Bootcamps – Vs – Large Group Personal Training What’s the Difference?

The other day I was invited by someone to attend a bootcamp that they had been doing.  I gladly accepted the invitation because I saw that this could be a great opportunity to learn a little bit more about what is out there, and maybe have a little fun in the process.

Now as someone who has been running “bootcamps” for over 2 years and doing personal training for 8 plus years I know a little bit about how to execute group training.  I’ve never actually attended a bootcamp before I started my bootcamp, but I’ve heard plenty about other bootcamps and I wanted to experience the difference between the norm and what I was calling bootcamp.  This process has led me to consider not calling my bootcamp by that name any longer.  Here is why.

Bootcamp


My alarm goes off at 5 AM to wake me up for the workout, which is no biggie for me, I’m used to it.  Although, I would have rather done an afternoon workout, I can understand that a lot of people like to get their workouts in early so I was glad to join this group of go-getters for an early workout. 

I show up early at the freezing cold park where the workout takes place to meet the instructor and fill out some paperwork.  I understand paperwork is completely necessary to get to know your clients.  I realized quickly however that I could’ve just slept in an extra 15 minutes because the instructor didn’t get there until about 5 minutes prior to the workout beginning.  The instructor gave me a sheet of paper to fill out.  Contact info, how I heard of the bootcamp, and if I’d had a heart attack lately were the depth of these questions.  I was a little upset to see that after I gave the instructor the sheet of paper I had just filled out he just said thank you and put it in pile along with the other new peoples sheets. He didn’t even look at it.  What was the point of the health history if you aren’t going to look at it, but oh well; I’m healthy, so lets move on. 

By this time I’m already a little skeptical, but willing to put it aside to get a good workout on.  Ugh, I’ll make this quick.  The workout consisted of the following:

1.     Running laps around the park for 10 minutes

2.     Forming a line and doing random amounts of pushups, burpees, jumping jacks, squats, and lunges.  I love all of those exercises, but the programming left a lot to be desired.

3.     Running laps and taking breaks to do more jumping jacks, jumping on park benches, more pushups, and more burpees.

4.     We finally ended with about 20,000 sit-ups, crunches, and more mountain climbers.

Even better yet, I had a non certified trainer who was a drill sergeant want to be, yelling at me the entire time telling me to work harder.  Naturally when I started getting too tired to do the some of the exercises in good form I dropped down to an easier regression of the exercise. I wanted to make sure I didn’t get hurt, but that’s a no go in this bootcamp.  Work hard and do what everyone else is doing in bad form maggot!   That’s what it takes to get results.  Sure, if the results you are looking for is bad posture and injury.  This guy either didn’t know what good form was, or just didn’t care.

To give the bootcamp some credit however, everyone was working his or her butt off, and it was really cheap.

Group Personal Training

Leaving that bootcamp made me realize that I had to write this article.  I had to let people know there is a better way to train large groups, but still get people to work hard, and work smart at the same time.  I’ve been working hard over the last few years with some of the best in the industry like BJ Gaddour, Mike Robertson, Jared Woolever, Pat Rigsby, the people at FMS, and many others and have found a better way to train groups.

So what is the difference between “bootcamp” and group personal training?  It’s huge.  Lets begin.

 

Assessments:  Having someone fill out a piece of paper and throw it into a pile without looking at it is a disgrace.  Group personal trainers require some sort of screen or assessment.  I currently use the FMS screen to make sure I know what’s going on with my client’s bodies.  I will also go over the client’s health history and goals with them to make sure we know exactly what they want and exactly what they need.

Typically Inside: Workouts don’t have to be inside to be good, but it sure is nice.  It also allows you to be able to have access to lots of strength training equipment, which is essential in a well-rounded training program.

 

Exercise Progressions:  Everyone is different and everyone has different needs.  If you aren’t going to do an assessment (which is crazy) you at least need to have different levels of difficulty for each exercise.  At the bootcamp I tried to regress, but was yelled at.  In group PT you are praised for being smart if you drop down.  It’s about working as hard as you can at the appropriate level for your body.

Certified Personal Trainers:  If someone who can’t put in the effort to get certified is training you please run as fast as you can away from that bootcamp.

Well Thought Out Programs:  Random workouts that change by the minute may be fun, but if you want a real program that produces results it should follow some sort of training guidelines.  You get results by learning exercises and tracking your progress. If you are just doing random exercises you will get random results.  Programs should be based on your needs to get you the results you are looking for.  How is a random workout going to give the 50 different people in the bootcamp the same results when each person is different?

