How to Create an Effective Personal Training Programme
If you want to achieve all your fitness goals, you need an effective personal training programme. Haphazard exercise grabbed in short sessions randomly throughout the week will never produce the desired results. Neither will generic fitness programmes created to appeal to a large audience. If you want to look and feel your very best, a training programme tailored to your needs, physical attributes, and lifestyle is essential. But how is a personal training programme created, and what should you focus on when creating one for yourself? Join our personal fitness experts as we find out!
Initial Assessment and Consultation
The first step in the creation of an effective personal training programme is to establish what your goals are. If you find it difficult to do this, think about how you look and perform physically right now and how you would like to change the way you look and perform in the future. When setting goals, don’t forget to refer to your medical history and take any physical or chronic conditions into account.
Setting SMART Goals
Effective personal training goals are neither too difficult nor too easy to achieve. They should provide you with a genuine and lasting sense of achievement when reached but should not be so far out of reach as to appear unattainable. Try to ensure each goal you add to your list is SMART:
- Specific – Include a measurement to be reached in your goal, such as the desired circumference of your waist in inches or the time in which you complete a run.
- Measurable – To use measurements in your goals, they must, of course, be measurable.
- Achievable – Don’t set physically impossible goals. Failing to achieve any of your early goals will destroy your motivation to continue.
- Realistic – Set goals that are realistic for YOU so you do not injure yourself by straining too hard to achieve them.
- Timed – You need to decide on a time by which you expect to achieve each goal, so you know what you need to do and when you need to do it.
By ensuring all your goals are SMART goals, you will make your personal training programme more efficient and effective.
How Professionals Create a Training Plan
Personal fitness experts normally follow a simple, highly effective 3-step process when creating a new training programme:
- Listening to the Client – By listening carefully, a professional trainer establishes what you want to achieve and how to help you get the best out of yourself.
- Fitness Metrics and Assessments – Personalised assessments help professional trainers determine how well you are doing and whether anything about your programme needs to be adjusted.
- Structuring the Plan – Having established your fitness goals and how best to assess your progress towards each one, a professional trainer will structure your programme to ensure you are successful.
Great training plans created by experienced professionals always specify frequency, intensity and times for each exercise to avoid any confusion.
Principles of Training
When creating a training programme for yourself, be sure to refer to the core principles of fitness training: progression, reversibility, overload, frequency and intensity. These principles will help you structure your training programme effectively. If you are not familiar with the principles of training, we recommend consulting an expert or scheduling some home study time over the next few weeks.
Even the best personal training programmes need to be tweaked and adapted over time to ensure they remain effective. The best way to do this is to perform regular assessments and continually review your goals as you work towards them. Continually reviewing and refining your programme will help you to avoid becoming bored or burnt out.
Conclusion
Without a programme that takes your strengths and weaknesses into account and prioritises reaching your most important goals, you are unlikely to enjoy satisfactory results when embarking on a new training regimen. If you don’t have the time or expertise to create a great programme and live in Melbourne or the surrounding area, contact MoveWell Health and Fitness for professional advice and assistance. We can help you achieve all your most important personal fitness goals in a safe, comfortable and motivational environment. We also offer online training assistance to those in other areas.
