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IDEA Personal Trainer
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Putting Some Mind Into the Body
Broaden your training menu with mind-body techniques that help clients achieve goals as much by “working in” as working out.
Lawrence J.M. Biscontini, MA

Personal training is evolving to keep pace with exercise research revelations and changes in consumer interests. An array of “softer” fitness forms such as yoga, Pilates, t’ai chi, chi kung, Feldenkrais and Alexander techniques has earned a firm foothold on the long list of today’s fitness options and has broadened our clients’ expectations for variety in their training programs.

Fitness-minded consumers are well informed about the mind-body exercise options available to them; they rely on trainers and other fitness professionals to train their muscles <I>and<I> their minds. Are you taking advantage of this surge of interest in mind-body training? The most forward thinking PFTs thrive in today’s business market by weaving mind-body fitness into traditional program design and addressing clients’ needs more holistically. Since PFTs train the individual, and the individual consists of brain, body, and breath, the PFT’s role, therefore, is to train, to some degree, all three parts of this trilogy.

Not only is it smart to learn mind-body techniques to provide clients (and yourself) with interesting training options, it is also a shrewd business move. According to the 2003 IDEA Fitness Programs and Equipment Survey, results-oriented personal training, yoga, stability-ball-based exercise and Pilates continued their 6-year trend upward in popularity (Ryan 2003).

Changes in training styles have paved the way (and maximized valuable session minutes) for increased integration of mind-body practices. Industry educators and researchers (Chek, 2003; Cibario, 2001; Seabourne, 2001; and Kravitz, 2000) agree that, over time, repeated isotonic exercise of a muscle group causes increased inhibition of the stabilizers that cross those joints. Simply put, the more a muscle is trained in the same way over time, the less benefit that occurs.

This is precisely why muscular integration in personal training has become so popular. Functional training allows both prime movers and stabilizers to fire simultaneously during a workout, thereby minimizing the time traditionally devoted to lengthy isolation exercises that take individuals from machine to machine. Training with a total body, kinetic chain philosophy frees up precious time to experiment with other forms of fitness.

Why not fill those extra minutes with mindful exercise techniques that will make the client’s training experience more holistic? With the correct approach, your client’s mind and spirit—as well as her response to exercise and value perception of your services--will soar.  

Teaching New Dogs (Very) Old Tricks
Effective teachers make it a point to learn new training disciplines by  <I>experiencing<I> them firsthand. If you have considered incorporating mind-body approaches into program design, take classes in as many different techniques as possible before asking clients to try them. Take at least two classes in various mind-body disciplines (yoga, Pilates, t’ai chi, Feldenkrais and Alexander techniques, stability ball, guided meditation and aquatic mind-body classes) and from different teachers each time.

Avoid taking “crash” courses in training methods new to you. Try to experience classes that address more than the physical body of a client (the “what” of the activity), and learn from the cognitive teaching approaches (the “how” of the activity) different instructors use.

Attending mind-body classes can add panache to your training style in three ways. First, you can see how other facilities’ instructors teach, which will help you create more balanced, individualized exercise plans. Second, you will learn different approaches to working with clients. For example, you may opt for a more gentle yoga-like approach with exercisers who don’t respond well to an aggressive “let’s get to work” style. Third, you will glean a variety of new exercises to spice up program design.

Yoga
Current research now documents both the strength and flexibility gains from ancient yoga.  (Tran, et. al., “Effects of Hatha Yoga Practice on Health-Related Aspects of Physical Fitness.”  Preventative Cardiology, Vol. 4, 165-170, 2001.   Trainers can harvest methods to assist clients with breathing techniques that are essential to successful execution of many weight-bearing exercises. Effective yoga teachers  constantly instill kinesthetic awareness and correct postural alignment for participants--skills which  also are valuable for personal trainers to develop. Assisting a client to execute a bicep contraction with heavy weight is useless if you overlook poor core posture and breathing (both essential components of yoga).

You also can borrow some yoga asanas (poses) to incorporate into sessions. These can improve balance and develop both isometric muscular strength (at specific contraction angles) and muscular flexibility. For example, certain functional closed-chain postures (e.g. utkanasana and vrykasana) train standing posture and stability.  These teach standing alignment, balance and muscular leg strength with yogic influence.

