5 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Personal Trainer
Breaking Down Barriers and Crossing Borders
We’ve entered into a new era here at InForm Fitness.
Let me share some background first so that you can understand why NOW is such a pivotal time at InForm Fitness.
I was a science geek – not your typical profile for an exercise maniac. I followed strenuous exercise programs and was dedicated to being fit. Some would say that I was an arrogant evangelist about it as well, and I just couldn’t understand why my fellow lab technicians didn’t want to get with the program. Then, one day, my boss told me the truth: “Adam, you are always nursing injuries and you look like crap – so why would I want to exercise the way you do?”
That was the moment. You know – that ah ha moment. So I set a new course to discover a safer, more efficient way to exercise. That’s when I discovered the work of Ken Hutchins on slow resistance weight training. While I wasn’t in agreement with all of Hutchins’ work, I did see the premise as being sound. I dug deeper to learn more, found studios that were practicing slow resistance weight training, and became a convert. I believed that this would change the whole fitness industry.
Fast-forward a few years after more research, practice and testing, and with absolutely no business experience; I started InForm Fitness in a Massapequa basement. The business began to take off and so we expanded to a studio in midtown Manhattan- our headquarters today. I also co-authored the book The Power of Ten with my good friend Bill Schley, and it hit the New York Times Best Seller list. I was now getting closer to my dream of being interviewed by Oprah and changing the way the world looked at exercise.
Well, the whole industry didn’t change, and I didn’t get invited to speak to Oprah. But I haven’t wavered one inch from my mission. While Oprah didn’t call, Leslie Stahl and Barbara Walters did. There have been several news programs and articles about The Power of 10 and InForm Fitness so I know it is catching on – but it seems that when we say ‘this workout isn’t for everyone’ – it really isn’t. Not because it can’t or won’t work for them, but because people become very invested in their beliefs – right or wrong, scientifically sound or mystically based – they oppose change.
So back to the point I started with – Breaking Down Barriers and Crossing the Border.
The first barrier: getting found. With several lackluster attempts at a website, we finally found the team to work with that delivered a new website that is already improving our ‘findability’ on the web and delivering a better experience. We’ve also begun a new marketing and communications program – so stay tuned!
The next barrier: getting our vacationing clients back in the gym. While we recognized that many of our New York City clients spend their summers in the Hamptons, coming back to the city for their workout was inconvenient. This sparked my idea of taking the gym to them – in a custom-designed, full-workout gym-on-a-bus! We rolled out InForm Mobile in the Hamptons this past summer. And we’ll be making ‘fit stops’ throughout Long Island and New Jersey all year long.
The third barrier: Crossing the Border. As you probably have picked on up by now, I believe that the Power of 10 workout should be the norm. And to make that happen, we have to aim beyond New York. We are excited to announce that in addition to our New York City, Massapequa, Lehigh Valley locations, and our bus, we now have a new location in Los Angeles, California. We are close to adding another location in Santiago, Chile – and another in Virginia!
After much delay, we are at a point in our journey where we have a great team and the right platform to consistently share our ideas and information that I believe will help improve your quality of life.
If you haven’t signed up for our newsletter, I invite you to do so. You might also want to check out our new Tumblr site and to join us on Facebook, where we plan on having some lively discussions. See you online!
FAQs
For competitive lifters who’ve trained the movement for years and accept the risk as part oftheir sport, it’s a fair trade. For most other people the risk-to-reward math doesn’t hold up. Thebarbell sits on your spine, the load goes straight down through your discs, and theconsequences when technique fails are severe. You can build very nearly the same strengthwith far safer tools.
Improvement in balance is highly specific to the task you train. Standing on a wobble boardmakes you better at standing on a wobble board. It doesn’t transfer the way the marketingsuggests. The better path to real-world stability is being stronger and moving regularly.
Not at all. Cardio is valuable activity in its own right, and it can be serious training. The troubleis when it gets evaluated by a definition that doesn’t fit. It deserves its own conversation.
For strength: progressive resistance training built around the major muscle groups, enoughprotein, enough sleep, daily movement. For everything else: pick activities you enjoy and dothem often. The fundamentals work. They just don’t sell magazines.
Exercise, the way I use the word, is structured work designed to build strength safely.Recreation is any activity that keeps you moving — sports, hiking, dance, tennis, cardio. Bothare valuable. They just shouldn’t be evaluated by the same rules, and confusing them is wheremost fitness debates go off the rails.
