FAQ about Houston Fitness Consultants
What type of results can I expect if I follow your problem as you instruct me to?
Most of our clients, when they follow our instructions, can lose 1.5-3 lbs per week for the first 3-4 weeks, then approximately 1% of their weight per week after that. The exercise creates the stimulus, the food provides energy for change, and sleep/recovery provides the final piece.
How do I know this will work for me?
Unlike a lot of programs out there, we are following scientifically established guidelines, confirmed by the American Council on Exercise, the American College of Sports Medicine, the AHA, and more. We combine the protocols that have been proven in clinical studies, time and time again. Proper, balanced, calorically correct meal planning, effective but safe exercise specifically tailored to the individuals’ goals and recovery ability, and proper rest recommendations. The combined approach has a proven track record.
We know there are new trends that come out practically every week, but we follow the science, and try to stay at the leading edge of progress, which is why our clients learn things that seem to become trends later on.
What special requirements do I have to have?
An ability to work hard, but at an appropriate intensity, an honest approach to tracking your eating, and a desire to be accountable for your actions. That is all we ask from our clients, we will provide the rest. If you have a medical condition that we feel is out of scope of expertise, we will recommend you to someone who specializes in that type of condition and treatment. Our clinical exercise background, however, allows us to work with people that other certifications do not.
Will insurance pay for the sessions?
Third party insurance reimbursement has been done, but with all of the changes in the insurance industry, it is hard to predict what will be covered and what will not. We recommend that you ask your doctor and your insurance agent to review any options you may have in receiving compensation for our services. When we sit down with new clients, we try to make sure they understand that, at this point, we do not believe they will be covered for an exercise and conditioning program. We are constantly reviewing this, however, so this may change soon.
Your prices are lower than the trainers at the gym, why is that?
As a trainer who has charged as much as 90.00 an hour, I feel that it is an unfair financial burden to put on a client. We adjusted our pricing to provide the highest level of service and experience for the money that could be found. We own all of our equipment, we have very low overhead, we are anxious to teach our clients as much as we can to empower them to make exercise and nutrition a lifetime choice, and we do not advertise. We would rather see our clients continue with us because they can afford it and they see the value. We will happily put our experience against any trainers: anywhere, anytime.
Why should I consider Houston Fitness over the other trainers that are out there? My gym has bodybuilders and a lot of young trainers that look really fit.
We at Houston Fitness pride ourselves in being in excellent condition, especially for our age. Our clients feel we represent a very healthy ideal. We enjoy a healthy body image with very low health risk factors. We are seldom, if ever, sick. We maintain low year-round bodyfat levels. We are capable of demonstrating every possible exercise variation we teach our clients. We do NOT try to be bodybuilders or pretend to be competitive athletes, and we have found that the clients we work with do not always have that image in mind when they begin a training program. We consider ourselves to be approachable, fit, and very experienced trainers that our clients can feel comfortable with, and they understand what we can and cannot do for them.
We have trained numerous high level athletes (Olympic silver medalists, professional track and field, state champions, competitive bodybuilders, and more) with excellent results, but we do not try to market ourselves to those markets.
How does this approach differ from what I could do on my own?
The biggest difference is helping you find your correct exercise tolerance and recovery ability vs. learning it on your own. Most people exercise at too low of an intensity and too long of a duration to create the proper stimulus for change. Since people tend to get over consumed with “numbers”, we try to focus on “feel” and feedback. Your muscles really have no idea how much you are lifting or how many reps you have performed. They rely on signals being sent to the brain and the brain responds by either firing more motor units within the muscle, recruiting additional muscles into the exercise, over-reacting and creating a harmful situation for the muscle, or shutting off. People get hung up on how many reps they are doing and may no longer be creating an appropriate stimulus for the muscle. This can lead to plateaus, which can lead to overtraining (if you try to do more), undertraining (if you try to do less), injury (when you work a muscle past its safe cutoff points), and termination of the program due to lack of progress. We offer solutions to prevent that. One of the ways that happens is by making sure you are performing every exercise correctly and at maximum efficiency.
How much time do I have to commit to the program to see results?
Most of our clients notice changes in the first two weeks. We have thought about offering a “quick-start” approach for the first couple weeks to exaggerate the initial progress, but we keep coming back to providing long-term solutions. If someone follows our advice, performs the workouts correctly and at the proper intensity, they will notice anthropometric changes in as little as two weeks of twice a week workouts.
