welcome to the belmont business reports i'm your host paulo region belmont business report is a community service that highlights belmont businesses so we can meet the owners and learn more about their business why you became a personal trainer all right well basically paul i'm the oldest of four children i grew up in foxboro i was a kid growing up who was always outside climbing trees playin in i want to be good at sports so i realized early on that in order to be a better athlete i had to get bigger faster i had to get stronger so from there i just started basically lifting weights i got a few books educated myself when i was thirteen i asked my parents for a weight bench for christmas and then over the years i sort of just educated myself on different workouts to to reach different goals educating myself on proper nutrition and then through high school i sort of became the go to guy to see if you had a specific goal great design a program for you to reach that goal so it's that in high school it's sort of high school has started early on i knew that i wanted to be active in the health and fitness industry  so from there i went to college got my degree in business continued to write work all programs for friends for family it wasn't until i was twenty six that i knew i had to become a personal trainer at that time a good friend of mine who had gained fifty pounds since i graduated high school so in seven years he gained about fifty pounds and i came to me he was bent out of shape depressed he was like you know i got no confidence he's like i got to lose some weight can you help me so i worked out for about six months exercise we did weights we did cardio we did circuit training we talked about nutrition i put him on a meal plan in about six months he lost the fifty pounds and it basically changed his life  lifestyle change it was a lifestyle change for him yeah i mean he went from having no confidence to being a guy with a little too much confidence i'd say so but basically the way that i made him feel appearance or change the way they work physically that helps them change on the inside as well and that's the biggest thing i've noticed as as i progressed over the years as a personal trainer it's not just about the physical changes it's more about changing the way people feel about themselves it just makes me feel good what decided what made you decide to open in the belmont you well like i said i grew up in foxboro i ended up getting a job as a personal trainer at one of the big corporate gyms in the area from there i sort of got certified through the national academy of sports medicine and i got c p r start a fire got different specially certifications once i got the start of occasions and really educated myself on the personal training aspect of it i was a guard so i got to move to the cia i can't keep commuting from foxborough to watertown so i grabbed a small place in watertown i continued to train at this gym for about two and a half more years and basically i proved to myself over that time that it was time that i open up my own place and a lot of my clients are from the bell money area of the watertown area after looking at probably what kind of fifteen spots the place i found on propeller road really hit home when fit and re different from other fitness facilities and trainers in the area really yeah definitely i know you and i know you're good but what makes you different well one thing that i learned from working at a corporate gym first that i didn't like was that once they get you in the door they sort of forget about you they really don't care about your issues your concerns everything sort of gets swept under the rug so what i do as a personal trainer and what i've brought to race that is basically i need to get to know all my clients paul i can't i can't just have a one style of training fits all approach ok because i i manage programs for clients in ages from six to seventy two so you need to know how to as a personal trainer you need to know how to assess your client figure out what their goals are figure out what their fitness levels that you need to come up with a realistic program for them to reach their goals you know build the relation you have to you have you have to build a huge relationship with these people you know some people are spending one two three four five hours a week with you and you also have to make the workouts exciting challenging but you have to make it fun to follow can't you know i think a lot of trainers at the gym are used to work out that they just stand there with their hands behind their back counting reps on two three to me that point that's not my style of training i'm more of a more dynamic and that i'm moving around to get the radio going i'm encouraging i'm motivating what you do with many different age groups joe what are different personal training options that that you offer the people ok totally well our most popular option is the one on one personal training option ok that's one client work with one trainer and you have one hundred percent attention from that trainer so basically what they pick how often do you recommend to use it that well during during the initial initial consultation ok so if someone's interest in a personal training what i read amend them to do is  get in touch with me via email you can call me you can even swing by ok from there we set up a consultation which is no charge to the potential client but it just gives me an opportunity to get to know them it gives them an opportunity to know me in from their i give them recommendations as to what i think best fits their needs based on what their goals are and what their fitness level is that could be meeting with me you know once a week could be meeting with me three times a week if someone says you know i'm pretty committed outside of the time that we're