Exercise without proper nutrition is as useless as a car without fuel. You can get people to perform demanding workout routines, but if they aren’t eating well, the workouts will only exhaust them.
On top of that, the diversification of the fitness industry has made it difficult for certified personal trainers to stick to basic workout routines.
These days, trainers need to combine multiple workout styles to deliver a custom exercise plan to their clients. As a result, they need to factor in different types of nutrition to keep their clients energized and healthy.
Besides that, without proper nutrition, exercise does more damage to a person’s body instead of keeping it healthy. This happens because the body doesn’t have the right nutrients and energy to keep up with the workouts. Ultimately, the client suffers from fatigue and muscle loss.
If you also want to offer diversified fitness training to your clients, read this guide to understand the role of exercise and nutrition in keeping people fit. Moreover, you can enroll in W.I.T.S Education’s personal training program to learn the basics of proper fitness training.
What Is Fitness Training?
Fitness training is a structured physical activity created to improve a person’s overall health and fitness levels. It relies on two factors; exercise and nutrition. Exercise focuses on the person’s physical activity, while nutrition improves their health.
Fitness training can be for long-term fitness goals or for improving chronic health conditions. It can also focus on a particular form of workout or combine different exercise forms to help people achieve their ideal fitness levels.
Types Of Fitness Training
Endurance
Endurance training is based on aerobic exercises to increase breathing and heart rate. These exercises are good for improving the functions of a person’s heart, lungs, and blood circulation. Some common endurance training exercises include swimming, jogging, brisk walking, running, and dancing. Proper endurance training can prevent or delay the onslaught of many diseases, such as diabetes, heart issues, and colon issues.
Strength
Strength training focuses on increasing the body’s muscle mass by stimulating muscle fiber production. Increased muscle mass prevents excessive fat deposits and enhances physical strength. Exercises like cardio, weight lifting, and interval training are good for developing muscle quickly. However, proper monitoring is needed for strength training because these exercises can lead to injuries if not done properly.
Balance
Balance training stimulates muscles that improve the core muscles and helps you stay upright. It’s also beneficial in maintaining a good posture while performing other exercises such as weight lifting, yoga, and interval training. This training is geared more toward older people and people with high-fat deposits. Exercises such as squats, balance standing, and tandem walking improve the body’s balance.
Flexibility
Flexibility training is mainly done to loosen the muscles and allow people to perform complex movements. Without flexibility, fitness training is useless because it won’t generate the required results. Not just that, but people are more likely to suffer from muscle fatigue if they have low flexibility. Generally, stretching is the best way to improve flexibility. However, yoga or Tai Chi can also massively improve a person’s flexibility.
The Difference Between Fitness Training And Regular Exercise
Exercise these days is more of a physical activity that aims to keep the body’s fitness level constant. It offers fewer effects for long-term fitness goals such as muscle building or weight loss. However, regular exercise is still in keeping the body active and healthy.
On the other hand, fitness training is more result-oriented and based on an individual’s long-term goals. For example, if someone wants to reach a specific muscle mass, fitness training is used to map the progress and create an effective workout plan.
Similarly, if someone wants to attain an ideal weight, fitness training can help them improve their workout performance gradually. Fitness training also requires more effort and a dynamic workout plan that can keep up with the changing fitness levels of an individual. In short, fitness training is a program built upon different exercise forms to help with a client’s long-term goals.
Importance Of Exercise In Fitness Training
Maintains Current Fitness Levels
The first step in long-term fitness training is ensuring that the body’s fitness levels don’t decrease. This means that the client’s current weight shouldn’t increase, and their current muscle mass shouldn’t decrease.
Regular exercise will help maintain these levels while increasing the client’s fitness. This means that even if the client doesn’t see any visible progress, they won’t deteriorate their fitness levels either.
Personal trainers can use the exercise to determine the client’s endurance, muscle development rate, and fat-burning rate. This will allow the trainers to modify or design effective exercise programs to improve the client’s long-term fitness levels.
Increase The Body’s Energy Levels
When a client starts a workout program, their endurance and energy levels are quite low. For more demanding workouts, clients need more energy. Regular exercise gradually increases these energy levels, allowing them to adapt their body to tougher workouts. This happens because the body breaks down the sugar to produce carbs that enhance energy levels.
However, it should be noted that the clients need to start with an easier exercise to allow their bodies to adjust to the workout program. Otherwise, they’ll only get exhausted, and no amount of nutrition will increase their energy levels. So the best way to do this is by factoring in plenty of rest time.
Helps Breakdown Long-Term Goals
As highlighted before, exercise is the short-term goal on which long-term fitness training goals are built. If a client wants to lose weight and increase their muscle mass, daily exercise goals allow them to break down their long-term requirements into short-term achievable milestones.
This also prevents the clients from quitting and feeling overwhelmed by their workout routines. This also enables fitness trainers to combine different exercises to create a timeline for the clients. For example, in the beginning, they can put clients on easy exercise routines but further down the line, they can introduce HIIT and strength training exercises to fasten their fitness goals. This allows clients to jump from easier to more demanding workout routines without feeling burdened and exhausted.
