We are halfway through our August client testing week and are seeing a lot of clients making great progress since they joined our facility.
While a lot of clients are lifting heavier weights, jumping higher, taking on more complex exercises, etc. the whole point of our program is simply to make people healthier. In our expert opinion, life long health is made up of a few different elements:
- Possessing a decent level of strength and power i.e. ability to move a heavy weight and be able to move yourself or an object quickly
- Maintaining a decent level of basic movement (one of the tools we use to measure this is the Functional Movement Screen)
- Healthy nutrition habits- hydration, vegetables, healthy fats, healthy proteins, healthy carbohydrates, etc
- Healthy fat:muscle ratios
- Stress management
- A basic level of stamina/endurance
- Regular massage
- Daily postural habits
- Great breathing mechanics
- Healthy and supportive social and work environments
- How you manage your stress levels
- Who you spend the majority of your time with
- Your living environment- clutter is one example of your environment that has a massive effect on “WHAT/WHO YOU ARE”
- Your ability to listen and implement the advice that is given
- Your level of education about health and training related topics
An example would be if you eat really healthy food but work in doors for for 8 hours a day, sit at a desk, do no regular exercise and then go straight home and sit down and watch tv. The good food will 100% give you a ton of benefit but your still not going to be healthy in the deeper sense of the word.
We put a huge effort into educating our clients on all of this in a very manageable and gradual way. We do this through:
- Education workshops
- Regular assessments
- Blogs
- Videos
- Tools and resources such as nutrition templates, recipe booklets, posture and breathing drills
- Testing weeks
- Deload weeks- weeks where we back off in the intensity of our training sessions
- Structured monthly training programs
- Habit development to support clients long term
There is much more to health than what you eat. If your health is a priority for you (and hopefully it is), you need to realise all the other factors that are necessary to optimise it and then put a plan in place to allow you build them into your lifestyle in a way that won’t overload you.
Think of changing your lifestyle as eating an elephant. As the saying goes- How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time (Full disclosure: I’ve never actually ate an elephant so don’t take my word for it).
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