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A personal trainer is the best investment I've made

herman.bearblog.dev

31–40 of 99 posts

Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made

#31
post #26

> What keeps fit people going to the gym on a regular basis isn't wearing their running shoes to bed at night. It's discipline and accountability. There is an alternative, less resistant path which I believe is more sustainable and better for the soul... find something you love that involves exercise, not much discipline is needed once you do, because you probably wont be able to stop yourself from doing it when it's…

> then you are more likely to have more control over when and where you can do your activity.

For me (also an unsporting nerd who came to exercise in midlife), having less control is actually a benefit: because I've got a booked timeslot with my PT, I have to go or it's embarrasing as well as a sunk cost. If I give myself control over when I go it's too easy for it to be mañana. Pre commitment is a real thing.

Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made

#32
post #22
post #10

Too 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 swe…

Too much emphasis is put on organised exercise. Organized exercise allows you to set a specific goal and do targeted exercise to accomplish that goal in the minimum amount of time with minimum risk of injury. 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 It's math and risk. If I make $150 per hour and have unlimited cap…

Gotta love some good ol' post hoc rationalising.

Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made

#33
post #31
post #26

> What keeps fit people going to the gym on a regular basis isn't wearing their running shoes to bed at night. It's discipline and accountability. There is an alternative, less resistant path which I believe is more sustainable and better for the soul... find something you love that involves exercise, not much discipline is needed once you do, because you probably wont be able to stop yourself from doing it when it's…

> then you are more likely to have more control over when and where you can do your activity. For me (also an unsporting nerd who came to exercise in midlife), having less control is actually a benefit: because I've got a booked timeslot with my PT, I have to go or it's embarrasing as well as a sunk cost. If I give myself control over when I go it's too easy for it to be mañana. Pre commitment is a real thing.

I would suggest that perhaps you have not found the thing you love to do yet?

You could always dump your PT for a few weeks and spend the money on booking some taster activities to try to find something... the initial booking still forces an initial commitment to get you to try ;) even if you don't find something on the first round it's a good experience to try out different things and meet new people... I still do this occasionally even though I have a couple activities i'm pretty addicted to, one i've been doing for over 2 decades.

Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made

#34
post #10

Too 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 swe…

absolutely. The Gym of Life is a great video on YouTube talking about this exact thing. Being in a walkable/bikeable location makes you accidentally kinda fit.

Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If you try to get better endurance most of your training should be aerobic (instead of anaerobic) >It's actually the opposite and interval training (mixed aerobic and anaerobic) seems to be more effective. Wrong and easy to prove that its wrong, just look at a training regiment of any elite runner in any distance. Most coaches agree that 80% percent of your volume should be easy aerobic for any goal. Doing high in…

> Wrong and easy to prove that its wrong, just look at a training regiment of any elite runner in any distance. That's a bad comparison. Elite runners' first priority is to win and get out maximum performance. But for regular people, the goal is to overall improve their body and condition using a small time span. Since the goals are different, the methods are as well. That aside, I believe athletes _do_ use interval…

Sure, you are broadly correct, however.

>But for regular people, the goal is to overall improve their body and condition using a small time span

No, the poster above you directly specified running endurance. That's what we're talking about NOT just running for general health. And not limiting training to a couple of hours per week.

>interval training

Interval training in the context is a pace-specific running workout, not interchangeable with HIIT.

Besides that the main point would be that long slow aerobic training has benefits that HIIT doesn't, mostly regarding the volume of blood the heart can pump.

So its not just for performance. Long slow volume will give you a lower resting heart rate and adaptions that HIIT alone will not.

Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made

#38
post #26

> What keeps fit people going to the gym on a regular basis isn't wearing their running shoes to bed at night. It's discipline and accountability. There is an alternative, less resistant path which I believe is more sustainable and better for the soul... find something you love that involves exercise, not much discipline is needed once you do, because you probably wont be able to stop yourself from doing it when it's…

For me that’s mountain biking. But I look like a Greek statue on the bottom and a bit of a melting ice cream cone on top.

Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made

#39
If you don't want to try a personal trainer, train yourself. Start small: find a thing you want to improve. Plan out several ways you can practice that only take 30-60 seconds. Set a timer to go off multiple times a day. By practicing for a very short period of time, many times a day, it's easier to practice, and you build up slowly over time. You can also vary the intensity of these practice sessions, starting very light and building up.

If this sounds familiar, it's also called Grease the Groove by Pavel Tsatsouline.

Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made

#40

Tangent: does anyone know of any online platforms or apps where I can find an online personal trainer? Someone that helps make exercise plans and does regular check-ins?

There are a lot. Where are you at in your current training and do you have any goals? Without knowing anything about you a suggestion would just be "I had a good experience with these people" but it might not be the appropriate level/match for you.
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