Personal Trainer
Virgin Active

Robert J

00:00:02 My name is Robert. I’m a personal trainer and I work for Virgin Active in Mill Hill. It tends to be an early start, at work for maybe six thirty for the early morning clients that want to get in some training before they go to work. Each day is varied because you’ve got different clients have different goals, whether they want to lose weight, or whether they want to increase their fitness, or is it just rehabilitation from a knee injury or lower back pain, maybe some posture correction. So each day is varied and clients are different from week to week, so there’s different challenges you’ve got to overcome.

00:00:40 After I did my GCSEs I went on to do AS levels. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life clearly so I just kind of, I was good at art, so I decided to study graphics. I thought computing would help, so I did an AS level in computing. The other thing I studied was music technology because in case I wanted to be a music producer. And the fourth one I did was mathematics because I thought I should do something a bit academic. Unfortunately, I failed three of them, so the only one I passed was the graphics one. It did come as a bit of a shock because I did quite well on my GCSEs, but I think it was more my priorities changed when I went to college and it wasn’t sixth form, so I left school and went to college, and I kind of switched my focus, I guess.

00:01:30 I spent a lot of time playing basketball, and that’s what I really wanted to try and move into. I wanted to be a professional basketball player, so kind of studies took a bit of a hit there. It was when I got my results, after that first year at college, is when I thought to myself I either go for the basketball all the day, do you know what I mean, and fully commit to that, or I kind of go down the kind of academic route and stuff, and although basketball was doing well and I was good, I don’t think I was quite good enough. I decided to play basketball for fun and more recreation rather than a career, and decided to continue with my studies but to switch what I was doing.

00:02:12 I decided I wanted to be a sports nutritionist, and I decided to go to a different college and I did a BTEC National Diploma in sports science, and I really excelled in that. I did two years in that, so it was a big contrast from the AS levels I was doing, and it was just the change of subject. It wasn’t that I wasn’t intelligent it’s just I wasn’t motivated by those subjects. I think if I hadn’t have failed at that point there on my AS levels, it wouldn’t have given me the drive and passion to really work at what I’ve done now to get to where I am now.

00:02:48 So I was working at Virgin part-time throughout university just to help pay the bills but also because I was studying sports science and then I was working as a sort of fitness consultant/gym instructor on the weekends, so it helped apply my knowledge from what I was learning into working with members, and clients, and stuff. So when I finished, I decided to go fulltime as a personal trainer, as opposed to just doing the gym instructing. So now what I’m currently doing is fulltime personal training, and, yes, it’s going really well. I’m really enjoying it.

00:03:22 My sort of first role model has been Michael Jordan when I was younger, as he’s a really successful basketball player. I always wanted to be as good as him. He trained so much more than everyone else in the team. Like, I’d read about how he stayed behind at the end of practice and he’d just carry on shooting the basketball, or he’d stay really late at night, and it’s just being so passionate about something and having that determination to just follow through on everything until you get the result, and even when things don’t go too well to come back stronger.

00:03:54 End