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Photograph by Dilip Vishwanat
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Image of a personal trainer
Fans of NBC’s The Biggest Loser have been glued to their sets for the past two seasons, witnessing the weekly transformation of the plump, portly and just plain out-of-shape to fit and fabulous.
The most remarkable aspect of these extreme body makeovers is that they’ve been accomplished not through surgery but in the old-fashioned way, with diet and exercise. Leading the way are personal trainers Bob Harper and Jillian Michaels, whose styles couldn’t be more different. Harper takes an emotionally nurturing “tell me about your mother” approach; Michaels has been known to crush a contestant’s stealthily stashed cigarette pack and endure the cursing that follows. Both get results.
So we wondered just how local personal trainers vary in their approaches. Exactly how do the effective ones motivate us to put down forkfuls of toasted ravioli and spoons overflowing with Ted Drewes and make tracks to the treadmill? We found everything from in-your-face boot-camp tactics to easy-to-incorporate lifestyle suggestions and offers to help grocery-shop.
Why the Ho Hos?
You walk into the shiny chrome-and-glass 24 Hour Fitness Sport club in Chesterfield and, as Gwen Stefani blares over the sound system, you see Dan Lyon, 28, putting a client through his paces. From early morning through late evening, Lyon moves clients—young, old, male, female—through 50-minute individualized training sessions. Disclosure: He’s been my trainer for 18 long months; I know this drill. Need to improve your balance so that you can navigate icy winter streets and sidewalks? Lyon has one-legged squats with weights for you to do. Not happy with the bulge in your biceps? He’ll tell you that it’s time to increase the weight of the dumbbells you’re using for biceps curls and do them while trying not to fall off a stability ball. Planning a beach vacation? Try split-stance stationary lunges while you hold a pair of barbells.
Don’t even think about getting out of any sets, says client George Cook, a retired advertising executive from Creve Coeur. After completing his second set of walking lunges across the gym’s basketball court, a 25-pound weight in each hand, Cook glanced at his watch, hoping that his training time was up.
“Dan caught me looking and made me do another set across,” says Cook, “and he’s never let me forget it.” Cook credits his work with Lyon for a 40-point drop in his overall cholesterol level and return of the 34-inch waist that he hadn’t seen since college.
Most clients work out with Lyon once a week, following an individualized cardio- and weight-training program on their own between sessions. For clients with weight-loss goals, the weekly meeting may include a weigh-in, body-fat measurement and meal-plan review. Lyon says it may take him two to three months to “dial in to” their body’s diet and exercise requirements. But pity the client who gets dialed in, then starts to backslide.
“Sometimes a hard edge is what it takes,” says Lyon. “I try not to let people slack off. In the long run, that hurts them, not me. I’ll discipline people if they’re not eating right or doing their cardio. We’ll sit down and have an eye-to-eye conversation about it.”
Although Lyon is a proponent of weight-loss and nutritional supplements, he refuses to sell them to people looking for a magic pill to remove fat without diet and exercise. And don’t expect much sympathy from him when it comes to emotional eating, either.
“I had a client tell me that after she’d had a bad day, she sat down and ate a box of Ho Hos,” he says, “so I asked her if she felt better or worse after she ate them. What I really wanted to ask was, ‘Why did you buy those things in the first place?’”
Credentials: Lyon holds a bachelor’s degree in nutritional science and physical fitness and is certified by the National Academy of Sports Medicine.
Contact: 636-734-9082
Cost: $65 per 50-minute session
Micromanaging
Tucked into Boone’s Crossing in Chesterfield Valley—amid restaurants offering home-style American dinners, baked goods, Italian and Chinese cuisine—is Sculptures Personal Training. The temptation-filled location might seem detrimental, but nothing could be further from the truth, according to personal trainer Jillian Marchese, 21, who developed the trademarked Body Management Systems, a six-week body-transformation program that Sculptures offers with a 100 percent guarantee.
In addition to working with two personal trainers for weight training and cardio, clients get an individualized nutrition plan designed by Marchese, who may advise them to eat more frequently.
“I hear a lot of excuses about making time to eat meals—especially from moms running around with kids,” she says. “They ask, ‘How can eating more calories make me lose weight?’ I tell them that it’s not so much what the scale says, it’s what the calipers say. That’s permanent body-fat loss.”
For clients who cook, Marchese offers a ready supply of new low-fat recipes because, she says, “I know it gets boring.” She also gives her clients grocery-shopping tips; for the cooking-challenged, she has been known to visit the wholesale club across the street to help clients stock up on already prepared healthy foods.
“We want to make weight loss and fitness easy,” says Marchese. “I take the time to show them how to work this into their busy lives.”
