Prior to starting my own Vancouver personal training company, I worked for several other personal training companies in Vancouver. The negative experiences I had working for those other companies was one of the driving forces behind me starting my own Vancouver personal training business.
One negative experience in particular stands out as important towards pushing me to start my own business, and shaping that business into what it has become today. The negative experience I speak of involved working for a personal training company in downtown Vancouver. The guy running the company and overseeing the team of trainers was without a doubt the most boring fitness professional I’ve ever met. He was a miserable person to be around, and his training style was “all business”. No smiles, no jokes, no fun.
Working out must be an enjoyable experience. If you don’t have fun with your workouts, and look forward to exercising, you’ll never get results.
When I started my own Vancouver personal training company, the goal has always been to make exercise fun. I go out of my way to make sure my clients enjoy and look forward to all of their workouts. By making exercise fun, your workout consistency will be higher, you will push yourself harder, and higher consistency plus increased intensity equals better and faster results.
I received the following question today via my YouTube channel:
Do you have or can you make female specific videos?
My answer:
Practically all of my videos are made for both males and females. 99% of my customers in Vancouver are female. Contrary to popular belief, women shouldn’t exercise any differently than men. Whether your goals are fat-burning (as is the case with 99% of my customers in Vancouver), or muscle-building, the workouts are the same for men and women.
Subscribe to my YouTube channel to get updated when new videos are posted.
I received the following question today via my YouTube channel:
Hello since i live far from gym i am trying to exercise with bodyweight i saw few good videos on your channel. The problem is: I can’t find any forearm exercises. Maybe you know at least one?
My answer:
You shouldn’t need to do any forearm isolation exercises. Those are just completely pointless. Your forearms will get a way better workout from doing heavy compound exercises like chin-ups, rows, dips, etc.
Earlier today I was reading a blog post about gym etiquette (the blog post was titled “What Not To Do in The Gym), and I was surprised by a comment left by a personal trainer:
Do not enter a gym without a pad and a pen. Ever. No matter what. If you are not recording your workout, you are wasting your time.
What a completely asinine comment. So according to that fool, if you’re doing a kick-butt workout, having fun, burning calories, getting fitter, and all of the other countless benefits that come from exercise, but you’re not taking notes about your workout (to track progression), then you’re wasting your time. That’s some seriously twisted logic.
I believe that exercise should be fun, and certainly doesn’t need to be treated like a boring research project where you have to have a pad and pen with you every time you exercise. You can get amazing results from your workouts without taking all of the fun out of it by tracking every excruciating detail of your exercise program. Actually, the more fun you have, the more consistent you’ll be with your workouts, the harder you’ll push yourself when you do exercise, and the better results you’ll get. So leave the pad and pen at home and just try to have fun with your workouts.
If you’ve ever participated in my Vancouver boot camp program, you’ve no doubt heard me talk about the importance of developing a habit of regular exercise. Only after you get into a habit of exercising regularly does it become automatic.
Studies have shown that it takes at least three weeks exercising regular before it starts to become routine. So if you haven’t been exercising regularly, and you’re just beginning your new exercise program, you need to be extra diligent in your first few weeks and ensure that you don’t miss any workouts.
In the initial stages of a new workout program, it’s sometimes very difficult to drag yourself to your workouts. If you’re used to waking up at 7AM, it will be quite challenging during the first few weeks of a schedule change where you set your alarm an hour early two or three days per week so you can exercise prior to going to work. But after a few weeks, this new schedule starts to become routine, and it becomes very easy, almost automatic, to stick to your new schedule. The longer to follow the new schedule, the easier it is to stick to it.
So if you’re starting a new exercise program, and making changes to your schedule to accommodate two or three weekly workouts, try to be extra diligent in sticking to the program and being consistent during the first few weeks. After you get over the initial period of change, you’ll find that your new schedule is very simple to follow, and becomes almost automatic.
If you’re interested in beginning a new exercise program, Mode Athletics run cutting-edge outdoor boot camp workouts for clients in downtown Vancouver, BC.
One of the most popular parts of my Vancouver boot camp program is the fact that there are absolutely zero crunches involved. If you join my outdoor boot camp program, you will never do a single abdominal crunch. Not one.
Another boot camp company runs workouts at Coopers Park and they spend almost their entire Wednesday workout (60 minutes) on their backs doing abdominal crunches. It’s painful to watch.
I can’t imagine why a fitness company would run a 60 minute ab crunching workout, unless they’re promoting the whole spot-reduction myth (i.e. do hundreds of crunches to burn belly fat and tone your midsection). Spot-reduction doesn’t work, so doing that many crunches is a complete waste of time, not to mention potentially harmful on your spine.
If you want to be shown how to burn belly fat and tone your midsection WITHOUT doing a single boring abdominal crunch, then join my Vancouver boot camp program. We look forward to seeing you there.
The following is a picture of my sister, Lori.
Her workout routine consists of HEAVY weightlifting and resistance training. She is NOT bulky. Girls, heavy weightlifting and resistance training will NOT make you bulky. It (combined with a good diet) will make you fit, healthy, and athletic looking like my sister.
If you want to look and feel your best, consider joining my Vancouver boot camp program where I have my participants exercising the same way that my sister exercises in order to look her best.
Great article in Best Life Magazine:
Defenders of stationary equipment argue that machines are designed to limit what you can do wrong. But seated machines often put heavier loads on the back and joints than is necessary, and almost always miss the mark when it comes to replicating the movements found in everyday life.
The 10 “better exercises” (i.e. to do instead of the 10 exercises to avoid) are all exercises that we do in my Vancouver boot camp program.
I never cease to be amazed by the pointless and goofy exercises I see the franchised boot camp company doing in their workouts. I genuinely feel sorry that their clients have paid hard-earned money for such a low quality exercise program without realizing that most of the exercises they’re doing are completely pointless and ineffective.
Today, in addition to lots of “wall sits“, I saw them doing some sort of a bizarre isometric lateral shoulder abduction type exercise. With their light hand weights, they raised their arms to the side and held them there (yes, the exercise looked as ridiculous as it sounds). Unless you are a scarecrow, and it is your job to stand with your arms raised for long periods of time, there is absolutely no good reason for a healthy person to be doing this exercise, and there’s certainly no reason for it to be done in a boot camp program where 99% of the clients just want to burn fat and tone their muscles.
One of my clients emailed me the following question today:
Could you tell me what exercises we do at bootcamp that helps tone the arms and butt?
Part of the response I sent her is included below:
Your question about arms and butt exercises must be answered carefully. If you were asking what exercises simply strengthen the arms and butt (which I know is not what you were asking), then the general answer is squats and lunges for the butt, and rows and pushups for the arms. Isolation exercises that target just the arms or butt (such as triceps extensions, biceps curls, and glute extensions) are not as effective towards working those muscles as compound exercises (multi-joint, multi-muscle) that work the muscles as part of a larger unit.
Since you asked about the best exercises to tone and firm the arms and butt, then the answer includes the information above, but with the disclaimer that spot reduction is not possible. You can’t burn fat off of certain areas of your body by targeting those areas and performing exercises specific to those spots on your body. So although the exercises I listed above will strengthen your arms and butt and make the muscles firmer, the only thing that will tone those areas (i.e. reduce fat) is burning more calories each day than you consume, which is done through a combination healthy eating and maximum intensity total-body exercise (i.e. what we do at boot camp each workout).
