Use playing cards for a creative, client-driven workout

How does it work?
What you are going to need to do is write down 6-10 exercises that will cover all major muscle groups. After that, you will need to decide on a set range [I typically use 3-5] and a rep range. For convenience sake using cards, I keep the rep range from 5-10 reps.

What you will do is have three different groups of cards that a client can choose from. Each group of cards represents exercises, sets, and reps. The client then chooses one card from each pile. The end result? Any combination of 6-10 exercises, 3-5 sets and 5-10 reps.

Tip: Prior to asking clients to choose one card from each section, I will divide each pile up, ensuring that each pile has the designed number ranges. Also, I remove all picture cards to avoid confusion. This is especially useful when training an older population. 

For example, I used this today with a large group I trained. I had three athletes choose from each pile- today their card numbers were 8, 3 and 10. Therefore, 8 pre-determined exercises were utilized, and the set and rep scheme was 3, 10 respectively.

Personal Trainers versus Strength Coaches

Personal Trainers versus Strength Coaches

Personal trainers and strength coaches have a number of similarities; both work in the fitness field, work with a diverse clientele, and work non-typical work hours and days. Beyond that, there are a number of distinct differences between the practices of personal trainers and strength coaches. I currently work as a personal trainer and strength coach, and comments/opinions posted below are based upon my own experiences and interactions with other coaches and clientele.

Clientele
Personal trainers are often required to use an active approach in gaining new clientele and signing up new members. Unfortunately, many personal trainers act as glorified salesperson, where they convince you that their service of worthy of a specific fee. Personal trainers sell training packages to clientele. Such training packages may consist of as few as five sessions or up to 20-30 sessions, dependent upon the goals and finances of the targeted clientele. In contrast, strength coaches do not have to work for their clientele. Rather, they are assigned to athletes based upon their teams. These teams may have few athletes if the sport is considered an individual sport (i.e. golf) but may have much larger numbers if the sport is considered a team sport (i.e. football, soccer, baseball).

Interaction
Personal trainers may prescribe at home workouts to clientele or workouts that are to completed without supervision. In doing so, personal trainers may only meet with their clientele 1-2 times per week, but again this will vary primarily depending upon the clients’ finances. Strength coaches often meet with athletes anywhere from two to six days per week. All exercises, sets, and training days are performed under the guidance and supervision of the strength coach. With the exception of the summer period, all athletes will work out under the direct supervision of strength coaches.

Programming
The goals of clientele of personal trainers will vary somewhat. However, the most common goal of this clientele is to lose weight, increase fitness and look better. In contrast, the goal of athletes within strength and conditioning programs is to improve sports performance and reduce the incidence of injuries. Therefore, the training programs between personal trainers and strength coaches will be distinctly different. Athletes are welcome to lose weight, increase fitness and look better, but, if it is not under the recommendation of their team coach or strength coach- they will do so at their own time.
Strength coaches have the opportunity to program long term training plans. These training plans often utilize the long term athletic development model whereby coaches will periodize training program throughout a yearly cycle. Strength coaches will frequently change exercise selection and training goals throughout the year. For instance, teams that are in-season will usually work out less often and at a lower intensity compared to teams that are out of season or approaching their current season.
Program development by personal trainers for clientele does not vary too much throughout the designated training period. Exercises may change to a certain extent, but many exercises will remain a stable throughout the training program. With most personal training programs, there is a strong emphasis upon cardiovascular training. Running, walking, cycling and overall cardiovascular exercise prescription will account for 30-60% of a personal training program.

Attention to Detail 
Training one to one in a personal training setting is a superior training method for clientele. However, this positive attribute must be weighed against the superior programming that strength coaches often put forward. Personal trainers have the opportunity to work with a single person whereas strength coaches work with multiple athletes at once. Therefore, personal trainers can often offer small training cues for clients and correct small, less subtle movement mistakes. Unless other strength coaches or interns are working with teams simultaneously, strength coaches can only pick up on larger, more obvious training mistakes. Strength coaches typically use the off-season to develop lifting proficiency among athletes while personal trainers can work on daily on attention to detail.

Working Hours
Morning hours for personal trainers and strength coaches are typically similar. Both begin their working days anywhere from 5-7am each morning during the working week. What differs with strength coaches is that they will typically not train teams between 10am-2pm as athletes attend class. The majority of training windows are early morning, mid-afternoon and late evening. For example, the football team train in the morning, soccer in the afternoon and baseball train in the evening. Personal trainers generally work throughout the day as most gyms will have a continual flow of clientele and members throughout the day.

