Older clients looking to lose weight!

[ocdaustin]

Hi,

I've just got a new client an older women looking to lose weight. I know as part of the recommendations that you should do resistance work as well as cardio.

Would you suggest a circuit based program with weights?

I just find that doing resistance work followed with cardio is boring, does anyone have any ideas as to what sort of cardio would be best for weight loss?

I know that working around 75% MHR for 20-60 minutes is the scientific proven method of losing body fat but like I said its boring.

Can anyone give me ideas please.

[KyleAaron]

I just find that doing resistance work followed with cardio is boring, does anyone have any ideas as to what sort of cardio would be best for weight loss?

If it's boring, add weight to the bar, or incline to the treadmill, or whatever's appropriate. Progress isn't boring. Remember that what's boring for someone experienced in the gym isn't for a gym newbie. For a gym newbie, everything is new and novel and scary. Don't worry about being entertaining, worry about being effective.

Diet will be most of her weight loss. You'll just help her get stronger and fitter, which will make her life better even if she doesn't lose any weight at all. Fat and strong and fit is better than fat and weak and unfit.

Do you not have a gym manager or experienced trainer in your gym you can ask about this? What's your situation?

[ocdaustin]

You know what I was hoping you would reply, I was reading through all your threads you definitely know your stuff. so thanks for replying.

Yeah I have a manager but to be honest not worth talking to.

How would you train clients looking to lose weight? Weights burn a lot of calories and have better (EPOC) so would you just do a weighted circuit sessions? HIIT circuits are also good i believe but never done one of them and not sure of work to rest ratios 1:1?

I would normally take them through like a circuit based session like: Squat over head press using VIPR, bent over rows, press ups, sled/prowler push, box jumps/step ups, battle ropes.

How does that sound to you? and do you have any exercises or training ideas thanks much appreciated.

[KyleAaron]

For weight loss, they'll achieve it by means of diet. The workout is irrelevant. Make them keep a food diary. You'll soon see patterns.

If they are overweight but healthy, then the government health recommendations of X serves of vegetables and Y serves of meat a day and so on are good. Go look them up for your country, print them out and give them to the person. Mostly it's common sense, though. This is up on my gym wall, in order of importance,

1. if smoking, stop
2. eat MORE fresh fruit and vegies
3. eat LESS junk food
4. eat MORE meat, fish and dairy. "But what about cholest -" "Okay, more fish."
5. drink LESS booze

These guidelines apply whatever the person's goals. If you get them following them, you can tune things up from there. Yes, they are all obvious - but how many follow them?

If they are overweight with a chronic health condition like type II diabetes, then ignore all the above because they need special attention. Shop around and find a good dietician you can refer them to.

So if the workout is irrelevant, why does the weight loss client even need to work out? Because it'll make their lives better with or without weight loss. Fat and strong and fit is better than fat and weak and unfit. Consider the basic human movements:

- squat
- push
- pull
- hip hinge
- loaded carry

Write down 10 variations of each, eg for squat, which is hip and knee flexion and extension: leg press, lunge, split squat, goblet squat, barbell back squat, squat to bench, etc. Now order them in terms of strength required and technical challenge, eg a squat to a bench is easier than a squat below parallel. You choose a variation and progress it with weight, reps and sets over time, and then move on to the more technical version. I like to keep the movements distinct. While doing a squat & press saves time, the squat & press won't have as good a squat or press as you would get doing them separately.

Put another way, the variables are,

1. range of motion
2. weight
3. reps
4. sets
5. technical difficulty

You should progress ONE of these in each and every session, and in that order of priority. One is enough.

An older deconditioned client with no contraindications like hip replacements might start with a squat to a bench, 3 sets of 5. Seriously, that's enough for day one. Next time you have her do 5,5 and then give her a 5kg dumbbell and do 5,5,5. Next session a 7.5kg dumbbell and same, then a 10kg dumbbell and same. In her 5th session you have her move to a lower bench with that 10kg dumbbell. Lower the bench by 10-25mm a time (spare bits of gym matting are useful here). At some point some weeks in she'll be squatting below parallel.

