How to Exceed Your Trainer's Expectations

My Personal Trainer reminded me (not so subtly) that I had not written an update for some time. 

I told you she was great at motivating me and making me accountable - right!

You can read here when I first met Sherri, and here about my first monthly assessment, here I was four months into the program where we had worked on finding my exercise mojo, and here where Sherri pushed me to reach a milestone. I touched on the fact that I had more energy here, and was able to stop taking blood pressure medication here, but a whole three months has passed since then.

Sherri and I were reminiscing, as we reassessed my journey so far, with a little chuckle.

I remember going in to meet Sherri, hoping for a miracle and some instant motivation. Sherri remembers deciding that I was possibly in the category of "most likely to fail".

Sherri had based her opinion on what I told her, and possibly on the numbers she accumulated in the various health tests.

I wanted to be truthful.

If I had learnt nothing else over my years of fighting my weight battle, I did learn that it was pointless and harmful to be anything less than honest about what makes me, me.

 So I told Sherri that given the choice, I would make and find excuses not to exercise. I had the best intentions and wanted the results. History had taught me, though, that I would waste time, finding other things to do, or simply put exercising off for a later date. The only way I would, and could stick with something, was to be accountable to someone, to give myself mini, achievable goals, and to keep to it interesting.

Sherri shakes her head now at the assessment she had made of me, compared to the milestones I have reached and the fact that I have stayed motivated and committed. Maybe the timing was just right for me, or maybe she is one hell of a trainer?

So, again going against my "most likely to fail" label, I recently rallied a group of co-workers together for a regular weekly Boxing session. I am loving our weekly session before work, and hopefully, the other members are loving it too. Sherri is loving having to eat her words, and was all too happy to help us with a workout plan and correct technique.

I have found out, since working with Sherri, that group sessions work much the same way as team sports, in committing to a group and a schedule.

With just a couple of months to go until Sherri has been training myself and my co-workers, we have learnt a lot, but something tells me, this is an ongoing adventure.