INTERVIEWS

I recently had the chance to interview a personal trainer/amateur bodybuilder, and an average gym goer that has body building aspirations.


Keith ( Trainer )

What is your favorite muscle group to work on?

Legs are probably my favorite to train. While you only need to train your legs about twice a week, they are the most important muscle group to train as they enable the rest of your body to grow. When training a large group like legs, your body is forced to release more amounts of testosterone and HGH (Human growth hormone). So in turn the extra amounts of hormones released will not only aid your legs but also every other part of your body.


If you had any advice to give newcomers to the gym what would it be?

Get in a good mindset, working out is just as much a mental game as it is physical. Have a plan, get in there and push yourself to your limits and beyond. Some people just workout until they feel a burn or until they get fatigued, but your results come from pushing through the burn and forcing yourself to go the extra mile.


Can you give some tips for those in the gym that want to put on some muscle mass?

In order to maximize the results from the work you do in the gym you need to have a good diet and you must consume enough protein, generally about a gram to a gram and a half per pound of body weight. You also need to consume a lot more calories than you normally would in order to gain size.


What motivates you to work out so rigorously and made you want to become a personal trainer?

Reaching my own personal goals tends to motivate me enough, I compete in competitions every now and then but I just really enjoy being in the gym to better myself. As well as bettering myself why not apply my knowledge and coaching to help others also, so being a personal trainer seemed to be the only thing that made sense to me.


Some people like to work one muscle or muscle group a day (ex: day 1 chest, day 2 back etc...) and some like to work more than one a day. Is there any strategy you have found in your experience that may work best? Or does it depend on the person's goals they want to achieve?

Typically in order to bulk you muscles you want to train one muscle group a day, this allows you to put 100% effort and concentration into fully depleting that muscle. Training more than one a day will yield results but you won’t be able to put on the amount of mass as you would otherwise. If you want to build lean muscle or cut down, then training more than one group will work but you shouldn't lift as heavy.


Josh ( aspiring body builder )


What is some advice you can give people who are wanting to start working out?

The best advice I can give a beginner is to obtain as much knowledge in nutrition and fitness as you can, be excited, explore options. Fitness is not something someone just can go and do, it is a lifestyle and there is true science behind every aspect of it no matter what your end goals are. The number one piece of information that I think every beginner needs to know is diet, our bodies are working machines down to the microscopic level. Just like a car, if you do not keep it maintained with the correct fluids and you try and put water in the gas tank, it won’t run and will fall apart, our bodies run in the exact same way, they are fueled by what we put in our mouths, the better the understanding of metabolism, correct portion control, times, and food times is the only way to meet your goal. Your end results come from 70% diet and 30% hard work.


Can you explain under training and over training and how they might affect gym-goers?

Under training can be comprised of many different things. One is to train doing the same exercises over and over and over again, your body can get use to a routine and your progress can slow down or even stop completely. Also, doing the minimal amount of work until you are winded, once again you are only doing what you are comfortable with, the only way to create a better you, is to push yourself past your limits, and intern this will raise your limits equaling visual and physical results. Over training can be one of the most detrimental to ones’ progress and like under training has a few different aspects. One being training so much that you do not give your body time to rest, a rest day is just as important as being in the gym itself. The resting period is when your gains and changes are basically being applied. The soreness is the muscle that you have torn, during your rest period your body is working hard to repair and rebuild all of the muscles that you have been working on. On the other hand if you over train in the means of pushing your body WAY past its limits, doing weight that is to heavy and or loosing form will lead to immediate injury, and everyone is smart enough to know that if you are injured, you can’t train, and if you can’t train, you’re not making any gains.


What are some helpful tips for people that want to start dieting?

Dieting is quite complex but can be summed up in some fairly Lehman’s terms for the beginner. When you say diet, it doesn't mean just the type of food that you are eating but also how you are eating it. Your metabolism is controlled by how much you are taking in, for example: if you eat only three large meals a day your body takes the food and instantly stores it as fat to feed off of for the next several hours before it gets its next meal, this intern slows your metabolism down because it doesn't have to work as hard to store the food as opposed to using the food and breaking it down completely. So the objective is to eat several small meals a day so the body understands that it will get food again within an hour and a half or so, this makes the body instantly metabolize the food instead of storing it. Now your body is no longer storing the fat, and your metabolism is working overtime to break down all the food you are feeding it. The rule of thumb is, your meals should be the size of your fist, don't ever eat till your full, and never let yourself get hungry, and it’s as simple as that. Once you have that down you can build off of that foundation and start customizing the food in those meals as your knowledge grows about health and fitness, the better the food you put in, the better the results.


How often do you work out a week?

Generally separating your muscle groups into about 5 days of training and giving yourself 2 days off is a good happy medium for beginners and more advanced individuals.


Do you prefer to train one muscle group a day or more than one? Why?

I prefer to train one major muscle group a day with maybe a secondary muscle with it. The reason for this is for complete muscle concentration, and maximum growth. What I mean by maximum growth is that your body can only produce so much fresh blood to your muscles at one time with enough nutrients to help that muscle get its maximum growth, once you have trained one major muscle group and try to move on to a second, your body will already be depleted of its resources.


What are the benefits of training heavy vs. training light?

The concept of "weight training" can be quite complex also. Depending on your goals, you will need to change your weight that you are using in the gym, and you will need to have a firm understanding on your own body and know how to read what it is telling you. Your basic explanation though is, heavier weight with fewer reps (8-10) is your basic formula for mass building, and lighter weight with 15-20 reps is considered more of a lean muscle building exercise.