Today is National Fitness Day, and as personal trainers we think that’s a pretty good excuse to celebrate, and more importantly, take a while to think about what fitness means to each of us. “Fitness” means different things to different people. For some, it’s running a sub 7-minute mile, and for others it’s about getting up and down from the floor with ease. It all depends on a person’s age and goals. So, what markers of fitness could you use for goal setting? Well, Becky has a few ideas… some more serious than others!

Let’s start with mobility and agility, key components of any fitness programme. These terms could refer to how flexible somebody is, but there’s more to it than that. Does the body move with ease when changing positions? Can the body sit and stand in a variety of different positions? All the movements we do in our day to day lives, from the day we we’re born, will contribute to how mobile we are. Here are a few ways you can assess yourself here:

1. Can you perform a strict banded overhead squat? This will assess hip, ankle and shoulder mobility.
2. How close can you get your hands and feet while performing an inchworm? This will assess hamstring and hip mobility.
3. Can you get up and down from the floor while using just one hand (or no hands) in less than 5 seconds? This will assess how agile your body is, as well as assessing your mobility.
4. Bonus advanced test: can you perform a pistol squat? Not only will this assess mobility at the knee, hip and ankle joints, but it will also test the strength at these joints.

If you struggle with any of the above, the most effective way to improve your mobility is to strengthen the areas that don’t move with ease and spend more time in positions that challenge you.

Next, let’s look at strength. This is the area most of our members come to us to work on. When you think of a strong person you may think of Eddie Hall lifting cars or Ronda Rousey pinning down her opponents with ease. But strength can be far more subtle than that, it’s simply the capacity to withstand force or pressure. Sadly for us ladies, on average we’re just are not as physically strong as men, however there are plenty of ladies stronger than plenty of men out there. Don’t forget that! Ways to assess your strength could be:

1. Can you perform a technically proficient press up from the floor?

Ladies – Most women cannot perform full floor press ups without training. Any woman who can perform just one is classed as having above average strength for a woman. Trained women should aim for between 1 and 10 floor press ups.

Gents – Men should aim for 5-20 floor press ups.

This will test upper body strength in the pectorals (chest) and triceps (back of the arms). Floor press up strength is also largely dependent on bodyweight. If you struggle with floor press ups, try them at a 0.5-1.5-metre incline. This will reduce the load through the upper body.

2. Can you lift your bodyweight in the form of a barbell deadlift?

Ladies – This is a very tangible target for most women of all ages after 1 to 12 months of training.

Gents – Men should aim for between 1.5 and 2x body weight within 1 to 12 months of training.

These goals will largely depend on your body weight, however, do remember mass moves mass, the heavier you are the more you may be able to lift.

3.  Bonus advanced test – Can you push your car on a flat surface with a driver in the front?

This will largely test lower body strength, particularly in the quadriceps. [Disclaimer – obviously only try this in very quiet streets or car parks…]

Let’s move on again to cardiovascular fitness, the most common form of fitness to assess. You remember the bleep test at school, right? When we think of fitness we tend to think of how long or far a person can continue to work. While there are many ways to assess a person’s cardiovascular fitness in a science lab, for example we can test lactate threshold or VO2 max, these scientific terms aren’t overly helpful for most casual gym-goers who want to assess themselves. Ways to assess cardiovascular fitness could be:

1. How long can you continue to increase and sustain your speed on a bike?

Find a bike (or assault bike if you’re feeling brave) that shows speed in km per hour. Starting at between 18-22 km per hour continue to pedal increasing speed by 1km every minute. Once you can no longer increase your speed and sustain it for one minute its game over. Non-athletes should aim for between 7-12 minutes of work. Bear in mind starting at a lower speed may allow you to work for longer, and readings may be different depending on which bike you choose.

2. Bonus advanced test – Can you beat the London underground from Marylebone to Paddington station using no other form of transport other than your feet?

It’s only 1.3 miles….

No running tests we hear you cry. We find it best to leave running out of the equation when it comes to testing cardiovascular fitness, so there will be no mention of that dreaded bleep test.