Chesterfield resident Chelsea Perry, who works as a children’s and youth development consultant for a local church, knows what it’s like to be too busy to eat healthy meals. During her church’s Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, Perry put in 14-hour days in a room stocked only with Cheez-It crackers.
“Jillian immediately shifted my diet so that I could eat quickly and even offered to go to the grocery store for me,” says Perry, who dropped from a size 8 to a size 4 after six months of training. “She gave me a program that worked for my lifestyle and continually adapts it. My life is so busy. I can’t afford the time to train—but I can’t afford not to do it.”
Clients in the Body Management Systems program meet with Marchese once a week for a 30-minute consultation, including measurements and a food-log review, followed by a 30-minute fat-burning workout that might include walking lunges, jumping squats and work on the stability ball. Another trainer leads clients through a more traditional machine-based strength workout twice during the week—and clients get cardio homework.
Marchese laughs about new clients’ fears that she’s going to be as tough as Jillian Michaels on The Biggest Loser.
“I wouldn’t say that I’m easy,” she concedes. “I’ve been called many things when clients are training. They’ll jokingly throw something out, because I’m making them do something they wouldn’t do on their own. It’s like any schoolteacher you remember: She might be tough, but you know that she’s teaching you something.”
Credentials: Jillian Marchese is halfway through a bachelor’s degree in exercise science and is certified by the International Sports Sciences Association and Exercise Safety Association.
Contact: 877-872-4637
Cost: $44–$60 per hour
Shark Alert
A glance at the home page of Shark Fitness Training (www.sharkfitness.net) will tell you that you’re not in your warm, cozy bed in Kansas anymore. For starters, the program’s mascot, sporting a toothy shark’s head atop a ripped male body, is building his already bulging biceps with dumbbell curls. Then there’s the slackers-need-not-apply slogan: “No Nonsense. No Excuses. Just Results.”
If the website isn’t enough to scare you off, then meet founder Keath Hausher on a dreary winter afternoon as he tells you about the group of “trainees” he worked out at 6 a.m.—temperature 23 degrees—in Clayton’s Shaw Park. Hausher describes the program as “basic bare-bones exercise” that includes sit-ups, push-ups, weighted squats and running. Shark Fitness offers the largest network of military-inspired boot camps in the Midwest, he says, as well as personal training and corporate fitness programs.
Hausher, now 37, founded the company in 2001 because he was disillusioned by the confusing advice available to the general public about getting healthy and fit: “There were so many discrepancies in training styles and inaccurate advice in magazines. I couldn’t work out at the gym anymore because I’d see too many trainers having people do things with such bad form that they had a greater chance of getting hurt.”
Hausher set up a gym in his South County home for personal training but works with most clients at their own home gyms. Clients range from semipro and professional athletes to bestselling authors, with the oldest age 76 and the youngest age 10. “I try to teach kids that McDonald’s is not a staple,” says Hausher, “and that Xbox is great, but so is getting outside.”
Because he is the first to admit that higher fees are part of hiring an independent trainer, he started the boot camps to give individuals a chance to benefit from his training style at group rates. Hausher records the scores of each trainee in a series of running, push-up and sit-up tests at the beginning and end of each boot camp.
“The majority of first-timers achieve well above a 50 percent improvement in their scores,” he says.
Although Clayton resident Kate Schwetye, a fourth-year student in the medical-scientist training program (M.D./Ph.D.) at Washington University, considered herself a good distance runner—finishing in the top 10 of her division in the 2005 Spirit of St. Louis Marathon—she’d never focused on strength training. In fact, Schwetye couldn’t do one sit-up at the start of her first Shark Fitness five-week boot camp in April. At the end, she could perform a dozen correctly.
“The boot camps are a lot like personal training, with the added bonus of camaraderie,” says Schwetye. “Keath looks at everyone’s individual form.”
Hausher is famous for his no-nonsense approach to motivating boot camp participants. “Deal with it,” he’ll retort, or “Exercise is not a spectator sport.”
“I try to provide feedback as to what they’ve accomplished,” Hausher says. “Everyone can be vain, so I’ll ask, ‘How are your clothes fitting? So, you can’t be cold for an hour?’”
Credentials: Keath Hausher is certified by the Cooper Institute, a Dallas-based nonprofit physical-activity research and education center.
Contact: 314-843-7577 or keath@sharkfitness.net
Cost: $75–$110 per hour
Fluffing their Feathers
The elementary-school appearance and back-to-basics feel of the Kirkwood-branch YMCA suit Gina Pona, 34, a former grade-school teacher. When not training clients one on one in the weight room, she’s teaching Pilates mat exercises to a classroom of students of varied ages, shapes and fitness levels, all eager to learn to improve their core strength and flexibility.
