Embarking upon a fitness regime takes effort, time and for many people; money.
With all 3 currencies considered it can be a relatively high cost activity if you want it to be effective.
So wouldn't you want to make sure your's is working?
Wouldn't you want to ensure that your precious time, effort and money is actually paying dividends and getting you the result you want out of it?
If you answered yes to these questions, then you should be doing a Results Session every 8-12 weeks.
A Results Session is simply the name we use at TEAM Elwood for the time taken to sit down with your trainer and take an objective look at the variables that have been input into your fitness and health regime over the recent months/weeks to determine whether they have actually been effective at achieving the goal you set out to achieve in the first place.
With 15 years in fitness and more specifically in Personal Training under my belt, one thing is undoubtedly obvious; people who don't see results lose motivation to train. It may not be that the person has not actually achieved any results but if they never take the time to measure the many parameters of health and fitness then how do they objectively know whether they have, in fact, achieved any result or not?
It is motivating to measure positive change. That's why we insist on Results Sessions every 8-12 weeks.
It's important to know whether there has been no positive change so we can make neccesary tweaks. There's no point living in denial about our health. That's why we insist on Results Sessions every 8-12 weeks.
Other names you may have heard these sessions referred to as:
Goal Sessions
Revision Sessions
Fitness/health Assessments
Tracking Session
We use the name 'Results Session' at TEAM because one of the main outcomes we want to achieve in these sessions with our clients is to analyse what results have been achieved to date, ie: body fat lost, cm lost, strength or fitness parameters gained, fitness events completed, and determine what result each client wants to work on achieving moving forward - even if it's simply to maintain a result already achieved.
'Why is it important to do a Results Session if my goal is just to stay where I am?' you ask?
Because in our experience; if you aren't growing; you're dying. If you don't have some kind of goal or picture in your head of what your ideal health is, then over time, you'll end up unconsciously slipping backwards.
It's easy to get lost in the day-to-day of fitness, to lose track of where we started and what we wanted when we did start. So it's important to regularly take stock of what has taken place over the recent weeks and objectively assess whether it is working or not to then decide what you should continue and what needs to change.
Every 8-12 weeks at TEAM Elwood we hold Results Week: a week in which every client has a Results Session with their trainer to assess these things. Our next upcoming Results Week will be held in the week commencing August 26. Below are a few questions for you to start pondering to ensure your Results Session that week is valuable and helps to move you towards your health result faster.
Assess the last few weeks/months:
What was my goal when I started at TEAM?
Have I achieved that? yes/no
How do I know? (how did we objectively measure it?)
How much exercise was I doing each week that led to me achieving/not achieving my goal?
- length of sessions?
- sessions per week?
- intensity of sessions?
- type of sessions? eg: high vs low impact, high vs low intensity, cardio-based vs weights-based.
What did my nutrition look like that led to me achieving/not achieving my goal?
What was my weekly alcohol intake that led to me achieving/not achieving my goal?
Other variables to consider:
- how much sleep have I been getting?
- how much water have I been drinking?
- what has my mood been like? (mood/emotional state/stress can have significant effect on our hormones which can in turn affect our ability to metabolise fat/build muscle. Read more about this in our blog on Cortisol.)
Setting new goals and direction for future weeks:
What IS working to help me achieve the goal I set when I started? What can/will/must I continue if I want to keep that result?
What isn't working? How can we change/improve that?
What is/are my new health goals moving forward?
Discuss with your PT: what combination of variables should we aim for to achieve that goal? Nutrition, exercise, alcohol, water, sleep, emotions? Be specific.
And most importantly: what do I like/want to keep about my PT sessions and what do I dislike/want to change. These Results Sessions are as much about giving us PT's direction as they are about giving you direction. We use them as an opportunity to get feedback from you, our clients, about what we are doing well and what we could be doing better/more of/less of, to help you get to where you want to be with your health.
See you in Results Week ;)
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