Two Pitfalls in Adherence to Personal Training
Abiye Alamina NASM-CPT, CNC
Some clients expect results from a fitness regimen in a very short period of time, often unrealistic results. This necessarily introduces situations where training becomes more intense and potentially leading to injury. An adverse cycle may result: The quest for faster results may lead to higher probability of injury, which may in the medium to long term then affect the ability to get results within what would have been a feasible time period. Frustration then kicks in and may lead to the client falling off the fitness wagon.
Managing expectations is therefore important and it is helpful to know what duration results are consistent with exercise science and current research on the modalities involved. This is where a personal trainer can help in dispelling fitness related myths, and by programming an exercise regimen that is both time-feasible and goal-effective, so that adherence is possible.
A second pitfall involves the experience of muscle soreness and fatigue. Clients, especially those new to training, and going through an exercise regimen may confound muscle soreness with injury.
When beginning an exercise regimen after a lifestyle that had been largely sedentary, or when performing activities that the body is not used to performing, or when challenging the body with a repetitive range of an activity that it is not used to performing, or with a weight that it is not accustomed to lifting, there are physiological responses that take place as the body reacts to these changes through cell breakdown and development that create the outcomes generally described as muscle soreness. It is inconveniencing and could be described as painful sometimes. It is however a normal and expected part of a regimen designed to be transformative on the body. This feeling though sometimes serves to discourage continuing the exercise regimen.
A personal trainer could help guide clients through this phase, as often as it arises, with ways to manage these outcomes especially through programing that allows for proper nutrition and enough rest for muscle and cell recovery. If necessary the level of intensity needs to be adjusted so that the soreness does not gradually lead to an injury by not allowing the muscles and joints to recover fully before subjecting them to new stress.
Injuries may still happen. Tendinitis, for example, is an injury that results, often due to repetitive movement of the joint. The objective of getting good training is to mitigate this occurrence. Should it occur, it is part of the personal trainer's role to provide guidance on ways to work around these, while working within the parameters and limitations provided by client’s primary care physician, whose recommendations and prescriptions remain the final authority on what the client can or cannot do while injured and in recovery.