On a recent Friday morning, Pona was enthusiastically introducing students to the benefits of performing Pilates exercises on the BOSU balance trainer. “Toys help a lot,” she says. “I try to get people to try new things.”
For Pona, it’s all about education. She teaches a hybrid of training theories, fusing yoga and Pilates with traditional strength training, to help avoid injuries. She draws upon her teacher training to help each client tune in to his or her learning style, be it visual, tactile or auditory.
“I want them to realize that it is their choice to do what they want, not mine,” she says. “I’m not going to bully them.”
Martha Grimm, a retired natural-gas marketer from Kirkwood who began training with Pona in January 2005, says that she’s lost 25 pounds and reversed her borderline-diabetic status. “I don’t wake up with aches and pains; I wake up feeling great,” says Grimm, who had focused on cardio exercise on her own for years without achieving results. “Gina’s style is complex but simple. She’s not a yelling, screaming, you-can-do-better person. She’s an extremely supportive coach who helped fine-tune my nutrition. I exercise a lot more now but in a different way. She keeps my body surprised.”
Pona uses standardized national fitness-assessment tests to gather data about a new client’s fitness level, including the ability to perform push-ups, sit-ups, a 1-mile walk, flexibility challenges, stationary weight training and maximal weight lifting.
“You have to find clients’ starting points and then help them get where they never thought they’d go,” she says.
Some of Pona’s clients are preparing for triathlons, but others are women focused on child-rearing. “Life does things to our bodies,” says Pona. “The majority of these people were athletes in high school. They’ve had kids and are burned out. They need someone to fluff their feathers, and then they can fly.”
“I don’t think that I intimidate people,” Pona adds. “I make people feel comfortable enough to ask me anything. When I was a gymnast in high school, trainers came in looking like Barbie dolls. I learned that was all about genetics. They only had to work at it a little.”
Credentials: Pona is completing a doctorate in physical education and is nationally certified by the YMCA and the International Federation of Personal Trainers.
Contact: 314-650-3571, ginapona@ginaponafitness.com
Cost: $45–$60 per hour
Shock Them Gently
Back in 1984, when Michael Jaudes began The Fitness Edge, he was one of a handful of fitness professionals in St. Louis who exclusively offered personal training. Today, Jaudes—named one of the 100 best trainers in America two years running by Men’s Journal—is doubling the size of his Creve Coeur facility. He says that people are far more willing to pony up significant bucks to hire a personal trainer today, and he credits mainstream Americans’ quest to lead better lives. (Costs for personal training in St. Louis generally range from $40 to $75 per hour.)
Although Jaudes employs 20 full-time trainers, he personally screens every new client, initiates the client’s workout program and assigns a personal trainer with whom he believes the client will be a good personality fit. Upfront screening includes a “fitness physical” in which the new client’s functional movement is assessed, as well as a 30-minute discussion about nutrition and lifestyle.
“We take the time to really get to know clients,” says Jaudes. “There have been times when I’ve thought a client wasn’t interested in making a lifestyle change, so I’ve suggested they go somewhere else. We can take their money for three months, but what good would that do? Everyone wants a quick fix.”
Dave Lewis, a social worker from Richmond Heights, had a long road ahead of him when he met Jaudes five years ago. Morbidly overweight, Lewis says he moved like “someone in their eighties,” although he was only in his mid-forties. Still, he was reluctant to work out in a group setting for fear of standing out.
“I couldn’t even fit in some of the machines when I started,” says Lewis, who has since lost 165 pounds, including 22 inches from his waist, and last year completed a 200-mile bike trip in southern France. “The attention of the personal trainers made all the difference. They paid attention to my goals, not their goals. It’s changed my life.”
Jaudes continues transforming his clients’ bodies with the use of the latest techniques, including functional fitness and time-under-tension training, and new tools such as the BOSU balance trainer, Reebok Core Board and balance disks. By varying his training approach, he aims to “shock the muscles to create change.”
“Metabolism in both the male and female body starts to drop after age 25 and continues to drop every five years,” says Jaudes. “You can defy the aging process, based on how you live. I’m 42 and I still train six days a week as hard as I can, but I have to train smarter so I can stay in the game longer.”
Credentials: Jaudes holds a bachelor’s degree in business with a minor in food science and nutrition and is certified by the American Council on Exercise, the Aerobics and Fitness Association of America and the Athletic Performance Institute.
Contact: 314-993-3343
Cost: $40–$70 per 30–60-minute session
