It is an amazing feeling to see how empowered you can make someone feel when they thought they could never do a full body-weight pull-up, or a push-up let alone 5 or 10 and even more! I usually like to have big goals for my clients set every 3-6 months, and we will slowly chip away at accomplishing it by tackling smaller progressive goals on a monthly basis.
The biggest and most important aspect of these goals is that they are always progressing in difficulty and intensity on a weekly basis, albeit in a safe, efficient, attainable matter to reduce the risk of injury. A perfect example and a client I wanted to shine the spotlight on is my client Em! She is a busy 37 year-old wife, and mother of 3, but you’d never know that because she never makes excuses and she always comes in ready to work! Even still had you asked her when we first started training if she thought she’d ever get to the level of strength that she has now, she would have said a big “NO!”.
She has always been active and healthy in some shape or form for her whole life, but she had never lifting or trained with weights, never thought she’d ever be able to do pull-ups, or push-ups etc. She also thought that type of training would make her big, hulky and muscular looking, which is the farthest from the truth. Also, as a trainer that is the last thing I’d want for any of my female clients looking to lose body-fat, trim down, and look better!
I’m very proud of Em’s performance and would like to highlight her Barbell Squat progression over an 8-month period. When we first had her start 65lbs seemed very heavy for her and we definitely needed to work out some kinks in her squat pattern. Now she just recently broke her personal record and squatted 165lbs for 3 sets of 5 reps!!! See the videos for yourself!
