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A personal trainer is the best investment I've made

herman.bearblog.dev

41–50 of 99 posts

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

#41
When I was PTing it was effective and results were visible.

Another commenter already said though: you can really only apply discipline in a few areas of your life effectively. The amount you can depends on your workload in other areas. Choose wisely…

That being said, your 0hysical Health is foundational.

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

#42
I have personally found that other individuals who happen to go to the gym at the same time as me to be my “accountability partners”.

While you build the discipline when doing anything enough, I think the better conceptual model for building that discipline is B. J. Fogg’s model.

His model is B=MAP.

Behavior = Motivation X Ability X Prompt.

You can have little motivation but high ability and go to the gym. You can also do the opposite. So long as there is a prompt of some sort.

Using the idea that motivation is transient, that’s where much of James Clear work in focusing on the systems comes into play. To make the ability and prompt easy, visible, etc.

A personal trainer is much of that combined into one.

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

#43
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.

:D thanks for the illustrative insight. I don't have much experience with that one, but can recommend rock climbing, which I've been doing for most of my life, it exercises pretty much everything. As something that demands good power to weight ratio you tend to drop the useless stuff.

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

#44
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…

> (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).

I tell people I only lift weights, not boxes or bags of soil.

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

#45
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…

Because in the gym the can progressively increase the wights they are lifting and get stronger and put on muscle. Looking at most people doing manual labor jobs all day and they almost never look great and mostly have wear and tear from the jobs they are doing.

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

#46
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…

I don’t need to move soil in my garden 5 times a week. As a matter of fact I have nothing heavy to move that often. I walk or cycle to most places and while it of course helps, it’s far from being sufficient to keep a good level of fitness.

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

#49
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…

I did this with biking years ago and I don't regret any second of it. It relaxes me in the morning, it does the same in the evening. During warm months it's all pleasure, during colder months it's mostly the way to work and back (or an equivalent in the opposite direction when I WFH).

The only drawback is that although the muscles in the lower part of the body seem like made of steel, the upper part is definitely weaker, so a while ago I started to do pushups as a kind of game: can I ever do 100 pushups in one go? The first step was to make 50 pushups daily and to gradually increase it. I can now do ca. 20 pushups and I'm very proud of it (I could barely do 7 at the beginning).

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

#50
I have to agree - finding a good trainer has made an incredible difference. Years ago I tried a random trainer at my local gym who spent most of his time alternating between weird exercises and incredulously asking about how I possibly came to be so out of shape. I lost some weight and gained some muscle but it wasn’t worth it.

Years later an independent trainer was recommended to me, much more expensive, but I gave it a shot. This trainer didn’t make me feel bad, didn’t make outlandish promises, just made me lift weights and do some HIIT. It mostly the same 20 exercises or so in different combinations, focusing on different parts of the body each time.

And it worked - I’ve doubled my bench press, my squat, and my deadlift, and I’ve got better core stability and balance. My sporadic shoulder and knee problems have largely gone away. Even losing ground during 2020/2021, I’m in much better shape than I started.

I could probably technically maintain my current fitness now - I certainly could recreate many of the exercise loops we do- but the commitment and consistency is the key part that I get, along with getting help with what to do when my back is a little sore, or I pulled a muscle over the weekend.

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