Needing Workout Motivation? As I’ve noted many times in my blogs as well as essays, I get asked a lot of questions in the gym, or even amongst friends and acquaintances outside of the gym. Naturally, some are better than others, such as do you think my particular case of Ankylosing Spondylitis is something that
Having Trouble Keeping the Weight Off? There has been a lot of recent coverage of enormous weight loss, followed by people experiencing difficulty keeping the weight off. On such television shows as The Biggest Loser, for example, this seems to be the norm rather than the exception. The premise of that show in particular, is
Asking Yourself Why Am I Fat? I had a rather amusing email land in my inbox the other day. It was from a young lady whom I have never met and she simply asked, why am I fat? Granted, I make myself readily available on such websites as quora, etc, and it’s not too hard
How to Go About Overcoming Gym Intimidation One of the biggest reasons people shy away from fitness, especially in gyms is because they are intimidated. Gym intimidation is rampant and is not confined to any one demographic. Over my 20 plus years as an Austin personal trainer, I’ve seen everybody from professional athletes, to beginners
Wondering How To Find A Good Personal Trainer? How to find a good personal trainer is a difficult, yet astonishingly easy question for me to answer, despite my bias. As a longtime personal trainer in Austin, as well as a gym owner for over a decade, I’m certainly biased when it comes to personal trainers.
Wondering How To Get A Flat Stomach? When you’ve been an Austin personal trainer as long as I have, you certainly get to meet a wide variety of people from many different backgrounds and with an equally wide variety of goals. A lot of men want to become physically larger with big muscles, usually pectorals
How To Go About Finding a Personal Trainer The other day, I had an interesting conversation with a personal training client of mine, who unfortunately for me, as I very much enjoy working with her, is moving out of state. It put the shoe on the other foot, so to speak, when she asked how
Thinking About Finding a Workout Partner? Over the many years I’ve been an Austin personal trainer, and a gym owner, I have written about how everything in fitness is individual, countless times. Sweeping statements should be swept under the rug is what I’ve always believed. This holds true to virtually everything in the fitness world,
Needing Workout Motivation? As I’ve noted many times in my blogs as well as essays, I get asked a lot of questions in the gym, or even amongst friends and acquaintances outside of the gym. Naturally, some are better than others, such as do you think my particular case of Ankylosing Spondylitis is something that
Are You wondering When is the Best Time to Workout? One great question that generates a lot of opposing answers is the classic, when is the best time to workout question. I’ve seen plenty of people chime in their opinions all over the internet, naturally. I’ve seen so called fitness experts, who work at Target
Do You Want To Know How To Get Rid Of Flabby Arms? As we get older, our body changes. Some things we don’t notice so much, such as higher blood sugar levels,for example, but other things we certainly do take notice of. They could be the graying of the hair, the formation of age spots
Body Shaming I’ve been an Austin personal trainer for over 20 years now, and in that time, I have been to, and worked at, many a gym, including owning my own for close to 9 years now, the Austin Fitness Center. People have asked me over the years, is it difficult to own a gym,
Setting Fitness Goals Common sense dictates that it’s far easier to establish a personal goal than to achieve one, unless of course, your goal is simply to set a goal. The realization and acceptance of the fact that you need to make a change, is perhaps the most vital and courageous step of the transformation
What Are The Benefits Of Lifting Weights? People always are asking if this is better than that. We always are making comparisons and trying to find out the best way to go about something. That’s just human nature. Whether we actually do something with our information, however, is hit or miss, but that’s human nature
What Are The Best Ab Exercises? Everybody is always asking what are the best exercises for this muscle, and what are the best ones for that muscle? I’ve been an Austin personal trainer for over 22 years now, and if someone posed the question of what are the best chest exercises, I could easily pull
Asking Can I Lose Weight Without Dieting? Every day, people decide they want to get in better shape. Maybe they have an aesthetic goal. Perhaps it’s just a matter of dropping a set number of pounds they are interested in doing. Other times in rehabilitative. There’s plenty of reasons and motivations, and as an Austin
Wondering What Is The Best Diet? There’s a sweeping statement in the fitness community that 80% of your results will come from nutrition. Not 79%, and not 81%. Just 80%, and that applies to everyone. As a longtime Austin personal trainer I can tell you with certainty, that is silly. It’s obviously going to depend
