Training Update

Six weeks ago I wrote a post about how I was changing up my training and was intentionally trying to lose weight whilst doing so.  This was not because I believed losing weight would solve my problems or make me happier as I am more than aware that is not a healthy way to make life changes but because I was uncomfortable, had put on weight and wanted to make positive changes.

I have said before but I am lucky that my husband is a qualified cycle coach so he writes my bike training plan and my best friend is a qualified personal trainer and nutritionist and she writes my strength and conditioning plan.

The new plan was for a six week period and on day 1 I received a message from Emma, which included the following:

‘This is a kickstart not a diet!!  I’m looking to change your way of thinking when it comes to exercise and good decisions.’

Before we began we had a consultation and completed starting measurements, weight and dress size and Emma also completed a fitness challenge that saw how many reps of squats, press ups and sit ups I could complete in one minute and how long I could hold the plank position for.

The six week period is not just about weight but about fitness, mental health and healthy eating.  Each week included 2 personal training sessions and 3 home workouts/classes.

For the 3 home workouts Emma would send me the complete workout so I knew exactly what to do, for what time, with what rest in between and no two workouts were the same so always something new to keep it interesting.

Emma gave me a booklet to complete which included a lot of information, pages to complete and also a food diary, mood checker, taking note of things during your week and noting them down, a wellness checking with the focus on being more mindful, self love and gratitude.

Fight Klub was a new addition to the schedule on a Tuesday night and so much fun!  Great music, cardio for an hour working with others.  I have terrible coordination when it comes to classes like this but I got it in the end and it was a great release too!

Emma and I used to train together all the time and I had missed that so was great to get back to training with her.

Every week I would complete a food diary and send to Emma for feedback so I could amend as needed.  It was interesting writing a food diary as I soon noticed my meals were often quite repetitive and often not enough especially on training days.

• Week 1 and 2 – went great!
• Week 3 – was my first week of working from home due to COVID-19 and that was when I was extremely busy with getting things organised as my company prepared to work from home for the foreseeable.  Whilst training sessions continued from home (I am lucky to have a home gym), I reviewed my food diary at the end of the week and found I had skipped meals all over the place and I’d had way less water than I should!
• Week 4 – I was making a conscious effort to pre plan and have a huge bottle of water with me at all times and that worked so much better.
• Week 5 – I was in the swing of things and even not having the face to face sessions and different structure meant things were kept on track and kept interesting.  Emma continued with clients via video for PT and spent a lot of time recording workouts that clients had access to – this meant I started some different workouts than I had done before including Power Wave and Boxercise.
• Week 6 – in all honesty I hadn’t even noticed I was six weeks in.  On some plans I have reviewed before I have been on count down until the finish but with every workout until the end being different this was definitely not the case here.

Working in a gym meant Emma had her workplace shut down due to COVID-19 but was on the end of the phone at all times to assist and send me over workouts to complete, review the food diary and check up on how I was doing.

In addition to the above I also continued with cycling and saw myself complete a 30 day streak on Zwift since working from home.

At the end of the six weeks I completed the following again to see if I had made any improvements:

• my fitness test – improvements in reps for all exercises and time to hold a plank
• measurements – overall loss of 11 inches
• weight – overall loss of 8lbs

It was just the kickstart I needed and definitely kept me on track and helped with focus during the lockdown and now I move on to start my new cycling plan and will ensure strength and conditioning continues to go alongside this.