Posted on March 28, 2014 by Jenny Cromack

I’m sure that you don’t always want to hear a step by step account of my daily activities, so whilst I may some times blog about this, I thought you might find it interesting to find out my thoughts about other areas of the health and fitness world, starting with an advert I saw last night which got me thinking about how valuable having regular health assessments are.

Last night I went to see Derren Brown’s Infamous tour…..a brilliant show, I have seen him before and in addition to being an absolute master of trickery he is a fabulous entertainer – very engaging with the audience. You walk away feeling a little baffled at how he does what he does, but he also let’s you in to a few secrets along the way (although you are sworn to secrecy at the start of the show not to tell anyone!)

As I was waiting outside for my hubby, I was stood outside a hair dressers and noticed that, in association with a certain brand of ‘health/protein’ shakes they were offering ‘Free Health Consultations’ in 5 minutes. As I read the poster I found out that they could perform 6 or so measurements in the space of 5 minutes…..your weight, body fat…..I think the others were BMI, bone mass and some others….to be honest I’ve forgotten what they were as it disgusts me that ‘services’ like this dilute what good personal trainers in Leeds and other cities around the UK offer their clients. In my opinion a good personal trainer should be offering an in-depth assessment with their client not some 5 minute test!

When a new personal training client starts with us, we perform a health assessment with them so that we can then analyse their progress towards their goals through future assessments and also inform them how certain lifestyle factors, eating habits and of course exercise habits are affecting their progress. This certainly doesn’t take us 5 minutes, and if it did I’d be embarrassed to offer this as a service to our clients. I would guess the measurements advertised on this poster were taken using a machine and then the person would let them know their results with possibly some interpretation of them and maybe some goal setting? Personally, I’d much rather be analysing body fat by the use of skinfold calipers and the use of the biosignature method than using a machine – it is much more accurate. BMI – how important is that these days? Everyone should know it’s not about how much you weigh, but what your body composition (ie body fat vs muscle tissue) which is more important. Our health assessments are tailored to the individual, we perform a whole host of measurements including blood pressure, resting heart rate, circumferences, body fat, bio-signature analysis and fitness testing, but these tests are selected based on the individual’s goals. As we have such a good relationship with our personal training clients we can then analyse these and give tailored feedback and goals based on what we expect from our clients lifestyle, exercise habits and nutritional plan.

My main view on why health assessments are so important is because our personal training clients can see the bigger picture. It stops the weekly weigh in (if they have one) being the ‘be all and end all’ of training and demonstrates what progress they are making….are they losing body fat? Gaining muscle mass? Increasing their fitness levels? Has their blood pressure improved? As I’ve said before surely all of this is more important than a number on the scales.

I’m not going to begin the review the shakes this company offers and for all I know these products might be amazing but I’m not going to waste my time researching it as I’m a huge believer in eating fresh and healthy food in it’s true form. I do realise that having these shakes work for some people, but my opinion is they only work in the short term as consuming a shake does nothing to educate you about what you should be eating, or encourage you to cook healthy meals and until people realise this and stop looking for a quick fix there will always be products like this on the market. It frustrates me to see personal trainers selling products like this as I believe they are selling their clients short – personal trainers should be giving their clients healthy nutritional plans to follow which guarantee to get the results they want to see. But I do accept that the occasional shake may be more convenient in certain circumstances.

Overall, in addition to this advert frustrating me, it also made me feel proud about the in-depth services we offer as personal trainers in Leeds. We ensure our clients are given full support in achieving their goals including exercise programmes, nutritional plans and lots of support and encouragement and this is what gets the results we achieve with our personal training clients. As always we live in a world of quick fixes but if we all took a step back and looked at the bigger picture then I believe people would achieve long-lasting results.