Less intense exercise can be better – two observations.

Some trainees want to go all out every time. Some trainees think they are going all out. They really haven’t revved up their engines as high as they think they have, but that is another matter. For those who like to go all out it is a good thing for awhile. After a time the most hardened trainee will suffer from burnout or become over-trained.

A good trainer will anticipate the burnout or the over-training and make pro-active adjustments for the trainee. Sometimes as trainers we miss the cues and have to make adjustments after the fact. I had one client who absolutely loved the workouts and trained very hard. He then became sporadic in his attendance. I asked him about it. He told me no longer looked forward to the sessions and would look for a reason to stay late at work so that he could avoid an appointment. Lesson learned; we made adjustments. We did not go hard every time after that. When we did he was really up for it.

I had driven woman who swam hard three times a week at 6:30 in the morning in addition to her training with me. When she first started training with me she improved steadily. The improvement soon diminished, and then it stopped. I had raised her weight on the leg press just two pounds. With great difficulty she managed 60 seconds of exercise, not the usual 90 to 120 seconds. I had her take a week off. We avoided the leg press for a while, and we did a few moderate workouts. After five weeks we went back to the leg press. I was anxious to see what would happen after five weeks of not doing the leg press. For her the weight almost felt easy, and she did the exercise a minute longer than her previous effort – she had doubled her time on an exercise that had crushingly defeated her the last time out.

Had I not had her rest and told her to fight through that plateau she would be forever stuck at the same weight on the leg press. From that point on we trained on the leg press less often and her improvement continued unabated.

Everyone has a different capacity for demanding exercise, just as some people can tolerate more time in the sun before burning. As trainers we make inferences concerning a client’s ability to recover and improve from exercise primarily by monitoring a client’s improvement or lack thereof. With experience we get it right most of the time.

Through trial and error you can eventually find out what works. At Austin TX Personal Trainers and New Orleans Personal Trainers our personal trainers have developed a high intensity training program (HIT) with special attention paid to recovery to insure that the improvements are ongoing – our business depends on it.

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