At the same time you'll be progressing the push and pull, so that as well as having increased hip and knee mobility and strength, she'll have achieved increased shoulder mobility and strength. By the time her hips are strong enough for her to be able to squat with a 20kg barbell on her back, her shoulders will be mobile and strong enough to hold it there. Does that make sense?

You will get a lot out of Dan John's work, look it up. The main thing is to realise just how little it takes to challenge someone. For example,

Squat: door knob squat (hold onto something at waist height, squat down, hold for 3 count, come up)
Push: plank 10" (a plank is a "push" because if you can't do a plank how would you do a pushup?)
Pull: bat wings (stand 6" from wall, pull elbows in towards the body and back, hold for 3 count)
Hip hinge: wall drill (stand 6" from wall, chin forward, butt back, minimise knee bend, push butt back until hamstrings are complaining, hold for 3 count)
Loaded carry: farmer's walk with pair of 10kg dumbbells

For someone 50-70yo who's never done anything before but has no complicating injuries or health conditions, that would be a pretty good first session.

We focus on strength because that'll make the most difference to someone the quickest. It doesn't matter how good or awful their cardiovascular fitness is if simply getting up off the couch is a struggle - so you get them better at squatting, maybe they won't sit around as much. One of my first ever clients was a woman on a walking frame. Putting her on a bike wouldn't have helped her, but bench squats and rack pulls did.

You get them stronger and increase their lean mass, they'll find it easier to do things, little aches and pains will disappear, and so on. The cardio part is like the diet, most of it will happen offstage outside training sessions. I gave them a step counter. It's pretty common for people to be doing 2-3,000 steps a day. I had one overweight woman who was doing an average of 850 steps a day - fck knows how, normally just going for a coffee and to the loo will give a person 1,500 steps a day, she must have been holding on or something. You don't get them to go from 2,000 to 10,000 steps a day, they'll be in pain, some are so weak they may actually hurt themselves, and in any case nobody will do it for more than 3 days. You tell them, "okay, tally it up over the week. Each week, 1,000 more steps on average. The eventual goal is 70,000 steps a week." Suggest small changes like walking the 1km to the train station instead of driving it, that sort of thing. It adds up.

But the diet's most important for weight loss. Refer again to the government recommendations, or my list above. Those are all obvious things: but how many people do them? The 850 steps woman and I had a conversation once:
"Kyle I haven't lost any weight yet."
"Well it's been 3 sessions. But remember what I said about food. Now where's your food diary?"
"I didn't bring it." (Translation: "I haven't used it at all.")
"Okay, what did you eat for dinner last night?"
"Oh I ate pretty healthy." (Translation: "I didn't, which is why I'm not being specific.")
"That's good. What did you eat?"
"Well I went out for dinner with friends. I had fettucini carbonara."
"Pasta, cream, mushroom, bacon, white wine, butter, garlic. Go on."
"And some garlic bread."
"Okay."
"But I had a side salad. Greek salad."
"Any dessert?"
"Some gelato."
"How about wine?"
"Well I'm not sure. The table had four bottles of wine, there were six of us but two didn't drink because they were driving."
"So you had pasta with cream, garlic bread, a greek salad, gelato, and a bottle of wine. And you did 850 steps that day. Can you see what's happening here?"

Can you see why no series of workouts can do much for the person if they're regularly eating like that, and doing so little physical exertion outside the gym? Do you really think two half-hours a week, or even three hours a week, can do much against a bucket of calories and less than a thousand steps a day?

Make them keep a food diary. Give them a step counter, and have them work up to 70,000 steps a week. Get them stronger.

[KyleAaron]

This will be hard to achieve working in a mainstream gym. Long-term, though, consider this approach:

https://www.********.com/41991310143...type=3&theater

[bonscott]

@ KyleAaron
You could literally get paid for the info you freely distribute. If Zig is correct, you truly will get everything you want. Do you have any published material out?
And thank you!

[ocdaustin]

Yeah I work in a mainstream gym.

