What’s the best thing about hitting a bit of a plateau? The view back over where you’ve come up from! Rob arrived at his personal training session this week feeling a bit plateaued. But had had the presence of mind to look back and think about how far he’s already come in a short period of time. We tend to have rather short memory spans and ‘forget’ what things were like before we started a new task or activity as our new status quickly starts to feel ‘normal’. Reviewing your progress is a brilliant motivational tool that brings back the ‘wow’ factor to illustrate just how much you have achieved.

Trainers laced, ready to run

That all said, definite progress has still been made. Rob is now down to 13stone 11lbs which is an additional 3lbs down in the past few weeks. He has kept his total running time to 30 minutes and is now able to run 16 minutes, walk for 90 seconds, then continue the run for a further 14 minutes. Huge progress from less than 8 weeks ago when completing 10 x 1 minute runs was a massive challenge!

Our last two personal training sessions have introduced Rob to the underlying principles and practise of Pilates. Although there were no huge nasties with his posture, Rob has found this quite a revelation in how he holds himself up in everyday life and during his runs. Teaching your body to put its bones into alignment and then strengthening your core muscles to keep them there whilst you move around has a number of benefits. The central ‘corset’ of strength protects the spine and back and allows your limbs to move more freely and efficiently. Reducing the likelihood of joint strain which can come about through repeated misaligned movements. Better core control also (very pertinently for Rob) assists with balance and this is something on which we will continue to work.

Lots of props were called into play – stability ball, bucket, bell, rope, paper plates, drinking straws, a corkscrew and helium balloons all had their part. When starting out with Pilates it is vitally important that you understand the basics of alignment for your own body before launching into ‘hard’ exercises, so this was time well spent. It is well worth investing the time and mental energy (lots is required, as when learning any new skill) to be happy with your own alignment and new, lengthened body – which, incidentally will appear to have magically lost weight without any additional effort on your part.

So, the task for the next week is repetition and consolidation. More practise at the running, more practise of the Pilates to make sure that we’ve laid strong foundations to confidently move forward from as we start our climb onwards up the hill (literally on Friday afternoon’s Netwalk from Swanston) to the next target of a continuous 30 minute run.