Importance of Setting Personal Training Goals

Setting personal training goals is the foundation of a successful fitness journey. It provides direction and purpose, allowing you to focus your efforts on what truly matters to you. By setting goals, you establish a roadmap that guides your actions, ensuring that you make progress and achieve meaningful results. Moreover, goals act as a source of motivation, keeping you committed and enthusiastic about your personal training journey.

Defining Your Fitness Objectives

Before embarking on your fitness journey, it’s crucial to define your fitness objectives. Start by asking yourself what you want to achieve. Are you aiming to lose weight, gain muscle, improve cardiovascular endurance, or enhance overall fitness? Defining your objectives provides clarity and enables you to tailor your training program accordingly. Remember, your fitness objectives should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART goals).

Assessing Your Current Fitness Level

Understanding your current fitness level is essential for setting realistic goals. Take the time to assess your strengths and weaknesses, as well as your overall fitness capacity. This evaluation will help you identify areas that need improvement and allow you to set goals that are within your reach. Consider factors such as cardiovascular fitness, muscular strength, flexibility, and body composition to gain a comprehensive understanding of your starting point.

Determining Realistic and Specific Goals

Determining realistic and specific goals is a crucial step in your personal training journey. By setting goals that are attainable and specific, you increase your chances of success and stay focused on what truly matters to you. Realistic goals take into account your current fitness level, available resources, and timeframe, ensuring that you can make progress without feeling overwhelmed or discouraged. Specific goals provide clarity and direction, allowing you to create a clear roadmap toward your desired outcome. Instead of vague aspirations, specific goals define exactly what you want to achieve, making it easier to track your progress and stay motivated. So take the time to assess your abilities, consider your limitations, and define goals that are both realistic and specific to pave the way for your personal training success.

Creating a Personalized Training Plan

Once you’ve defined your fitness objectives and established realistic and specific goals, it’s time to create a personalized training plan. This plan should outline the exercises, workouts, and routines you’ll follow to achieve your goals. Incorporate a combination of cardiovascular exercises, strength training, flexibility training, and rest days to ensure a well-rounded approach. Gradually increase the intensity and complexity of your workouts as you progress.

Incorporating Strength Training into Your Fitness Goals

Strength training is a vital component of any personal training program. It helps build lean muscle mass, improve bone density, enhance overall strength, and boost metabolism. Incorporating strength training exercises into your fitness goals can accelerate your progress and provide a wide range of benefits. Work with free weights, resistance bands, or machines to target different muscle groups and challenge your body.

Overcoming Obstacles and Staying Motivated

On your personal training journey, you’re likely to encounter obstacles that may hinder your progress or demotivate you. It’s essential to anticipate these challenges and develop strategies to overcome them. Stay focused on your goals, seek support from friends or family, join fitness communities, and track your progress to stay motivated. Remember that setbacks are natural, and it’s crucial to maintain a positive mindset and persevere.

Working with a Personal Trainer to Achieve Your Goals

Working with a personal trainer can be highly beneficial when it comes to achieving your personal training goals. A personal trainer brings expertise, guidance, and accountability to your fitness journey. We have the knowledge and experience to design a customized training plan tailored specifically to your goals and abilities. A personal trainer can also provide valuable feedback on your form and technique, helping you prevent injuries and maximize the effectiveness of your workouts.

Furthermore, a personal trainer serves as a source of motivation and support. We will push you to go beyond your comfort zone, encouraging you to reach new heights and surpass your own expectations. We can also help you navigate through plateaus and adjust your training program when necessary to ensure continuous progress.

Incorporating the expertise of a personal trainer into your personal training journey allows for a more efficient and effective approach. We can help you optimize your time in the gym, ensuring that each workout is purposeful and aligned with your goals. We can also provide valuable insights into nutrition, recovery, and overall lifestyle adjustments that can further enhance your progress.

Remember that personal training is a journey, and it’s essential to enjoy the process along the way. Celebrate each milestone and achievement, no matter how small, as they contribute to your overall progress. Stay committed, stay consistent, and maintain a positive mindset.

Transform Your Fitness Journey with Le Physique Personal Training

If you’re ready to take your personal training goals to the next level, Le Physique Personal Training is here to guide you every step of the way. With our team of dedicated and experienced personal trainers, we offer a holistic approach to fitness that encompasses personalized training plans, expert guidance, and unwavering support. Our focus on understanding your unique goals and tailoring a program specifically for you sets them apart. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced fitness enthusiast, Le Physique Personal Training will help you define realistic and specific goals, assess your current fitness level, and create a personalized training plan that incorporates strength training, cardiovascular exercises, and flexibility training. Don’t settle for ordinary results when you can achieve extraordinary transformations with the support of Le Physique Personal Training. Embark on your fitness journey today and experience the difference of working with true professionals who are passionate about helping you achieve your personal training goals.

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Many of us have New Years resolutions. A common goal shared amongst New Years revolutionists is to run a marathon. Though it can be daunting and require lots of preparation, it is definitely an achievable task. A marathon has an official race distance of 42.2 kilometers and typically takes 4 hours and 30 minutes to complete. Luckily for you, there are several local marathons happening in and around Vancouver in 2019. If you are reading this, chances are you have done some sort of distance running in the past. Using the 4 month training guide provided below, you will be running your first marathon in no time!

