You might not be a Functional Fitness trainer, but if you are doing some of the exciting Functional Fitness programs such as P90X, Insanity, Crossfit, or Kemme Fitness, you might get some friends and family wanting to try it out. What advice should you give them?
How do they begin? Do they just join in with you, or are they too out of shape? What if they want to run more than crosstrain? Do you start training them, or just send them to a website?
I’ll try to steer you in the direction in order to help you introduce Functional Fitness to your friends.
STEP #1: Find out their goals. I at times had skipped this step only to be frustrated later on. You would be doing your friend – and yourself – a huge favor if you just take a second and ask them what their goals are. Some people are training to do a 5K, while some just want a little core strength. Some want to delve into an intense program, while others just want to lose a few pounds. Some are wanting to supplement their sports activities such as biking while others want to keep weight lighting and just want a touch more circuit type training to get their heart rates up a few days a week.
The point with Step #1 is if your friend is not ready to ditch the “bicep/tricep day” or needs to get in 20 miles of running a week, you can’t just refer them to a 12 week program. Programs such as P90X and Kemme Fitness’s 12 week programs (K-Fit, K-Challenge, K-Basic, K-Element, & K-Bootcamp) are meant to be all you do each week. There will be no time or energy left for running or weight lifting.
My suggestion is determine how many days a week they are planning on exercising. If they losing weight and want to run/jog/bike, they can do that in addition a bit, but if they aren’t looking to exercise 4 days a week with Functional Fitness workouts, then steer clear of the 12 week programs (more on those later). My suggestion is to let them try out a few workouts from the workout pages here at Kemme Fitness a day or two a week and see how they like them. Maybe later on they will up for a 12 program challenge.
STEP #2: Kemme Fitness or other programs? Kemme Fitness has a boat-load of resources, including all those 12 week programs. However, if you friend wants a DVD to play at home, they are going to have to invest some money. My suggestions are P90X, Insanity, anything put out by Jillian Michaels, or anything related to The Biggest Loser TV show or their trainers. There are also some awesome Kettlebell and TRX videos out there too. I’m sure there are other Functional Fitness workout videos available, but those are off the top of my head. Since this post was first written, now you only have to search for apps!
If they live near a Crossfit gym, have them join up. I am cautious of doing Crossfit at home because I feel you need more supervision when throwing out heavy, heavy weights. With that said, the gyms themselves, with the trainers always ready to help, are a fun and awesome way to get your Functional Fitness on.
STEP #3: Explaining the workouts at Kemme Fitness. If you are unable to walk them through workouts because they are exercising separately from you, then have them download or email them the Kemme Fitness User Guide. It only takes a second to read and they can then easily use all the resources on the website.
If you are going to be working out with them, just remember to start them slow and be safe. Make sure they have clearance from a physician if needed. There are tips in Functional Fitness Defined for starting out any intense fitness program.
STEP #4: Choosing the right 12 week program at Kemme Fitness. Let’s say your friend is ready to exercise 3 or 4 days a week and wants a Functional Fitness program to do at home or their gym. Which of our programs is right for them?
Here are some quick background on the creation of the workouts, which I believe will answer your questions. I first created K-Fit as an introductory program. There are only 4 pieces of equipment needed (Physioball, Kettlebell, Pull-up bar, and Medicine Ball). Don’t forget to download The Low Cost Gym for directions on making some of the equipment yourself. This is a great place to start for many.
K-Challenge was designed to be a follow-up program after K-Fit. They use the same equipment, but the intensity is turned up a notch (or 2 or 3 or 4). K-Element is somewhere in the middle of these, maybe more towards K-Challenge, but uses different equipment – Slosh Tube, Clubbell, Medicine Ball, and Pull-up bar.
I then got tons of requests to help folks with lower fitness levels, who just couldn’t do K-Fit. Hence, the creation of K-Basic. K-Basic is simply a lower-level core-building program to get you ready for the resources here at Kemme Fitness. Finally, I put together a whole bunch of fun group workouts for K-Bootcamp so trainers can use it, or friends can do it together.
There you go, good luck!