Luis Lazo’s interest in fitness and human movement began at a young age. He was throwing kicks by Kindergarten after seeing a Bruce Lee movie. By his early teens, Luis had earned a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and an opportunity to join Team Canada in the sport.
He decided instead to pursue his post-secondary education in economics and finance, and ended up working in customs services for six years. But the pull to work in the fitness industry and help people just wouldn’t go away.
So Luis made a decision to become a personal trainer. Always the sort to favour hands-on learning, he opted to earn his stripes in the industry rather than by returning to school. He signed up for the in-house training and certification program offered by one of the big fitness chains, but was quickly disillusioned by what he found – long hours at a computer digesting generic training modules, along with a hard-to-swallow pile of corporate marketing.
“It definitely was not for me,” Luis said. “It wasn’t where I envisioned myself going. There was a huge emphasis on revenue and selling memberships, but I wanted to focus on learning as much as I could to become a good trainer.”
Then he came across Free Form Fitness.
Last spring, Luis joined FFF on the front desk at the Kanata location and recently took part in Free Form Academy – FFF’s unique training program for anyone who wants to work anywhere in the industry as a personal trainer.
“The course was awesome,” he said. “I loved the fact it wasn’t a big class, but it was large enough for us all to learn off each other. It was more hands-on that way, we would discuss the subject matter and constantly bounce ideas back and forth.”
At FF Academy, participants are grounded in all the important aspects of building a successful career that are not covered in most certification programs.
Being a great trainer is about much more than understanding human movement and the correct way to do an exercise. It requires skills in persuasion, basic psychology and practical nutrition, to help people who may be dealing with high stress and other mental health challenges, digestive issues and poor lifestyle choices, all while being bombarded by misleading marketing messages about what to eat and how to lose weight. Then there is the business aspect – not pushing a corporate agenda, but just understanding the basics of how to run a successful business built on great personal service.
“It’s a huge value to do a course where the instructors are working in the business and have been training clients every day for many years,” Luis said.
Luis and his classmates were able to draw on an experienced team of people at FFF with diverse backgrounds in sports medicine, nutrition and various disciplines of physiotherapy. They also developed their skills with volunteer “clients,” as well as by shadowing certified trainers during actual client sessions.
FF Academy has put Luis on the right track to become a personal trainer. But his career plans don’t end there. His long-term goal is to become a strength conditioning coach for a sports team or a certified sports therapist.
“When someone comes into FFF, they’ve made a commitment to themselves and also to us,” Luis said. “I take that very seriously. I love to help people. As a client, just having someone there for you is a huge thing. That’s what FFF does – it creates more personal and interactive relationships between trainer and client. You don’t get that in a lot of gyms.”
