Following a really great upperbody session yesterday, which for me truly showed how far Ped has come, it was back to legs for our 25th session. To celebrate our quarter century, I decided to join Ped in his training session rather than just train him myself.

Training with a client is something I do at some point with most of my transformation clients (and many of my strength and conditioning clients when it comes to metabolic conditioning circuits). When I was doing my FA coaching awards, the advice to all coaches was never play. Even if you have odd numbers, don’t play, you can’t effectively coach. I do agree with this, especially for team sports where there are a lot of moving parts. Even for RM PTIs, it’s very difficult to effectively teach, coach, motivate a whole group of others if you are taking part yourself. It either means you hold back a little to be able to fully watch/coach or you could end up missing things.

However, for 1:1 training, if it’s a session designed that one person works while another rests, then training with a client works for me. Furthermore, I find it can really motivate certain people to do more. In the past, I’ve had clients that once I’ve trained with them a couple of times, they actually only want to train with me when we can train together. The element of friendly competition or being inspired by someone else’s efforts obviously really hitting their particularly learning style.

It think it’s also important for some clients to see that their trainer actually can walk the walk. Many sessions (particularly legs and intervals) are pretty tough. It’s often easy to stand on the sidelines and say “no pausing, keep going” or “come on, you’ve had your rest”, but as a trainer to have forgotten what it’s like to actually do that session – at least in the client’s mind anyway. They may be wondering if this trainer has ever actually tried this. Hence, every now and then I jump in – and this session being a DTP leg session seemed like a good one.

With Ped’s hip still not 100% I stuck to the decision to avoid loading the hip directly, instead, we headed for the leg ext/leg curl machines and did the following:

Warm-up reps/mobility

1. Leg ext 50reps, 40reps, 30reps, 20reps, 10reps, 5reps, 5reps, 10reps, 20reps, 30reps, 40reps, 50reps.
   Our weights increased by 2 plates as we dropped the reps 50-20reps and by 3 plates between 20-5reps. Then the same weights as we worked back up the reps.
2. Seated leg curl 50reps, 40reps, 30reps, 20reps, 10reps, 5reps.
   Our weights increased by 2 plates as we dropped the reps 50-20reps and by 3 plates between 20-5reps.
3. Lying leg curl 5reps, 10reps, 20reps, 30reps, 40reps, 50reps. Weight dropped by 2 plates 5-20reps and then 1 plate 20-50reps.
4. Seated calf raise 10-12reps 50kg x 3sets, last set 2 x drops sets 40kg and 30kg.
5. Leg press calf raise 120kg 10-12reps x 3sets, last set 2 x dropsets 2 plates per drop.

We didn’t rush any of the exercises trying to keep to a steady 2010 or 1010 tempo throughout.

The sheer volume of this session makes anyone squirm. The lactic build up after just a couple of sets of each exercise is a mental strength issue throughout, let alone the physical side of the session. Ped coped well, only stopping a handful of times and needing a bit of encouragement to keep it going. And… no hip pain so smiles all round.