“We can train you to get Before you spend a fortune for what are sheer lies and what is known as a marketing gimmick, hear John’s personal trainer
“It’s not only dangerous, but also discouraging for somebody who has just started his/her fitness journey. Also, some trainers might end up pushing you too much with high-intensity or high-repetition workouts. That’s not going to help. You will tire out and quit,” says the 36-year-old celebrity trainer, who explains that John has trained for several years to be able to adapt to rigorous workouts to meet the health and fitness needs of his movies.
Also, he explains that the same
Don’t procrastinate, get up and hit the gym!
“You may be planning to start exercising for ages. Merely planning won’t help. Get out of your comfort zone, identify a good gym and most importantly, hit it!
Get the right trainer for yourself
Spend time identifying the right trainer for yourself – ideally one who has certification or has experience. Vinod, however, cautions that the trainer should be interested not in what he wants to do but in what you want to achieve. A good trainer will not only be in sync with your requirement according to your lifestyle, fitness level and genetics, but also extract your potential. Go with a senior trainer with at least five years of experience who is certified in different types of fitness techniques and has experience of handling different kinds of people. Most importantly, he should have tried the techniques on himself, only then would he be a good teacher.
Set a target:
Where am I, what’s my target and by when do I want to achieve it- decide! Until you have a target, you are going nowhere with your workout.
Follow a progressive workout:
Enhance your workout every day. If you are doing 10 pulls ups, try 15 or start doing 10 with single hand. Similarly, if you are doing 10 kg spotting, try 15 so on and so forth. Stretch yourself a bit to go the extra mile, not too much.
Compete with yourself, not others:
It will help you in not feeling disappointed if you don’t attain that near perfect body despite rigorous workouts. “John was training with 20 pound weight and he was able to get 19 inch triceps. We trainers can sustain 30 – 40 pound weight, but our triceps haven’t enhanced like John’s,” says Vinod. Set your own benchmark and work towards realizing it. Don’t follow a celebrity!
Stay optimistic, Live in the present and do your best!
Having a healthy mind is very important for achieving a fit body. Stay happy and positive, only then can you sustain that endurance that is needed to become fit.
Inculcate good eating habits
Your meals should have 25 per cent protein, 40 per cent carbs (good) and 35 per cent fat. It helps in sustaining you longer during the day. Whenever you feel you are gaining, increase intensity of workouts and switch to a low carb diet.
Hailing from a middle class background, Vinod Channa’s 16-year-journey from body building to becoming one of India’s top celebrity trainer is no less compared to that of a Bollwood star’s journey to stardom.
It all started for him when he was 16.
He was called names by boys his age for being lean and sensitive despite being a male. He took it in his stride to work on his physique, he says, only to later win 1 Mumbai Gold, 2 silver, 2 Maharashtra silver medals. He also won two championships in body building. His journey however was not an easy one.
“When I set out, I didn’t have money and my family was dependent on me. I started working out in small gyms first because I couldn’t afford better ones and soon, I ended up getting training from body builders as there were no personal trainers then,” he says, adding that the body builders were helping him in return for doing menial jobs for them inside the gym.
Years of struggle followed. He worked as a freelance personal trainer teaching his clients at their homes. “There was not one day when I didn’t go to work and I worked throughout the day,” he says, remembering he had to brave rains and heat both for years to get to places far from where he stayed.
His hard work soon earned him his first celebrity client - Hrithik Roshan. Obstacles, however, remained. Vinod had to beg the posh locality-based gyms to allow him and his client a workout space in return for money, but he was often asked to leave suspecting that his unique fitness training could divert the gym’s members towards him for personal training. Clearly, he was different from other trainers – with better understanding on fitness techniques and the ways to apply them on clients.
“I started my own gym two years back and I invite good freelance trainers to my gym to come with their clients. If they are really good, I advice them to take my client as well. There should be healthy competition,” he says.
His gym now boasts of a huge celeb clientele that he has built over the years. Shilpa Shetty, Raj Kundra, Ritesh Deshmukh, Genelia D’Souza, John, Hrithik are a few among them.
“I have gained knowledge from various fitness trainers across the world and I apply all the new techniques on myself before I teach them to my clients,” he says, adding that it has helped him specialize in weight training, functional and body building training, Gazette training for balancing, yoga ashtanga, kalari pattu, parkour, caleshthenic, kick-boxing and animal flow workout.
A busy man now, he chooses to spend time on celebrities on priority basis. “So if any celeb say John or Hrithik have a movie coming up in another month, I’ll take him on priority,” he says. He is currently preparing John for his upcoming movies Rocky Handsome, Force 2 and Dhishum.