Personal trainers and gyms

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demi
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Personal trainers and gyms

Postby demi » Sun Sep 03, 2017 2:43 pm

Copying this over from the yoga thread:

I'd like to add that finding the right personal trainer may make the difference. I trained myself from my 20's thru mid 50's, and it worked very well for riding. I followed along with the Jane Fonda routines as she progressively improved them. In addition to JF I ran, bicycled, did the Nordik Trak Ski machine and lastly treadmill. I pretty much quit doing extra exercise in my mid 50's (10 years ago). Around 2 1/2 years ago, I started back with DH's personal trainer. A really good, fit man, who I stuck with for a year and a half, religiously 3 times a week. His workouts are super for DH, but were too hard for me, plus even though he has a form of aerobics built into his resistance training, it still wasn't right for me. I think I gained some muscle, but I also gained a lot of fat because the training increased my appetite and I wasnt getting enough aerobics to burn off the extra calories...

I recently tried a 7 day free pass to a gym, which included two sessions (fitness assessment) with a personal trainer. I had two different trainers, both young, very fit women. It was so much differnet than with DH's trainer. I liked it so much I bought a 3 month membership. The second trainer would like me to go into 3 times a week resistance training but I am convinced I need at least a month of just aerobics on the elliptical trainer. We had a very in depth discussion (DH's guy did it his way and had no interest in my input) and we decided that I will do 4 times a week on the elliptical and then re-assess my fitness, and % body fat after four weeks. We both agree that my eventual program needs to include some strictly aerobic exercise along with the resistance training.

I'll update here in four weeks.

demi
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Re: Personal trainers and gyms

Postby demi » Sun Sep 03, 2017 2:48 pm

From yoga thread post:
...since the OP (of the yoga thread)did mention a reluctance to join a gym but thought she might give a try anyway, there were a couple of responses addressing gym/ trainer. I also had been reluctant to join a gym/work with a personal trainer and then when I did try, I wasn't happy with the experience, even after trying my best religiously for well over a year.

After a second try, as mentioned in my previous post, I am much more hopeful that it will help. I went for my 4 week re-assessment. My goal was to start losing extra body fat, but only at a rate of about a pound a week. I lost 4.8 lbs and a half a percent of body fat. I had a long discussion with the trainer, she rode horses and did pony club as a kid so she has some basic understanding of how the body works on a horse. She thinks I will lose too much muscle vs fat on just the cardio program and wanted me to add some resistance training but she agreed that it probably wouldn't hurt if I spent another 4 weeks on the elliptical trainer doing hiit, and then start adding a combination of cardio/resistance.

I will try to start a new thread on gyms and trainers but am not sure how to copy and paste my initial post (and now, this one) into a new thread. Fingers crossed I get it right!

(Yay! I learned something about posting)

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Re: Personal trainers and gyms

Postby Chisamba » Sun Sep 03, 2017 3:51 pm

i have had terrible experiences with gyms and personal trainers.

First one: at one time i was very fit, I had health insurance hydrostatic submersion weighing done where you are weighted dry and then again underwater, where i was measured as having between 20 and 21 percent body fat mass, which is considered pretty healthy in women. So I walked six miles a day, did weights three times a week, and belonged to a gym. Now perhaps you all know this, but i am big boob big butt type. So after i had been at the gym about three months, i chose to be measured ( they keep a chart) for progress in developing muscle and such. The "personal trainer" tried to pinch my waist to measure body fat. only the skin pinched. So he grabbed my abdominal muscle, forced it between the points of the caliper and measured and "inch" of fat. he then measured thighs, hips blah blah. I stood there quietly fuming, and then he got to the end and said, okay, your first measurements were wrong, they measured you as having 20 percent body fat, and you have 35 percent, people with 20 percent look like those girls ( he pointed at two girls with slender builds but no muscle). I called the manager of the gym and said, its time you hired people who are not sexist dick heads in your gym and showed him the chart. so there was a bit of big man standing together until he realized my original measurement was taken in immersion, he got the calipers and started to pinch the skin on my waist, and could only measure skin thickness, and he quickly began to apologise. Too late, i made him refund my membership, cancel my annual fee, and i walked away feeling both smug and incredibly hurt and depressed.

