Fitness Makeover's for Women

In the past 15 years I have trained all sorts of clients for all sorts of reasons. Working with people who are in terrible condition, possibly facing the end due to hypertension, cardiovascular disease to finely tuned athletes earning in the neighborhood of seven digits. Of all the experience I have gained over these years the system of training I enjoy the most is working with middle age women who's goals are to regain the youthful bodies that had escaped them in the course of life, berthing children, maintaining a household etc.
What I have learned from this ongoing study is that women have more drive than men, they tolerate pain more gracefully, and tend to listen to instruction far more than men.
As a trainer and a backyard exercise scientist this is a perfect setting to learn about the human condition and how to invoke change in clients, both physically and mentally.
We train predominantly outdoors, typically 5-6 days per week in the early morning (between 5-7:30 am). I decided on this early timeline for two very important reasons.

1. Getting up early requires discipline. It means you are responsible to the daily clock. You need to get your rest to survive the morning and get on with the rest of your day, which eliminates much of the activities that are counter productive to fitness change.
2. Getting up early eliminates excuses. If I ask most prospects what they have planned for 5:00am, the answers always the same, SLEEP! Which means if you wake up, you have time. Your agenda is open.

I train women over varied terrain. Hilly roads, trails and parks. I like the early morning fresh air, something that training indoor lacks. Most all of our strength training is conducted with body weight and leverage. which means that pretty much anywhere you go, you have resistance training opportunities.

Aside from the organic nature of our training approach we preface all of our training programs with clinical evaluations of both active and resting metabolism. I want to know how fit you are when you begin, I want to know how much your body requires in the way of energy so I know how much debt you can tolerate, without sacrificing lean muscle. I take a great deal of pre-program data, weight, measurements, body composition, strength assessments along with the previously mentioned clinical eval's.

We use heart rate monitors to ensure that we are administering the appropriate range of intensity in any given work out. When our theme is to burn fat we want to burn the greatest percentage relative to greatest caloric output possible. I also want to know what is enough work when we are reaching the higher end of training intensities to avoid injury.

It's been a little over 3 years now as of this writing and we have consistently run 8 week programs with new clients every session with no end in sight. What has been most interesting is the predictability we have learned. We can almost determine the end result based on an initial interview. This is generally a result of attitude more than physical presence. The most important thing we have learned and we can sum up into one phrase is this; "The body follows the mind, train the mind and the body will follow".

About five years ago I was introduced to over speed development training with the use of a high speed treadmill. I was intrigued with the idea of re-educating the central nervous system to rewire the motor unit's of the working muscles of the legs to achieve a much higher turnover than what has been employed in other alternative systems of training.


I found two very interesting opportunities that became apparent while using this system of training. First, realize that in order to sustain these high speeds (in excess of 20 miles per hour) the subject needs to be harnessed in a pneumatic canopy. This canopy provides not only protection from injury, it also allows for incremental unweighting. Being able to adjust the amount of body weight that is to be reduced, also allows to minimize muscular recruitment. This unweighting provides an opportunity to provide neural stimulus at reduced force production which supplements a reduction in the potential for injury which is an obvious benefit. What is more interesting is the ability to introduce corrections to mechanical faults in gait through unique strapping of the thighs and feet.


I know it's difficult to paint this picture in this writing, but what we've essentially accomplished is a marriage of speed production and bio-mechanical gait correction. Not only are we able to train at unbelievable speeds, we are able to correct poor gait mechanics all within a matter of less than a dozen training sessions!