Things you never want to hear from your Personal Trainer

Things you never want to hear from your Personal Trainer

“If You Stop there will be consequences”

I have learned this the hard way. I was doing push presses above my head for 3:00 minutes at 2:50 I put them down and Damir was a little pissed and said were going to it until you reach 3:00 minutes get them back up there. Which I did and it was very hard, but I push through and finished. To this day I always have that in the back of my head; he says do something and I do it without thinking. Once I was getting changed in the locker room and he was training a client outside the locker room door, he Said “let’s go squat” to his client, and I automatically squatted while trying to get dressed. Yes I am well trained

“Today you will be doing only 3 upper body exercises over and over as many set’s as we can get in the next hour”

Translation: tomorrow you will be drinking your morning coffee through a straw because there is no way you will be able to lift that cup to your lips!

“This is going to hurt, but you can do this”

Translation: when we are done, you will be laying in the corner in the crying for your mommy!

“This week all your sessions will be on the treadmill”

Translation: you will puke many times this week and there will be crying in the shower!

“Come on now this is easy! Let’s Go”

Translation: move your ass or I will break out many burpees!

“Pain is weakness leaving your body”

Translation: I don’t care if it hurts! No stopping or there will be consequences

“Come on Brian! You’re using the girl weights”

Translation: the weights are not that heavy, move faster, stop whining like a little girl, Brianna!!

“This is the last time you will have to do this............., until the next set ha ha ha!!”

Translation: yes I will lie to your face to get better results!!!

“This is going to be an awesome workout; I just finished my second XL Timmy’s coffee”

Translation: Oh Shit this is going to hurt.... and there will be Blood, sweat and tears!!

Things you never want to tell your Personal Trainer

“I am going partying tonight; I won’t be at kickboxing class in the morning”

This is not a good idea as when you say something like that all he is thinking about is all the crap you are about to put in your body! He has your phone number, so there will be a wakeup call in the morning, and like we you are told to do something in the gym, your body will automatically get you moving towards the gym for that Class! I have seen this on more than one occasion, where someone who has stated the night before that they will not be there. Saturday morning comes and they get the wakeup call and they come in, still a little drunk, to do the morning Saturday classes.

“I am in a shitty mood!”

This is wrong on so many levels, but sometimes it is needed to be said, but when you do be prepared for an awesome asskicking! As they are going to beat that bad mood out of you!

To be continued.............

Day in the life of Brian

Day In The Life

My day starts around 5:30am. I say around 5:30 because well it depends what kind of workout I had the night before. If it was a session with Damir, Kristy usually needs to peel me out of bed. It is Thursday morning so I awake while Kristy is in the shower. As I hear the water from the shower I lay there in bed and think about last night workout. It is funny how much things change, before I started at alive the first thing I would think about was what I was going to make for dinner that night and what I was going to have from MacDonald’s for lunch. After starting at alive I my first thoughts were oh my what will I be allowed to eat today. But in the last three months or so my first thoughts are about what workout I did the night before.

Last night’s workout was Damir’s kickboxing boot camp. It was awesome! My regular Wednesday night partner was back from a few weeks off. So last night’s workout was very intense. A good regular kickboxing partner is like having a great dance partner. They know where your punches are going to land, they know when you need encouragement to go faster and harder. They know when to hold the pads lower when you kick so you can catch your breath and they know when to hold them up higher to push you a little harder. If flows beautifully, without missing a beat. Also my partner, Lisa is much taller than me so I get a great workout on both sides, with the pad and with the gloves.

As I hear Kristy turning off the water, that is my queue to start moving. As I put my feet down on the ground to stand up, I take a deep breath in. As I stand up I can feel the pain fire up and down legs. Once I am up I lean back into the bed, hands down as I take some of the weight of my legs as I stretch. This is a morning routine that will help me get moving. I don’t remember what is was like to get out of bed without pain in my legs. As I start moving the pain fires up and down my legs even more.

As I grab my lunch, gym bag and the shake Kristy made for me earlier and I head to the bus stop. As I walk to the bus stop I put my ear buds in my ears and start blasting my favourite playlist on my Iphone. Now my legs are feeling a little better. As I get to the bus stop I pop open my shake and finish it as I wait for the bus. The bus ride is always the same I start preparing myself mentally for the day. I repeat to myself I won’t buy any chocolate on my way into work today. I am strong I will not do it. On rough morning I change my Iphone background to Damir or Holly’s picture to help me focus. I get off the bus and walk across the Wal-Mart parking lot I can feel the anxiety of walking in the doors, going past all the junk food. I take one more deep breath and head in. I walk by the crap with my head down, repeating you are strong don’t do it. I make it to the stairs and I proudly climb them one stair on foot at a time. There was a time I took them one stair two feet, but now I just walk up them with a good pace.

