Monthly Archives: August 2019

6 Tips to be a Successful Personal Trainer

Though you love working out, becoming a personal trainer is a serious step up. It’s no longer about you; you’re giving life skills to other people who seek your guidance. That being said, it’s time to get serious and focus on being well-recognized in the field. If you want to become a successful personal trainer, follow these six tips. 

Stay educated

Once you get your basic certification, you may think you’re done studying, but this is just the beginning. As a personal trainer, you need to stay up-to-date on the latest fitness trends, scientific research, and certifications. Not all certification programs are the same. The CPT certification choices are different than other certifications. They’ll keep your mind sharp, and ahead in the field.

Think like a business owner

Yes, you’re a personal trainer who works at a gym, but you’re also running your own business. As a personal trainer, you need to decide how you wish to run your business and attract clients. Are you going to work full-time or part-time? Do personal training, group fitness training, or both? Figure out where and what you’d like to train, and the number of clients you can take on.

Keep clients coming

You may be happy with your set of clients, but if someone gets injured or doesn’t have time to work out, you lost business. Use marketing tools and referrals to attract potential clients, ensuring that you’ll always have steady business. By developing long-terms clients, you’ll have a stream of reliable income.

Build relationships with your clients

You’re not just a trainer; you’re someone who’s helping someone change their life. Focus on building relationships with your clients. Of course, you should focus on training, but your clients are looking for more than just someone to teach them how to squat. They want to enjoy working out and have fun while becoming fit and healthy.

Teach them realistic workouts

Not everyone has the time or desire to run 20km and then do a HIIT work out. Be realistic with your clients, and give them tools they’ll be able to use on their own when you’re not training them. That way, they’ll continue to see results when they’re on holiday, for example. Though you’re training them, show them what they can do on their own as well.  If you want to change their life, give them long-term tools so they can do it.

Be passionate about training

The key to being a successful personal trainer is truly enjoying training other people. It’s a very social job, so if you’re someone who doesn’t like to talk, then think twice about being a personal trainer. If you want to be a successful trainer, make sure you’re passionate about it. 

Becoming a successful trainer shouldn’t be hard if you love training and socializing with people. Follow these tips, and you’ll become the best of the best.

Ample discoveries in managing your anxiety

For years, physical health has been at the forefront of healthcare and medical research, and while of course this is an important aspect of overall health, and thus more than worthy of the dedication to its cause, it is important to also remember mental health. And at the end of the day, one of the most shockingly common mental health struggles out there is anxiety. This mental health disease does not discriminate, meaning that it can and does affect anyone, anywhere, anytime, anyplace. That is the power and the horror of anxiety, and it remains one of the most terrifyingly common mental health struggles there is, the world over.

The internal nature of anxiety often means that it is not as easily recognised, or diagnosed, as most physical health problems are. This can make it difficult to even recognise in the first place, but also challenging to control and treat. And while not all those who actually suffer from anxiety may even realise that is indeed what they are suffering with, the point always remains the same: anxiety can be debilitating, but it does not have to be that way. Outside of professional treatment solutions, what are some of the recent and ongoing discoveries to help you manage your anxiety?

Break big projects into small tasks

This is so important. Sometimes, even the smallest thing can feel like the biggest deal when you are battling anxiety. So, when faced with big projects and tasks, it is easy to understand how they could easily become more and more challenging to deal with. When you have big projects on your plate, try to break them down into smaller tasks, prioritising the most important fundamental sections of the project to be taken care of first. This way, you are not necessarily dealing with one giant, heavy task, but instead multiple smaller, more easily managed tasks. Make a list of these small tasks, and tick them off one by one. This will make you feel more productive and more in control, thus quelling your anxiety from bubbling over.

Take control in a natural way

Sometimes, going back to nature is the best medicine you can get. It does not necessarily matter if you do this by using essential oil blends to help calm and relax your body and mind, or if you buy CBD oil online to assist in managing your anxiety. What matters is how you approach dealing with it, and what you plan to do to figure it all out. There is an undeniable sense of calm that comes hand in hand with knowing that you are approaching dealing with the issue head on, in as organic a way as possible. It is also important to note that if you plan to make use of CBD oil, you should consult with a healthcare or medical professional you trust beforehand.

While the original plant of marijuana could enhance an existing anxiety problem, the cannabinoid compound of CBD has the opposite effect. CBD oil has been proven to help in calming nerves as it is a popular relaxant. In one study, brain scans showed that patients treated with CBD oil had changed blood flow to regions of the brain which is linked to anxious feelings. This is extremely promising and scientists are looking into ways of how CBD is able to react with patients of depression, OCD, PTSD and even autism, amongst other mental disorders.

