Personal Trainer Singapore – Coach Jonathan Wong

As all my personal training and fitness bootcamp clients know, my staff and I can’t stand NOT getting them results. And the MAIN factor that stops committed clients from getting results is toxicity.

That means that if you eat, sleep, exercise and have good habits and STILL don’t get great results, toxicity is probably what is stopping you.

If you are eating prata and cookies, then no detox, no exercise gadget and no personal trainer can help you.

The reason detox is important is that our environment is not as clean as it should be. We have plastics, heavy metals, allergenic food, pesticides, and it is estimated 80,000+ chemicals that are man made and which our body is not designed to handle.

The only effective way to detox plastics (and it helps all other stuff also) is through far infra red saunas. They are touted as “weight loss tools” because they burn up to 600 calories per hour… but I prefer exercise for that! We are using the saunas to get rid of bad stuff so that our bodies can function fully.

Toxins get in the way of our cells producing energy (they reduce the efficiency of mitochondria) – so we feel sluggish, our metabolism drops, the reactions in our body happen slower, we can’t lose weight, burn fat, or gain muscle mass – all because our cells are not as energetic as they should be.

I got only the best brand! “Heavenly Heat” – why? It got the most recommendations by natural medicine doctors and fellow coaches that I respect. It cost’s up to 10X the price of other brands or sauna options… but I think it’s an investment that my personal training, and fitness boot camp clients will appreciate. Nothing but the best stuff for them!

• These saunas keep a relatively low temperature (40-50 deg C – instead of up to 100 deg C in regular saunas) so you don’t run out screaming after 5 mins…
• It uses NO GLUE and NO LAMINATED WOOD – If you use glue or laminated wood, the toxins from their production will get into you while you sit in the heated enclosure. That is NOT what we want during a detox session.
• It uses focused Far Infra Red (FIR) Heaters not “carbon” synthetic ones which spread the power out too much and dilutes the FIR output. This means you get a better heating, sweating and detox effect.
• It has heaters targeting every part of your body ( there are 7 heaters for just 1 person).
• Proper ventilation so the toxic air gets out properly and you don’t need to use the DOOR as a FAN
• Glass door/windows – plastics are poison!
• VERY IMPORTANT - I will provide each person a set of customized anti-oxidants, liver support and detoxification supplements to maximize their sauna time. Without these your body will not be able to effectively remove all the toxins that the sauna stirs up. (This is one of the key value added benefits of doing your detoxification here rather than anywhere else!)

I look forward to using this health and energy boosting method to get our clients even better results!

There have been several articles lately on fitness coaching and personal trainers in Singapore. They question the knowledge and ability of personal trainers and they question the lack of standardization in the education of trainers.

And so do I!

After all, your personal trainer is going to help you take care of your body just like a medical doctor would. So it makes sense that a personal trainer needs to know enough about your body to help you get the results that you want from your fitness program.

Education is vital to me. I spend an average of 10 hours per week learning better ways to help out fitness bootcamp and personal training clients get great results.

In fact I just came back from 16 continuous days of seminars with the best coaches, doctors and physiotherapists in the world. We discussed the latest improvements in helping back pain, osteoporosis, PMS, kids training, nutrition, detoxification from plastics, heavy metals and excess estrogen, strength and speed training for sports, stress management, and many more things. The pictures on this post are from this trip.

Just the fact that it is a gathering of those who are the tops in the health industry helps because even the informal meals and training sessions are a chance to learn from each other.

The knowledge and information is worth the 30 (36 with delay!!) hour plane rides and the sub zero temperatures.

Part of coaching clients either in our Singapore personal training or fitness boot camp programs, is managing the emotions of fitness. Getting strong, or lean or looking good is incredibly emotional and as a coach we need to handle these emotions.

Every Client in singapore who wants to build muscle, burn fat, lose weight and get strong wants it NOW.

Our fitness coaching, nutritional, health building and performance boosting programs get you there as fast as possible… but there is still this instant gratification factor that kicks in sometimes.

One of my clients was upset and discouraged and wondered why he kept getting “weaker” during this phase of his training. All other signs were good, he was leaner, bigger and visibly improved in all areas! Just that he could not lift the weights he usually could.

