Jeff's Thoughts

• What Is The Point

  2 February, 2015

  At Studio41 Personal Training Studio and Gym we have the view that if your health was a bank account – The only times you would be adding to this bank account would be when you are sleeping, eating (depending on what you are eating) and drinking water. Everything else is a withdraw – Exercise, work, socialising.

  People don’t understand this simple principle – they seem to think that when they are exercising, they are adding to their health bank account. But you work hard, break your body down so it can recover and become better from the exercise, this recovery happens in sleep. I recently treated someone who was in constant pain, when I asked why does she run for 2 hours at a time? Her answer was simple – Why would you do any less?

  There are numerous times when I as a personal trainer have met people who think that simply more is better. However lets be very clear on the role of exercise – This is to break you down so you can recover and get stronger. But please note that the exercise is only half of it. The recovery is the other half. I prefer the phrase

  Train Hard: Recover Harder. 

  People are simply missing the point. We exercise to become healthy, not for it to wear us down. If our health bank account is added to the most when you sleep, and you reap all the rewards of all the hard work of exercise when you sleep – the question has to be asked “how well are you sleeping“? If your personal trainer does not know your sleep habits – you should be spending your money more wisely.

  Exercise: A specific activity that stimulates a positive physiological adaptation that serves to enhance fitness and health and does not undermine the latter in the process of enhancing the former.

  McGuff, D. Little, J. Body By Science 2009

  If you are in constant pain from your exercising you have a problem, infact you have an addiction. But if you are not losing body fat, constantly tired, you are not healthy. But many of these people are exercising, not recovering and therefore the exercise is contributing to their ill health. When they don’t get results, they often look at doing more!!!

  The scientific literature is filled with data that strongly makes the case that long-distance runners are much more likely to develop cardiovascular disease, atrial fibrillation,” cancer/’ liver and gallbladder disorders, muscle damage/ kidney dysfunction (renal abnormalities),” acute microthrombosis in the vascular system,” lira in damage,” spinal degeneration,1: and germ-cell cancers” than are their less active counterparts.

   McGuff, D. Little, J. Body By Science 2009.

  I am all for exercising, but understanding when to train hard and when we need to address factors that are restricting an individual of reaping the benefits of that exercise is the skill of what personal trainers should do. Often going harder for longer is not our answer. Dressing the underlying issues that maybe stopping that person from recovering is the answer, these range from sleep, digestive health, liver detoxification, stress. How can we call ourselves health and fitness professionals if we didn’t take this holistic view? At Studio41 we look at all of these aspects and as a result, the training becomes only one aspect of the journey that we take our clients on.

   

   

   

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