Posted on February 28, 2024 by Jenny Cromack
Some of you may have read our social post a couple of months ago about Alice. Alice has shown commitment to achieving her goals but also the story I’d like to tell here is about how it’s important to recognise that goals can change, which is why it’s important to continually re-assess your goals and what is important to you.
Alice previously trained with me to get in shape for her wedding 10 years ago. We had a break from training for a number of years and then around this time last year, Alice started back training with me again.
Since starting back, Alice has been really considered and focused about the goals she wants to achieve.
The ‘Getting Back Into It’ Phase
For the first 6-8 months of training Alice wanted to focus on getting back into training, making regular exercise part of her weekly routine and feeling healthy and good about herself. Alice has a busy work and family life and had fallen into the rut which many of us do….not making time for her health or prioritising exercise. Ever since I’ve known Alice she has always eaten healthily, but she enjoyed a glass of wine each night when cooking the evening meal and the sugary snacks such as cookies and cakes were definitely creeping in.
During this phase we focused on:
- Accountability with food with Alice tracking her food on a daily basis. I review this on a weekly basis and give Alice feedback
- Aiming for Alice to do one other workout in addition to her weekly PT session.
- During our personal training sessions we focused on a mixture of strength training, body weight training and boxing to give a good mixture of developing her muscle mass whilst also working on her cardiovascular fitness.
The ‘Getting In Shape for My 40th’ Phase
Around the end of August Alice decided she wanted to focus in feeling better in her clothes, aiming to drop some inches and body far ready for her big 40 in November! Alice had lots of outfits in her wardrobe which no longer fitter her and she was determined to fit into these and feel ace for her birthday celebrations.
During this phase:
- We continued to monitor Alice’s food intake paying a little more attention to macros and calories Alice was consuming without it becoming a chore! We focused on the basics – healthy, balanced tasty meals which contained slow release carbs, good fats and good quality proteins.
- Alice increased the number of times per week she trained, aiming for another two sessions in addition to her personal training session. The key to note here is that Alice’s workouts could be done at home, with minimal equipment and in no more than 30 minutes, proving that you can get amazing results in just 30 minutes.
- The workouts focused mainly on strength training , with the main focus on compound moves such as squats, lunges, deadlifts and push/pull upper body exercises.
The ‘Getting Stronger’ Phase
With both goals above accomplished and regular exercise and healthy eating now a constant in Alice’s life, Alice now has a new focus…..to get strong! We are going to look at how much Alice can develop her strength in the key lifts such as bench press, squats, deadlifts and also master the pull up!
I’m confident Alice will see progress in all of these areas as she:
- Is CONSISTENT with her training and her nutrition
- Is DEDICATED to her goals, without them becoming a chore. Alice’s goals don’t take over her life, but she does know what she wants and is determined to achieve it.
- APPLIES what she learns. Alice is always eager to understand how she can make improvements and is a perfect student when it comes to applying this to help her achieve her goals.
It’s worth noting, we didn’t agree this journey from day one. We constantly re-evaluate where Alice is, not only with her progress, but also to what is important to Alice at that moment in time and that, currently, has led us to this point….who knows where we might be in another 6 months time!
Well done Alice, I look forward to seeing you hit that first pull up and seeing your strength improve!