Read the Episode Transcript...

Naomi Nakamura: Hello, my friends and welcome back to The Live FAB Life Podcast, I'm your host Naomi Nakamura. And we are kicking off a brand new miniseries on fitness. And I have several episodes lined up for you on the different aspects of exercise and fitness from mindset to self-confidence to how to make time for it. Because I know that's a challenge a lot of us have and a whole lot more. We're going to approach it from many different aspects.

In today's episode, I'm joined by Martin Luna. And Martin is a personal trainer at Equinox. He specializes in calisthenics, animal flow, kettlebells, swimming, boxing, barbells, and weightlifting. And he happens to be my own personal trainer, and he has been for over a year and a half now.

So in this episode, you're going to hear us have a very candid conversation on how your mindset and your attitude influence your workouts, what to do when you feel stagnant in your training and in your workouts. And he even gives tactical tips that you can put into practice today on how to make your workouts more effective. And these are things that he's taught me, and he has me use in my own personal training sessions. And I personally attest to you that they do work, and they make things a whole lot more manageable and easier.

He shares so many other great insights, and you will hear why I like training with him, and I hope you enjoy hearing what he has to say as much as I do every week during our training sessions. So with that, let's get to the show. Hey there, welcome to the show.

Martin Luna: Hey, thanks for having me.

Naomi Nakamura: So why don't we start off by having you introduce yourself and telling the listeners who you are and what it is that you do?

Martin Luna: So I'm a personal trainer at Equinox. I've been training there for about three years. Before that, I was a swim coach at the OFJCC and then started my training career there. And then before that, I was a sailing and windsurfing instructor at a lake down in Mountain View right by the amphitheater, so ShoreLine Aquatic Park.

Naomi Nakamura: I didn't know that. And have you come to Foster City and done that in Foster City yet?

Martin Luna: I haven't, no, I really want to, though.

Naomi Nakamura: I've lived here for like 20 years, and I've never done it.

Martin Luna: Yay.

Naomi Nakamura: I know. So what made you decide to get into this line of work?

Martin Luna: I kind of fell into it out of necessity. I had just, or I was currently in school, I was going to school for business econ, and I was kind of leaving the JC Foothill at the time going down Foothill Expressway, making a turn on El Monte and on my motorcycle. And I slipped and fell because there was construction there and I was kind of bedridden for like six to eight weeks at 21 and that sucked really bad.

So I was just like, let me just press pause in school, let me take care of myself and just kind of rehabbed myself back and got back into shape and started boxing, hired a coach, fell in love with it. And yeah, that was kind of the turning point from business econ, a complete 180, to [inaudible 00:03:30].

Naomi Nakamura: So for listeners, he's my personal trainer, and I think I've been working with you for like a year and a half now.

Martin Luna: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Naomi Nakamura: And you offer such great insights while we're working out and there's different tips that you give me that I find really helpful. And just for context, it's been a while, but in the past, I worked with a personal trainer for 10 years. So it's not like I didn't know how to work out in the gym or I didn't know what to do. And there's a lot of times we know what to do, but you had a coach, I'm a coach. As a coach I have coaches. And just having that second set of eyes and those little insights that someone can provide can make the hugest difference in the world.

So I love all the things you share. I love your approach. I love your philosophy, and I just thought you have a lot, I think, that people could really benefit from learning from, so-

Martin Luna: Thank you.

Naomi Nakamura: A lot of my audience, they're women from the ages of late 20s to probably late 40s. And everyone has their apprehensions about starting a workout or coming back if you haven't done it in a while or even if you are doing it. I was talking to someone over the weekend, and she's a very accomplished runner who is going through a bit of overtraining and needed to step back and was trying to do other workouts and really felt challenged because even though she's someone who's a really fit person, it was going into an area where she wasn't familiar with.

So what are some of the common struggles that you see people have when it comes to exercise? And really it can be anything.

Martin Luna: Well, I think first things first is everyone has a different definition of success and just kind of asking yourself, "What do I want out of this?" Because ultimately it's about you and if you're not into it for the right reasons, then you know a lot of the times you're going to be unsuccessful.