Asking How Can I Lose Weight? Sometimes the questions I get from people at my gym, or via e mail, are very simple sounding and straight forward, but if you scratch the surface a little, you realize that there’s much more going on than one would initially summarize. Since I became a personal trainer in
Wondering Where To Find Workout Routines? A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an essay about workout routines here on my website. I explained how I don’t write them for people. Even those who have trained with me for years will not get a prescribed workout routine from me. Why? Because they are useless except
Want to Know How to Build Muscle Fast? How to build muscle fast is a question I’ve heard from many men, and a handful of women, during my 20 plus years as an Austin personal trainer, and gym owner. There’s ways you can expedite the process, just like any process, but nothing comes overnight. Even
Are You Wondering How To Build Bigger Calves? One of the age old dilemmas of some people working out in the gyms across the world is how to build bigger calves. There are many machines from the donkey press, to both seated, and standing calf raise machines, all the way down to body weight exercises
Are You Wondering What is the Best Way to Lose Weight? When you’ve been a personal trainer in Austin for over 20 years, it goes without saying that you get asked a lot of health and fitness questions. People want to know what the quickest way to accomplish their health and fitness goals are. They
Want to Know How to Lose Weight Fast? Everywhere you look, people want instant gratification. Not that it’s a bad thing necessarily, but our society has made a premium of focusing on how fast things are achieved, how quickly websites load, how fast our cars and motorcycles go, how fast our smartphones are, and so
Don’t be that Stereotypical Personal Trainer. This is How to Become a REAL Personal Trainer As promised last week, this week’s blog is about how to become a personal trainer. One of the best things about my job as a personal trainer in Austin, is when I work with truly motivated people. These are the
Suffering From Postural Imbalances? Whenever I have a potential client contact me about personal training, we will always meet for a consultation first. As long as I’ve been an Austin personal trainer, this has been my protocol, and that’s been for over 20 years now. The reason for the consultation is multi fold. It allows
Question of the Week: Rich Piana: What is my Opinion of him? As a personal trainer in Austin for over 21 years, I have had a lot of people ask me over the years if I know certain people. Sometimes they are inquiring if I work with a celebrity they are especially fond of. Other
How to go About Finding a Gym Recently, a long standing Austin personal training client of mine, whom I also call a good friend, moved out of town to Arizona so he and his wife could be closer to their kids. Good for them, bad for me, as I truly enjoyed his company both professionally,
Does Weight Lifting Produce Bulky Women? One of the main objectives of this blog, has been to educate people about health and fitness by drawing upon my experience of 21 years as a personal trainer in Austin, as well as a gym owner here for nearly a decade. I have written many posts and essays
Wondering Should You Be Changing Personal Trainers? Few things in this world can remain a constant, other than time, perhaps. It doesn’t stop for anyone, or anything. In the rest of the world, things evolve, dissolve, and fluctuate. The health and fitness world is no exception. We may change gyms because we move to a
Some Basic Gym Do’s and Don’ts In a recent blog, I took a different approach than usual, and wrote a factual personal training do’s and don’ts. It was done with humor, but all of the “ridiculous” scenarios were completely unstretched truths and experiences from my 21 years as an Austin personal trainer. As many of
I Can’t Lose Weight You Say? Nothing is working they say. I’m doing everything I can they say. I’m eating right, I’m exercising, and I can’t lose weight. I have bad genetics they say. I’ve been a personal trainer in Austin for over 20 years now, as well as a gym owner for 9. I
Want Some Weight Loss Tips? No matter the subject, there’s no shortage of advice from those who truly are educated in that specific field, and likewise, there is no shortage of advice from self proclaimed experts. Fitness is no exception, especially when it comes to weight loss tips. Turn on YouTube, and you’ll find a
More Workout Myths As a longtime personal trainer in Austin, I’ve pointed out repeatedly over the years on this blog, as well as in my gym to my clients, that there is an overabundance of misleading information, and simply out and out falsities circulating within the health and fitness world. Maximum heart rate calculation formulas,
What Are Alternative Exercises? There are a lot of ways to accomplish most anything that you seek to accomplish. You can build a house out of any number of materials such as wood, brick, etc, and you will have a house. You can make any number of food dishes by using a variety of ingredients.
