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MEDICAL MATTERS
The measure of success
FIA Chief Medical Officer John Searle looks at the checks and balances that can mark your clients’ progress
‘If you do not measure it you do not know’ I was told when I was a medical student. I had been asked by the consultant who was teaching me if a patient’s blood pressure had improved. I had not measured it and could only say, ‘I thought it had!’ I was being rather stupid but do we measure and assess the progress of our clients and gym members? The reality is that unless we do, we do not know whether or not their exercise programmes are doing any good. But what is practical in a busy gym or personal training practice?
The first thing we need to know is how much exercise our clients/ members are actually doing. How active are they in their daily living? How many gym sessions do they do regularly? How long
are they spending over them? Somebody who comes to a circuit class or a personal training session once a week and does nothing the rest of the time will make only very limited progress in their fitness.
Secondly we need to do a few specific measurements. Weight, BMI and waist circumference are key indicators of health and progress in weight loss programmes. The value of BMI has been questioned because some people have a BMI above 25. This, of course, is fine if the increase in weight is muscle and not fat and it is accompanied by aerobic fitness. But BMI and waist circumference remain the best predictors of the risk of developing such conditions as strokes, heart attack and diabetes.
Thirdly, measuring aerobic fitness is more difficult. A guide to maximum oxygen consumption can be obtained from many CV machines. But there are other more reliable, and more simple, ways of doing it. Charting the fall in resting pulse is easy to do. Measuring heart rate for a given aerobic challenge is another simple way of assessing aerobic fitness. As fitness improves, the heart rate will fall when, for example, a client rows a given distance in a given time.
Classically muscle strength is measured by the 1 rep max test. But another way is to chart progress – how many reps can a person do for a given resistance?
Making these assessments every six to ten weeks for personal training clients and two or three times a year for gym members not only enables progress to be seen but it also provides excellent motivation to keep training. This assumes, of course, that the measurements are done accurately!
Finally, there are qualitative ways of assessing progress. Quality of life questionnaires can be helpful. A simple scoring system for energy levels is a quick and easy way where 1 is ‘I feel tired most of the time’ to 10 which is ‘I feel full of energy most of the time.’ Photographs are powerful tools also especially for those losing weight or wanting to change their body shape and muscle definition.
If we measure and assess the effects of exercise we know whether or not progress is being made towards health and fitness. Then we can adjust programmes in an informed way. If we don’t measure and assess we are just guessing!