Rob Woollen Personal Training Manchester

Announcing our new services to Manchester clients - dietitian support and 1-2-1 martial arts/ self defence.

Training plateaus and how to avoid them.

Stroke awareness.

Congratulations to AB - with a fantastic result at the Alexandra 5k!

Good luck to GS this weekend at the Oulton half marathon.

I got an email the other day from a client from long ago. Having knocked about half an hour off her marathon to six hours in our short time together, PW of Stockport has gone on to a 5:15 marathon time! Get in there!

We are very pleased to announce our partnership with Manchester dietitics expert Jennifer Casson.  It is illegal to prescribe a diet in the UK unless you are a dietitian. The term dietitian is protected by British law and you have to have a relevant degree and specific post-graduate experience to earn it. Jennifer has all that -and works as a community dietitian.

Jennifer is busy writing some well-balanced diet sheets for RWPT which will be available free of charge to our clients this summer. These can be adjusted to suit your goals, and your body.This is ideal not only for thise trying to lose weight, but also those looking to live a healthy life - getting all the necessary vitamins and minerals from natural sources. Jennifer will also be available shortly to write personalised diet sheets at an extra charge.

It's one of the most common stories in fitness training. We spend years doing the same workouts, religiously following the same training programme session after session; week after week; even year after year. Then we wonder why we never seem to get anywhere. After an initial increase in performance, we dont get any stronger, faster or fitter.

Adding to my theme of specificity (please don'task me to pronounce that - it's always caused me problems) from last month, it bcomes clear why this is the case. Your body gets very good at doing what you train it to do. If we want to run faster, we need to run fast; if we want to get more endurance we need to do endurance work; and if we want to gain strength - you've guessed it - strength work.

So what's the best way to avoid these training plateaus? Well if you train with a personal trainer, you'll be doing just by following your trainer's progressions in the gym. Although specifics will vary depending on your aims, you will generally work through a progressive series of harder and/or more challenging sessions, with the odd "easy" one thrown in to allow your body to catch up. We call this periodisation, so that we have another big word to make us sound clever.

Then, after between 10 and 20 weeks, you'll go back to the beginning. Only this time you'll begin higher up the ladder. So by constantly refreshing the session plan, we can challenge different areas of fitness and "keep it fresh".

We are delighted to announce that Rob's own personal trainer, Matt Townsend is now offering his outstanding martial arts instruction through RWPT.

Matt has graded highly in Wing Tsun (sometimes called Wing Chun) Kung Fu, and offers traditional martial arts or functional self defence skills. See more about Matt here. 

Matt will be mostly focussing on 1-2-1 training with RWPT, but we can also arrange one-off seminars for groups interested in personal security, self defence or just a team-building event with a difference.

You've probably seen the recent adverts about strokes and how to act quickly to identify them. Given that 150,000 people are estimated to suffer strokes each year in the UK, it's an important issue.

Stroke survivors' fitness is estimated to be impaired by up to 50%, which contributes to disability. The provision of rehabilitative therapy by the NHS is fairly basic and does not prepare survivors to carry out many tasks which are realistically required for daily living.

There is a new Level 4 course in training stroke survivors, the contents of which remain to be seen, but many people may also be unaware of the ARNI trust. Dr Tom Balchin (a stroke survivor himself) has spent years putting together his own mix of strength training, energy work (from Qi Gong) and functional training to give stroke survivors a chance in the real

world and has had amazing results. See more about ARNI  http://www.arni.uk.com/