Today’s spotlight is on Shayne Washington, Personal Trainer, FitKidz Coach and Kickboxing Instructor for Fitness Forum Health Club as well as our Assisted Stretching Professional.
Tell us a bit about yourself, fitness background, passion for fitness and areas in fitness you excel at.
I started training at 15, and believe it or not, signed up at Fitness Forum when I was 15.
I fell in love with fitness from the get go. I have always played sports and my older brothers have been a big influence on me in that area as well.
I completed a Bachelor of Applied fitness which enables me to deal with specific demographics: those suffering from particular illnesses, injuries, post-operative clients, diabetic clients, clients with heart disease, just higher risk clients in general.
Working while studying, enabled me to put everything into practice immediately and helped me achieve wonderful client results through this. I find that even to this day – 6 years later, I’m always still learning and growing my knowledge to keep giving my clients something new.
My signature in personal training is the ability to recognise every-body, physically – is different. I find I am the most challenged when teaching my Fit Kidz class, I want the best for my students and always aim to provide them not only with fitness advice but also the ability to help them to carve out a better pathway to health through fitness, education on nutrition and just positive lifestyle changes in general.
Growing up, what were some of your achievements in sports?
As a kid, when I was 12 – I was sports captain and our house never won in the previous years. And we won that year. I told everyone they needed to compete and even if they came first or last, the main thing was that they gave it a go. I like to encourage people to do the best they can. Even from an early age I was always interested in motivating others. It made a big impact. Knowing that someone really cared about whether or not they were involved.
I later became athletics champion that year.
The positivity that came from that feeling of helping made me want to stay in that environment.
Who is your ideal client?
I don’t have an ideal client, but one thing I really enjoy is working with someone who is dedicated and committed to making a positive difference in their life.
How does your sporting career in soccer differ from Personal Training?
My sporting career is a great social outlet, when I am on the soccer field, my only concern is when I am on the field. I forget about all of lifes’ stresses and zone in on what I’m doing. When I’m training others, my objective is to focus on my client and help them achieve this sense of release of stress, ability to tune into positive energy and enable them to find an outlet that allows them to express themselves freely, with motion as I do with my soccer game.
What is your biggest inspiration as a trainer vs. as an athlete?
Well, as an athlete, what inspires me to keep pushing is failure. Failure helps you improve. As they say in soccer you either win or you learn. In the gym, this sentiment can be applied by looking at different methods of training, revising workouts and looking at what worked in the past and what needs to be adjusted to make improvements. Form is also and area that people tend to disregard while training. It makes such a huge difference and can be the difference between someone giving up or someone achieving their goals.
What are the Golden rules that you stand by in the fitness industry?
You reap what you sow, what I mean by this is – you only receive the results if you put in the time to exercise and plan your meals in advance. Hard work pays off, trust me. And if you put in the hard work it will reward you.
What is your favourite exercise routine?
I love incorporating Muay Thai into my workouts, which is what I practice. I also add these moves into some of my classes. It is a different style of striking and its fun to see the combination during class. If you’re curious, I encourage you to check it out.
As a trainer some of my signature components of a session usually include circuit-based training involving explosive-dynamic movements, which is essentially what helps me on the soccer field and makes day to day activity / range of movement so much easier.
Why is Fitness so important for our youth and our up and coming sporting champions?
Fitness empowers kids to take responsibility of their own well-being. They are required to be responsible for their health from an early age which can not only prevent complications from poor health but can also steer them in the right direction in terms of building positive habits, relationships, friendships, confidence and self-esteem. These are all necessary to ensuring a life filled with happiness.
One more important point I’d like to talk about is self-efficacy. What this means, is one’s own ability to know that they are capable of doing things. So, when it comes to kids who haven’t exercised before – and year 8 P.E is the first time they get to demonstrate in front of their peers, they can feel embarrassed and held back. This can hold them back from making important life decisions, in fear that they can't achieve without failure and embarrassment. Its crucial for kids to know that they are all able to achieve anything they aspire to. And in each FitKidz session, this is my key objective. To not only be able to help them realise their potential but have them realise it for themselves. This is what gives me the greatest fulfilment as a trainer.