My experience of working out with a personal trainer

This post is all about my experience working out with my personal trainer Michelle
Why did I go to a personal trainer?

Most of you know my weight loss/fitness story, over the years I have struggled with exercising and choosing healthy food, finally I had reached a point in life where I was enjoying my workouts (maybe too much) and eating healthy (maybe too little). My goals had changed from just losing weight to becoming stronger.

I knew I was in a healthy weight range but I also knew I was not feeling healthy; there were days when I would feel too tired, I could not do much of strength training. As usual I did my research did lots of reading but I think I needed somebody to point out my mistakes which were actually related to overdoing everything.

I was looking for somebody I could trust to guide me in the correct direction, somebody who understood where I came from and listened to my fitness goals. I was not looking for a trainer only to push me to workout harder instead I was looking for somebody to tell me to work hard in a different direction 

Michelle – my personal trainer

When I first started thinking about working out with a personal trainer, I looked at all the personal trainers in my gym and decided to narrow down to Michelle randomly. Michelle is certified, is a boxing instructor and she also conducts classes in my gym for me she sounded perfect. I had still not made my decision, I wanted to talk to her and then decide. My first consultation with her was great. Trust me I was worried about meeting somebody so fit, I was worried about her judging me and telling me how unhealthy I was but she was very sweet, the first time she just let me speak, she heard me out, heard my goals understood my worries and that’s when I decided my training sessions with Michelle would be good. We also did a test workout session before we started my actual sessions.

If you want to know more about Michelle –  http://www.ms-pt.co.uk/

My sessions

Working out with a personal trainer was not in my budget, luckily for me Michelle came up with a solution instead of 1 hour workouts we did only 30 minutes workouts. I did my own warm up and cool down and promised her I would put in maximum effort for the 30 minutes that we worked out.  So I did 5 sessions, 1 per week for 30 minutes and trust me those 30 minutes made a difference. (More details on this in coming up posts)

My food

The first time I was talking to Michelle she asked me to show her my food log and I was embarrassed because at that point I realised I was eating less, even though I had stopped junk food and most unhealthy things I knew I was not eating enough, especially since I was working out a lot. She made a food plan and slowly increased my calories intake every two weeks. This was more difficult for me than any exercise we ever did. Never in my wildest imagination did I think eating more would be a problem for me. We increased my calorie intake mostly by increasing my protein % in my meals.  (More on this in another post)

Result

30 minutes every tuesday for 5 weeks + increasing my calorie count and focusing on macro nutrients

total loss - 11.2 cm

chest - 2 cms

biceps - 1.5 cm

waist - nothing (thank god!!!, I was hoping for no loss here)

hips - 2.5 cms

thighs - 3.7 cms

I was surprised especially because I had increased my food intake I was worried I would disappoint Michelle and myself at the end of 5 weeks so this loss of inches was a pleasant. The other very important thing was my strength increasing, I was noticeably less tired during the day, I have increased the amount of weight I carry and I can keep up little more with my body pump class, I feel more confident when I enter my class or the weight section now.

(I continued to do my regular workouts along with these PT sessions)

What did I learn?

1.       Importance of getting your calorie count right (not too less not too much)

2.       Focusing on my macro nutrients (Now I look at the ratio of protein/carbs/fat along with my calorie count), make sure I eat more protein (40%-30%-30%)

3.       I can do more weights, if I can manage 8 reps of a heavier weight that is better than 15 reps of lower weight and over time I am able to increase my 8 reps to 10/12

4.      Complete body workout (cardio/weights/squats/burpees/jumping lunges/cool down)

5.      Importance of sticking to the correct rest period between intervals. I would never measure this sometime it would be more than a minute but when I started working out with Michelle she measured my rest period, this make the workouts more intense. 

I’m hoping to work on a few posts with Michelle to share with all of you a few important things we discussed during my sessions.

Keep Reading I will Keep Writing 

Tanvee