Stop Guessing – Start Assessing!

“Paul Chek, one of the world’s leading educators in the fitness industry, first exposed me to this phrase and it is one of the cornerstones of 4D Fitness. Until you’ve been properly assessed, it’s impossible to design a programme for you that will achieve your goals. It is as simple as that – any trainer that doesn’t start with every new client by assessing them, for both safety and efficacy, is offering a sub standard service.”   Nick Berners-Price, Founder 4D Fitness

All 4D Personal Trainers begin a new client’s journey with an assessment. And lets be clear, this is not a fitness test, it’s an assessment. The 4D assessment has been developed over many years of delivering leading health and fitness results, and uses techniques that are incorporated from many disciplines and educational institutes from around the world. The main focus of the assessment is to give your personal trainer a better understanding of your body and how you will best be able to achieve your goals, and so it is very different to the industry standard assessments! These are really  fitness tests that give little or no information on how best to make your individual body respond to its training.

Our assessment is entirely painless, uninvasive and educational! We will initially assess:

Relative Flexibility – specific flexibility in the major joint movements and muscles relative to the optimal, and relative to each other, i.e left/right, front/back, etc..
The Functional Systems – breathing, balance, co-ordination, core stability.
Posture and Biomechanics – spinal curve, ribcage and head positioning, clavicular angle, knee and foot alignment, pelvis position.

This assessment is the starting point. Your trainer will then continually evaluate and assess your progress in these areas and adjust your training when necessary. You are always in control of your training, but ideally they will also gradually assess elements such as digestion, cardiovascular function, lifestyle, sleep patterns, etc. and build in ways to improve them. If any issues arise that need input from a specialist in these fields we can refer you to, and work with the relevant practitioner. This philosophy of assess, correct, progress, reassess underpins 4D Fitness and our training techniques, and is one of the main reasons why we achieve results with clients where other personal trainers often don’t. We also find the process acts as a great catalyst for the transfer of knowledge – so you as a client learn about your body and how to control it, information that stays with you even if our paths divide and you can no longer train with a 4D trainer.