Science has shown us that mindfulness can have an awesome impact on people who practice it. And exercising mindfulness while working out has its benefits too.
Studies showed that mindful workouts have a positive impact on cardiovascular health, as well as better results with maintaining exercising. People who use mindfulness techniques spent more time engaging in practice and showed a decrease in perceived stress.
Even though mindfulness just recently became one of the fitness trends, it already showed several benefits to well-being and keeping a healthy routine. As a fitness professional, you could try to apply mindfulness exercises to your workout plan and check if it works for your clients.
But, what is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is a type of meditation, but it doesn’t mean you need to sit down and start om-ing. A person practicing mindfulness should focus on being aware of their feelings and sensations at the moment. The point is to do all that without judgment.
The key qualities of mindfulness are:
- Being aware of what is happening
- Observing what is occurring in the present moment
- Being non-judgmental and kind
That being said, practicing mindfulness will make your clients notice every movement and muscle and ultimately, work out better and more regularly.
Benefits of mindfulness
There are many benefits of working out while being mindful of your body. It is especially important if clients are doing online fitness and home workouts with their personal trainers because they might have many distractions.
It is very demotivating if a person is working out and they don’t see any improvements in their body image or well-being. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle can be hard because of the many everyday tasks.
So, give your clients the best of their workout time and make them reach their fitness goals even sooner with mindful fitness.
How to apply mindfulness into your workouts
Making mindful workouts to get your clients more focused is a process. We’ll show you some mindfulness aspects you can include mental fitness in your workout sessions, but you don’t have to do all of them at once.
Try out one element and when you get comfortable with it, include another one as well. The point is to feel relaxed, so your clients can easily catch that atmosphere and way of thinking while exercising. That way they will surely start to feel the benefits of mindfulness.
Your biggest asset while doing online fitness is that you are always a personal trainer, even though you can’t see your client. But, you can still talk to them in a way that you would if you were exercising in person.
So, you need to focus on explaining every movement, how to do exercises, how to breathe, and even what to think while working out.
- Breathing techniques
Every now and then tell your clients to focus on their breathing. You can use pauses between exercises to explain how to rhythmically breathe during workouts.
The general rule is that people should inhale as they lower the weight and exhale as they lift the weight. Or, exhale while doing the harder part of the movement and inhale while doing the easier part of the movement.
While focusing on rhythmic breathing, people will clear and calm their minds. Yoga teachers usually do some breathing exercises at the beginning of their classes. They advise their students to take deep belly breaths and while exhaling to imagine all distractions and stress leave their bodies.
- Purpose of the exercises
Explain to your clients why a certain exercise is important, what will the result of doing that exercise (in the long run) be, what should they be feeling while doing it, and how to perform it correctly.
- Mindfulness while stretching
Advise your students to focus on the muscles they are stretching, take deeper breaths at that time, and try to relax those muscles.
- Posture and core
You already know that people can do the same exercise in many different ways. So, for them to get the best results, explain the posture of every exercise and what they should do with core muscles.
Focusing on the posture will help your clients be more relaxed and efficient. Try to guide your clients through the exercises so that they can feel their muscles contract and relax.
- Mindful thinking while working out
Remind your clients of what they’ve accomplished and that they are doing great work. Tell them to feel good about themselves when they finish a workout. Remind them that they will sleep better, feel less stressed out and that they deserve to take care of themselves.
Make time at the end of the training session to simply lie down and relax every part of their body from head to toe. A relaxed position is when the palms are facing up and the feet are hanging to the outside. Remind your clients to focus on their breathing and relax every muscle on their bodies.
Wrap up
If you have transferred to online fitness, you’ve probably already implemented some of these elements into your workout routines because that is the way to connect better to the clients even when you don’t see them, and help them to feel all the benefits of mindfulness.
Not being able to talk directly to your clients isn’t a set back anymore. You can still show them how to do proper exercises, how to focus better, and be mindful of what they’re doing with a custom branded fitness app, where you can post your home workout videos (and do much more).
Try out the one that Lean On Digital offers, ask their team for advice on how to make the most compelling content, implement mindfulness in your routines, and your clients will appreciate the effort and energy you are giving them.