Pilates
Trainers can extract mindful forms of nontraditional isotoninc exercise from Pilates. Learning these techniques can increase your movement expertise and help you understand the body as an integrated whole. Your increased savvy about body movement can also improve your client assessment and evaluation skills. For instance, working on muscle imbalances in your client’s body keeps you in tune with problems you might observe when she is walking or standing. If you work with athletes, Pilates also can be a useful tool for avoiding overuse injuries and restoring muscular balance in weaker muscles.

T’ai Chi
T’ai chi, which means “ultimate energy,” develops not only body awareness as it relates to spatial movement, but also contributes to balance enhancement, relaxation through visualization, moving meditation abilities and muscular control of super-slow isotonic contraction. Recent research (Yu, 2003; Lan, 1999,  LaForge, 1995) indicates that t’ai chi can improve balance, and increase VO₂ max, muscular flexibility and T-cells in those with impaired immune systems.

T’ai chi practitioners begin in a standing position with legs adducted. Next, the shoulders are abducted until the fingers of both hands meet overhead (without scapular elevation). When the fingers touch, the hands and elbows are lowered slowly toward the navel, “covering” the body. The hands are separated and the process of “sinking the chi” repeats. The purpose of “sinking the chi” is to practice slow movement and relaxation, increase synovial fluid of the shoulder joints, stretch the latissimus dorsi and prepare for further t’ai chi forms by directing energy, or chi, toward the body.

Simple instructions using t’ai chi cueing--e.g. “Today we will incorporate t’ai chi speed in our approach to these repetitions”--can change the mood of a workout from a “terminator” school of fitness to a more mindfully controlled and balanced approach.

Feldenkrais and Alexander Techniques
Classes in these two disciplines can instill the benefits of slower-paced movement with closed eyes to help develop a client’s inner awareness of movement.

PFTs often follow the “tell, show, do” method of explaining exercises to clients. Moshé Feldenkrais was noted for his “tell, show, <I>imagine<I>, do,” model, which emphasizes that trainers should encourage clients to take a moment before an exercise to imagine themselves recruiting all of their muscle fibers in the exercise.

Recent research supports this. In his book, <I>Mind/Body Fitness,<I> (2001) Tom Seabourne says, “Sport psychology studies show that if you think about throwing a punch or kick [before you do], you can actually enhance the nerve-to-muscle function, so that when you actually throw your punches and kicks, they will be faster, higher and more powerful.”

Australian born F. Matthias Alexander taught his students and musicians to engage deep core musculature with eyes closed to train mindfulness and active muscular recruitment through breathing and proprioception. You can translate this philosophy to personal training by challenging your clients to perform the final progression of an exercise with their eyes closed. (when prudent and safe, of course).

Guided Meditation
These classes can teach personal trainers how to help clients relax beyond mere flexibility-enhancing postures at the end of sessions. You can learn how to verbally emphasize muscular flexibility and review the purposeful integration of mind and body in each exercise addressed. For example, try concluding a session with guided meditation as follows: “Constance, as you stretch your hamstrings sitting in this yoga staff pose today we are borrowing from yoga, close your eyes and review with me the purpose of today’s training, which was to concentrate on a mindful leg workout. Remember how you felt when you tried those hamstring curls, when we used the stability ball and when we tried squats with your eyes closed? Imagine the hamstring muscles along the back of your legs lengthening every time you exhale.” Adding meditation to the final moments of a session ensures attention to flexibility, enhances understanding of the training and contributes to the client’s positive frame of mind.  Furthermore, it summarizes the theme of that particular workout.

Aquatic Mind-Body Classes
The water, an often unexplored personal training environment, offers another way to add new stimuli and variables for clients. If you have ventured into mindful aquatic classes such as “Hydro Yoga” or “Ai Chi” (t’ai chi in the water), you have discovered a completely new world of training. Such aqua mind-body experiences can enrich your clients’ exercise experience through buoyancy management, balancing skills, dynamic resistance, unique flexibility skills and relaxation techniques. Once per month, Jeff Howard, mind-body personal trainer at the Golden Door Spa at Las Casitas Village in Puerto Rico, takes each of his clients to an outdoor pool at the end of their training session for final relaxation and aquatic stretching techniques.

