Meeting Your Needs
Q: I've never done anything like this - how does it work?
A: It's quite simple - contact me for a free consultation, where we'll talk about what you'd like to do, your goals, your present physical condition, your exercise history, where you like to exercise, etc. Then we'll determine how I can help you meet your goals, what type of program is best, how it will work, and what it will cost. If you decide to continue, I'll send you a couple of forms to fill out and we'll get started! We can work together in person, remotely online or by phone, or in combination, to teach exercise or running technique, observe workouts, deliver training plans, etc.
Q: Can I just get a little advice without committing to a complicated plan?
A: Sure - after the preliminaries discussed above, we'll set up an hourly or monthly plan, in-person or online, where you simply pay as you go and fire away with your questions. You can stop or re-start at anytime, and there's no long-term commitment.
Q: I already belong to a gym - how can you help me?
A: It all comes down to investing your time wisely to get the results you want. Unless your gym membership includes personal training, all you've purchased is access to equipment. With training advice based around your goals, the equipment in your gym, and your schedule, you're much more likely to get results. I'll give you a thorough training plan, including things like:
- optimizing your time at the gym
- alternative exercises for times when the gym is crowded
- proper weight, speed, repetitions, sets, and exercise order
- how to keep your program going at home or on the road
- varying your routine to avoid boredom and plateaus
- eating to maximize the benefits of your workouts
Q: How do you train and coach people without a facility?
A: A personal trainer or coach should focus primarily on WHAT you need to do to meet your fitness goals. WHERE you do it is secondary. My aim is to thoroughly understand your history, motivation, commmitment, and fitness or running goals, design an achievable plan to help you meet those goals, and teach and motivate you along the way. Every one of these can happen very effectively without ever setting foot in a gym or on a track.
If you're interested in weight training, I'll use barbells and dumbells to demonstrate a number of exercises in your home. As for weight-training machines - they're pretty much the same from gym to gym. I can easily teach you how to use them effectively without actually being at the machine. (And I'll also teach you why hand weight and body-weight exercises are far superior for most people.) We can also do a number of fitness and strength tests in your home if those are needed as well.
For aerobic activites like running, XC skiing, etc., I'll deliver your training plan by e-mail, and we can meet outdoors on your favorite route or mine, and analyze your technique or test your fitness.
Q: Don't we need access to a track for running workouts?
A: Not unless you really like running in circles ...
All a track provides is measured distance markers. We can simply measure a section of your favorite road and do the same thing, use other indicators of running intensity like heart rate, or use GPS technology to measure your speed and distance simultaneously.
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Hiring a Personal Trainer
Q: Don't I need to join a gym to get in shape?
A: No. Not at all. Some people feel the commitment of a paid membership will get them to work out. Others may be motivated by the equipment and the people. But many memberships go unused (see article) for a variety of reasons (see article).
Fundamentally, to get fit, you simply have to move. There's not a single part of your body that can't be trained without a machine. You can improve your strength dramatically using your body weight, inexpensive hand weights, bands, and balls for resistance. And you can improve your endurance greatly simply by walking, running, cycling, etc. So you can accomplish the same, and possibly more, than what you might in a gym, without the expense, commitment, and hassle. (And you get to pick your own music!).
Q: I work out on my own. Why do I need a trainer?
If you have no real goals other than to be active and burn some calories, you certainly don't need a trainer. But if you have specific objectives like losing weight, gaining strength or muscle, developing aerobic fitness, or improved nutrition, your chances of meeting them on your own are very slim. A trainer will work with you to methodically and safely manipulate the many exercise variables necessary to maximize your time and effort and motivate you to meet those objectives. Especially important are:
- Specificity - Most people exercise for a reason: to lose or maintain weight; to add muscle mass or tone their muscles; to enhance their performance in other sports; etc. The type, amount, and intensity of exercise you do are all critical in getting the results you want.
- Active rest and nutrition - Few people know that the time you spend in between exercise sessions is as important as your workouts in optimizing your efforts. The length of your rest periods, the activities you undertake during them, and your nutrition are all key factors. Find out how to get it right.
- Alternative exercises - If you don't belong to a gym, can't always get there, or find it crowded when you do go, you need to know how to substitute exercises into your normal routine. Plus, your body will reach a point where it no longer adapts to the repetitive physical stress of your exercises. Despite continued training, results diminish as strength and endurance level off. A trainer can quickly show you simple modifications that will overcome this.
Q: Can't I just buy a book?
A: Books can be great resources for general information. But the information they contain isn't customized to you. We're all unique in our genetics, history, physical ability, aerobic potential, muscle fiber type, motivation, life circumstances, etc.
Look around - if just buying a book made you fit, you'd see a lot more people in better shape! Unlike a book, a good trainer will work with you to understand your fitness goals and abilities, customize a training to meet them, motivate you to reach your potential, and be there to answer your questions.
Q: What about the Web - it's loaded with free advice?
A: Advice is often worth only what you pay for it. Do you really want to spend months of time and effort, doing things that will directly affect your health, based on 'some' web site? There are sites that are great sources of fitness-related information. But recognizing them among the many that aren't so good takes a 'trained' eye.