Work with your body to calm yourself down

Anxiety often manifests in fits of panic and even sometimes rage. When you feel your anxiety start to take over, it pays to literally sit yourself down and actively and consistently work with your body to calm yourself down in the face of your anxiety. This often seems difficult, if not impossible, but counting to three, focusing on your happy place or something definitively good, and taking slow, deliberate breaths will give you an edge up on your anxiety and help to neutralise your head space.

Brain Fog: What it Is and How to Combat It

Do you ever find yourself in a condition where you can’t think clearly? Everything just feels slow, clunky, and hazy?

You may be experiencing a phenomenon commonly referred to as brain fog. Knowing ways to deal with it could help you overcome recurring bouts of impaired cognitive functioning.

What is Brain Fog?

Brain fog isn’t an official medical condition. You won’t ever see a doctor diagnose a patient with it. There are probably no scientific papers on the source of brain fog and how it’s dangerous for our health and well-being.

Yet common sense tells everyone, including doctors and researchers, that brain fog is a real phenomenon. Whether we’ve recognized it or not, we’ve all experienced brain fog at some point.

It’s a type of cognitive dysfunction that involves such symptoms as:

  • Memory lapses
  • Lack of mental clarity
  • Poor concentration
  • Inability to focus
  • Overarching sense of confusion

Brain fog is best described as a condition of mental fatigue. In severe cases, people are unable to perform work-related tasks, schoolwork, or other essential duties.

Brain fog typically comes and goes, but it can settle for hours or days at a time. It’s believed to be caused by a combination of stress, lack of sleep, hormonal changes, diet, medications, and underlying medical conditions.

How to Prevent Brain Fog

Despite not being an orthodox medical diagnosis, brain fog can be avoided through smart and healthy decision-making. Here are some ideas, suggestions, and theories about how to prevent it.

  • Disconnect From Digital Devices

How much time do you think you spend in front of a screen each day? Make sure you include your phone, computer, tablet, and TV.

If you guessed six hours, you’re probably wrong. Nine hours? That may not even be close.

Try 12 hours per day. When you recall that the average person is awake for only 18 hours roughly, that means we are spending 66 percent of our waking hours staring one screen or another.

The problem is that staring at a screen typically requires very little mental aptitude or cognitive processing. Immersed in a universe of bright lights and flashy graphics, the brain doesn’t have to think.

It glazes over and kicks into autopilot. Then it may have trouble switching gears when it comes time to think and process information at a meaningful level.

So the first piece of advice is to disconnect from digital devices. Start by reducing 12 hours to 11. Then shoot for eight hours a day. Getting your daily screen time below six hours should be the goal.

  • Get More Exercise

What will you do with all of this new time? You could get some exercise. Not only is a workout good for your physical health, but it has a profoundly positive effect on your mental health.

Studies have shown the parts of the brain that control thinking and memory have greater volume in people who exercise compared with those who don’t. In other words, physical exercise enhances your cognitive abilities.

Try to get at least 30 minutes of moderately intense physical exercise every day.

  • Work Out Your Brain

Spend time directly exercising your brain, too. The brain’s plasticity enables it to adapt and change over time. If you engage in mental exercise, you’ll find that your brain becomes less susceptible to brain fog.

Here are some ideas:

  • Teach yourself a new language
  • Write short stories by hand
  • Do crossword puzzles, Sudoku, and other brain challenges
  • Read books regularly

You don’t have to do all these things every day to improve your brain. Just make sure you regularly pursue habits that stretch your brain and empower you to process new and challenging information.

  • Improve Your Diet

There’s a strong correlation between gut health and brain health. Improving your diet can have a direct and positive impact on your ability to focus.

In addition to cutting out unhealthy foods that are high in saturated fats and refined sugars, you should integrate healthy nutrients into your daily food intake. If you find that you can’t get all the vitamins, minerals, and nutrients you need from food, try taking natural supplements such as fish oil, B-vitamins, phosphatidylserine, ginkgo biloba, ashwagandha, bacopa monnieri, L-theanine, and other nootropics.

  • Get More Sleep

Our fast-paced society disdains sleep and preaches the virtue of working hard for long hours throughout the day. Given the presences of so many distractions that compete for our attention, sleep too easily gets shoved to the back burner.

This compromises health in more ways than one. If you want to combat brain fog, you should aim to get at least seven or eight hours of sleep on a nightly basis.

Set a consistent bedtime and wake-up hour. This will enable you to develop a proper rhythm of rest and rejuvenation, and as a result, you’ll function better at both the physical and cognitive levels.

Live Healthy, Be Happy

Brain fog is typically a sign of other underlying physical and mental health issues. So if you address your brain fog head-on, you’ll also tackle other health issues.

As a result, you should find yourself living a happier and healthier life.