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Workout Motivation when the Personal Training Sessions End
Are you plus size and struggling to keep working out, now that your personal training sessions have ended? Have you been avoiding the gym? Here’s how to get back into the workout groove!
It’s nowhere near unheard of among the personal training community that when a plus size woman’s training package ends, she stops working out.
Suddenly, she’s no longer seen at the gym. She’s disappeared into oblivion.
How could this happen, after all those fired-up training sessions in which she kicked butt and seemed quite motivated?
This phenomenon is also no stranger to overweight men. When the training package is completed, many stop coming to the gym.
Though many cannot afford to pay for another round of personal training, this doesn’t explain why these former clients stop coming to the gym, when they’ve either already paid for a membership that’s still active, or, they’ve signed a commitment to pay a monthly fee, and there are still months left on that commitment.
Why Plus Size Women and Men Often Stop Working Out when There Are no More Personal Training Sessions
Many overweight people quit exercising after their package with a personal trainer is used up.
It’s one thing to continue coming to the gym and doing some exercise – be it a scaled down version of what they’d been doing during the training sessions, or something quite different.
But it’s another issue when they’ve quit coming to the gym altogether.
Many overweight people who hire a personal trainer have not done much exercising prior.
And if they have, it usually doesn’t include any weight workouts. With my experience, I’ve found that pre-existing exercise among overweight clients was almost always limited to group aerobics classes and/or sessions on cardio equipment.
If they were doing weights, it was with light resistance – nothing too challenging.
Clients put all their trust in the personal trainer, and whatever exercise program that the trainer brings to their new inexperienced client, is often the client’s first experience with strength training. And sometimes a first impression becomes the only impression.
So if a plus size person ends up with a personal trainer who’s jumped on the bandwagon of strange, oddball exercise routines in the name of appearing progressive or fancy, that client is apt to think that this is what exercise is all about.
One day I witnessed a very obese, middle aged woman holding light dumbbells, but struggling to step up onto a rather high stool. Once standing on the stool, she raised the weights over her head and then struggled to step down.
Once back on the floor, she regrouped to step back onto the stool, legs always appearing unstable, as though any moment a knee would give out.
She was visibly in poor shape, not some athlete who happened to be overweight. Yet here she was, performing a precarious task at the direction of a personal trainer.
What the Trainer Has You Do
Many overweight people, desperate and eager for results, will completely submit to whatever their personal trainer says, figuring that the instructor knows what he or she is doing.
If plus size, nonathletic clients are instructed to do any of the following, it’s no wonder they may lose motivation and quit working out once the personal training is over:
• Pushups (more reasonable alternative: seated chest press)
• High stepping — which can damage knees in poorly conditioned heavy clients (safer option: using a step-class stepper with one set of risers)
• Jumping (better option: horizontal leg press or bodyweight squat)
• Walking lunges (better option: bodyweight squat – then add resistance once form is mastered)
• Various moves involving balancing on one leg (alternative: standard basic strength training exercises – the client wants to lose weight and get in shape, not enter a tightrope walking contest).
It’s no wonder that when the training sessions are completed, the plus size woman or man is left thinking that in order to lose weight, get fitter and stronger, and look better, they must engage in all sorts of one-legged stunts, hopping, high stepping and demoralizing attempts at pushups.
Yes, I’ve witnessed this – and the poor client is completely discouraged.
So when the training relationship ends, guess what: The client lacks any motivation to keep going to the gym.
Find Your Motivation and Stick to the Basics
Here’s what you must do: Simply get back in the gym. You don’t have to struggle with pushups. Get on the chest press machine and/or the bench press station!
And you NEVER have to do ANYTHING on one leg! Focus on your immediate goals.
One-leg routines, bear walks and other moves that made you feel exceedingly self-conscious or unstable are absolutely NOT necessary for weight loss, toning, sculpting, reshaping, feeling more energetic, improving cholesterol, lowering high blood pressure, reducing knee and back pain or strengthening the muscles.
Below are images of some basic exercises that any plus size woman or man can do with minimal, if any, feelings of self-consciousness, embarrassment or instability.
Chest press — seated. Shutterstock/Travelerpix
Dumbbell chest press. Shutterstock/Catalin Petolea
Pull-down. Freepik.com
Bench press. Shutterstock/LightField Studios
Overhead dumbbell press. Freepik.com
Weighted squat
Leg press
Leg curl. GeorgeStepanek/CC
Leg extension. GeorgeStepanek/CC
Deadlift
Treadmill. Swing your arms! Shutterstock/gpointstudio
If you’re overweight and frustrated, do not quit exercising based on past experience with a personal trainer who failed to make you feel empowered.
