I haven’t written about research reviews for a while so thought I would mention a study I looked over recently. It was about the influences of personal training. An American study took two sets of people and gave one half a programme and the other half the same programme but with a personal trainer to coach them. This was conducted within a normal health and fitness centre. The results were significantly better for the personal training group. The results included –
-The personal training group gained 1.3 Kg vs 0 Kg gained in the self training group.
-The personal training group lost twice as much body fat than the non training group (2% fat loss vs 1%).
-The trained group gained almost twice the amount of strength in 12 weeks than self directed people (Average 38% vs 21% strength increases on two exercises tested).
-The personal training group increased aerobic fitness by 8 times more than non trained group (7% vs 0.8% improvements in VO2 Max).
-The Personal training group spent 15% less time per week exercising than non directed group (150 minutes vs 172 minutes / week exercising).
These are spectacular results showing the advantages of having someone train you. The biggest thing for me is that the significantly better results were achieved in less time exercising when having a personal trainer. This points to how it is not time training that counts but the effort level reached that really stimulates results. This seems especially true in muscle gain and fitness improvements which were almost non-existent in the self training group.
It was interesting that a third of people did not complete the programme and dropped out in equal numbers from both the trained and self directed group. This shows the reality of fitness plans and difficulty in conducting studies.
The very small changes in body fat in both groups alongside improved fitness and muscles gains represents that this plan was more focused on developing fitness over losing body fat per se. It would be interesting to see a repeat of this study with a heavy emphasis on a fat loss plan over conditioning. To see the study review please go here>>>
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To me this study is of no surprise, I have trained people for 15 years and seen person after person bounce off their plateau to new levels when working with me. This study was about fitness gains which lends itself to great results as you just need1-2 quality sessions a week to guarantee progression. The reason I would like to see a fat loss version of this study is that food intake is the biggest influence on results and that comes back to how do you act in the 165 hours on your own outside of gym training sessions.
I am highly motivated, one year I did 367 exercise sessions and over 400 sessions in 2014 (cant find link to that article). Despite this I got my best results when having my own personal trainer. My friends seemed confused about why I would “need” a trainer but studies like these show why you would employ someone to take you to higher levels. My thought always were if this is a goal that is important to you then why wouldn’t you invest in all the advantages you can find to take you there. This is even more important when you generally struggle within an area in life.
Photo – Instagram video of one of my training sessions back when the dog was still alive to bark out orders. Watch Here>>>
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