So travel on ahead to the YMCA here locally. I asked the personal trainer for work i could do that would not further injure my knee as i would like to be in better fitness but have a bad arthritis. you know what the suggestion was? yes, of course, 1200 calories a day. I said, oh interesting, how is that going to increase my muscle fitness?

sadly most personal trainers are fattists with orthorexia. they do not actually listen to what people want for their fitness goals, because they are so blinded by their own perspective of what others need.

So i went to a pilates class. Now people, as you know, most horse riders are pretty strong in the core and have certain positives wrt to strength. So i took my overweight body to pilates and the instructor asked us to hold a certain move. this particular move hurt my back, so i said so. She belittled me for being weak and fat and told me to hold the position. so, what happened? i was not in the correct position, put too much strain in the wrong muscles and suffered a severe sprain. instead of checking my posture, she ridiculed my weakness and fatness.

So everyone says, oh you must choose a good trainer/ its kind of like finding a good riding instructor, not as easy to find and you would think.

I think fat people still have the right to expect a person to be able to evaluate their strength and suppleness based on who they are and what they are working toward, not the fact that they have big boobs and carry extra weight.

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Re: Personal trainers and gyms

Postby Tsavo » Sun Sep 03, 2017 4:32 pm

Wow reading these testimonials I think I really lucked out in finding a personal trainer! I would not have stuck with it had I run into the problem described here I am sure.

I work with a trainer who asked me what my goals were, understood them, and delivered. We constantly reassess them. I told him I need three things, core, open hip angle (i.e., suppleness), and back muscling to allow easy pulling down of the shoulder blades. I also told him I wanted a lower body fat percent. I work with him twice a week for an hour each session. We do HIIT... high intensity interval training for the fat issue, lots of weights for the shoulder issue, lots of core exercises, and work to stretch so I can open my hip which I can now open >180 on both sides.

After about year I noticed I gained 13 pounds but dropped body fat. My pants fit the same. Normally I would not have minded this situation but I said I want to cap my weight gain for my horse's sake. He doesn't care if it is muscle or fat. So he tweaked the routine and I am not hypertrophying the muscles any more. Despite being a vegan, I am able to gain muscle very easily and have been that way my whole life.

I should say that I pay this trainer almost as much what I pay my FEI trainer so it is not cheap. Besides getting the targeted results I asked for, my trainer keeps me from getting hurt. And he knows how to work around injuries, new and old, that I get outside the gym without letting me lose ground. At this point, I would go to him first before I went to PT for an issue. His knowledge is that deep and he has me doing similar things for shoulder that the PT had me doing. He told me he is not a substitute for PT but I still would give him a shot.

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Re: Personal trainers and gyms

Postby Flight » Mon Sep 04, 2017 12:59 am

I'm with a physio twice a week at the moment with my knee and she's great! However a physio is going to be different from a personal trainer.
Chisamba your story makes me reluctant to join a gym, which I never got round to doing.

Will be interested to here are you go Demi.

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Re: Personal trainers and gyms

Postby demi » Mon Sep 04, 2017 1:53 am

Chisamba what horrible personal trainers you had! I am mad at them for you!!!

This young girl I have right now seems really good so far, even though she is not of the caliber of Tsavo's trainer. She is still quite young and therefore not very experienced (and not very expensive!). At my age, though, I probably couldn't handle a high caliber trainer anyway.

As far as "finding the right personal trainer" I can imagine it can be just as difficult as find a good dressage trainer to work with. I have been lucky so far with the personal trainer, but my bad experiences with dressage trainers/coaches is right up there with Chisamba's experiences with personal trainers! I have had some good experiences for sure, but the bad ones far outnumber the good ones unfortunately. Partly, I think because when I started dressage, it was still so new in this country that the good trainers were still so few in numbers. But i am rambling....

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Re: Personal trainers and gyms

Postby Tuddy » Tue Sep 05, 2017 4:23 pm

I have started back at the gym again after 2 years off.

I did my first bikini competition in 2013 and then steadily started gaining weight and am now 35 lbs heavier than when I hit the stage. After that competition, finding a good trainer that understood that my goal was to be strong and healthy and not for a look, or a stage was painfully exhausting. One thing I could say about those trainers is that they never pushed the 1000-1200 calorie diets on me, I was always at the 2100-2200 range.

