Before going into these reasons it’s worth noting that I don’t always use progress photos as methods of measuring progress. Not all clients are comfortable with taking photos, not all of them want them shared on social media (I would always ask for their consent before doing so) and not all of them even need to take photos. You should never be coerced or persuaded into taking progress photos if you really don’t want to. And if you take them, take them for yourself. Now, let’s get into some of the reasons why progress photos don’t always show progress.

They don’t show how the result was achieved

You’ll often see progress photos shared in order to sell coaching or a programme. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with showing social proof and showing how you helped a client achieve an amazing result. I sometimes do the same to advertise my online coaching after all! However, you’ll very often see these types of “transformations” posted without any real context. You’ll often see the result itself and rarely HOW that result was achieved.

Yes, it can look amazing seeing how an “8-week shred” can help these people see great results but you don’t tend to hear what this person had to do. And very often it tends to be a generic, restrictive meal plan alongside multiple cardio sessions every week. Super regimented, super strict and super unsustainable. Yet it sucks people in!

Whenever I post a progress photo of a client I’ll describe what their individual goal was (which often goes beyond just “losing weight”), the challenges they faced and how we worked together to overcome those challenges. You have to be transparent and explain that these results don’t always come easy. Yet you very rarely hear people who sell meals plans and quick-fixes talk about how difficult this person found sticking to their diet or training plan.

When looking at a progress photo just read the caption and see if they give any insight into HOW that result was achieved. Any personal trainer or online coach worth their salt will happily give away a few details on how they helped this person. If it just says ”they worked hard” and doesn’t give any insight into what this hard work involved, run for the hills!

They don’t show how sustainable the results are

A photo is just a snapshot of a moment in time (this got deep very quickly, eh?). It shows how that person looked at the time it was taken in relation to how they looked when another previous photo was taken. And while this can be very useful for comparing results and seeing what changes were made over a certain time period, it doesn’t show whether or not the individual kept their results.

As a personal trainer and online coach, my main goal is to make sure clients keep their results for the rest of their lives. A progress photo can be a very motivational tool for them, but the mindset and the habits that they build matter far more. We don’t want them to be in shape for one photo, we want them to be in shape for every photo that’s taken for them long after they finish coaching with me.

But progress photos that are used to sell short-term programmes can be deceptive. Yes, that person may be got a great result for 8 weeks, but did they keep them after those 8 weeks? How did they look a few weeks, months or years later? Did they build the correct habits and lifestyle changes that help them keep those results? It’s great seeing people get leaner and more confident but it’s even better checking in on them months later and seeing that they’re still doing well and keeping up the habits that got them there in the first place!

It’s important to always think about the “long game” in your fitness journey but even more so when you see these photos. But sadly, the way in which photos are used can often leas to unrealistic expectations. This leads on to the final point…

They can give people unrealistic expectations of progress 

Many people struggle with motivation enough as it is and sometimes seeing photos can only demotivate them further. Think about it this way, how many times have you tried your hardest for 8 weeks and seen a progress photo for an 8-week crash diet and been even the slightest bit tempted to sign up for it? How demotivated have you been when you’ve tried your hardest for 8 weeks and see someone else doing better?

Transformation pictures promising results in 8 weeks should always be met with slight suspicion when they refuse to state how these results came about or how they plan on building on this progress further. Otherwise, people are led to believe that they only need to work hard for 8 weeks then do nothing else afterwards. Comparing yourself to other people will only demotivate you further, even more so when the photos may not be accurate!

And it’s well known by now that there are loads of ways you can tweak a progress photo. You could use different lighting, get the person to flex or pose differently or you could take the “after” photo after a workout when they’ve got a sweat on. And this is all before photoshopping even takes place. Like anything you see on social media, take it with a pinch of salt. Or maybe I’m just naturally sceptical!

The main takeaway is this: You do not have to take progress photos for anyone but yourself and if you don’t feel comfortable taking them, don’t do it. They can be very useful methods of measuring progress if used correctly but there are other methods of measuring progress too. And if you see a progress photo posted and there’s no insight into how it was achieved, then run for the hills!

