most revolutionary training approach to hit the fitness industry for years. Once you learn the philosophy behind the system, the number of original exercises and programmes you can design will be limited only by your imagination.
For more information, contact Creating Chaos, keep an eye out for taster workshops or get ahead of the game and book onto the next Primal Pattern and Functional Movement Specialist course – be one the first trainers in the world to be certified in the next generation of training technology.

Does being Pregnant mean getting unfit?

Friday, November 18, 2011 9:09 AM Posted by Phill Wright
, 2 comments

Jenny Wright, OutFit director


Back in August I had some fantastic news – I’m pregnant!

As well as being overjoyed and extremely excited, I also felt a little scared. What will happen to my training? Will I get fat? Will I lose all my strength? Will I have to stop doing all the things I enjoy?
When I was past 12 weeks and able to tell others my good news, the next question after “when is it due?” was “so when are you going to give up all the exercise?”

The common train of thought amongst people is that pregnant women should be wrapped up in cotton wool and shouldn’t do much more than go for a gentle walk in terms of exercise. I knew that this couldn’t be right – pregnant animals in the wild don’t stop hunting, pregnant women in the olden days continued to work and hunt, and pregnant women now in developing countries continue to do manual work, walk miles and look after their families. Why should it be different here?


Those of you who know me will know that I am quite into my training (that’s probably an understatement). I enjoy being physically fit, and typically would train 2 to 3 times a day in a variety of ways – running, kettlebells, bodyweight circuits and hockey to name a few.

When my husband and I decided to start trying for a baby, I wanted to be as prepared as possible for what was about to happen to my body, and the changes I would inevitably have to make. I am fortunate in that I work in the fitness industry and therefore I have a number of experts and resources to go to.

To my surprise however, most trainers and instructors were very cautious about advising me about training during pregnancy. And those that had studied it were men and obviously could not fully understand the changes that occur to a woman during pregnancy.

I could only find articles stating that “you should not lift heavy weights”, “you should not over exert yourself”, “you should not raise your heart rate above a certain level”, “you should not do any balance work” and so on. What about the things I could do?

So I looked overseas for my information. I found a few blogs by fellow female kettlebell instructors in America who had continued to train during pregnancy and had a trouble free pregnancy and gave birth to a happy, healthy baby. This gave me hope, although being a bit of a geek; I still wanted to know the science behind exercising whilst pregnant.

I found a brilliant book by Doctor James F Clapp called 'Exercising Through Your Pregnancy'.

In it he details the research that has been done on the effects of training whilst pregnant (surprisingly little until about 30 years ago when he set up numerous research programmes), he described the physiological changes to the body that happen during pregnancy, and the effects of exercise on the body and the effects of exercise on a pregnant woman. The benefits of continuing to exercise are numerous, and mostly positive additive benefits to those which naturally occur to a pregnant woman.

A lot of the changes that occur during pregnancy make the body extremely efficient – more oxygen intake, more efficient at getting rid of heat, better heart rate regulation.  All of these changes also occur to women who regularly exercise. Combining exercising with being pregnant adds positively to these effects; it improves the supply of glucose and oxygen to the baby (provided the mum eats adequately and regularly).

The fitter, stronger and healthier you are, the easier labour may be, the stronger the baby will be, and the easier it will be to get back to pre-pregnancy size and fitness.

there are certain things that need to be said here. My body is used to, and has been used to for years, the types of training that I do. It is not a good idea to start an exercise programme or new types of training when you’re pregnant; and if you feel any pain or have any complications during pregnancy – always consult your doctor or midwife before continuing training.

The most important thing to understand is that it is not the time for pushing myself, or trying to beat personal records; I must listen to my body and if I’m feeling tired/exhausted/any pain, then I must stop or not try to train. I also must fuel my body properly – it’s not a case of “eating for two” (you only actually need an extra 300 calories a day, and this is only from 6 months onwards), it’s a case of eating healthy, nutritious foods that will enable the baby to develop and grow, but also sustain me through my training.

I am now 18 weeks pregnant, and I have continued to train most days throughout. I tend to do 20-30 minutes of kettlebell and bodyweight circuits in the morning before work, and then a long run including hills sprints or intervals with the dog after work.

If I feel too tired – I don’t train. The only thing I have stopped doing is playing hockey due to the physical nature and contact of the sport. I understand that when bump gets bigger I will have to slightly change and tailor my training to accommodate it. But unless I have any complications during my pregnancy – I will continue to do what I love doing. If I can’t train for some reason – I know that it is only for a few months, and most importantly – the baby now comes first. Nothing is more important to me than being able to give birth to a lovely healthy little boy or girl – that is something no amount of exercise can ever take the place of.



A Beastly, Body-Crunching Belter of a Session

Sunday, October 23, 2011 7:20 AM Posted by Phill Wright
, 0 comments
Now and again, those at Chaos HQ are able to get together, share some ideas and put themselves through some fairly challenging sessions. Just a week ago, that's exactly what happened resulting in a destructive session, now for the faint hearted.

Summary: 2 circuits, each completed twice through and containing 3 stations. (Ideal for 3 or more people, station 1acts as the timer)

Circuit 1:

  1. Run 40 meters, hop 40 meters (20 meters each side), bear crawl 20 meters
  2. High pull to squat catch (30lb sandbell)
  3. Sprawl - down dog / ascending Kettlebell push press each side (20kg Kettlebell)

Circuit 2:
  1. Walking lunge 20 meters, frog walk 20 meters, skater 20 meters
  2. Potato lunge to ipsilateral lunge (30lb sandbell)
  3. Hindu press up / ascending snatch each side (20-24kg Kettlebell)

Enjoy and be sure to leave your comments - only once you've given it a go!!

Suspension Training - Magic or tragic?

Tuesday, October 11, 2011 2:30 PM Posted by Phill Wright
, 0 comments
I was asked last week to give my thoughts on a particular brand of suspension training kit...you may be familiar with it and it got me thinking.

I've used this particular type of training a bit, years before this popular brand brought this type of training into the mainstream. As with many types of training/new products in the fitness industry, a good slice of marketing, healthy scoop of PR and some strategic endorsement is followed by what can potentially be called mass hysteria. The question is, in this instance, is it justified or is it just another example of a fickle industry desperately seeking the next great thing?


Why?

  • Able to target specific body parts to focus on
  • If used with good technique, the greater demand for proprioception will increase the training effect, engaging more muscles and to a greater intensity
  • Excellent to target particularly weak or phasic areas
  • Versatile to allow numerous variations in the movement pathways
  • Durable and robust
  • Assist in balance and progression towards exercises that may be currently unachievable
Why not?
  • Expensive
  • Require specific anchor points
  • Impractical for large group work
  • Require an ability to control inner core units much greater than the normal demand of activity
  • Increased stress and tension placed upon joints and supporting musculature
  • Difficult to fit into complexes or sequences of movements
  • Can encourage dependency on the support offered if used to aid balance or range of movement
  • Encourage single pattern repetition
My general thoughts are that suspension training kits can form a very useful although small component of a balanced fitness programme providing individuals are already at a good stage of physical fitness. However, exclusive exercise programmes based upon suspension training are limited due to the lack of integrated body movement possible and the significant requirement for the body to work around the kit and not visa versa. We look forward to hearing your thoughts

Follow this link to get your hands on excellent quality and reasonably priced fitness equipment
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)