Have You Lost Your Workout Motivation? In all of my years as a personal trainer in Austin, and a gym owner as well, I’ve noticed that there are several pitfalls that people succumb to when falling off the workout wagon. It’s as if they all of a sudden lose their workout motivation, but there’s nothing
There’s No Reason To Have Trouble Finding Time To Workout As a personal trainer in Austin, TX for 21 years, as well as a gym owner for close to a decade, I can assure you wholeheartedly, that I have heard every excuse in the book as to why people couldn’t work out, couldn’t make their
Stuck On The Road? Do A Hotel Room Workout! They say that you can’t predict where life will take you, and to a great extent, that holds very true. Obviously, certain behaviors and lifestyles can offer more predictable results than others, but generally speaking, we assume we know what we’ll be doing and where we’ll
Don’t Let Gym Intimidation Hold You Back Anytime we start something new, it’s perfectly natural to have some sense of trepidation. When we undertake something that we’re even somewhat familiar with, in a different setting, we naturally have a propensity to feel a little ill at ease, regardless of how excited we are to start
Are Muscle Magazines Realistic? We’ve all seen the muscle magazines in the checkout line at the grocery store. Some quasi porn star looking, barely clad female standing in apparent awe at the tanned, ultra muscular, young buck who is every man’s envy, and the apparent desire of every female. There’s a bunch of these muscle
The Importance Of Visualization Great journeys may begin with a single step, but the very first step, in any journey, great or small, is to come up with the idea. The second part of the process is visualization. No matter what undertaking you decide to tackle, you must first have a visualization of the plan,
Will New Year’s Resolutions Take The Weight Off? A lot of people will be flooding the gyms across the world in the next month or so as part of their new year’s resolutions. This is a documented, undeniable, and very predictable occurrence, and as an Austin personal trainer for around 20 years, I’ve seen it
No More Workout Excuses Everyone tries to get out of things from time to time. Even if it’s an activity which they were at one time enthusiastic beyond belief about. There’s simply times when we don’t feel like doing something and it’s perfectly ok, for the most part, not to. Fitness and health is no
Should You Be Considering Personal Training? As a longtime Austin personal trainer, I can surely tell you that there’s a lot of ways one can approach exercise. There’s a myriad of theories abounding in magazines and cyberspace from the educational and factually correct, to the misinformed and possibly injurious. Fads and theories come and go.
