No matter where you’re working out, you probably don’t have a custom workout unless you’re working with a personal trainer. Personal trainers don’t just have you work until you feel tired or point you toward a machine and say do it ten times and work up to fifteen by next week. You often find that type of “leadership” at big box gyms where the person helping you actually has no more training than ten minutes on how to use each machine.
Personal trainers first assess your overall fitness.
Trainers may give you an exercise to do and watch as you do it. They may put you through your paces and see where you struggle or how you move your body. Even though you’ll be doing exercises often the first day, those exercises help to begin the continual assessment of fitness. That includes identifying all types of fitness and the level of fitness of each muscle group.
You’ll have a program that’s continuously in a state of flux.
A custom program isn’t created and then used the rest of your life. That’s because your body continuously changes. The more you work out, the more fit it becomes and the higher your level of fitness becomes. If you started with a good customized workout, it won’t be viable after a few weeks when your fitness level improves. That’s why trainers are constantly changing the workout to reflect your improvement, keeping it customized.
Make sure the program considers special needs and goals.
When I work with some people, they want to focus on specific problems, such as endurance and cardio or weight loss. That’s their goal. I create a program to focus on it, but also insure the workout provides all types of fitness. Others may come in with physical problems, such as back injuries, which require me to adjust the workout so it doesn’t exacerbate the problem. If time or travel makes a scheduled workout difficult. I create programs for people that fit their lifestyle, even ones that can be used traveling.
You don’t just get one customized workout but many. As a personal trainer I continuously change the program to avoid plateauing. That comes from the body becoming too efficient at one type of exercise.
A personalized program includes insuring you do all the exercises correctly. Not only do I and other personal trainers show clients how to do each exercise, we watch them to insure they do it right, thus,avoiding injury and getting more benefit..
A customized workout can also include nutritional advice. Nutritional advice isn’t dieting, but learning how to eat healthier so you never have to diet again.
No matter how fit or unfit you are, you’ll benefit from a customized workout.