Personal Training

Personal Training in Springwood, Blue Mountains

My personal training studio in Springwood is a large, comfortable studio space with a leafy outlook – the perfect place to focus and get results!

Want to find out how personal training with Free2Flow works? Book a free Introductory 90 minute Discovery Session.

What does personal training at Free2Flow look like?

I specialise in personal training for over 40s, taking a holistic approach to training for fitness and health. The goal is for you to not only look your best, but feel and function physically, mentally and emotionally at your best. Teaching and supporting you to ‘move better, feel better and stress less’ is the Free2Flow approach.

In more detail, I organise personal training around three distinct areas:

Movement Training

As a Free2Flow personal training client you will learn a movement routine I call ‘Movewise’ that teaches you to coordinate your body and develop movement skills in patterns of movement such as squatting, lunging, bending, pushing, pulling and twisting.

My experience in Tai Chi and martial arts combined with my exercise science and strength and conditioning education led to the development of Movewise which teaches a complete palette of movement skills through choreographed sequences. Movewise will train your body and mind whilst giving you advanced practical understanding of movement in and out of an exercise context.

It is my belief and reflection that most fitness training neglects the skill, coordination and complexity components of good movement, placing most emphasis on the quantities such as how much weight is lifted, how many reps or sets or how long training sessions are.

Regardless of your fitness goals, you can’t exercise without moving. So a focus on developing good movement skills is central to good results from exercise. Having awareness and control of your body across a range of functional patterns and speeds that form the basis of everyday activities, exercise and sporting skills is crucial to optimal health and fitness.

The main goal of Free2Flow movement training is to develop optimal levels of muscle tension during movement. This involves coordinating appropriate active and passive states in different parts of the body simultaneously. That is good movement and has far reaching benefits.

Strength Training

The benefits of strength training for all ages and especially over 40s are now more widely known. Strength training brings increased bone density and muscle mass, hormonal and metabolic benefits and much more.

You can be assured that my extensive experience as a gym based Personal Trainer and Exercise Therapist along with my own achievements representing Australia in Weightlifting as a masters athlete means I know a thing or two about getting you strong safely and effectively.

I use functional strength training that builds on the skills gained in movement training applying appropriate loading through expert manipulation of all relevant exercise variables. This is the science of strength training.

Bodyweight loading, resistance bands and free weights such as kettlebells and dumbells are ideal methods, progressing to gym based barbell and cable exercises depending on your goals and needs. What you won’t find in Free2Flow programs is a reliance on machines. Rarely do good exercise programs ever incorporate exercise machines more than 10-20%. Not only are they not necessary, their benefits are limited and often detrimental. Unfortunately they are overused in the fitness industry, often due to lack of movement skill and lack of movement training to develop those skills.

The main goal of Free2Flow strength training is to increase the ability to create muscle tension to maximise force output. Developing a reserve of strength over and above the demands of an individual’s lifestyle makes everything easier.

Resilience Training

If movement training is a unique aspect of Free2Flow, resilience training is unfortunately even less seen in the fitness industry, and in my opinion so desperately lacking.

So what is meant by ‘resilience training’? Resilience, by definition is the ability to spring back or recover quickly from stress. It is an often misunderstood and overlooked reality that Exercise is a stress. Effective exercise is essentially skillful stress management. Sadly, the general population and even the fitness industry often believes ‘all exercise is good’, ‘more is better’ and just ‘getting some exercise, or more exercise’ is the answer to what ails us. The truth of the story is that getting good results from exercise actually comes down to a basic formula that could be explained as:

Training Effect = Exercise Stress + Recovery

My long interest, training and experience with Body-Mind modalities enables me to specialise in recovery and resilience methods. It is the integration of resilience training with movement and strength training that gives great personal training results enabling individuals to progress with exercise rather than be limited by aches, pains, tensions or injuries.

These methods include body-mind stress reduction and breathing techniques, movement meditation methods borrowed from Tai Chi and Qi Gong, TRE (tension releasing exercises) and Somatic Education exercises to gain control over reducing muscle tension. Self bodywork (massage) techniques are also employed to great effect along with myofascial stretching methods to gain and restore flexibility and decompress joints.

The main goal of Free2Flow Resilience training is to regulate the nervous system and develop the skills to reduce muscle tension that comes from exercise and other life stresses. You will recover from exercise better, for better results, whilst improving your ability to ride the waves of life’s stresses.

What are the benefits I can expect from Free2Flow Personal Training?

Look Better