Get toned & ripped - Breakfast nutrition

How do you turn the body into a fat-burning machine? Start with exercise, sure - but if you are feeding the machine a bunch of crappy foods high in fats or just too many calories, you will never get ripped because the energy balance is all wrong.

As a PT, you should be spending lots of time talking to clients about eating habits, ask them to keep food diaries for a few days at a time to get an accurate idea of what they are consuming. Lots of people skip breakfast - leaving their metabolism stuck in the mud all morning. Others eat cereals filled with sugar or toast with big chunks of butter on top... Ouch.

Changing client eating habits is incredibly challenging - it takes more than talk. You need to support clients with any strategy that might help kick them along. Try taking pics of foods with a mobile phone & SMS them to clients - gently suggest they pick it up next time they are shopping.

So... what does a fat-burning machine eat for breakfast? We want something with carbs for energy, we want fibre for intestinal health, and we want something slow to digest - it needs to be low GI so it gives slow release energy and the client is not going to feel full for a few hours.

I highly recommend you simply eyeball some breakfast cereals and pick one with unprocessed whole grains. Many "whole grain" cereals are processed into flakes or shapes - pick a cereal which actually has the original grain in it's unprocessed form. Lots of muesli brands have whole grains but beware you need to read the label of your muesli and avoid the brands that are high in fat.

OK... Once you've picked your whole grain cereal, walk to the health food aisle and buy a packet of psyllium husk. This is an ultra-high fibre supplement with wide ranging health (and fat-loss) benefits, if you've never heard of it check out this link and start reading. Adding fibre to your breakfast "bulks up" the meal (you tend to eat less calories) and it also slows down digestion, which leaves you feeling fuller for longer after you eat.

It will take some hunting around to find a whole grain breakfast cereal that has everything you want, tastes OK and is also affordable. My experience tells me that many of them taste like cardboard and some can be very expensive so you will need to experiment yourself with different products and you can then give advice to clients based on your own experience & with confidence.

Once you've chosen your cereal, you can add a table spoon of psyllium husk to the mix. Beware psyllium can have a laxative effect so perhaps start with a small amount & gradually increase as your body gets used to this massive fibre dose at breakfast. Psyllium as linked to all sorts of health benefits so it's well worth a try, stick with it for a few weeks and see how it makes you feel.

Keep your Clients Working out During the Holidays

With Christmas around the corner, a number of Personal Training clients will take a break from their regular training as they perhaps go on a vacation or just choose to have some down time at home with family & friends.

For the PT, this spells a potential double disaster. Firstly the unavoidable excesses of eating and drinking over this period can often derail some excellent work in the gym and put the brakes on our successful body fat loss.

Secondly - and more importantly in terms of your business - a large percentage of clients who take an extended break simply don't come back, and that means you are losing a paying client and will have to again pound the streets for new revenue. Christmas and Easter tend to be the worst times for putting a dent in your business.

So, get proactive with your clients and talk to them about how you can support them during the festive season. Invest some time now to find out what your client needs to help keep them on track and (more importantly) remain focussed on their goals so that the holiday does not result in them deleting you from the contacts list in their mobile phone!!

Most clients are very similar and will have needs centring around food & drink, or exercise. A few things that you could produce in order to support your clients and keep them thinking about PT during the holidays are:

• List foods & drinks to avoid over Christmas - keep it simple, clients can stick it on the fridge.
• A few strategies to avoid over-indulging. E.g. drink more water, low carb beers etc.
• A simple exercise plan that clients can perform at home in minimal time without equipment.

Today I'm uploading an example of a simple exercise program I produced for a client. It's simple, quick, requires no equipment and could be done in a lounge, hotel room or outdoors by the pool. There are no excuses for not doing exercise when someone puts it down on paper like this, you could even consider asking your clients to keep a diary of what they do over the holiday so you can yell & scream at them when they return. Oh the joy.

It's designed as a beginner program, and could easily be beefed up to include more exercises, or maybe even add a group of core exercises to the program. Use your imagination.

You can see the full program at this link.  Check it out & tell me what you think.

Click here to see full program

How to Sell PT - Value vs Cost

With lots of budding PT's graduating from out Certificate 4 in Fitness course right now, it's a good time to talk about selling yourself as a PT and in particular justifying a higher hourly rate. As a PT you are going to spend time planning & preparing for workouts, travelling to the session, lost time in between bookings... It all adds up and for every hr you spend training a client you will probably spend about 30 minutes on this "other" stuff so your rate needs to high (as opposed to low) if you are ever going to make it in this game.

