Recently I took on the challenge of creating workshops for people who walk into a gym and just don’t know where to start. The machines can be intimidating, confusing and potentially harmful if you don’t know what you’re doing. Effective, safe training requires knowledge of how to properly sit on a machine, how to position yourself, and important reminders to not do certain things in order to avoid injuries.
As a Personal Trainer, of course I will recommend you hire a trainer to reach your fitness goals, but I see poor form in the gym all the time, even with people who look like they were born in the gym.
My wife and I gave a workshop at The Brix apartment building to help their residents get to know a few machines in their gym, the feedback we received was consistently the same; that they just never felt comfortable in the gym, that they only knew how to use a few things and would get bored easily. We were so happy to be able to elevate their fitness experience in their home gym and look forward to continuing to increase their fitness knowledge. We were excited to be able to motivate them to use their gym.
YouTube videos can only take you so far, they won’t look at your form and tell you specifically what you are doing incorrectly, what you can do better and what you may want to focus on or be wary of for your specific situation. We taught these 10 participants how to safely use the Lat Pull Down, how to use the Rowing Machine successfully, how to squat and press like a beast, as well as 4 different ways to do push-ups. From there, in the sessions to come, we will continue to give them the basics while adding on different movements to keep things interesting.
We followed up the workshop with a mini-bootcamp to make sure everyone left with an endorphin high, eager to get back at it!
Here are the photos from the first workshop, contact us if you’d like to provide this service to your residents or employees!