Working Out to Work In
Are you up for the challenge of training your clients’ minds, bodies and spirits through a more holistic approach to exercise? You can glean much from popular mind-body techniques by taking classes as a first step. As a mind-body PFT you can help clients achieve their realistic goals through programs that allow them to grow successfully as much by “working in” as by working out.*

Sidebar 1: How and Where You Train
Understanding how physical factors contribute to emotions can help PFTs train the overall well-being and health of clients.

As trainers, we tend to rely solely upon the confines of inside space in fitness facilities. Individuals who spend a great deal of time sitting indoors in offices should experience gross movement patterns during training. If your program design only takes clients from machine to machine inside a fitness facility, you have facilitated little more than more indoor sitting!

How you utilize the facility’s or your studio’s training space can greatly influence the brain-body-breath trilogy. Most facilities in the United States dedicate little, if any, gym space for private flexibility. Often clients must stretch without privacy on mats placed between pieces of heavy gym machinery. How can you avoid this awkward and non-relaxing situation for your clients?

Try to develop “flexibility enhancing rooms”--private spaces where you can control the mood of the space. Providing soft light, candles, incense, gym or yoga mats, appropriate music and even a small water feature are examples of items that would enhance the client’s muscular relaxation response during flexibility work.

Taking clients outdoors for a bit of fresh air and sunshine is another way you can enhance the training experience. Serotonin, a naturally occurring chemical in the body, helps connect the synapses between cells in the brain and leads to feelings of happiness. One of the most natural ways to stimulate serotonin production occurs when skin comes into contact with natural sunlight for 10 minutes or more.  

If you have access to transportable equipment such as stability balls, medicine balls, resistance tubing and core boards, consider taking your clients outdoors to capitalize on sunlight’s natural effects on the body (be sure to check first with facility management to ensure that it is legal for you to do so). Seabourne (2001) suggests that changes resulting from such natural-light driven training include benefits to the immune system, bone marrow, thymus, spleen, lymph nodes, endocrine system, bones, muscles, internal organs, and the walls of veins and arteries.

You can train –or stretch--clients outdoors at minimal cost and you’ll create long-lasting rewards.

Sidebar 2: N-A-M-A-S-T-E - Practical Steps to Mindfulness
Yoga instructors often greet students individually at the door with a sincere “namaste.” This Sanskrit word means “hello” and “goodbye,” and conveys the message, “My inner peace meets, greets and salutes your inner light.”  Trainers who educate clients on the meaning of this word bring centuries of mindful greeting into each subsequent session when they use it because it is the oldest mindful greeting on the planet. To help you incorporate specific mindful training techniques, try remembering “namaste” as an acronym.

• N stands for nurturing the client’s brain-body-breath relationship. You begin nurturing when you merely ask your client how his body is feeling (“How is your energy level today?”), and how his brain and breath are responding (“How is your concentration level today?” “How has your breathing been this week?”)

  One way to nurture the trilogy of brain-body-breath is to give your client reading materials to take home. Encourage him to read at least one mind-body approach article for every traditional strength training article recommended. This post-training “homework” continues your nurturing of the brain-body-breath connection well after the session has ended.

• A stands for aligning the body with the brain and breathing. Try beginning the session with a fitness fact, quiz or riddle pertinent to the day’s training program. Stimulating a client’s thinking early in the session will improve productivity throughout and stimulate mindful exercise. Sharing a thoughtful quotation or motivating story before a workout can also inspire your client’s mind and spirit.  A powerful, deep inhalation and exhalation aligns both the mind and body for work.

• M is for motivating clients to pursue their integration of brain, body and breath. As a mind-body personal trainer, make it a goal to plant the seeds of motivation so your participants cultivate mind-body fitness and integration independently. Show clients the benefits of both physical and mind-spirit cross training. Share article clippings from the media and Internet that show how mind-body fitness rounds out the total approach to well-being. Exposing a client  to ongoing research and the latest results can prove very motivational. Motivational books also can be excellent sources for stories about people who have overcome physical limitations to embrace fitness.

