Posted on May 27, 2015 by Jenny Cromack

Its always great to share a success story from one of our personal training clients at Motive8 North.

Whilst many people think personal trainers only deal with weight loss clients, the truth may actually shock you. I would only classify roughly half of the clients I see as primary weight loss the clients. The other half fall into a broad spectrum of categories, from increasing their muscle mass to improving their performance in running/ cycling and clients that wish to improve their sporting performance.

This month our Personal Training Success Story is about James Underwood. Whilst one of James’ targets was to reduce his body fat percentage he also wanted to focuse on building size, strength and power for rugby and these are his top priority.

Since January James has worked through 4 cycles of training. Breaking training into key phases where the training plan focuses on one key element leads to a considerably more efficient outcome. These cycles have included focus on hyperthrophy, strength and lastly power, where James has began to master the skill of Olympic Lifting! Olympic lifting is something that will help transfer James’ new found strength and power into movements and actions on the pitch.

At the start of this year (22nd Jan) James initially measured in at 18.12% with a lean mass of 135.8lbs. Following 4 months of training we now have a newer faster, stronger James at 16.64%, with a lean mass of 144.2lbs, an increase of 8.4lbs muscle mass. A phenomenal achievement when you consider that this increase in lean mass has had to be maintained through power training, which contrary to the opinion of most people is not the most optimal method at building muscle mass.

Since January, here are James’ improvements in his lifts:

• Back Squat 3RM= was 95kg, now 120kg
• Deadlift 1RM= was 130kg, now 145kg
• Hang clean 1RM= was 42.5kg, now 57.5kg

James’ training sessions currently consist of acceleration training, combined with absolute strength work. This complex approach to training translates into amazing performance in his sprint work through a potentiation effect. James is well on track at the moment to continue the amazing progress, building more size, strength and power before the start of the 2015 season , a very worth candidate of a personal training success story!