Saturday, June 5, 2021

Resistance Training

Resistance Training
Whenever I am speaking to gym members, or I am on a consultation with a new client and I begin talking to them about resistance or weight training (and this mostly relates to female clients)I all of a sudden get a look of sheer panic.  "I don't want to get big ugly muscles" they say. The second I use the words weight and training in the same sentence, they automatically get a vision in their heads of me turning them into the next Miss.Olympia. It's understandable because of the the misconceptions that have been allowed to creep in to our society regarding weight training and body building.

To the un-initiated, anyone that has never walked into a gym before and even those who work out in gyms regularly, it is the common understanding that the weights area is only for those who are dead serious on developing large, lean, defined, strong muscles. if you have no interest in looking like Schwarzenegger, then why would you go up there? Surely you can get all the results you are looking for from the treadmill or other cardio machines right?


Wrong. It's a myth and actually counter-productive to your training (99.9% of the time).

Believe it or not, almost every single client I work, from all ages, shapes, sizes and abilities, I train using some form of resistance, whether it's their own body weight, free or fixed weights, medicine balls and so on. Oh, and just to add, I don't train body builders.

Now I understand why people tend to feel hesitant about resistance training. Apart from the misconceptions of  free weights are only for the bodybuilder types, the free weights area can be very intimidating. If it's not the big fella bench pressing 250kg, the equipment itself can be very daunting if you've never used it before. Most people feel that way at first, but once you know what you are doing, resistance training can be very enjoyable, and very beneficial.

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