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Name: Thomas Perez
Job Title: Personal Trainer
Asphalt Green Department: Fitness
Asphalt Green Campus: Upper East Side
Q: How long have you been working at Asphalt Green?
A: One year and four months.
Q: What does your job entail?
A: I help my clients achieve their personal health goals. I also help train and strengthen the players on Asphalt Green’s youth soccer teams with my supervisor DaBarion Taylor.
Q: How did you get into the fitness industry?
A: I started boxing when I was 17 years old and then started weightlifting. This was the start of my passion for fitness. Being proud of how you look and being healthy leads to a positively charged life. Nothing else compares to the feeling and confidence you get from a good week of working out.
Q: Why did you become a personal trainer?
A: My two passions are teaching and fitness, so personal training was a great fit. I also enjoy showing another person how strong they are, and how they can achieve their health goals through a well-planned training program. I became a certified personal trainer in June 2012 through the National Academy of Sports Medicine.
Q: What is one of your fondest memories of working at Asphalt Green?
A: Helping one of my clients lose 20 pounds right before her wedding. I worked with her for roughly two months during the summer. I helped her get on a strength training program in order to produce fast results due to our deadline. The program emphasized the basic lifts: bench press, military press, squat and deadlift. During our training, I had her do some research on ‘flexible dieting.’ From this she learned that the first step to weight loss was to slightly decrease her calorie consumption in a healthy balanced matter. We also got her setup with MyFitnessPal to track her calories, macros and to keep our program aligned with her resting metabolic rate. In a week we were able to see minor changes in her physique.
Q: What is your favorite exercise?
A: My favorite exercise is the bench press. When I started lifting weights and exercising regularly my friends and I would always bench press. Whenever I bench press now I remember how my journey on the gym floor began years ago. Aside from this personal reason, the bench press is the best exercise to strengthen the upper body.
Q: Can you share a fun fact about yourself?
A: I practice Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.