Less People in the Workout:  One coach can’t train 50+ people well.  Indoor group PT typically has less people to make sure the coach can correct your form so you can improve.

Nutrition Intervention:  I know a lot of group personal trainers and almost all of them include some sort of nutrition information or nutrition counseling in their programs.  If nutrition is forgotten in your bootcamp, forget that bootcamp.

All of the Benefits of Bootcamp Without All of the Negatives:  Outdoor bootcamps can be fun, low cost, and provide group support.  That is the draw of bootcamps in the first place.  Group PT offers all of these benefits without any of the drawbacks that I discussed above.

This article has been a long time coming.  Anyone who knows me understands my strong dislike for generic crap training like the bootcamp I attended.  It’s my mission in life to increase the quality of group training in America. I hope this article will make a small splash in that happening.   I know the readers of this blog will understand the importance, so if you know anyone that may like this article please share it with them.  If each person who reads this makes a vow to increase the quality of his or her bootcamps and/or group training I know I’ve begun to make the difference I’m trying so hard to make.  Thank your for reading and for going the extra mile to do what is right.

 Neutral Pelvis and Proper Posture in Resistance Training – Workout Your Midsection Without Sit-Ups Or Crunches

Many people ask me the best way to train their core. How often, what exercises, how long etc. One of the best ways to train your core is not through isolating your abs at all, but through training your entire body as a whole.

Training your midsection is a vital part of any fitness program. Some of the most valuable benefits are injury prevention, better performance, and of course a flat ripped stomach. One of the best ways to make sure you have a rock solid sexy trunk is to train with exercises that target multiple muscle groups like the squat, lunge, chest press, push up, rows, etc. It’s important to make sure that when doing these exercises you have a neutral pelvis.  What does it mean to maintain a neutral pelvis?  To keep it simple, you want to make sure that your lower back has a natural curve, imagine wearing a belt, the buckle should point straight ahead and not down.  

A good way to check posture is the put a broomstick or PVC pipe on your butt, back, head and make sure those 3 points of contact are maintained throughout any exercise. The key is to keep these points of contact with the pelvis neutral and the chin tucked, or neutral neck. 

It's important to make sure when you do these exercise you inhale and tighten the abs, glutes, obliques, and lock your lower back into its natural curve. Maintain this locked core and natural curve throughout the entire exercise. Make sure you inhale during the easier part of any lift and slowly exhale or hold your breath and  during the hardest part of the lift.

Even doing standing curls with perfect tall posture will increase your core training effect in comparison to doing curls seated or on a machine. After doing a routine that hits your entire body with exercises that target multiple muscle you should know that your core has been thoroughly trained. Do this 3 times per week every other day and you will be on your way to the strong core and fit body you are looking for.

If you are unsure if you are lifting with proper posture please make sure to ask one our trainers for help!

Why Cardio Alone Doesn’t Work

Have you ever heard someone referred to as a skinny fat person? Maybe you’ve seen someone who fits that description. A skinny fat person is someone who is not fat in the typical sense of being large in size, instead this person is small framed yet has no muscle tone. These skinny fat people believe that pounding away on a treadmill, or doing the elliptical for hours a day will get them the dream body they’ve been searching for, but have probably never picked up a weight in their life. Cardio certainly has it’s place in every fitness program but it should be a part of a balanced program including cardio, strength training, and a healthy diet.

The key to losing body fat and keeping it off is strength training. Lean muscle is the driving force behind your metabolism and the only way to increase your metabolism or burn more calories at rest, is to increase lean muscle through strength training. For the women that are afraid to get “too bulky” from strength training that is simply a myth. When most people think of strength training and the results it yields, they think of the heavily muscled bodybuilders that plaster the covers of magazines such as Muscle and Fitness. The models that grace the covers of those magazines are simply models who are hired to sell magazines and not a realistic result of someone who strength trains a few times a week to get healthy. So in order to truly rev up your metabolism and get rid of body fat once and for all, hit the weights!

The Truth Behind Your Scale!
Your Scale Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story

When it comes to weight loss, the scale can be a good measure of progress, particularly if you have a lot of weight to lose. But if you place too much emphasis on your weight and not enough on your body composition (the ratio of fat to lean muscle), you’re only getting half the story. Plus, dreading your weigh-in or obsessing over the number on the scale is unproductive and can lead to unhealthy behaviors such as bingeing or starving yourself. Losing pounds doesn’t always mean losing fat. Here’s why the scale can be misleading.