Whether you’re a regular gym-goer or not, why not use National Fitness Day to think about what fitness really means for you, and set yourself some goals for the rest of the year? That’s exactly what we’ll be doing. If you need any help setting yours, drop us an email and we’d be happy to help.

In our last blog post we looked at the difference between fitness and conditioning. While most types of exercise will improve our general fitness, we need to be a bit more specific when it comes to conditioning.

If we’re looking at conditioning, there are two main factors we need to consider:
1. Energy output and control
2. Joint mobility and integrity
Let’s look at what these terms mean.
1. Energy control
Sadly, we live in an era when the general philosophy around fitness is often to go harder, faster, further – if you’re crawling out of the gym then you haven’t worked hard enough. Although this may earn you a load of kudos from your trainer or other members of your gym it’s unlikely to translate into medals won after crossing the finish line.
While the idea of being able to go 100% from start to finish sounds heroic, practicality it’s just not possible for the human body to maintain this level of power for an extended period. While there will be times where you’ll have likely pushed yourself to maximum effort continually, operating at this maximum capacity will ultimately lead the body into a state of stress, poor recovery and injury – ironically, decreasing your ability to perform.
Instead, it’s important to know your body’s limits, when to push on the gas and go 100% and when to back off. You need to be able to recognise what your limits are and to have a strategy around recognising when you’re about to exceed them, as this is the only way you’ll be able to manage your energy effectively, giving you the ability to maintain a high level of power output throughout your session.
An effective tool in teaching you energy control is something known as ‘dynamic energy control.’ This tool helps you to become aware of your own energy output, and to consciously control it to avoid fatigue and maximise performance.

There are serval lessons in dynamic energy control, with the cardiac output method being the first:

When you’re able to recognise what your limits are with your own heart rate, and how different levels of exertion and rest cause it to increase and decrease, then you can move on to more complex methods in energy control, such as tempo intervals and alactic-aerobic intervals. These two methods will teach you how to control energy at higher intensities, as well as improving your ability to recover quickly between bouts of work using periods of rest.
Dynamic energy control will help you to recognise the signs of fatigue, and to develop an awareness of what different levels of exertion look and feel like, so you can learn to manage and manipulate it.

2. Joint mobility and integrity
Runners certainly have a good level of fitness, with markers including a low resting heart rate, high Vo2 max and a high anaerobic threshold, and they often know how to manage their energy output through dynamic energy control – that’s one piece of the conditioning puzzle ticked off.
If you’ve recently taken up running then it’s more than likely you’ve experienced pain or even worse an injury in the ankles, knees or hips. If you talk to any runner, they will almost certainly have suffered from medial tibia stress syndrome or “shin splints” – a sharp shooting pain up the inside of the shinbone. Essentially, this is a sign of doing too much, too soon and is a classic indictor of poor conditioning.
A lot of runners – running is just one example here – don’t think about the mechanics behind running, and the amount of force the joints are exposed to as the feet strike the ground. We exert around 2.5 – 3.2 times our bodyweight through each foot when running at moderate speeds [1], with each foot striking the floor at an average of 80-100 times a minute. As an example, if a 60kg person runs for 30 mins, the force the ankle joint is exposed to is equivalent to a 152-192 kilogram baseball bat continually being bashed on the sole of each foot 25,000 times – it’s no wonder there are lots of injuries!
A big part of conditioning is preparing the body for the environment you’re training or competing in. Conditioning methods such as aerobic plyometrics and explosive repeats are great at developing the tissues of the lower body to handle incoming stress by becoming bigger, stronger, and more durable. This develops our joints and tissues around to better handle the stress imposed by the sport or environment.
The same can be said for golfers with the amount of force their elbow joints are expose to or combat fighters and their wrists. Different sports place a different level of stress upon the body and if you’re looking to reach your peak performance then you need to make sure your body is ready to meet the stress your particular sport demands.
So, as a quick recap – are fitness and conditioning the same thing? No…
• Fitness (energy systems, strength, power) = energy production, the potential for performance.

