Monday, August 28, 2000
Actor changes career to personal trainer
By Christine Oliva
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Robert Kramer recently opened a gym in Madeira.
(Michael Snyder photo)
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Robert Kramer went to New York to be a star and came home training them. In the gym, that is.
The 26-year-old Fort Mitchell native is now a personal trainer. And after a three-year stint in the Big Apple working with such celebrities as singer Carly Simon and actor Jay Mohr, he's back in Cincinnati for a while. He recently opened his own studio in Madeira, Robert Kramer Personal Fitness.
In an interview with The Enquirer's Christine Oliva, Mr. Kramer chats about his return, his new studio and his philosophy on exercise.
Question: You went to New York to pursue a career in theater and ended up as a personal trainer. What happened?
Answer: After about two months in New York, I rediscovered how burned out I was on acting. And the one thing I'd always done since I was about 16 was work out. A friend of mine was a personal trainer and I always saw her down at the gym. She looked like she was having a great time and that was her full-time job. I never really even thought about that as a career until I started talking to her one day.
Q: How did you build your client base?
A: My second client was Carly Simon's husband. Next thing I knew I had all these referrals from people. I was working 40 hours a week — it was my full-time job. As I got more serious about it, I began to get more and more certifications to try to better my knowledge. Now I have about everything I could possibly get.
Q: What prompted you to come home to Cincinnati?
A: I always knew that New York was temporary. I decided it was time to come home and do my own thing with this gym. I wanted something private and very upscale — as far away from that sweaty hole-in-the-wall gym as possible. It doesn't take too long to figure out that we've put some effort into the design of the gym to present a first-class operation. Everything is as meticulous as possible.
Q: Isn't that expensive?
A: The going rate for personal trainers in a normal fitness facility is pretty similar to what we charge here. The difference is that here there are no membership fees. If you're somebody who wants to go work out in a gym on your own and then use a personal trainer every once in a while, then this is not the place for you. But if you strictly want to use a personal trainer and come in on your own and do the cardio, this is probably even a better deal financially than in a gym.
Q: What about the people who don't have the time or money to belong to a gym, let alone a personal trainer?
A: The goal should be to get more people active. You can get started right now. You don't have to worry about finances — just start moving. It can be as simple as walking 30 minutes a day, four days a week. There are a lot of exercises you can do around your house — things like walking lunges, push ups and various forms of crunches. With a little bit of creativity and a little knowledge of exercise, you can design a pretty complete program with very limited equipment, in most cases none at all.
Q: What do you do during your workouts?
A: When I was younger I really got into body building. But now I'm a lot more balanced. I do strength training probably four days a week, as well as cardiovascular four or five days per week. Generally I work out about an hour to an hour and 20 minutes a day. The last thing I want to do is get burned out.
Q: What advice do you give your clients to help prevent that?
A: I always stress moderation when they first start to try to establish those long-term patterns. I would much rather have someone come to me and work out two or three days per week for the next 10 years or the rest of their lives than have them come and work out five days per week, have great progress and then get so burned out after five months that they never want to see a gym again.
Q: Who benefits the most from such a routine?
A: I've worked with clients as old as 80 and as young as 11. There are a lot of myths about who can and who can't work out. Most of the activity that older people do in an average day — picking up groceries, bending over, sitting down — these are weight-training in nature. They may have a slightly different routine, but they can increase their strength dramatically.
Q: What's the best way for a woman to lose weight without bulking up?
A: Strength training is the only way to raise your resting metabolic rate. The little bit of lean muscle that women gain will help burn that body fat. Men get bigger muscles than women because of hormone levels, primarily testosterone. Women have testosterone, but much lower levels. They don't have to worry about accidentally looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's just not going to happen.
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