Alright everyone strap your seat belts on and get ready for my first official interview.
This first interview is actually one of three that I conducted over the last couple of weeks and I want to personally than Donnie Raymond for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer these questions.
These are 3 questions that I felt people would like to know more about and Donnie came through for me with some unique answers. This guy is honestly one of the most intellegent and well read people that I know so I know you’re going to love this.
Stay tuned for Interview 2 of 3 when I go in depth with one of Maryland’s most well rounded Strength Coaches Thomas Strong.
Enjoy!
INTERVIEW #1
Donnie Raimon, owner of Elite Health & Performance (www.elitehealthperformance.com). Donnie is a 15 year veteran of the U.S. Navy SEAL, Athletic performance specialist with emphasis on injury recovery and prevention. Donnie also works with multitudes of Professional, Olympic, Collegiate, and amateur athletes.
Question #1
What is the state of the industry in your opinion right now? Where did we go wrong and how do we fix it?
In my opinion, our industry hit rock bottom about 3 years ago, but is making a slow but steady climb. There so much contradictory information being spread around by unqualified people trying to get rich off of gimmicks the public has stopped trusts us. The public is fed up, and they are doing their own research instead of trusting these quacks. I believe it all went wrong when the pharmaceutical and insurance companies got involved with the fitness industry. The current system is based on “Sick Care” not “Health Care”. There is virtually nothing in our current system to keep people healthy and this problem trickles all the way down to the personal training industry. Health clubs are now full of machines instead of free weights, because the clubs insurance policy won’t cover them if a client gets hurt squatting or deadllifting. Seem’s they think it’s more cost effective to buy machines, than it is to give the trainer more education than his/her weekend correspondence course provides. As far as a fix I think we just keep spreading the truth, and making people healthy. When there are enough of us doing it, hopefully it will become mainstream and the population will start demanding more from everyone in the industry.
Question #2
Are there any significant differences in the way you train male and female clients? Please explain.

I don’t have any significantly different training protocols for women. Every client is different, so it depends on the individual. I have a few women at my gym that put the men to shame. The only training adjustments are during the premenstrual cycle when the hormone relaxin can be present in a female’s blood stream. It is not as prevalent as during pregnancy, but can be there nonetheless. This hormone tends to “relax” their ligaments so end range of motion and ballistic training is very closely monitored.
Question #3
If you had 12 weeks to get a women leaned down for her wedding day, how would you accomplish the task? Exercise selection? Loading Parameters? Rep schemes? Cardio? Nutrition? Supplementation? etc…
12 weeks is not a lot of time to healthily lean someone down. It is possible, but not ideal. The exercise selection would depend on how the client reacts to the load. Some women will respond very quickly to high repetition light loads, and some respond to heavy loads with fewer repetitions. That’s our job to figure out. I’m not a big fan of cardio. Overdone, which it usually is, will raise the cortisol levels too high and cause fat storage. It’s also not such a great return for the effort. The metabolism stays elevated for 4 to 6 hours after a weight training session as opposed to an immediate return to the resting rate after a cardio session. The diet would be cleaned up with the obvious elimination of processed and junk foods. I don’t recommend supplementation, unless there is some evidence of a deficiency. We don’t try to fool Mother Nature here.
Donnie can be reached on the web at www.EliteHealthPerformance.com or by phone (305) 531-4803.