Pinny Weiss Trainer and Manager at Power Up Fitness
How is Power Up Fitness different from a typical gym workout?
When a person wants to work on his fitness, whether his goal is weight-loss, health, strength or muscle building, he generally has two options. He can sign up at a gym, pay their monthly membership fee, and either attend gym or not, with no specific direction or goals. The vast majority of people who sign up, end up paying the fee and not showing up. Alternatively, he can hire a personal trainer who will customize a plan for his specific goals and train him, but each time he wants to work out he needs to pay the full price of a session, or get a gym membership on the side. At our personal training studio, you get trained with a customized program, you can show up when you don’t have a scheduled session, and still get motivation and guidance. What made you go into this line?
I was earning a degree in psychology. I was not interested in it, but I couldn’t think of what I wanted to do with my future. I was slowly gaining weight. Every so often, I’d go to buy a suit in the next size, and I always chose one that was just a little smaller than I needed, so it’ll give me a motivation to lose weight. After doing this for the fifth time, and saying to my wife, “I’ll just get one that’s a little tight so I’ll have the motivation to lose weight,” my wife suddenly said to me. “I think you should just get a suit that fits.” This was a wakeup call and I suddenly felt that I had to prove myself, to actually go and lose that weight. Then there was also the fact that I was feeling lethargic throughout the day: I’d get home after work at four and I’d collapse on the couch. I also had knee pain and every time I’d go to the doctor he’d prod me to lose weight. My weight and poor eating habits were really affecting my mood and functioning. Then began my journey with yo-yo dieting, I tried all diet fads; I’d see short-term results, but the weight would just come back. It was then that I hired a personal trainer; I wasn’t yet ready for food changes. I started exercising religiously three times a week, and then, when I realized that food changes must go along with it, I went onto a strict diet from which I didn’t budge for a full year. And I started seeing results; I slept less, yet I had more energy and the pounds were slowly yet steadily dropping. I began feeling confident and purposeful. I lost about 90 pounds, and kept it off since 2011. I was still studying psychology at that point, when people inquired why I don’t become a personal trainer. In 2012 I became a personal trainer at Better Health Studios in Brooklyn, in 2013, I received certification. I now manage
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and train at Power Up Fitness in Monsey. What kind of EDUCATION do you have?
I am an ACE certified personal trainer. I have a certification in the Functional Movement System (FMS), and I’m a Certified Functional Strength Coach (CFSC.) I am certified as a nutrition coach so I can give my clients the full coaching and support. What I do is called functional training, which is training the body for the activities performed in daily life. It involves training for strength and for a healthier life. It’s taking your goal and working with it by setting up a program that’ll get you healthier, fitter and stronger. What do you find makes people more successful at getting in shape than others?
There are the clients who come in and say, “I want to lose 30 pounds in the next month.” Obviously, I’ll work with the client to help him reach his goal, but that’s not the recipe for a consistent, lasting plan. There are three tools you have to losing weight: the exercise, the food plan and also just being active outside the gym, whether it’s by doing housework, doing errands on your own, or walking to a shul that’s farther than around the corner. Slower, more focused healthier lifestyle changes will give you the constant — maybe slower — progress that can be maintained. And the automatic benefits are many: Once you're focused on health and functionality, you’ll be looking better, feeling better, and reaching your personal goals along with bettering your quality of life. That’s what functional training is all about. And really, every single client that shows up — even after they’ve been lax, even after they binged on food that isn’t good for them — and sticks with just a bit of consistent exercise will see results. Whatever effort you put in really shows. How do you encourage clients to exercise?
We send out reminders, we make phone calls, we reach out to our clients, doing everything except for actually going into their homes to pick them up.They know they’re expected to do their steady workouts. In most gyms, they expect you not to show up — if everyone who’s actually signed up would be showing up, they wouldn’t be able to run. At Power Up, we count on you to show up, for business to run.