· The scale doesn’t tell you how much fat you have. Your scale does exactly what it’s supposed to—it tells you how much you weigh. But in addition to measuring your weight, the scale weighs bone, water, muscle, organs, and undigested food. When the number on the scale goes up or down, it doesn’t represent only fat loss or muscle gain. It measures fluctuations in glycogen (stored carbohydrates) and water, and it even measures how much that breakfast you ate weighs.

You may wonder about scales that claim to measure your body fat. These send small electrical currents up one leg, through your pelvis, and down the other leg to determine your body’s density. Then a formula is used to estimate your body fat. The problem with these scales is that they’re notoriously inaccurate. However, they are usually consistent in their readings, so they can be helpful as a measuring tool. Even though the body fat reading might be off by as much as 5 or 10 percent, if the number trends downward over time, you know you’re on the right track.

· The scale can’t tell if you’ve gained muscle. A pound of muscle is like a brick, small and compact. A pound of fat is like a fluffy feather pillow, bulky and lumpy. When you gain muscle and lose fat, your body gets smaller and tighter. Building muscle also makes it possible to drop clothing sizes without a big change in weight. Perhaps after a 90-day fitness program, the scale says you lost 7 pounds, which may not sound like much. But what if you actually lost 12 pounds of fat and gained 5 pounds of muscle? That’s a remarkable improvement in your body composition, but you wouldn’t know it if you only used your regular bathroom scale to track your progress.

· You didn’t really gain 5 pounds of fat overnight. You may step on the scale one morning and shriek in disbelief because the number is five digits higher than it was the day before. Stop panicking. Unless you ate an extra 17,500 calories the previous day, you didn’t gain fat (a pound of fat is equivalent to 3,500 calories). Your scale is registering water, stored carbohydrates, and food. Also, cheap bathroom scales may have measurement errors, giving slightly different readings even when you’re at exactly the same weight.

· Your body’s water levels are constantly changing. The scale can move up or down depending on how much water you drink, how much salt you consume, how much you sweat, and how many carbohydrates you eat. An average person can see a daily fluctuation in water weight of about 2 pounds, without any changes to diet or exercise habits. These fluctuations do not signify fat loss, and watching the scale move up and down every day can be frustrating for many dieters.

If you’re trying to achieve a healthy weight and improve the way you look, you should focus less on what the scale says and more on developing the good habits that will produce results. To get lean and strong, with low body fat and nice muscle tone, there are three things you should do:

1.  Resistance training. Cardio workouts raise your heart rate to help you improve your fitness level, burn calories, and shed fat. Resistance training builds muscle, which boosts your metabolism and helps you burn even more calories.

2.  Healthy diet. No matter how much you exercise, you’ll never reach your fat-loss goals if you don’t follow a healthy diet consisting of protein, vegetables, and fruit. The right foods in controlled portions will fuel your body as it shrinks.

3.  Track your progress. If you don’t use the scale, you need to do something else to check your progress.

· One of the best ways to keep track of your changing body is to use a tape measure. Record your chest, waist, hip, thigh, arm, and wrist measurements in a journal. Update the measurements every 30 days to see how your body changes.

· Pictures are also good indicators of progress. Have someone take front, side, and back photos of you every 30 days and keep these with your body measurements.

· Body fat testers can also be used regularly to track your fat loss. Monitoring your progress with tools other than the scale will give you a more realistic assessment of your weight loss success

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· Notice how your clothes fit. This is a foolproof way to prove that you’re losing weight. If your clothes are getting looser, your body is shrinking, even if you don’t see a big change in the mirror yet.

Too many people are slaves to the scale. They can’t resist weighing themselves, only to feel guilty, angry, or demoralized when the numbers don’t move down quickly enough. If you’re one of those people whose weigh-ins lead to loss of motivation or a feeling of helplessness, then you need to reconsider using the scale for your progress checks. Success is more than just a number!

Weight Loss – What Successful People Do That The Others Don’t

A while back I asked my readers what they wanted to know about fitness.  I wanted to know what people needed to know to help them lose weight and achieve their fitness goals.

While I did get a good amount of responses asking specific questions, the overwhelming amount of readers informed me that they have a decent idea of what to do to reach their goals they just don’t do it.  They try for a while and quit or never start at all.

I realized that people asking the specific questions where the ones who were having the best results and the ones who were struggling where searching for motivation.

So what’s the difference between people who succeed and those who have a hard time? In the process of training hundreds of people over the years, I’ve noticed what successful clients do that the others don’t.  Here are a few of the traits of successful clients

They Know What They Want

You have to know exactly what you are working for.  It’s very important to set a specific long term and short term goal that you are trying to achieve.  This is basic goal setting.  More on goal setting below.