• Conditioning = qualities of fitness + the skill sets that facilitate energy expenditure. Preparing the body for the demands/environment of the sport.  A well-conditioned athlete is able to execute their skills to the best of their ability throughout the competition.
The key to unlocking your true performance is marrying these two, as only then do these two pieces of the performance puzzle come together.
If you’re looking to improve your fitness and conditinng levels then why no sign up to our 30-day Fitness & Conditining Programme – a thirty day programme that develops your conditioning and teaches you the necessary skills to unlock your full potential when it comes to performance.

sources:
Burdett RG. Forces predicted at the ankle during running. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 1982;14(4):308‐316. doi:10.1249/00005768-198204000-00010

When fitness coaches talk about conditioning, they often refer to it as a measure of “how fatigued someone becomes over time” or “the ability to keep on going,” and this becomes linked with how “fit” somebody is. Now this isn’t strictly true: fitness and conditioning are two separate pieces of our overall performance.
Confusingly, it’s both possible and very common to have a relatively high level of fitness but poor conditioning. So what’s the difference, and how can you make sure you’re tackling both elements of performance in your training?
Fitness is defined by gauging set markers that allow us to see a potential increase in performance, for example Vo2 max, resting heart rate, anaerobic threshold, or an increase in strength, speed or power etc. Generally speaking, the markers we track for fitness are both measurable and tangible, allowing us to see how much someone can lift or how fast they can run. Fitness markers are all qualities that contribute to the energy output side of performance.

Fitness is the measure of physical qualities that create the potential for performance:

Conditioning on the other hand is a lot less data driven. Conditioning is about our ability to use our fitness qualities to meet the demands of the environment. In effect, it’s the physical and mental skills we must develop to manage our energy effectively to meet the demands of a sport.

Conditioning is the real driver behind our performance, as if wish to utilise all our potential (fitness markers) to drive performance we must also work on developing the skills needed for conditioning – as performance requires both a high-level of fitness and a high level of conditioning.

Conditioning is about our ability to use our fitness qualities to meet the demands of the environment:

A good personal trainer or conditioning coach should be able to develop your fitness and your conditioning to prepare you and your body to perform within the sport or environment you’ve chosen. Most gym-based resistance and cardiovascular training will improve our fitness markers, but conditioning is a different ball game.
Look out for Part 2 when we look at how you can tackle this piece of the puzzle!

p.s. Over the last few months we’ve been working on a brand new online training programme that promises to get you fitter, stronger and overall, better conditioned.

If you feel ready to start moving forwards, then this could well prove beneficial for you – Welcome to our 30-Day Fitness & Conditioning Programme.

Now, just because Covid-19 is restricting us to our homes it doesn’t have to restrict us in our training. During this pandemic we understand you’re unlikely to have access to a gym or any of the gym equipment you may have been used to. So, we’ve put together a collection of small workouts that can be done from the comfort of your home with limited to no kit – what’s more, they only take around fifteen minutes to complete.

Why not give a few of them a try?

It’s been lovely to see so many people using this lockdown as a time to rekindle their love of running or take it up for the first time. However, with little warning of the lockdown coming, some people may have taken it up as a last resort, with little knowledge of how to get started and how to progress while staying injury free. Here are a few tips to get you started and keep you going over the next few weeks.

1. You do not need to run continuously

Don’t ask too much of yourself – every step counts, whether it’s running, jogging or walking. If you’re new to running, try a 1:2 ratio of running and walking to start, for example 1 minute of running followed by 2 minutes of walking. Once you feel more confident, progress to a 1:1 ratio. As the weeks go on slowly reduce the walk time and increase the run time. It may take a few weeks before you feel confident to run continuously for more than 5 -10 minutes.

2. You don’t need to run everyday

I know the idea of running every day sounds great during that motivated phase when you first take it up, however this simply is not sustainable, nor is it ideal. No matter how strong or fit you may be, your body needs time to recover. Lack of recovery leads to injuries, low motivation and boredom. Keep your body and mind hungry to run by limiting it to 2-4 runs per week.

3. Keep the routes changing

In an ideal world you would run a combination of off road and on road routes. Your ankles are built to need to stabilize, constantly running on road can lead to injuries. Wherever you can, keep the terrain changing. If you are limited for routes, you can also try running your route in reverse to help combat boredom.