So I quit in fall of 2015. Walked away from it. The people that I was working out with were starting to go down paths that were not healthy for an industry that promotes health and wellness.

From a personal fitness view though, it was a big mistake...I was getting weak, my joints hurt and it took longer to recover from muscle soreness, and I felt full of inflammation. Don't even get me going as to what it was doing to my mental state.

Fast forward to last November where I got tired of being sick and tired. I didn't want to go back to the gym at that time, so I found a class. I now take a pole fitness class 1-2 times a week. My core strength is coming back, my shoulders are starting to fill out again and my legs are remembering what it was like to be strong. I had to quit for a while in July (woman surgery - bilateral salpingectomy), and now am cleared to get back at it.

I started up at the gym 2 weeks ago, my goal is that if I am in the city for work, I can make 50 minutes available for a work out after work. I had a trainer (former competitor as well), who set me up with a daily macro program for my diet - 1700 calories to start, and I have slowly been weaning myself off the foods that I know trigger digestive and inflammation issues. She understands that I want to get healthy for life, not for a look or timeline.

I'm already starting to perk up and am actually enjoying my 15 minutes of steady state dreadio on the elliptical every day. I forgot how much I loved lifting the heavy things up and putting them down. And I am really enjoying how I can spin my large booty around a pole and laugh and smile if I fall off or the trick turns out not as graceful as it's supposed to.

Good thread! I'm looking forward to hearing about your journey Demi!

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Re: Personal trainers and gyms

Postby Mareless » Fri Sep 08, 2017 2:29 am

Tuddy, I would love to hear more about what you have weaned from your diet that was causing digestive and inflammation issues. After getting nowhere with Drs for years I've recently started experimenting on my own trying to find out what triggers those types of issues for me. So far, soy seems to be one of the things my body doesn't care for.

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Re: Personal trainers and gyms

Postby demi » Fri Sep 08, 2017 5:41 am

Mareless wrote:Tuddy, I would love to hear more about what you have weaned from your diet that was causing digestive and inflammation issues. After getting nowhere with Drs for years I've recently started experimenting on my own trying to find out what triggers those types of issues for me. So far, soy seems to be one of the things my body doesn't care for.


I'm interested, too. I dont have digestive issues, but I am still figuring out how to adjust my diet. It seems like there is a point where I can control my appetite by the amount and type of exercise i do. I think we are all really individual in this kind of thing. I need a certain amount of cardio. Too much resistance training and not enough cardio makes my appetite go way up. If I increase the cardio the appetite goes right down, but only to a point. Too MUCH cardio, and the appetite skyrockets.

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Re: Personal trainers and gyms

Postby Tuddy » Fri Sep 08, 2017 3:33 pm

Mareless wrote:Tuddy, I would love to hear more about what you have weaned from your diet that was causing digestive and inflammation issues. After getting nowhere with Drs for years I've recently started experimenting on my own trying to find out what triggers those types of issues for me. So far, soy seems to be one of the things my body doesn't care for.


Sure!

Number 1 - Gluten. Anything gluten. Same with my daughter. We have both been tested for celiac, both negative, but both been told by our doctors to stay away from it. Even g-free oatmeal I can only handle in small amounts (can't have everyday)

Number 2 - Dairy. All of it. I try and think I can have it, have a greek yogurt, or some hard cheese, and my sinus' get so plugged up... not worth the bother. I even stay away from foods with dairy in them even gluten free bread.

Number 3 - Soy. I don't use it in anything.

Number 4 - Vegetable oil or canola oil. I use grapeseed oil for everything that calls for oil. I don't like olive oil, or I would use that too. I just don't like the taste of it. Canola oil for me makes my stomach roil. My dad, who is 81, has taken it out of his diet too, and found his guts work much better without it.

Number 5 - Citrus. Supposed to help with your stomach, but does the exact opposite for me. Weird, but it does. I was drinking lemon water for ages thinking it was good for me. Stopped and the stomach acid/heartburn almost gone.

Number 6 - Sugar and processed foods. Of course, I can have some, but I think this is where I get most of my inflammation from.

