Fitness testing!

Tuesday, October 16, 2012 · Mike Davis

Tonight I met my client out at the track for a fitness test. My intentions were to put her through a fairly tough repetitive workout that would indicate how she is doing with her personal strength training plan and her personal running program. I have worked with Jaime now for 4 months with the goal to help her run healthy which is something that has eluded her for 6 years. Within this challenge I had to get her through Reach the Beach relay race without a setback. Her personal training plan started her out slowly, built up enough miles with hills worked in to prepare her for RTB. I was worried that the stress of RTB would bring on greater risk of injuries, but we had a structured plan and she executed it perfectly. No injuries beyond tired legs like every other runner.

Moving forward I went back to her personal training plan and mapped out the next month. Instead of building on RTB I pulled Jaime back to almost the beginning. Now thank goodness I have gained her trust as many would not be happy about going back. My plan is to continue to build Jaime up both strength wise and running base. We actually met at the track a couple weeks ago with the doctor that has also been working with her. The doctor has been impressed with Jaime’s progress and wanted to further discuss some thoughts. We pretty much agreed on what other dynamics we would like to see adjusted with Jaime, but nothing extreme. Mostly just getting her to hit mid foot and roll off her toe and push off.

Back to tonight. At the track I put Jaime through as many 400 meters runs as she could do, with 6 pushups and 6 X 2 single foot squats after each 400. I had two goals, one being to see how well she’s doing with her personal strength training and running plan. The second goal was to set a bench mark for evaluating improvement a month from now. Creating some conclusive data to compare helps me to adjust her personal training plans as we move forward. The results were amazing; Jaime exceeded my highest expectations and then some! Not only has she been disciplined and followed the personal training plan laid out for her, but she has worked her tale off! She ran great, did over 100 pushups and 100 sets of single foot squats and complained the whole time! Her results indicate that she is totally fit and much stronger since we started. The only problem with her results tonight is now she has set the bar and will have to work that much harder.

I have written many personal training plans, but not everyone follows them as well as Jaime. I tell people up front; paying me to design a personal training plan won’t make a difference; following through with doing what the training plan say’s makes the difference. Jaime has done exactly as I designed and her success has been all that I could hope for. Another benefit of Jaime’s success is the trust that we both gain in our coach/trainee relationship. She believes in me and I trust that she will follow through with her training plan. I have no doubt that there will be some bumps in the road, but that’s typical of all runners.