So I think the first step is definitely asking yourself, "All right, what do I want out of this? Am I doing this for myself or am I doing this because social media says it's good for me? Or all my friends are doing this, and I want to be part of a team." So that's definitely one of the biggest struggles-

Naomi Nakamura: I think that's huge because when you and I went through this were when I started running over 10 years ago, I really enjoyed it. And then I started getting into races. Right? And you know when you're just running for the joy of it, you don't know if you're fast, you don't know if you're slow, you have no context. And then you start doing races, and then you start meeting other people who do it maybe through social media, and then you start to realize, "Oh, wait. Maybe I'm not as good as I thought I was." And it wasn't a matter that I thought I was good before. But then you have more context, and then when maybe the reason why you're doing it starts to shift that can rob you a little bit of the joy and the enjoyment of why you do it.

Martin Luna: Definitely, definitely. And you bring up a really great point. I think sometimes competition can push you to the next level for sure. But at the same time, at what cost? If you're competing for the sake of competing because you want to do it and you want to see where you are amongst others, we can definitely motivate ourselves by the people around us, who were around are a reflection of us. But just kind of going back to that having or being motivated by external factors is great but never losing sight of your roots and what you want out of it. Self-betterment for yourself rather than self-betterment for the sake of competition.

Naomi Nakamura: Even that competition with yourself can even be detrimental at times.

Martin Luna: Totally. Totally. And it's not always about chasing the PR, the personal record. It's more so the long game, right? Will I be able to do this for the rest of my life? And I think that's huge.

Naomi Nakamura: That is a very good challenge to point out right off the bat. Okay. What else do you see?

Martin Luna: Another one would be, or just to kind of piggyback off that one is just finding your path. Just building your own goal. Because ultimately if it's something that you enjoy or the best workout is the one that you enjoy and the one that you'll come back and continue to do. Goals can change and that's totally fine. But I guess this is really where you see a split, setting goals but sticking to them and creating a plan around them. So I have a goal, for example, to be on American Ninja Warrior. I tried out last year, sent my video, and I didn't get in. A year or two, I've been training really, really hard. I'm going to try to get in this year, compete at local competitions and then potentially get on the show.

That's one goal that I've had for two years or almost two years now that I still haven't got, but not swinging from that too soon. It's not like, "Oh, I didn't reach my goal first time round. Let me just give up now. Let me not go for this anymore. Let me switch paths." There's nothing wrong with switching paths, but there's also something really nice and beautiful about reaching your goal and a lot of the times it's not necessarily the end game but more so the development and the self-growth along the path to your goal.

Naomi Nakamura: And that makes me think a lot, at my old gym, my friends and I used to have a running joke that started the new year, and we're like, "Oh, it's time for the January joiners, but it's okay. We can suffer through the extra crowdedness because they'll be gone by March."

Martin Luna: Yeah, yeah. I forget where I read this and forgive me, I'm paraphrasing here. I think there's something to be said. I think after the first 28 days, you're either sticking with the new habit or it takes 28 days to build a new habit and if you're able to stick through it, then you're going to make it more of a habit versus the initial fall off. Like you said, after March, that's when a lot of people start dropping off.

Naomi Nakamura: And I think that to your point is to really hone in on your goal is what will keep you there past March.

Martin Luna: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Also, not falling on goals or not setting goals when everyone else's setting goals, set intermittent goals. This week I'm going to have one less soda than I did last week or this week I'm going to cut my TV time down by one day, so four out of the seven days or whatever it may be. Intermittent goals and doing it for the right reasons, I guess.

Naomi Nakamura: Yeah, I know for me, I think my goal is like, "Oh, can I get a workout in five days this week?" I think I used to be at the gym at 7:00 AM on a Saturday. And I was like, "Are you shocked to see me here? Because listen, folks, that has not happened in years," because I used to feel Saturdays were my long run days. If anything, I was outside running. So for me to be at the gym at 7:00 AM on a Saturday is quite frankly shocking.

Martin Luna: But that's the other thing too. A lot of people think working out, and they're like, "Oh, gym." It doesn't have to be gym. If you enjoy basketball, go ahead and go out to the court and play basketball or for you, you enjoy running and you're getting back into running, getting your workout in, outside, getting out in nature or again, doing what makes you happy and building a program or building training outside of your goal. I am a runner, but because I'm constantly running, I'm pushing, and I'm only moving in one plane. So for that reason, we do kettlebells because it's dynamic. Keeps my general fitness up all the while building my strength.