4. Keep a steady pace

I know it sounds obvious, but you will find yourself shooting off at the start with pre-run confidence. This may closely be followed by an urge to need to stop after 1-2 minutes. It’s incredibly hard to learn how to pace yourself, even the pros get it wrong. Start super slow, slower than you believe necessary. Let your body warm up to the feeling of running and you’ll find you’ll hit that wall a lot later on, or not at all.

5. Treat yourself to a post run recovery walk 

You will most likely be sore after the first few runs you complete. This is completely normal; however, it can be reduced by simply treating yourself to a 500m-1km walk after your run. Try not to finish your run right on your doorstep, give your body time to cool down while staying on your feet. Keeping the blood flowing while you cool down can have a significant effect on reducing the aches you feel in the hours following your run.

When they first start training a lot of our members ask us why the programme doesn’t change every week. Although constant variety may be more exciting, it also limits our improvement, as we would lack two key elements necessary for progress.

These elements are adaptation and progressive overload, and skill acquisition. Every programme we develop has adaptation in mind. There are lots of different adaptations we can try and achieve with a specific programme depending on the training phase.

1. Neurological phase
   • Goal: strength (lifting the heaviest weight possible for the given rep range)
   • Method: Heavy load, low reps

2. Hypertrophy phase
   • Goal: muscle growth, lifting the greatest cumulative weight throughout that session
   • Method: Sets x reps x weight

3. Metabolic phase
   • Goal: fat loss, completing the most work in a given time frame
   • Method: higher reps, shorter rest

It takes time following a specific programme before these adaptations can occur. In order to achieve them we use a principle called progressive overload. This principle is always used in alignment with the specific goals of each training phase: increasing the heaviest weight used in a set (strength), increasing the total weight lifted (hypertrophy), or increasing workout density (metabolic).

Generally speaking, neurological adaptations take the longest amount of time to occur, metabolic adaptations are the quickest, and hypertrophy sits somewhere in the middle. This is why our metabolic phases are shorter than our strength phases.

If you’re chopping and changing your workout every week or selecting random exercises to perform to keep things ‘interesting’ then you’re missing out on all of those adaptations and making it impossible to measure your progress. We don’t track our members’ workouts so diligently for nothing!

Another key improvement achieved by consistency is skill acquisition. Alongside allowing the body enough time to adapt to what we’re throwing at it, we need to give ourselves time to learn new skills.

We need sufficient practice at movements in order to become proficient at them. Only once you’ve hit a certain skill level will your jumps in weight be from actual strength gain, everything up to this point is generally improvement in proficiency. This causes a ‘lag period’ each time you switch exercise before actual improvements in strength are made. The more experienced you get, the smaller this lag period becomes until it only takes 1-2 sets to ‘find the groove’ again.

Although not much of a pianist myself, if you were learning a new piece, you’d keep practicing that same piece until you’d really nailed it or were at least considerably better than you were. You wouldn’t dabble for 10 minutes, just about pick up the correct notes then move onto another piece – you wouldn’t get any better. Exercise is as much of a skill as learning an instrument is.

So with that in mind, here are our key take home points:

1. We need to ensure that overload is achieved, and subsequently that adaptation is triggered – keeping in movements for longer increases this likelihood
2. Beginners should stick with the same main exercise for longer (possibly as long as 12 weeks), only changing the rep range
3. More advanced individuals can spend longer away from exercises without losing skill proficiency

If you have any questions about structuring a training programme, don’t hesitate to give us a shout! You can email George here.

It’s about this time all the “New Year, New You” articles and gym adverts start popping up, and we hate them with a vengeance. While this limbo between Christmas and New Year is a great time to think about what you’d like to achieve with your health and fitness, all too often we see people set unrealistic and unachievable goals, determined to be a new and better version of themselves. This inevitably leads to disappointment and abandoning all the good intentions that were set.

The truth is that you don’t need radical change to be a “new you”, in fact, radical change is one of the worst things you can do. Instead you need to look at where you want to be and then work out what the smallest steps are that you can take to get there. In order to achieve lasting change, we need to make changes that can last. Habit is key.

