USU grad teaches self-reliance as personal trainer
Days start early for Greg Panfiloff, a personal trainer at the Sports Academy & Racquet Club, who gets up and is at work everyday by 6 a.m. He starts his day with an hour-long meeting with a scheduled client, helping them with their work out for an hour.
Panfiloff said the length of his meetings sessions vary from a half-hour to an hour. The hour clients come twice a week and the half-hour come three times a week. He typically sees five to six clients a day, providing health information, guided workouts and motivation.
“As personal trainers, we try to teach our clients as much as we can so they can go out and do it themselves,” he said.
Holly Daines, a former client of Panfiloff, sought his instruction to help her get in shape.
“He helped me get familiar with the equipment again and doing a routine that’s good for me,” she said. “I was very happy with his results and he still encourages me in the mornings.”
Twice a week Panfiloff teaches a class called “Greg’s hard-body boot camp,” a class incorporating quick plyometric movements and strength exercises.
When he’s not working with clients, Panfiloff stays busy by designing new fitness programs, aiding members with their workouts, fixing scheduling conflicts and marketing for Sports Academy.
Most clients look to Panfiloff for motivation and education in their workout so they can apply them later on their own.
“I try to give them a good workout, try and make sure that they stick to their program and go through a lot of the exercises need to be done to get the person’s goals meet, whether it is weight loss or toning,” he said.
Panfiloff said many clients come in with a weight loss goal and expect him to help them lose weight in a short period of time. Results can vary depending on a person’s level of commitment, and personal trainers don’t really play into all aspects of achieving goals, he said.
“It’s hard, with most of our clients, to have a straight eight-hour day,” he said. “We kind of work when our clients are off work, so early in the mornings and later in the afternoons. I don’t know if my day ever really ends.”
Panfiloff described himself as a “twenty-four hour trainer.”
“I just keep going and going, and when I get home I’m a trainer for my family,” he said.
Panfiloff has been working as a personal trainer at the Sports Academy for eight years and has reached “master trainer” status. There are three levels of personal trainer and Panfiloff has reached the top because of his skill and the time he has spent working. Panfiloff is a certified personal trainer through The National Academy of Sports and Medicine.
Brenda Brunello, a client, said she looked for skill and knowledge when picking a personal trainer.
“There was a lot of forethought in selecting him because I was interested in somebody that understood the anatomy as well as the physiology of exercising,” she said. “Greg has been really, really good at that.”
“I think that he has helped me get more physically fit,” Brunello said. “He has spent so much time with me, helping me. Would I pick him again? Absolutely.”
In addition to working at the Sports Academy, Panfiloff attends USU as a graduate student studying physical therapy. He earned a bachelors degree in graphic design. Panfiloff said he realized he wanted to be a personal trainer when in 2004 he was working out in the Fieldhouse and people started asking him questions.
“I decided that maybe I could turn this into a career or something worthwhile, so when I did get asked those kind of questions I could answer back and know exactly why I was doing what I was doing,” he said.
“If you’re thinking of going into personal training, make sure you really really do love and want to work with people and try to meet their goals,” Panfiloff said.
– daniellemgarcia@yahoo.com