The Big Step

I mentioned in my last post that I'd be talking about my brush with a personal trainer.  Well, because things were going rather slowly, I figured why mess around, go the whole hog and try and get someone to force me to do things.

After looking around a little, I found a guy called Ian at ICFitness, who nowadays spends most of his time on ICNutrition, as a Herbalife reseller.

Note: I don't promote or use Herbalife, just thought i'd mention it!

Ian came along and did an assessment with me and at the time I was still near my peak weight at around 123kg, and he helped with proving to me that exercise is possible even if you're out of breath, just push through and it's only for a period a day (at the time they were 30-40minute sessions).

We generally met up 1-3 times a week, dependant on where I was working, or if I was around, and it would always be at my apartment, with the sessions focusing on high energy low rests workouts and routines.

I found it incredibly difficult at first, but it didn't take long for me to get used to using the kettle bells, dumbbells, and getting used to the fact I had 40 minutes of hard work to do before I could start my evening (or day in some instances).

While I no longer use Ian, it taught me that exercise can be done anywhere, and that it's very simple to put together a simple routine that suits the environment you're currently in, helping me with doing some workouts when i'm away on work, and even spontaneously either at home or out.

Unfortunately I don't have any of the measurements or the weight I was at when I finished having sessions with Ian, but I think I dropped around 6-8Kg, and a couple of inches around the waist.  For me, it was an extremely valuable step to take, and I'd recommend it to anyone who's struggling for motivation and has the opportunity to take the chance.

Attempting to move it

During my time working away, I often attempted to pop in to the miniGyms at the hotels and try my hand at various things, and being a complete novice at Gyms, it didn't always go so well, and my motivation was never really at the levels that I needed it to be.

As we all know, exercising is one thing when you're not used to it: hard work

I'd often find myself trying to run 1km, and very often coming up short, and only managing to last for periods of 1-3minutes, and even on the bike I was struggling to last more than 5-10 minutes.

My inability to perform when going to the gym was restricting my motivation, and it was only when I began to go swimming that I really started to feel that I could turn things around, but ultimately these brief visits would never stand me in a good stead to lose any weight, and much less improve activity.  I simply didn't want to stand on a treadmill for 20minutes.

At this point there were a few work friends that would come in and out which sometimes would help motivation, but even this wasn't really helping me move along, while it was an important part of progress.

Rather than push through the boundaries slowly, I needed to speed things up, so I looked in to hiring a personal trainer, which i'll come back to soon.

Helping hands

Well where do I start.. I've mentioned previously about having a couple of people that I spent a lot of time with in the few years while I was working away, and how they had a massive impact on how I spent my time away from home, so let's talk a little about the people I surrounded myself with, took advice from, and have learnt from to help me along the way a little.

I firstly started reading a really good blog after finding it reading about Nike+, which is a blog about a guy called Sean Willson, and is called LearnFitness.com, it really shows his struggle with getting the weight off, and what/how he used to get to where he is now (still going I should say!).

A friend of mine has been going through University as a personal trainer and nutritionist, and has his own blog which he runs over at SGTCoaching.  We've had many conversations about the type of exercise to do at what time, and what type of foods to feed your body either in times of no exercise or conversely, times of heavy exercise.

Something that i've really struggled with, is getting a regular gym partner who likes to spend the same amount of time as me (or as early in the morning!), when I first began it was really difficult as I barely had any stamina, but there was a couple of friends I worked with who helped me push through some resistance routines, while now I do a lot of cardio in the Gym I tend to do this on my own but have a couple of guys who tag along for short periods when possible.

Over time, i've found that having friends who receive your honesty is extremely important, because they'll give it in return and help out when they can!