Formulating A Unique Client Approach With Personal Training for Lasting Health
- Brainz Magazine
- 16 hours ago
- 12 min read
Written by Bradley Abbott, Personal Coach
Bradley Abbott is known for his wholistic approach to personal coaching merging fitness training with nutritional therapeutics. Author of the e-books A How-to Guide in Developing Functional Strength, Power and Adaptability, and The Cussing Coach, both published in 2024.
Personal training is more than just exercise; it's about crafting a holistic approach tailored to each client's unique needs. In this article, I reflect on my journey from experiencing severe health issues in my early twenties to becoming a qualified personal trainer. I share the insights I gained from my struggles, including the importance of proper nutrition, the impact of eliminating harmful foods, and incorporating essential nutrients into a fitness plan. This approach has not only transformed my own life but has also helped my clients achieve lasting health and fitness success.
“The ability of a living organism to experience stress, and remain symptom free, in a state of dynamic equipoise.” -Jeremy Share (UK) & Dr. Joel Sheppard (Chicago, Illinois)
My journey through health discovery
When I was around 22 years of age, I was always active, always playing football, swimming, and running, 'fit as a fiddle', my Dad would say. I was also eating anything in sight and I mean anything. Crisp sandwiches and 2-3 bowls of cereal a day, would be the 'norm' and sugary sweets, 'bullets' as my Dad called them, would become a daily consumption, and then one day when I was "jog-walking" to attain said sugary 'bullets' I started getting a tingling in my arms, followed by shooting pains. I thought, as most do, 'well I'm fit, really fit actually, why on earth am I getting shooting pains up both my arms? I'm also in my early 20s, ahh, it's okay, it'll pass.' This was my inner dialogue. I foolishly thought it would go away on its own, and kept eating the same way. My naivety would soon come to an abrupt and painful hault. Sometime during the middle of that year, I ate a homemade cheese & onion hotpot which triggered a pain I've never experienced before, that would remain in my memory for the rest of my life.
Shortly after I consumed that cheese and onion hotpot, I began to experience shooting pains up both my arms more intensely, which was accompanied by a very sharp, excruciating 'stabbing-like' pain in my chest. It's like someone was stabbing me with my own car key and wouldn't let up. I was bed-bound, tossing and turning, crying out in pain. My Mam was incredibly concerned to the point where she begun to cry. I do not remember much between that experience and the next day's sunrise. What I can tell you is that this pain persisted for the few days that followed.
I went to visit my local GP in my hometown and after i explained to him what I had eaten, the dairy, the sweets, the cereal, the crisp sandwhiches, he poked at his computer, looked at his notes, then turned and looked at me and said, 'based on what you told me Bradley, I think you might be drinking too much milk, that's all I can think of.' Needless to say, I was disappointed, and still worried this pain wouldn't go away. I'm sitting in the chair across from my local GP, thinking, 'I thought these people were supposed to be the holders of all knowledge.' I was baffled. Based on what I watched on YouTube, I thought, 'I'm going to try something else here, since my local GP has failed to provide any sort of answer.'
Driving towards our local indoor retail park, I visited the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) place of practice within the facility, trying anything I could to make the pain stop. I explained to them my symptoms, and they responded with what was to me at the time, a miracle. They had shown me the 'fiery-cup' which I recognised from Jackie Chan's 'Karate Kid' (2010). I thought, 'I recognise this!' Its original name is 'ba guan,' a cupping therapy promoting blood flow and healing. This was followed by 30 minutes of acupuncture. Knowing what I knew about meditation, after the needles were strategically placed to help open up the meridian channels, I was told I had to lie there for 30 minutes for it to take effect. I thought, 'Well, I guess I'm meditating for 30 minutes, she did say I had to relax.'
The treatment was effective, but there was still pain in my chest, and I felt it every two steps I took. It was like a throbbing feeling with every two steps. I needed to do more. After listening to wholistic naturopathuc documentaries and seminars on YouTube, I decided I was going to try and eliminate gluten and dairy for 2-3 weeks. Since it was the cheese and onion hotpot that triggered this chain of events, I figured dairy was the culprit. After nearly three weeks of eliminating these foods, I foolishly tried to introduce them all at once within a single 24-hour slot. 'Boy, was I wrong!' During elimination or rotation diets, you're supposed to ease into them; I didn't do that. Ironically, my initial suspect, the cheese and dairy, wasn't the main issue; it was the gluten! As soon as I started re-introducing gluten back into my diet, I begun to have sharp pains in my stomach. That was a mistake I never made knowingly again.
As a newly qualified Personal Trainer in 2015, I was working nights and began to use my spare time to educate and experiment with as many different foods and methods as possible. I even tried going fully raw vegan for 24 hours, but I realised quickly why that wouldn't work. I spent my spare time watching as many seminars, webinars, and documentaries as I could. My eyes were soon opened to the truth about nutrition. After doing years of research since then, and reading through copious amounts of literature of all different kinds, it hit me like a wet towel in the face that there is a method behind the madness, a truth to why people get sick, and more importantly, how it can be prevented. Ironically, I wasn't looking for this information, I just remained open-minded, and ended up stumbling across something that made the most sense to me out of everything a watched, eerything I read.
