Personal Trainer Archives - ForeverStrong® Fitness

Your Scale Does Not Tell The Whole Story

Body fat is something that most people view as a part of everyday life, but few recognize that there is a dangerous type of fat that can contribute to heart disease, dementia, cancer, depression and many other diseases.

What is Visceral Fat?
Visceral fat is stored in a person’s abdominal cavity and is also known as a “deep” fat that wraps around major organs. Shape or size can be deceiving when determining if you have visceral fat or not. You may be carrying excess visceral fat within your abdominal cavity whether you are overweight or average size. For example, Body Mass Index (BMI) is used by many as an indicator of health. It involves comparing your weight in relation to your height to give an indication of your weight status. But BMI doesn’t take into account muscle mass, age, sex, ethnicity, general level of fitness. Therefore, even if you have a ‘healthy’ BMI you may still be carrying excessive visceral fat, and could still be at risk of the health complications associated with it.

In addition to giving you a large waist, visceral fat can change the way your body operates. Fat cells do more than simply store extra calories – they pump out hormones and inflammatory substances. Storing excess fat around the organs like the liver, pancreas and kidneys increases production of pro-inflammatory chemicals, and at the same time, it interferes with hormones that regulate appetite, weight, mood and brain function.

We can reduce the negative impact of visceral fat by making a few lifestyle changes:

Revise Your Diet
Aim to eat high-nutrient-dense, real foods. This means avoiding packaged foods and artificial ingredients. We also want to eat plenty of healthy fats, including coconut oil, extra virgin olive oil, wild-caught fish, nuts and seeds. Healthy food fats have beneficial effects on insulin balance, hormones and weight management.

Exercise Regularly
Exercise helps us balance insulin and makes our cells more efficient at using glucose. While different types of exercise can limit cardiovascular risk, studies have suggested that high-intensity resistance training tends to produce faster visceral fat loss than mild or moderate training. But, as always, the best exercise is the exercise that matches your lifestyle and becomes a habit.

Reduce Stress
Stress triggers cortisol production and interferes with appetite control, metabolism, sleep and cravings. The things we do to fight stress (pleasure, play and social connection) are often overlooked when it comes to fat loss, but we know how important it is to beat stress in order to beat excess fat.

Prioritize Sleep
The benefits of sleeping at least seven to eight hours a night are studied and well-documented when it comes to hormone and weight control. Good rest recharges our appetite and stress hormones, boosts our metabolism, and keeps cravings away.

“Example of Data from the InBody Results Sheet”

Solid Information You Can Use to Create A Plan
At ForeverStrong we use the InBody scanner to help our clients accurately measure how much visceral fat your body is storing. The Inbody test is a non-invasive body composition analysis that provides a detailed breakdown of your weight in terms of muscle, fat, and water on an InBody Result Sheet. An InBody Test takes only 45 seconds. By monitoring this data over time, you can pinpoint the changes needed in your diet and exercise to achieve your goals.

Our Personal Trainers have helped hundreds of people in Howard County and the surrounding areas lose weight, tone up, and become stronger. Our neighbors in Highland, Clarksville, Columbia, Burtonsville, Olney, Ashton and Silver Spring love their personalized training program. Unlike group fitness classes, each client receives a custom program guaranteed to deliver measurable results. We’d love to help you too. Call us at 301-452-5547 or email info@trainforeverstrong.com to see for yourself. Mention this article for a free session!

Are you ready to get Strong & Sculpted?

Iron Body Armor Ends This Week!

The final week of Iron Body Armor’s foundational strength program is here and you’ve been asking what your next 8-week program cycle holds,

so…

ForeverStrong is excited to announce the Strong & Sculpted Functional Fitness Program!

Iron Body Armor focused on developing foundational strength. We lifted heavy weights to get stronger because we wanted to lay a solid foundation for other types of fitness improvements. During Strong & Sculpted, we will build from that foundation using “functional” movements.

This follows the ForeverStrong Method, which cycles through foundational, functional, and enduring strength programs, and uses the exercise science principles of periodization and progressive overload to make sure clients get results year after year.

ForeverStrong’s Current Program Cycle:

Cycle 1: Foundational

Cycle 2: Functional

Cycle 3: Enduring

Based on this formula, Iron Body Armor, which focused on foundational strength, ends Saturday. This Monday kicks off Strong & Sculpted, which will focus on functional movements. I know I can’t wait!

We put the FUN in FUNctional Fitness 😉

Functional movements replicate essential daily activities and help us become more athletic and agile, while developing resilience in our joints that helps us improve balance and coordination. For this reason, highlighted movements of Strong & Sculpted will include band chops and single leg deadlifts. Hooray!

