Fitness trainer Jim Ford enjoys helping people look and feel better

It’s Christmas Day, with New Year’s celebrations on the horizon. It’s the time traditionally for making merry and partying and overindulging both with food and drink in a season where those calorie-laden practices can be hard to resist for people of all ages.

Jim Ford says don’t worry about it. Enjoy yourself, but be ready to jump back into your workout routine as the calendar turns to 2017. The personal fitness trainer at Anytime Fitness, a gym at 5408 Summerville Road in Phenix City, knows his stuff, having helped people get into shape and stay there for about two decades.

“It gets very busy in January,” said Ford, 50, a Columbus resident and native of Woodstock, Ga. “Oftentimes, you’ll find that people actually restrain themselves through the holidays as, I guess, sort of a pre-resolution. They say, ‘I’ll eat a little better during the holidays and then I’m really going to go full tilt when the new year gets here.’ You’ll find that they’ve already started or you can find the exact opposite, ‘I gorged, I had my eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow I get fit.’ And now I’m done with all of this and I’m going to start.

Ford has a passion for his job, which started somewhat whimsically years ago. He had played football and wrestled while in high school, so he was generally fit. But it was a broken relationship with a girlfriend, which led him to quit hanging out with his buddies and start working out on the back porch of his parents.

“It just steamrolled into a healthy lifestyle,” he said during a recent visit to Anytime Fitness, which is owned by Daniel and Stephanie Blevins. It’s there that Ford trains clients in half-hour increments on average from 9 or 10 in the morning until about 8 in the evening, with a good break in the middle of the day for his own workout.

The Ledger-Enquirer talked with Ford about his job, why people seek out a personal trainer, and just what they can accomplish with the sessions. This interview is edited a bit for length and clarity.

Q. First off, what does it take to be a good trainer?

A. Having the knowledge, of course, to get the results that clients want. Having the knowledge to train them safely so that they don’t get hurt or injured. You want them to enjoy this and do it injury free and get the results they want, the weight loss, the muscle gains, the endurance, the athleticism, whatever their particular goal is. And it’s being personable. There’s a big social element.

Q. People want to train with someone they can get along with?

A. Sure. You have to be adept at adjusting to several different personality types. However, what I’ve found is when you’re dealing with people who come in here and they take this serious enough to actually get a trainer — and the majority of new gym members ought to get a trainer — you’re going to succeed.

Q. What are some of the reasons people come in for personal attention?

A. The general thing is to get back into shape. Whenever I sit down with someone, you do a consultation and you get more detailed. What do you want to look like? Everyone has a vision in their head. In their mind’s eye, they have an image of ‘I’d kind of like to be like this.’ There’s a vanity element, whether people want to admit it or not. Eventually, everyone does admit, yeah, I want to look better. I want to lose some fat. I’d like to look better. I want to get down from a size 14 to a size 8. Guys are I want my arms to look a little bit bigger. From time to time you have people come in, women who may be suffering from osteopenia, which is the precursor, the beginnings, of osteoporosis. They’ve come in on a doctor’s advice. They don’t want to have brittle bones and the only thing that stops that from happening, aside from medication, is weight-bearing exercise, weightlifting and resistance training. So there are specifics from time to time, but generally is a get-into-shape type of motivation. My area of expertise is resistance training and that’s the thing that I think that people should concentrate on and focus on the most.

Q. How do things progress as people stick with their fitness sessions?

A. A few months down the road, when we see that their balance has improved, they’ve gotten stronger, they have more endurance and cardiovascular strength, then we start hitting aesthetic things a little more. We start tweaking things as far as how they are eating. We kind of monitor that to a degree. We’re not nutritionists, but we can kind of say, well, you don’t need to be eating this or that. Or we can always guide them to a website or article and give them some ideas as to how they ought to be eating to complement their training.

Q. Do some people bring in a picture of someone they want to look like, such as Brad Pitt?

A. From time to time, but it’s rare that it happens. I really discourage that because if you’re a guy who’s 5-foot-6 and you have wrists this big around and you just don’t have that body type, then you’re not going to look like Brad Pitt. If you’re a woman that is 5-foot-7 and you bring in a picture of Naomi Campbell, who’s 6-foot-1 and very lean, you’re not going to look like that either.

Q. What are some stumbling blocks for people reaching their goals?

A. Lack of motivation, lack of accountability, work restraints, family restraints. But it doesn’t take much. I believe that if you put aside just two hours a week in the gym, you can get results. There are a lot of things you can do. You can always control your decisions as to what you eat. That’s within your control all the time. Two hours a week in the gym and your results will be astonishing if you stay consistent. The key is consistency.

Q. You need to make it a lifestyle?

A. That’s exactly right. Any type of nutritional plan, exercise program, trend diet that involves a supplement that makes claims that you can lose 45 pounds in 45 days, if these programs are not geared toward changing a lifestyle, they’re not going to work. They’re going to be a failure.

Q. What is your recommendation for enjoying the holidays?

A. It depends on where you are. If you’ve stuck with your program and you’re already exercising and you’re doing what you need to do with your nutrition, and you’re getting proper rest, my advice to people who already are in shape is you know how to be moderate. Stick with the lean meats. You can always get turkey and lean ham. There’s a lot of vegetables that you can eat. There’s nothing wrong with having a piece of pie after dinner … just moderation. If you’re doing what you should be doing the rest of the time, that can be your cheat day. Christmas Day would be your reward day. Eat what you want and have fun.

Q. I take it that not everyone sticks with their New Year’s fitness resolutions?

A. I’ve seen statistics, that over the last 20 years, anywhere from 88 to 92 percent of new gym members will stop using that gym membership in the first six weeks of their membership. If you take these same 92 percent and they decide to use a trainer, you can reverse that statistic. I would say 97 to 98 percent of new personal training clients continue to come and see their trainer for the entire amount of time that they’ve hired that trainer.

Q. What’s the biggest challenge in your job?

A. The honest answer, there’s nothing tough about it. I love it. I love what I do. Scheduling can be a little bit of a headache sometimes. Every now and then you get that person that you really have to keep on them to keep coming in. They want to cancel a lot. They want to be out too much. You don’t want to be overbearing, but you want to make sure you send them texts and say, ‘Come on, I’m missing you now. You need to get up here.’ There are those little things. But I love what I do. I would recommend it to anyone that wants to do it. You have to be patient and you have to build the clientele. The patience is the key. It takes time. But once you become established, it’s one of the most rewarding things I could ever think of doing. I enjoy who I work for. I enjoy the people I work with. I can say I never had a client that I didn’t like.

Q. What do you enjoy the most about it?

A. I like seeing the results. I like knowing that I’m helping people look better, feel better. Many years ago, I trained a client, one of my first clients, she was in her 60s and she came to me specifically because she had been diagnosed with osteoporosis. After about eight to 12 months of working out with me, she came in one day and said, ‘You know, I worked in my garden all day Saturday, up and down, and I felt great the next day.’ She said that was the first that had happened in eight or nine years. She looked at me and said never lose sight that you’re helping people. And I never have. When I first started, I thought (fitness) was nothing but looking good. When she said that, she had an impact on me.

Q. A bottom-line priority for you is making sure no one overdoes it and incurs an injury?

A. Absolutely. Safety is paramount as far as I’m concerned. It is the most important thing that I do, is making sure that people are safe when they lift. I never want someone to do something that will hurt them. An injury can not only put you out for months, it can affect you for the rest of your life.

This story was originally published December 24, 2016 at 3:26 PM with the headline "Fitness trainer Jim Ford enjoys helping people look and feel better."