5 Things You Should Tell Your Personal Trainer Every Time You See Them

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With so many people using personal trainers to achieve all sorts of health and fitness goals and with Spring just arrived, it makes perfect sense to discuss what you should be talking about with your trainer before or during your session with them.  My clients and I talk about all sorts of weird and wonderful things, but the following five things are right up there at the top of the list.  I use the info gleaned during a casual conversation usually during the warm up to decide whether or not I need to make any sudden and last minute changes to their scheduled workout.

While some trainers will disagree, I don’t see the point in flogging any client who is feeling slightly ill, a bit fluey, only got a couple of hours sleep last night or has a nagging back twinge from last week’s heavy back session.  So without further ado, here’s my top 5 things you should tell your trainer.

1. How’s your body feeling today?

One of the biggest mistakes 21^st century humans make is we tend to rely too much on technology to do things our own body is capable of doing.  We’ve essentially forgotten how to listen to our own body and so I teach my clients how to become in sync with some tell tale signals.  One piece of overused technology is the simple alarm clock.  If your day begins with the loud blasting noise of an alarm clock going off at 6.30am, followed by a stiff coffee to activate your brain, then clearly you’re doing something wrong.  For millions of years humans used their built in circadian rhythms to know when it was time to wake up.  This was usually at sun up.  Any mammal still sleeping after 8.00am, usually became someone else’s breakfast so you got up when  the sun came up and usually went to sleep when it got dark.  Fast forward to the 21^st century and we use a loud noisy device to wake us up, have to drink a stimulant to get going, and usually drink a couple more during the day to keep us going and then when it comes to unwinding at the end of the day, we knock back a glass or 3 of wine to drive us to sleep.  So my take home point is this: stop and listen to your body.  It will talk to you if only you pick up the signals.  A headache may mean you need to drink more water.  An elevated heart rate over a period of days or weeks may indicate you’re over training.  Runny stools means you’ve got some intestinal or gut issue going on.  Not being hungry or always being hungry may mean you’ve got some hormonal issues.  Lots of signals to listen to, so long as we stop and listen to them.

2. How much sleep did you get last night?

Whether its fat loss, muscle gain, or somewhere in between, people often make the mistake of thinking that it’s during your workouts that you either burn your fat or build your muscle and this couldn’t be further from the truth.  In reality it’s when you sleep that your body does the bulk of muscle building and fat burning, hence the reason why sleep is so important to your goals.  When you train, there are a number of metabolic processes taking place, some of which are designed to keep you going during your workout.  Converting on board liver and muscle glycogen into freely available glucose for your cells to use as energy is one.  Unfortunately, if you’re training hard enough, body fat is NOT, I repeat IS NOT the body’s preferred energy source while training intensely.  Getting to sleep by 10.30pm should guarantee you at least 8 hours.

3. When was the last time you ate and what was it?

Remember those liver and muscle glycogen stores we talked about before being the body’s preferred energy source for those high intensity workouts, well they get replenished from the foods you eat, particularly your carbohydrate intake.  So if you head into a training session with a reasonably good amount and quality of protein and carbohydrate stores on board 1-3 hours prior to training, you can pretty much guarantee yourself the greatest chances of training really well.  Head into a workout with no fuel on board and rely on body fat stores to fuel your workout and I guarantee you will fade, get dizzy, crash or even puke during your training, as they are the classic signs of training without any energy on board.

4. How much water have you had to drink today?

Our body is anywhere from 60-75%  water, depending on what literature you believe, so you can pretty well guess how important it is to be sufficiently hydrated when you turn up for a workout.  2% dehydration can cause a 10% loss in performance.  To calculate how much water you should drink in a day simply multiply your bodyweight in kgs by 0.033 to get the amount of water in litres you must drink in a day, then divide that by 6 work out ow much to drink by every meal.

5. How did you pull up from your last workout?

If your trainer is anything like me, then they have you on a structured training regime, one that is measureable, with sufficient progression from one day to the next.  Oh and they had better be writing your workouts down so they’re not guessing it or winging it from one to the next.  It will stress your body just enough to make your body adapt and make you sore for a couple of days, but not so sore that you can’t function (walk, shower, work etc) for the next 6 days.  Sometimes we play a balancing act between too much and too little.  Only with verbal feedback from my clients do I know if I’m on the money or not.  If your workout wasn’t hard enough, let your trainer know.  If it was too hard, again let them know.

So there you have it, my top 5 things you should tell your personal trainer every time you see them.  Till next time, take care and I’ll talk to you real soon.

Pat Rae

ABOUT: Pat Rae is a personal trainer, lifestyle coach, massage therapist, motivational speaker, author and presenter.  He is the owner of a boutique PT studio in Brisbane  and an online health and wellness program both of which have been established to help people live healthier, happier and more energetic life through exercise, eating whole real foods and stressing less.  See more at http://www.prpt.com.au & http://www.patrae.com