Naomi Nakamura: I know one thing that I used to be really, really stringent about was sticking to my training plan no matter what. Whether I was feeling terrible, whether I was injured, whether I was tired, whether I was super busy and had no time, I would not sacrifice that training time. And back to your point about keeping view of the long game that did not sustain me to be able to keep up that pace for five years, 10 years later.

And so now I really, I did sign up for half marathon that, let's be honest, is not happening, but I am allowing myself grace and not killing myself either physically or mentally and emotionally for that not happening, but yet I'm trying to be a lot more, I guess intuitive with my body. I'd be like, "Actually today, lifting some weights in the gym would sound really nice," or, "Going for a swim actually sounds like what my body needs." I'm still waiting for my body to tell me it needs a yoga class because you know that yoga and I have a love-hate relationship but it's about having that intuition and really being able to, I guess that's really what listening to your body's about.

Martin Luna: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Definitely. Taking a break from your... was it half marathon, right? Quite often in training programs, you'll have a plan and as a trainer and say, "Okay let's try our best to stick to this plan because articles and research proves that this is correct." But with that being said, everyone has extrinsic factors pulling in all directions. So you have to listen to what's going on in your everyday life as well as emotionally and mentally or sometimes even physically.

I also struggle with over-training, especially as a trainer. I'm around movement every day. And I go a little stir crazy when I don't get it, but quite often I've gotten injured, and that's a result of overtraining and not listening to my body enough because I'm always, "Oh, what can I add to make myself better? What can I do to take me a step further?" So I know for sure I need to do a little bit more of that because I'm one to just keep going and say like, "Oh, if I do a hundred more pushups, I'll be that much stronger." Or like, "Oh, if I can't do a hundred pushups, then let me do 200 squats. If I can't do 200 squats, let me do 300 sit-ups," or something stupid like that. That's the mindset that I have

Naomi Nakamura: And trust me, I have that too, but I think for me as I recognized a few months ago that my body was not necessarily ready for that half marathon training because as I did the training that my running coach had set forth I was like, "Oh, my hamstring hurts. Oh, my foot hurts." And all these little niggles kept coming up and it started to rob the joy of it where I had been in a place where I was really loving running again, and I thought, I'm going to do this half marathon and then try to make my body do more than it was capable of at the moment.

And it's not a matter of pushing yourself and going beast mode. It's like my body was literally not ready for that yet that I started to see the signs coming again. And that's when I was like, okay, I release the pressure of having to do this and the world will not end if it does not happen.

Martin Luna: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You bring up a really great point too, one, listening to your body and then, two, not pushing past that. I think another thing that's really important is in any workout program is having a de-load week. So three weeks of hardware, one week of mobility and maybe taking one or two extra days off. Not cutting all movement out together, but just having some time to give yourself a break. So when that fifth week comes, you can get back into it and say like, "Oh, I feel so much better. I'm really fast. I've given my body a chance to rest, I'm ready to keep going." And a lot of times I can kind of be more proactive rather than reactive, which sucks everyone, it sucks when you're injured.

Naomi Nakamura: That's one of the things that I really appreciated you shared because not a lot of people would come out and say it or not a lot of people would come out and see it quite frankly that because as athletes with the athletic mentality, you never want to be told, "Rest and don't do anything."

Martin Luna: Yeah.

Naomi Nakamura: So I feel like even a lot of trainers and coaches, they will kind of tip-toe around that fact because they don't want to mess with someone's psyche. But yet at the same time, those are the exact people that just need it to be told frankly.

Martin Luna: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Plus, I think since we were talking about training and just movement in general, going to the gym and working out and staying on a plan while it gets you stronger mentally and sometimes or physically and sometimes mentally as well. There's so many more other factors that create a well-rounded human being or a healthy human being. And talking to you, being a nutrition coach has definitely opened my eyes a little bit and this is making me focus on my own nutrition and sustainability, gut health and-

Naomi Nakamura: Sleep.

