Health Education

Today was my Personal Training Consultation at my gym, BoostFitness. It was more of an educational sesstion than just " you need to do this and this, to be able to do this with your body..yadayada."
The trainer, Brian, talked a lot about BMI and Body Fat %, as well as what you are burning when you are running, and all that. Just because my BMI says I am obese, means nothing! According to his BMI he is obese, and he looks fit as a fiddle! It is more important that your Body Fat % is less than your BMI. I am a BMI of roughly 29, and I have a body fat of 33%. So it is more important to know what your body is made up of, than a number on a scale. You may have a high weight, but look at the facts...is it because of the amount of fat that is making up your body, or the amount of lean muscle you have. At least that is the way it processed in my head!

The other thing, which is really important for those runners...just in case there are runners who dont know, which I was not aware! When running, as you know you need energy ( i knew that!) but when you run, in order to keep up your energy you are burning carbs...good thing right? well kind of...but once you run out of carbs to burn, you burn your protein...but what about that darn fat we all want to get rid of...nu-uh! you are barely burning any fat when you run....and you burn even less the harder you are breathing.

So yes, running is still good for you, it helps you with your cardiovascular...but thats it. In order to improve, burn fat while building lean muscle, you need strength training. Work on building your core, your arms, your legs...any kind of strength/resistance training. And when doing any type of excercise, you need to change and step up your work outs in order to maintain any weight loss and muscle strength. If you continuously do the same work out over and over again, you will never get anywhere. Your body will adjust and get comfortable and as Brian says "plateau."

Brian then proceeded to have me warm up, I chose to go on the treadmill for 5min..then get educated in some moves. He had me do some squats...yikes! Squats arent so bad, until you find out you arent doing it 100% right, along with your lunges. "It's all about the 90 degree angle" in your legs.

Anyways, a couple more "core" strength training, more like a "test", exercises, and I was done. I wish it had been a bit longer. The session was only an hour, but half of that was spent talking and giving me a lesson. But it was all very helpful!

Needless to say, I am still looking forward to my training for the Princess Half as well as working on my strength training.

-Stephanie
"You must plan for the future, boy. You've got to find a direction"