Kickboxing Chic’s BodyBlog

Very exciting news… I passed the ACE Personal Trainer exam today and can now refer to myself as a "Certified" Personal Trainer. So the text books are going back on the bookshelf. Now the real work begins in getting a business entity set up so that I can actualy take on clients. I got a business license (that part was easy), and now I need to get some marketing stuff in place (i.e. a website), forms that clients need to fill-out/sign, etc. I really don’t have a place of business yet either, so I will need to figure that part out too. Anyway, I’m not worried… this is not my primary source of income… it will be a side gig I do in my spare time. With the goal of eventually making it my primary source of income. Getting the certification was a first step in my career-change journey. So I’m super-excited about today’s accomplishment.

As for my over-training drama… I’m learning that I’m an over-trained text book case. Everything I’ve ever read about the signs of over-training and what it takes to overcome it is coming true for me. The only symptom I haven’t encountered, unfortunately, is the lost appetite. Anyway… last weekend I pulled a hamstring. I was doing sprints up my cul-de-sac, and half way through my LAST sprint interval, I felt my right hamstring tighten up with sharp pain, bringing me to a screaching halt. I then read in my ACE PT text book that this is a common scenario when the body is over-trained. While I’ve built in more time off and reduced the intensity of my training sessions, it is not enough when you are truly over-trained. Recovering from being over-trained takes several weeks of serious rest/recovery time. I’m learning that now. I did take off nearly a full week a couple weeks ago and (mentally) nearly went insane. So I think June is going to be a really low-key training month:

• Lower weight/higher reps (I haven’t done this in a while so it could be fun to dust off old/come up with new training techniques using a higher rep range.)
• Light leg work since I need to let this strained hamstring heal
• No HIIT cardio sessions at 90% of my max HR; I’ll be bringing this down to 75/80%
• Spend more time stretching
• Getting more sleep (don’t need to get up at 4:30am 5 days a week)

I actually have another reason for needing to bring it down a few notches, which I will share in a later post.

So a bit of good news and no-so-good news today. The way I look at it… with a potential career in helping others make fitness part of their lifestyle, it is good for me to actually experience this stuff on a personal level. Now I can really tell people don’t go to such training extremes as you’ll end up a wreck physically and emotionally… and personal experience carries a lot more credibility.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 8:57 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.