Article 1 - Starting Out on a Physical Fitness Programme
Mel Richards – Personal Trainer & Sports Therapist
When starting out on a fitness training programme it is essential to identify the goals of the programme and to design one with those goals in mind. Most of us have made a decision at some time – usually having been inspired by an article on television or elsewhere in the media - to attempt to "get fit", "keep fit", run a marathon or just lose a few pounds. However, many of us, despite starting out with the best intentions, have completely failed to do any of those things! The vast majority of those failures could have been avoided if we had started out with a clear understanding of what we were trying to achieve and had formulated a balanced and effective programme.
What we wish to achieve must be defined clearly. It is important to be specific about our goals. e.g. It's not enough to say "I want to lose weight" or "I want to run a marathon", we've got to say how much weight we want to lose and set a timeframe for that weight loss, or we've got to pick a marathon and identify the distances that we need to be running in preparation for that event. It's also no good to say "I want to get fit"; we have to recognise the difference between "functional fitness" – the ability to carry out daily tasks with alertness, vigour and endurance, and "sports specific fitness" – the accomplishment of sporting activities with high efficiency. There is no point training like Lance Armstrong or Paula Radcliffe if we only want to be able to cycle with the kids or run for the proverbial bus!
Having identified our goals we then have to formulate a programme and write it down. This can be as rigid or as flexible as we like, but it must be based on clearly defined goals and it must be written down. Every time we complete an element of the programme we can pat ourselves on the back; every time we fail to train when we should have done, our failure is there in writing, spurring us on to get back on track!
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US & Canada Toll Free
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