Here are our top tips for creating lasting change this New Year.

1. Work out your barriers

Say you want to drop a bit of fat – what’s holding you back; is it that regular bottle of wine each night? Is it that you’re really good during the week and then binge at the weekends? Is it that you don’t have a regular eating pattern? Say you want to improve your cardiovascular fitness – have you been plodding along the same 5k run every week without varying it or changing the intensity of your runs? Spend a good amount of time thinking about why you’re not seeing the results you want to. If you don’t know why then find somebody who can help you work it out.

2. Address the basics

Okay, so now you know where you’ve been going wrong it’s time to think about the small steps you can take to address these problems. If you snack too much or binge at the weekends, the first thing you need to focus on is building a regular eating pattern. If you’re drinking loads, try and cut down to one drink per night or just drinking at the weekends. If you’ve hit a wall with your training, think about how you can change your training split, intensity or volume to overcome it. In six months, you’ll be amazed at the transformation you’ve made, and you probably won’t even have noticed any sacrifices.

3. Look at the bigger picture

Over the next few weeks these small changes you’ve made will become habit and you’ll hardly notice them anymore. This is the time to take a step back and start to look at the bigger picture. When our clients are looking at fat loss this is the time when we work with them to analyse their daily environment and habits. Can you find 2,000 extra steps each day? Can you carve out an extra hour or so each week to train a bit more or even start exercising for the first time? Start building in these additional habits to ensure your progress doesn’t stall.

4. Tweak the tiny details

Now you’ve got the basics covered and your progress should be pretty speedy but more importantly it’ll be sustainable. We can now start to optimise your daily routine for your goals, looking in more detail about the macronutrients you’re having, getting more particular with the type and frequency of exercise and all the while making sure your life is still completely recognisable to you, without too many sacrifices. It’s so important we don’t jump from step one straight to step four otherwise the changes simply won’t stick in the long term.

We work with all of our clients to ensure their results are enjoyable, sustainable and long-lasting. Whatever your goals this year, focus on habits rather than speed and you’ll be amazed what you can achieve.

The personal training community is a close knit bunch. Recently we meet some personal trainers from London called Evolve Fitness.

Based in Liverpool Street and Blackfriars they focus on group and individual personal training programmes. Their lead trainer and founder, Tim Walker, has also appeared on the odd TV show (most notably Get a Holiday Body: Lose a Stone in 4 Weeks, where he was a fitness mentor to the Antony Costa formerly of the boy band Blue).

They’ve written us four of their top tips for building muscle.

1. Train the largest muscles first, but not always

The general rule of thumb that the big exercises should be done first is a good one. But a couple of times a year, a three or four week period of training the smaller muscles first in isolation is extremely effective. So, on a push session you’d do triceps, then shoulders then lastly chest. You’ll need to reduce your weights, but we’re only talking about a few weeks here.

Then, on a pull workout you might train biceps first, then the upper back and then finish with chin-ups (if you can manage it, it’s a humbling experience!).

2. When training for muscle gain, seek inefficiency

When training solely for muscle gain, try the opposite and make the exercise harder. With our bench press example, you could perform the wide grip press to the upper chest on a five-second lowering tempo.

Same movement pattern, dramatically different exercise.

This is the opposite of training purely for strength. For example, if you’re looking to just get stronger on the bench press, you should place the feet firmly on the ground, retract the shoulders, arch the back and drive the traps into the bench. This gives you a solid, stable base to lift more weight.

3. Vary your exercises more

When seeking to build muscle, choose exercise variations you haven’t used for at least a few months. If you’ve been back squatting, switch to front squats. If you’ve been doing pull-ups (palms facing away from you) switch to chin-ups (palms facing you). You still want to train the key movements, change -upper body push to upper body pull, lower body knee dominant to lower body hip dominant.

You should vary your methods too; when a new client arrives and wants to build muscle one of my first questions is “what have you been doing up until now?”.
Then I do the opposite of whatever they’ve been doing. If they’ve been using a high volume approach I’ll drop the volume and increase the intensity. If they’ve done nothing but full body routines I’ll split things up. If they’ve trained bench press first thing on a Monday every week of their adult life, guess who’s going to be occupying the squat rack on a Monday evening from now on?

