Working out is hard work.

By John Grainger MS, CSCS
Fitness and Personal Training Director

As some of you know I am a baseball coach at Colby-Sawyer College and have coached at the American Legion level as well.  I have also done numerous lessons—both hitting and pitching—for youth baseball players in the upper valley.  I have been working with a great young man—we will say his name is Nick—who reminded me what it is like to have the drive and desire to make yourself better. 

I left Nick in September when he started playing soccer and we couldn’t make our schedules match up.  He had made some improvements but still had a long way to go.  I left him with a few things to work on—those things aren’t really important for this story.  Nick took those things to heart and worked hard—worked hard EVERY DAY—at improving his skills.  Last week I got to work with Nick again and was blown away at the progress he had made.   I asked him what he did and he said, “I come down here (his basement) everyday” to hit baseballs off a tee.   As I was driving away from his house it made me realize the connection between Nick’s continuous drive to get better and the work we do as personal trainers.

The people that have the most success—on the field, on the scale, or on the bench—are those that continuously strive for improvement.  The workouts you do in the gym alone aren’t enough—it is about sleep, nutrition, stress management, family, and everything else—and how to balance it all.  Nick’s improvement came from his willingness to put the time in to better himself.  It did help that he had me coaching him on how to do it right—he would not have improved if he was practicing the same bad habits over and over again.  The same thing goes for training.

Using a personal trainer to help you reach your own goals is a great step to success.  Whether it is one-on-one, with a friend, or in Shed and Shred, having the guidance of a trainer will help you reach your fitness goals.  If you really want to reach your goals, the hard work comes outside of the training sessions.  Having two training sessions a week with a trainer isn’t enough for most people—you need to eat right, sleep right, and manage stress.  That is where the hard work comes in.