This is what we will do:

Implement a progressive strategy. When we start, you’ll notice you’ll immediately be asked to perform more reps than you were asked to perform during Iron Body Armor, and the reps are only going to increase from there!
Use variable intensity. During the LIFT, 3 of 4 workouts will be an upper / lower combo. Expect your thighs to burn when we kick up the challenge and train a lower body superset once every 4 workouts . Imagine how sculpted your legs are going to feel!
Isolate weak links. Expect lots of “sculpt” with maximum emphasis on isolating the biceps, triceps, and core. This will help fortify your weak links and help your body develop muscle definition by targeting specific, smaller muscle groups. In the end, these techniques will help you break plateaus and set new records!

Ready for the gun show?

To get the most from your sculpting sessions, we will hit triceps and biceps hard to optimize muscle protein synthesis in the “show” muscles. Muscle protein synthesis is just the rebuilding of muscle tissue after it’s been stressed, but without muscle synthesis, your muscles won’t grow.

As a result, during Strong & Sculpted, we will emphasize building lean, sculpted, and powerful bodies through intense performance, as well as through optimal nutrition.

Did somebody say six pack?

Build a strong core with movement progressions that began with Iron Body Armour. Clocks and dead bugs will carry over for another 8-weeks, and we will progress the kettlebell getup to the elbow, then eventually to the bridge. Yay! Everybody loves progress!

Speaking of guns…

The Teaching Melt returns! So get ready to pull your guns from your holsters and learn Gunslingers, an advanced two kettlebell swing!

Of course, at ForeverStrong we compliment every session with our high intensity MELT. You can look forward to new and challenging HIIT moves to push your metabolism into overdrive. 😮

Check out this video for a demonstration of gunslingers.

If you are not already training ForeverStrong, it’s not too late to start!

We’ve helped hundreds of busy parents, grandparents, business owners, and neighbors in Marriottsville, Turf Valley, Waverly Woods, Woodmark, West Friendship, Eldersburg, Sykesville, Woodstock, Cooksville, Ellicott City, Mt. Hebron, Clarksville, Fulton, Laurel, Burtonsville, Highland, Silver Spring, Columbia, Ellicott City, Glen Elg, and Maple Lawn, and we’d love to help you.

Come see why hundreds of men and women train ForeverStrong instead of hiring an ordinary personal trainer.

The first step is to schedule a complimentary first session. The easiest way to start is to text us at 301-452-5547. We will take it from there!

Why Small Group Training Is Better Than Training On Your Own

At Train Forever Strong, we pride ourselves on the community aspect of our training gym. Empowering one another to break through personal barriers and reach new fitness goals is a standard practice for us, and we firmly believe that you can work harder and achieve more in a supportive, small group training setting as opposed to doing it all on your own.

In today’s post, we’re going to look at why our small group training classes and programs are a better use of your time (and your efforts) as opposed to figuring out things on your own. If you happen to be a seasoned fitness professional with a sports medicine background, then we encourage you to do your own thing.

But many of those who wind up at Train Forever Strong don’t have extensive fitness experience or haven’t exercised in a long time, which makes them excellent candidates for our expert training guidance and support. Anyway, let’s take a look at a few reasons why small group training at our Fulton gym is so awesome.

Make Lasting Friendships

Who knew that exercise was such a great bonding element between fellow humans? Yes, all of those blood, sweat, and tears (hopefully just sweat) that you shed at Train Forever Strong represents a shared experience among those who you’re working out with. At our personal training gym, there are no judgments – only positive, supportive energy for one another to improve our physical and mental states.

Community Connection

Tying into our last point, over the years we’ve found that many of our gym members end up coming back for reasons other than improvements in their physical fitness. Like a great workspace or your favorite local bar, you’ll find worthwhile and lasting connections with the people that you meet and share your fitness journey with.

The inner-focus during an individual, unguided workout is great (there really is nothing like your own tunes to get you pumped), but the reality is that your earbuds will prevent you from meeting cool new people or verbally encouraging your partner to finish that last set of reps.

If you’re looking for major physical improvements through fitness and being active, then you’ll eventually walk out of our Fulton gym as a different person than when you started. The beauty is that fellow members in your small group training classes will also be forever changed, and you get to relish that together. Too sappy for you? Too bad!