If you’re looking at going into a hypertrophy phase, give some of these tips a go!

When we moved to our new private personal training studio in Kidlington last year, we had a few raised eyebrows when we said we’d be offering semi-private and small group personal training. We thought it was time we addressed the question we’ve been asked over the last few months: is 1-on-1 personal training always better? George explains our thoughts…

For someone with an injury or a very sport-specific goal, for sure, 1-on-1 PT will provide the best results in the shortest amount of time. However, when we’re honest with ourselves, 95% of us are looking to improve our general fitness and see the changes that makes to our physique along the way. For us, it’s nearly always better to train with other people. As long as we’re sticking with the fundamentals of training, training with others offers more benefits than 1-on-1 training alone…

It’s very easy for personal trainers to over-complicate things for clients, spending (and often billing!) hours writing incredibly detailed programmes which on the surface may seem like they address your goals, but often leave fundamentals such as mobility or the different energy systems untouched. There aren’t many of us who need to have programmes as complicated as an elite athletes’, despite what we’re told by fitness professionals.

While private 1-on-1 personal training definitely has its place, semi-private and small group training have enormous benefits which shouldn’t be overlooked. Let’s have a look at a few of these benefits now.

1.     They allow you to train with a trainer more regularly

As we all know, the frequency and consistency of our training sessions over time will play the biggest part in our success when it comes to achieving a health and fitness goal. Whether you’re working on body shape or simply an improvement in your overall health, frequency and consistency will be king. Through years of coaching clients, we’ve found that those who manage to be active three times per week or more are the most likely to achieve their results, and then maintain them.

If you’re advanced in the gym or a very self-motivated person, then you may well be fine training three times per week on your own. But if you’re new to training, unsure about how to structure a programme for your results, or someone who struggles with motivation then it can be tricky.

If you rely solely on 1-on-1 PT and look at training three times per week or more, your session costs are going to rack up pretty quickly! At Hall Training, our system is specifically designed to give you access to different session types and make regular personal training affordable, while ensuring everything is still tailored towards your specific goals.

2.     They make you work harder

Theoretically, training 1-on-1 should mean you’re working as hard as possible in a session. In practice this isn’t always the case. Despite a trainers’ best intentions, it can be easy to spend a good part of a session catching up about a weekend, and sometimes our clients have admitted to chatting as a stalling tactic if things are getting tough! Don’t think we didn’t notice… With 1-on-1 training you need to turn up to every session prepared to push yourself against who you were last session, and it’s not always easy to get into that mindset.

Our semi-private and small group training sessions are where teamwork and camaraderie really come into play. All of our members have told us they work harder when they’re training alongside others. Now this doesn’t mean sessions are competitive, but it means members push themselves to keep up and work hard. As trainers there’s nothing better than seeing your members cheering each other on and providing that extra dose of motivation. There is something really special about training alongside like-minded individuals.

3.     They offer interactive learning

One of our mottos is “execution above all else”. As a team, we’re all about performing exercises correctly and we know that watching, understanding and then implementing correct exercise mechanics can be challenging. We’ve found that our members learn so much more quickly when they see those around them, sometimes even in the same session, performing the movements with expert guidance. No more poor form or worrying about doing things badly – you have a whole community of people around you focused on making sure you have the best session ever.

The same applies for asking questions. We aim to give our members the tools they need to truly understand what a healthy lifestyle is. Having different perspectives in one session means different questions get asked and answered on the spot, often questions members may not have thought of themselves.

4.     Everything is still bespoke

A common concern we hear is “but everyone is doing something similar, so I won’t get results.” In the politest possible way, that’s nonsense unless you do happen to be an elite athlete or a bodybuilder. Programmes don’t need to be ridiculously complicated to get results, they just need to address all the fundamentals and be properly periodised over time, which ours are. They also need to be tailored to the person, which ours are.

Over ten years of programming for clients, we found that similar methods, philosophies and exercise patterns were yielding the best results for those with the same goals – be that fat loss, hypertrophy, strength or general health. It’s very easy for a personal trainer to write you a “personalised fat loss programme,” but the reality is that programme will have a huge overlap with all of their other fat loss programmes. After all, there are only so many ways to skin a cat.