And of course, there are some fruits and veggies that just don't agree with me, but I think we all have some of those foods in our diets. Oranges, pears, I can hardly eat a raw veggie, steamed is okay, and peppers (raw or cooked) make my digestive system think I am trying to kill it. The gas pains are worse than childbirth.

When you don't treat your digestive system with respect, it can't nourish your body, and therefore, can't nourish your brain - I was getting really bad anxiety, and once I paid attention to what I was eating, it really really helped. Food fuels your body, if it can't absorb the nutrients, because the system is broken, how can it fuel the rest of your body. Just a domino effect in my opinion. Keep eating foods that are not healthy for YOUR body, and sickness, inflammation....imbalance, will follow.

Of course, exercise is always a good thing. Our bodies are meant to move. I'm not saying you should become a powerlifter, or a marathon runner - but yay for you if you are! - but just stay active. A sedentary body is also an unbalanced body. A sedentary body, with a diet not suited for it, can lead to a very unhealthy body....

Hope this helps!

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Re: Personal trainers and gyms

Postby Tuddy » Fri Sep 08, 2017 3:37 pm

demi wrote:I'm interested, too. I dont have digestive issues, but I am still figuring out how to adjust my diet. It seems like there is a point where I can control my appetite by the amount and type of exercise i do. I think we are all really individual in this kind of thing. I need a certain amount of cardio. Too much resistance training and not enough cardio makes my appetite go way up. If I increase the cardio the appetite goes right down, but only to a point. Too MUCH cardio, and the appetite skyrockets.


Everyone is different. I hate cardio. Hate it. But I do it for the cardiovascular benefits now, not fat loss. And I love weight lifting, but my goals have also changed from training for a look/stage, to training for strength and balance.

This past week I have been tracking everything that has been going into my mouth on MFP, and I am finding that now that I have cleaned up my diet (bye sugar and unhealthy fats), my appetite has leveled out. I am having a hard time eating this 1700 calories that I am using as a guideline. Before, I was hungry, all the time.

Just keep at it and you will figure it out!

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Re: Personal trainers and gyms

Postby Mareless » Fri Sep 08, 2017 10:44 pm

Tuddy, thank you so much for all the info! I totally agree with you about treating your digestive system with respect; afterall, when our animals are 'off', one of the first things we investigate is what they've eaten. I don't know why, as humans, we think that our bodies work any differently in terms of the affect what we eat has on how we feel.

Have you, by any chance, tried dairy products from non-cow sources (goat, sheep, etc?) If so, did they have the same negative effects? A few years ago I briefly had a source for goat's milk, and thought it seemed to be easier on my stomach than regular cow's milk. Alas, that source is no longer available.

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Re: Personal trainers and gyms

Postby Tuddy » Mon Sep 11, 2017 2:25 pm

Mareless wrote:Have you, by any chance, tried dairy products from non-cow sources (goat, sheep, etc?) If so, did they have the same negative effects? A few years ago I briefly had a source for goat's milk, and thought it seemed to be easier on my stomach than regular cow's milk. Alas, that source is no longer available.


I use Blue Diamond brand Almond Milk for my milk substitute. Seems to be working so far. :)

Personal victory - clean eating, daily exercise and a glass or two of wine every night - down 3 lbs last week. ;)

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Re: Personal trainers and gyms

Postby demi » Sun Sep 24, 2017 1:50 am

How are we doing? I hope everyone else is doing better than me. I got off track when Harvey struck and DH was working 12 hour shifts with an hour commute each way. We were getting up a 4:30 am and I wasn't getting to bed till after midnight. For two weeks I didn't get enough sleep to have the energy to go to the gym. Plus, I was over eating, lots of sugar, trying to get energy from the sugar :roll:

I haven't started with the personal trainer yet, as I wanted to get rid of some fat first. I don't think I can cut calories, do aerobic training, and do resistance training all at the same time. So I have an appointment with the personal trainer this Friday and I will have to tell her I am still not ready to start the resisitance training with her.

It's going to take more discipline for me to get with this program.

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Re: Personal trainers and gyms

Postby kande50 » Mon Sep 25, 2017 12:09 am

demi wrote:I don't think I can cut calories, do aerobic training, and do resistance training all at the same time..