What could affect my progress? I am very busy and may have to miss a lot of sessions.
We develop programs for busy people, it was one of the reasons we started training this way ourselves. We understand the 70-hour work weeks, the last minute schedule changes, the traveling; we also help our clients with programs that fit into that type of lifestyle. This includes meal planning and supplementation, in-room workouts and cardio plans, IPOD workouts that care custom designed for each client, whether they are home with the kids, out on the road, or adjusting to change in personal schedule.
Our programs are designed to be perfect for the busy lifestyle, allowing for those times where you just cannot fit a workout in the way you planned it. We always offer plans for fitting SOMETHING in when the schedules get hectic, even for our own workouts and diet planning.
We would really rather see someone make a small adjustment to their workouts and do something rather than miss it completely, so we teach that when we work with our clients.
What is more important to my progress: exercise, diet, rest, and stress reduction?
Everyone hates to hear this, but they are all pretty equal to making real progress. Too much exercise, and sleep suffers, followed by immune system inefficiency. Too much food, and you increase your body’s ability to store extra calories as fat. Too little and muscle is sacrificed to feed the metabolic requirement of the rest of the body. Too much stress, and conditions similar to overtraining occur. If you do not get enough sleep, then glycogen levels are not fully restored, and that can lead to symptoms similar to overtraining. There is really no way to ignore one or more of the four points and make the progress you are aiming for, better to reduce the intensity somewhat and take a more patient approach.
I want to lose weight quickly and I do not mind taking a lot of supplements, can you recommend any?
We usually prefer to see our clients take a more long-term goal oriented approach. We understand the overwhelming media exposure to energy drinks and weight loss products and we understand the temptation they bring about, but we know they are short-term fixes with very little in the way of lasting results. As for supplements, we always figure it makes sense to actually know WHAT you are eating before you begin to “supplement” anything. A lot of dollars and a lot of frustration are wasted every year on products that offer a lot, produce very little, and cost a lot, especially long-term. Some of the supplements do offer real value to a properly administered program, but their value is as a “s-u-p-p-l-e-m-e-n-t”, not as new food group.
What is the best form of exercise? Why would I want to do anything other the best if I have a choice?
The best form, without trying to make a joke of it, is the one that you stick with that provides you with the benefits you want. As far as what works the best, there are advantages and disadvantages to all of the forms of exercise commonly used. If it were up to only being able to do ONE form of exercise, we would recommend resistance training, because it provides strengthening and cardiovascular conditioning benefits when done correctly. The problem is, it does not burn a high amount of calories per minute or per workout, so the diet has to be followed more strictly. Cardio alone burns calories well, but requires some sizable equipment, along with a major commitment to time and diet to get the benefits. Cardio alone does not do enough to stimulate muscle mass increases or bone density increases; that can lead to a loss of lean mass and muscle density. We prefer a cross training approach, experiment with new activities, try new things, look for new interests! Why feel like you can only do one thing? Have some fun with your exercise!
What type of equipment do I need to buy to get results?
No special equipment is required, we design the workouts around the items you currently have or want to have. We help clients learn how to use their bodies in effective ways to make routine exercise more challenging. We also work within the space you have available and the things they like to do to help optimize their investment in equipment and space. We have clients that do their whole workout in a 2-foot by 4-foot area, and some that feel the need to use the whole gym every workout. Whatever works best for the client!
How does the chile pepper fit in to your approach?
The chile pepper represents a number of things to us. It is an abstract representation of a pepper for that very reason. It is a healthy and highly effective natural food product, capable of stimulating circulation, reducing inflammation, increasing metabolism, and aiding digestion. It is high in vitamins and anti-oxidants. Not much to dislike about peppers!
Second, it represents our unique “chile-pepper” approach where we adjust the workouts to match our client’s unique tolerance for “heat” or work. Everyone has a different perception and tolerance for how much work they can do, and how much work they believe they are doing. Too much work and the client gets sore or injured, too little and they lose stimulation and fail to see the interest and value in exercise, similar to eating too hot or too mild of a pepper.
If someone goes right into a habanero pepper (a VERY hot pepper) the first time they eat a pepper, chances are good that they will find it WAY too hot and painful, and they will probably never want to try it again. The same thing happens when they try to do too hot of a workout: excessive pain and discomfort, long term and short term pain, and a general distrust of the “genre”. We see a lot of trainers push their new clients much too hard, almost like it is important to have someone in that kind of pain to feel like they worked hard enough. This approach may work with some people (same as it would with eating a habanero pepper…), they would probably have a very high tolerance for pain and a high threshold for work, but this in no way applies to everyone.
