personal training
Elsen
Mindset
BUILDING HABITS TAKES TIME, effort and consistency, you will need to work to see progress and motivate yourself through bad days… But I promise you if you keep it up and you start reaching those small and big goals you set up for yourself and you feel yourself getting stronger… you will be hooked, you will dream about it and you will fight for it.
Dream about things you want to achieve
Search the kind of training you like
Make training fun
Think about skills rather than looks
Find joy in overcoming the struggle
Be proud of your own progress
Accept the bad days
enjoy
the progress
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If you are in it for the long run, Amazing things will happen
Set up long and short term goals
There is no quick fix
Consistency is key
Train through good and bad days
Progression is not lineair
Progression takes time
Effort will always be rewarded
Grind it consistently
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Set your priorities
Avoid skipping training
Don't think, just do
It's all about making time
Don't change everything at once
One step at a time
Remind yourself of your goals
Give yourself the right kind of push
Keep going till you can't stop
turn motivation to habit
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A balance between what you want & what you need
Injury Prevention is key
Recover from your injuries
Handle your weak points
Variety in your training
Take your rest days
Work on your sleep rythm
Feed your body real food
take care
of your body
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Form
over Reps
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You are working harder when you perform the exercise better
Quality over quantity
Control the movement
Fix your posture
Care for alignment
Activate the right muscles
Focus on core stability
Avoid exercises you can't control
Exercise on your level
Build a good foundation
A balanced training program
The right amount of weight
The right skill level
Don't move too fast
Set realistic goals
Progress without injury
Progress
on your level
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a word on motivation
"THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS FINDING A FORM OF EXERCISE YOU ACTUALLY LIKE AND THEN GRIND IT CONSISTENTLY."
There are many reasons to start training, we all know them… primarily they will focus around losing weight, looking better, feeling healthier, feeling mentally stronger, +avoiding physical discomfort like back pain and even just because other people exercise… These are all acceptable reasons to start, but what interests me is HOW DO YOU KEEP GOING? How do you stay motivated that you keep exercising , that you start to love it, look forward to it, build a good habit so that it becomes a lifestyle?
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I believe that it’s possible for everyone to build on a motivation from within yourself, that EXERCISING ITSELF BECOMES THE REWARD, the reason and the goal. Once we reach that point we will be less concerned about how we look, because your body will already have changed, we will be healthier because we want to make better decisions for our training, we will be stronger so daily activity will not feel that heavy any more , mentally we will be more resilient because we learn how to overcome struggle during training…
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To reach this point is not easy, BUILDING HABITS TAKES TIME, effort and consistency, you will need to work to see progress and motivate yourself trough bad days… But I promise you if you keep it up and you start reaching those small and big goals you set up for yourself and you feel yourself getting stronger… you will be hooked, you will dream about it and you will fight for it… When you will look back after a few years at the person you were when you started, you will have changed completely, doing things you never thought you would be able to do.
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The most important thing is TO FIND THE KIND OF TRAINING YOU ACTUALLY LIKE. You might not like it every time, sometimes you might even hate it, but stop forcing yourself to do exercise that doesn’t fit you… Training should be fun and make you happy. That’s the first step, so let’s find out what you like, which goals interest you, what skills did you secretly always want to learn, but never thought you could? Lets see if you like it!
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SO that’s pretty much my mindset as a personal trainer, if this appeals to you… We will be working hard together to build a good physical foundation to work towards short and long term goals and figure out what your body needs and what you like in a training. Or you already have a foundation, have reached some of your goals but really want to take it to a next level? I’m ready for it, we will find your weaknesses and turn them into strengths.
MY Story
When I was young I never really did sports, I tried a few things as a kid, but my parents never really motivated me to find something I was genuinly interested in. I never liked sports at school either unless I could battle the other team.
I was not fit at all, but then I started pole dance when I was 25... I completely fell in love with it, because I was actually having fun! I started to train more days a week and it litterally became my life... It came before nearly everything in my life. It made me eat better, sleep better, party less, feel better about myself. I never felt passionate about anything as much before.
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At this point I discovered that being strong and improving certain skills, makes you feel so much more confident in life, and so I developed even more love for strength training.
I was looking things up all the time, learning from classes, from videos and so on how to get more strenght. Combined with this I also learned that pole dance is not the most body friendly training there is and in order to keep progressing you will need to do additional training. I learned the hard way... By getting a shoulder injury that could never fully recover.
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Next to becoming more strong, I discovered the downside of only focussing on strenght... The lack of mobility and flexibility... I was getting thight muscles and pains . So I started to stretch more in class and later educate myself more in flexibility, in understanding how the body works. How training reacts differently to other people...
As most people I started out stretching passively, which takes a lot of time, and not always brings a lot of result, even injury, because the muscles are weak. The big game changer for me was working on active flexibility and taking a coach on for this. Active flexibility combines strenght training with stretching, and gave me far better result, as I am not naturally flexible anywhere...
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I decided to take the big step and get self employed. We started a pole dance school, where I teach pole, aerial, strenght and flexibility. Next to that I got certified as a personal trainer and educated myself more in flexibility training.
The last years, I've been training a lot less pole because my shoulders will no longer take training everyday, life lessons learned. I am enjoying a more varied training scedule combining active flexibility, calisthenics, functional training and trying to master a descent handstand.
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So eventhough I'm training diferrently then I used to, going hard all the time with little variety, Sports is still my main love in life. I live it everyday in one way or the other... and I'm still learning from my students everyday.
I keep looking for that next challenge and get exited everytime i nail something new.
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I would love to share with you the gains I made getting strong, keep you from making the same mistakes I made and above all hope I can get as passionate about training as I am!
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