Smart Fitness opens in Ocoee

IF YOU GO

SMART FITNESS

ADDRESS: 324 Moore Road, Ocoee

PHONE: (407) 877-4044

EMAIL: [email protected]

WEBSITE: GoSmartFitness.com

A long-standing economic principle has been, “It’s not how hard you work — it’s how smart you work.”

This is the mentality Smart Fitness — a new 1,600-square-foot personal training studio in Ocoee — is applying to workout routines.

“I don’t do pull-ups hardly ever,” Andrew Noble, certified personal trainer and owner of Smart Fitness, says. “Maintaining my strength and fitness with our program, I just did 18. … You maintain strength; you maintain fitness without even doing that move.”

Noble also says his workouts require no sweat — any plainclothes Jack or Jill can focus on strength-training through a series of machines and get a full-body workout every time.

 “You work out in your business clothes,” Noble says. “It’s 20 minutes, twice a week. You’re getting a safe result for shoulder, knee, hip, back injuries.”

Each workout consists of several Nautilus muscle-building strength training machines, based on the science of greater muscle mass leading to burning more fat all day, as opposed to just the workout time for cardio workouts. Within 12 weeks, a physiological change will lead to sticking with it long-term, Noble says.

Among those succeeding through Noble’s methods are a septuagenarian with hip and knee replacements and another who believes he is in better shape than when he was 25.

“The program can be tailored to suit everybody’s needs,” Noble says. “To figure out what your needs are, we’d have to sit down and talk — come in for a consultation and figure out what you specifically need, and then I can make a better recommendation. If our program doesn’t fit your needs, we’re going to tell you.

“Does that happen often?” he asks . “No, because we tailor the workout up, down, left, right to make it easier for someone who needs it to be or to make it harder for someone who needs it to be harder.”

Noble moved Smart Fitness July 6 into Plantation Grove Shopping Center and held his grand opening Sept. 10. Although 20 minutes seems soft on time, Noble’s goal is to make more of those minutes than a typical hour pumping iron.

“When you go to the gym and do three sets of 10, how many seconds do you think you’re actually in contraction while you’re doing that?” he asks. “We’ll say 45 to 60 on average during that five-minute exercise. Now we’re going to take three minutes and … contract three minutes, so it’s a guaranteed muscular contraction for each second you’re doing an exercise — there’s no downtime. … It’s effective; it’s focused … you’re in; you’re out; and you’re out of here.”

Part of the Smart Fitness focus is a seven-page form of health history, fitness information and minute lifestyle traits to better tailor the program to the trainee.

Noble’s instructions to a trainee using a leg press are just as pinpointed: feet in a proper starting position, knees straight over feet and parallel, no locking knees, push through the heels, breathe a lot through the mouth, keep arms loose at the side and even get out of the seat with a proper rotation of the legs.

Timing is what makes the workout, though.

“We lift and lower the weights in a (10 count) … because it increases safety and it maintains tension on the muscle,” Noble says. “Our goal is to fatigue around two minutes, 30 seconds. That tells the muscle how to get stronger. That tells the muscle it’s time to grow.”

With a detailed chart of what each pupil lifts in each three-minute session, he or she can avoid stagnancy.

“The one thing you have to consider in doing this program is you can’t be hard on yourself,” he says. “You’ve never done this before.”

And his biggest general fitness tip?

“Find something you can do regardless of how busy you are, because we’re all going to be busy,” he says. “If you can find one or two things that you enjoy or you know that you can fit in time-wise no matter what, you’ll do it.”