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.

As a personal trainer in Vancouver, I’m always looking around at other Vancouver personal trainers and personal training companies to see what the competition is up to.

There are a lot of great personal trainers in Vancouver, but there are also just as many horrible personal trainer in Vancouver.

For example, one trainer boasts on his website that if you train with him, you will “effortlessly transform your body”. Sounds kind of like something you’d hear on one of those informercials for a completely useless ab gadget.

If there’s one thing about burning fat that’s more important than anything else, it’s that it requires effort. A lot of effort. You have to be very consistent with your workouts (effort), improve your diet (effort), push yourself very hard when you do exercise (effort), and continue to work hard and see progression from workout to workout (effort).

There is absolutely nothing about fat-burning that’s effortless.

I don’t lie to people and tell them getting in shape is easy. It’s not easy. It requires a lot of effort. That’s why I motivate my clients better than any other trainer in Vancouver, so that my clients are able to push themselves as hard as they need to in order to see the results that they desire.

For a personal training company in Vancouver that’s not going to lie to you and tell you burning fat is easy, check out Mode Athletics. We’ll motivate you to get fit, and you’ll have a lot of fun with our intense fat-burning circuit training workouts, but nothing about it will be easy.

I was just talking to my sister (personal trainer in Maple Ridge), and I told her the story about the personal trainer I saw at the gym the other day.

My sister had her own story for me about a new client she recently started training. According to the client, her previous personal trainer (in Vancouver) put her on the recumbent bike for the first 35 minutes of every session (while the trainer just walked around the gym talking to people).

It’s hard to find value in a $100 (yes, that’s how much the trainer charged) personal training session when your trainer leaves you on a cardio machine for over half the session.

Unfortunately, these stories are very common. It’s incredibly hard to find a personal trainer in Vancouver that’s passionate about fitness and truly dedicated to helping their clients reach and exceed all of their fitness goals.

For elite personal training in Vancouver from motivated and passionate trainers who are as excited about your success as you are, visit my Personal Training Vancouver website.

I never cease to be amazed by the seemingly unlimited ways that my fellow personal trainers can disappoint me.

I recently got a membership at a local gym, and I was there doing a workout this afternoon and I saw a personal trainer who I had previously only ever seen online on his website and YouTube videos.

Based on what I saw of him online, I had thought that he was a decent personal trainer.

Today I saw him training a client, and although I wasn’t intently watching him, the times that I did happen to glance over at him, he was usually checking his Blackberry, and in one case actually typing on it. This was during the personal training session. Amazing.

If I paid my hard-earned money for a personal training session and my trainer was more concerned with his Blackberry than my workout, I’d never train with that person again. Ever.

And if one of my employees ever takes out their Blackberry while they’re supposed to be running my Vancouver boot camp program, that will be the last boot camp workout that person ever runs for me.

My Vancouver boot camp workouts are very unique from other Vancouver boot camp programs, for a number of reasons. The intensity is on a completely different level compared to every other Vancouver boot camp class I’ve seen. Most boot camps are aerobic (you exercise the entire class without taking a rest) and my class is very much anaerobic (you exercise for bursts of maximum intensity, followed by rest/recovery periods). This type of training is the most proven effective way to burn fat and increase your metabolism, which is the goal of the vast majority of my clients.

I provide all of the equipment (medicine balls, kettlebells, dumbbells, resistance bands, gymnastics rings, jump ropes, kick shields, etc) used during my Vancouver boot camp classes. Most (if not all) other Vancouver boot camp programs require their participants to bring their own equipment (mat and light dumbbells), and it’s very difficult to have an intense results focussed workout when only working out with light dumbbells.

I run my classes in a circuit training style where I setup stations, and each person has a partner, and they pick a station to start at, and then rotate around the circuit. Other boot camp programs are run such that everyone just gets in a circle with their light dumbbells and they all do the same exercises for 60 minutes.

My classes are much smaller than other boot camp programs. I cap my classes at 10 people. Many other boot camp companies in Vancouver run classes with 20 to 40+ people in one class. Having less people per class means that the participants get more attention from me, and I can keep a closer eye on them to make sure everyone is working hard, doing their best, and most importantly exercising safely.

Most boot camp programs are 3 or 5 days per week. Mine is 2 or 3 days per week. This is because the intensity of my workouts is very high, and 2 or 3 days per week is all that is needed to see great results. Actually, doing my workout program more then 3 days per week would result in overtraining and would do more harm than good.