Salary
Strength coaches typically have a fixed income, with 9-10 month contacts being most the most common working contracts. Most personal trainers do not have contracts as they work as self-employed within their respective gyms. Therefore, the salary of personal trainers can vary tremendously based upon location, hours worked and clientele. If job security is the goal, personal training might be a better option. If financial security, or fixed income is the goal, then working as a strength coach may be the best suited of the two professions. The salary of a strength coach will vary depending upon their experience and college. Division I coaches will typically be paid more than Division II, and NAIA strength coaches may only work on a part-time basis due to budget allowances at smaller schools.

Level of Legitimacy 
Without a doubt, strength coaches are more respected and recognized as professionals when compared to personal trainers. There are numerous reasons for this. The problem with personal training is that any person can claim to be a personal trainer upon completing an online exam from various agencies. Therefore, a person with little to no knowledge of nutrition, training and fitness can become a trainer within a 24-48 hour training period. Strength coaches are held accountable for their knowledge through stringent standards enforced by nationally recognized organizations such as the NSCA. The prerequisites for entry into strength and conditioning coaching jobs are higher, as is the level of competition among candidates vying for open positions.

Summary 
The purpose of this post was to highlight the varying functions of personal trainers and strength coaches. While the title of the post is personal trainers versus strength coaches- I do not believe that one profession is above or greater than the other. In some respects, it is like comparing these professions is like apples to oranges, but I do hope that this post has been successful in informing the health and fitness community about the role of strength coaches and personal trainers within the health and fitness field.

TRACKING IN FITNESS TRAINING: PART ONE

TRACKING IN FITNESS TRAINING: PART ONE

Between fitbits, pedometers and GPS analysis within professional sports, tracking fitness habits and trends over time has become a norm. The following posts will highlight five different measures that can be tracked daily and/or weekly to assess training status and improvements in overall health, well-being and sport performance. The first of five measurements is discussed below.

1.    Heart Rate

Regarding heart rate, there are two important measures that can be recorded. These are resting heart rate, commonly referred to as RHR within the fitness world, and training/exercise heart rate.

a)    RHR: is exactly as it would seem. Take a measure of your heart rate over 15, 30 or 60 seconds. There are a number of places around the body where you can feel your pulse. Locate which position is most comfortable, grab a stopwatch, and begin counting. Over time, RHR should decrease as fitness level increases. This change in HR is attributed to increased stroke volume, which means that the heart can pump more blood throughout the body per heart-beat. The end result is that the heart becomes more efficient at this process, and thus reduces the number of beats or contractions it needs per minute.

b)    Training/Exercise HR: More information will be added to the blog about training/exercise HR in later posts, but what follows is a brief highlight. As exercise intensity or level of work increases heart rate also increases. Therefore, training/exercise HR indicates how hard you are actually working. This method of measurement is superior to how you ‘feel’ as working out based upon how you feel often leads to two extremes of training; under-training and over-training. Moreover, measuring training/exercise HR during activity can help determine the phase of training and ensure the correct training zone is met at the right time. More on HR training will be discussed later.

Take the guessing out of weightlifting. (1-RM Calculator)

This repetition max calculator can identify weights that should be used for the bench press, deadlift, squat, and hang-clean exercises. Simply enter your max weights across the 'MAX' row, and enter the desired training intensity below the '% MAX'.

 

Example: If  BP, DL, SQ & HC Maxes are 225, 350, 315 and 165 respectively, enter them in that specified order. This calculator is particularly useful when you may need to calculate weights throughout a cycle or week, whereby days are designated as heavy, medium, and light.

To do this, I use 100% of a 90% max for heavy day, 90% for a medium day and 80% for a light day. By using 90% of a max, this ensures that the weights can be lifted repeatedly over a number of sets, and not just for a single set. Using 100% of a max will lead to excessive fatigue and burnout throughout sets 2,3,4 etc.

BP Calculation: 
220 * .9 = 198
198 * .1 = heavy
198 *.9 = medium
198 * .8= light

BP Heavy = 198 BP Medium= 178.2 BP Light= 158.4
^these numbers are for heavy, medium and light days for a 1-RM. To calculate percentages/weights for specified reps, refer to the chart below.

Determining what percentage is dependent upon the training goal within a cycle. If gaining strength is the primary objective, percentages should be kept at ≥ 85% of max weight. However, the percentage will be adjusted if muscular endurance or hypertrophy is the goal. For muscular endurance, the percentage of max weight lifted should be ≤ 65%, while for hypertrophy, the percentage of max weight lifted will range from 65-80%.

  Important Note: Percentage of max and repetitions lifted to failure are inversely related. For example, a weight at 90% of one's max may only be lifted consecutively for 3 repetitions. Yet, if the same lifter were to choose a weight at 80%, they may be able to lift this weight eight times consecutively. To give a better idea of weights and percentages and what significance they have for weightlifting goals, refer to the NSCA Training load chart below. The training load chart can be used to quickly reference what weights that can be lifted for each exercise. Due to it's basic structure, the training load chart is best referred to within the gym setting.