Thanks for all that information, it has helped loads and given me a greater knowledge.

I agree with bonscott and not many people would go out there way to help thanks mate.

[KyleAaron]

The truth is that being a trainer is a craft. Most craftsmen, like plumbers, chefs and electricians do an apprenticeship.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship

In brief, the apprentice spends 2-7 years under a master, starting with sweeping up and being paid a pittance, and gradually takes on more and more responsibilities and is paid more, until eventually they graduate to "journeyman", where they can make their own way in the craft; not now but in the past after some years they might produce a "masterwork", presenting it to the guild of masters to themselves be recognised as a master. Really, personal training should be like this. New trainers should not walk straight out of PT school with a polo shirt and clipboard and start training people, they should work for some time under an experienced trainer learning the craft.

Unfortunately the fitness industry is not built like that, thus it's dominated by enthusiastic amateurs, most of whom get burned out and quit long before they get any good. I've had masters help me become a journeyman, and in the absence of any masters here, I have to do my best to pass it on, as Ronin and others do.

Working in a mainstream gym, there are three things you must start doing today:

1. Get yourself a trainer. As Alwyn Cosgrove points out, your music teacher had a music teacher, your judo teacher had a judo teacher, but how many trainers have had a trainer? Would you go to a karate teacher who'd never had a lesson, but just made it all up himself from reading a book? Get a trainer.

2. Personal - Every day, talk to one new person in the gym. Find out their name and two other things about them. Then go and write it down in a book, and next time you see them refer to something they told you. "So how is it with the kid starting school now?" or whatever.

3. Trainer - Every day, teach one new person a movement. Just pick a movement you like and teach it to 200 people over 12 months. I chose barbell squats and deadlifts, but let's go simpler and say it's a plank. From this you will figure out some things, like: is it a useful movement? and if so, for whom? and how does it apply to other movements? After each time you do this, go away and write down what you saw and learned, eg "plank doesn't work for obese 55yo women, it hurts her lower back and her boobs and belly drag on the floor humiliating her" or "the trunk needs to be planked in a deadlift, too - if someone can't stay tight in a deadlift, maybe planks will help?" And so on.

Adding in some gym appointments and in two years you will have spoken and taught movements to over 1,000 people. You may be a good trainer or a bad trainer, but after talking and teaching movements to over 1,000 people, you will be a better trainer than when you started.

You hear a lot about the "10,000 hours to mastery" rule, which lots of people quibble with; but the point is that by deliberate practice you get better. "Deliberate" comes from "deliberation", which means "thinking about it." By talking to new people you practice the "personal" part, by teaching them a movement you practice the "trainer" part. Deliberate practice of being a personal trainer.

And of course, if you get the reputation of always being out on the gym floor helping people, then who will gym members come to if they want to do personal training?

[ocdaustin]

Yeah I will look into getting a PT.

At the moment I'm finding it hard to get confidence in the gym, I'm the newest PT in there. Also watching some PTs in there they seem to do isolation exercises before compound exercises now I know this is not correct but you begin to second guess yourself.

[Iceman1800]

Yeah I will look into getting a PT.

At the moment I'm finding it hard to get confidence in the gym, I'm the newest PT in there. Also watching some PTs in there they seem to do isolation exercises before compound exercises now I know this is not correct but you begin to second guess yourself.

I'd never hire someone like you as a PT based off this post. You have zero clue why other PT's train their clients the way they do and you say it's wrong. Does that client have physical limitations or injuries that prevent certain compound movements? Are they rehabbing? You don't know but say they're wrong. No thanks.

[ocdaustin]

I'd never hire someone like you as a PT based off this post. You have zero clue why other PT's train their clients the way they do and you say it's wrong. Does that client have physical limitations or injuries that prevent certain compound movements? Are they rehabbing? You don't know but say they're wrong. No thanks.

Yeah I understand what your saying, and yeah I know what there fit and healthy individuals if I didn't I wouldn't have posted it. Of course if people have limitations you have to regress I'm not that stupid. Also you can regress compound movements to suit client needs. But nice one for the offer 👍