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Don’t do any damage. The basis of proper training.

Whether your goal is to lose weight, recover after birth, prepare for a summer season or just a desire to get into a good shape – is nearly impossible without the help of a specialist, and sometimes well-coordinated work of several specialists.

So, where do you begin in realising your fitness goals? Before we offer you any professional training, we will ask you many questions such as: your age, lifestyle, habits and physical abilities as they are all individual for everyone. Believe me, a personal trainer cannot determine your cardiovascular health just by looking at you in order to develop your cardio training, therefore will ask you a question: ‘When was the last time you had a fitness test?

·      It is hard to find adults who are 100% healthy. Those who have no distinct disabilities can be called ‘conditionally healthy’. As doctors joke: ‘There are no healthy people – there are those that haven’t been checked’. Those who have not done exercise for a long time, who do not eat a well-balanced diet and had a lifestyle far from being named ‘healthy’ can be easily categorised as people who will have certain health problems. However, for a majority of them – a well-planned physical activity training programme will not pose any harm. Nevertheless, the information obtained as a result of taking a fitness test may help identify people for whom fitness training may not be appropriate or permissible due to certain health restrictions. A good personal trainer will not engage in any independent action and try and pretend to be a doctor; he will definitely recommend (or even insist) on prior consultation with a doctor and will ask you to present to him an expanded health card with recommendations on any physical activity.

A fitness test consists of 4 components:

·         a questionnaire (medical history)

·         interview

·         somatoscopy and anthropometric measurements

·         functional testing

Anthropometry – a method of studying a person based on the measurement of morphological and functional features of his body. However, anthropometry (somatometry) is usually combined with somatoscopy – an examination of the body in which the signs that cannot be measured are fixed. In fitness practice, some dimensions are measured by anthropometric methods which measure the development of muscles, fat content, body bass and body components, primarily muscle  and fat tissue.

Modern functional diagnostics includes a range of procedures to evaluate all the possibilities of the body and its willingness to exercise or even SPA and sauna treatments. Firstly, the cardiovascular and respiratory systems are examined, which indicates what level of intensity the training can be done at. A blood test allows you to adjust your eating patterns; a test of musculoskeletal system and joints helps you to adjust the training programme and provide exact recommendations to your trainer.

The result of the fitness test will be to get enough data to make an individual training programme and ensuring its safety. Further analysis and interpretation of this data can be done to ensure the effectiveness of the training process and exclude overtraining during the course of the programme.