My Job at Wal-Mart is semi physical and very repetitive. The rest of the day is very safe food wise, first because I won’t go back on the sales floor until I leave. Second today is Thursday so there won’t be any free food in the staff lounge today. They do have free doughnuts or cake (when someone leaves), and pizza from time to time, but that mostly only happens on a Fridays so I am pretty sure today is safe.

Things go well until I am about to leave, then I start worrying I won’t be able to make it out of here without buy some chocolate or potato chips. After I punch out and head down the stairs I am in full panic mode, bad thoughts start filling my head, stuff like, you are going to work very hard today you can have a little chocolate. It will be ok. Go for it. I stop off at the pharmacy and pick up a protein bar and head for the front tills. By now my heart is pounding as I get closer to the till and the impulse rack by the till. As I get to the till I grab a coke zero out of the cooler and a Ferrero Rocher 3 pack off the impulse rack and go though the till. As I walk across the parking lot to the bus stop I pop open my coke zero and take a drink. I reach the bus stop bench and sit down. I pull out the Protein Bar and the Ferrero Rocher and I stare at them both weighing out which one I am going to eat. I put the Ferrero Rocher back into my gym bag and I open the protein bar. As I eat the protein bar a car with some teenagers goes by, they see me eating and roll down there window and make a derogatory statement towards me about my weight (I wish I could say this doesn’t happen very often, but it does most days) that is when I pop my ear buds in my ears and start my afternoon playlist on my Iphone. The bus ride to Alive is very awesome; as I sit on the bus I can feel the stress of the day peel off me. I start getting excited as it is Thursday, a training day with Damir. Thursday’s workout is like a last chance workout with Damir before I weigh in for the week. So I start think what is it going to be today! A crazy circuit outside with a giant tire, ropes and sled, or will it be the Hill of Hell or maybe a crazy circuit inside Alive with Kettle bells, Trx, and me pulling Ryan, Damir and Sam up the hallway. I get off the bus and head to Alive. As I cross the parking lot to alive I checkout the park across the street. I see no tire so I don’t think we are going outside.

As I open the door to Alive Sam says Hi Brian. I smile and see Damir sitting beside her. I say hi and open my bag and hand Damir the Ferrero Rocher. He smiles and opens them right away and pops one in his mouth. I tell him I am upset I even bought them. He says do not be so hard on yourself, yes you bought them, but you didn’t eat them. I get changed into my workout gear, Sam helps me put on my ankle brace. My Training Partner and best Friend Ryan arrives, fist bumping me on his way to the locker room. As Ryan gets changed I notice that Damir is bouncing off the walls! I know today is going to be intense.

We are staying inside, Damir explains the first Circuit. Stairs will be first for me, three sets up three flights. Next will be pushing Damir up the hallway and back. After that the lap pull down, and then it’s off to the medicine ball slam. Repeat.

So I start the up the stairs, up three flights and down. At the bottom I turn right around and head up right away and head back up. As I am starting my third set Damir check in with me and say let’s go, so I head back up the stairs, as I come down I came feel my heart pounding in my chest. As I reach the ground floor, Damir is waiting at the door. I stop to catch my breath, so Damir can put sliders under his feet, but he doesn’t. He just says Come on. He is facing me, as I put my hands on his shoulders; I begin to think this is going to be easy! I weigh at least twice as much as him. I start to push and he starts pushing back. It is every hard, he fights me for every inch like we are playing football. As we go down the hall I am thinking man he is one tuff son of a bitch. As we get to the end, I think I will get to catch my breath and I am wrong he immediately grabs me and we go back up the hall. I move over to the Lap pull down and start right away. My heart is pounding in my head and I can barely count as I pull down. I pound out the lap pull down, Damir see it was too easy and gives me a heavier weight for next time. I head over to the ball slam and start slamming it down, my heart is in the back and the front of my head and I lose count. I call it ten and pound though the next 20. As I finish the ball slam, Damir says I want us to get though this 3 more times. Take a small breather we will start again. By the time we get though the next 3 set, my legs feel like jelly, I have vomited in my mouth twice and my arms are just pulsing. As we finish I look over at Ryan and he has a pretty big sweat mark on his shirt. I look down and see mine is just as big. Damir say Cardio Brian. So I head over to the hamster wheel and start walking. Ryan joins me. We walk of another 30 minutes. We hop off and Ryan heads back down to the gym to stretch. I pull off my brace and head for the shower.