And all this started because I had an excruciatingly painful experience.
Why does the cure get reprimanded
People have been arguing over the same things since the wheel was invented. People think that because there are certain scientific populations still arguing about the same stuff, no answer has been found, but this notion is absolutely ludicrous! The reason they argue is that ego gets in the way.
It never made sense to me that people's health problems couldn't be cured, couldn't be reversed. Why? Well, it just doesn't make sense. Think about this logically; we as humans have advanced in so many areas of life, and yet, "couldn't solve our own health problems?" This seems completely illogical to me. We've invented the telephone, Apple computers, electric cars, steam engines, mobile phones, and beautiful architectural masterpieces, but we cannot fix our own health problems?
The more likely scenario is logical: certain medical giants make way too much money, so they feed us propaganda and feed us silly little notions like "genetics," and because it sounds sophisticated enough, people believe it. What's worse is that their doctors will die before they do and feel sorry for him, run marathons in his memory and for the noble causes of charities (that go right back in the allopathic medical profession's pocket, toward new equipment, tools, but never a cure!), and they'll keep following his advice! This doesn't make sense: why would you follow the health advice of someone who passed away before you did? I digress.
These unspoken arguements and thoughts have been going on for the past 120 years. They stemmed from the AMA and other associated parties lobbying Congress way back in 1912. Now granted, there was a lot of misinformation from both sides back in 1912. One of the concerns back then was different medical professions (both allopathic and natural medicinal practices) engaging in malpractice, and the other was the cleanliness of the facilities and the cleanliness of the medical practitioner's hands (no joke), which caused infections and cross-contamination to the point where it would make patients severely ill.
This way of thinking for the past 120 years has led us down a path of disease and feeling crippled and helpless in our supposed "old age." Even though truthful geneticists and gerontologists will tell you that the maximum lifespan for a human being is well beyond 100 years of age without any aches or pains, and the reason that this isn't common knowledge is because we've done too many of the bad things and not enough of the good things. We're not even properly taught what those good things are! Well, it's time for a change.
Why are the bad foods 'bad'?
Wheat, Barley, Rye, & Oats are part of the gluten category, and you don’t necessarily have to be allergic to them for them to cause you harm. Intolerances, however, are something that seems to be happening more frequently, and even though these glutens are harming us, our bodies have an amazing adaptability. It can continue to harm us even though it has become our “norm”. Gluten is a protein, and it is used as a broader term when referring to gluten proteins. When gluten makes contact with our small intestine, it flares and swells up. Think of poison ivy, when animals come into contact with poison ivy one time, they won’t do it again, because poison ivy produces toxins to defend itself against foreign invaders. Similar to gluten, when it makes contact with the small intestine, it becomes damaged immediately. And it’s easy to tell when people have a gluten intolerance, because the signs and symptoms of a gluten intolerance show themselves in the skin, breathing, digestive issues, and allergies. A good example is when you see people with noticeably red patches on their cheeks and they are not wearing make-up. In babies and toddlers, it’s more noticeable. Usually, any eczema, dry skin, dermatitis, asthma, bronchitis, allergies to dust and others, and colitis, Crohn’s Disease, and any other related skin, breathing, digestive, or allergy issues, are all directly related to gluten intolerance.
Fried food & oils in a bottle
Fried food and oil in a bottle are different chemically, but they cause high levels of inflammation and are carcinogenic. Oil in a bottle causes harm, firstly, because the space between the bottle top and the surface of the oil is made up of air (oxygen), and when fat, any fat, is exposed to air, it oxidises. When fats and oils become oxidized, they become rancid and harmful to the human body, especially the digestive tract, and therefore, the skin and DNA. When you heat oils, not burnt, but even just heated, they produce toxic chemicals called acrylamides, which are pro-inflammatory and highly carcinogenic.
Carbonated drinks
Carbonate Drinks, whether it be Coke, Pepsi, Fanta, Tango, lemonade, or even soda water, neutralize stomach acid, something that you don’t want when you’re trying to break down foods into smaller molecules for absorption. This, more importantly, is responsible for the development of allergies, because you can’t break down proteins into the simplest of amino acids, so it recognises it as a foreign invader, and we are not meant to digest and absorb whole proteins, we’re meant to absorb amino acids, smaller molecules. Carbonated drinks also sap minerals from your bones, which contribute to scoliosis, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, and ankylosing spondylitis, to name a few. Another thing that carbonated drinks do, especially the sugary ones, is increase your risk of diabetes, metabolic syndrome and obesity when consistently consumed.
