FITNESS Training with purpose

Training with purpose


Personal Trainer
Paul O'Brien

WE all struggle with our motivation from time to time. This is certainly true where exercise is concerned. You may have started the year with a solid resolution to exercise more and look after your overall health.
If you have started a new programme of exercise, perhaps joined a class or are walking regularly, you will eventually get to a point where it becomes harder to face into your next workout. Enthusiasm may drain a little and left unchallenged, will eventually lead to low motivation and probably cessation of exercise.
There are a number of strategies you can apply to prevent this dip from happening. Among them are ensuring you have social support for your activity, perhaps exercising with a friend and challenging each other; adding variety to your workouts is key, as is periodically trying something different.

Purposeful training
An often overlooked strategy is to employ what’s known as ‘purposeful training’. This strategy is a hot topic in the fitness industry at the moment. We have been employing it at Bootcamp West in our group sessions. However, you can also bring more purpose to your exercise on a personal level.
A good starting point is to begin a training or exercise diary. Take this diary along to your workout and record what you did. Use headings like type of exercise (aerobic, walking, jogging etc); resistance training (bootcamps, weights etc); flexibility or core work etc; length of workout completed; names of individual exercises; number of repetitions completed.
You can also record this information after your workout if your memory is pretty good.
Next, before starting each exercise session, ask yourself this simple question – ‘What is the purpose of my session today?’ Here, you are asking yourself what you wish to achieve from this session. For example, if you are jogging, you could focus on doing an extra 5 minutes relative to your last jog, or spend an extra minute at a higher pace for this run.

Extra repetitions
If you are working out with weights or in a class you could focus on particular exercises and try complete an extra repetition or two relative to your last workout. Other focus points could be to learn a new movement or exercise, or even to bring a little extra awareness to your workout (more on this next week).
The point is to consistently set a goal for yourself before each workout and then focus your awareness on achieving this in your workout. This will help prevent you merely going through the motions when exercising. You will find your workouts are revitalised and that you will actually look forward to achieving the small goals you set for yourself.
This strategy is very helpful in the context of achieving an overall, longer-term goal. A goal to lose 2 stone in 6-months can seem very far out of reach in the beginning. Bringing more focus to your workouts by applying the principle of Purposeful Training will provide smaller stepping stones and allow you to enjoy the journey all the more.

Paul O’Brien is a personal trainer and life coach based in Westport.