Here is where coaching and knowledge comes in. He has been on leave lately and has been training more often and on a harder program than before. I explained that I am intentionally over-training him for these few weeks so that when he rebounds he will be stronger than before. Also, he has to understand that he is a fairly advanced trainee, and these guys will have “great” workouts where they set records more and more infrequently as they progress. And it takes more and more specialized training to progress.

After all, the best in the world, the Olympic champ, has a great workout only once every 4 years!

The same is true for fat burning. Assuming you are training hard and doing the right nutrition and supplementation for your genes and current fitness level, weight loss or fat burning tends to come in “bunches” not 500g/day but rather nothing for a week, then suddenly 1-2kg. Then again, I as a coach have to keep people on track during the “no-progress” times.

I will use myself as an example of not having great workouts often. Here is me… lifting 200kg x3 in the deadlift from a podium at 81kg bodyweight. This was a VERY draining attempt for me and I could not repeat this effort for more than 3 weeks after this set of exercise. I had a “great” workout only once in that MONTH! But its ok because it was a record that I had been training 6 weeks to get.

The key is to stay on track, stay in focus and never give up on your fat burning, muscle building or weight loss goals.

I am very conservative with obese clients. This may seem different from the rest of the blog where there is quite a lot of really serious, maximum performance training going on! But…

If a person is very overweight, extra care needs to be taken to ensure safe training. Here are some things to watch out for

Do not…

• Use unstable surfaces like wobble boards or outdoors on uneven ground.
• Use exercises where there are hard landings, certainly no plyometrics… I wouldn’t even do low intensity bouncy stuff like jumping jacks. There are other ways to get the same training benefits safely.
• Train the muscles more than the connective tissue can tolerate (connective tissue like ligaments adapt slower than muscle to stress)
• Cut calories! Instead work on food choices first. ALL obese people should be on a low carb diet, high fat diet (healthy fats not processed trans fats).
• Lose fat without supplementing your detoxification system. Fat burning results in alot of toxin entering your blood – that was formerly in your fat cells. You need sufficient amino acids (i.e. meat!) and nutrients to help your liver detox this stuff.
• Just use common sense!!

This is not the “biggest loser asia”. That is entertainment not science. There is a huge injury risk with the stuff that they do. I much prefer smart training that gets results that matter to the client… not the audience or the producers.

Quoting the news report … “We’ve had multiple hospital visits from the contestants, we’ve had hypoglycaemic shock, kidney issues, busted knees, busted ankles, emotional breakdowns, even mental collapse.” – Would you go to a fitness center or personal trainer that has those kind of “results”?

One of the relatives of my client was on the show. Yes she lost a few kg in the first week BUT its 6-8 hours of training per day AND she busted her knee and is out of action. So… this is not quite a sustainable lifestyle.

The key is that you should aim for the lifestyle not the short term goals. The perfect nutrition plan probably includes 10 different supplements for things that you are deficient in. The perfect training is multiple times per day (2 or more PER DAY) for best results. But these are not realistic for real life so only a portion of my cleints are on such a plan.

However we get good results for both our men and women personal training and fitness boot camp clients because of the consistency of lifestyle that we teach, in addition to the customized training program. The great program gets results. The lifestyle keeps them. That is how we get not only “success stories” but results that last!

One of the former athletes at the Sports school where I coached formerly is now a DJ and invited me for an interview on health tips. Here is a rough transcript of today’s interview.

Q: 1. Tell us a little bit about what you do.

I help people pursue maximum health and achieve their fitness and performance goals. So I help them get leaner, healthier, stronger and into the best shape of their lives.

Q: 2. Generic question: How much should the average person exercise per week, and how much calories should he or she eat per day in order to stay healthy?

Exercise is a fairly new thing, our ancestors didn’t need it, they had active lives. But for us we don’t usually have that kind of lifestyle. What im saying is that our bodies are made for activity. Very basic things like immune system function and joint health decrease if we do not use our bodies actively as they were created to be used.

If I had my way, the average person should be active 8 to 10 hours per week for best results! But in reality 3 hours per week of proper training plus a few sessions of activity that we enjoy like walking or playing sports would be excellent.

