Week 6

February 22-26: These past few weeks I've been struggling with finding workouts that suit one of my clients who is less familiar with weight room equipment and organized exercise. During our first session when I prescribed the diagnostic full-body workout which is designed to be of moderate intensity and easily adjusted for any fitness level, we were unable to make it through even half of the workout before my client began to feel sick. Taking into consideration the fact that I had begun the workout with more intensive cardio movements and immediately moved into a full-body workout, I designed her next workout to have a light, cardio warm-up and gradually progress through the upper body exercises. Within 10 min after our light cardio warm-up, my client once again began to feel nauseous. Frustrated with not being able to design a workout my client was able to complete even halfway, I took a new approach in developing her workout for last week. Instead of trying to combine the most energy demanding exercises by interspersing them with periods of less intensive activities, I compiled a lower intensity routine that included a light, cardio warm-up followed by low-resistance exercises designed to target each lower body muscle group in near isolation. By taking out the high-intensity, multi-joint exercises, my client was able to concentrate on contracting one muscle group at a time and felt less overwhelmed by not having to exert maximal, full-body effort with every repetition. In addition, the isolating exercises help build neuromuscular connections that are necessary for the body awareness required for more advanced exercises. And her workout went so much better that she was able to challenge herself enough to complete it without ever feeling sick!

All that to say that this week, I've made a second attempt at designing a workout catered to her specific fitness level and once again, had success in designing a challenging, yet acceptable workout!