The Key to Navigating Gyms & Personal Trainers

Hey folks, J.C. here, and I've been getting a lot of requests from friends to help them with finding the right gym, finding the right trainer. So I wanted to do a podcast for everyone on it because I think it's important. I think that fitness is of utmost importance as we get older. I think it's more important as we get older. When we're younger, it's easy to stay fit. Let's face it, we're all running around like Superman, but as we get older, our fitness needs change and it becomes tougher. So I want to talk about finding the right gym and then touch on finding a trainer. Now, personally, I'm on a mission to enter a bodybuilding competition. And to be honest with you, I don't recommend it. It's intense. there's a lot to it and I wouldn't recommend it for others unless you're ready to devote a lot of time and of your life to it. But that was just a personal goal that I have, and I'm doing that as a family thing with my sons and. Family, but I don't recommend it. But when you're just trying to find a good gym to go to and maybe a trainer to help you with some of your fitness needs, it's simple. The first thing is walk into the gym and see how you feel about the atmosphere. Typically, when you go into a gym, they're gonna give you somebody to take you on a tour, and they're gonna be showing you around and the equipment, look around at the people, see if there're folks that you have something in common with. You don't want to go into that gym that's hardcore. Everybody's staring at each other like a bunch of angry gorillas, and you're just there to get maybe somewhat in shape. So you wanna look for the right atmosphere, the right environment. You should feel comfortable when you walk into the gym, not self-conscious about yourself. It should be, a no stress situation because you're gonna be stressing your body and your mind with the intensity of your workouts, hopefully. Second thing is and I'm gonna give you an example. I just left one gym to go to another gym. And the gym that I was going to had all of the right equipment, but they played this horrible, heinous, gangster rap music constantly. And it was always of a volume that was just outta control. You could have your headphones on and still, you couldn't overcome the volume of the music, couldn't hear the person next to you, but it was the quality of music. It was just garbage. It was that. Gangster rap with all the foul language and the N word, and it was just horrible. I'm not gonna fault the owner at all because I paid to go there and he believes that's his thing. He's promoting that. That's his big deal. He believes that's what's bringing him the customers, and maybe he's right. I guess there's a lot of people that like that garbage. It just wasn't for me, and it was just the music made the entire. Gym experience negative for me, and I only realized the importance of that when I left and went to a gym that actually plays decent music. You don't hear it much in the background. It's just there. They don't have all the equipment that I need like the previous gym, but I will sacrifice a little less equipment for a better experience. I'm just having a better time at the new gym. So atmosphere is 110%. Of importance to have a quality gym experience. You have to like the staff of the gym. You gotta like the equipment and you also have to like the environment I think is most important for you to have the best experience possible. Next thing is some of you may decide to hire a trainer. I. And hiring a fitness trainer, you have to make sure that you find the right fitness trainer that cares enough about you as a client to help you with your fitness needs but isn't going to harm you. Okay? Because fitness can harm you if it's done improperly. One of the things that I often see is these trainers that just wanna push too hard, and the folks that are training end up in, so much pain and agony that oftentimes they quit going to the gym. They don't want to go back, they don't wanna experience that anymore. And fitness does not have to be agonizing naturally. You're gonna have to push yourself. To reach goals, there is gonna be some fatigue and soreness involved in it, but you should not be an agony. You should not end up at the surgeon. And if you have a trainer that pushes you improperly or does the wrong stuff, they're gonna injure you and you will. Potentially end up having to have medical treatment. It's a fact. It happens a lot. Okay. I have a bicep tendon that is bothering the heck out of me, and with the intensity of the workouts that I'm doing, there's a lot of pain involved in me accomplishing the goals that I'm pushing for, but I'm forging through because that's a personal choice. But most aren't gonna go through the type of pain that I'm willing to go through to accomplish my goals, because I realize I'm not injuring myself. It's an injury. It's there. It's not gonna be fixed. It's not gonna go away. It's called bicep tendonitis. Anybody that has it knows it could be quite painful. It is just there. It's something I deal with. But if you're just starting out, getting in shape, figure out where you have your injuries. Your trainers should be quality enough to work with you, to work around those injuries, to overcome injuries, and maybe help improve, whatever the injury is. I've rebuilt a couple rotator cuffs naturally a few years ago, and I did it by building all the muscles in my shoulder around the rotator cuff. So it gave the rotator cuff time to heal, and I've never had a problem with that since. But make sure that you're not walking home from that gym or driving home from that gym. So torn up that you can't move the next day, and then that trainer wants you to start all over again. That's not the way to fitness, that's not the proper route. You should start with baby steps. It should be a plan that's approved for you, one that's gonna help you accomplish your goals. You also have to incorporate nutrition. You walk into any gym and you're gonna see the person that's been there for years, they're doing the same thing over and over, and they get no different result. And that's called insanity. If you want to get in shape, it takes a combination of proper nutrition dieting. And the proper workout and fitness program and regimen. So that's all I can tell you about what I've experienced and what I think that I would recommend. Find the right gym, find the right trainer. Start on a path, take baby steps. It doesn't happen overnight. You don't get fit overnight. You don't accomplish anything overnight. The plant that grows fast, usually withers quickest. The tree that grows slow stands the test the time. So that's a rule that I go by. So hopefully some of this has been valuable to you. I hope that each and every one of you gets inspired to have some type of improvement upon your fitness, because let's face it, we're either getting better in life or we're going backwards. And as we get older, we do not want to go backwards with our fitness. We want to go forward. We wanna live long. Happy healthy lives and fitness and our health is an important part of that. Hey, that's all I have to say here today. For now. I hope you get out there and enjoy upcoming summer activities and for those of you that are pursuing fitness goals, hopefully some of this has helped. Hey, this is J.C. and I am out of here.