Back to the Future of Personal Training
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When it comes to trends in fitness and healthcare, there’s more than I could count on a few pairs of hands – Weights, Aerobics, Triathlon Training, Swiss Balls, Resistance Bands, Vibration Plates, Yoga, Pilates, and the list goes on.
Do all of these work to get results for clients?
Sure they do, but all in different ways with some gaining greater benefits than others. Many of these trends came and went, and many of them are still here. Some of them have been combined, like doing weights on Swiss Balls, and some of them have been modified and you now find “Hardcore Yoga” sessions in many gyms across the globe.
The evolution of my own training regimen and consequently the recommendations I give to my clientele has also varied over the years – Weights, “Body-Builder Type Training”, Exercise to Music and Body Combat, Swiss Balls, Sports Specific Training – until I realised that my most recent style of training had modified into a hybrid of many of the different styles of exercise I had learnt and had success with for my clients.
My clients are getting greater gains than ever before, in all areas, as am I. Plus, I am enjoying my workouts so much more because each and every one is different to the ones before it. Having spent a minimum of the last 10 years “exercising” at some level, and many years before that playing sports, I felt very bored with “typical” training routines and the gym in general.
The thumping music playing on loop, the air conditioning that never quite feels right, the mirrors that seem to distract more than help, the machines that have absolutely no function except creating injuries and possibly becoming a door-stop one day, the artificial lighting, the toxic materials the mats are made from, the clocks on the walls pointing at you from every direction. There’s a lot of things you notice in gyms when you’ve spent literally half of your life in them.
When I started noticing all of this stuff I started to train myself a little differently. It seemed like my evolution, as I keep calling it, had come full circle. Now, I remember the days of being a kid and running around the park climbing over obstacles, under obstacles and sometimes trying to make my way through them. If I analyse this now it was a pretty good workout routine I had back then. There’s not a muscle in your body that isn’t on the job when you’re running/jumping/dodging obstacles at a fast speed and at different directions.
Mix that in with a few trees to climb here and there and you build so much more variety into your workout. So much more than any gym could ever give you!
So, out I have been going into the wilderness – parks, forests, fields, urban, semi-urban, 100% natural – and have been working out. Knowing the body and the biomechanical needs of the body, I decided after a few random workouts to make this into a programme, something that could be followed by others if I chose to give it to them, and it has turned out to be very successful.
Each programme starts safely with a warm-up and a scientifically designed stretching programme based on a postural analysis, followed by a mixture of primal pattern movements (to mimick the needs of our primitive ancestors) and short, sharp bursts of cardiovascular work that once again builds on what we would have needed 10,000 years ago – If it was good enough for them, it’s good enough for me!!!
Everything in between is quite flexible. I developed a concept after analysing hundreds of clients and their levels of stress and their circadian rhythms, based on flexibility within an exercise programme, rather than structure. For a modern world that is managed by it’s iPhone, diaries, and schedules, it is extremely liberating to walk on to the gym floor (or into the park/forest) and not know what you’re going to do next.
It’s very much a philosophy that might be more akin to Free Running where the Free Runner will pick a place in the distance and traverse all obstacles to get to it in the most fluid motion possible. My system of “exercising”, or movement pattern training, now has the flexibility of being in the present moment and saying, “Okay, today I am going to do this…” without know what it is prior. All the while keeping technique and form at the forefront.
So “Natural Fitness and Athleticism” seems to be at the core of this new system of movement, which also lends nicely to the overall holistic nature of my Vitality Programme’s that I use with all of my one-to-one clients.
With Natural being the buzz-word, it’s key to also take care of a person’s nutrition and lifestyle factors if they are truly aiming to become naturally fit and athletic – both in performance and appearance. Once again, we look back 10,000 years ago and think “What would our ancestors have eaten?” and this should give you a better picture of how far we have come from what nature intended for us to be healthy.
With diseases and injuries at an all time high it is fairly obvious that most of us are not living in accordance with Mother Nature and what was designed for us from the beginning. Unfortunately many have lost their way and lost touch with their intuition and knowing what is best for them.
This where a well experienced holistic nutrition and lifestyle coach can come in handy as there are systems in place to know exactly what people should be eating, and what changes they can make in the life to optimise their levels of load on the physiology and help to balance their neurology.
Obviously now you can see that when fitness and health trends come and go, you can always come back to the basics, to the core of our existence: movement and breathing, nutrition, and stress management for a busy lifestyle.
“What will this help me with?” I hear you say: weight loss, body shape transformation, building a more muscular and lean physique, improving health and energy levels, understanding your mind better and dealing with your emotions – Yes to all of these, and many more.
The Future of Personal Training doesn’t have to “no pain, no gain” and artificial supplements and even more artificial gym surroundings. It can be fun, fresh and first and foremost can get results that will make you want to continue exercising and changing your habits for a life-time.
Thanks for reading,
Brett Sanders: Natural Fitness Expert
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[...] This in itself I find odd – the fact that my type of training is classified as abnormal, and training in gyms, wearing shoes, and using artificial materials would be “normal” in most people’s [...]