personally training i'll design them a program to follow during that time but one thing i tell people is that when they start training i don't think that because they have a personal trainer in their training one or two times a week and they're doing nothing else outside of those two sessions that they're going to reach the success that they want a lot more goes into it than just a personal training session commitment it's a commitment i mean you can't work out twice a week and expect to really get anywhere so it's basically the whole get a little bit of muscle ok and that's generally what most people are looking for these days whether you're a guy or girl most people just want to be fit they want to be be healthy they want have a functional body ok but they want to also keep the strengths ok and women don't want to look masculine right so most of the things we do at raith that involve high intensity circuit training or interval training and high intensity circuitry circuit training yeah so basically that means setting up anywhere i had already those that intense circuit training means we set up anywhere from two to ten different exercises and we'll do each exercise for either a certain number of reps or we'll do it for a certain number of time we'll take a small rest and we'll go to the next exercise we'll do that for certain number of reps a certain amount of time take a small rest go to the next exercise so again you want to make it exciting in there you want to make it exciting and different but this type of training the circuit training involves all aspects of fitness ok so we have the muscle strength aspect ok the muscle and burns aspect which is the ability for muscles to perform exercises for a long duration we also have the cardio respiratory insurance aspect of it which is you know how long can your body most people don't challenge themselves and i on the machine to get results if you're on a strength training or seen a chest press or a lap pull down your body can only go in one range of motion so your only working battle ropes we have kettlebell vhs we have stability devices and then we also reality show should be one day and then we also have some dumbbells and barbells and regular weights but there is no machines a gym when they travel so what i do to make sure that they stay on track and they keep progressing is just because they're traveling for the week or say their kid is sick or whatever the reason may be they can't get to a gym i have most of my clients doing bodyweight workouts wherever they go just so they can stay on track so if you say hey ram travel in the next week the hotel i'm staying at doesn't have a gym which they do before you leave we'll meet up i'll go over what i want you to do for your body weight workout and all you have to do is do it i mean i come up with everything as far as program design i plan the workouts i come up with meal plans for people i even take people to the grocery store and i show them how to shop i make your grocery list i make ok so day one meal one this is what you eat for egg whites can't it's not just about the one two or three hours a week you spend with that person i'm constantly emailing clients making sure they're staying on track i'm basically holding them accountable for what they're doing because if they're if they're paying me for a service i want to make sure that they're getting the results that they deserve so in order to do that you have to make sure that they're staying on track and i think you answered my next question which is what differentiates you from other personal trainers and to reinforce that again but i can tell it's to you all in approach that you take with the individual you know before you open it up for a fair like i said i worked at one of these big corporate gyms you know win there telling you how they want to be a trainer they don't tell you anything that i just told you they just they get the people in selma package quota try to get them to try to get them to train as many days as you can it's almost like you're a salesman and from day one i didn't have that approach that's just not my style if someone if i think that someone can me one day a week and they're capable of working out two three four days a week on their own following my program i would tell them that if someone honestly needed to train with me three days a week i would tell them that i wouldn't try to b s anybody paul and i think that's part of the reason why i became so successful so fast because i was honest and i delivered what i said i was going to do for these people and before you all made a brief that you know i did some research about other personal training facility in the area and they all seem to have the same one in my opinion lame boring approach to training which is ok guys the number of shoulder the yeah it's just it's not my style and what i do works because i've done it on myself i've done it on hundreds of clients both  different training options we have at rates that like i said we have the one on one training ok we also have what i call partner training which is two clients one to are generally those two clients know each other they're related to friends or coworkers or whatever and they just feel that by working out with a friend it's you know it's almost about half the cost but you still get the benefits of personal training and you also have that added motivation of knowing that not only am i there for you but your friend or coworker whoever you're training with is also there for you so that's part of training we also have what i call small group training which is anywhere from three to five people working together during the same session to reach one common goal and i also run two camps  so we got to the six a m thursday seven p m sunday morning nine a m and ten thirty i can fit up to fifteen people in