How to Prepare / Things you will need

1. Proper running shoes – Should be snug around the middle of the foot and heel, lightweight and breathable
2. Breathable clothes
3. Water bottle
4. Timer or watch
5. Reflective bands or lights if running in the dark
6. Sweatband or hat (optional)
7. Earphones + music (optional)
8. Heart rate monitor (optional)

Running Tips

1. Warm up – the greatest athletes always start with a warm up 5-10 minute in duration. This can include dynamic movements or stretches.
2. Pace yourself – under pace yourself if necessary. Some of these runs can be quite lengthy, so start out slow and push at then end.
3. Bring snacks/gels or a hydration pack – to refuel/hydrate during your training.
4. Taper off the week before – we want your muscles to feel refreshed and have time to fully recover before your big race.

Post Run Tips

1. Stretch – important areas to stretch following an intense running session include: quadriceps, hip flexors, hamstrings, calves and the gluteus maximus
2. Foam roll – after each running session, roll out your legs and give yourself a massage. Foam rolling aids in healing and recovery by promoting blood flow to the area.
3. Post workout meal – eat a nutrient-dense meal after your session with carbohydrates and protein. Eating carbohydrates will help replenish the glycogen used during your run, while protein will aid in muscle recovery.
4. Ice bath or Compression – This can aid in recovery after an intense session. See my previous blog here for more information

Marathons in Vancouver

1. BMO Marathon – May 5th, 2019
2. Tynehead 5/8/12 Hour Marathon – July 6, 2019
3. RMHBC Boundary Bay – November 4, 2019

4 Month – Training Schedule

Kevin Kwok – Studio Coordinator

Kevin enrolled in numerous sports program as a child, which exposed him to an active lifestyle early in life. He played ultimate frisbee competitively at the junior level while in high school. Kevin now focuses his training exclusively on dragon boating. He has been paddling for the past 2 years and hopes to make the Canadian National Team in 2019. He hopes he can motivate others to accomplish their short and long term fitness goals.

The post Want to Run a Marathon in 2019? first appeared on Le Physique | Vancouver Personal Training.

January 2nd is National Personal Trainer Awareness Day, and it cannot come at a better time! New year, new you, new habits, and new goals, right? For fitness goals, a personal trainer is the best tool to achieve results in a healthy, fun, and long-term way. Personal trainers are not just glorified rep-counters, they offer something unexpected to clients who are serious about achieving their goals.

A Holistic Approach

Personal training is not simply about lifting weights and putting them back down. A good personal trainer will also train your mind when thinking about why you have your goals, how you can achieve them, and the things  that are holding you back. Health is not simply physical, it also has mental and social components that could play into why one feels ‘out of shape’ to begin with, or what stops someone from giving their full effort. Moving past barriers, whether physical or mental, is what will show the greatest results.

Motivation

Let’s be honest: motivation is at an all-time high every January! Sadly, by the time February comes around, most goals are forgotten or given up on. Seeing a personal trainer can keep your motivation to achieve your resolutions in a number of ways. Firstly: with training comes a financial investment. By purchasing a month or a year worth of training in advance, you can use this opportunity to hold yourself accountable and show up every session. You know someone is waiting for you, otherwise, why pay money to sit on the couch? Some clients work with trainers to overcome the mental cost of “feeling guilty” and losing confidence in their abilities to stick to this new habit.

Next, by the time your motivation plateaus or hits a low, your trainer can recharge your battery by showing you how far you have come! Often we don’t see our own progress as it can be incremental on a daily basis, and it takes someone else to help you see your improvement. For some people, they have “moving goalposts syndrome” – if their initial goal was to do 5 pushups with good technique, March rolls around, they’ve lost motivation and can now do 15 pushups, but because they moved their goal to 25 reps, they still feel like failures on the inside because they “didn’t reach their goal.” This is where a trainer can show clients the results they have achieved in all areas from a day 1, objective standpoint.

Some people have an “all or none” perspective when it comes to health goals. At the start of the year, we can feel unstoppable and create our own spectacular 4 day a week ultimate workout plan. But then life comes at you and going to the gym 3 times a week becomes unsustainable – this is where many people quit, all that work put into the ultimate 4 day plan gets pitched. A trainer can help you with effective workouts at 2 sessions a week, or even 1 with some short and sweet mini home routines. Either way, you are still going- once a week for a year is still 52 more times that you went to the gym than you otherwise would have!

Finally, by making workouts fun, personal trainers make working out something to look forward to. Instead of dragging yourself to the gym and counting down the time until you can go home, personal training can help bring life and energy into workouts. By learning how to properly complete exercises, confidence in the gym goes up. A strong relationship with your trainer can be formed, and a session with them can help you relax after a long day of work or help you with a problem you’ve been struggling with.

Skills

Personal trainers are trained to help you bridge the gap between where you are now and where you want to be. Experienced and educated trainers like Kinesiologists have extensive knowledge, training, and education, to provide you with strategies and techniques that can help you to reach your goal faster, in a safe way. Watching a workout video on YouTube or Instagram can give you some solid information, but it won’t be able to tell you if your technique is spot on, without the assistance of a professional’s eye on your knee alignment from the back, especially as you fatigue. Will your downward dog look like the instructors? Maybe, maybe not. Or with a little back pain, will this hyperextension move be right for you? How should you change it or should you even do it at all? Working under the safety of a professional that can help you set up the appropriate weights or getting the right corrections will reduce the risk of injuries, which are very common for new gym-goers. A good instructional video has it’s limits.

We trainers are here to serve you, no matter what your goals are. Whether it’s a few training sessions to check up on your program or technique, or consistent and ongoing training, personal trainers are an invaluable resource for all of your health and fitness goals.

Mika Fogelman- Client Care Manager

Mika is passionate about helping others in any way she can. Having danced since she was five years old, she discovered excitement for fitness through teaching Zumba dance fitness classes, and loves to help others develop their confidence through exercise.

The post New Year’s Resolutions? How a Personal Trainer Can Help first appeared on Le Physique | Vancouver Personal Training.