Nitrates/nitrites in meat
These chemicals that are used as preservatives are found on foods such as already cooked and prepared deli meats. They are incredibly toxic to us humans and are pro-inflammatory and carcinogenic, even on fresh meat that you find at the butcher's. When you heat and cook meats with nitrites/nitrates, they create toxic chemicals called nitrosamines, which are pro-inflammatory and carcinogenic.
Skins of baked potatoes, yams, and sweet potatoes
The skins of all potatoes and potato-based foods, when they’re crispy, become highly toxic. When carbohydrates are heated at high temperatures, they produce toxic chemicals, collectively referred to as heterocyclic amines, which are also pro-inflammatory and highly carcinogenic. This means that it damages the cells of your body (your skin, other organs of your body, and your DNA).
Burnt meat
The reason burnt meat is bad is for the same reasons that oil is bad. When you burn fats within the meat, they produce very harmful chemicals called heterocyclic amines, which are highly carcinogenic and pro-inflammatory. When people eat meat rare, medium-rare, way fewer of these toxic chemicals are produced. This is also why frying meats is harmful. It’s not necessarily the meat, it’s how it’s cooked. Animal-based protein, or fish, or eggs, or any of these foods, contain essential nutrients in them, such as choline, which is a B-vitamin, iron, zinc, selenium, and so on.
Soy & corn
They are recent additions because they directly harm our DNA, due to a lot of corn and soy products being heavily genetically modified, and not every company puts this on their label. Some companies, however, should be cautious when consuming these products. Additionally, and most importantly, corn and soy are heavily sprayed with a herbicide called ‘Roundup’ (chemical name: glyphosate), and the World Health Organisation deemed this a carcinogen.
The method to the madness
Much later in my Personal Training career, when I returned to Pure Gym, Sunderland, to prove to myself that I could perform better as a Trainer than when I first started in 2015, I started reading more about business, naturopathic nutrition, and fitness practice. I armed myself with as much knowledge as I possibly could to help people with their fitness and health, especially now that I understood that the term 'fit' does not mean you are healthy. I noted down what I had learned from books, seminars and my own personal experiences. I remembered from my own experience that the food I ate heavily affected my health long-term and that the cheese and onion hotpot may have been the 'trigger', but it was the years of eating garbage foods that affected my health to the point of 'bed-bound chest pains.' I also noted what I had learned from naturopathic webinars, the 12 bad foods that caused these health issues and why they caused them. Things were starting to make sense at this point. The final piece to the puzzle was the wholistic nutrition, the 90 essential nutrients that everybody needs. This made sense to me, because as a Sports Science student, one of the first things we learned was the chemical levels and structures of the human body within the first few chapters of our physiology books. Within the chemical structure, the physiology books explain the importance of calcium, phosphorus, potassium, iodine, and sodium. Understanding the importance of minerals in the human body is basic physiology!
I begun to formulate my own unique approach to Personal Training. Now armed with the formula:
Elimination of the 12 bad foods that harm your body, including the digestive tract.
Replace those bad foods with good foods, and educate clients on why this is important.
Support clients through this process.
Supplement with the 90 essential nutrients.
Continue with monthly and sometimes weekly reviews to monitor and accelerate client progress.
This approach worked for the clients who wanted more than just fitness. I didn't force what I learned on anyone because I didn't want it to affect my business. The clients who saw the most progress for overall health, fitness, and energy were the ones who had the most pain and were open and receptive to change.
Nothing is in isolation
The truth is that when you hit your lowest point, you are the most receptive and open to change.
My path led me to realising that if I was truly going to help my clients achieve remarkable feats, then I would need to understand and practice the wholistic approach to fitness and health. One cannot exist without the other, and nothing is in isolation. I used my understanding of wholistic nutrition with fitness and it worked like a charm!
My clients saw their rosacea almost completely disappear, their back pain gone, their digestive issues and blood pressure problems disappear, and their energy soar to heights they'd not known since they were much younger.
You cannot leave anything to chance when your client depends on you to do good by them. Did this take time? Yes, of course it did, three months to be precise, but that's worth the leap when they had experienced these health issues for years.
I kept their personal training sessions to the requested two times per week, and monitored their progress during our weekly food diary and monthly Goal-Review sessions. They stayed with me for a year, and I couldn't be prouder.
"The basic functions of life itself cannot be performed without minerals, either as a major part of the function, or as a catalytic factor. No biological process is exempt. The concept holds true for RNA, DNA, subcellular and digestive enzymes, biochemical reactions, hormone function, energy use, and to utilize oxygen and vitamins. Nothing in a living system works without one or more mineral co-factors." - Dr. Joel D. Wallach
Read more from Bradley Abbott
Bradley Abbott, Personal Coach
Bradley Abbott is a personal coach and author. Known for his wholistic approach to training merging naturopathic principles with fitness training, he has managed to reverse the symptoms of his clients almost completely, and raise their energy to heights they never thought possible. He is the founder of Phoenix Phorm Online and uses these platforms to educate and inspire a larger audience.
