For many of us, getting fit, or fitter, works better in theory than it does in practice. Sam Agars gets some expert advice on how best to achieve and maintain the ultimate revenge body.
We’ve all been there – a flash of inspiration, a grand plan and a flying start to what will be a life changing exercise regime. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, the initial motivation isn’t matched by sustained hard work, and what was a great idea peters out into little more than nothing. With the arrival of 2018 and New Year’s resolutions flying about thick and fast, we’ve turned to three Lantau-based personal trainers in a bid to point you down the road to a new you.
Know what you want to achieve
For Ash Joshi of AJ Fitness, the decision to improve his body shape changed his life in more ways than one. What started as a mission to get fit enough to play with his young son has led to a career in the fitness industry, with the 41-year-old Tung Chung resident now a personal trainer, with clients in DB and across Hong Kong. Ash’s story is one we can all relate to, and he’s not afraid to admit there were points in his life when his diet wasn’t great and he “wasn’t really fussed about being healthy”.
Ash first started putting on weight in 2012 not long after he got married, and the scales really began to tip after the birth of his son in 2013. “I was just very happy and content with life,” he says. “And I was eating a lot of junk.”
When friends started commenting on his weight gain, Ash decided to take action, and he set himself a goal – the London Marathon.
“I trained for a whole year, and I completely overhauled my diet. I quit smoking and everything,” he says. “I finished the London Marathon and my weight had gone, and then I started weight training and toning my body up. There was lots of sweat, blood and tears.”
Ash says at his biggest his waist ballooned out to 38 inches – now it’s 30. He didn’t slow down after completing the marathon, and people took notice of his achievements.
“People would take photos of my transformation and put them on Facebook, and they started asking me how I’d done it, and if I could help them out,” he says. “I ended up turning my own life journey and my passion for exercise into a business. I’m really happy. For, me it’s a personal achievement but it’s also nice that I can help other people.”
And for those hoping to follow in his footsteps, Ash has this advice: “Getting fit is a psychological thing, it’s not just a physical a thing. Your state of mind has to be right and you have got to want it.
“I see a lot of clients start training, and after the first 10 sessions they are not interested anymore because their mindset is not in it. It is about getting your mind focused and knowing what you want to achieve.”
Enjoy it and keep at it
DB-based personal trainer Tyler Treece, of Treece Fitness, says making sure clients enjoy exercising is his way of ensuring they stick at it.
Tyler, who has been running boot camps and the like in DB since 2006, grew up interested in fitness, and for him the best recipe for success is the simplest one.
“What I try to do is teach everybody how to structure their workout, and I make sure they focus on and keep doing the important parts, like warming up and stretching. This way, people feel better while they are working out,” the 40-year-old says.
Tyler is well aware that fitness training supercharges the body’s store of endorphins – the hormone responsible for our feeling on top of the world after a good workout. “People find they feel better after a workout, even before they start seeing actual results,” he says. “In order to get results, you need to get people hooked on exercising, and what usually gets them hooked is just feeling better while they exercise.”
According to Tyler, finding an exercise regime that works for you, and that you enjoy doing, is step one – step two is keeping at it. What’s more, the likelihood of your making exercise a key component of your life is wholly dependent on how much you enjoy it.
“If you want exercise to work for you, you have to do it consistently,” he says. “I always tell people that it is easier to maintain than it is to start and restart. You don’t have to kill yourself during your workout in order to get results, you have to do it right, you have to enjoy it, and you have to do it regularly.”
Get out of your comfort zone
Anyone who is even remotely familiar with the DB fitness scene will know of Wesley Reid – and his wife Cindy – and The HIT Room.
While Wesley was never one who had huge issues with his weight, there were times when he wasn’t as healthy as he could have been, and he says his fitness journey has been a lifelong progression.
“I played a lot of sports but I was never a very athletic kid. My mum used to bake a lot of cakes, and I liked to sit down with a plate of food and watch cartoons of an afternoon,” the 36-year-old says. “I’d say that overall I was a naturally sedentary person. I wouldn’t say I was fat but I was probably slightly chubby.”
Wesley’s road to fitness opened up when he started working out and running with friends in his late teens. While studying to become a personal trainer, his knowledge of the human body and how it responds to certain types of exercise grew.
“You can get to a certain level of fitness just by throwing some weights around or going for a jog. But if you really want to get to where you want to go, you’re going to have to do a little bit more than that. It’s actually the little things that make the big things happen,” he says.
Wesley and Cindy pride themselves on being able to match or better anything they ask of their clients, and Wesley says the key lies in finding a way to make people want to push themselves out of their comfort zone.
“There is a difference between telling someone to do an exercise and making them want to do that exercise because they really believe that it’s for their own good,” he says. “Even in session one, I’m quite frank with clients: I tell them I can get them strong and help them lose a bit of weight, but they will need to push themselves, if they truly want to reach their goal. It’s about going beyond wanting to stop when the training starts to get a bit tough.
“Humans don’t necessarily want to work hard,” Wesley adds. “You hear every excuse under the sun, honestly you do. It’s about giving yourself a reasonable goal and being disciplined. Take it step by step, make it a lifelong progression.”
Find it:
– AJ Fitness, AJ Fitness Facebook page
– The HIT Room, www.thehitroom.com.hk
– Treece Fitness, www.treecefitness.com