You’ll Always Know What To Do

This point is very important, so pay attention! When a lot of people get into an exercise routine by themselves without either consulting a medical professional or getting involved with a certified trainer, they’ll find themselves in a world of hurt due to stress-related injuries or even improper equipment use. Others find themselves discouraged from getting active in the first place, because they simply don’t know where to start or what to do.

We understand where you’re coming from, and that’s why our dedicated fitness professionals are here to safely and effectively facilitate your training sessions so that you maximize your time and efforts while having fun in the process! Plus, you’ll virtually eliminate any possibility of injury when you’re engaged in supervised training with our fitness experts. Small group training really is a win-win situation, and frankly, we don’t know why more people aren’t considering it.

Come See For Yourself!

We’re a biased but credible source when it comes to small group training, but don’t take our word for it – come break a sweat and check it out for yourself! Train Forever Strong offers your first session absolutely free of charge so that you can get a feel for our facility and community. We’re confident that you’ll like what you see, and we’re even more confident that you’ll love how you feel. Get in touch with Train Forever Strong now and take the next step on your fitness journey!

Why You Should Take Advantage Of a Free Personal Training Session

Free…wait, did someone say ‘free?’ We did! Train Forever Strong is happy to provide you with your first session at our personalized fitness center, free of charge! We understand that you have many choices when it comes to small group training and personalized fitness, so we invite you to come check out our Fulton gym to see for yourself why people love going to our personal training facility.

If your first time in being free wasn’t enough of a reason to get you in here, check out a few more reasons as to why you should make the smart move for your health and head on down to Train Forever Strong. Let’s take a look.

Seriously, There’s No Charge

We already mentioned that your first session is on the house, but it’s worth really emphasizing in this post. Even if for some reason you don’t have the most fun, positive and rewarding experience as you can (and we’re confident that you will), there’s really nothing to lose in this situation except for a couple hours of your life. Just come see for yourself how awesome this community is here at Train Forever Strong, and you’ll see why people keep coming back time and time again.

Meet Some New Friends

At Train Forever Strong, community is huge! We specialize in small group training fitness classes that provide you with the personalized support and guidance of a certified fitness instructor, combined with the peer-to-peer benefits of support and encouragement. There’s something empowering about empowering other people on their own fitness journey, and vice versa.

When you learn to live healthier and grow stronger with the same group of people over time, you’ll notice a sort of ineffable bond between one another that you just can’t put your finger on. You’ll learn to love and support the people around you as they work through and eventually overcome their fitness obstacles, ultimately working toward a healthier and worthwhile life.

It’s More Than Just A Tour

Most gyms and fitness centers give prospective members a simple tour of the facilities, without actually getting active and involved while they’re onsite. Instead of that, we want you to actually try out our facilities for yourself to see how you like it – to determine if you’re comfortable with the environment, familiar with the equipment, and so forth.

What Are You Waiting For? Contact Us Today!

Most personal training centers don’t offer this level of interaction when you check out their facilities, so it’s a good idea to jump on this free session – it’s basically a free workout for you. Take advantage of our free session offer by contacting us, or learn more about our Fulton personal training gym here!

New Personal Training System Goes Into Full Swing in Fulton

Fulton Kettlebells recently debuted its new strength training and fitness program: ForeverStrong Personalized Fitness System at its Fulton, MD studio.

The new system features an hour-long, shared personal training session that incorporates a progressive strength workout with a high intensity interval routine. Clients are reporting that the experience has been life-changing.

Monica, one of the first participants to go through the program, lost 12 pounds in 2 months and several inches off her waist. Afterward she exclaimed,

“I feel healthy. I feel strong. I feel confident. I feel empowered.”

Central to the unique personal training program is the versatile and dynamic kettlebell. While it may look like a simple iron ball with a handle, when swung properly, the kettlebell becomes a powerful weight training tool, proven to torch fat and build muscle and simultaneously, improve cardiovascular strength and endurance.

Fulton Kettlebell trainer, Kelly Scott, says that the new innovative exercise sessions include drills specifically designed to develop lean, metabolically active muscle, strengthen and tone core muscle, and burn fat in the shortest amount of time.

“Because we work in small groups, our clients get one-on-one, custom coaching to train safely and effectively. A real bonus to the training is the high-energy, high intensity finishers that not only help improve heart and lung health, accelerate weight and fat loss, but also are a lot of fun,” said Scott.

Scott holds one of the highest accreditations in kettlebell training: the SFG Kettlebell Instructor Certificate Level II.

“As a personal trainer over the past 9 years, I wanted to create a systematic approach for people of all fitness levels to work smarter and safely sculpt their body. ForeverStrong is that system,” Scott adds.