Knowledge is power, fact. The more you know about something the more you can make informed and relative decisions about it. This is true for many things but particularly fitness!
Our fitness learning is a vast and complicated mind field of government guidelines, personal opinions, industry advertisements, social media gurus and our own individual experience. Choosing what and who to listen to is hard, annoying and one of the biggest barriers to most peoples fitness journeys!
So where do you start?
Your coach! Without going on a preachy tirade everyone and everything else has a hidden agenda. Government bodies, large companies and yes, even those social media ‘gurus’ you see as friends have their own interests at heart.
A good coach however, and I emphasize a good coach, will always have your best interests at heart! But that’s not the only reason to choose your coach:
1 – Your coach, whoever they are, knows you personally. They know your work, your lifestyle, your goals and your abilities. This allows us to advise you accordingly. A generic training program or blog cannot accommodate all your personal needs without some serious in back ground knowledge.
2 – Your coach will watch you train. It’s great videoing PB’s and short segments of workouts and having people critique them, someone might see something your coach misses. But your coach, as in the person who see’s 90% of all your training, will be best placed to know your strengths, weaknesses and movement patterns. There’s also no hiding anything from them by just giving them a snap shot of your workouts.
3 – You will watch your coach train. Now this might not sound so important but I really think it is. When you see your coach moving well, practicing the basics, following the box programming and enjoying their training it will show you you can trust them. It will give you the confidence, hopefully, to buy into their methods and follow the process with them.
4 – Your coach is knowledgeable. A good coach (again that word good) should always be trying to improve their own knowledge and be open to new and different thoughts and ideas on training. This could include attending courses or seminars, reading books or blogs and even watching a few Youtube or instagram videos.
So the next time you have a fitness related query don’t just turn to Games athletes on insta or the person with a gazillion followers on social media. Ask your coach, after all it’s what you pay them for.