How Long Will It Take Me to Reach My Goals?
What goals do you have for personal training? A lot of my clients want to lose weight. Others want to increase strength, prevent illness, or overcome injuries. I even have one client who is training for a marathon.
For all of these situations, I would say a two things:
Personal training (and fitness in general) is best as an ongoing thing. Once my clients reach their initial goal (weight loss, mastering the plank, etc.) they usually discover that they have other dreams they haven’t even let themselves entertain. For example, my marathon client originally came to me for weight loss. She lost the weight in just a few months, but then she realized that her new, fit body opened up fresh opportunities for her, including running long distance. So don’t think “I will only do personal training for 3, or 6, or 12 months.” You can do that if you want, but honestly you will get the most benefit mentally and physically if you make it part of your life going forward.
How long it takes to reach your goals ultimately depends on you. Let’s say you’re trying to build muscle. I can walk you through the best workouts and teach you to eat like I do, but if you don’t follow my dietary and supplemental recommendations your progress is going to be much slower. Make sure that you are ready for change, and make a commitment to yourself to follow through on the day-to-day habits that will help you reach your goals.
That said, you can expect to see results as follows:
Weight Loss. Experts recommend losing no more than 2 pounds per week. I will work with you on your fitness and diet plan to approximate this rate of weight loss. Using a fitness tracker like MyFitnessPal is really helpful, because you can enter your data and it will give you a calorie goal to stay under each day. If you want to know how long it will take you to lose weight, divide your desired weight loss by 2 to get the number of weeks it will take you to reach your goal. Recognize, however, that weight loss can sometimes slow down as you get closer to your goal, so losing those last 5 or 10 pounds may take some extra cardio to get you there.
Strength Training. You will see an increase in strength almost immediately. How much muscle you gain will depend on a few factors, including whether you are male or female. The average man can gain 1 to 2 pounds of muscle per month. The average woman, however, can only gain .5 to 1 pound of muscle due to less natural testosterone. I have a lot of personal practice building muscle, and I can say that building muscle takes not only the right workouts, but the right nutrition, proper timing of rest days, and more. If you’re just looking to build basic strength to help you carry in groceries, you will do that naturally through our workouts in just a few weeks. If you have bolder goals, you’ll need to talk to me about your lifestyle so we can set you up for success.
Cardiovascular Fitness. Even 15 minutes of regular cardiovascular exercise will improve your fitness level. But for best results, studies recommend at least 30 minutes of cardio 3 times a week to see benefits in 8 to 12 weeks. I mostly focus on strength in my sessions, but my training style will increase your heart rate, and you’re always welcome to use my cardio equipment outside of your scheduled gym times.
For more information on personal training, contact me at (760) 658-4708. We’ll set up an in-person assessment to review your fitness goals and discuss how I can help.