Posts in category personal trainers

Really Expensive Personal Trainers

Written by Hans Hageman

personal trainers

This guy in Dubai charges 750 dirham per session. That’s a lot of money – roughly $202.38 U.S. dollars.

Conversations about what we pay for our food, exercise, relaxation are a regular part of the routine in our house. I drill into my youngest children (too late for the older ones) that they’re going to lose in life if they know the cost of everything but the value of nothing.

How much would you pay for training? 200, 300, 400 dollars per session? How about if money was no object? You’d probably want to know how good this guy was, right? How would you determine that? Hopefully not by the number of celebrities they had starved.

You might even be saying, with a lecherous chuckle, that, “he’d better do more than just train me for that kind of money!”

The best trainers also act as coaches. The best coaches are rebels against the indifference that infects so many segments of our society.

Why use a personal trainer at all? Well, you could…

optimize your workout time
ensure proper form
get an accurate assessment of your state of fitness
exercise safety through proper form and a balance between work and recovery
learn that everyone benefits from having a good trainer; the top athletes have trainers because they know that “knowing what to do” is not good enough
be held accountable
have someone who will push you beyond your comfort zone while not pushing you beyond your physical limits
get program personalization
receive motivation
have special concerns (nutrition, fat loss, post-injury rehab, etc.) addressed
access to a community and support system

How much would you spend if you knew that you would look and feel sexier, that your kids couldn’t put you in a nursing home (my only fear in life), that you would be able to play with your children and grandchildren, that you would never have to buy another “fat dress,” that you would look better than everyone at your next college reunion, that you would never have to worry about “back fat”, that you had the strength to hike, run, or fight, that you wouldn’t have to worry about Type 2 diabetes? No, really. Tell me in the comments how much you would be willing to spend.

P.S. Bernadette needs a new dress. If you want to help out, order your supplements through Prograde Nutrition. We have an affiliate relationship with this company because we believe in the company and we use their products. Trust me, I’ve looked into a lot of supplements. Eat real food but get your insurance policy from Prograde.

Posted in body transformation - Tagged "fat loss for women" "Harlem personal trainer" "Harlem personal training"

Train Naked – Do You Like What You See?

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Written by Hans Hageman

This post was inspired by a discussion I had with a couple of colleagues about workout attire and what it communicates.  If you thought there would be more “interesting” pictures of the staff of Brownstone Fitness, you’ll have to join the contest on our membership site to see those!

There are a few ways to train naked
I’m not going to discuss the most obvious method of training this way and for safety reasons, I’m not advocating it.

Do What You Can With What You’ve Got
This kind of training has to do with simplicity and a minimalist ethic. Pavel Tsatsouline has popularized it in his Naked Warrior book. The concept is that you should be able to get stronger using nothing more than your own body.

It’s interesting how addicted some people have become to exercise machines. This affliction seems to run deeper in men. It is one of the reasons we only have a couple of guys training in our “machine-less” facility. You can fake and cheat on machines. Working with your body tells you the truth. My theory is that a lot of men can’t handle this kind of truth.

True naked training involves mainly bodyweight and things you can pull up to and jump on. It has many benefits. It saves time and money. You’re less likely to get injured. You don’t have an excuse for getting out of shape when you travel. It has a lot of meditative qualities. You’ll move with more grace. You’ll become more creative and improvisational.

You’re Exposed
Then, there’s a third meaning. Hard training can tell you a lot about yourself. We often don’t like what we find when we push the limits and do the hard thing. Exposing ourselves to ourselves is very uncomfortable and most of us avoid it. For most guys, a hard workout is a couple of extra sets of (light) bench presses and curls. For women, it’s doing an extra half hour on the elliptical machine. Where are the pull-ups, the sprinting, the deadlifts, the handstands and cartwheels?

When you actually work to reach real fitness goals, you will find out about your courage and mental toughness. You will learn about your self-discipline. You will be able to examine and display your values. Make a public commitment to do the hard thing with your diet and exercise and people will discover whether you are capable of doing what you say you will do – Oh no! That integrity thing!

Our desk-bound lives don’t provide us with a lot of opportunities for introspection and challenge. We allow ourselves to be forced into autopilot. This has inevitable consequences for all our relationships.

Figure out a way to train naked. Stand out. Do it often enough and you’ll end up liking the reflection.

P.S. At Brownstone Fitness, we don’t always train naked. We also include kettlebells, barbells, clubbells, ropes, and accountability. Give us a call to find out what this looks like in a firm but caring environment.

