My personal training routine

Some said you gotta be careful with personal trainers because they don't always set the right routine to help you achieve what you want. So someone tell me, is this a good routine for building general fitness, strength and power.

Warm up: 2km run
Row machine: as hard as I can without stopping (for about 3min)
Cycling: 20sec at full speed, then 10sec cool-down (repeat for about 5min)
Then back to row machine, then back to cycling.
Then I do tricep dips, bicep curls, crunches, squats, lunges, and chest presses. We don't do all of this in one session, we usually alternate muscles groups every session. I start off with a set of 20, the next set is 18...going down by 2. In between sets I do burpees, skipping, or push-ups.

This is the basic routine, although it does change every week...but you get the basic idea.

 

I'm absolutely no expert at this, but isn't that a bit too much with the warm up, row machine, and cycling? Wouldn't you expand all your energy from that?

Also, you might want to include some stretching at the end to help with recovery.

 

General fitness, yes. Strength and power, no. Doing all that endurance training prior to the actual strength portion just depletes your reserves and risks poor form. Training should always start off with a warm-up (as you have), then progress from those exercises requiring the highest amount of skill to those requiring the lowest. Since rowing and cycling don't need as much attention to form as your strength exercises, your strength exercises should come first.

 

Not a very balanced routine as I don't see many things that target your back or shoulders. You might want to look into some HIIT or HIRT programs. Good luck

I once saw a great HIRT routine using some Olympic lifts using a barbell with some weight( I think it was about 20% your max squat). It's something like a deadlift, to Romanian clean to front squat to shoulder press etc done over the course of 10 minutes. I will try to find the link

 

http://www.projectswole.com/conditi...esistance-training-and-how-should-you-use-it/

Scroll down to the Olympic routine. It sounds like what you are looking for in terms of strength and fitness

 

How often do you see the personal trainer?
Do you only do this workout when you are having a personal training session?
Do you have a workout plan for when you are working out on your own?

 

As a trainer, all I can say is I hope you haven't invested too much money into whomever is training you. That routine makes it clear your trainer hasn't a clue what they're doing.

 

I had a personal trainer for 4 months and found it good for cardio and conditioning, but not for any strength gains. I had a routine like yours but with the run first as warmup, then some upper body work, then rowing, and stretching to finish.

In that time I felt I got no closer to doing pullups - one of my aims, though my core strength and general fitness improved. It's just not possible in under an hour to do everything in one session and when I went on my own I would do a couple of hours incorporating some of my PT suggestions. Maybe not in retrospect the best, though I would do just cardio or just multigym so on the right track.

I eventually moved towards HIIT using dumbells and TRX, but now do separate barbell training twice a week and interval/core/cardio stuff once, not enough but my running has been on a hiatus

 

metal_kitty hasn't actually said that this routine is set by a p.t., most likely her own idea's that she is looking for feed back on.

 

reading the original post reminds me of a quote from joe defranco, any idiot can make you tired and want to throw up, it takes real skill and planning to get someone stronger fitter and more explosive

 

Actually Hatsie, this is set by my personal trainer.

The thing is...she lives 2 doors down from me, and she has all the equipment...so it's very convenient. If it was any further away, I probably wouldn't bother doing personal training.

I do this once a week.

I don't really want to change personal trainers cos this is just too convenient for me...and also she's a neighbour and a friend. So is there any way I can talk to her about altering the routine to get what I want without seeming offensive?

 

I think one of the main problems is you are trying to fit everything into that one hours session. Currently you do a bit of everything but the current plan doesn't have a lot of focus. I would actually pick one goal and let her know and focus on that for the once a week training session. For you this is probably either going to be strength or cardiovascular fitness. Things such as power and agility are a bit more specialised and it can be better to have a good base in strength and fitness first. Trying to fit all physical goals and work on all of them in a one hour session isn't going to improve much in any area. So if she's got the strength training equipment at her place, then focus on strength in this hour is probably a good idea.

Then in other workouts that you do on your own, ask her for advice on what equipment you do have. For example, I am sure you have runnings shoes, so you can run either constant speed or intervals on your own.

 

To be fair to the trainer when she asked what your goals were, what did you say?

Because if you listed them as you did in your post: building general fitness, strength and power in that order then she has probably seen building general fitness as your priority and set the sessions accordingly (and to be fair for general conditioning and working a bit on strengthening some muscles its not the worst plan I have seen)

Most females working with a personal trainer are not as a rule athletes looking to learn powerlifts OL lifts or explosive movements so her idea of building strength and power and what you actually want might be worlds apart

Sit down and write your immediate goals, long terms goals and what you want to achieve, and write what they actually mean

Building general fitness is such a catch all its no wonder she wrote the programme she did (it pretty much covers everything)

Did you mean improve aerobic fitness in general (in which case you should have some measurable goals such as a drop in resting heart rate, a drop in recovery time between rounds of sparring etc)
Or did you have a specific goal in mind? To run a marathon, take part in a race, take part in a competition or something specific to your chosen sport?

The same with increasing strength did you mean become better in the deadlift and the squat, or just general overall strength? Did you have a goal in mind such as squatting over your bodyweight?

A goal might be better conditioning overall: An immediate linked goal might be a 5 beat drop in your resting heat rate within a few months, a long term goal might be to run a 10km race by the end of the year

Like wise your strength aim might be to get stronger: an immediate aim to learn how to squat with good form, and your long term goal to be able to squat bodyweight by the end of the year

Once you have set your goals out let the trainer know them and they might be able to write a better programme for you

 

how about directing her to this thread and ask her opinions of the posts and why people would say such things, can't go wrong with that.

 

What's convenient is rarely what produces the best results.

If you're just looking for easy fun times with your buddy, then it doesn't matter how terrible the workout is.

If you really care about your health and fitness, it won't matter how inconvenient finding a better trainer may be.

 

Frodo, you're right. I'm already studying 2 martial arts, and if my personal training wasn't just 2 doors away, then I wouldn't even bother doing it.

Icefield, aerobic fitness is definitely a main focus. I don't have a specific goal, but I just want to improve as much as I can. Not looking to run a marathon, but just want to be more athletic in my daily life and for my martial arts.

In regards to strength...it's not like I want to be the next Olympic weight lifter...it's mainly because I want to make up for some of the strength disadvantage of being a girl. I wanna be able to hit and kick hard....VERY hard. I know it's a lot to do with technique, but strength and power definitely comes into it.

But the last thing I wanna do is bulk up and look like this. Ideally I don't want to change my shape too much.

 

you can improve your aerobic fitness easily enough without your trainers help, use her session to work on strength

get yourself a HR monitor and do 3 sessions a week of steady state cardio, keep your HR between 130-150bpm, start at 30 minutes for each session and add time each week do this for a month or two and you will see big improvements

as for strength work let your trainer lead those sessions, and dont worry you wont look like that unless you start eating like a horse and injecting yourself, females simply cant put on any real size and muscle without illegal help, heck men have a hard enough time doing it!