Tip of the Week: How to get started on your fitness goals

As personal trainers it is our job to assist you in obtaining results. However, these results are completely reliant on what your individual goal is. Not everyone wants to lose weight, but most want to drop body fat. Not everyone wants to gain muscle mass, but most at least want to tone up. So how do we obtain results for your individual desires? By making goals. When we ask people why they exercise many people simply state “I want to stay in shape”, “I want to lose weight”, or “I want to gain muscle”. These are all legitimate goals, but how do you assess whether or not you are “in shape”, whether or not you have lost body fat and not just water weight, or whether or not you have gained muscle and not fat? The answer is to make short term goals and to assess and reassess with the proper equipment. A scale is not the preferred method. Fitness assessments, body fat measuring and circumference measurements are all more accurate ways of determining if you are progressing toward your individual goal. Having a personal trainer to monitor this with you and keep you on track using numbers and exercise assessments can ensure results. So the first step to moving toward better fitness is to make a short term goal and set a goal date. On this day you will find out if what you are doing is working, and if not, it is important not to get discouraged, but to find out why and fix the problem.

Thanks,
Furious Fitness Seattle