How I became a personal trainer – Bryan

1. How did you find your path to personal trainers field?

It all started in my first professional volleyball team, when I was 16 years old (2002). We had a really good strength coach back then, and funny enough I always cared much more about the physical training than the volleyball training itself. I knew I wanted to work with training somehow, if possible in sports performance. Then in 2004 I worked with another great strength coach who was a Judo fighter, having been in 2 Olympic Games, and his passion for the work plus his personal approach to all athletes made me realise I could work with high performance but still have a very intimate touch with people. And that’s basically when I decided to go into this field once and for all. I started my studies back in 2008, which is when I got my very first certificate (nowadays I have over 20 from 3 different countries), but as I was still a professional volleyball player, I was working with trainings mainly during my vacations from the season. I only started working with personal trainings full time when I came to Estonia in 2013. Personal training became a natural path, since I’m very perfectionist in everything I do, so having more time to work closely with one person only definitely suits my personality better, and it allows me to implement all techniques and mindset I learned from high performance into that person’s life. Everybody can perform better, it’s all about careful planning and hard work with consistency.

2. The best schedule for a personal trainer-how do you manage everything in your work?

One of the greatest assets of being a PT is that we make our own schedule. So I make sure I can work as much as possible while still having time to do my own training (which is not negotiable under any circumstance), have time for my girlfriend, dogs (Yes, dogS. I have 3, and they are my world :D), my education (I try to read at least one new scientific article or finish a book every day. Usually I do the reading while doing my cardio after training), plus my other things, like creating content online for my website, Instagram and Youtube channel.

Usually I’ll do all that during weekends, together with planning the new training routines for the upcoming weeks. I prefer to start my days as early as possible (most days you can see me 6:30 am in the gym). That’s a way I can fit more personal trainings in my schedule, and also finish my day a bit earlier (sometimes), so I have time for all the other things going on. Luckily I’m used to waking up very early. Back in the volleyball player days I was a 7 am already in the volleyball court training hard with my teammates, so being in the gym 6:30 to train other is not an issue at all.

3. Your hobbies?

My main hobby is music. I play guitar, both electric and acoustic. That’s a passion I always nurtured without any deeper explanation, since nobody in my family is involved with music. From a very early age I wanted to learn an instrument, but my parents never bought me one, for financial reasons and also because in Brazil the vast majority of people doesn’t really have a musical culture in their families. Usually our musicians will be born from families of ohter musicians and keep passing on the legacy. Back in 2009 I saved some money and bought myself an acoustic guitar (the cheapest one I found) and started learning on my own. After 10 years already playing, I finally had the chance to hire a teacher, Brad Jurjens, who took me to a whole new level and now I’m working on my 2nd song already (the first one is uploaded in my YouTube channel Bryan Farani, for those curious to watch 🙂 )