Stick to the basics to avoid any confusion.
Observe a particular trainer in action before hiring that person.
No matter what happens…do not give up working out!
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
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Top image: Freepik.com/katemangostar
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TMJ disorder can cause quite a few symptoms – some that you’d never even think were connected to this common condition.
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The sensation of fluid buildup in the ear or behind it can be uncomfortable and sometimes alarming.
It often feels like there is a feeling of fullness or pressure in the affected ear, and it may be accompanied by muffled hearing or a sense of “underwater” hearing.
This sensation can result from various underlying conditions.
Have you been diagnosed with TMJ disorder and are wondering if there’s a connection? (more…)
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How Fit Can You Get from Living Room Dance Parties?
Those living room dance parties may be fun, but are they really enough for aerobic and heart fitness?
If you love to dance, there are ways to make this count towards a good level of cardiovascular fitness.
I was inspired to write this article after seeing a video of yet another spontaneous “dance party” by a 240 pound self-love influencer.
She typically has an unplanned urge to have dance parties in her living room and kitchen, having her two young kids join in. She always looks very comfortable and relaxed while moving.
Many plus size women – children or no children – engage in what they call dance parties. They may or may not be planned.
For Fun or Fitness?
It’s one thing to suddenly start shimmying around and swaying to and fro when the urge strikes – simply because you like to do this and it helps relieve stress.
However, what if you believe – or are wondering whether or not – your dance parties are sufficient for keeping you aerobically fit?
From the way I’ve seen the 240 pound influencer moving, there’s no way that this will yield for her a strong heart and lungs, and efficient blood vessels – especially since these spontaneous, easygoing events last only several minutes.
On the other hand, a session of dance, when done a certain way, can do a great job of improving cardiorespiratory fitness.
Movement Isn’t Enough
The very plus-size self-love influencer, and many like her, will insist, “It’s movement! ANY movement is good! It’s better than sitting on the couch!”
But if your standard of reference is that of sitting on a couch, this should tell you something.
If you must compare your movement to that of a couch potato, that is a very low standard, and is a strong sign that you need to fire things up if you want better heart and lung health.
How to Tell Your Dance Parties Are Making You Fit
Working up a sweat may be one way. This depends. Some women sweat easily, especially if they’re postmenopausal.
Sweat may also easily come if the room is on the warm side or not well-ventilated.
But if the room is cool and you’re wearing light clothes, sweat may also mean that you’ve entered your target heart rate for aerobic exercise.
Another point to consider is that if you sweat to what seems like very low-level, minimal activity, this means your physical fitness isn’t as good as you think.
Singing and talking. If you can sing while moving, you’re not exercising hard enough.
But again, as mentioned, if the only purpose of your dance parties is to have fun, then that’s a whole different topic.
This is about what it takes to cause a training effect on your cardiovascular system – if that’s what’s important to you.
If you can easily carry on a conversation with your kids or someone in the room while dancing away, this, too, is not sufficient for a training effect.
Yes, it’s better than sitting around, but remember, that’s a pretty low standard of comparison!
If your talking is halting and erratic while you’re moving about, you’ve entered a zone for which there will be a training effect.
If you’re not speaking but your respiration is noticeably increased, you’ll get a training effect.
In other words, you’re not in a comfort zone. It’s challenging enough to affect your ability to speak.
You feel a little out of breath or slightly winded. Keep at it. This is good. It will force your cardiorespiratory system to adapt.
Keep moving for a minimum of 20 minutes, recommends the American Council on Exercise, for aerobic conditioning.
If you’re moving so intensely that you can’t sustain it for longer than several minutes, this would be considered vigorous movement, relative to your level of fitness.
if it gets you really huffing and puffing, and you prefer to take a few minutes of active rest (easy movements, basic yoga) between multiple intervals, that’s another great way to improve heart and lung fitness.
If you normally do dance parties for only several minutes, you should make every minute count if you want this activity to boost your cardiovascular health.
If it feels like a warmup, this is a sign that it’s not rigorous enough to induce a training effect.
Increase the Intensity of Your Dance Parties
• Speed up your movements.
