05/04/04
The picture below is of the person who got me started in fitness, only in the fifties I don't remember it being called fitness. We just called it "workin' out." My dad, during those years, worked for Chrysler Motors in West Los Angeles. That was his vocation. His avocation and passion was workin' out. He dreamed of being in the fitness business. In those days the only way to be in the fitness business was to own a gym. At one point he and one of his workout buddies pooled their money and bought all the equipment from a gym that was going out of business. Owning a gym was often risky and they were able to buy the equipment really cheap. They had great dreams of a small, clean little gym, but they both had young families and jobs that, though not wonderful, provided a steady wage. They never opened the gym. After a year or so of paying for storage they decided to sell off some of the really big pieces and keep some of the smaller stuff. By that time my dad's workout buddy had sort of stopped working out, so my dad bought his share out. For the rest of the time I was growing up, we never kept the family cars in the garage. The two-car garage was carpeted, had mirrors all around, a squat rack, bench press rack, lat pull-up, dumbbells in five pound increments from 5 to 75 pounds, Olympic bars, and just about anything else you'd need for a great, clean, well-equipped, little gym. It was really what we'd today call a studio.
Below would be an even earlier picture of me with my dad at Seal Beach.
I worked out in that great, home gym from about 12 to 15 years old. Then I began to realize, as young men will often do, that I was too smart for my dad. Besides, there was a new thing in town called surfin', and all of the really cool guys were doing that.
I was really addicted to surfing for the next 25 years or so, but I always worked out, off and on, over the years. The funny thing was, I always had to build some kind of home gym if I had the space, because I just couldn't get used to working out in a gym full of people. In my forties I began to suffer the pains of obsessive surfing. Surfing is pretty much a healthy sport except for a couple of things, one of which is too much exposure to the cold waters off the California coast which can cause "surfer's ear." "Surfer's ear" is a condition where the cartilage of the outer ear closes due to continuous exposure to cold winds that blow just above the ocean water. After years of exposure the cartilage begins to enlarge to protect the delicate inner ear complex, closing up the ear. It eventually closes up so much that water can go in but can't come out. The only way to correct this condition (to allow the water to drain out) is surgery. I ended up with 95 and 97% closure in my ears and had to have them both "drilled out." This surgery has to be done one ear at a time and requires "no water" for about 2-3 months, so I spent the good part of a year out of the water.
I began to think about working out again. After all, with working out I had never had an injury. I only felt better, stronger, and healthier. Also, as middle-aged men will do, I began to realize that my dad wasn't such a dumb guy after all. He'd really been on to something with this weight lifting/working out thing. Of course a lot had happened since the 1950s in "workin' out." With the advent of icons like Jane Fonda and Arnold Schwarzenegger, things had really changed. For one thing, working out was a lot more popular than it was when my dad had been doing it. It seemed like everyone was working out. Even lifting weights had gone mainstream. I started to work out more seriously again. I had to do something physical.
Then, about 1998, I began to get really fed up with the construction business which I had been in most of my life. I was at that point in life where the kids were raised, the mortgage was relatively low, and I could stand back, take a breath, and ask myself what I really wanted to do. Amazingly, it wasn't sit on the beach and do nothing. I thought back to the different things I'd done in my life and the thing that really stood out was just good old workin' out. I thought about my dad who had died in a car accident in 1981. He never did get to open up that gym, but he always worked out, till the end of his life. He probably would have loved to be in personal training, but there wasn't much personal training going on before 1980.
I started to research what it would take to become a personal fitness trainer. I felt I already knew how to work out, and quite a bit about diet, but that I'd need to learn more about what was going on in the "fitness industry" at that time. I found that Orange Coast College was offering a certificate in Personal Training, so I decided to enroll in one class to see how I liked it. It turned out to be one of the best things I've ever done. There I met an inspirational person who runs the fitness program. His name is Leon Skeie (pronounced ski).
From him I learned not only information about the personal training business, but I began to understand the inspiration that was involved in the fitness training business. For anyone living near the Orange Coast College campus in Costa Mesa, California, I'd highly recommend the series of classes that make up the certificate.
About half way through the series of classes I realized I'd also have to have a national certification to be a trainer. At that time there were probably over 300 certifications you could get, but only a handful that were really well recognized. I whittled my choices down to ACSM (American College of Sports Medicine), NSCA (National Strength and Conditioning Association), or ACE (American Council on Exercise). ACSM and NSCA were probably more rigorous, but I felt they were a little too narrow in their primary focus. As I remember it, ACSM was focused more on what's called post-rehab (working with people after injuries/maladies that required a Physical Therapist), and NSCA was more focused on sports training, which I felt was a narrow part of the population. I liked ACE because they concentrated on working out with "regular folk," people from age 25 to 75 or so, who didn't have anything in particular wrong with them, but just wanted to be fit, look and feel better.
Towards the end of my classes at OCC I decided to try working/volunteering in a class called Adaptive Strength Training. Adaptive Strength Training was/is a fitness "class" provided in a small, on campus gym, for people with physical disabilities. Essentially you're assigned to work with the "student clients," develop a workout program for them, and take them through a semester of training. Doing this work was very rewarding, humbling, difficult, and stimulating. I soon found out that there are not hard rules for working with disabilities. Every session was like an experiment. I had to think on my feet and try new things. It's not like working with clients who can achieve supreme health, you just work to make things a little better for them. No matter where you work with "regular folk", you're not likely to find that level of appreciation anywhere else.
For about the last three years I've been working as a trainer at a fitness studio in Newport Beach, California, called Positive Results. Here I began to work with the "regular folk" I'd been imagining all along. One good thing about Positive Results is that because of the way it's structured, you often have a full schedule right away. By the end of the second summer, it was not uncommon for me to have 45 to 50 training sessions per week. Another interesting thing about working at Positive Results is the range of clients I've worked with. So far the youngest client I've had was 17 and the oldest was 92. You can imagine that working with so many people, you get a wide range of personalities, adaptations to learning, strength levels, commitment levels, strength potential, flexibility, and just about everything else. I've had clients who, during the fit test, couldn't do one sit-up, and others whom I had to stop after 100, because it was obvious they could keep going. Studios like Positive Results, I feel, are the real "workout trenches," and it's where I've been able to develop many of the concepts that I think will help people reach their fitness goals.
I feel the next step for me as a trainer is to work on my own and move my training business to Huntington Beach where I live. The nature of the training business is that most of the work is in the morning and the late afternoon/evening. You're off during the middle of the day. That schedule is fine if you work close to home. Fitness, like most everything else in contemporary life, is in constant change. In Newport Beach I've mostly worked with clients who wanted to work with a personal trainer two to four times a week. I will probably continue to have clients like that, but I'm working on coming up with new programs that will allow me to provide services at a much lower price point, and yet still be effective. I've been considering things like on-line training, once a month consultation and program writing, and small and large group sessions.
If you're interested in any of these services, please contact me at (email address) or (714) 273-7601, or here Feedback .
Happy Fitness,
Rudy