Why Not Just Get a Gym Membership?

Getting a membership at your local gym is a great starting point. But if your goal is to not only improve your health and body image, but also just help you feel better and live a better life, you will have a much better experience when you work with a personal trainer, and a significantly higher likeliness of completing your goals. A personal trainer keeps you accountable, helps you stay focused, and is your biggest cheerleader. They understand your goals, know just how to help you get there, and the best personal trainers know how to create custom programs for individual clients based on their physical and emotional needs. Working out solo can be hard and leave many people feeling unsure as to whether or not they are doing the exercises correctly and safely. A personal trainer ensures you do everything right to get your desires results, and they are your fitness rocket fuel.

Here’s how personal training makes huge, and unexpected impacts in an average person’s life.

1. Fights Depression or General Sadness

Regular exercise helps combat depression. According to the Mayo Clinic, regular exercise eases depression and anxiety by releasing neurotransmitters, endorphins and endocannabinoids—feel-good brain chemicals that impact mood. The Mayo Clinic also states that regularly increasing your body temperature may account for calming effects, and they state that routine exercise reduces immune system chemicals that can worsen depression.

The key here is “regular” exercise, and this is where investing in personal training pays off big. Your personal trainer will keep you focused and motivated to continue a regular fitness routine and reduce the chance of you calling it quits, or simply exercising “when you feel like it”.

2. Move Out of a Rut

Do you feel like you are lost in translation when it comes to understanding your place in life? Do you feel like you are stuck in a rut, but you aren’t sure what the real problem is or how to get out of it? When we have energy and are happy we think more clearly. Since personal trainers help keep clients engaged in regular exercise with a specific focus, you can benefit from training by increasing your ability to connect with your authentic self and face some deeper questions with a clear mind that can lead to a place of understanding, self-compassion, and a blueprint for escaping that rut that’s holding you back.

3. Socializing and Improving Communication Skills

Some people go through periods where they aren’t socializing with others (or they do so in a limited way) and they feel their communication skills are anything but polished. When you work with a personal trainer opposed to just getting a gym membership you work directly with another person who has the same interest you have—to see your life improve through fitness. Your personal trainer may not become your buddy that you go to a movie with; they are something much better because they are on your side, they listen to your needs, help you accomplish your goals, and they do so unconditionally. When you work with a personal trainer you are putting yourself in a social situation via a working relationship that can help give you that boost to step out and start associating with other people again.

Personal trainers also help you work on your communication skills. The trainer/client relationship is one of mutual trust: you must trust your trainer when he gives you guidance, and he must trust you when you send feedback. This relationship also deals with compromises. If you don’t like a certain exercise you and your trainer will work together to come up with a compromise that still gives you the full benefits. This requires you to communicate openly and honestly, and to problem-solve with your trainer to find a better solution.

4. Dealing with an Injury or Illness

A personal trainer can help speed up your recovery time from an injury. When you work out in the gym by yourself and you are recovering from an injury, you may unintentionally be putting harmful strain on it, or you may be missing out on a few exercises that can help strengthen the injured muscle and facilitate a faster recovery. The best personal trainers knows just how to protect a sports injury, sprang, or any other physical ailment from further damage while gently working it to enhance its healing.

Personal trainers are also great for helping people deal with chronic or terminal illnesses. There are specific routines for various conditions that can reduce symptoms. Your personal trainer can set you up on an ideal program designed just for you and your health needs, and help you balance keeping fit with your medical treatment all while keeping a positive outlook.

Achieve Your Goals with Personal Training Today!

Whether you want to know how to get six-pack abs and sculpt a Hollywood body that turns heads, or you simply want to be healthier and happier, personal training is the way to go. Consider a smaller neighborhood gym to one of the large big box chain gyms where trainers are under pressure to sign clients and retain them in order to keep their jobs or get a bonus. Smaller boutique gyms generally do not operate on this business model and are therefore more dedicated to assisting clients at an authentic level of genuine interest. Give personal training a shot today, and discover over the next few weeks how your life has already started improving!

The post 4 Ways Working with a Personal Trainer Improves Your Life appeared first on A Tighter U.

