Program Trends
Personal Experience Inspires Client Success
client: John | personal trainer: Tony Phillips, president, Custom Fitness Solutions | location: Cookeville, Tennessee
Cultivating a Home Yoga Practice
Find out why a home yoga practice can benefit your students, how to encourage them to create the space, and what will help them sustain it.
The Secrets to Building a Successful Business and a Prolific Career
When Jake Trione, owner of TriAffect Fitness, Health and Wellness in Houston, thought about what he wanted to do after 13 years of active duty in the United States Coast Guard, he knew he’d become a personal trainer. “I thought to myself, ‘If I am serious, I should find the most successful professionals in the business and spend time with them,’” he says.
Water Fitness Magic: Method, Modeling and Music
Something magical happens when you mix exercise with water. The pool can transform physical activity into something more enjoyable, safe and effective for people of all ages and fitness levels. Buoyancy is a boon to individuals with musculoskeletal issues or other health considerations; it reduces the effects of gravity on weight-bearing joints and provides a supportive, low-impact environment for improving body composition, cardiorespiratory endurance, and muscular strength and flexibility, among other health parameters.
Sample Class: Sweat, Strength & Stretch: S3
Keep participants engaged and active with this cardio, strength and yoga fusion workout.
Group fitness fans love creative total-body workouts, and this class perfectly fits the bill by combining 3-minute intervals of cardio, strength and yoga into one fun, balanced experience. Customize this template to play to your strengths as a teacher and get people moving!
Partner Up to Warm Up
Have you noticed the latest trend? Instructors are incorporating partner work to add intensity, motivation and a sense of community. Prepare your class for success by teaming people up during the warmup. Below are a few full-body exercises that hit the upper body, lower body and core in a coordinated movement pattern. Before you start, get everyone in the “sidekick spirit” with these tips:
Cue participants to find a partner as they enter the room.
50 Ways to Cut Calories
For the first time ever, overeating is a larger problem than starvation among the world’s overall population (Buchanan & Sheffield 2017). Losing weight—and, perhaps more importantly, not regaining it—is a challenge facing millions of people worldwide. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), global obesity rates have nearly tripled since 1975. Further, 1.9 billion adults, 18 years and older, were overweight in 2016. Of these people, more than 650 million were obese (WHO 2017).
Lose Weight, Save Money
A new report from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health suggests
that people who are overweight or obese could potentially trade weight for cash.
Authors of the report produced a model linking body mass index, health outcomes and associated costs at various points in an adult’s life. For example, for a 40-year-old, having obesity (vs. normal weight) adds $15,024 in lifetime third-party payer costs, $16,400 in lifetime productivity losses and $31,447 in societal costs. For a person of that age, being overweight (vs.
Get Up, Stand Up—For Your Health
We know that sitting long hours is a health hazard that can lead to early death. What’s been unclear is whether frequent breaks in sit time can reduce that risk even if total sit time remains the same. Researchers from Columbia University Medical Center looked into that question.
Millennials Prefer “Activacations”
According to a recent survey produced by Hotels.com, most millennials prefer to lift weights instead of piña coladas while on vacation. Savvy fitness professionals can leverage this
information when marketing and promoting programs to this demographic.
Muscle Activation During Kettlebell Exercises
Understanding how different exercises affect the body is a prerequisite for designing optimal training programs. In a study published in the Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research (2017; 31 [9], 2363–70), scientists looked at muscle activation during three kettlebell movements.
On This Day in Fitness History
The first-ever Winter Olympics were held January 25–February 5, 1924, in Chamonix, France. The event involved eight sports and just over 250 athletes.
Weight Disparities in Children Worldwide
When it comes to childhood health, lots of emphasis is placed on the risks of being overweight or obese—and an estimated 124 million kids worldwide were in those weight categories in 2016, a tenfold increase since 1975. While this is of great concern, a new study has found that in the same year, 192 million boys and girls were moderately or severely underweight. The researchers believe that family income levels may play a role in a child’s weight.
Olympic Support Coach Talks Winter Games
In February, thousands of athletes from around the world will descend on PyeongChang, South Korea, with dreams of stepping onto a podium. Among them will be members of the U.S. speed skating team, who have received support from the Under Armour Performance Team.
Dan McDonogh, 2012 IDEA Fitness Instructor of the Year and UA senior manager of performance training, knows what it’s like to ready the athletes for competition:
One Size Fits One
Ozzy Osbourne was curious and decided to have his genome sequenced.
“Given the swimming pools of booze I’ve guzzled over the years—not to mention all of the cocaine, morphine, sleeping pills, cough syrup, LSD, Rohypnol . . . you name it—there’s really no plausible medical reason why I should still be alive,” he said in the Sunday Times of London in 2010.
“Maybe my DNA could say why.”
Social Support and Seniors
Fitness pros working with seniors deal with the physical and cognitive losses of aging every day. But what about the social support losses?
Row Your Way to Health
Did you know that rowing has been a competitive sport for hundreds of years (and an official Olympic event since the modern Games began)?
At lower intensity levels, rowing is a great training tool. As long as rowing form is correct and efficient, people of all ages, sizes and abilities will enjoy better cardiovascular and muscular function from rowing regularly. Rowing can strengthen your aerobic system, making it easier to take care of kids, work around the house, use the stairs at work and race from one meeting to the next without running out of breath.
Sample Class: Tabata-Inspired Blast
The high-intensity interval training wave is still cresting, thanks to its positive metabolic effects and its ability to elicit results. HIIT raises the anaerobic threshold and creates excess postexercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), or oxygen debt. Simply put, metabolism stays elevated for longer after an intense workout than it does after low-intensity exercise.
“How do you handle the situation when clients want to discuss political matters with you?
Handling political discussions during a training session can be tricky. Clients come to sessions stressed-out already, and talking politics does not help reduce their stress level. Living near Washington, D.C., many of my clients are involved in politics or hold positions that are severely affected by the new administration’s direction.
Training an Up-and-Coming Athlete
client: Lauren | personal trainer: Francesca Pucher, co-owner, Fitness 121 | location: Roseland, New Jersey
In search of progress. Lauren was just 13 years old when she first met Francesca Pucher, personal trainer and co-owner of Fitness 121 in Roseland, New Jersey. Lauren’s mom was working with Pucher and asked for some advice on how to help her daughter with her ice skating. She wondered if Lauren’s performance would improve if she incorporated some strength training into her weekly routine.