Wondering How To Get Fitness Results? As an Austin personal trainer for over 20 years and a gym owner for over 8 now, I can assure you I’ve seen my share of fitness results success stories, excuses, rationalizations, triumphs, aborted goals, etc, etc. Like most people, when we set out to accomplish anything, we usually
Is The “Dad Bod” Real? There’s always a funny term that seems to be coined for describing people as they get older. We have the term “cougar” for an attractive older woman, etc, but the newest descriptive, seems to be the most accurate. The Dad Bod. No offense to the ladies. What exactly is a
Is Exercise Fun For You? A question I often field from potential clients or those just beginning their fitness journey has long been is exercise fun? This is the same as any other question in regards to personal training, or just plain working out on any level. It’s very individual. There’s no way for anyone
Bad Genetics Can Be Overcome We all think we have bad genetics. Not a one of us has never picked up a magazine and seen some super fit model, actor, athlete, bodybuilder, etc, and thought to ourselves, “I wonder what they do differently than I do”, and at least entertained the idea of following their
Shunning Negativity and Embracing the Power of Positive Thinking Within the realm of the fitness world, there is no shortage of advice. There are many hundreds, or even thousands of techniques which trump all the rest, according to their proponents anyway. There are many supplements that will turn you into a Greek God for only
Excuses: They Are Easier To Come By Than Results Excuses are very easy to come by, as are rationalizations, justifications, as is denial. You won’t have to search too deeply within yourself to dig up a reason why you shouldn’t do something that you have no interest in doing. That certainly can include going to
YouTube Personal Trainers Are Not Real Personal Trainers A longtime personal training client of mine happens to have one of the worlds most watched YouTube channels. We have joked that we both have made a lot of money from YouTube. He, for obvious reasons, me, because people are seeing these YouTube personal trainers and supposed
Having Heart At The Gym Who hasn’t gone to the gym, any gym, and saw someone whose physique or strength, they admired? No one. It doesn’t matter if you are a novice or a professional bodybuilder, you’ve experienced it many times. All that anyone respects is having heart at the gym. It’s simply human nature.
How Does One Go About Getting Stronger? A very common goal amongst trainees is getting stronger. The client may want to become stronger at a certain lift, such as the bench press, for example, or perhaps they want to strengthen a certain region that has atrophied, or perhaps we need to strengthen an area that
Gym Victory Success within the realm of fitness can be measured any number of ways. We can make a lift we were previously unable to accomplish and that would be a gym victory. We can gain or lose weight, tighten up our abs, develop bigger biceps, fix hip imbalances and rid ourselves of back pain,
Ready To Get Started? I’ve been an Austin personal trainer for 20 years now and I’ve had a lot of people come to my gym, the Austin Fitness Center, and tell me they were ready to make a life change and get started at finally lose the weight. They said that now was the time
Unless You’re Sick, Don’t Skip Your Workout! Everybody runs late on occasion. Some people obviously more so than others. If you have an appointment with your personal trainer and are late, come in anyway. If you blow it off with the mindset that it’ll only be a partial workout and therefor not worthwhile, you’ll be
Elementary School Wellness Day Was Awesome! Today was a fun day for me. My kid’s elementary school had what they called Wellness Day today and they had asked me to be a presenter as I’m a local gym owner and have been an Austin personal trainer for nearly 20 years. I’m a rather known quantity
There’s many reasons why one would hire a personal trainer. Expertise in nutrition, exercise, physical therapy, physiology, accountability, but motivation? Unfortunately, that’s one thing that will always fall short. That’s something that has to come from inside of you, the client. As a personal trainer in Austin for 19 years, I’ve worked with a vast
Stick With It and Don’t Give Up On Your Workout! As an Austin personal trainer for almost 20 years and as a longtime gym owner, I’ve certainly seen my share of people come and go. Most folks start off with the greatest of ambitions and a reinvigorated sense of purpose. All too often, however, these
Do I Have To Lift Heavy Weights to Build Muscle? A question I get very often as a 20 year veteran Austin personal trainer is, “Do I need to lift heavy weights in order to gain muscle”? The answer is yes and no. We have 2 types of skeletal muscle. Fast and slow twitch. Each
Are You Wondering Exactly What Is Personal Training? What is personal training? To me, it’s just that. A personal trainer is not a hired friend, a therapist, etc. My job is to help you achieve your goals using a multifaceted approach that includes nutrition, exercise, and identifying and repairing weaknesses and imbalances, otherwise known as
Are You Lacking Motivation For The Gym? I’ve been an Austin personal trainer for 20 years now, and there are plenty of misconceptions and myths surrounding my profession. I’ve hear a great many of them over the years, in fact. Some stand out as ludicrous, such as the one time when I was asked to
