City College Norwich, gym instructor Kristian Dyer explains how he teaches students to make good decisions about health and fitness
In the run-up to summer, the county’s gyms and fitness centres saw many users returning to the treadmills and free weights in preparation for this year’s swimsuit season. With the wide range of celebrity-endorsed fitness regimes and the vast amount of diet and nutritional advice available online, it can be difficult to know the best way to get fit and healthy.
Sports science lecturer, City College Norwich gym instructor and owner of One Body Personal Training, Kristian Dyer, has not only worked with clients to achieve their fitness goals but has also helped a number of people lead a more healthy and active lifestyle. As well as offering personal training services, Kristian runs a wide range of classes, including circuit training and kettlebells and has even trained two Paralympic athletes.
Kristian explains the science behind some of today’s fitness and nutrition trends and tells us how he encourages his students to fully research each training method to make their own decisions on what is effective: “In order to become a fit and healthy individual, you have to make a commitment to take part in some form of regular physical activity and ensure that you are getting the right nutrition in to your body, which can be the hardest part of any fitness regime.
“The internet is full of advice on the most effective ways to fuel your body and lose weight, such as reducing the intake of carbohydrates, which is said to be a good way to stay slim while still maintaining sustainable energy to train. However, in my experience, I have found this to be a short term fix, as completely starving your body of a main energy source such as carbohydrates leads to lethargy which will ultimately affect your motivation to take part in any physical activities.
“Today’s personal trainers are finding that their clients are more aware of specific diet plans and training methods that might not necessarily be the best way for them to achieve their goals. Because of this, it is vitally important for us to ensure that our students are equipped with the basic knowledge of how the human body works and teach them how to conduct their own research to find what works best for them and their clients. We do this by encouraging our students to utilise the college’s gym facility to learn the practical skills involved in training somebody and, when they reach degree level, conduct extensive performance testing in our specialist sports science lab.
“Fitness and nutrition trends are constantly changing and you have to keep up to date with them to be successful in the industry, however, it is also important to use your own creativity to transform what you have learned from them into something unique for your clients.”