On the other side of the coin, if someone is expecting an exercise program to be a “mega-calorie” burning experience with a lot of sweat and struggling, too mild of a workout will leave them feeling like they did not get enough out of it (similar to eating too mild of a pepper when you are expecting something hot…), they may lose interest or feel that there is something wrong with them for not “getting it”. In this case, they may end up quitting.
We like to use the chile pepper to help our clients find their own “heat range”. When they find a level of work that challenges them (safely), produces the results they want (efficiently), and makes them fee like they are accomplishing something, we say they have found their heat level. It is our job to get them to try to “Turn up the Heat” when they feel they need a new challenge. We have not found a client yet that does not benefit from this approach.
What about a Periodized Approach? This seems to be what the professional athletes are doing.
A periodized approach is a great idea for professional athletes. Their job is to be at their peak when their events are in season. A Periodized approach is a scientific way of creating different intensity cycles that allow for maximum expenditure and exertion followed by adjusting cycles that are progressively easier to allow for enhanced recovery.
This approach can work very well for the professional, but they
I want my child to be the best in sports, how soon can I start him/her on a training program?
Children can begin “training” at a very early age, but what we define as training may not fit the hardcore training approach some parents put their children on (in most cases, too soon for any real benefit). Children are still developing neural pathways, bone lengths, leverage points, and muscular strength throughout their early teens. Trying to force the body to adapt to a highly specified training program prior to this point can lead to a lot of short and long term problems, early joint pain, muscular imbalances, back pain, gait problems, and more. Our approach, when working with children, is very much age- and maturity-dependant. Every child develops certain skills at a different age, these issues cannot be forced, no matter how competitive the parent or child may want to be.
We recommend a training program focusing on high neuromuscular recruitment, balance, multiple joint movements, power application, and practical execution of technique before beginning a resistance-training program involving machines or power lifting-type movements.
This is probably not what a lot of parents want to hear (we know, we see new children every year that are being pushed WAY too hard into sports they are not ready to be in), but it prevents and almost completely eliminates injury, improves recovery, and provides a better multi-sport athletic base for the developing child.
The advantage for the child is that they have a much better starting point when they grow into their bodies and prepare for more competitive sports.
I do not like the “drill sergeant” approach to working out, what approach does Houston Fitness Consultants take with new clients?
Since our studios are semi-private, appointment only training facilities, we approach the training from the standpoint of: what does the client need? We prefer to keep people entertained while working with them, but we are also very big on teaching while working. The best way to explain our approach is fun, efficient, entertaining, and informative. No yelling, no “three more reps”, no insults, and no lack of interest. We watch EVERY rep, and make adjustments based on how your individual reaction to each exercise in a muscle sequencing order fatigues, and your perception of what your muscles are telling you.
What guarantee do I have that your program will work for me? I have tried everything, and nothing has worked for me.
We offer a money back guarantee if you do not lose weight or do not make changes towards your goals. As always, the problem with this type of “guarantee” only guarantees that Houston Fitness Consultants will do everything that has been proven safe and effective for our clients. We have seen many of our potential clients sabotage their efforts with poor sleep, late night partying, poor food planning and tracking, and overuse of cardio; this takes the guarantee out of our hands. We never want to see a client not reach their goals! If they follow the advice we “prescribe” for them, they WILL succeed! We do not make up the science or exaggerate the effects of what we do; we lay it out in real numbers and real timetables. We review the programs you have tried and try to find out why it may not have worked for you, and try to help you overcome the barriers that may hinder your progress.
One of the ways we do that is by not bringing in any questionable financial interests; we do not support quick weight loss products, gimmicks, or gadgets that promise results beyond what is scientifically feasible. We see a lot of trainers and training programs where people buy into expensive multi-level marketing products that put a lot of money into their pockets at their clients’ expense.
What reasons are there that this will NOT work for me?
Some of the things that can make our approach ineffective are an inability to challenge your muscles with a specific stimulus. A lack of attention to the eating portion of the program; Poor sleep. Poor stress management. An overuse of cardio exercise, poor meal planning; the list is long. There are a lot of reasons, but if you come into this with a desire to make a change, an ability to listen, work hard (but not too hard), and the ability to plan your meals, you can be successful and get all of the benefits a properly designed plan can offer.
Any questions we didn't answer? Contact Us for the answers!