As we head to subway for dinner, Ryan and I talk a little, not much, because we are exhausted from our session with Damir. After dinner Ryan drops us off. I feed the cats, grab a coke zero and melt away in my chair to watch a little TV. Kristy begins to fall asleep, so I suggest we hit the hay. Kristy agrees and heads up the stairs. I sit a few minutes longer. To give her time to get into bed so I am not in her way. As I stand up my legs are so stiff. Exhausted I climb the stairs slowly. I plug in my Iphone in to charge for tomorrow and crawl in to bed next to Kristy and immediately fall asleep.

So this is an average Thursday in my life. I choose Thursday because it is the hardest day of the week for me. My work day is very busy and my workouts with Damir are insane.

Progress on my fitness goal this month is going well. I have done on of Ben’s Crazy Boot camp Saturday classes and plan to do this Saturday’s class as well. The hill of hell I have not yet been able to do as I have been rained out and smoked out as well. However on Friday I did Damir’s “Wheel of hell” program on hamster wheel for two hours, and he said that could count as doing the hill. Friday I hope to do the hill and I don’t think anyone is going with me yet. So if you want to join me let me know.

Hero I am not!!

Hero I am not!

I know I have done well in the past year. I worked very hard on my weight loss journey. In last few weeks a few people have said that I am their hero, because of what I have done. I know this may sound weird to you but, this is the truth about how I feel when someone says that to me. I am no hero, a hero saves people from burning building, serves in the military, is a cop, or spends there life helping others. I am a just like everyone else who is on a weight loss journey, I struggle with food every single day; I never have a day where I don’t think about eating a chocolate bar or a bag of chips. I wish I could say I never eat that shit any more. But truth be told, I have caved more times than not, and eat that chocolate bar or enjoy a bag of potato chips. As I walk into work every day, I walk past the chocolate bar and potato chips, and say to myself please let me get out of here without buying this crap! Hero I am not!

Last night I came across my old “bucket list”, it was very sad. It only had places I wanted to eat, dishes I want to cook on it. Now that I have changed my life, it has changed big time. Here are my top 12 items

1. Play full contact football.

2. Bungee Jump or sky dive (this is what I want to do when I reach my goal)

3. Learn to drive

4. Play a pickup game of basketball

5. Photograph a beautiful nude woman

6. Ride a horse

7. Eat a Nathan's chilli cheese hot dog ( in new York, and Holly I know this is not in my food plan..in fact it may be all the calories for the day. LOL )

8. Learn to skate

9. Play softball

10. Run a 5k

11. Climb the steps of the Calgary tower

12. Take my shirt off on a hot day and look good

Although they may change in the future, this is what I am going to focus on now.

This month I have challenged myself to do the “hill of Hell” twice without Damir and to Do Ben’s awesome boot camp class twice as well. So far I have done Ben’s Class. It was awesome!! I am doing the hill on Friday and Ben’s Class again on the 28^th. If you would like to do Ben’s Class with me on the 28^th or the hill next week with me just send me a message.

one of his crazy “Satan little helper” moods

One of his crazy “Satan little helper” moods

Today was an awesome day food and fitness wise. Somehow when I was going through the till at Wal-Mart on the way out I ended up with a bag of potato chips in my bag. I did not pick them up I think it was the person in front of me who had a whack of them on the belt in front of me, somehow I ended up with one not realizing it. While I was waiting for the bus I went into my shopping bag to get my Coke Zero and saw the chips. It was a long bus ride to Alive. My mind could not stop thinking about the chips in my shopping bag the whole bus ride. I was close to eating them. But I dug deep and did not eat them. Instead I told my trainer Damir to take them, and he did.

As I got off the bus I look at the time on my Iphone, 4:16, I turned on my music and walked up the block to Alive. I looked again as I opened the door to head in and it said 4:19. Wow it took only 3mins to walk from the bus. As I got my shorts and t-shirt on I smiled as I thought how far I have come. I know I have talked about it before, I just can’t wrap my head around that it took 15mins the first time I walked up that street to alive.

