A personal trainer is the best investment I've made
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A personal trainer is the best investment I've made
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Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made
#2Great point! I am 40 and when I look at pictures of myself 10 years ago, I look and feel much much better now. One day in my early thirties I started running and going to the gym. But I had phases of extreme motivation following phases of zero motivation. A personal trainer might have helped, but is expensive.
What really brought a turning point was when I discovered a sport I always wanted to do, but did not know it exists in that form. Historical fencing (HEMA). - There I found good friends and sport. Sometimes when I have no energy, I still go to training to meet them. Also this sport is very competitive, be it in sparring with friends or tournaments. If you do not stay in shape and train, your performance will visibly look bad and people start asking you what's wrong and how they can help.
So that's my advice. If a personal trainer is nothing for you, take a look at competitive sports, even if you are too old for world ranking and such. Try to find the gym or group where the people, including the trainers, are interesting to you and you feel welcome. - This way motivation will become totally positively intristic. Actually you will be sad if you miss a training or event. =)
Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made
#3No post body was provided.
Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made
#4I have chronic fatigue, but what can go a long way, and what I am doing, is 1. a good diet on the low calorie side of things, 2. a little body-weight strength training each day, 3. do some walking. All of which has the advantage of not taking too much time. But it does require habit building which is tricky.
Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made
#5Great point! I am 40 and when I look at pictures of myself 10 years ago, I look and feel much much better now. One day in my early thirties I started running and going to the gym. But I had phases of extreme motivation following phases of zero motivation. A personal trainer might have helped, but is expensive. What really brought a turning point was when I discovered a sport I always wanted to do, but did not know it…
One great thing about HEMA is that just walking around in full gear constitutes exercise.
I was part of a group presenting as the Teutonic Order because there was a dearth of baddies in the community.
But the absolutely best thing about this sport is that there's an easy solution to every conflict or misunderstanding - combat!
Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made
#6Quoted post unavailable.
Pure plagiarism of Cryptonic's top-level comment
Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made
#7> Having a trainer has a better set of incentives. Firstly there's the loss-aversion of having already paid for the session. Humans are irrationally motivated by loss-aversion and regualrly succumb to the sunk-cost fallacy.
I disagree. "Having paid for it" is a bad motivation and sparingly works. I know several folks who bought expensive cameras, bicycles, and guitars which only gather dust. The bicycle I rode almost daily for a year was one of the cheapest I had ever bought. Yes, there's a regret if when not utilizing something expensive, but the regret is more like, "I shouldn't have bought it" vs "I have already paid for it so better utilize it".
In fact, I would advice quite the opposite. Get something no-so-expensive. See if you can build a habit around it. Buy the premium thing only if you see yourself plateuing or seriously needing it.
Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made
#8> I've also passed the threshold of exercise feeling like a chore. It's now something I enjoy and even look forward to. This took over a year to achieve but it does happen, I promise.
This was the most surprising part for me : I used to be the stereotypical anti sport nerd when I was young, and when I started training, even a bit, it was a proper chore and something that required motivation.
But after running regularly for a couple of years, now going for a run is something that I do for relaxation, and honestly look forward to especially after a stressful day.
I could not say when it happened, the change is pretty gradual, but it's definitely there : not only does it get easier after a while but it becomes something you deeply enjoy
Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made
#9> I've also passed the threshold of exercise feeling like a chore. It's now something I enjoy and even look forward to. This took over a year to achieve but it does happen, I promise. This was the most surprising part for me : I used to be the stereotypical anti sport nerd when I was young, and when I started training, even a bit, it was a proper chore and something that required motivation. But after running regular…
Although I never hated sports I had the same experience.
A few points for those who think about getting into running:
* make sure you are doing training units of at least 30 mins regularily. Going shorter than that is not really useful to get you actually trained.
* If you try to get better endurance most of your training should be aerobic (instead of anaerobic), this means it should be easy for you to do. Doing anaerobic training (so going to the max) is also useful, but it should not be the only thing you do
* regularily doing a little is always better than occasionally doing a lot. Set yourself some distance targets (e.g. 12 km a week). If it helps get yourself one of those sports tracker apps, or watches (Garmin, Polar, ...)
* with the right clothes weather does not matter at all (except maybe: too much heat/sun and not drinking enough)
* the most important thing are the fitting shoes (to avoid pain in the joints). Retailers will often offer a analysis of your running style and offer you the fitting shoes. Those should then be changed every 600 to 800 km.
* for certain people with bad joints or other related issues cycling or swimming might be better choices
Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made
#10Too much emphasis is put on organised exercise. I think it's an American thing, where nobody seems to walk anywhere.
Better advice is to build more functional "exercise" into your day-to-day life. This is where real lifestyle change happens without you really knowing it.
Take the stairs, walk to the shops, cycle to work (where possible), household chores that involve getting on your hands and knees and breaking a sweat, do DIY/gardening (why people pay to go to the gym and deadlift, then e.g. happily pay someone to move a load of soil around the backyard always confuses/amazes me).