Hugh Zhang

My name is Hugh Zhang. I have played sports my entire life for as long as I can remember. I have played tennis, volleyball, basketball, and have done muay thai and boxing. As of 3 years ago, I began bodybuilding which is now my current passion. I believe that fitness looks different to everyone and one of my goals with training is to get a true and deep understanding of the goals of each of my clients in order to find the best way to help them achieve their goals. My current aspiration is to open my own gym where I can continue to help people achieve their health and fitness goals. In terms of my training experience, it began when I was an undergraduate while at UCSB. I worked as a Strength and Conditioning intern trainer and coach for the collegiate club athletes. This involved training several different themes, including rumen’s rugby, men’s and women’s soccer, men’s and women’s tennis, women’s volleyball, cheer, and men’s and women’s fencing. This involved creating programs for the different points of the season of each team, whether it was optimizing physical performance and growth during off season or maintaining performance during regular season and post season. This was a valuable experience to me as I was able to work with a variety of different athletes and understand how to create very specific programs. Afterwards, I worked as a physical therapy aide as well. I believe this was valuable to my arsenal of training tools as I was able to learn how to work with again a variety of individuals, this times those with injuries. This experience helped me learn how to taking individuals through exercises while being aware of their injuries. It also helped me learn how difficult it could be for people recovering from an injury. I think I really learned how to empathize with those who are recovering from injuries. My most recent experience has been working as a personal trainer at Equinox. This experience was valuable as each program we made for individuals was very specific and tailored. We would always start with a one hour evaluation with the clients where we were able to learn about their goals as well as their fitness backgrounds. We would also take them through a fitness assessment to discover any imbalances or injuries to be aware of while creating a training program. We would then create a program specifically tailored to each individual that we work with. This allowed me to work with a variety of individuals and really fine tune my programs.

My training philosophy is to gain a true understanding of my patient and their goals in order to find the best way to motivate them and create habits that last.

A typical training session will vary depending on the client’s specific goals. However, for the most part each session will begin with a 5 to 10 minute warm up to help get the muscles primed and to prevent injury. Depending on the goals, there will then be a 50 minute strength workout or 40 minute strength workout with 10 minutes of cardio or a 30 minute workout with 20 minutes of functional or HIIT training.

Out of all my client success stories, I have two favorites. One from an individual client and another for a team. In regards to the individual client, I worked with a celebrity who wanted to be in shape for a photoshoot that she had. We had 10 sessions and approximately four weeks to get her into the condition that she wanted to be in. After our initial evaluation, I was able to get a clear sense of goals and work with her to get her into the shape that she wanted to be in. It ended of going really well and the photoshoot went amazing. She had very specific goals and we were able to constantly communicate any changes in these goals to update them. In terms of my team goals, it was with women’s volleyball. During off season, one of the greatest goals we had for the team was to increase all of their vertical jump heights. During their post season, I worked on creating a specific program for their off-season designed for this goal. After 12 weeks of their off-season we retested all of the players’ vertical jumps and compared it to the previous results. All of the players saw an increase in their vertical jump heights with an average of a 1.5 inch increase.

Going to music festivals, bodybuilding, reading, hiking, surfing, playing volleyball, basketball, and tennis.