The 70-year-old woman donned the clunky, black urban rebound shoes. They looked like rollerblades with springboards instead of wheels. After a wobbly start, mediated by careful coaching, she was hopping and laughing.
The rebound shoes are just one of the many props that personal trainer Damon Hawkins uses to help his mature clients get fit and improve their balance.
Loss of balance is the No. 1 cause of fractures in older people, Hawkins said. “When people reach a certain age that’s one of the most important things to train.”
A personal trainer since the early ‘90s—before most people had even heard of personal training—he focuses on helping people in their golden years who are extremely busy (often doing charitable work) squeeze in high-intensity but low-impact workouts that are safe for aging joints.
The goal of his workouts, Hawkins said, is to set the groundwork for overall health by making the workout experience enjoyable.
To add to the fun element, Hawkins carries with him a very full backpack with a variety of high- and low-tech props to help his clients exercise.
And he does it all through home and office visits, a huge point of convenience for busy people.
When he visited the Epoch Times office, his bag included boxing gloves, the rebound shoes, a yoga mat, a machine that pumps small electrical pulses into your muscles, and plastic cups, which are extremely useful for learning to regain balance if you try to pick up three while standing on one leg.
Hawkins has had some of his clients for over a decade and is always bringing new workout toys for them to try. The rebound shoes are his latest favorite and are good for burning calories, increasing circulation, and improving mood.
They are “euphoric—very euphoric. This is the most important thing,” Hawkins said. “When I get people on them … they start smiling and laughing.”
Once people feel good, they’re much less likely to regress into unhealthy habits.
“When your stomach is sore and you’re going to be like, ‘You know, I don’t want to eat that pizza, I’m feeling really sore, I worked [hard], I’m going to try to do the right thing today.”
High-Intensity, Low-Impact, and Playful
Hawkins’s clients range from their mid-50s to their 80s. They want to train but have never worked out and feel very uncomfortable or intimidated by big sports clubs with “young people running around in their spandex.”
He specializes in helping them get fit at their level, lose weight, and maintain functional movements, like picking things up off the floor by bending at the knees instead of at the hips to reduce stress on their lower backs.
“I try to give them a high intensity workout without impact to their joints, knees, and lower back. Most of these people at that age they have problems from arthritis … some of them have old injuries like fractures or knee problems,” Hawkins said.
Firsthand Experience
Helping people recover their dignity and ability to carry out daily tasks after an illness or accident is also one of his skills. He has a unique insight into post-rehab specialization, from a childhood experience.
Hawkins began gymnastics when he was 11 but became ill two years later. He had to stop all formal sports because he was frequently too sick to attend regular practices. On the many days when he was bed-bound and too weak to even get up, Hawkins would invent exercises to work specific muscles that didn’t add extra stress to his body.
This period of invalidism gave Hawkins firsthand insight into what it’s like to cope with a weak, unstable body, an experience, which now helps him understand what his clients are feeling.
He was eventually diagnosed with kidney disease and has been well since having one kidney removed. After surgery, a friend who was a fitness trainer got him his first job at a club. After years working for different clubs and spas, Hawkins’s roster of clients allowed him to start his own business, Home Fit Pro, with two partners in 2006, working with clients throughout the New York City and the tri-state area.
He still encourages clients to branch out from his training and helps get them enrolled at health clubs so they can try new classes.
“[I want to] change their lives so they can enjoy doing something every week besides just me because you have to if you want to really get fit,” he said.
Home Workouts
Hawkins uses his wealth of training experience to create efficient and versatile workouts that you would normally get only if you bought a punching bag, leg press, and took an aerobics class, or did a parkour route.
(And even then there’s the question of motivation, we all know how easy it is to ignore those expensive workout machines).
About 5 minutes into a 25-minute workout session, which started with cardio boxing followed by jumps in the rebound shoes and ended with core work on a mat, my heart rate was well up but I hardly noticed because I was so focused on kicking with the correct leg and punching with the correct arm, all while Hawkins encouraged me to give it more oomph.
Over the next 20 minutes I poured sweat and pushed my core muscles to their limit (which didn’t take long, given their usual nonaction). I put on the rebound shoes and felt like I was walking on the moon. They really do give you a euphoric feeling once you find your feet, so to speak.
Amid the toughest activity, a series of crunches targeting my obliques, Hawkins entertained me with stories from his profession, making me forget how many repetitions I had left to go. It made the crunches go much faster, and luckily, he was able to keep track while conversing.
Overall, it was a faster and more efficient workout than I could do on my own or with a machine, because Hawkins used his own body as a target and for balance support. He applied just the right amount of resistance to a crunch to make it feel like an achievement.
Personalized Service and Spa Treatments
Hawkins tailors his training to fitness levels and personal learning styles.
“Everybody has their own things to get them going. Some people want to fail and some people have to do well,” he said,
The key, he said, is to “pay attention to what people need.”
In addition to offering personal training and classes, years of working in different clubs and spas have given Hawkins and his partners a network of specialists that they can connect clients to, from nutrition to massage therapy, as well as spa services.
Damon Hawkins
Ph: 800-768-2153
E: [email protected]
W: http://homefitpro.com/
Playing With Magnets
Many people may not realize that walking on concrete is more draining on the body than walking on bare earth, Hawkins said. This is because the Earth has a magnetic field, which energizes the human body but is also partly blocked by layers of concrete.
“The earth is a magnet itself, and the more concrete and steel between the earth and peoples’ feet, the less magnetic energy they receive. That’s why a lot of people have become weaker from a biological standpoint.
“Back in the day, people had more energy because there was nothing between the earth, the magnetic force, and people’s bodies.”
Wearing magnets can help people be more stable on their feet, improve circulation, and in some cases reduce pain.
Hawkins said his first “wow” product experience occurred when a friend at a gym showed him a stick with a couple spinning magnetic balls with short spikes (kind of like a medieval mace). The friend started spinning the balls and waving the stick around Hawkins’s body. After a short time, Hawkins felt the pain he'd been experiencing in his chest disappear.
Hawkins has been working with magnets for years and said while it’s still not known exactly how they work, he has seen them really improve the health of his clients. One client was experiencing the pins and needles, and numbness in her feet due to diabetes. Those symptoms disappeared after she started wearing magnetic insoles.
“I’ve seen such improvements in my clients because of these magnets. … Once it [a magnet] is on your body, [its energy] travels all around.”
He demonstrated the grounding power of the magnets by having me overlap my hands and hold them out at chest level. As soon as he pushed on them I became unbalanced, but when I either stepped on some magnetic insoles or wore a magnetic bracelet, my feet seemed like they were stuck to the ground. Even though my upper body swayed forward, my heels stayed planted.
After he waved the magnetic ball wand around me, I was able to easily twist my upper body about 10 degrees further than I could before he waved the wand.
Hawkins helps his clients choose from a variety of magnetic products from bracelets and necklaces, knee, elbow, and shoulder braces, insoles, showerheads that remove chlorine from water, and even a magnetic bed pad, which Hawkins and his family have used for years. He said that it helps deepen their sleep and wick toxins away from their bodies.