Martin Luna: Sleep, rest and regeneration.

Naomi Nakamura: Yeah.

Martin Luna: Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Naomi Nakamura: Any other common challenges you think are important to call out?

Martin Luna: The best advice I could give is consistency. Yes, taking a break but not taking a break for too long that you forget about your goal. If you really want something, try and do it constantly listening to others and getting influenced by everyone and everything around us. But getting back to your own root and ultimately you could have the most simple program and if you're consistent about it and your nutrition isn't all that bad, you'll see results from it.

Of course, there's certain things I can say that I think everyone should do, but ultimately just staying disciplined and staying consistent. For example, one of my clients wanted to lose 20 pounds, and we're now at that 15-pound mark out of those 20. So we were at 175, and we're now at one 60. And I think one of the things that people forget is asking yourself, "Okay, how long did it take for me to get to 175?" Oh, it took three to five years. It's not going to happen overnight.

Yes, we can do programs where it's shocking our Blitzkrieg where we're just hitting it hard, and you're losing weight really, really fast, but is it sustainable? Consistency and sustainability should be treated equally. If you're consistent that's great, but not if that's taking away from your sustainability or if you feel like you're to sustainable or you're not seeing any progress, maybe it's time to ramp it up a little bit or just kind of ask yourself like, "Oh, what can I do to make this better?"

Naomi Nakamura: Yeah. And I think a little bit on the opposite of that if you are not seeing results to maybe try something different or ramp it up, but if you're, say, on your an advanced program or something and you're consistently seeing setbacks with injuries or fatigue or something, maybe switch it down to be something that's a little bit more simpler, but yet you can still do that and still maintain consistency.

Martin Luna: Yeah, definitely. I think that's a great point for sure.

Naomi Nakamura: During our sessions, you always have a lot of really interesting but effective tips that I've never thought of before.

Martin Luna: Like what?

Naomi Nakamura: Like the whole thing about your vision.

Martin Luna: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Naomi Nakamura: Can you share that with us?

Martin Luna: Yeah. I haven't taken the course yet, but one of the courses that I want to take next is Z-Health, one of my best friends, mickey is a Z-Health trainer and one of the smartest people I know.

Naomi Nakamura: What is Z-Health?

Martin Luna: Z-Health is... If there's anyone out there listening that already knows Z-Health probably don't do as good an analysis of what it is exactly. But essentially it's a neurological perspective and training yourself neurologically besides just physically or biomechanically. And when I say biomechanically is sets and reps, simple mobility and all that good stuff. And so vision is a big deal. If we can spot or reference something while we're doing an exercise that'll vastly increase your success rate.

And now that I'm doing tricking, that's one of the biggest things, tracking, being able to stay focused when you're doing something very dynamic or when you're doing something static and just having a reference point or being able to change your gaze to either assist or kind of help relax you into more range of motion or just less resistance during an exercise too, there's a lot to be said about threat and non-threat just with vision, and I'm just scratching the surface there. I'm not a Z-Health trainer, but I can't wait to take the course and just build my toolbox that much more.

Naomi Nakamura: Well, it's interesting because I definitely had that theory of using vision helped me in the yoga class and believe as much as they don't like yoga. I have taken yoga extensively in the past and it did help me with a lot of yoga pillows, but I've never heard anyone bring that conversation into the gym floor anywhere else.

Do you remember what exercises we were doing where you had me do that and it really made a difference?

Martin Luna: Yeah. So we were doing, well, vision and breathing.

Naomi Nakamura: Yes. That was the other one is breathing is huge because I know when I'm doing something that I'm already nervous to do it or I know it's going to be challenging like pushups. But the whole breathing thing just makes the whole movement flow so much easier and less stressful because as I tell you, a lot of the times as you're having to go through exercises, and I'm like, "Gosh, there's so much to think about." And I'm sweating profusely because the exercise may not be all that difficult, but there's so many things I'm trying to think about, keep this straight, bring this elbow out and do all these things that it's taxing

Martin Luna: For sure. Yeah. Oh, well, we've done that with a couple of different things; with breathing, we've done squats, we've done single-leg RDL, so Romanian deadlifts very similar to a warrior three with the vision drills. We haven't done rock string just yet we will, but I think we were doing simply torso rotation. So very similar to an oblique twist. But the difference was I had you look before you rotate or rotate to an end range, then close your left eye and then close your right eye, and seeing if you could rotate a little bit more simply by changing or closing one eye and then closing the other. Eye dominance is huge. One of the things that I didn't know until I had my own vision tested is that I have 20/15 eyesight on my right, but 20/20 on my left.