They Know Why

Even more important that what, is why.  Knowing why is what keeps you motivated.  You have to a have a reason and acknowledge your reasons to yourself.  Real reasons, not why people or books tell you should be fit, but the real reason you want it.

You have to want to do something to stick with it.  Why do you want to workout and eat right?  You probably don’t.  You just want what comes from eating right and exercise.  That is your reason for doing it.  The payoff is much more rewarding than the work.

 

They Are In It Long Term

Long term weight loss takes long term effort.  You can’t expect to rip off weight fast and keep it off.  You gained it slow you have to lose it slow.  It’s also important to know that you have to have a nutrition plan you can stick to for life and you have to cheat! Eat right 90% of the time and exercise consistently and you will have great results.  Just know that you have to do this for life and get out of the mindset that you can keep going up and down the roller coaster.  It doesn’t work.  Invest in yourself and invest in fitness for life.

They Have Confidence They Can and Don’t Make Excuses

Most people fail because deep inside they think they will fail.  Guess what?  The people who have had success aren’t anymore special than you.  Genetics aren’t making you fat, the man isn’t holding you down, you do have time to exercise, and no one is shoving food down your face.

Anyone can have great results.  You are a smart and special person who can figure this out and stick to it.  Think of all the things you have done in the past that you thought you couldn’t do.  Even as simple as riding a bike.  It seemed so hard at one time, but now its second nature.  Eating healthy and consistent exercise can be second nature just like riding the bike.  You just have to practice and not give up.

They Have A Step By Step Plan

You have to have a plan and you have to write it down.  It doesn’t have to be much, but at least write down the following:

Long term goal

Why you want it

Steps you will take to achieve it

Potential Obstacles

Solutions to Obstacles

3 short term actions to help you achieve it

How you will reward yourself when you do achieve it

Mapping out those things will give you a conscious plan of what you want and why you are working for it.  You have to remember why you want this when those times of temptation hit.

In summary, there are really two major traits of the people who achieve success that can be summed up in one sentence.  People who achieve success in fitness want it bad and remember they want it bad at all times.

Do you want it bad?  Why?  What are you going to do about it?

Training Quality Over Quantity

At Complete Fitnesss Results, we have integrated the Functional Movement System’s philosophies into our program design.  Our beliefs and methodologies have been based around these training systems for quite some time, but we had no baseline screening system for classifying if someone was able to safely enter our program to get the results they were looking for.  Integrating this system into our at-home format program design has been nothing short of amazing.  Our team at Complete Fitness Results really believes that this form of screening and standardizing movement is essential for safe, timely, effective results.

In order to better understand the premise of where these beliefs stem from, let’s take a look at some of the rules that Functional Movement Systems are based around.

·      Pain should not be present while performing basic bodyweight movement patterns.  If there is pain associated with these basic movement patterns, movement patterns will be compromised and substantially increase the likelihood for developing further injury to the site of pain.  Also, this could lead to a secondary injury from the body compensating to avoid the pain or restricted movement.

·      Having multiple limitations within several basic movement patterns, even if they’re pain free, can create compensations and general weaknesses that may lead to a greater likelihood of injury.

·      Basic unilateral movement patterns should be symmetrical on both right and left sides of the body.

·      Fundamental and basic movement patterning should precede performance related activities.

·      Basic before Complex, Stable before Unstable

Foundational movement patterns need to be assessed before we can create a program designed to fit each individuals needs.  Our goal at Complete Fitness Results is to provide the best personal training service around.  Using the Functional Movement Screening System, we were able to establish a solid baseline screening system to better help manage and prevent injury to the musculoskeletal system and increase fitness results.  Also by establishing a baseline scoring criteria, we will be able to monitor and track progress to ensure that the right program is being implemented.

All of this screening, assessing, and implementing the right mix of corrective exercises into the programs are going to help keep our clientele safer and healthier for long periods of time.  We realize that injuries are going to happen.  However, it’s our job to reduce the likelihood of injury.  After all, if someone gets injured during training, their outlook and thought processes about exercise can be compromised for the rest of their lives.  Exercise should be enjoyable…Exercise should be well thought out and serve a purpose…Exercise should help you meet and exceed your goals…Exercise should help improve movement patterns and make daily activities more enjoyable.

This training philosophy is the foundation of our personal training and at-home program design at Complete Fitness Results.  We’ve had multiple questions about exercises being “red lighted.”  The reason for taking certain exercises out of your program all stem back to these five rules.  It’s our job to get results and keep you injury free.  It’s all about the quality of the movement, not the quantity.