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RESULTS DRIVEN

1. Motivation

Most of us work harder in the presence of others. Having a trainer by your side can provide the encouragement, energy and motivation you need to jumpstart your routine. A trainer can also help you set goals, create a plan to accomplish them and celebrate the day you reach them.

2. Consistency

Do you find it difficult to stick with a program or habit? A trainer can hold you accountable and help you overcome all the excuses you might use to avoid your commitment to exercise. It’s a lot harder to skip the gym when you know someone is waiting for you.

3. Clarity

Fitness can be confusing. There is a lot of information to sort through. Eat this, not that. Cardio before or after strength training? Your trainer can help you find credible information and provide direction on your fitness journey. A trainer can help remove the guesswork so you can put all your energy toward accomplishing your goals.

4. Confidence

The gym can be intimidating. Working with a trainer allows you to become confident with how to perform exercises, use machines and navigate the facility. After a few sessions, you will feel ready to tackle the weight room on your own. Even better, an ego boost during exercise can promote stronger self-confidence and self-efficacy, which can help you stick with your exercise program over the long term.

5. Avoid Injury

If you are new to exercise or find that some movements are painful, it is worth hiring a trainer to be certain that you are moving in a safe and effective way. Taking the time to learn proper exercise technique can improve your results and prevent annoying injuries.

6. Individual Attention

When it comes to fitness, everyone is different. Your unique body mechanics, experience, goals, fitness level, likes and dislikes can guide your trainer in creating a plan that is specific to your needs. With a program that fits, you are more likely to maintain the habit and see results.

7. Sport-specific Training

Do you want to run your first 5K or prepare for a backpacking trip? Looking to shave some strokes off your golf game? Your trainer can design a fitness program specific to your sport, which will improve your performance and reduce your chance of injury during the event(s).

8. Training With Medical Conditions

Exercise is beneficial for preventing or managing many common chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and hypertension. However, exercising with a medical condition requires additional precautions. A knowledgeable trainer with experience training clients with chronic conditions can design a program that ensures your safety and provides a positive exercise experience.

9. Aging Gracefully

Our bodies change as we age. Perhaps the exercises you used to do no longer work with your body, or maybe you’ve stopped seeing results. A trainer can help you adjust or adapt your program as you age, which will allow you to maintain functionality and strength.

10. FUN

Believe it or not, exercise can be enjoyable. A savvy personal trainer can make exercise both effective and fun. Group or buddy training can be a great way to increase enjoyment, make exercise social and attain the services of a trainer for a cheaper rate. And simply working with a trainer who you like and respect can be enough to provide you with more gratification from your workouts.

Amber Long, Contributing Editor

Benjamin Apollos, Compiler

More personalization

I often get asked, "what's the future of fitness". As a reporter of events that have happened in the past, usually the immediate past, I'm probably not the best person to ask. But from what I've gathered from experts I've spoken to in the field of health and fitness technology, one thing that always stands out is personalization. That is, in order for future health tech devices to give us truly valuable feedback, they need to be more personalized. For instance, it’s all well and good measuring your heart rate, but the average smartwatch is comparing your BPM to the average rate of someone your age, sex and height in order to calculate how many calories you’re burning, and so it’s not a truly accurate measurement; it doesn’t take into consideration the state of your personal inner workings.

So, how exactly will fitness in the future be more personalized? One way is through bespoke training technologies, for example, fitness regimes that are based on taking specialist recordings of your body via high tech machines based in state-of-the-art gyms. Take Equinox, for example, a high tech fitness center that boasts one of the most personalized training programs in the country, called Tier X. This uses various forms of technology to capture the state and potential of your health and then puts this to a group of highly-skilled personal trainers to create a program unique to you. It saves you time, money and most of all, effort. But it doesn’t come cheap, and it means signing up to a dedicated plan so it’s perhaps better suited to those super serious about fitness. Actionable data based on DNA A less expensive and more accessible way of personalized fitness that is growing in popularity is through genetic insight, via DNA testing. It might sound quite extreme, but the process is undeniably simple. By measuring your vitals from inside your body, as opposed to superficially with sensors, testing your DNA and looking at your genetic code can give you a more accurate insight into the state of your health. Obviously, you’re not going to have this done after every workout, but the idea is once you’ve had a test, you can see, genetically, where your weaknesses are and more useful recommendations about how to improve this can then be forged. So what’s all this got to do with wearables? Well, as DNA testing is becoming more ubiquitous, it’s very likely that it will be integrated into future wearables, which will use this information to give you more tailored and precise readings and thus clearer, more focused and personal goals for faster, better health outcomes.

Actionable data based on DNA

A less expensive and more accessible way of personalized fitness that is growing in popularity is through genetic insight, via DNA testing.

It might sound quite extreme, but the process is undeniably simple. By measuring your vitals from inside your body, as opposed to superficially with sensors, testing your DNA and looking at your genetic code can give you a more accurate insight into the state of your health.

Obviously, you’re not going to have this done after every workout, but the idea is once you’ve had a test, you can see, genetically, where your weaknesses are and more useful recommendations about how to improve this can then be forged. So what’s all this got to do with wearables? Well, as DNA testing is becoming more ubiquitous, it’s very likely that it will be integrated into future wearables, which will use this information to give you more tailored and precise readings and thus clearer, more focused and personal goals for faster, better health outcomes.

Future of fitness

The idea of all this is that once your results are recorded, and you can assess them online, your fitness tracker can give you tips based on your genetic profile, making it all much more valuable than before, with less guesswork.

