My First and most Important Client

     Well here we are. Almost at the end of a 3 month program of working with my first client. I'd like to take a little time to explain a bit about my client. First off, she is from Lebanon. She is a 34 year old mother of 2. When she started the program with me (Professional Fitness Consultant program) she weighed 168 pounds. She was also suffering from some shoulder pain and demonstrated a lack in upper body, and distal arm strength. She does have lower body strength, since she was a belly dancer in her home country. However she was also lacking in cardiovascular.

     Her goals were to lose at least 18 pounds, gain upper body strength, and increase her cardiovascular. I love the reasoning for her goals. She wants to be able to play longer with her children, and have the strength to play harder as they get older.

     Our plan of attack? Simple. Start off increasing her Cardiovascular. It is important to do this for a couple of reasons. First reason is it helps build endurance and increase the flow of oxygen to the system. Second is its a great way to help lose the weight.

     We have had some obstacles to over come. The first few weeks we had to take it easy, due to an issue of a personal nature of my client. At the start of Week 3, we started our assault on her system. First plan of attack was to improve her cardiovascular system,  and endurance. We did this by starting every session on a treadmill. She would start off walking for 5 minutes, to prepare her body for the workout ahead. After the 5 minute walk, we would increase the speed. At first she would last between 60 and 90 seconds. Gradually over the weeks, we greatly increased her time to the point where in a 1 hour treadmill exercise, she spends a majority of the time jogging at a fast pace. Congratulations to her and all her hard work. I am more than impressed.

     Second attack was on her upper body strength. I put my client through a short serious of machines from the Fit-Fix area in our gym to find what her base strength was. Since we had a rocky start, I didn't see the need for a mid point reference. On the first machine, she was able to do 1 set of 10 reps with 75 pounds. The last time i tried her on the same machine, she managed to do 3 sets of 10 reps with 115 pounds. An increase of 53.3%. Although not all increases were as great, they are still very significant. on average the strength increase is between 30 and 54%. I also have to take into consideration that not only is she able to lift more, but has also increased her amount of sets, and repetitions.

     Here is a chart to show the weight loss that was achieved.

 As you can tell by the graph. Weight loss was gradual. Slowly losing weight gives a higher probability of keeping the weight off. The following graph shows the gradual decrease in my clients Body Mass Index.

The final chart i wish to share with you, is my clients Fat Mass. As you can tell by the chart below, my clients Fat Mass has dropped by almost 10 pounds. 

     Although we did not exactly hit my clients goal of a weight of 150 lbs, we did come very close. For me it is a great success. Even though she is my first client, I feel very confident in saying already that she was my "Most Challenging" client.