So... The typical client is thinking (or maybe even asking) why not just join the gym rather than pay you $40 for a half hour session?

Answer: I'll lay this out in sections so we can work through the logic of our value proposition:

Part 1 - True value per session - The average gym membership is around $650 per annum. Most people (in fact around 70%) join a gym and will use it regularly only for a few weeks - how many sessions are they actually getting for their $650?

Part 2 - Cost versus actual benefit & personal attention - What sort of results did you get last time you forked out $650 to your local gym and what sort of personal attention did you get? If you pay me $650 up front I'll apply a 20% discount and give you 20 half-hour sessions. Train with me twice a week for 10 weeks and you will see more results than one full year training in the gym.

Part 3 - No contracts - Your gym will lock you into some sort of contract where you will continue to pay even if you are not using the gym and not getting results. Train with me and I'll commit 100% to getting you in shape. If you're not happy at any time with what we are achieving, walk away and I'll even refund any remaining sessions (because I'm confident that I can get you there).

Part 4 - Highlight services that the gym just can't offer - When was the last time your gym instructor took an interest in your nutrition? How often do they push you as hard as you need to be pushed? How often are they updating your program? Taking your measurements? Offer you personalised motivation?

Part 5 - Back it up with other awesome stuff - Visit my blog, join my community and get support on my Facebook page, receive SMS prompts to train when you are not with me, access my great nutritional tips which I will email you... Use technology to value add for clients and suddenly the $650 up front is getting much more than a few training sessions.

Risk assessment for outdoor PT

Today I'm uploading a template that you can use to do a risk assessment for an outdoor training session. I'm uploading it in Word so you can edit it and save an electronic copy of your own locations and make it relevant to the activities you run.

This form is going to be very important if a client has in accident and/or suffers an injury during an outdoor training session. Your PT liability insurance policy is unlikely to cover you for any damages or claims if you haven't done at least a basic risk assessment. This shows that you are fulfilling a basic requirement of your duty of care to the client by anticipating potential risks.

The first page is a simple checklist - I've tried to build in as many possible risks that I could think of, but you may need to add any items I've missed. The second page is your risk management plan - I have completed a few examples to show you what it should look like.

Visit this link to view & download the form. It could prevent you from significant financial loss and/or being put out of business.

Click here to see the full template in Word

If you enjoy my Blog, please follow my Facebook page I use it purely to distribute meaningful information and I'll never try to sell you anything or spam you with crud.

PT for beginner clients

Today I'm uploading a program that I designed for Personal Training a beginner client. Peter is 47 yrs old, he was unfit and out of shape when we began (about 5 weeks back) but he did have a history of competitive rowing and high levels of fitness in his youth. Please note, due to his exercise history I'm not treating Peter as a complete beginner and some exercises (e.g. box jumps) are not suitable for clients with zero training age.

Pete was suffering from a range of issues when we began, he felt that he needed to lose 10Kg. He also suffered some bursitis in his shoulder, and had poor posture (rounded shoulders). Pete was having regular physio for these issues and I worked with him to make sure I was doing things that were going to complement the physio work and not make any of his issues worse.

I'm having the "big" re-appraisal with Pete this week, we've been training just over a month and I believe this is long enough to make measurable changes against his key measurements. We had a weigh-in after two weeks and he had lost 3Kg which I thought was a fantastic result.

I decided to split Pete's program (two days), because I wanted to work on a variety of things with him and I also wanted to avoid DOMS interfering with his subsequent workouts too much when he first began. I'll probably progress Pete to a three-day split soon.

I've saved Pete's program on Google Docs so you can see it via this link so check it out.

Click here to see the full program

Jacobs Ladder Workout...

Anyone serious about getting fit and/or training outdoors in Perth needs to get to Jacobs Ladder and take on the challenge of the stairs.

Forecast 37 degrees in Perth today so I got up to Jacobs ladder this morning and began at 8.53 am (not that anyone was counting minutes). 

Huge workout, managed to crank out eight ladders in total. Full workout duration was 37 minutes, time spent actually working (i.e. running, walking, crawling up stairs) was around 9 minutes so my work:rest ratio was around 1:3.

I did this same workout 5 days back, it took me 40 minutes all up so I managed to shave three minutes off the previous time. I don't want my workout to take any longer than 40 mins so I'm now trying to run Jacobs 8 times in less time rather than add more volume to the workout.