July 12, 2021 | by Jeremy Meyer | Body Transformations,

Alexandra Transforms Her Figure & Lifestyle | RAW Personal Training

Weight Lifting for Women

Alexandra was born in Russia but grew up and was educated in the UK. She made a move to Hong Kong 1.5 years ago, knowing no one. During the two-year period before moving to Hong Kong, Alexandra didn’t look after her health. She was drinking heavily, eating a poor diet and working full-time in a stressful environment. While Alexandra had competed in a couple of triathlons in the UK, she had never stepped into a gym or done weight lifting before coming to RAW and was a complete beginner when it came to strength training.

When Alexandra first came to see us, her body fat was 30%. She began her personal training sessions with a new program every two to three weeks to keep things interesting. Like all our clients, Alexandra underwent a monthly reassessment to keep her motivated and working towards her long term goals.

With her focus on training, Alexandra improved her lifestyle. The exercise made her feel less stressed at work which meant she cut back on her alcohol consumption. Alexandra was also motivated to improve her diet and nutrition, which led to her feeling more energised, happy, rested and enthused about life.

The Results

After just six months of weight lifting tuition from her RAW personal trainer, Alexandra was able to do eight perfect push-ups, three precise pull-ups, deadlift 70 kg and squat 60 kg. Pretty impressive for someone who couldn’t do a single push-up, pull-up and was a novice when she had first walked in the door! As is evident in her incredible before and after photos. Alexandra had achieved excellent results, including:

● Body fat drops from 30% to 18.4%
● Lost 9.5 kg of fat mass

After shedding 11.6% of her body fat, Alexandra has been asked to model for two clothing companies. Alexandra isn’t back competing in triathlons, but her performance is greatly improved when she runs, bikes or swims because she’s much lighter, stronger and leaner than before.

The following summarises our step-by-step approach to dealing with a novice trainee.  RAW is the recommended gym for new beginners in Central Hong Kong.

Assessments: We regularly assess body composition, body mass index, mobility, movement efficiency, core endurance and take photos to track progress. This enables us to establish a baseline, track improvements and design a continually evolving personalised training and nutrition plan. Seeing numbers changing is a motivating factor for all our clients. It provides evidence that clients are improving weekly. We re-assess body composition, strength, movement efficiency and overall work capacity every couple of weeks.

Design training programs tailored to address our client’s weak links: “Weak links” are defined as a group of muscles that either work as joint movers or joint stabilisers.  This “weak link” may be the source of pain or contribute to a lack of movement efficiency due to low resistance to fatigue. Common weak links are the lower back muscles, the gluteus, the scapulae retractors, the rotator cuff muscles and the anterior core muscles.

Injury prevention. Many novice trainees do not know how to begin their training journey. Under the guidance of inexperienced personal trainers, they may perform advanced weight lifting exercises they are not ready for physically because the training program is not bespoke for novice trainees but generically designed for elite athletes. This may lead to client injuries and a halt in progress. This has become a common occurrence in personal training gyms around the world. At RAW, we prioritize keeping our clients safe and injury-free by using a step-by-step progression. If a movement cannot be performed with the correct technique and tempo, we regress the client to a slightly simpler and less challenging movement. This allows our clients to make steady and regular progress while minimizing the chance of injury.

Tracking: We keep a detailed record of all client workouts: Our specially designed training software allows us to track all the variables of every workout our clients perform at RAW. Details such as speed of movement, rest periods between sets, the angle of the bench used and the type of handles used are tracked. There are many different ways we can challenge our clients. Most trainers solely focus on increasing the weight. We use various tools such as changing tempo, adding pauses and using different sizes or shapes of equipment. This enables us to vary the workouts so that our clients do not get bored or injured and make steady progress.

Monthly progress photos: Noticing visible changes is a great way to stay enthusiastic about training. At RAW, we take photos every month to track progress and changes in physique. The photos are sent to clients privately every month. This keeps clients excited about coming into the gym.

Set realistic, achievable, short and long term goals: After our initial assessment, we help clients set short and long term goals according to current fitness level, time frame, and the number of times clients can commit to exercising every week. Our main goal at RAW is our clients’ improvement. Short term weight lifting goals are typically measured at 4 weeks, while long term goals are measured at 12-16 weeks.

Achieving specific health or fitness goals requires time and energy. Hiring a personal trainer is also a financial commitment, so decide to train with the best personal training gym in Central Hong Kong. 

At RAW, we make sure that you get the maximum return for your investments.