Improves Cardiovascular Activity
The number one issue clients face when starting an exercise routine is poor cardio health. Without proper cardio stimulation, they can’t perform effective workout routines. However, doing simple exercises like running, jogging, or lounges helps improve their cardio activity.
After a while, trainers can up the workout intensity without worrying about their endurance levels. Other than that, improved cardio levels are also important for the client’s overall health.
Importance Of Nutrition In Fitness Training
Nutrition fuels the body, allowing people to keep up with their busy lives. Maintaining a basic nutrition level is enough to keep a person healthy. But if someone opts for fitness training, they need additional nutrients to supplement the muscle loss, weight loss, and energy loss from intense workouts. Here’s how nutrition is useful in fitness training.
Enhance Muscle Generation
Nutritional foods such as protein and amino acids enhance the muscle synthesis process in the body. Through this process, the body replaces the fat cells with muscle fibers and increases the body’s lean muscle mass. The process happens with the absorption of amino acids in the body. When a person works out, their muscles develop tears amino acids fill up these tears by stimulating new muscle fiber and tissue generation. Additionally, the fat burned while working out leaves the body feeling feeble. These muscle fibers also fill the space left behind by the fat cells, ultimately improving the body’s lean muscle mass.
Prevent Low Bone Density
Low bone density can be a result of osteoporosis or intense workouts. If the body’s muscle mass is low, exercises like weight training and strength training start affecting the bones. Meals high in vitamin D and calcium help improve bone density and prevent bones from getting damaged during workouts.
Increasing Endurance Levels
The body demands constant energy to keep up with the workouts. This happens because the muscle contracts and require more oxygen to improve the blood flow and prevent cell damage. As a result, the body needs additional energy to absorb oxygen. This energy comes from carbohydrates. This is why personal trainers include carbohydrate-rich foods in their client’s diets.
The body breaks the carbs into simple sugar, which is absorbed into the bloodstream. These higher sugar levels increase insulin production, which converts it into energy. To do this, the body needs good carbs instead of processed sugars. These good carbs are obtained from nutritional foods such as fruits, oats, and sugar from whole foods.
Prevent Fat Storage
Healthy and nutritious foods help fill the stomach without increasing the fat cells in the body. Replacing processed foods with protein-rich foods enables the body to heal faster after workouts and increase muscle production. The increased muscle production reduces fat cell production while keeping the body’s energy levels the same. Foods like oats, wheat, and bananas are great for keeping the stomach full without introducing bad fats into the body.
Nutritional Foods For Fitness Training
Fruits And Veggies
Vegetables and fruits are filled with vitamins and minerals that help improve the body’s overall health. These fruits and vegetables increase the body’s endurance, energy, and tissue recovery rate. Additionally, they also prevent diabetes and blood pressure issues to some extent. Fruits like bananas and apples make for a good quick mid-workout meal to increase energy. Not to mention they can combine with a variety of foods to create healthy and delicious meals.
Energy Bars
Energy bars are great for getting nutrition on the go. These bars are filled with protein, calcium, vitamins, and other important nutrients that give the body instant energy. These bars are also great for clients who like snacks often throughout the day and end up eating high-calorie foods. Some energy bars are designed for workouts and contain the daily nutritional intake required by people.
Protein Shakes
Protein shake and powder have become a necessity for intense workouts. These supplements contain plenty of amino acids, increasing the body’s muscle fiber generation while maintaining energy levels. Protein supplements are also a good mid-workout snack that prevents exhaustion and allows people to complete longer and more intense workouts. They also reduce muscle damage, so the body needs less time for recovery. As a result, people can reach their fitness goals faster.
Don’t Forget Water
When talking about nutrition, water is commonly ignored. However, it’s one of the most important forms of nutrition. It may not be rich in protein and carbs, but water reduces your body’s temperature and increases its energy. Often, people forget to maintain adequate hydration levels, resulting in exhaustion and sores. Without enough water, the body isn’t fresh and gets dehydrated easily.
Dry Fruits
Dry fruits such as walnuts and cashews contain Omega 3 fatty acids, another form of amino acids required to increase the body’s muscle mass and prevent muscle fatigue. Moreover, dry fruits are great snacks that don’t require any prep or cooking before consumption. They are also recommended as an effective post-workout snack because they’re light and energizing.
Start Your Fitness Career With W.I.T.S Education
W.I.T.S Education is a training institute offering several personal health trainer programs to those looking to start a career in fitness. Our courses include a certified personal trainer course, a senior fitness trainer course, a group exercise instructor program, medical fitness program, and many more.
Besides that, if you’re interested in managing your fitness business, you can enroll in our fitness management course. Our course includes interactive online classes with 5-star instructors along with in-person practical labs. These labs are located all over North America and are equipped with state-of-the-art training equipment.
Additionally, our courses are also accredited by the NCCA and the American Council of Education, allowing us to offer course credits to college students. Not just that, but we also have the largest network of universities and colleges. So hurry up, check out our courses and enroll today to start your fitness training career!