So if I'm trying to look at something far off in the distance, subconsciously I'll close my left eye and really just focus on my right. But what that does is it makes me tilt my head and therefore rotate my shoulders, and I'm focusing on one eye and just not using my left eye enough. Then it's throwing off the rest of my movement. Being able to address your strengths and weaknesses and being able to just build on that once the issue has been addressed. And that I would say brings me to another point like assessing and reassessing. And that doesn't necessarily always have to be hopping on the scale or checking circumference, testing. While I think those are great tools to use, not all tools work the same and simple assess and reassess or test and retest can be squat and then squat to the bottom or squat to 90 degrees.

Take an inhale and then exhale and maybe see if you can go a little bit further. And again, just trying to get past that threat and make it non-threatening because we can just hold onto tension by our breathing and not being able to breathe.

Naomi Nakamura: And you've heard me do that a lot and it really isn't [inaudible 00:22:57].

Martin Luna: It works. It's a great tool.

Naomi Nakamura: It does.

Martin Luna: So breathing, vision is huge, but definitely talk to someone who knows about this because there's a lot of things that you can do that can actually make you worse too. So finding someone that actually knows their stuff and as practice and has not only practiced on others but practiced on themselves. So finding someone that's pulled them integrity and it's not just BSing you. One of the things that I hate to see is someone can be really good at selling but not necessarily be in it for the right reasons.

You know what I mean? I have quite a few clients, but with each client it's I'm talking to the individual I'm not just trying to give them a cookie-cutter program and say, "This is what you're going to do." Literally, tailoring to the individual and customizing things around them. Because again, everyone's different. Everyone has different size extremities and your squat can look different than my squat, but that doesn't mean that they're wrong. If you're looking for a trainer and make sure that, one, you get along with the trainer because if you don't get along with them you guys aren't going to last very long. And then, two, being real with them. Because everyone wants to talk to someone real and not be fed a bunch of BS for the sake of being.

Naomi Nakamura: I think I did a podcast episode last year sometime about that topic. And I think what it really comes down to is communication. Because if you're someone who's new to the gym or you've never worked with a personal trainer before, it can be very intimidating and you may not even know what to ask. And like I said, I've done this before. So I remember when I knew that going in that I needed to find somebody that had about this kind of similar philosophy to me.

And I remember emailing the manager saying, this is what I've done, this is what I'm looking for. And because he saw that I had said that I was running, he was like, "Oh, let me put you with this person because he doesn't want a long-distance running." I had to come back and say, "No, no, I actually overtrained from running, I'm trying to get overtraining. And this is what I'm looking for now."

And once I said that because had I not said that he wouldn't have known, he reassessed, and then he recommended you to me. And that's kind of how we ended up together. But it's really important again, and I talk about this a lot in many different scenarios on this show, is to not be afraid to use your voice. Don't be intimidated, speak up, ask questions because that's how you're going to get what you want, which is ultimately going to be better for you in the long run.

Martin Luna: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think that's a great point. I think not enough people are willing to speak up and sometimes, for example, if you're overweight or you have an injury or just maybe you're underway and have never trained before, it can be kind of scary and asking for help is scary.

Naomi Nakamura: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Martin Luna: And I think sometimes the generation, which we live in now, or how society has shaped us, it's a lot about me, me, me, and like, "Oh, I can do it by myself. Oh, I don't need any help." Sure you may be able to figure it out yourself, but how much faster will you learn? Or how much more efficient will you be if you just get a little bit of help? And so I think that's, that's huge.

Naomi Nakamura: Exactly. Exactly. I want to go back to breathing for a little bit because we didn't touch-

Martin Luna: Sure, sure.

