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

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

When people see my title of “Sports Performance Coach”, they automatically assume that I work with athletes who are fit, strong, explosive, and dominate their sport. However exciting it is to work with athletes who make your job easier, the greatest reward comes from working with people who are looking to improve their quality of life. Years ago when I worked in NYC, I had the opportunity to work with a senior citizen who really needed help. Watching her walk down the stairs was painful to watch as she gripped on the rail and side-stepped down each step, staggering down to the check-in desk. During our initial assessment, she had everything from A to Z: surgical screws in her ankles, arthritis in her knees, bursitis in her hips, general lower back pain, limitations in her left shoulder, and she wanted to lose weight. Her fitness routine at the time consisted of only walking – the bare minimum. I started slow with corrective exercises, gave her a workout plan for her to come in two extra days in the week (on top of our two session a week) and focused on her balance, coordination, strength, and endurance. About a month and a half in, she came in for her Tuesday session and I had asked her how her weekend was. She mentioned that she went to church on Sunday and wore high heels for the first time in nearly 20 years without pain in her legs. This fact partially flew over my head as we were going through our warm-ups, but it hit me really hard after our session: wearing her heels to church without pain was more than looking her best. I had overlooked how she felt empowered by her new strength and felt the improvements in her health that she could wear heels to church, not be in pain, and feel confidence. Nearly a week later she had disclosed that she was now able to get up off a chair or off the toilet without having to grab anything to pull herself up. Thinking about how we take for granted the simple movement of standing up from sitting in a chair without having to grab anything hit me hard. I felt proud knowing that I had not only made her stronger, loose a few pounds on the journey, but also given her the power to regain her femininity, confidence, and independence.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’ve been in the personal training, sports performance, and wellness industry for over a ten years in both the NYC and LA markets. My background playing tennis as a young teen lead me to venture into other sports like boxing and kendo. My passion within tennis grew to a point that I became a USPTA professional level tennis coach for four years in the northeast. I felt my reach with tennis was limited and knew I could make more of an impact to my community and others with personal training.

Over the next decade I passionately studied two masters degrees in exercise science from both domestic and international institutions with concentrations in wellness & fitness and strength & conditioning. In NYC I worked in every sector of the training industry from corporate chain gyms, concierge services, online startups, boutique studies, independently facilities, and even opening up a brick and motor training studio. As with the rest of the world in 2020, I took a hard right turn. I went off to work multiple unpaid internships during a period that allowed me to take two steps back to go four steps forwards. I took that risk and made the move from coast to coast, arriving in LA in the beginning of 2021.

Even though my primary focus now is to work with tennis, baseball, soccer, hockey, football, and ju-jitsu athletes of all ages and levels, I still continue to love working with people who are looking to improve their strength, recovery from an injury, or achieve their wellness and fitness goals. I work with clients in-person either at their homes or at independent training facilities, virtually across all US-time zones, and provide online programming with exceptional personal detail. What sets me apart is my extensive knowledge of exercise science, broad experience with high-profile athletes and professionals, and creating a personal relationship that is individual with each one of my clients.

The main things I want my followers and potential clients to know is that having the right information is everything – including achieving your fitness and wellness goals. I understood early in my career that knowledge is one of the most important factors in improving your physiology. If you take out the guessing, trial and error, and experimentation, you save time, energy, and effort. Working with a professional who looks at what he does not as a “job” but as a passion, has the book smarts, the practical experience, an eye for detail, and never leaves no stone unturned, is your best bet.

Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?

Connecting with clients is the biggest thing that can help anyone in my field succeed. This is an interpersonal exchange where the your trainer/coach should put in 110% not only in their program design, equipment setup, or appearance, but also in how much they care about you as a person. As all of my clients know, I start every session with one question: how are you feeling? This is an opportunity for them to tell me not only if they feel sore, tight, fatigued from their day or if they didn’t sleep well, but also for them to open themselves up a bit and give me any insights if there are any social, emotional, or psychological stressors affecting them on top of physiological concerns. You need to be “personal” if you want to be a successful personal trainer.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Doing the things other won’t do, to achieve the status others want. Simply stated it is putting in the efforts other people won’t go the lengths to work to build: soft-skills and hard-skills. Early on in my career I knew I had to have an online presence with a website and be seen in a saturated market like NYC. I understood that mean building my own website – something I didn’t know how to do. Every single day for over two months I remember coming home from work and immediately until midnight working on learning how to build a website, registering a domain, basics of SEO, and building traffic. Later it was reaching out to writers and reporters for stories that could get me notoriety and establish myself as a person of authority to fitness, wellness, and workout topics. That landed me in stories covered in GQ, Women’s Health, Men’s Health, Insider, Weight Watchers, EatThisNotThat, the Nike Blog, UnderArmor, and other publications.

Later that expanded to seminars and networking opportunities, but it also meant going outside my own network. Reaching out and doing old fashion “cold-calls”. I created chances to be on podcasts, work with editors, be featured as a blog writer, collaborate with brands and sponsors, and grow in my market. These are all skills they don’t teach you as an undergrad student, but it’s the entrepreneurial spirit that pushes me forward to achieve more.

Contact Info:

• Website: jameslshapiro.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/james.l.shapiro/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameslshapiro/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/JamesLShapiro

Image Credits
Joseph Bara, Anthony Lee Sams of Utah