Personalized training: the benefits of training with a mentor

Surely everyone who has dared to take up sports and bought a fitness club membership has faced the choice of working out on their own or with a professional mentor. Thanks to a special editorial project, we tried to look at the training process from different angles. For a whole month the managing director of “Championship” Maxim Syreyshchikov trained under the supervision of a personal trainer. We had a chance to talk to Vladimir Bardin, World Class Vlasov’s elite trainer , and find out what are the undeniable advantages of individual training and how to choose a trainer with whom you will really feel comfortable.

Vladimir Bardin

Goal Setting

One of the advantages of training with a mentor is that, firstly, the trainer, after listening to the client, competently determines the level of load and makes a training program based on the goals, fitness level and well-being of the person. And the client, as a rule, sets a single goal for himself. For example, to lose weight, to gain weight, to tighten some muscle groups and so on. But the trainer sees in addition to this some other goals that the client may not name. For example, most often it can be posture correction.

By the way, in 30% of cases people change their goals. At first they come with one goal, but time passes and they say: “Now I want to achieve a different goal. I remember when a person came to me with the words “I just want to do fitness”, but then he started training, found out that we compete in various competitions, and wanted to join us. He got so hot that now he has fulfilled the standard of a master of sports.

Injuries that you kept silent about

A person may have flat feet or back pain. The client did not voice it, but the problem is always found out during personal training. The trainer notices in time and realizes that a person cannot do a certain exercise or does it, but feels pain. Accordingly, it turns out that there may be an injury, for example, protrusion, hernia, torn miniscus. And at personal training there is an opportunity for the trainer to choose the right exercise and to monitor the execution of the technique of this exercise, taking into account all the nuances. Because if the technique is wrong, the effectiveness can be lost by 50%, and in the worst case a person can get injured.

Maxim Syreyshchikov

Safety net and competent weight distribution

In addition, the trainer can back you up in case of anything. It often happens that a client performs an exercise and cannot cope with some weight on his own – the trainer helps. And there is no fear that you will suddenly be crushed there.

When a person comes to me, I already know roughly what weight he can cope with. You can see it roughly. And when he performs a couple of exercises, in most cases everything becomes clear: what weight he can work with, with what intensity. Sometimes, you know, what the eyes fear, the hands do. Many of my trainees say: “I myself would never have thought of putting so much weight on a block or a barbell. I thought I wouldn’t be able to do it.”

Also, there is often a lot of fuss, and a person does a lot of warm-up approaches. Roughly speaking, he wants to go to 100 kg in the bench press and starts to do first 50 kg for 10 times, then 70 kg for one more approach, and it’s good if he reaches the desired 100 kg. You need much less approaches, it all depends on what weight you can work with and what the goal is: strength, endurance, muscle volume. It also depends on what the next exercise will be.

Training diary

If the coach is a professional, then he is not only obliged to know how to provide first aid and recognize the signs of hypoglycemia, but he must also keep a training diary of each ward. First, it helps to assess the level of progress, what results were, with which a person began to train, what is the situation at the moment. It is always interesting. For example, I now have clients who have been training for several years, and many of them can’t remember what they did in training a couple of years ago. In such cases, we open a diary, in which we write down the dates and what the person performed on that date, with what weight. Personal records in exercises can also be noted in this way, the best results are always recorded. It is often problematic for the client to keep a diary, but such a thing is motivating, because the result is always visible.

Help with nutrition

Of course, in addition to training in the gym, you need to pay attention to what you eat. And in many ways it can both help you achieve your goals and hinder you if you do not notice what you eat. That’s why I sometimes even ask clients to take pictures of what they eat and send them to me. That way I can see the time of the meal, the volume, all the components and I can already give some advice.

Intensity and proper layout of exercises

The trainer gives intensity to the exercise. Often a client can be distracted by the phone, conversations, or he did one exercise, and then he doesn’t understand what to combine it with – the trainer helps here too.
For example, as we did at the training session with Maxim: he performed bench press and then, let’s say, did abs and other exercises, in most cases without changing the starting position. So that there was no such thing as lying down, getting up suddenly, then sitting down and then jumping up again. If possible, it is necessary to give maximum exercises in one starting position, if possible, because many people may otherwise have orthostatic collapse (dizziness on sudden lifting).

Vladimir Bardin and Maxim Syreyshchikov

How to choose the right trainer?

1. Read reviews and see from the outside how the trainer works with clients. If possible, talk to some of his charges and learn about the results obtained for a certain period.

2. When working with a trainer it is important to know that 6-8 weeks is the period after which progress becomes visible to others. Accordingly, if you go, work out and realize that nothing has changed even with the regularity of 3-4 times a week, it is urgent to make a conclusion.

3. Attend a trial workout. Usually it happens that when clients come for instruction, they look and roughly determine which coach they like, because you can see everything from the outside: how the coach corrects mistakes, how attentive he is in general.