Posted in body transformation, exercise, fitness, health - Tagged exercise, Harlem, naked, training

“Becoming Bulletproof” – A Review

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Written by Hans Hageman

The Challenge
Once I hit my 50’s, maintaining fitness presented a serious challenge. There are mental and physical hurdles that arose all of a sudden and I realized that no one had prepared me for them. I also have clients of all ages who are facing the same challenges. Some of these challenges are the loss of coordination, a loss of power, a loss of strength, combined with an increase in stiffness and pain. Maintaining health and fitness becomes too difficult and most people give up. Increased immobility means we are that much closer to death.

The Book
Whether a function of age or civilization, there are things you can do to gain the function that is your birthright. The eBook, “Becoming Bulletproof: An Uncommon Approach to Building A Resilient Body” (NOT an affiliate link) is a roadmap to that goal. The authors, Tim Anderson and Mike McNiff, have created a blueprint for better movement. They use their own experience and the research of others in the field of human performance to show how we can move the way we were meant to move.

After reading the book you will learn how to (re) train your neurology through exercises that they call “Resets.” The authors present resets for your breathing, your core, your feet, and the thing that controls your balance – the vestibular system. You will also find an elegant (simple and effective) strength-training plan

Fighting Dysfunction
Our brain always moves us towards survival. What this means in the modern world is that our bodies are made to compensate for the chronically stressful situations we find ourselves in. These compensations cause our movement dysfunction. For people who still have the energy to exercise, you go to a fitness chain to get strapped into a machine that proceeds to lock in bad patterns as strength is placed on top of dysfunction; or you pound your way through an exercise DVD that has you jumping and pumping into positions that will eventually cause your connective tissue to rebel. “Becoming Bulletproof” provides a more intelligent approach.

Most people have firsthand awareness of how sedentary our society has become. Our bodies too often map our occupations and our emotions. This means that many people walk with rounded shoulders in a head-forward, stiff-legged gait. This was “learned” through too many hours at the computer and at soul-destroying jobs. Pain often accompanies the posture. There is evidence that this posture and the pain are not only a reflection of a troubled inner world but often become the source of it in a feedback loop of dysfunction.

Summing Up
I now perform a sequence of resets as part of my warm-up and on my recovery days. After several sessions, I am already feeling the difference. I have also started adding them to the workouts of my clients.

The criticisms I have of the book are that the nutrition section could have been more detailed or left for a separate eBook. I also would have liked to read some case histories of clients using these methods from Mike and Tim.

I highly recommend “Becoming Bulletproof.” Whether you are a personal trainer, an athlete, or a middle-aged person trying to fight back against life’s insults, you would do well to use this book as an organizing principle for your training. You’ll learn why and how the “warm-up” should be the workout for most people who are starting or getting back to working out. You’ll learn how your workout can actually be play and practice for living. Follow the program and I’d be willing to bet you’ll get physically stronger, improve your awareness and mindfulness, become more aware of the balance between relaxation and tension, improve your posture, and develop powerful and pain-free movement.

Posted in aging, brain, exercise, fitness, flexibility, health, mind, mobility, movement, workout - Tagged Becoming Bulletproof, movement, pain, workout

Body Transformation – In A War Zone Pt. 2

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Written by Hans Hageman

I hope you read the first installment. Dino responded with a comment that I have used for the post below. Please send any questions you have about the process and we’ll try to get them answered. His comments about food choices are particularly interesting.

“Hello,
I am Dino the subject of Hans’s post “Body Transformation In a War Zone”. I wanted to say “hi” and to introduce myself to his readers – one, so that they know that I am real and second, so that I could provide some insight into the exercise and nutritional programs that Hans has set me up with. I will say that so far my journey has been positive, especially being able to knock off 20 pounds within a month or two of working with Hans. Prior to that I had started out on my own workout regime, but having little knowledge of the nutritional part I was not seeing the results of the exercise work that I was putting in. Well little did I know and thanks to Hans’s advice I found out that I knew very little about exercise.

To me it seemed simple – work out hard and alter your eating habits and you will lose weight and get in shape. Well that might be true if I had the metabolism of a 16 year old, but at 45 and after years of not exercising, I learned that it doesn’t work like that. If I had to pinpoint the main thing that I had to focus on from what Hans has taught me so far is that you have to work out smart not hard. I discovered that if I increased the physical energy that I put into my workouts vs. long endurance sessions, I not only got a shorter workout but that I also burned more calories.

The other point, and I have far from mastered this one, is the stuff that I put into my body. I learned you can eat, you don’t have to starve yourself but that what you eat and when you eat is very important. About a year ago I went on a fast (not under the direction of Hans). Don’t ask me why. I just wanted to see if I could do it. I went 19 days without eating food at all, just drinking water with lemon. The amazing part was that it was so easy to do. The best part is that I was able to see that most of the time when we eat, we eat not because we are hungry but because the food is there, or because its breakfast time, or lunch time. I was amazed at how I saw food and didn’t desire it.