Anyone can put up a web site, regardless of their qualifications or motivation. In addition to the lack of specificity to your goals and abilities, web sites may contain inappropriate, confusing, conflicting, or even harmful information. Many are trying only to sell you things. And of course you'll spend hours on your butt searching, while those extra calories you ate are sinking you further into your chair ...
Q: My friend is in great shape and she helps me train. What else do I need?
A: Friends are often great sources of fitness information, but while well-meaning, you really need to question the accuracy and reliability of their advice. Did they get it from a reputable and knowledgeable source? Is it specific to you? Do you have the same body composition as your friend? The same muscle fiber types? The same aerobic capabilities? The same balance of strength in your muscles? What works for friends is very likely inappropriate, and possibly disastrous, for you.
Q: Do trainers need to be accomplished athletes?
A: Like professional sport coaches, trainers need to be good listeners, teachers, and motivators, and must possess the knowledge and expertise necessary to test your capabilities and to develop a plan to meet your goals safely.
Having been an accomplished athlete in addition to these qualities might certainly help, but alone is not a prerequisite. In fact, top athletes are typically born with a number of physical and mental qualities that predispose them to excelling in their sport. So despite their accomplishments, they often lack personal experience in understanding the challenges faced by those of us that are less gifted.
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Hiring a Running Coach
Q: Isn't a running coach overkill for a beginning runner?
A: Most everyone has run at some point in their lives - and it certainly doesn't take much skill to put on a pair of shoes and just run. But regardless of the shape you're in, if you've never run regularly for fun or fitness before, your body will rapidly undergo a number of changes as you increase mileage.
Done right, you will quickly increase your strength and endurance, have fun, and be rewarded with improved health and fitness. Done wrong, either nothing will change, or worse, you'll fall victim to one or more of a number of beginning runner's injuries. Not only is this physically painful, but many runners report significant mental anguish as they're stuck in a chair, in pain, in worse shape than they started out.
A coach will help you avoid these maladies and get you started safely and effectively with things like picking the right shoes, basic strength training and flexibility exercises to prevent injuries, running stronger and more confidently, nutrition, and eventually running faster. A coach can also motivate you to actually get out the door and run when the going gets a little rough!
Q: Why not just use running magazines and web sites for training advice?
A: The volume of running information out there is staggering. Much of it comes from scientific studies conducted by exercise physiologists and published in technical journals, or is excerpted from books written by like authors. It is then often condensed into short magazine articles or web pages, or in brief snippets seen in magazine side-columns.
It's important to realize that these studies are typically based on small, selected samples of people (e.g., twenty beginning college aged rowers; fifteen experienced middle-aged cyclists). Often times their conclusions, while statistically significant, are not overwhelming. Finally, such studies at times (more often than you would expect) cannot be repeated, and actually conflict with each other!
So a few paragraphs summarizing potentially limited, biased, and conflicting experiments (which may not even have used runners), broadly published to a wide-ranging recreational athletic population who seldom represent the original subjects of the study, simply leaves too much room for error.
A good running coach stays abreast of this material and uses his or her knowledge and experience to make informed conclusions from it. He or she applies it, when appropriate, carefully and selectively to clients based on their history, present capabilities, and needs, and accurately monitors them to ensure that it's safe and effective.
Q: Free marathon schedules and advice are everywhere ... why pay for them?
A: Training and racing at this distance should not be taken lightly, especially if you're a beginner. A number of complex changes need to occur in your body to adapt it to move quickly and continuously for 3 to 6 hours. Muscles and connective tissue will undergo repeated microtrauma and repair. Your oxygen and CO2 exchange systems will be enhanced at the cellular level. Your blood circulation network will expand. Your heart will move more blood with each beat. Your bones will also be stressed and, hopefully, strengthened.
These stresses must be applied in a very controlled way to be effective. Supporting muscles must be strengthened to avoid common overuse injuries like plantar fasciitis, ITB syndrome, shin splints, and patellar tendonitis. Your diet and training must be designed to avoid stress fractures. It's critical to train hard enough to gain performance and confidence, without overdoing it and becoming injured, as many beginning runners do. Your enjoyment of your marathon and recovery afterwards are also directly dependent on the your training.
The late George Sheehan, a cardiologist and 'father' of the 1970's running-boom, said "We are each an experiment of one." While no training method can guarantee success, you're certainly placing the odds in your favor by using a plan from a qualified coach that is designed to your present physical capabilities and potential, as opposed to 'some plan' from a book, magazine, web site, or friend that has been diluted to fit the 'average' person, whether a middle-aged woman with osteoporosis risk factors, or a college-aged competitive cyclist.
A custom training plan will carefully evaluate your present abilities and add distance, intensity, and rest in the right combination. It will include base-building mileage, strength and flexibility training, rest, more intense workouts, nutrition, motivation, and advice from hundreds of experienced distance runners ... all customized for YOU. You'll never find that in a book or website!
Q: How can an experienced runner benefit from a running coach?
A: Although you've been running for a long time, it's highly unlikely that you've trained up to your full potential simply by just 'running for a long time'.