Killer Abs Rely on the Right Diet and Exercises

If you are trying to sculpt killer abs, you need to get on the right diet and do the right exercise routine. Various fitness goals require specific exercises and diets. If you are a 25 year-old man trying to add muscle, your diet and fitness program will be night and day compared to a 40 year-old man seeking a six pack. The following map to killer six pack abs is a general guideline for the average person. For a customized routine that will help you reach your six pack abs goal faster, contact a local personal trainer and ask for a consultation.

Exercise 1: Sit Ups Build Strong Abs

Lie down on a mat with your feet flat on the floor, knees up, and cross your arms over your chest. You will need to have someone hold your feet down, or you can get a sit up bar that can be easily mounted to the bottom of a door. The key is to keep your back and stomach tight when doing the sit ups. Start with 3 sets of 25, and as this becomes easier increase the repetitions.

Exercise 2: Bruce Lee’s Dragon Flag

Known as Bruce Lee’s go-to exercise for developing core strength and killer abs, the Dragon Flag (certain versions of it are known as Dragon Flies) is an exercise for people with above average fitness and free from any injuries. If you have never tried the dragon flag, it is recommended you do the exercise for the first time under the care of a fitness trainer, as injuring yourself doing these incorrectly is common for the inexperienced.

Lie on a flat bench or a declined plane grabbing its edge behind your head with both hands. You will want to form tension in your arms, traps, lats, legs and core while lifting your body off the surface. Swing your feet up so that you are nearly vertical and keep your body straight with a tight core.Lower your feet very slowly lowering them just above the bench, lift your legs back up, and complete a rep.

Exercise 3: Leg Lifts, Easy, Medium or Hard

You will need to lie on the mat with your hands at your side and your legs straight out. Without bending your knees, lift your legs upwards and lower them without touching the ground. To give the workout a medium-level challenge you can always raise your legs horizontally while keeping them stretched out and straight. If you want to go full beast mode, try dangling weight from your feet or hang from a pull up bar raising your legs all the way up in front of your face while keeping them perfectly straight.

Exercise 4: Plank Your Way to a Six Pack

Get on your elbows into the push-up position on the floor keeping your body flat. You will want to lower your body enough that it is not arching, and so it remains perfectly level. Hold the pose for 60 seconds, rest for 10 seconds, and repeat. If your fitness level is good try shooting for a five minute hold, and if you can’t make it to the five minute point create this hold-time as your goal.

Diet Tip 1: Breakfast Builds Six Pack Abs

Most people who skip breakfast do so because they think it is a good way to diet, or they don’t think they have the time. In reality, skipping breakfast can halter weight loss for two main reasons: (1) it keeps your metabolism sluggish and (2) you get more hungry later in the day. Having a healthy breakfast will raise your resting metabolism by as much as 10 percent and minimize mid-day cravings. A breakfast of lean protein such as Greek yoghurt with blueberries and flax seed, or leftover salmon in an egg white omelet with spinach is ideal.

Diet Tip 2: Don’t Eat After 7PM

When you eat late at night your body is more likely to store the food as fat because your metabolism isn’t as active when you sleep (though it is always running). If you must eat something after 7PM, avoid starches and sugar (this includes fruit). A hand-full of nuts, or a few spears of steamed asparagus accompanied with a large glass of water can satisfy more appetites and give you that full feeling.

Diet Tip 3: Eat Small Frequent Meals Throughout the Day

In order to keep your metabolism up so you can burn more fat and get those six pack abs, it is ideal to eat a small meal every three hours. Your calorie goal will be based on your current weight and BMI, but sticking around 300 calories per meal is pretty standard. For breakfast you could have a hard-boiled egg and a piece of whole grain toast, a snack of almonds and berries, followed by four ounces of skinless boiled chicken breast and some broccoli florets for lunch, hummus and celery for another snack, and a fish filet with some kale for dinner.

Diet Tip 4: Ditch Refined Grains

White bread won’t build abs, but switching to whole grains will help you trim down and develop a healthy body to sculpt the Hollywood body of your dreams. A well-balanced diet that replaced refined grains with whole grains impacts the insulin and glucose response within your body that regulates fat burning.

Killer Six Pack Abs Come Out When You Eat and Train Right!

Anyone can get six pack abs if they are disciplined enough to stick to a proper fitness routine and follow the right diet. By conducting some solid research and going through potential trial and error work, you can likely determine your best routine. By working with a personal trainer you can get faster, safer results.

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