The post Why progress photos don’t always show progress appeared first on Chris Anderson.

During my time as a personal trainer and coach, one of the most common questions people ask me on calls or over message is “can you write me a meal plan?”It makes total sense as to why people would want this. It’s much easier having a fixed plan to follow and it’s much more convenient having the thought all taken out for you.

But there’s a whole host of issues with relying on a meal plan:

1. The person writing them often isn’t qualified

In order to write a personalised meal plan you need to be a registered dietician. Just let this sink in for a moment and have a look at how many people try to sell you a meal plan. I’m not a gambler, but I can safely bet the VAST majority of people selling meal plans aren’t dieticians.

Anyone can go into myfitness pal and work out what foods can add up to a certain amount of calories. And anyone can create a pdf of a 1200 calorie diet and send it over to you in exchange for cash. YOU could sell a meal plan tomorrow if you know how to present and market it. But very often there’s no actual coaching involved for people who use these meal plans.

The fitness industry is widely unregulated and it’s worrying how many times I’ve seen people spend hundreds of pounds on meal plans from “fitness influencers” only to regain the weight they lost shortly after stopping the plan. Which brings me onto my next point…

2. They don’t work long term because you don’t learn anything

“Teach a man to fish and he can feed himself for the rest of his life.” A very familiar phrase and it’s still true today! One of my jobs as a personal trainer and online coach is to help my clients learn about nutrition as they practice it. That way, they can be confident in their understanding of nutrition, practice it for life and most importantly, not get sucked into any fad diets that they see.

A meal plan can help you lose weight, but so can lots of other things. Anyone can lose weight; it’s keeping it off that’s the hard part! And meal plans cannot prepare people for what to do after they stop using them. Because they don’t teach people how to eat, what food choices or habits they could make or why they’re doing them. They just give them a set list of what to eat. So when people use them and lose weight thing look like they’re going well!

But then after that, the weight just creeps back up again. Because after people finish with a meal plan they don’t know where to go from there. And they often fall back into their old habits. Which beings us on to the last point….

3. They don’t address the reasons why people needed a plan in the first place.

Very often people put on weight due to life circumstances. Whether it’s a busy workload, lack of knowledge around nutrition or other life factors, it’s not a case of people gaining weight overnight. It’s often a gradual process that happens overtime. And as a result, reversing that process takes time.

Helping someone figure out how to manage their nutrition around their individual lifestyle will do far more good long term than throwing a meal plan at them and leaving them to it. If you’ve struggled with healthy eating due to things like a lack of knowledge, lack of time or an unhealthy relationship with food then would it not be more beneficial to tackle that instead of relying on a meal plan.

Whether my 1-1 clients are in person or online, the main takeaway that I want anyone who works with me to have is a better understanding of nutrition and a better relationship with food and how they can tweak it to suit their individual lifestyle. It’s much better to empower people than it is to just lead them by the hand. So to anyone who wants a meal plan from me I’m afraid I can’t help you (and neither should other non-dieticians be!) but I can give you something much better. A better relationship with food and a better understanding of how to take control of your nutrition without sacrificing your social life.

And if that sounds good to you, then click the button below to book a call!

The post 3 Reasons why the best results don’t come from meal plans appeared first on Chris Anderson.

This is just one of the many reasons why people have hired me in the past. They’re frustrated with trying fad diets or generic workouts that don’t work and they just want to know what they need to do and how they need to do it in order to reach their goals. But there are many other reasons you should invest in a coach. And I use the word “invest” because that’s exactly what hiring a coach is, an investment in your own health and wellbeing.  Here are 5 reasons why investing a coach is money well spent:

1.  It takes out all the guesswork

When your day to day life consists of conference calls, chasing up emails and just trying to manage that heavy workload you have day after day,  the very thought of trying to make your own workout routine can be exhausting! And then there’s the question of where to start? So many different articles saying that X diet is best, that you shouldn’t eat X and that THIS exercise is the BEST way to burn body fat, build muscle, tone up or whatever crazy result they promise you. Just browsing the internet for the right answer is a huge hassle! 

