A Sad Day for Me today!

It was a sad day for me today!

After my long holiday in the United States, I am home now and ready to resume my fitness training sessions. I have been working out with the assistance of an excellent personal trainer, Joyce L., at the Good Llfe Fitness Gym.

I was very relaxed and happy looking forward to my personal training session this morning. But my happiness was short lived as Joyce informed me that she would be leaving the gym at the end of April.

Darn it!!! I could never understand this!

Joyce is such a great motivator and an inspiration to her clients in their exercise programs. After a year of training with her, I have come very far eliminating a lot of the pains I have previously experienced and my physical condition has been improving. I am very disappointed that Goodlife Fitness did not do more to retain their best personal trainers. I have seen them advertising and recruiting personal trainers very often all over the place. But why don't they pay more attention to their current staff, develop them into senior trainers and promote them to management positions?

I am immensely disappointed and there is no word to express what I am feeling now. It took me a really long time to get into the habit of going to the gym and getting trained under a personal trainer on a weekly basis.

I wish big companies these days would pay more attention to their staff and customer relations. But as I have observed, once when companies have grown big and become national companies, such as Good Life Fitness in Canada, they start losing touch with their customers and ignoring their needs.  Goodlife doesn't seem to care about the established rapport between their clients and their personal trainers which is paramount in the success of any training program. I had a personal trainer at Goodlife before but I had no success.

These big companies like Goodlife do not understand this:  They recruit and hire people all the time thinking that their employees are easily replaceable. Yes, many athletic people can be trained to become fitness instructors, but not everybody could be a good personal trainer able to motivate their unmotivated clients to exercise regularly. It takes a special trainer to understand the needs and capabilities of the clients.

An excellent personal trainer has to be sensitive to understand the pains and the limitations of the individual clients yet knowledgeable enough to push the clients to their limits enabling them to achieve the things which they themselves thought unachievable.  Joyce L. is one such trainer!  With her encouragement, patience, understanding and sensitive approach to my pains and limited capability, I have never felt so good since turning fifty and have achieved fitness goals which I thought were impossible. I am grateful that I have had the opportunity working under her guidance but I will miss her dearly!!!

I am really sad that Goodlife Fitness fails to recognize the excellent work and dedicated efforts of is outstanding personal trainers and did not do more to retain and promote its star employees. Instead of taking the easy way and going to the nearest Goodlife gym, I rather travel a fair distance to go to the Steels and Victoria Park gym in order to have Joyce as my trainer. I have made that sacrifice in my time and efforts in order to be trained by the best personal trainer I have met. I am enormously saddened by Joyce's pending departure.

It's unfortunate that Goodlife Fitness has lost the confidence and trust as the fitness centre of my choice due to its lack of knowledge and inability to recognize its capable and talented trainers and outstanding staff.

I want to be trained under an experienced, knowledgeable and caring trainer like Joyce, not just anybody who is hired by Goodlife!

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I did the following exercises under Joyce's watchful eyes today:

1. Body Squat
2. Elevated Squat
3. Loaded squat - holding a weight to my chest
4. Pistol Squat
5. Holding 15lb weight on each hand and step up to risers up to my knees
6. Loaded Back Squat - My favourite because it made me feel powerful and young
7. Riser Squat - one leg at a time

R.T,. Retired Boomer
Toronto