Individualized and community support at New Hamburg Anytime Fitness key to sustaining healthy lifestyle

Personal trainer Hunter Livy emphasizes the importance of individualized and community support to help members of Anytime Fitness in New Hamburg reach their personal health and fitness goals. Galen Simmons photo

Galen Simmons, Regional Editor

According to Hunter Livy, a personal trainer at Anytime Fitness in New Hamburg, the key to sustaining a healthy lifestyle, both at the gym and in everyday life, is having a plan and supports that work for you and being part of a community that keeps you accountable.

For members of the local Anytime Fitness, Livy and the gym’s other personal trainers make it their goal to ensure their clients are engaged and having fun while they’re getting healthy. While Livy says the pieces of every person’s health and fitness puzzle may be the same, they certainly don’t fit together the same way and each person’s plan needs to reflect that.

“I’m very passionate about making sure that the programming and the time I’m investing in aiding the individual is focused on their specific needs and their specific goals because not everybody’s the same; in fact, everybody’s different,” Livy said. “So, the approach you take for one person isn’t necessarily going to work for somebody else. It’s a situation where all the puzzle pieces might be the same, but they fit differently.

“For example, I have two individuals whose primary goal is to get healthier and lose weight. One of them works a desk job, so they’re very, very sedentary. The other one is a PSW, so she’s a lot more active. The end goal is the same for both of them but the approach is different because one individual doesn’t move a whole lot, so we want to increase general movement, and the other individual moves quite a bit, so we try to focus on movements and exercises that are going to help her perform her duties at her job with more ease to just increase longevity and make sure she’s living an active and healthy life.”

According to Livy, part of creating individualized plans for each client and helping them stick to those plans is ensuring there is just the right amount of fun incorporated to keep them on track. And that goes for both exercise – like joining a sports team for cardio instead of running on a treadmill – as well as developing a healthy meal plan.

As Livy puts it, if he were to tell his clients exactly what they need to eat every day for the rest of their lives, no one would stick with it. What’s life without a little pizza now and then?

But the biggest factor for why members of Anytime Fitness New Hamburg continue to come to the gym on a regular basis and sustain that health and fitness routine is the community they get to be part of.

“The sense community here is unlike anything I’ve seen at other locations that I’ve worked at. It’s one of those things where because of the fact we’re in such a small town, a closeknit community, the options for gyms around here are limited, so most of the time, individuals around the area who are into fitness or thinking about it either already know somebody who goes to this gym or are aware that the gym exists, which makes things a lot easier.

“In addition, everyone here talks and it’s a very welcoming community and everybody here knows each other,” Livy continued. “ … And I’m very much an open book when it comes to my clients. I always provide all my clients with my personal cell number if they have any questions outside of our sessions. I look at it as I’m at their disposal in general, not just here while they’re working with me at the gym. There’s a lot of aspects of that journey that take pace outside of the gym. The general consensus is getting healthy is a lot of physical work, but it’s a lot of mental work too. If I can ensure my clients know I’m a resource that’s available to them for anything that’s going on in this journey, I’ve found that I’ve been able to help them.”

In some cases, like with Livy’s client who works a desk job, that professional relationship can even become a friendship as Livy works with his clients toward their health and fitness goals.

“Often times, that’s what people do need; not necessarily the physical part and the physical push, but someone to listen and just be there for them,” he said.

Thanks to an ongoing promotion, anyone who would like to become part of the Anytime Fitness New Hamburg community can join as a member now for just one dollar. For more information, visit www.anytimefitness.ca/gyms/3904/new-hamburg-on-n3a-1t6/ or call 519-340-3242.