Probably not, or at least I wouldn't be able to, because when I'm trying to change habits I need to be able to focus all my attention on developing the new habit. So if I wanted to change the way I eat I'd have to focus on that until it became a habit, and then I could leave that to take care of itself and focus on changing how I exercised.

I might possibly be able to combine the resistance and aerobic training projects into one project and then focus on my new exercise goals as a single project, though? Only trouble is that I'd have to stop riding to do it, which would pretty much defeat the whole purpose of going to the gym.

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Re: Personal trainers and gyms

Postby demi » Tue Sep 26, 2017 2:48 am

kande50 wrote:
demi wrote:I don't think I can cut calories, do aerobic training, and do resistance training all at the same time..


Probably not, or at least I wouldn't be able to, because when I'm trying to change habits I need to be able to focus all my attention on developing the new habit. So if I wanted to change the way I eat I'd have to focus on that until it became a habit, and then I could leave that to take care of itself and focus on changing how I exercised.

I might possibly be able to combine the resistance and aerobic training projects into one project and then focus on my new exercise goals as a single project, though? Only trouble is that I'd have to stop riding to do it, which would pretty much defeat the whole purpose of going to the gym.


Kande, I am thinking that I too, would have to stop riding to keep up the gym and as you say that would defeat the purpose. I just don't have the energy that I use to. It comes and goes, actually. My riding feels better when I am doing other exercise, so I would like to figure out how to balance gym and riding.

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Re: Personal trainers and gyms

Postby Tuddy » Wed Sep 27, 2017 8:14 pm

demi wrote:I haven't started with the personal trainer yet, as I wanted to get rid of some fat first. I don't think I can cut calories, do aerobic training, and do resistance training all at the same time. So I have an appointment with the personal trainer this Friday and I will have to tell her I am still not ready to start the resisitance training with her.

It's going to take more discipline for me to get with this program.


All those things at once (cutting calories, cardio training, strength training) would be too overwhelming and it makes it easier to stall or quit.

You need to take it in stages. Find what works for you and your goals. What worked for me, which may or may not work for you, was take those three things and start with one. Clean up your diet first. Cut the sugar. Do that for 2-4 weeks. Once your body gets used to the new fueling system, start something else, the cardio if that is what you like (I hate it. Hate.it.) Do that for 2 weeks-4 weeks. So after that, you will have 6-8 weeks of a clean, or cleaner diet, and 2-4 weeks to kick start your cardio and endurance. Then incorporate the resistance.

Unless you are in a rush for a specific deadline, don't rush. It will end up getting to be too much and too mind consuming. Find the balance and the amount of time you can give to it to make you satisfied.

We all have this thing called life - mine consists of raising a family, being a wife, running a farm, full time job, kid stuff, not and again throw some pony time in there... making the time to keep me healthy will make be better at my life stuff. But don't throw yourself into it, I did that and end up hating it.

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Re: Personal trainers and gyms

Postby demi » Wed Sep 27, 2017 11:51 pm

Thanks for the encouraging advise, Tuddy. I have definitely stalled....but will think about it and come up with a new plan. I am planning on starting with a new dressage trainer which adds more to what I have to balance. Just thinking about a new trainer, then going to meet her, and then getting Rocky up to speed for lessons has taken a lot of effort.

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Re: Personal trainers and gyms

Postby texsuze » Thu Oct 12, 2017 7:08 pm

I started using a personal trainer when I reached a dead end with attempting to configure my own workout routine (weights, reps, distance, frequency, etc, etc). Had a great trainer at the YMCA a few blocks from us when we lived in the mega metropolis. He was a triathlete himself. He had blind clients, old clients, adolescent clients, competitive clients--you name it. I would do my PT once or twice a week, then head from the Y to the barn, in addition to riding two other days during the week. Fast forward to life in the country, and lo and behold, DH and I found another great personal trainer out here. She is the bomb. Remembers details of your last workout, all your extracurricular activities, your goals, your creaks and ouchies and smoothly has a program formulated to account for all these factors. She is funny but focused, knows the muscle groups and opposing groups to give balance to each workout. I got lucky with these personal trainers, but sometimes you must work with one, or two, or three different trainers to find a good match. I think it is worth the effort.


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