Subscribe
E-Paper
 |
| Personal trainer Kim Su-hyun / Courtesy of Kim Su-hyun |
Many are spending less time exercising after the breakout of COVID-19, finding it hard to work out at gyms due to infection control measures such as wearing masks and maintaining social distancing. Kim advises these people to work out at home or switch to outdoor activities like hiking. She said outdoor activities like riding electric kickboards could also be a good workout as people use almost all parts of their body when riding them.
She also advised people to start with light workout routines such as jogging or doing planks, as exercising effectively is not about spending lots of time or following a demanding routine, but rather about getting your body moving.
Kim said working out is about personalizing a workout routine after finding the strengths and weaknesses of one's own body.
For her, working out has been an exciting and fulfilling experience since she was at school and when she finally became a professional personal trainer, she was motivated to teach her clients what she thought would be the best routines. But she discovered that the exercise routines she had planned did not always meet the needs of her clients.
"I realized that I needed to consider the clients' physical health, abilities and level of fitness, as they were not following up with the routines I had planned for them," Kim said during a recent interview in Seoul with The Korea Times. "When planning exercise routines, I needed to think about which would work best from each client's point of view, and that required patience as I often had to start with the very basics."
Kim said she was able to find joy in figuring out which routine would work best with each person, according to their physical health, level of fitness and exercise experience.
"Working as a personal trainer is not just about teaching typical workout routines but is more about learning about each client, what they can do well and what they can't," Kim said.
She said muscles in different parts of our body do not work separately but are connected. For example, lifting an arm not only uses muscles in the arm but also those in the back.
"It is like muscles in different parts of our body are connected like a web and the shape of the web varies between people," Kim said. "People develop different parts of the body depending on which muscles they use more in their daily lives and they tend to use the ones they feel comfortable with. My job as a professional trainer is to find out patterns of muscle usage of customers and present a prescription of exercise."