That’s where a coach can come in handy. You don’t have to think about what diet method works best, what workouts to do and how to make your own workout routine, it’s all done for you.  Before any client starts (or even gets charged) I always take a few days to design their welcome pack which outlines their whole workout routine delivered through my custom app alongside their nutrition guidelines. No more second-guessing yourself, no more wasting time in the gym doing workouts that just make you tired without getting you results. Just the important stuff that you need to do to get results.

2. It keeps you accountable

In your job, you show up every day at the office and put in the hours because there are people to hold you accountable, people who make sure you’re consistently putting in the effort.  People often claim that they’re lazy and that’s why they can’t stay consistent with their nutrition. But the truth is far from it! If you were lazy, you wouldn’t be able to show up and work long hours in your day-to-day working hours. More often than not, a lack of consistency is down to someone not keeping you accountable.  When you invest in a coach, you’re getting someone who’s keeping you accountable to improve your health and lifestyle, not to force you to finish that spreadsheet or follow up with a client.

It’s someone who’s in your corner, someone who wants to help you stay consistent so you can continue to make progress and overcome any plateaus. 

3. It saves you time, money and a lot of frustration long-term

It’s mindboggling some of the things people will waste their time and money on. Meal replacement shakes restrictive diets, wacky workout plans and fads that just don’t work. People will spend hundreds of pounds on these things and get frustrated when they make no progress. Or even worse, they see great results, only to lose their progress weeks later. Any coach worth their salt will care about getting you results and helping you KEEP them long-term. I’m not a quick-fix merchant or someone who’ll throw a meal plan at someone and force them to starve themselves for 8 weeks just to get a good “transformation” photo. If it doesn’t bring about sustainable change, it’s not worth it.

Investing in a coach that thinks of the bigger picture long-term will save you that constant hassle of losing then regaining weight. They’ll help you take control of your lifestyle to manage your exercise and eating habits for life, not just a few weeks. And if pricing ever seems like an issue just think to yourself: how much have you spent so far on supplements, workout plans and fad diets or weight loss programmes that haven’t worked? How much money would you save over the course of your life if you invested in a decent coach who doesn’t care about quick fixes? Imagine NEVER having to spend money on those things ever again?

For that higher price investment, you’ll save yourself money and a lot of time long-term while fitting it into your lifestyle.

4. It makes nutrition and exercise simple and easier to fit into your lifestyle

Let’s face it, the influencers and fit pros who try and sell you these diet plans and workout routines don’t live the busy life that you do. They don’t work long hours in the office and they don’t care about the struggles that you face. A template routine will only get you so far until you find you just can’t adhere to it and that it just doesn’t coincide with your lifestyle. Which is why you need someone who can tweak your workout routine and your diet to suit you, not the other way around. Far too many fitness professionals just throw a meal plan and a workout routine at people and expect them to religiously adhere to it without considering that this approach may not be best for their client. 

If it doesn’t fit your lifestyle, it’s just not going to work long-term. The thing might go well for the first couple of weeks when motivation is high but once those work deadlines start to loom and those working hours start racking up, it’s going to be very hard to stay consistent with your exercise or nutrition. Which is why it’s worth having someone who can monitor how you’re doing, check-in with you regularly and make those small adjustments so you can stay on track. Whether it’s chatting during a 1-1 session with my personal training clients or sending a personalised check-in video, clients can always be assured that they have someone to help them stay consistent and, as a result, fit fitness into their lifestyle.

Personal Training or Online Coaching isn’t dirt cheap (if it’s a solid service being delivered anyway) and I’m not going to pretend it isn’t. As I’ve said in this article, there is a myriad of benefits that investing in a coach can bring you. It stops you second-guessing yourself, keeps you accountable, saves you a lot of money long-term and can help you finally take control of your fitness while fitting it around your lifestyle. It is not a quick-fix solution but rather an investment in your own long-term wellbeing.

If you feel that you’re ready to make that investment and want to see if I’m the right fit for you, then fill in an application to book your free call.

The post 4 Reasons Why You Should Invest in a Coach appeared first on Chris Anderson.

Stuck at home and can’t get to the gym?

