Train SMART

At First Guess Fitness we believe that you don’t have to train harder to get the best results but rather train just hard enough to get the ‘minimum effective dose’.  Now, I’m not saying that you can’t still train hard but just understand that harder doesn’t always mean better, especially if you aren’t training Smart! Sometimes it just means being in the right mindset and understanding the difference between training and nutrition as they pertain to reaching your goals.  Here is what I mean:

Strength training should be primarily for: posture, strength, balance, muscle tone/growth/maintenance 

Nutrition is should be primarily for: health, fat loss, muscle growth/maintenance

As soon as you walk through our doors you will see a poster hanging on the wall with with some house rules and things you should know about fitness and strength training.  Here’s our list:

1. You control the intensity of each workout with your own effort.

2. Pain increases cortisol and cortisol increases body fat.  There is NO benefit to working out in pain.  Avoid painful movements at all costs and focus on training non-painful movements.

3. Soreness is okay, but it is not a marker of a good workout.  Just because you are not sore the next day does not mean that you didn’t get a good workout.

4. Stacking fitness on top of dysfunction will only lead to injury or plateau.  That is why we assess to find your dysfunction or limitations and work to fix them while training around them.

5. Overtraining is the #1 contributing factor to both chronic fatigue and injury, both of which will prevent you from getting results.  If you train hard more than 3 times a week, it is highly recommended that you take a deload (recovery) week every 5-6 weeks and train light or rest completely.

6. Lifting weights does NOT make women bulky!  It will help you get lean, strong, gain energy and help you prevent injury.  Avoiding strength training will cause you to lose muscle and become frail and weak.

7. You get much better results from doing a less challenging exercise with good form than doing a more challenging progression with poor form.  Form BEFORE intensity.

8. If your goal is fat loss, it is imperative that you understand that you CAN’T out-train a bad diet.

9. Recovery is just as important as the workout meaning it is what you do the other 23 hours counts.  Getting a good post-workout meal, taking care of your soft tissue, getting 7-8 hours of sleep each night, and reducing stress are essential to a well balanced program and seeing results!

10. When training your core, it is important to understand that this part of your body was not meant to flex, extend and twist under load (e.g. doing crunches, twists or extending your back).  Your lumbar spine is designed to stabilize which is why we do exercises to force your core to work in a neutral posture (e.g. planks, side planks, etc.).  Essentially, every exercise you do is working your core if you execute it properly and core training at it best is meant to train good posture of your spine through various movements and exercises.

There you have it!  If I left anything out please post below!