Fitness: Do you need a personal trainer?

Achieving your personal fitness goals comes only after you commit to changing your lifestyle, which doesn’t come easy.

“A lot of people have got to have a life-threatening event to get them motivated. They almost have to have one of those episodes where they feel like they almost visited God to get them to do what they need to do,” said George Goodloe, a personal trainer at the Waynesboro Family YMCA.

Once you make the commitment to fitness, you can’t try to do it all at once. Goodloe preaches the virtue of dialing it back training-wise. Goodloe has found that women tend to be more receptive to personal training, because in general women are more willing to work within themselves.

“Guys have testosterone guiding them. They try to do too much,” he said. “The ladies are smarter about it. The guys are know-it-alls. They try to lift too much, hurt themselves, and wonder what they did wrong. I would forewarn them about certain exercises that shouldn’t be done. They don’t always listen.”

So dial it back, is one important message. Another: fitness isn’t just what you do in the gym.

“We talk about sleep, nutrition and exercise. If you don’t put all three together, it doesn’t work. It takes a combination of the three,” Goodloe said.

Another fitness tip from Goodloe: stick to it.

“You can’t just come in one time or for a week or for 30 days and think you’ve accomplished something,” Goodloe said. “If I can get you in here for six months, I’ve got you. You’ve changed your life. You’ve changed your lifestyle. You’ve changed your perception of what it means to be healthy. But it takes that kind of commitment to get there.”

– Story by Chris Graham