It’s February now, and, as we all know, that means Valentine’s Day is just around the corner! In this month of love, it’s very important to remember to love yourself, first and foremost. In this video, we discuss how you can choose the best exercise for you – exercise that will help you to feel confident in your body and your own physical ability.

In fitness, as in love, it’s also important not to jump right in at the deep end. For those just starting out, knowing how and where to begin can be a significant challenge. Beginners can be tempted to begin exercises with particular routines they might have seen online – perhaps attempting the most complicated yoga poses or complex, high intensity workouts during their first session at the gym in a while.

However, unless you work up to these exercises, you body just won’t be able to cope, and you’ll find that carrying out these particular routines or poses will actually become painful, and could even cause injury. In this blog post, I’m going to discuss how I answer the question ‘what’s the best exercise for me?’. Essentially, my process for working out the answer to this can be broken down into three different categories – injuries, skill level and mechanics.

Injuries

As part of my training process, I’ll assess my client’s past injuries. This is important for a few different reasons. Not only will it help me to understand what they can realistically expect to achieve through their exercise programme, but it will also help to flag up any problem areas. If a part of the body has been injured previously, it’s then far more likely that this body part will be injured again than any other part. This could actually be due to a fault in the way the client is exercising, which is something I’ll need to help them work on moving forward.

Skill level

As well as looking into past injuries, when working out which exercise is best for you, it’s important to judge your current skill level. You might have a preference for a certain exercise because it’s been recommended to you by a friend or because you’ve seen it’s had good results online, but this doesn’t necessarily mean it will be right for you. It’s important to break down the exercise you want to work on into each of its separate components, and then focus on each of these separately before building back up to the exercise you want to improve.

Mechanics

Mechanics refers to the way your body moves. This is individual to every person out there, whether they’re a complete gym rookie or a professional athlete. For example, someone who is a talented track runner won’t be a weightlifting champion, too.

It’s all to do with the way you’re actually built, and, when clients come to me, I often find after a consultation and assessment that they’re just not ready to attempt intensive exercise yet. This is something I’ll then be able to act on and help them through – for example, if a client has an area of particularly tight muscles that is inhibiting their process, I’ll suggest a type of sports massage that I know will benefit them endlessly.

If you’d like more information about my training services, please check out my website at christopherhole.com. I’ve worked with clients from all kinds of fitness backgrounds, helping them to find increased confidence and develop their physical skills. I’ll work with you to create a tailored plan that works perfectly for you and your body.