(Photo of Sexy Houston Personal Trainer Melissa) Exercising with a Personal Trainer should eliminate the potential for cheating in a workout. However, I still advise my Houston clients to workout some on their own to facilitate quicker weight loss. Occasionally these workouts fail to produce the desired results and I discovered that it is because clients do the following "cheats":

1) Making the fitness workout too short...not scheduling a full hour for exercise, as you would with a personal trainer, will cheat you of calorie burning potential.

2) Talking between sets... To maximize fitness each workout set should be timed and the rest period should not exceed ninety seconds...talking when there is no personal trainer to monitor.. often extends the rest period for too long.

3) Failing to stretch...a muscle will contract better during workout if it has been consistently stretched...Think of a muscle as a rubber band... the more it is stretched..the more forceful the contraction will be. Stretching should be done after workouts or before you go to bed. Each stretch should be held for thirty seconds minimum. Yoga is an excellent post workout stretch for this.

4) Workouts using only one speed while doing the treadmill or the ellipsis...Intervals, where training at high intensity is mixed with training at a lower intensity, are more effective workouts than doing one speed the entire time. In spinning class..make sure the tension on the bike is hard enough so that there is a burn in the legs.

5) Not using enough weight...If a client can easily do one set of twenty reps in a specific workout..then the weight is too light to improve fitness. Each set needs to be effective...EACH SET needs to make the client feel that the final repetion is absolutely the last one they could do without help from a personal trainer.

6) Avoiding food...I have advised my clients to eat very small snacks at regular intervals to fool the body into thinking it is still receiving significant calories..so it will not slow down the metabolism in an effort to conserve calories. DO not skip meals..it is counterproductive to workouts and fitness.