Q 3. For most of us working people, exercise rarely happens because of a lack of time. What are some ways we can stay active throughout the day? (office workouts?)

I could say the usual stuff like stop 1 or 2 bus stops from your home, don’t take the escalator and take the stairs etc … but in reality, these are a tiny drop in the ocean when it comes to improving your health.

And who really does these things?

Do you see your colleagues come in to work sweaty because they walked from 2 bus stops away? No you don’t, nobody does these things.

I would like to say that there is an easy way to maximize your health but there really isn’t.

The problem is with the standards we hold ourselves to, we have confused what is normal with what is average.

It is NORMAL for a human being to be lean with low body-fat, strong, and healthy with no degenerative diseases like obesity, cancer, diabetes, alzhimers or cardiovascular disease.

But unfortunately it is not the average, the average person is not in good shape and is likely to develop one of those conditions. walking from the bus stop is not really going to change this outcome much.

What will change your health is the most powerful attitude changing emotion in existance. And that emotion is love. When we choose not to exercise it is because we don’t love being healthy as much as we love watching TV or surfing the internet. When we choose to eat unnatural foods like cake or prata it is because we love the taste more than we love being lean and free from heart problems.

So actually the action is not as important as your attitude toward your own health. You need to love your body. Nobody can do that for you.

MYTHBUSTERS

1. Doing crunches or other exercises on the ab machine we see in infomercials will get rid of belly fat.

Nope, if you want lean abs, you do it with your food choices and your lifestyle.

You will need to eat foods that promote fat burning and prevent fat storage.

Foods that do this include green veggies, nuts, meat, whole eggs and healthy fats like omega 3 oils. Most ab machines actually make your posture worse and more hunched.

2. Skipping meals are a good way to lose weight

Think about it this way, when you skip drinking water, do you go toilet less or more?

You go less because your body tires to hold on to the water is has.

When you skip food, your body tries to hold on to fat that you store because it wants to make sure that there is enough in case you are in a starvation situation.

Eating healthy food that does not spike your blood sugar, in smaller meals throughout the day is proven to work for fat burning.

3. Weight-training will make me bulk up

Weight training will make a woman have nice curves a slimmer waist and good health. Eating cakes, noodles and cookies will make a woman have the wrong kind of curves and bulk up.

If you hit the gym but also eat starchy, processed food, you will get bulky and it will not be muscle, it will be fat and the food is the reason not the gym. Just think about this, many men want bigger muscles but are not able to get them easily.

And men have about 10 times the muscle building hormones that women do. So its actually even harder for a woman to get too bulky.

The problem is that many of the women you might see on TV who go to the gym are also on steroids which make them have the muscle building ability of a man, and it’s just not something that happens to women who go to the gym to get healthy.

4. Eating after 8pm causes mad weight gain.

Depends on what you eat. If you eat a pizza you could eat that any time during the day and it would make you fat. But if you a hard boiled egg and some almonds, you could eat that any time and it would not make you fat.

The main things to consider when talking about late night eating is how it affects sleep.

We do want to eat a small snack of slow digesting food like nuts, egg, cheese or a small piece of meat. This makes our body know that there is enough food and you are more likely to have a good sleep because your body will not wake you up to go and eat.

However we do not want to eat a huge meal within 2 hours of sleep because during sleep, the body recovers itself from the stresses of the day. If you eat a large meal right before sleep, your body will not be focused on recovering, it will be focused on digestion which is not what we want.

About your fitness center

1. Tell us a little bit about the Genesis Performance Centre

The Genesis performance center is the fitness and health center where my staff and I help hundreds of Singapore residents each year to maximize their health and get into the best shape of their lives. We help our clients to pursue maximum health with nutrition that is customized for their genetics, supplements and herbs that correct any hormonal or sleep problems, as well as exercise that gives them the optimal fitness for their chosen activity.

Our clients range from competitive athletes at the national level, to people who haven’t exercised for years. We customize the program to meet their goals and their current fitness level.

2. Let’s say if I were a total couch bum who decided to turn my life around and get fit, what would your fitness plan for me look like?

Assuming you love yourself enough to visit us…

First we would do a health assessment which includes your body fat, your sleep, tests for you nutrition, mineral and digestion levels. We test these because these are fundamental to health, and the best training program in the world does not give good results without a good foundation of internal health.