Maybe you’re travelling a lot because of your job and find yourself stuck with hotel gyms, or even just your hotel room!

Many people think that you need tons of fancy equipment to get fit, but lockdown definitely taught us otherwise! Even with very little equipment you can still get great results. Many of my clients only had a single kettlebell and a resistance band to work with and they still got stronger during lockdown. I’m going to show you a few of the methods we used to achieve this and help you get fit with less equipment!

Supersets

Stressed for time? Or need to fit in just that little bit extra for a muscle group? Try pairing a couple of exercises together and perform them back-to-back. Think of it like a mini circuit with just two exercises. So, for example, I could pair a push up and a pull up together where I’d perform a set of push ups then immediately jump into a set of pull ups before resting. So instead of resting between each exercise you simply go straight into the second one before you go for a rest.

You can pair pretty much any exercise together within reason. You could pair an upper body with lower body (chest press/goblet squat), opposing muscle groups (e.g. chest exercise/back exercise) or even two exercises from the same muscle group (e.g. chest press/pushups).

Not only can this save you time and chuck more work into a shorter timeframe, it can also help you get more of stimulus when working with less equipment. For example, during lockdown my clients and I didn’t have access to heavier weights, so for those who wanted to gain muscle we had to resort to supersets in order to get the most out of the light weights and resistance bands that they had.

And for many of my clients who find that they’re stuck for time on their lunch break and can’t manage a full hour-long session, supersets are an easy way to fit in loads of work in a short space of time. Just make sure fatigue isn’t so high that technique starts to break down!

Tempos

This is by far one of the most eye-opening ones for my clients, and one of the most deadly! And it can make any exercise effective if you do it right. All you have to do is slow down the tempo of the exercise. Sounds easy, right?

I’d like you to try a normal bodyweight squat, no weight or anything, just you and your bodyweight.  But I want you to really focus on the timing of it. Try lower for 5 seconds, pausing for 5 seconds in the bottom position then slowly rising for 5 seconds. So, 5 seconds down, 5 seconds at the bottom, then 5 seconds on the way up. Really keep the count slow (even going one Mississippi, two Mississippi can help) and see how you do.

Surprisingly tough, right? That’s because when you slow down the tempo, you’re putting your muscle under more “time under tension.” So simply put, we’re putting our muscles under more tension for a longer period of time. And when you’re working with very little equipment, or none at all, something as simple as changing the tempo of the exercise can make things brutally hard!

It can be done with the majority of exercises too, next time you’re in the gym pick your favourite machine and try 4 seconds for the movement. Just be sure to keep technique solid the whole way through.

AMRAPS

Oh man, here we are! I can hear my clients cursing me out just at the mention of this word! This isn’t a method I use too often, and for good reason! AMRAP stands for “As Many Reps As Possible.” Yep, you read that right. As many reps as you can perform on that given exercise.

The concept is simple, pick an exercise and perform as many reps as you can with good technique. You can measure progress by aiming to beat your previous record or seeing how many reps you can perform in a given time frame. The main priority here is maintaining good technique with EVERY rep even as you get fatigued.

For that reason, I’d always encourage beginners to first focus on building solid technique so that you can safely perform the AMRAP. And even if your technique is solid, it goes without saying that you want to be smart with the weight that you use. If you try and AMRAP close to you max weight you’re gonna have a bad time. Whenever AMRAPS are programmed for a client, I tend to only do so with machine exercises, easy free weight exercises or even just movements that only involve a resistance band or your bodyweight. That way, we can keep things as safe as possible as fatigue builds up. We’ll never really do AMRAPS with more complex exercises like a bench press or a deadlift, where the risk of injury due to poor technique is much higher.

So, now that you’ve seen just a few of the ways you can get a solid session in, there’s no more excuses to be had! Try out some of the things you’ve read here and see how you get on. And if you decide you want to finally take that first step into taking control of your routine, get in touch and book a strategy call below!

No gym? No problem. No matter where you are, you can get a workout in and still see great results!

The post How to get strong and toned without breaking the bank for a home gym appeared first on Chris Anderson.