Six Days at Elite Health & Fitness: Article III

Exercise makes you happy.

Evan Burgess has first hand experience of having trained at Elite for six days in a row. Find out how a tailored program can work for you...

I will attempt to describe how my experience has gone so far. The legs will always receive some kind of attention, being the largest muscle group in the body. However, nothing could prepare me for the burn on the initial three days of my first 6 day week at Elite. What happened after though, was even more revealing.

45 Minutes is all you Need
Legs day at Elite is intense, with plenty of squats. The average squat is a simple exercise, but even an air squat can be boosted to challenge you in ways you never expected. Lowering down for 5 seconds and holding for three, only to burst up to standing, is a guaranteed method of making an air squat much harder. Doing that for three sets of 10, you’ll feel like a well hammered piece of metal in a forge.

This is done in a group class, and will give anyone the base strength for more complex movements, or heavier loads. Activating the quads and glutes for what is to come, don’t be surprised to find yourself hitting a wall. Shake it off, you’ve got more in you! This is easier said than experienced, but the key to this volume of exercise is to find your rhythm, and keep going. Your frame of mind will help you vastly in going beyond what you knew was possible, a lot of exercise is about having a frame of reference to work within. If you can see what you might interpret as pain as learning, you will be well underway and see dramatic athletic changes in a few weeks.

But sometimes a trainer helps to remind you to smile.

After a great deal of intensity, at the end of 40 minutes, you can relax. It is time to stretch, those 40 minutes can feel a lot longer, but as you leave the gym and realise you still have time to do other things in the evening, a sense of accomplishment takes over. Group classes run frequently at Elite, and they can be a great way of meeting people as well as sculpting the body you desire.

An Hour of You Time

With private or semi-private sessions at Elite, you have an hour just for you. Sounds nice doesn’t it? You will have given your trainer an instruction of what you want to achieve, so if things get tough, you’ve no one to blame but yourself. This might seem a bit masochistic, but after 6 weeks at Elite, I have experienced some rather impressive improvements in my ability. This has taught me humility when I’ve been left spluttering on the floor. Finding myself spluttering on the floor after doing a few body weight exercises, I learn a lot about myself. I can lift more than my own weight when lifting weights, but when it comes to moving my own weight fast and fluidly, I’m just a beginner. However, from being able to do almost no pull ups, I can now manage three to four full range of motion pull ups. Carrying 95kg isn’t easy, so this private time has clearly paid dividends. In my case I have been doing two semi-private sessions a week that target all my weaknesses, as well as build on my strengths.

Going Through the Wall

As I mentioned earlier, my legs were hurting me by the third day. But on the fourth day, I gained a newly found freshness. This second wind was unexpected and rather well enjoyed. Personally, I have used a degree of acupuncture and spot massage, as well as foam rolling to help any aches and pains. This has helped me increase my range of motion.

Saturday Social

Some people might see Saturday as a day of rest and relaxtion, an hour of friendly faces on Saturday taught me that some people find exercise relaxing!  What better way to start a day then by a solid hour of circuits? Just imagine that time invested in an hour’s lie in, and the money of the class spent on cakes? Accumulated over a year, your body won’t be thanking you later. In the moment, the intensity of the exercise is thrilling even though it can be hard. As I have a broken big toe on my right foot, I find some exercises like lunges hard due to balance issues. It would be tempting to quit them, but instead I see them as a chance to learn. The body has many miraculous ways of achieving things, and other muscles can be taught to compensate for the imbalance. After a few weeks of this, I will look forward to updating you with my progress.

Find out more about Elite here!:  http://www.elitefit.co.uk/