We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Gil Correa. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Gil below.

Gil, appreciate you joining us today. We love heartwarming stories – do you have a heartwarming story from your career to share?

There are many stories that makes me smile and Most of these stories are about my clients who are of an older age, lost a considerable amount of strength and are able to regain it becoming more independent, doing their daily activities with less effort. I was hired once by a lady who wanted me to train her 86 year old mom who had troubles with balance due to age, past surgeries (one being on the heart) and lost some strength by not being very active. We started working together and some weeks later I got a very positive feedback from the daughter saying her mom was more energetic, confident and having less trouble to walk. That made my day, week, year!!!
It still warms my heart when I remember stories like this. I consider a “dream feedback”, being able to cause such a positive change on someone’s life. Changing someone’s life for the better changes my life for the better as well.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I grew up as a kid who was very active but at some point I started losing that interest for physical activities when I became more introverted and found myself in love with playing video games. Noticing that I was gaining weight and becoming less interested in movement, after giving up volleyball practice my mom met a Karate instructor and had the idea of having me try some classes. Shortly I found myself in love with martial arts, going from Karate to Kung Fu and Tai Chi. That passion led me to pursue a higher education in sports science/kinesiology in Brazil (where I am from originally). During my graduation I tried almost everything and really fell in love with all things related to gym activities, from weight training to group classes. I spent my graduation as a trainee at a gym, learning as much as I could, sometimes prescribing training plans for customers and sometimes teaching classes (yoga, aerobics, spinning…). I can say I did almost everything. I also developed a passion in teaching Tai Chi Chuan for people at their age of 60 and older which later in life directed me into specializing in exercise for the same age group. After training all age groups in Brazil, Canada and US I started to focus more on a specific group that brought me joy and fulfillment. Most of my clients today are from an age of 60 and over, had trained my oldest client at 95 years. More than aesthetics, my main goal is to make them stronger and healthier so that they can improve their quality of life and keeping their independence for as long as possible. Aging is a process which we all deal with every day and being able to age with autonomy, independence, feeling healthy and stronger is priceless. If I can provide that to my clients, my work is fulfilled.

Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?

Being present and learning how to connect with your clientele. Being with your client and asking them to do a specific exercise will only get you so far. Really connecting with your client and showing them you care about their needs and that their goal is also yours will keep you busy for life. Ask yourself which kind of people you resonate with the most and focus on those people. You can still train someone different but having a focus and bringing a type of client you resonate the most with will increase your satisfaction increasing the quality of your work, that goes to your client as well. There are only great things tat comes with such an exchange.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

When I first moved to Los Angeles I was burned out from training people. That and being new to the city made me work with different things such as retail. It was a huge change for me but also a great lesson. During this time I had a chance to realize how much I loved what I do and organize myself to start my business again, this time as an independent trainer. Retail did teach me more customer service and how to be more organized with my work which only benefited me as I transitioned back to personal al training and fitness .

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.gilcorreatrainer.com
• Instagram: @gilcorreatrainer