The Best Way to Get Your Best Body
You shell out money for a gym membership, but pushing weight by yourself may not be the best way to pack on muscle and shed that winter belly. New research from the University of California, Los Angeles, found that exercising with a personal trainer can increase your strength, cardiovascular fitness, and lean body mass more effectively than flying solo at a health club.
For the study, 34 healthy men at the same Equinox gym exercised at least three days a week for 12 weeks. Half of the men worked out alone, following their own program, and the other half worked out with a personal trainer. At the end of the 12 weeks, men working with a trainer chest pressed 42 percent more weight and leg pressed 35 percent more than they had at the beginning. The self-trained guys increased their chest press 19 percent and their leg press 23 percent.
Also, when asked to run on a treadmill until exhaustion, men in the personal trainer group saw their cardiovascular performance improve by 7 percent from the study's start. The solo group saw no gain. The personal trainers also helped their patrons increase lean body mass—which helps you look toned and strong—by 2.8 pounds, while the solo group stayed stagnant.
It wasn’t that the self-trained guys spent their time at the snack bar. They actually worked out 22 minutes more each week than the trainer-assisted guys. So why didn’t their workouts pay off as much? When you’re observed by a professional, it makes you work harder and smarter, says study author Thomas Storer, Ph.D. Plus, a trainer will pick up on small—but important—cues as you exercise and tailor workout routines to fit your needs. They can help you break through plateaus, stay injury-free, and challenge your muscles in new ways, says Storer.
While hiring a personal trainer can increase your gains, not just any trainer will do. You need to pick an effective trainer—otherwise you’ll waste your time and money for an injury.
Ways To Incorporate Activity Into Schools
- Promote collaboration between physical education and classroom teachers. For example, physical education teachers might provide ideas for "fitness breaks" to classroom teachers, where 5-minute aerobic activities could be used to break up the school day.
- Provide extracurricular physical activity programs. Interested teachers and parents might be encouraged to establish developmentally appropriate clubs and/or intramural activities of a competitive and noncompetitive nature. Walking clubs, in-line skating, jumping rope, water aerobics, and intramural swim teams provide a few examples.
- Coordinate physical activities with community agencies. Schools might allow use of school facilities by community agencies that sponsor physical activity programs, facilitate training programs for volunteer youth coaches, invite community groups to an "activity fair" for students in the school gymnasium, or provide a listing of community physical activity resources to students.
- Encourage and enable parental involvement in physical activity. Parental activity level is very important in promoting activity among children. Schools can help encourage activity in parents by sending home activity homework that parents and children do together, recruiting parent volunteers for physical education classes, and sponsoring parent-child activity programs at school.
- Provide physical and social environments that encourage and enable physical activity. For example, schools might allow access to facilities before and after school hours and during vacation periods, encourage teachers to provide time for unstructured physical activity during recess and during physical education class, and help school personnel to serve as active role models by enabling and encouraging their own participation in physical activity.
Why Is Physical Activity Important?
There is no debate about the value of physical exertion--regular physical activity has significant health benefits, and even modest increases in energy expenditure can have health-enhancing effects, including:
Reduction in chronic disease risk--hypertension, type 2 diabetes, high blood lipids, cardiovascular disease, and obesity. Even among children and adolescents, physical activity can prevent or delay the development of hypertension and can reduce blood pressure in those young people who already have hypertension (Physical Activity, 1996);
- Lowered risk of colon cancer;
- Increase in bone density;
- Reduction of anxiety, improvement in body image and mood;
- Development of physical fitness;
- Promotion of weight control through caloric expenditure. This benefit is of particular importance to children, who are experiencing the same epidemic of overweight as adults.