This kind of super-personal, more accurate insight into our health and the current state of fitness is now so easily accessible that it's bound to come hand-in-hand with wearables very soon. It could even be that next-gen smartwatches and activity trackers (likely to come in the form of more integrated, invisible clothing) will ship with DNA swab kits so they can get right to the good stuff as soon as you activate your device.

It's this personalization in the health tech space that will eventually help people realize there’s much more to this industry than a smartwatch telling you what your heart rate is. While it’s not a mainstream notion just yet, it will be (just as soon as it becomes a bit cheaper), and when it does, it will shake up the wearables space and revolutionize the way people work out and stay healthy. - Lee is a journalist specializing in health tech and fitness innovation.

Lee Bell, Contributing Editor

Consumer Tech

Benjamin Apollos, Compiler

Exercise and chronic disease: Get the facts

If you have a chronic condition, you might have questions about exercising. How often can you exercise? Which exercises are safe? Understand the basics about exercise and chronic disease.

By Mayo Clinic Staff

If you have a chronic disease — such as heart disease, diabetes, asthma, or back or joint pain — exercise can have important health benefits. However, it's important to talk to your doctor before starting an exercise routine. He or she might have advice on what exercises are safe and any precautions you might need to take while exercising. Find out what you need to know about exercise and chronic disease. How can exercise improve a chronic condition? If you have a chronic condition, regular exercise can help you manage symptoms and improve your health. Aerobic exercise can help improve your heart health and endurance and aid in weight loss. High-intensity interval training is generally safe and effective for most people and can take less time. In high-intensity interval training, you alternate exercising at high levels of intensity and exercising at a less intense level for short periods of time. Even activities such as walking at higher intensities count. Strength training can improve muscle strength and endurance, make it easier to do daily activities, slow disease-related declines in muscle strength, and provide stability to joints. Flexibility exercises may help you to have optimal range of motion about your joints, so they can function best, and stability exercises may help reduce the risk of falls.

For example:

Heart disease. Regular exercise can help improve your heart health. Recent studies have shown that interval training is often tolerated well in people with heart disease, and it can produce significant benefits.

For people with high blood pressure, exercise can lower your risk of dying of heart disease and lower the risk of heart disease progressing.

Diabetes. Regular exercise can help insulin more effectively lower your blood sugar level. Physical activity can also help you control your weight and boost your energy. If you have type 2 diabetes, exercise can lower your risk of dying of heart disease. Asthma. Often, exercise can help control the frequency and severity of asthma attacks.

Back pain. Regular low-impact aerobic activities can increase strength and endurance in your back and improve muscle function. Abdominal and back muscle exercises (core-strengthening exercises) may help reduce symptoms by strengthening the muscles around your spine. Arthritis. Exercise can reduce pain, help maintain muscle strength in affected joints and reduce joint stiffness. It can also improve physical function and quality of life for people who have arthritis. Cancer. Exercise can improve the quality of life for people who've had cancer, and it can also improve their fitness. Exercise can also lower the risk of dying from breast, colorectal and prostate cancer. Dementia. Exercise can improve cognition in people with dementia, and people who are active on a regular basis are at less risk of dementia and cognitive impairment.

What exercises are safe?

Your doctor might recommend specific exercises to reduce pain or build strength. Depending on your condition, you might also need to avoid certain exercises altogether or during flare-ups. In some cases, you might need to consult a physical or occupational therapist before starting to exercise.

If you have low back pain, for example, you might choose low-impact aerobic activities, such as walking and swimming. These types of activities won't strain or jolt your back. If you have exercise-induced asthma, be sure to keep an inhaler handy while you exercise.

If you have arthritis, the exercises that are best for you will depend on the type of arthritis and which joints are involved. Work with your doctor or a physical therapist to create an exercise plan that will give you the most benefit with the least aggravation on your joints.

How often, how much and at what intensity can I safely exercise?

Before starting an exercise routine, it's important to talk to your doctor about how long your exercise sessions can be and what level of intensity is safe for you. In general, try to accumulate about 30 minutes of physical activity a day at least five days a week. For example, try walking briskly for about 30 minutes most days of the week. You can even break physical activity up into short chunks of time spread out through the day. Any activity is better than none at all. If you're not able to do this much activity, do as much as you can. Even an hour a week of physical activity can have health benefits. Start with moving more and sitting less, and work your way up to moving more each day.

If you haven't been active for a while, start slowly and build up gradually. Ask your doctor what kind of exercise goals you can safely set for yourself as you progress.

Do I need to take special steps before getting started?

Depending on your condition, your doctor might recommend certain precautions before exercising. If you have diabetes, for example, keep in mind that physical activity lowers blood sugar. Check your blood sugar level before any activity. If you take insulin or diabetes medications that lower blood sugar, you might need to eat a snack before exercising to help prevent low blood sugar.

If you have arthritis, consider taking a warm shower before you exercise. Heat can relax your joints and muscles and relieve any pain you might have before you begin. Also, be sure to choose shoes that provide shock absorption and stability during exercise.

What kind of discomfort can I expect?

Talk to your doctor about what kind of discomfort you might expect during or after exercise, as well as any tips for minimizing your pain. Find out what type or degree of pain might be normal and what might be a sign of something more serious. If you have heart disease, for example, signs or symptoms that you should stop exercising include dizziness, unusual shortness of breath, chest pain or an irregular heartbeat.

What else do I need to know?

Starting a regular exercise routine can be tough.

To help you stick with your routine, consider exercising with a friend. You might also ask your doctor to recommend an exercise program for people who have your condition, perhaps through a local hospital, clinic or health club. To stay motivated, choose activities that are fun, set realistic goals and celebrate your progress, or simply hire a Genetic Fitness Matrix personal trainer anywhere in the world.

Benjamin Apollos, Compiler