And also physical testing of your posture, movements and joints so that we can be sure that the exercises we ask you to do are not dangerous for you. With these results, we customize a nutrition and training program for you. For the typical client, within a week you will be measurably different. Leaner, sleeping better and you will be more energetic.

We have been working hard over the past 2 weeks to get Singapore’s best gym, the Genesis Performance Center up and running! We are ready to go and are open for the business of helping Singapore residents burn fat, build muscles and perform to the best of their God given ability! Our personal training and fitness boot camps are going to be better than ever.

Disturbing news from Time magazine last week! In an article called “Exercise does not make you thin”, there is this author who has this “special” idea that exercise makes you fatter.

WHOA!! Maybe I’m in the wrong industry If I want to help people! Seriously, I earn a living helping people lose weight, get lean and strong, get the physique they want, get into the best possible health and perform to the best of their ability! None of these things require “more fat” and if exercise makes us fat, then I should be asking all my clients to do as little exercise as possible.

Now there is scientific basis for this article as I wrote about in my previous article on the topic of fat loss and exercise.

In fact there is another study I just came across from the University of Oklahoma which came to exactly the same conclusion. I.e. 10 weeks of proper exercise had no effect on fat loss (only about 1kg of fat was lost on average!).

So… it seems this article has some merit!

Time to look for another job Coach Jon… you just spent 3 months (10-12 weeks as demonstrated in the studies) of all your client’s time, effort and money for what is in effect the same scam as any slimming center or infomercial product!

NOT SO FAST!!

Just because the author of the article spends many hours each week exercising (and even getting a personal trainer to help him!) without getting results – doesn’t mean that he is doing it right.

The article mentions nothing about the role of eating correctly for burning fat. In fact it says that exercise makes you hungrier and you end up eating more. For example after exercise that burns 300 calories, you feel like eating a piece of cake that has 500 poor quality, fat storing, no-nutrient calories in it… YES that is true. And if you keep doing something as foolish as that – exercise will make you fat!

But exercise has so many benefits that it would be totally outrageous to stop.

• Maintaining strength, power and muscle at all ages and especially as we get old. This is a key determinant of happiness, independence and quality of life of senior citizens.
• Fitness in both the short and long duration energy systems (aerobic and anerobic) that mean life becomes easier
• It improves brain function, and happiness. My sister can attest to this! She is a therapist in the area of mental health and exercise is the BEST modality that is non invasive, drug free and has no side effects.
• It prevents age related disease like osteoporosis.
• It builds muscle mass which has direct co-relation to the strength of our immune system. (You don’t fall sick)
• It makes us look good! Yes, there I said it. If you just diet yourself till you are thin you will be weak, sickly and unattractive because you will be “skinny-fat”.
• The list really does go on and on…

So we can’t afford to ditch exercise (especially proper exercise that is the stuff we do in our personal training and fitness boot camp programs).

If there is a member of the media in Singapore who is having trouble with their tummy fat like this Time magazine author is, I would invite them to participate in our Singapore fitness boot camp. Along with our nutritional coaching.

If they did that for 12 weeks, irresponsible articles like this would never be published and I would never need to quit my awesome job of helping people in Singapore burn fat and get strong!

Weight loss, fat loss, and mass gaining are the goals of three major groups of people that join our customized personal training and our group fitness bootcamps. What we do at the Genesis Performance Center is give you a world class fat loss or mass building training program, along with nutrition that is customized for your genetics, ethnicity and current levels of bodyfat.

BUT there is one aspect that we also want to help each and every personal training client and boot camp fitness client with.

The mental/psychological aspects of fitness. There is an old saying that says:

“If you want to know where a person’s mind has been, look at their body today…

if you want to know where a person’s body will be tomorrow, look at their mind today”

Our body follows our brain! For e.g. when we are afraid, our hair stands up and our heart beats faster.

So ask yourself… if you have been stuck in a fat loss, weight loss, or muscle building rut or plateau lately, and you have been trying without success to get the results you want…

“What is the position of your mind today?”

A few days ago there were a few articles on “Today” paper and Channel news asia (here is the online article) about the “evils” of low carbohydrate diets. They are simply incorrect.

