Track your Results with your Personal Progress Pack

If you prefer to monitor your progress in the comfort of your own home, we can offer you our Personal Progress Pack where you can chart the weekly changes to your body, your fitness level and various other tests that we measure.

Your trainer will give you your pack at your first visit and we would like you to complete it within a day or so of starting so we have an opening benchmark.

When you open the pack, you will see a battery of different tests for you to do.

We would like you to complete them weekly and if possible, at more or less the same time each week. It helps us evaluate your progress and trigger any changes we need to make to your programme.

When you open your pack on the left, at the top of the page we have a 3-minute step test that you can do at home.

Heart Rate Test

Heart rate is key to our programmes and we put a lot of store by it. If you can get a monitor to chart it accurately that’s great but if not than learn to take your own at the carotid artery on the neck. As you get fitter you should expect that your heart rate will drop week by week when you do this step test.

To do this we ask you to do press-ups to test your upper body fitness. You can do either half or full press ups but remember always use the same type in one minute. Please don’t mix them or your improvements won’t be so noticeable.

After the press ups do as many sit ups as you can in 1 minute. Again, as long as you use the same techniques each test, you will see clearly the progress you are making in the number of reps you can do.

Strength Test

Next, we have some flexibility tests and we will show you how to do the exercises and how we measure the results:

Flexibility is important to how your body functions and how you feel. We encourage you to make stretching a vital and regular part of your workout particularly if you suffer with any sort of arthritis or muscular issues.

Flexibility Tests

The Body measurement chart is possibly the most important area on the chart, and we would like you to really focus on this.

Body Measurement Chart

Weighing yourself on scales is very important to many of our members and we understand this but changes in your shape are the most accurate guide to the effectiveness of your programme.

Muscle is denser than bodyfat and because of this, you may initially weigh heavier while getting slimmer and more toned. If you weigh yourself and don’t measure yourself, this can be a surprise and de motivating.

Please measure yourself FIRST and you will be delighted with the results we get for you with in the first 6 weeks of your membership

Body Weight Chart

If you are measuring in kilos, then put in the big box’s multiples of 5kg, i.e If you’re in stones and pounds, then….

Once you have done the weight chart you can see your BMI chart. Next is the area of the card where we determine the Cardio intensity of your workouts.

Cardio is great for building heart strength, burning calories and making your lungs more efficient.

Ideally you will have access to a pulse monitor. And we would strongly advise you to buy one sell you one or we can simply show you how to take your own pulse rate using the neck or the wrist.

If you haven’t got a monitor don’t worry. Here’s how we establish your training zone.

To get the most from your workout we need to ensure that your heart rate beats at a certain level throughout your workout. This level is based on your age and exercise history. This we call your training zone and it’s based on the American College of Sports Medicine guidelines, the world’s most eminent exercise organisation.

Firstly, we need you to recognise where you are on the “programme stage”. Most of you will be starting out so you will be in the Initial stage area week 1 so your required range will be 55-70 %of your heart rate maximum for the first 4 weeks of your plan and then 60 – 80 % for the 5th & 6th week.

For those fitter athletes, we suggest that you start at the Improvement stage with a 60 – 80 % range or for well-conditioned individuals use the 75-90% range.

Heart Rate Chart

Now we have your recommended training range we need to get your personalised heart rate numbers.

If you now look at the graph below you need to trace your finger along the horizontal axis until you find the nearest point to your current age.

From here trace your finger vertically until it meets the lowest number of your required range.

I’m using the 55% point as I’m new to exercise.

My low number for a 40-year-old will therefore be 99. Make a mental note of that number.

Now we need to get the higher-level number so continue to track your finger vertically until it reaches the 70 % line and note that number.

My training zone is therefore 99- 126 beat s per minute for the first 4 weeks and then for the next 2 weeks I will be training between 108 – and 144 beats per minute at the high end.

In another area of this site we will show you how this information is used on your session by session programme cards to make every workout super effective for you.