• Add some hopping and single-leg leaps or kicks.
• Add some leaping up onto a 12 inch exercise stool.
• Hold light hand weights.
• Add more difficult moves such as burpees.
Burpee. For more challenge add a jump at the end.
• Add jumping jacks.
• Lift your legs higher.
• Place nearly all the emphasis on your lower body; spend less time shimmying the shoulders.
If you want more physical fitness, you won’t achieve this with lazy swaying and shimmying around.
The more you kick butt during your dance parties, the more fit your body will become.
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
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Top image: Freepik.com, Racool_studio
Tons of Symptoms but Can’t Get the Right Diagnosis?
Dr. Christine Traxler, MD, suffered from many symptoms and was misdiagnosed multiple times over seven years before she herself figured out what was wrong.
I didn’t know that when my symptoms first started, that I would ultimately feel like the “queen of rare diseases” or maybe just crazy.
I did not know that my journey toward finding an answer would take so long, nor did I realize that I would have to figure most of it out myself.
And yet, I went through all of these things in the last seven years. By the end of that time, I was convinced I would be a woman dying at just under 60 years of age with something no one understood.
My litany of symptoms are long and did not show up all at the same time. Had they all occurred together, perhaps someone would have put it all together and made the correct diagnosis — but neither of those things happened.
It started with weight loss I wasn’t trying to have. I was very overweight in the beginning, so I didn’t mind until I had lost more than a hundred pounds unintentionally.
I then went through uncontrollable incontinence, serious sweating episodes followed by no sweating at all, nasal congestion every time I ate anything, severe constipation, and I eventually started fainting nearly every day.
All of these symptoms started gradually and not all at once. Some things, like the incontinence, disappeared, while the weight loss and fainting hung stubbornly on.
I saw doctors starting in 2014 and was given basic diagnoses like menopause, allergies and urge incontinence.
Three years ago, they told me I had idiopathic gastroparesis, which meant that my weight loss was there because my stomach wasn’t emptying properly.
This was why I struggled so much to eat large meals and felt so uncomfortable for hours after eating.
No one figured out my fainting spells, which got better only when I decided just to eat a lot of salt every day.
When my lower legs went numb suddenly and the tests were normal, I stopped saying anything because I was convinced I was just crazy and imagining it all.
As a physician, I was frustrated by having so many diseases that respected doctors could not explain, only giving me medications to treat symptoms, or telling me just to live with everything.
I was told to wait until my weight was below 110 pounds and then think about having a tube placed in order to feed me.
I started thinking that, back in medical school, we were told to think of the “least common denominator” or the smallest number of disorders that could explain the greatest number of symptoms.
But even I was never taught about these symptoms and neither were any of my doctors.
I became obsessed with researching my symptoms and with reading medical journal articles that would help me put it all together.
Eventually I realized I had some type of dysautonomia, which is an abnormality of the autonomic nervous system.
I couldn’t myself, however, figure out what kind I had. I did some creative “pulling of strings” to get into the Mayo Clinic at their autonomic nervous system clinic.
A few months ago [2020], I had all of the tests for autonomic nervous system diseases, which involved sophisticated blood pressure testing, labs and sweat testing to confirm I did not sweat.
Unfortunately, while they were able to confirm I had dysautonomia, they could not figure out why.
Doctors at Mayo Clinic told Dr. Traxler that her condition probably was not terminal.
The study of dysautonomia in medicine is still so new that a lot of people don’t know why they have it, but still can get some of their symptoms under control.
I continued to reach out to people in other parts of the world for advice and recommendations.
I met a wonderful neuroscientist and nutritionist in England who gave me strange dietary recommendations that I have religiously followed.
I have gone from being one pound shy of having a tube placed in my abdomen to gaining 10 pounds, eating healthier food, sleeping better, having improved blood pressure numbers and regaining the health I had lost.
I realize now that I don’t have a complete answer as to why I have this, but have a much better answer than I once did.
More importantly, I have found doctors and others who understand this disease and have made recommendations that have fortunately restored my health at just about the time I thought I would lose my life.
After many years as a rural family practice physician, Dr. Traxler turned to a career in medical research and writing to share information with the general public about common medical and health issues. Her extensive knowledge includes management of chronic diseases, neurology and women’s health. Dr. Traxler is currently a writer and contributor for invigormedical.com.
Here is more information on dysautonomia, which is often misdiagnosed.