Now, I am not saying don’t eat. The point that I am trying to make and that I need to reapply into my life is that some of the foods (pizza, chicken burrito, fried foods) that I am eating I don’t need to eat. I am eating them because being over here I say to myself “let me eat that because I don’t know when I will see pizza again”, but mostly because it is the foods that I find tasty, my happy foods, the foods I substitute to offset my current living conditions.

So workout smarter not harder (which doesn’t mean give it your all), and break free of your happy foods, learn about the stuff that you put into your body and about your body. It will go a long way. I encourage you to continue following Hans’s posts as he teaches me more about exercise, the body and nutrition, and I go for my weight goal of 170 pounds.”

P.S.
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Posted in body transformation, fitness, health, inspiration

The World’s Oldest Personal Trainer?

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Written by Hans Hageman

“Most men die at 27, we just bury them at 72.” – Mark Twain

“Are you planning on becoming the world’s oldest personal trainer?” My friend’s question did not have the sincere enthusiasm I would have hoped for. If the tone had been used by a stranger, the words “derision” and “contempt” would have immediately jumped to my mind. I have to admit, his words and tone did cause a momentary tear in the fabric of my eternal optimism. I also knew that he would not be the only one making negative and barely veiled judgments about my new career direction. After all, how could Princeton and Columbia University degrees lead to this?!

I have recovered quickly. I had a warmup for this kind of status game when I left the practice of law to start my first independent school. I did that with $25,000 in start-up funding, an infant daughter, and no health insurance. Charter school legislation was only a vague dream. Education reform and school choice weren’t quite as sexy then as they are now. I guess that after having started three schools for under-served youth, working in the U.S. Senate and as a prosecutor, and turning around a large youth development organization, it might now appear as if my “give a shit” is malfunctioning.

I’ve been silent on the blog as I drafted this post in my head. It was never quite finished – there was too much to say, too much to explain. Finally, I accepted the fact that like so much of my life, this post was part of a process, a journey. Getting it “finished” would mean about as much as accomplishing my longtime dream of becoming a lawyer did. It’s about reinvention and creation. I have learned the hard way that pursuit of these things is regarded as rebellious and irresponsible – however,”La Luta Continua.”

I am a serial entrepreneur and I have chosen to employ my ability to take action in a different direction. I am now putting my bucket down into the well of wellness. The reasons are many. I am no longer interested in taking orders from cynical people who combine arrogance with a depressing lack of moral courage and integrity. With two parents who committed themselves to the service of others and who died before their time, I am intrigued by the possibility that, God willing, I can temporarily outrun my genetics. I want to help others to live fully engaged. I want to model for my children and my former students the skills that may help them to master their own professional fates. I want to work with people who are honest, committed, and who share my vision of justice and what it truly means to be human, and so…

I now work with people who are in physical and/or emotional pain. I work with people who refuse to be “zoo humans.” I work with people who are trying to manage their stress. I am providing nutrition and wellness coaching to poor people who are victims of the metabolic derangement brought about by governmental collusion with Big Farming and Big Pharma. I work with women who want to define beauty on their terms – terms that include the pursuit of physical strength. I work with tough women seeking balance, movement, and complete expression of their humanity. It’s been interesting to discover that they have more balls than too many of the men I have recently encountered (see Kay Hymowitz and “Manning Up” or John Eldredge and “The Way of the Wild Heart”).

In fact, my personal training career actually started in 1981. I took it on as a way to help pay for law school. It was quite a cast of characters at places like 21st Century Nautilus on East 57th and Better Bodies. I am proud of having competed in the USA Bodybuilding Championships in Las Vegas (Couples Division) in 1982. I felt more comfortable in that world than I did among my law school classmates and the glib, ambitious but dead-eyed lawyers I worked with during my summers.

I have had the option of being dismayed, depressed, or disgusted by some of the people who have crossed my former professional path – and it has been a tempting option. I choose instead to see them as people who are trapped in pain, confusion, and insecurity. My only regret is that I didn’t have a chance to be their personal trainer.

My study of Reiki, hypnosis, Neurolinguistic Programming (that began almost twenty years ago), and my sports coaching certifications were never meant to to be the powder for a magic bullet that was going to change the world of education, eliminate poverty, or any other such grand plan. They were tools to help me express my humanity and to help other people express theirs. This is my Hero’s Journey. It may not be up to the standards of some of my accomplished and erstwhile friends but I’m loving it.

By the way, my “give a shit” is working better than ever.

P.S. Call or email if you are looking for more energy, engagement, and living.
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Posted in aging, fitness, self-employment, work/life balance

Posts in category personal trainers

Really Expensive Personal Trainers

Train Naked – Do You Like What You See?

“Becoming Bulletproof” – A Review

Body Transformation – In A War Zone Pt. 2

The World’s Oldest Personal Trainer?

Catherine Nunez

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