Interview with Focus & Belief
By admin at February 1, 2012 | 9:16 am | Print
Company Name: Focus & Belief
Company Address: Henley Beach, Adelaide
Phone Number: 0416 045 227
Website: www.focusandbelief.com.au
1) Can you tell us a little bit about you as a personal trainer and the services, training you offer to your clients?
As a Personal Trainer I have struggled with the concept that people seem to see Personal Trainers as the ones that are responsible for the changes that their Clients need to make in their lives. People seem to put Personal Trainers up on Pedestals as the ones that are responsible for people making a change in their lives. I disagree with this attitude or sentiment and so I do not train people like this at all. I see myself as a sign post, in fact I have moved away from calling myself a Personal Trainer, my business Card refers to me as a ‘Health and Fitness Educator’. What this means is that I simply offer my Clients the ideas and concepts about their health and their fitness that I have found have worked in my life and also the lives of clients past and present. I am not the Trainer you come to train with for the next five years, I am the trainer you come to with a specific goal in mind and I teach you the strategies that you need to get there and then you go and do what you need to, mostly in your own time.
2) What’s the history behind your passion for personal training, how did you get started training people?
I like to think of myself as the relatable Personal Trainer, during my schooling years I was fit, as most Rowers are and so knew what it was like to feel strong and healthy. After I finished school I ended up working in the Hospitality Industry for 10 years, anyone who has worked in that industry will tell you it is not a healthy environment. I put on weight, I drank lots of alcohol and partied lots, I basically lived life. I then realised one day what I was doing to my body and decided it was time for a change. I saw an advertisement in the newspaper for a Fitness Course and ended up signing up, I suppose the rest is history. I feel that because this has been the road to my fitness career I can relate a lot easier to my clients who are trying to do the same thing in their lives.
3) It seems that as Australian’s we keep trying to get fitter, but not too many out there manage to achieve their goals. What is the secret behind a successful personal training program?
The secret to success, if I knew that I would be a very rich man. The challenge with the concept of a secret to success is that it actually has very little to do with me or the Trainer, it has to do with the Client. I could write the perfectly tailored program to get my Client to their goal in double quick time and they really aren’t ready to change so they don’t do anything that I recommend, it depends on the Clients’ willingness to change and their desire to achieve their goals. Having said that there is a reason why a lot of people fail to improve their health and fitness, they try and change too much at once and they expect the results to be instantaneous. I always ask my clients how long they have been walking around in their body, most say they have been around for more than 20 years, this means they have been treating their body badly for 20 years and their expecting it to all fall into place after 2 weeks of effort, please stop kidding yourselves people. Lasting change takes time, small steps maintained over time will get you there!
4) Personal training is surely not just about “doing exercise”, what can you tell us about the physiological part behind any training? How important is the motivation and the mind set?
I have talked a fair bit about this already, there are a lot of factors that go into training, the least of which is the exercise side of it. One client came to me wanting to lose 5 kilos, the first thing I did was actually reduce the amount of exercise she was doing, 3 weeks later she had lost the weight. Personal Training is more complicated than just doing Exercise.
5) What makes a good personal trainer?
The key word in the name of what we do is the ‘Personal’. There are a lot of trainers out there that will take one look at you and put you in a box and train you like you belong in that category, doesn’t sound very personal to me. Personal Training is about assessing your clients’ goals, movement patterns, habits outside the gym and checking where their head is at before you start doing anything physically stressful. Any trainer that does these
things before training a client is a good trainer, the thing that makes a good trainer into a great trainer is a great trainer is the one that the Client gets a long with and relates to. I have seen too many clients training with trainers out of obligation and it just doesn’t work.
6) Tell us a little bit about your personal training sessions and classes, what type of training can someone expect while working out with you?
As you may have guessed from my previous answer this really depend on the client’s goals and also their physical capabilities. Some people can expect their first couple of sessions to be instructive on the little things that I need them to do at home to develop the strength in their bodies to be able to stabilise themselves. Others we will be able to jump straight into some hard physical training, it really depends on where they are at.
7) How important is nutrition in the path to achieve any personal training goal?
A mentor of mine once told me that Nutrition is 70% of the problem when people need to lose weight. I would have to agree with this because this was my problem for a long time and I just ignored it, even when I was working in the industry. Nutrition is massively important and people who aren’t willing to make changes to their nutrition are kidding themselves that they are ready to make a change in their lives.
8.) We all know there are many personal trainers out there, what do we need to ask to a personal trainer before starting a program, how can we guarantee we are a good match to work together?
Most trainers will offer you a complimentary session to introduce you to their service. During that session expect some form of short assessment, if it’s not their then in my opinion they are not a good trainer. During that session ask them lots of question about their training methods and philosophy about training, if you relate to what they are saying and it ‘resonates’ with you then they are probably the right trainer for you. If not trust your instincts or your gut and go elsewhere.
9) What is a normal day in your life as a personal trainer?
To be brutally honest with you I wish I had better habits than I currently do, yes I am human! My routine in the morning should be to get up and meditate for 20 minutes, eat my breakfast and head to work to train a client, sometimes sleep interrupts the time set aside for the meditation. I usually train a client in the morning before work (yes I do have a day job as well), I train myself after work and then train other clients in the mornings on the weekend, the afternoons on the weekends are mine!
10) Can you tell us about a personal training success story that can inspire us? Maybe one of your students? Maybe your own?
I have talked briefly about my change in life but in slightly more detail, when I actually bit the bullet and changed, so began living the life that was healthy I lost 12 kilos in 6 weeks, just simply by following what I had been taught and now spend time teaching others. This is weight that has come off my body naturally and so hasn’t ballooned back on either. The other story that springs to mind is the other story I have already alluded to, the only client who ever took what I told them and they followed it to the letter, they achieved their goal of losing 5 kilos in 3 weeks, 3 weeks before the deadline they had given me. All I can say is the system works if you work it.
11) Now, for the last question… we invite you to plug your personal training service. What makes you a Top Personal Trainer? What message do you want to send to anyone reading this and thinking of contacting you to start their personal training program?
As you may or may not have worked out by reading this, I pride myself on a personal approach to training. There is no one size fits all in this business and if you want to find out which size fits you then feel free to contact me. If I don’t fit for you there are a couple of people in the area that I know share the same philosophy so I am sure I can find you a good fit.