KBuddah Interview

Meet your Tour Guide

Please meet Khris Argue, my personal trainer, your tour guide for health and wellness. Khris compares being a good trainer to being a good tour guide. If you have a bad tour guide, the city can be wonderful, but your experience might not be so great. When you have a great tour guide, you find yourself cared for. You may keep waiting for the grand finale, but it never comes. Instead, you end up thinking that this tour just keeps getting better and better. The guide cares about you and wants your experience to be fantastic. He may even be able to pull a few strings and get you into some special exhibits or events going on. The guide is always thinking about you. You aren't just a number and it's not just a job. You are a person. The guide doesn't ever want to think, "Did I let this one down?"

KBuddah Background

Khris is a certified personal trainer, but his unofficial certification began when he was about 8 years old through experience. He watched, observed and learned from his family members. He observed obesity and alcoholism along with excuses and a lack of awareness.According to Khris, he learned that he didn't want love; love came with stipulations and rules. That's where we get the idea of unconditional/conditional love. He wanted compassion. Compassion he saw in his grandmother and other women in his life: compassionate beings manipulated by what they thought was love. As a kid he got the feeling that something just wasn't right about many things. As kids, you were told "because I said so". He learned to ask why. If you don't ask why you can't find other options, alternatives. The why makes you think. Creates awareness.In the neighborhood there were corner stores, chicken shacks and other unhealthy things. He wanted to find out what other options there were. He ventured out. Did his own research. Started to ask the right questions. Khris talked quite a bit about options and awareness. If people are aware of all of the options and choose to make bad decisions, then that's their choice--that's poor character.But he wants to make sure that people have some awareness of the good options so they aren't just making bad decisions because they have no guidance or knowledge and the bad is the only option they have.

Helping Hand

Figuring out your why allows you to be calm and accept the helping hand of the trainer. Khris talked about how many clients come in bullying themselves under the guise of "admitting" their faults and that makes it harder for the trainer.Just saying you're fat or weak or old or just have to live with the pain--making those A.A. type statements--doesn't get you anywhere.You need to decide what you want. Do you want to lose weight? To be healthier? To get stronger? To look better? To make your back feel better? To lower your cholesterol? Your A1C?Vanity and health are perfectly valid reasons to want to workout. The trainer wants to help you and once you accept what you want rather than continue to bully yourself and reject the help, you can be calm and work together.It's not the trainer's job to just tell you what to do; that's a common misconception. You're there to work together. You are part of the process. You're taking the tour.

Passion and Persistence

When you speak to Khris, you feel his passion and persistence. He has a confidence that benefits the client. He told me that he feels like with the right amount of time and energy, he can fix it all. He can't allow people to fail. He can't allow excuses.It becomes a science project to him. He listens, observes, analyzes, visualizes. He cares. He said if a trainer isn't exhausting all options for you, that's a limitation on your health and you are not a priority, you are a number. It's a big deal that you are trusting him with your body. You shouldn't just believe in your trainer, your trainer should believe in you. Another misconception is that a trainer should be a drill sergeant.It shouldn't be a love/hate relationship. You shouldn't feel like you love the results, but you hate being there. Or you love the idea of it, but you hate the work. You should love what's going on. The happy feeling should be contagious. It may look confusing from the outside. Khris says some people find him intimidating when they observe him from the outside. They see how hard the clients are working and then they also see the high fives and hugs and wonder how the two mesh. But they do. He says he's the opposite of intimidating. He just accepts no excuses. He describes his style as passionate, quiet and engaging.

Change Your Mindset

Khris's motto comes into play with many of the topics that come up during a conversation about personal training. Changing your mindset comes into play with the idea of health and wellness itself. He says we've gotten away from the idea of feeling and abilities in favor of image as we've glamorized fitness.Clients often have to change the way they view things as he teaches them to look at their accomplishments over the numbers on the scale. For example, when a client was disappointed about losing only 10 pounds, he asked her if she remembered when she couldn't do a certain number of push-ups or when certain things were more difficult, or when she didn't have as much energy, etc.He asked her if she would trade those 10 pounds back for the growth in those exercises, and her energy, etc. Khris says he likes to use those types of analogies to help his clients become more aware. He likes to strip things away and watch his clients as they start to see things become clearer, nod and tell him, yes, that makes sense. You can't always just tell people things and have them understand. They have to get to a point where it makes sense to them.Khris's clients usually bring up diet on their own. They start to see that if they cut corners with their diet they are only hurting themselves the same way they hurt themselves if they cut corners with their workouts. They are ready then to receive some guidance and information that can help them.

Successful Clients

Khris couldn't think of one or two words to describe what his successful clients had in common, but I think he did a great job at using lots of words. He said they have a common energy or aura. They are genuine and passionate. They come in with their eyes open and mouths closed and with an open heart.They have their guards down, they are attentive, and are ready to receive. They've seen it all and are very accepting, They are like, let's try it. He said there isn't just one word in the English language to describe that kind of trust.

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