Naomi Nakamura: ... about it, but it really does make a huge difference in what you said about releasing tension and just making a movement much more effective. Can you talk a little bit more about breathing?

Martin Luna: I'm going to press pause on breathing, but I want to circle back to it. There's something to be said about mobility and stability. And I'll also like to make a distinction between mobility and flexibility. So flexibility is getting into position and being able to be in that position, ideally without pain. For example-

Naomi Nakamura: Yoga.

Martin Luna: Yoga or the splits, for example. Maybe you can get into the splits in yoga, right? And like wow, that's really impressive. But the way you're getting into it is or can be passive and you want to think about definitely increasing your passive range of motion but at the same time starting to work on your mobility, and the difference between flexibility and mobility is being able to control that flexibility. So being able to do the splits in yoga versus being able to hold this splits as if you're kicking someone, which one is harder obviously holding it in a kicking position and that's, I think, a big or something to distinguish the two. Can you control that flexibility? Are you able to get into that position on your own using strength and your levers and the pulleys in your body versus just, "Oh, let me just get into this position, stretch myself out and then get out of it"?

People should work on their flexibility but not at the cost of losing your mobility. And sometimes the step to taking your mobility to the next level is by adding stability. And what I mean by that is maybe if you can't get into a deep squat, it's because your hips aren't strong enough to stay neutral, to allow you to descend a little bit farther down. And I think that's a really great place to tie in breathing. If we're holding our breath potentially we could be rounding our back and if we're rounding our back we can get into a neutral squat.

And what I mean by neutral squat is think of your hips as a cup of water, right? We don't want the cup of water to tilt too far forward or too far back. That's where injuries can happen and that's where stability comes into play. Strengthening your hips in the areas around them to be able to descend a little bit lower without rounding your pelvis or tucking your pelvis in or anteriorly tilting your pelvis. And I think breathing is a great tool for that because it can take us from being super tense to learning to relax and say, "Oh, I don't need to work this hard to get down this level."

Naomi Nakamura: Yeah. When you tell me to do something, and I'm like, "Ah, there's no way I'm going to be able to do it." And then you walk me through it and you're like, "This is the breathing for it." And then as I do it I realized like, "Oh that actually wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be."

Martin Luna: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I also think, I mean I take yoga pretty religiously two to three times a week, but one of the things that my teacher tells me is let your breath guide you, do everything with breathing. If you're not breathing, then your chance of success are going to be a lot less high than if you were breathing.

Naomi Nakamura: Absolutely. And I think I just want to close with this discussion, and I'm going to be honest, I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this, but we a bit of a discussion about mentality and the mindset that you bring into the gym. And I know we talked about that a little bit earlier, but what would you say is, I guess what are your thoughts on that?

Martin Luna: Believing in yourself, being able to give yourself a challenge and not have that challenge scare you just a little bit, but going forward anyway. Again, just going back to what we've talked about, trying for the right reasons. And I guess I would say just having a positive outview versus having a negative outview coming in and saying, "Oh, no, I want this. Let me do this because I want this. Let me better myself for myself versus, "Ah, this sucks. This terrible. I hate this so much." If you're just kind of high fasting something, then you're not going to get the results you want. You know what I mean? If you really want something then go for it 100%. Don't be afraid of what everyone else tells you. Just stick to it be consistent, have that discipline.

Naomi Nakamura: And your words matter, [crosstalk 00:30:44] the words you say out loud or the words you tell yourself, you say it often enough and it becomes your reality. So be very mindful of the words that you say internally and externally as well.

Martin Luna: For sure. For sure.

Naomi Nakamura: Well, where can listeners connect with you? I know you're pretty active on Instagram, right?

Martin Luna: I'm getting better at Instagram. I wouldn't say I'm pretty active on Instagram, but I need to post more. But yeah, I'm on Instagram. Check me out. Hopefully, I'll be on American Ninja Warrior next season.

Naomi Nakamura: What's your handle?

Martin Luna: It's martino_luna, M-A-R-T-I-N-O_luna.

Naomi Nakamura: I will have a link to that in the show notes.

Martin Luna: Oh, cool.

Naomi Nakamura: Well, thank you so much for taking the time. I really-

Martin Luna: Yeah, thanks for having me.