I hired a personal trainer!?

I hired a PT – personal trainer. After two months of going on my own to try and hit the daily exercise targets I’d finally realized that DIY-ing your own fitness regime has its limitations. I was keen to try out some harder and more complex exercise to see if there was a way to fast track my performance. 

I’d watched a lot of fitness blogs and I’d seen many cool moves that I was keen to learn – mostly just to show off in the gym. Most specifically I was keen to learn to do a ‘box jump’ a movement where you jump on top of a 24 inch box and land in a squat position. The second one I was keen to get started on was a squat rack – a machine which helps you to squat using heavy weights. It’s a very popular machine for fitness bloggers – and I was pretty inspired at this stage.

I’d met the girl I worked with previously on a Friday morning boot camp that the gym ran. I had started going out of general interest – thinking that it might help me figure out how to get more out of the gym. It’s a 45 minute high intensity interval training session (HIIT). HIIT are very popular modern work outs as they raise your heart rate and increase your after caloric burn.

There are two types of calorie burn – active calories and resting calories. Generally speaking, you have to move to burn calories, however, post exercise oxygen intake can increase your resting caloric burn to up the number of calories that you burn overall. Post caloric burn will increase your total calorie burn – allowing you to eat more! This is especially important for those who struggle with metabolic syndromes as was shown in a study in the Scandinavian journal of medicine & Science in Sports (Larsen, Welde, and Martins, 2013). However, this effect can be triggered by any high intensity exercise such as Tabata – a 20 second on 10 second off interval training style. In the study I present on the afterburn effect, a fast paced cycling exercise was used, where the participant was working at 75-80 percent of their max heart rate – this did positively trigger the caloric burn after exercise.

I had my first session with a personal trainer on a Monday. This was a lot less intimidating than I’d built up in my head. It was more like a work out with a friend than what you see in the movies. We went through some exercises that we hadn’t done before, talked about my performance goals and worked out ways to reach them.

The next training session I was keen to try a box jump. – It was then that I discovered while a lot of these things look easy they really require more control over your muscles than just the ability to jump onto it. I could get onto the box but quickly lost my balance and fell off onto the ground. After that I chose to focus on building my balance instead of falling on my back several more times.

After that minor set back I was thrilled to be given alternative ways of reaching my goals. Previously there’d been a lot of research and work on my behalf- that wasn’t always successful. Making the decision to work with someone else allowed me to tailor my program so that I could see my progression in strength, balance and agility and I could do so without feeling disheartened.

I’m still working on the routine that I was given by my PT two months later. While I haven’t achieved my major performance goals yet I am seeing performance increase. If you read the first lifestyle change article where I discussed my first foray into the exercise world you’ll discover that I really struggled to have energy after my training sessions. That is definitely no longer the case. Now I can continue on with my day as if I hadn’t studied. I have to make sure I don’t stay up too late or I can’t get up in the morning – but it’s probably a good thing!

 If you’re looking to make some changes in law school and wondering if it’s worth the effort – I would recommend starting out with a personal trainer – going it alone is hard. While you may save money I personally found that I got a better benefit from working with someone else – at least initially. I felt like I could be certain I was doing the right thing and I could focus more on pushing myself harder rather than constantly trying to find out what I should be doing.

Keeping up motivation and knowing what to do took a lot more time and effort than I had expected – especially if you’re hoping to reap the full benefits of exercise and not just a good insta photo every now and then.

As of April I have definitely experienced some cognitive benefits. The biggest I’ve found are;

·         Increased focus

·         Better problem solving

·         Increased self discipline

They definitely weren’t immediate changes and I’m not super woman status yet. However, the lifestyle change has definitely increased these areas of my life and I'm looking forward to seeing their impact on my academic endeavours.

If you’d like to join my on my lifestyle journey then you can connect with me on Instagram, tumblr, twitter or facebook!

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