“This was 20 years ago, and I had this stereotype in my head that personal trainers were the old meatheads in the gym,” she laughs. “And at the time there weren’t a lot of gyms around like this. In the last 20 years trainers have become so educated. Now personal trainers are at the forefront of preventative health.” Selman has fostered that approach at Evolution. Injury prevention, nutrition and body work are integral to the overall program. Her philosophy centers on gauging each client’s needs and creating a path or a journey that starts by taking small steps. “They do it for a while and then when they have some confidence, we add another thing, but only at a pace that doesn’t feel overwhelming.” She makes sure success can be constantly reinforced. “Everybody knows whether an apple is better than a bag of chips, says Selman. “We know what we should do, so …it’s more about building habits into the client’s lifestyle that can become second nature and easily repeated. You brush your teeth every day, but you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.” Instead of delivering a whole new program to a client, she helps focus on changing one small thing at a time, maybe drinking more water each day or getting more sleep. Selman says that while it’s sexy to work with athletes and it plays to your ego, when you work with someone who is an executive or a mom, or anyone eager to improve their overall health and happiness, as a trainer you can really change somebody’s life, and that’s the real reward. Selman sees herself as a prime beneficiary of that step-by-step approach. When she underwent hip replacement surgery a few years ago, Selman had to ask herself, who trains the trainer? “It takes a village!” she says ruefully. “I’m lucky that I have 40 fitness professionals available to me here. I know about the body, but I fall into traps and make myself do things I think I should, then think to myself why am I even trying to do that? So it’s great to have a trainer who can look at me and give me guidance.” Selman says some things are still a struggle after her surgery, but it helps her relate to her clients. “I do feel like on some level my experience gives me not only more empathy, but also the ability to understand what it’s like for 76 South Bay Accent someone who has a bigger hill to climb, so to speak.” Her focus these days is to give people the minimum effective “dose” of training without pounding the body needlessly. Some fitness crazes can become excessive, she explains. For her, now 45 with a hip replacement, self-awareness plays a crucial role. She knows she can’t run long or lift heavy weights. And in many ways that is what Selman offers her clients—a realistic assessment of attainable goals, and with a strategy for how to best achieve them. Fitness, in other words, that fits. BEN ZORN Personal trainer Ben Zorn, 26, does more that lift weights. He also elevates the heart rate of women with his warm, broad grin coupled with an “aw, shucks” affability. That may explain his appeal to legions of fans when he competed on the 11th season of ABC’s “The Bachelorette” last spring. Underneath the handsome, all-American good guy looks, though, is an edge of competitiveness, and a quiet fierceness when he talks about his work in physical training and fitness. Even though “Ben Z.” from San Jose didn’t get his rose on the show (he was eliminated in week seven) you sense that he’s got bigger prizes in his sights, like developing his fitness business and bringing his own ideals of physical training to the world. Zorn champions Total Resistance Exercise, known as TRX, a form of suspension workout developed by a former Navy SEAL that uses the body’s own weight. TRX uses suspension trainers, or systems of ropes and straps that allow a person to work in various angles of body position. Because that increases resistance with the pull of gravity on your body, it enables clients to perform exercises with the correct form and alignment. “A lot of people know that you can do squats and pushups using the resistance of your body weight,” he explains, “but one of the hardest things to do is any kind of back motion or exercise using your body weight. What I love about TRX is that everybody can do it, whether it’s their first time in the gym or they are an expert. With TRX you can safely teach them to manipulate their body weight in a number of ways and then graduate them to other exercises.” The basics of technique come first for Zorn. After that he says you can increase weight or resistance, you can add the challenge of instability and balance to a workout, and then bring all those ideas together. “Exercise,” he adds,” is all about progression.” Born in Vienna, Austria, Benedikt Zorn grew up in Berkeley, where his father, a scientist, worked on the human genome project at Lawrence Berkeley Labs. The quintessential California guy—a ‘Niners fan through and through, he says—he spent his high school years at George Mason High School in Falls Church, Virginia, before returning to attend San Jose State University, lured by the prospect of playing football at the NCAA Division I level. As fans of “The Bachelorette” will recall, Zorn’s mom had an enormous impact on his life, and her death when he was a teen hit him hard. “My mom and I were very close throughout my entire life and I don’t think I realized how much until I lost her,” he says. He found mentors to help guide him, though, and his high school athletic trainer sparked his interest in kinesiology—the BEN ZORN DEMON - STRATES ONE METHOD OF USING TR X.
South Bay Accent - Feb/Mar 2016
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