GRAVITY TRAINER PROFILE: JEREMY HOVAN.
Saturday, June 25, 2011 at 11:59AM 
“I often tell my clients, if you treat fitness as an option in your life, your very life will then become an option without fitness, and I wouldn’t take those odds,” said Jeremy Hovan, certified personal trainer and owner of Bravo Fitness in Los Angeles, CA.
Jeremy’s Bravo Fitness offers strength conditioning, functional/core training, and balance and agility work for all fitness levels. Jeremy’s clients range from those with zero experience doing resistance training, to competitive NCAA athletes and those with health issues, ranging from carpal tunnel to rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis.
Throughout Jeremy’s 20-year exercise career, he’s naturally progressed to advocating bodyweight and core training as his premier exercise methods. He says these modalities fall right into his current understanding that core training should be the “core-nerstone” of every client’s fitness regimen.
Grasping the concept of GRAVITY
“GRAVITY training [on Total Gym] provides that core-nerstone for total body fitness,” said Jeremy, who received his GRAVITYGroup certificate this February.
Jeremy is well aware of the great challenge, but equally great benefits, of moving and controlling one’s own bodyweight. He appreciates the unique benefit of dynamic instability that Total Gym provides by requiring users to recruit core control to balance on the free-rolling glideboard.
“It’s always interesting to see how people respond to the challenge of exercising using their own bodyweight, even if it’s only a portion of it,” said Jeremy. “It’s a true barometer of how strong (or how deficient) we are in certain parts of our body.”
Jeremy currently teaches GRAVITYGroup classes at the Ketchum-Downtown and Hollywood-Wilshire YMCAs in Los Angeles. Each facility offers separate studio space for GRAVITY Training.
“GRAVITY has definitely assisted in involving, increasing and retaining more members at these facilities,” said Jeremy. “It is by far one of the most popular classes offered.”
At both YMCA facilities, the GRAVITY classes (GRAVITY Strength, GRAVITY Pilates and GRAVITY Boot Camps) attract men and women 18 to 80 years old and from all fitness backgrounds.
“I’ve personally subbed for GRAVITYPilates [classes] by teaching GRAVITYStrength and received good feedback from those that appreciated the new and different challenge offered by the difference in the two routines,” says Jeremy.
Jeremy adds that core training on Total Gym provides a visual cue that helps trainers focus on clients’ weaker areas. This helps bring their total body into a balance, which translates to all areas of their lives, adds Jeremy.
Many weight machines force the body into one plane of motion and don’t allow the body to balance and compensate with stabilizing muscles as it would with a more natural method, he says. These machines can compress your spine and, with no option for your body to compensate, it’s very easy for a disc or vertebrae to be thrown out of whack. GRAVITY training safely moves clients through all three planes of motion on Total Gym. Jeremy says his clients benefit from true functional training and a greater range of motion.
“I work every day with fitness-seekers on functional exercise so that they can participate in life on an entirely different level,” said Jeremy. “I must be credible so that my clients can become incredible … and GRAVITY has become a large part of my functional training regimen.”
HAVE A STRONG DAY.
Photo credit: Charles Imstepf/IMSTEPF studios LLC