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Photo: Jonathan Gibbs Eddie Antone-Boyd, back, aligns the lifting form of Warwick's Tom Faiola at Workout World in Warwick. By JONATHAN GIBBS
Man’s battle to shed weight and attain a perfectly-proportioned body probably goes back to ancient campfires, where our ancestors’ taste buds compelled them to chow down that one extra Mastodon leg or grab that one bonus handful of grubs. The balance between eating enough to power our bodies through their daily chores and eating more than what is necessary to provide that energy has resulted in ill-fitting bear skins, togas and designer dresses. It has powered countless industries dedicated to getting unwanted pounds off by weight loss pills, powders, programs and countless devices, all of which are shilled in the backs of magazines and over the airwaves as being the One True Way to look good while eating well and exerting as little as possible.
It doesn’t work that way.
There is really only one way to have a fit body, and that is by balancing good nutrition with sensible, varied exercise program.
This being said, I decided to take my aging, gooey 55-year-old body to a place and a person who could help me get on track to get back to an approximation of what I used to be. There have been a number of state-wide YMCA and ShapeRI programs springing up in anticipation of springtime, but I decided against those sort of group efforts. I don’t like people all that much and didn’t want to have to slap palms with some other chubby buddy every time one of us managed to lose a millimeter off our waistline or squeeze out one more pushup.
So I took myself to a gym, WOW in Warwick, and after asking around for the best available trainer at a reasonable price, sought out a personal trainer based there, a man named Eddie Antone-Boyd of Professional Fitness. I didn’t tell them I worked for a newspaper and therefore didn’t get one of those sleazy deals where I would get a fiscal break in return for a nice article about how great they are. I didn’t want to be locked in to something, and knew the value of any of the ensuing description of that kind of experience would have been compromised and co-opted. The reason for writing anything about the experience would have to be about my own vanity, not about being beholden to anyone. The article, if it came to be, would be about satisfying my curiousity about taking my personal fitness to this heightened level.
During my first meeting with Antone-Boyd, we sat at a table surrounded by gleaming white machines strung with pulleys attached to chunks of rectangular weights with green pads for sitting and leveraging the opposite of whatever part of your body the machine is intended to work. Muted clanking sounds mix with the music being piped through the vast room. It’s a family gym so the music piped through the vast room tends toward the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac variety. The clientele is pretty low-key about such a high-octane endeavor. Antone-Boyd asks me about my medical history to make sure my ambition for virility doesn’t exceed my capacity to stay alive while attaining it. In the process, we size each other up with some small talk. Eddie is in his thirties, obviously solid, and laid-back in nature. I find out shortly that doesn’t mean he won’t push me to push myself into a better workout. After I answer his questions about what I want to accomplish with a workout regimen, he sends me off to the elliptical trainer.
“I want you to do 20 minutes at a good pace, and then I’ll come get you,” he says. He explains it takes that much time of cardio exercise before your body begins to burn off fat. I hit the 20 minute mark and hope Antone-Boyd notices how hard I was working. I have drenched a shirt and gone almost two miles while traveling nowhere. I feel empowered with the knowledge by everything I do from now on will be burning fat. Goodbye, bad flab.
“Okay,” he says, a slight grin acknowledging he knows how proud of myself I am. “I want you to do some pullups.” I do what he asks, already not wanting to let him down. He positions my arms, sets the counterbalancing weights on the front of the machine so that I can actually do more than the standard girly-boy four or five reps, and says,”give me 12. All the way up so your chin goes over the bar.”
We finish the chin-ups and he takes me through a series of bicep curls, tricep dips, back machine reverse situps and sitting chest presses. It probably would not be fair to repeat every piece of advice he had for the exercises and why he was making me do them the way he was telling me to. He watches closely as I run through each exercise, tilting an elbow angle here and adjusting my grip there. “I want you to maximum results from everything you do during every exercise,” he says later. “That’s what separates those who are in here just as a pastime and those who actually feel better, look better and have the results you’re looking for _– a better all around way of life.”
Toward that end Antone-Boyd offers a wealth of advice on what to eat, not eat and drink and when to eat and drink them. To summarize: fast food, fried food, large portions are all out, and smaller portions consumed more often with a sensible, balanced mix of protein, carbohydrate and vegetables are all in. He stays away from supplements other than protein drinks after a workout and doesn’t advocate for anyone else to do what he doesn’t do himself. “I’m all about eating real food and I think that’s all you need, really,” he says. “And if you do take anything, it should be herbal and natural, not some stuff made up in a lab you don’t know anything about.”
As we move on through several more sessions over the next several weeks, I find I have definitely made changes in my workout, both in attitude and in the methodology I employ during each one. It’s more balanced and more economical in terms of how I apply my time and my exertions. “You have to do a well-rounded group of workouts that use everything if you really want to be in shape for life,” Antone-Boyd says. “You have to do cardio to get your metabolism going and your heart rate up. And everybody wants to work those muscles that show: Your biceps and chest; but you have to balance the chest exercises with the corresponding muscle groups in the back just like you do with the tricep muscles opposite your biceps. And a lot of people ignore the legs because those are hard exercises and working them doesn’t really show as much. But they are the biggest muscles in your body, so that’s where your body burns the most fat to make lean muscles.”
Antone-Boyd loves what he does as a trainer, and he also offers a variety of aerobic, kettle bell and abdominal classes at WOW. My initial fear during a class was that I wouldn’t keep up, but his pacing allows for a group of people in varying degrees of physical shape to push themselves as hard as they can without anyone failing. I wasn’t as adept as some, but I did about three-fourths of every exercise. “My job is to get you to focus on what you can do and give you ways to improve that,” says Antone-Boyd. “I consider myself an architect of every body that comes to me as a trainer or to one of my classes. I’m good at what I do because I really like people and I love what I do.”
Eddie Antone-Boyd can be reached at WOW in Warwick, at 739-2107.
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