I’m a certified personal trainer, which is very much a rare thing to find in a boot camp instructor. Most boot camp instructors are uncertified, or possess a “boot camp instructor” certification from the company they work for, which isn’t a credible certification (when the employer certifies their own employees, that’s not an objective process). If you are exercising with an uncertified trainer, you are unlikely to see very much results from your efforts, and you may very well be putting your safety at risk.

My boxing instructor, Ritchie Yip, uses the term “Core 4” to refer to four common counters to the jab. The title of this article is a homage to Ritchie, but the article is not about boxing.

Core 5 refers to the following five resistance training exercises:

• Squat
• Lunge
• Push-Up
• Pull-Up
• Row

One of the most common mistakes that I see people making in the gym is poor exercise selection. Biceps curls, triceps pushdowns, side lateral raises, leg extension, prone hamstring curls, glute extensions, calf raises, and the list goes on. These exercises are fine as a supplement to an otherwise balanced workout program, but too many misguided people seem to base their entire workout around them.

Whether your goal is to lose fat, build muscle, gain strength, improve athletic performance, or some combination of those goals, your workout program should be based around compound exercises (multi-joint, multi-muscle group), and a great place to start is with the Core 5.

The Core 5 exercises are not easy. That’s probably the main reason why most people avoid them. It’s easier to sit down on the leg extension machine and squeeze out 20 reps than it is to muscle out 10 strict squats. But since the leg extension exercise uses only one muscle group (quadriceps), and squats involve various muscles (including the quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, calves, and core), most busy people with limited time to spend exercising would be much better served doing squats; think “maximum bang for your buck”.

Obviously not everyone can do pull-ups (most people can’t complete a single repetition of a pull-up using correct form), but that’s where the assisted pull-up machine or the lat pulldown machine comes in handy (or resistance tubing for those of you working out at home).

Push-ups can be done against a wall, or with your hands on a bench or table, progressing to knee push-ups, and eventually toe push-ups and decline push-ups.

The squat, lunge, and row all have their own levels of progression to suit men and women of all levels of fitness.

If you’re not seeing results from the time you spend in the gym, consider hiring a personal trainer in Vancouver to help you with exercise selection and program design. IDEA Health and Fitness Association released a statistic that found 75% of people who exercise are not getting the results they want, and out of the 25% of people who are getting results, 90% of them are working with a personal trainer.

As a personal trainer in Vancouver, I feel added pressure (and rightfully so) to make sure that I look my best and am setting a positive example for my clients. Something that I’ve let slip over the years is my diet. Back in my early 20′s, I had a rock solid system of grocery shopping and meal planning, and I very rarely ever went off track from that system and ate or drank anything that would be considered “unhealthy”.

Today, it’s a different story. Over the years my structured system of grocery shopping and meal planning has gotten worse, to the point where now the bulk of my diet is made up of less than desirable food that is not conducive to my current goal of decreasing my body fat.

Last summer I purchased a book called 5-Factor Diet. It was written by Harley Pasternak, who is one of the most sought after personal trainers in Hollywood, with a celebrity client list that includes Eva Mendes, Jessica Simpson, Kanye West, Mandy Moore, Alicia Keys, and too many more names to list here. Harley’s diet book is described as so:

The 5-Factor Diet is a revolutionary plan that has shaped some of Hollywood’s most beautiful bodies. This unique eating plan helps you lose weight, get fit, and have more energy throughout the day.

The 5-Factor Diet is based around the number 5 (surprise, surprise). 5 meals per day, 5 ingredients per recipe, and 5 minutes of prep time. I read the book cover to cover within days after purchasing it, and I was blown away by how simple Harley’s diet plan is. And unlike the vast majority of fad diets out there that are clearly unproductive, if not dangerous, Harley’s system promotes safe and healthy eating through a balanced diet of whole foods, and teaches step-by-step how even the busiest people with the least culinary skills can follow his plan and greatly improve their health.

I planned on trying Harley’s diet system last summer right after I read the book, but for whatever reason (no excuses) I didn’t end up starting it. But as a project to see how an improved diet affects my energy and body fat levels (which are both already pretty good), starting tomorrow I’m planning on following the diet for the next five weeks (possibly indefinitely if I enjoy it and see good results).

So today I need to head over to the grocery store and stock up my fridge with all of the “5-factor foods” that Harley outlines in his book. Once my fridge is full, then it’s just a matter of planning ahead, and following Harley’s simple recipes that should be completely within the ability of myself, and anyone else who’s not particularly skilled in the kitchen.

Over the next five weeks, I will be logging my progress, and thoughts on the diet system here. I’m hoping that this goes really well and that the system will become a permanent part of my nutritional habits.