  Be sure to show clients their progress in both mental and physical training. When you point out specific examples of  brain-body-breath fitness improvement, it builds his or her confidence and spurs him or her to reach for more.

  The second A stands for appraising the client’s integration of brain, body and breath. You may opt to record and file a client’s feelings along with his numerical measurements, and track these over time to follow emotional progress related to fitness level. For example, instead of merely “weighing in” the client and tracking measurements and pounds of weight, try recording a few adjectives that describe how his energy, concentration and breathing feel that day. Track these changes over time and share the journey with him periodically.  Using Borg’s 6-20 Rating of Perceived Exertion scale requires the client to make a connection between body and brain as well.

• S stands for starting sessions mindfully. Consider  greeting clients with “namaste,” to start the session on a mindful tone.  Starting sessions with a mind-body approach also means asking the client how he feels in terms of energy, emotions and breath. Another way to begin mindfully is to verbalize a  mindful “theme” for that day. For example, you can develop cards that each lists one mindful focus; have the client pick one from a basket before you begin training and have that be the mindful theme for training that day. Some examples follow:

• focus on movement with eyes closed
• focus on outdoor training
• focus on super slow training with t’ai chi-like speed
• focus on yogic breathing techniques
• focus on Pilates breathing techniques
• focus on verbalizing how the repetitions feel
• focus on ending our session in the pool for liquid flexibility work
• focus on chatting about our training over green tea as we conclude

• T stands for transitioning, and refers to how you spend the time with your client between and among exercises and equipment. As you become more familiar with mind-body exercises, try incorporating them as transitions between machine-based repetitions. As for the time you allot for  flexibility, try drawing from yoga or t’ai chi to make it a more mindful segment of the session. Some examples include:

• After a super or giant set of exercises involving abdominal flexion and other core work, try having the client stretch in some variation of the yoga “bow”(dhanurasana) posture; this can work wonders to open the chest, abdominal and hip flexor areas.
• Between abdominal crunches on the ball and spinal extension exercises on a machine, ask the client to try yoga postures of “cat” and “cow” (calling them by these yoga names), to stretch both erector spinae and rectus abdominis muscle groups.
• Insert a standing yoga “tree” position between exercises to challenge muscles isometrically, especially after explosive-type of isotonic sports-specific drills.
• Have the client walk from one exercise to another in “bow steps,” traditional, slow steps from t’ai chi.

After an initial sense of awkwardness, most clients soon look forward to such exercises. They may feel that not only are they stretching after working hard, they are getting a bit of “extra” mindfulness, education and value for their training dollars because they may not have time to get to a full-length yoga, Pilates, or T’ai Chi session.

• E stands for ending. Try to finish each training session mindfully. Saying “namaste,” adding guided meditation, ending a session with flexibility exercises in a warm-water pool, offering mindful reading material or brain teaser handouts are all examples of how you can incorporate mindfulness into a client’s regime.

Petra Kolber, 2001 IDEA Group Fitness Instructor of the Year, says that clients will “always remember and learn from the first and last 5 minutes they spend with their trainer. In many ways, those moments are the most crucial for behavior change.” This underscores the importance of careful planning for the ending stages of training sessions, which often are the most rushed.

Some trainers offer green tea to their clients after training sessions. Recent research (Quinlan, et. al., 1997) shows how beneficial decaffeinated or natural green tea can be as closure to training. Because the beverage is hot, clients must take a pause from hurried life as they drink. Such a pause can invite reflection, especially when coupled with a motivating handout or conversation from the trainer.  Furthermore, other studies (Quinlan, Lane & Aspinall 1997) have shown how beverages like green tea also help stimulate the body’s relaxation process—a great bonus after working out!

When planning how the session will end, consider that your client can make mindful gains by remembering how he has trained his mind, body and breath. If you have chosen a theme for that session, the ending serves as an appropriate time to reiterate it.