Arguably the most important element of achieving your health and fitness goals is consistency. The frequency with which you train over a consistent period of time will have a bigger impact on your results than almost anything else.
Anyone can train really hard once or twice, but the ones who make a real lasting change in their health and fitness are the ones who stay consistent over the long haul. The one-off people just don’t see the changes they like.
There is a quote that has been attributed to Aristotle, the Ancient Greek philosopher and scientist…
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
You could lift this word for word and say the same about fitness. We are what we repeatedly do. Fitness, then, is not an act but a habit. It’s not the one great workout that changes your body, it’s the dozens of them, strung together over a long period of time. It’s a consistent set of actions accomplished without a break, and with high intensity.
Personal training is a huge part of the accountability that a lot of people need in order to stay consistent for the long haul.
Personal training and accountability - how it helps to change lives
There are a lot of reasons why somebody would hire a personal trainer, but I’d argue the most important one is accountability. If you see the difficulty many people have sticking to a regular training routine, their personal training sessions, (whether once weekly or several times per week) are the bedrock from which they build their fitness and accountability.
Personal training is the motivation you rely on when you can’t motivate yourself. The accountability of working with your personal trainer, ensuring you have a good training session even on the days when you don’t feel like it is powerful.
Habits are built on momentum, and the momentum you get when you’ve had a great session that week is really powerful. It pushes you on to adopt healthful behaviours for the rest of the week.
This isn’t just opinion either - in a study from 2019, a group of university students had their dietary choices monitored to see how a training programme would influence their food choices.
The dietary choices were monitored to see how many calories, and what kinds of foods they were consuming pre and post exercise intervention. The training program lasted for 15 weeks and there were several observations noted, especially around the type, duration and intensity of the exercise program followed. The study concluded…
‘The 15-week exercise training appeared to motivate young adults to pursue healthier dietary preferences and to regulate their food intake.’
Think about that for a second… regular exercise triggered them to make lasting changes outside the duration of their workouts. It inspired other healthy behaviours and choices away from the gym. This suggests that the personal training isn’t just effective during the session - it helps afterwards too!
Support equals success
Having a personal trainer also means there’s another person invested in your success. This is very powerful and can be another motivator that keeps you accountable. You wouldn’t be letting yourself down, you’d also be letting your personal trainers down too.
Research conducted in 2020 assessed something called ‘Supportive Accountability Measure’ (SAM), which assessed whether or not having social support helped with adherence to healthy behaviours when trying to reverse obesity.
The results showed that the ‘SAM has strong reliability and validity across two separate studies’.
By having other people invested in your goals, it would appear that you help yourself stay on track with achieving them. It’s part of the reason personal training works so well. These are the ‘soft’ elements of personal training that we don’t always think about, but are arguably more important than the dietary advice or the exercise programming.
Where to start with personal training
If you really want to change your health, the best place to start is with an experienced personal trainer who understands your goals and how to get you there. At AdMac Fitness we have a team of professional personal trainers, who operate out of our private fitness studios.
We have a diverse team of trainers, all with experience in different elements of fitness. No matter what your goals, one of the AdMac Fitness team can help you get there.
Our private personal training studios are located in Bow, E3 and South Woodford, E18. Thanks to our set up, we’re not in a public gym, so the places are never crowded and you won’t have to wait for your equipment. You’ll be able to exercise in a purpose-built personal training space to give you the very best session available.
Our South Woodford personal training studio is completely private, so you’ll have an entire facility to yourself, allowing you and your personal trainer to focus the entire session on you and your goal achievement.
At AdMac Fitness we’re not about fads, fashions and short term fixes. We want you to succeed properly over the long term, so with our help and advice you can get your fitness back on track! If you’d like us to help you, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!
AdMac Fitness: Arch 457 Robeson St, London E3 4JA
AdMac Fitness South Woodford: Unit 4 Marlborough Business Centre, 96 George Lane, South Woodford, London, E18 1AD