Tonight’s workout was in the park, across from alive, as my training partner Ryan and I walk across the parking lot we could see what Damir had planned for our hour. It looked insane!! There was a giant tire, weight sled, the rope, a sledge hammer and kettle bells. Although I did not notice the other stuff until I got to the park as my eyes did not really leave that giant tire. I could tell that Damir was in one of his crazy “Satan little helper” moods. As he began to tell us what we were going to do, all I was thinking was please don’t say were flipping that dam tire. He tells us to carry the 2 45lbs weights (one each hand ) to the tire and come back and put them on the weight sled, and I was thinking yes he didn’t say flip that dam tire, he continue to say pull the sled down around the tire and come back. Still I am yes he didn’t say flip the tire! He continues with 100 slams of the rope on each arm. I think 100 on each arm tough, but he didn’t say flip that tire. He continues... grab the sledge hammer and do 15 swings on each arm, and I am thinking yes he didn’t say flip the tire.. He continues run to the kettle bell and do 15 clean and press on each arm, and I am thinking ok looks like we are not going to flipping the dam tire. He continues after the kettle bell walk over to the ...... (And I am saying in my head not the tire not the tire) .....tire and flip it all the way up the park. He continued to say something else, but I did not hear what he said as I was staring at the tire. So Ryan starts, as I wait for him to get a little ahead of me I do burgees. As I am doing burpees I think I was staring at that dam tire the whole time. As he finishes with the weight sled Damir hands me the weights and I go I quickly go down and around the tire back to the sled and I put the weights on the sled and start pulling the sled down to the tire. It was allot harder then I thought it was going to be. I finish with the sled and go to the ropes, start slamming the ropes and it was not as hard as I thought. As I finish with the ropes I head over to the sledge hammer and start swinging, my heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in the back of my head. That is when I see Ryan flipping the tire and it looks hard. I finish with the sledge hammer which was harder then I thought, and I run to the kettle bells and start, now my heart is really pounding, I now can feel it in the back and front of my head now. My arms are hurting from the sledge hammer but I finish each arm with the kettle bell, and head over to the tire. As I look down at the tire I am overwhelmed by the size of the tire. I lift the tire up and flip it.....wow it was not as hard as I thought it was! In fact it is the easiest part of the workout so I pound the tire up the park and that is when he said don’t forget the push ups against the picnic table. After the push up I catch my breath and he say two more time let’s go! As we did circuit my heart jumped out of my chest more and more. The workout was like a last chance workout on the biggest loser. I would love to say I made it through the without losing my cookies, but now I did not I totally blew chucks, and since we were outside I didn’t swallow it just let loose just past the picnic table. After the workout my heart was so tired, I had to sit for about 20mins before starting my half hour of Cardio. It totally rocked tonight and I can’t wait until Tuesday’s hour with Damir.

The Plateau

It has been such an intrusting month, vacation went very fast. During my time off from Wal-Mart I tried as much as I could to keep my calories on track. This was hard as temptation was everywhere, but I did keep in check. I took my niece to the stampede grounds, this was a tough as the smells were very overwhelming, everywhere you looked someone was eating crap, but I made it out of there only having 1 poor choice, lemonade. I won that battle. But while on vacation I did not eat in a good routine, and my body works well with routine. So I have been on a Plateau with my weight loss for over a month.

At first I thought maybe the plateau was the result of not being on a proper routine, but once I was back on routine nothing happen. So I talked to Damir about maybe cutting some of my calories? He suggested before I cut any that I should talk to Holly when she comes back from vacation. However maybe try eating some different foods like chicken or fish. So I Cooked off some chicken for last week’s lunches. Also we have been eating allot of Subway for dinner and Kristy noticed that the girl making my sub was putting double meat on my sandwich, because we have been going there allot lately I would just tell the girl the same as last time and I guess she thought I wanted double meat. So the last two weeks or so I have not been counting in the double meat calories. With the adding chicken into my routine and not having double meat on my sandwich, I broke my plateau!!

I don’t think it was just the change in my food that broke the plateau. We stepped it up with the workouts this week! This week the treadmill and I had really good dates. Monday I did 5 sets of the program that Damir put together for me. It rocked!! I was so wet from sweat it was like I fell in a pool or something. On Tuesday it was the “hill of hell”. Damir kicked my ass up that hill for an hour! Wednesday I did Damir’s kickboxing boot camp class and a little walk on the treadmill. Thursday I arrived at Alive with a bit of an attitude, I was in a bad mood.... this did not last long as Damir had me pull him up running.... not walking fast.... not jogging..... Running up the hallway! So the attitude went away very very fast. By the third or fourth set I was smiling. At the end of the session I asked if I could do one more set of pulling him up the hallway. He said ok ...... with that crazy grin.... that’s when I knew I was in trouble!! I pulled Damir and Ryan up the hallway.. When I got to the end of the hallway I just sat down .... That is when Damir said get up we are going back up the hallway..... Now my heart beat is pounding in my head...but I am trained well so when Damir says to do something I just do it without thinking ....so I start back up the hallway at first it was ok this not that bad, but then bang!! It got heavier ... but I kept going and got about 5 feet from the end and I stop. As I turned around I saw Ryan step off the sliders, then Damir and then another small surprise Sam was on sliders as well. It was not until I did the math in the car ride on the way home that I realized that I was pulling about as much weight as I weighed when I started. Friday I did the treadmill program at home ....was not as fun as doing it at Alive. Saturday I did the extended Kickboxing class and 30mins of the treadmill program. So all around it was a good week

Last month I did walk over 100 km This month’s Challenge is to do Ben’s Saturday Boot camp class twice and the “hill of Hell” twice if anyone out there would like to join me, please let me know.