those classes most classes are already sold out for the month of march the reason these classes are a very popular is because it gives people an alternative to personal training at a fraction of the price so you still get the same type of refit workout that dynamic intense circuit training something a little different each time  t it's only a fraction of the price so you know i think i noticed over the past couple years was kids these days like i'm talking young kids like six seven eight nine ten all they want to do is play on the i pad or go play video games and you know they're they're not very active they live a very sedentary lifestyle and it sort of bothered me a little bit so once they all made a brief that i started talking to a lot of the moms and dads that i train and i sort of brought this idea about what about i do a kids book camp where we don't use any you know equipment we do a lot of body weight stuff we use you know some balls and bands but it's more or less we start every every kid's book can we talk about nutrition ok i try to drill home ok kids vegetables fruits you know water milk we talk about proteins and why they're important we talk about why fast food in the readers and all that stuff should be had on a limited basis and then we warm up a little bit and then we do our work out which is just so much of the adult class in the fact that it's a circuit but it's not as intense obviously and then we cool down with some white stretching at the end and then the kids run around my place like crazy and then they go home and it's forty five minutes and some parents stay and watch some parents you know participate but it's actually pretty cool we just finished our first eight week session of kids boot camp in the next session actually starts this saturday at eleven o'clock at night is all that information on the website yet everything's on dot com everything that i just talked about  com ok you've summarized a potential client what they should be looking for on a personal trainer well number one they should look for a personal trainer who know like i said hold them accountable ok you know look for a personal trainer that in my opinion say someone comes in and they say i want to lose weight or i want to get stronger or i want to lose body fat or whatever the case may be there has to be some sort of baseline information gathered at the beginning to judge progress ok so if you know trainer mentions that they're going to calculate your body fat percentage they're going to calculate your fat mass they're going to calculate your lean body mass or say someone comes in and says you know i want to get bigger arms or i want to increase my bench press or whatever the situation may be that train has to be ok so we have to get some some baseline info from you so when we reassess we can make sure that you're progressing toward your goal and then so you have to sort of set small attainable goals for your client in order for them to reach the big goals so if someone's big goal is to lose thirty pounds or to lose ten percent body fat or to lose six dress size or whatever maybe you  just in it for the dollar and they're just in it for the time they're getting paid they don't really do all this extra stuff which is someone do if they want to talk to you about the best options for them yeah like i said earlier you can either get in touch me through e mail you can stop by the shop to forty six propeller road give me a call and then from there we set up a time for you to come down into go through what i call a fitness evaluation which is just an opportunity for the client and myself to get to know each other a little bit  i need to first figure out what their goals are number one that's most important just to make sure that i can help them so i figure out what your goals are from there i figure out what your past exercise history has been like we talk about nutrition we talk about injuries medications what brought you to work with a personal trainer have you worked with one in the past it gives them an opportunity to ask me any questions they might have i'll tell them a little bit about my background and why i became a personal trainer and then from there we go through a what i call a finished assessment which is just a mini workout it gives me an opportunity to to judge the potential clients fitness level gives me a chance to sort of point out some muscle imbalances and some things we can do to correct that the first call or what are the first e mail but once you do that i mean i do the rest of the work and it's very easy you know i make it fun i make sure that i come up with a realistic program for each client to reach their goals and like i said before we don't have a  now i mean i just think that you know if anybody is serious about reaching their fitness goals whatever they may be like i said i've helped people from six to seventy two men and women all body types i've helped people  do it all of a fit you just got to call me let me know what your story is and i'll come up with a realistic program to reach your goals and if you stick with what i ask you to do i can almost guarantee that you'll reach your goals no matter what they are ok we'll tell the viewers how they can contact with your business again so you can e mail me at ray at ray fit dot com they can stop by the shop or the facility it's two forty six propeller road in belmont that's right near that new c and they can also give the shop a call it's six one seven nine three two one three three four ok thank you richard thanks a lot off that concludes this episode of the belmont business report i like to thank my guest because i know i've learned a lot and hopefully you have too thanks for joining us we'll see you on the next episode of the belmont business report i'm paul aeration reminding you to support your local businesses