Summer is just around the corner, and came the same Monday when you finally activated your card to the sports club? That’s right, it’s time to prepare for the beach season at an accelerated pace – in three months you can achieve quite decent results!
But where do you start? – you ask. I am firmly convinced that building a truly beautiful, proportional figure can only be done through strength training.
Yes, dancing will help keep a genetically slim figure in good shape, yoga will develop flexibility, and step aerobics will add endurance. But if you need to lose those extra pounds, put your ass into a nut, shape your waist and create a beautiful muscle relief – you are in the gym.
Whatever advertising of newfangled gadgets promises you: electric butterflies for abs cubes, chewing gum for super slimming, a 15-minute charge for the Brazilian ass – forget and don’t transfer money to trash, they are not superfluous in a crisis.
The key to a good figure is the combination of proper nutrition and physical activity. If you are on a strict diet, you will lose weight, but you will get a lean, sluggish, muscleless body. A skinny cow is not a gazelle yet, as the famous saying goes.
I’m not talking about harm to the stomach and mood. If you start exercising, and then eat junk food, at best, you will stay in place. Eat a healthy, sensible diet, spend more calories than you consume, and you will be happy. Now let’s talk about physical exercise.
If you have never been to the gym before, most likely, the abundance of all kinds of pieces of iron will put you into a stupor: where to start, how to do the exercise correctly, how many times to repeat, and the like.
Of course, you can spend time surfing the Internet, shoveling through a bunch of special literature and forums, studying the issue, making an initial program and trying to implement it, independently tracking your own mistakes and mistakes.
The consequences of this approach can be very diverse: from no result to serious injury due to improper technique. Or you can take a shorter route – hire a trainer who will develop an optimal training system for you and advise you about nutrition.
Online fitness schools are very popular now. Choose the class you are interested in, depending on the level of training and direction, pay for the classes, receive nutrition instructions and an exercise program by e-mail and start practicing. You can train both at home and in the gym.
As a rule, such schools have closed chats, where participants share their experience, seek psychological support from like-minded people, and simply communicate. The principle of such organizations is approximately the same, but somewhere you will be followed by professional coaches and titled athletes.
And somewhere – the same as you, amateurs, but who started a little earlier and have already passed the first steps. In addition, social media is teeming with distance learning offers from individual trainers. Let me tell you right away: I am not a supporter of remote training. Nevertheless, it is possible to qualitatively control the performance technique only in person. In addition, on the spot, the coach will immediately understand what turns out better, what is worse, what is the gag and how to deal with it.
For example, at one time, in order to learn to squat deeply, I practiced jumping onto a gymnastic bench. With this exercise, the explosive strength of the legs develops, which I did not have enough to push myself with the barbell from the very bottom and go parallel. And if it comes to serious weight, the coach will both cheer up and, most importantly, hedge.
It is clear that a personal trainer is not a budget business. The average price tag in Moscow is 1000-2000 rubles, depending on the club. It can be found cheaper, but the result seems to me dubious. There is no limit to the upper level: the more titles your mentor has, the higher the price.
But if the coach is worthwhile, you will never regret the investment, regard the costs as an investment in your beauty and health. In addition, you can practice in parallel with a friend. The price for one lesson is slightly lower, but if you calculate it for a month or a year, you will see a significant difference.
In addition, it is not at all necessary to train with a trainer every time. When you understand the equipment and you have an understanding of what and how to do, you can proceed to independent training, only occasionally hiring a specialist to correct it.
Now, in fact, about how to choose specifically “your” coach. Keep in mind that a trainer and a gym instructor are not synonymous. The trainer has more serious training, can draw up a program specifically for your goals (lose weight, gain muscle mass, correct your figure in a certain way), taking into account your individual capabilities. The instructor works according to simpler standard programs and, by and large, will simply make sure that the simulators are used correctly.
The most obvious way to choose a mentor is to walk up to the front desk and ask them. However, employees will tell you their subjective opinion or, very possibly, will offer a specialist at a higher price. If you’re not too shy, then it would be great to chat with the regulars at the gym and listen to their recommendations. Personally, I am in favor of collecting as much information as possible.
Go to the gym, walk on the treadmill, watch the visitors and their trainers. Pay more attention to the client’s appearance than the specialist – who has the most fit wards?
Take a closer look at how long the chatting takes: it is clear that if two people spend an hour together, they will chat and joke around, but this should not interfere with the process. Conversation by conversation, and the approach on a schedule. If the picture you observe looks more like a meeting of two friends after a long separation, it is unlikely that such an activity will be of any use.
This also includes the telephone. It is clear that the coach is a real person and he may have important calls: the client will call to reschedule the workout, for example. But again, the conversation should be kept within reason. Once I watched a client squat with a serious weight, while the coach played solitaire on a tablet at the same time – you definitely don’t need that. It’s important to warm up well before a workout, but running 15 minutes on the treadmill is a steal of your paid time.
Before moving on to classes, the coach should ask you: what result do you expect, are there any health restrictions, what you have been doing before, discuss your lifestyle and nutrition. The first lesson takes place in a test mode, the coach gives you a minimum load, gradually increasing it in order to understand your current level of fitness. Here I must say that there is a fine line between the actual limit of your capabilities and the desire of some coaches to please you. If a mentor in the middle of a set says to you: “Tired? Okay, let’s do the next exercise, ”- this is a reason to be wary. Unfortunately, a tangible result is achieved only by overcoming yourself and your fatigue.
I advise you to be very alert if the coach asks you if you are ready to use pharmacological drugs. Just don’t confuse sports nutrition and supplements with serious medications. Personally, I don’t use either. But high-quality sports nutrition, fat burners and the like will not do any harm, then decide for yourself whether you need them or not. But if the coach asks you to “cheat”, know that this means serious hormonal drugs. With their help, the result is achieved in the shortest possible time and with minimal effort, but they lead to irreversible, often unpredictable and very serious consequences for health, including psychological. Therefore, if you suddenly get such advice, I recommend that you flatly refuse and look for another specialist.
Well, the rest is a matter of your comfort in communicating with the coach; after all, you will spend quite a lot of time together, and it is better that this person is pleasant to you.
Productive workouts for you!