We took training back to the principles we have found to be the most effective and developed a training method that addresses the whole health and fitness package, while allowing room to pursue individual goals.

What we have is a framework for every session that addresses the entire fitness package – mobility, activation, strength and cardiovascular fitness. Within that framework we’ll have certain movement patterns and muscle groups to target that are the same across clients, however everything is pushed forward or pulled back depending on your ability and goals. You can check out our infographic for more details!

5.     Everyone can take part, you’re never alone

When members start our 30-day trial they often worry about training alongside people with different goals or abilities. The benefit of semi-private and small group personal training as opposed to a class or boot camp is that we are still able to tailor everything 100% to you. This is where Hall Personal Training is different to your local small group training or park fitness session – you won’t see four people in a line doing identical things; don’t worry about where you’re starting out from! We have members aged from 16 to 85, looking to do everything from get shredded to a holiday to an ultra-marathon to be better at climbing the stairs.

Our members catch up over coffee before their session if they’ve got time, they congratulate each other or help each other up the stairs after a session if they need to. They arrange 5k runs, or theatre nights, or help us with our charity fundraising and social events. They have all found somebody with a similar goal to work alongside. The biggest benefit of training with others is you’re never alone.

Hopefully this blog post has shed some light on why we’re looking at these different types of training now. Although they may not be the method you’ve been led to believe is the most effective, we can assure you it’ll cover all the bases. If you’re keen to give it a go, or want to challenge us to convince you, why not take out our 30-day trial and put us to the test? As always if you have any questions, you can drop us an email. Reach me on george@hall-training.com.

In June 2017 we wrote a blog post about putting the “personal” back into personal training and how our identity and philosophy as a team had changed since Chris founded the company previously. We shared our new ethos, “stronger, healthier, happier” and outlined the kind of service we wanted to be bringing to our clients – one based entirely around them.

Well, over the last year and a half we have kept our clients at the centre of everything we do, with training and nutrition developed to suit every single individual we work with. While our clients were building healthier and stronger lifestyles, we were proud of them but growing increasingly frustrated with what we could deliver. There was so much more we wanted to do for them – we wanted to increase our sense of a community, we wanted to be able to hold events to boost client education around health and fitness, we wanted to be able to programme without limitations, without worrying about whether kit would be free or whether our training environment would be nice.

So, in January of 2018 we sat down as a team and made the decision to open our own private personal training studio. After years spread out as personal trainers in Summertown, Central Oxford and Botley, we wanted to create a better environment for our clients. One that isn’t intimidating or busy, one where you would never have to fight for kit. One where everyone is supporting everyone else and the entire team is professional. Most importantly, we wanted the freedom to create a cutting-edge personal training programme that delivers results. We wanted our team, our kit and our training principles.

Fast-forward ten months and by some miracle our own studio is open and operational. But what do we want going forward for our members, what does it mean for them?

We want everyone who works with us to be able to come to the studio regularly and to look forward to their sessions. We want to provide somewhere people can work on their long-term goals, ensuring they last into the future. We want a studio where everyone feels welcome, smiles at everyone else and provides that support network. We’ve only been open three weeks, but we think we can see that culture emerging already.
We know that personal training has traditionally been very expensive, while gym memberships often lack the specific guidance needed to ensure results. That’s why we’ve developed a system making personal training three times per week or more affordable, one with built-in time each month to ensure you’re always progressing, and one that ensures constant motivation from those around you. With our mixture of private, semi-private and small group personal training sessions, we believe our members can have the best of it all; more contact time for a reduced cost, with everything still tailored to them.
The last eighteen months have been a huge transition period for us. Who knows what we’ll be reflecting on in eighteen months’ time!? But for now, a huge thank you to everyone who has supported us over the last few months, and everyone who is bringing our new studio to life with their enthusiasm, dedication and hard work. We feel that we’re finally able to offer the kind of service our members should demand of our industry, and we can’t wait to put you and ourselves to the test, getting you the results you deserve with some laughs and coffees along the way.