Is Your Personal Trainer Really That PERSONal? Based on my recent conversation with my friend Christ

After my last post, my good friend Christian Fajardo, who also inspired me to pursue my certification for a personal trainer, contacted me and suggested he and I make blog posts on multiple subjects that relate to the fitness industry and share our experiences and opinions on those topics. I believe that his idea can highly benefit my readers since they will get to learn how educational backgrounds, different personality traits, and life philosophies can influence the quality and the impact that their personal trainers will have on them.

Christian offered me a topic for this blog post which I believe can be quite interesting to explore. He asked me how my dance or/and theater background help me with my personal training career. The answer to this questions is very simple. I was a lucky student since most of my dance/theater teachers were highly educated professionals who understood that dance and acting is not just an art form but a combination of many creative elements that heavily rely on physical education (technique) of a performer. As a dancer who did not have an advantage of natural flexibility, I had to invest way more effort and time into achieving at least a half of that range of motion that my peers had. I believe that those days of struggle and frustration of trying to understand my body turned me into a patient coach. Since most of my clients are people with low level of proprioception, I can relate to their frustrations and use my personal experiences and tools to help them find those deep postural muscles and get in touch with their bodies on the level that allows them to enjoy performing otherwise not so entertaining exercises.

I also approach every session as an opportunity to share an active and rich imagery that is so popular in the modern dance and theater world. My clients never just do it. We always play with the rhythm, dynamics, qualities and intentions of the movement. We constantly explore concepts of self awareness, creative expression, and pure focus during the training sessions. As many of my dance and theater teachers used to tell me everything is useless in the world of arts if it does not make you a better person. That's why, I remind my clients that they did not walk into the studio to learn how to do squats but to explore how being able to improve their body awareness can help them go back into their lives and be more mindful of those who need their help to learn what they have to offer.

The next thing might sound a little bit arrogant but I say it as it is. We all know that personal training and social/ballroom dancing is not a cheap service. Most of my clients are wealthy people who drive luxury cars and take a very good care of them. As a dancer who knows a lot of other dancers, I know that most of us if asked to sacrifice our ability to move freely with grace and ease in order to buy a car with white leather interior and all the electronic madness along with it would answer no. I personally do not care how cool that car is if I can't get out of or get into it without a back pain. It is my body that my soul exists in and not my car. That's how I coach my clients. That's how I cultivate the artistic thinking in people who never heard that prospective before or simply got overwhelmed by other responsibilities and neglected their own health. As it is being shown by many studies, the main competitor of a personal trainer is not another personal trainer but a couch and a TV. I mean you do not really have to do a study to know that your friend or neighbor probably uses his/her Netflix or Cable subscription way more aggressively than his/her gym membership. That's when I dive into my showman personality and do my best to entertain my clients by using all of my dance and theater skills . After all, I have to compete with some powerful performers out there who have an advantage of having a couch, fancy flat screen, and a powerful Kuleshov effect on their side.

When I think about my coaching approach and how my dance and acting background help me with my personal training career as well, I honestly never even separate them. I simply change the skill that I teach but never the message. The message is the universal one: be mindful of your health , creative with your approaches, patient with your challenges, and thoughtful of your transitions.

I hope you find my post useful for your next training session or your next car purchase :)

Feel free to ask more questions on any topics mentioned above or any other posts of mine that you find interesting, entertaining, or even useful :)

Photo taken by Gregory R.R. Crosby, Lost Heart Productions, during a rehearsal of an action choreography for the short comedy The "Janitor".