Victory for Men's Health

Posted by Nell Mead at 09:00 on 6 Feb 2012

Half a lifetime ago, I fell in love with a young man who used to like telling me about health and fitness.  Ever the observant girlfriend, I fairly soon noticed in his bedroom copies of popular magazine Men's Health: my amour's goal, it seemed, was to be a cover model. 

A short while into our relationship, however, his words of wisdom dried up.  This may have been because I began buying my own copies of Men's Health, reading them faster than he did (I had to sit through physics lessons; he at a couple of years older had an actual job) and then quoting the articles at him.  He had nothing more to say.  We didn't last long, and he never did become a cover model, which is a shame, as he had lovely abs.

Not being their target audience, I hadn't picked up a copy since then; but if you are a MH aficionado, you'll know that on a semi-regular basis, they set their journalists physical challenges, which they then have to complete and write about for the amusement and edification of their readership.  The current such challenge is for two ectomorphic journalists, both coincidentally called Ed, to compete for the most impressive "transformation" with a personal trainer.  In effect, the trainers are competing to make the greatest difference to their clients.

And this is how I came to meet Ed Reeves, or "Big Ed" as he is affectionately known to readers of MH.  Ed has been working with top Foundry trainer and former Olympian Sarah Lindsay since the start of January, trying to pack on enough muscle in three months to beat "Little Ed" Vanstone, who is himself working with MH cover model and trainer Olly Foster.

Big Ed somehow bypassed our usual pre-training musculoskeletal assessment; but given that he has never trained before, and with a pretty dodgy starting posture and various underlying issues, it wasn't a huge surprise to anyone other than himself when he broke down and found himself being poked and prodded by me and by Victory's osteopath Ray Yong.

I'll not go into details of what we saw and found - medical confidentiality being pretty important to both me and Ray! - but suffice to say that we were both able to offer suggestions of diagnosis and treatment.  Ray is a fan of acupuncture, and I'm a fan of the Sarah Key method; I think Ed would have been happy with either (and either would have been effective) but as Ray was heading home, I treated Ed myself.  And he seems quite happy with the results!

Having said that, Ed was lucky to recover so quickly.  If you are thinking of embarking on a new training regime, it really is sensible to get checked out beforehand.  I don't just mean the usual GP checkup for blood pressure, though if you're seriously out of shape, of course that is important.  But from an injury perspective, or rather from an injury avoidance perspective, it is worth getting a good pre-training musculoskeletal assessment with a therapist who is familiar with the demands of personal training and who will talk to your trainer.  Our assessments help the Foundry's trainers to personalise their clients' programmes, adding in specific corrective exercises and avoiding anything that's likely to be detrimental.  Most of our clients have relatively sedentary jobs, or jobs that involve repetitive movements - I've lost count of the clients I've described as "chair-shaped" over the past year - and corrective exercises, particularly using the back block as an "anti-sitting" device, really do make a difference and help them to avoid injury.

If you're thinking of starting a course of personal training, whether at The Foundry or elsewhere, it's worth getting yourself checked out. We're not the only option, but we're pretty experienced and we're happy to talk to your trainer - what have you got to lose?  Contact us for your 30-minute MOT!