Your ultimate running potential is based on a combination of hereditary factors and the quality of your training. Your training involves numerous variables that affect your aerobic capacity, muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, diet, running economy, mental toughness, race tactics, etc. Together these items make you unique from your fellow runners. So comparing your race times to others is fun, possibly motivating, sometimes frustrating, but in reality, quite meaningless.
A running coach will use your recent race times and a number of physiological and strength tests to evaluate your present capability versus your potential - things like VO2max, lactate threshold, true maximum heart rate, muscular imbalance, flexibility, and diet. He or she will then create a comprehensive training plan that is designed to specifically address those areas to help you close the gap towards your unique potential.
Q: Do coaches need to be fast runners and win races?
A: Like professional sport coaches, running coaches need to be good listeners, teachers, and motivators, and possess the knowledge and expertise necessary to test your capabilities and develop plans to meet your goals safely. Being a fast runner or having won races in addition to these qualities might certainly help, but alone is not a prerequisite.
In fact, research shows that fast runners (and accomplished athletes in general) are typically born with the muscle fiber types, skeletal composition, aerobic capacities, and mental toughness that predispose them to choosing and excelling in their sport. But that's no guarantee that they can listen, teach, and motivate, nor does it mean they have the fundamental required knowledge in critical areas like physiology, strength training, and nutrition. Most importantly, natural or gifted runners will likely never understand the challenges those of us that are less fortunate face.
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Conditioning for Other Sports
Q: What is 'sport-specific conditioning'?
A: Sport-specific conditioning is a training program that is customized for the demands of a given sport. It is an assessment of the strength, endurance, movement, and agility needs that are critical in your position and your sport, and a training program that focuses on enhancing your abilities in those areas. Such training typically occurs in the off-season and into the pre-season.
For example, a striker in soccer needs anaerobic energy to sprint with quick bursts of speed, aerobic endurance for continuous movement throughout an entire game, core strength for body positioning and heading, dynamic leg strength for running, kicking, and heading, and obviously agility. A football lineman's needs however are quite different - his energy demands are mostly anaerobic, with rest periods occurring often during the game. He requires tremendous leg, core, and arm strength for pushing and holding position, but it is static (or isometric). His demands for agility are also relatively limited. The training regimes for these two athletes would be quite different.
Q: Isn't my coach responsible for conditioning?
A: In most team settings, a coach's priorities tend more towards skill instruction and practice, game strategy and tactics, psychology and motivation, and team management. By the time the season is underway there is little, if any, time or energy left for strength conditioning and endurance training (which take months to build). Also, if you'll be competing for a position on a team, you'll want to show up in top shape to give you an edge.
Q: Is sport-specific conditioning limited to certain sports?
A: No. All physical sports require movement, which in turn requires at least some level of strength, energy expenditure, endurance, and agility. Some sport positions are certainly more skill oriented than others (e.g., golf, hitting in baseball, goalkeeping in hockey, alpine skiing), but even these athletes clearly need to be well-conditioned to complement their skills and increase their overall performance.
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Losing Weight
Q: How can a trainer help me with weight loss?
A: For some people, weight loss can be very complex, requiring the assistance of a nutritionist or physician. But many people can lose weight by following the simple advice of hundreds of health professionals, proven many times over (despite the latest fad diet claims) - eat less and exercise more. But this is much easier said than done.
The input side of the equation involves more than just cutting back on calories. Depending on your specific goals (e.g., losing weight, gaining strength, gaining endurance, eating a healthier diet, etc.), your dietary habits need to be nutritious, compatible with your lifestyle, and supportive of your exercise practices and goals. On the output side of the equation, there are many types of exercises to choose from, and they vary greatly in difficulty, calories burned, safety, and effect on body composition.
Your trainer will teach you how to put all these pieces together safely, motivate you to stick with it, and carefully and accurately monitor your progress. He or she will alo help you sort out the often confusing flood of diet and weight loss information that pervades the news and the marketplace.
Q: But what if I'm not ready for exercise?
A: 'Exercise' doesn't have to mean running a marathon or climbing a mountain. Adding a few hundred steps of walking or fifteen or twenty minutes of other simple physical tasks, and some very basic arm and leg movements to your daily routine, may make a tremendous difference in your functional strength and the amount of calories you burn.
These small and simple changes may in turn get you started slowly towards a more active lifestyle, which coupled with small changes in your eating habits, diet, and attitude, might indeed make a tremendous difference in your life. And, before you know it ... you'll be exercising!
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Online Coaching and Training
Q: How does online training work?
A: Online training simply uses e-mail and the web as tools to augment verbal communication by phone and, where possible, face-to-face personal training. Training plans, progress reports, training advice, Q&A, and, depending on the speed of your web connection, even video exercise demonstrations can all be exchanged.
Q: How effective is online training?
A: It depends on you, your needs, and your level of comfort with exercise and training methods. Face-to-face personal training and coaching is obviously the ideal method of interaction. But for delivery and explanation of textual, graphical, and video material, online tools can effectively complement communication by phone to teach technique and receive feedback. For self-motivated individuals, remote online and telephone based training is an ideal way to exchange information.
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