Here are my thoughts…and what I wrote about in my reply to them.

“It’s a shame that there are so many myths about what kind of diet is best for health, many consumers get so confused.”

“My role as a fitness expert is to help as many people as possible to achieve their health and fitness goals by helping them prevent disease, live long and be productive each and every day”

In this article (“Noodles? Yes, please!” TODAY Newspaper, Singapore Jul 14 2009) it is mentioned that low carb diets cause side effects such as fatigue, poor concentration, and dizziness, as well as bad breath. And that low carb diets only result in water loss rather than actual weight loss.

In reality, the side effects are temporary and minor. And the benefits of stable blood sugar and reduced insulin response are major for those with weight problems.

Fatigue, concentration, dizziness and bad breath only happen is a small percentage of people and only when they are transitioning their body from using carbs, to using fat for fuel. This usually lasts only a few days and if done under the care of a fitness professional, are totally safe and not serious. Bad breath can be helped by some simple sugar free mints.
Coach Wong explains how it is not about low carb diets being good or bad.

“I am not a low carbohydrate supporter”. I am a “correct” carbohydrate supporter. We help over 300 clients per year with personal nutrition and training plans at the Genesis Performance Center.

Some of our clients like eat less than 40g of carbohydrates per day and get great results. Others are on food plans where they take in more than 400g of carbohydrates per day and this is optimal for them.

The timing and type of carbohydrate also matter alot. A banana eaten after a hard training session is totally different from a plate of noodles eaten at lunch time.

This is because there is a large genetic difference in our ability to use carbohydrates efficiently and our nutrition plans need to account for those differences.

That is also why there are so many different kinds of diets and diet books. The zone, protein power, atkins etc. They all work for different people but none of them work for everybody. We are all different.

In our center we use a special method of measuring body fat that can help us determine what kind of nutrition plan is best for this client at this point in their life and at their current level of body fat.

“It is not ideal for everybody to go on a low carbohydrate diet, but on the other hand it is not responsible for health professionals to recommend high carbohydrate low fat diets for general health because alot of people will get less healthy doing that. Diet needs to be customized for current fitness levels, genetics and ethnicity.”

Join our personal training program to get your exercise and diet customized for you.

What I am happy to say is that the clients at the Genesis Performance Center soon learn to enjoy the healthy, lean, strong life.

But there come times when life just gets in the way. In the last week alone, one client moved his office to a brand new building and it has alot more dust and he was unwell and couldn’t train for a week.

Another 2 clients just had brand new babies.

And weekly, many clients go on business trips or other things that life just throws in the way of training and gym time!

This is not the way to get great results. But sometimes it happens and do you know what?

Our clients get WORRIED. “will I get fat again?”, “What about all my hard work?”, “What can I do do keep my results?” and other questions like that.

Firstly, for our personal training clients, we provide hotel room workouts if they travel, and some simple stuff they can do in they typical, small hotel gym.

But as long as these interruptions don’t happen often, there is nothing to worry about.

First, be prepared, you will lose strength. In fact the more advanced you are and the more experienced you are and the stronger you are, the more strength you will lose due to a loss of efficiency in your nervous system (how your brain controls your muscles). This loss may be as much as 20% of your best lifts! It is especially bad if you are stressed during your 2 week break. No sleep, worrying about work and time zone changes make this effect worse.

BUT don’t worry, it comes back pretty fast when you consistently train again. Just do some sets with low reps and high weight, and you will be back to full strength soon.

Second, you may look “smaller” due to losses in muscle glycogen. You probably don’t eat as well, or as much when on a stressful business trip.

Or you might look fatter! beacuse you may not be in control of your nurtition while overseas.

Either way, 2 weeks of imperfect food will be fixed with a few weeks of proper nutrition. No problem. This stuff happens to me as well when I go to army reservist or on holiday.

Finally, you may actually lose muscle size. But in 2 weeks this factor is not that significant and you will be back to peak shape quickly.

So in conclusion:

1. You shouldn’t skip training!

2. If it does happen, do something while you are away! As a persomal training client you get a travel workout plan, but as a minimum, at least be active with walking, hiking or something!

3. It’s not that bad, as long as you get right back on the wagon ASAP