This vs. That: Personal Trainers

Editor’s note: This Vs. That is Travel Boulder’s weekly comparison guide designed to help you pick the activities, food, drinks, hotels and events that best fit your preferences. It’s like if a traditional newspaper review had a love child with Yelp, except always reliably researched and experienced firsthand by our local writers. Because sometimes you can best understand an option by seeing what it is not and by placing it side by side with something else.

Health, fitness and weight loss are always the No. 1 New Year’s resolution for Americans, year after year. Yet studies show that 80 percent of New Year’s resolutions fail by February.

Whether you are visiting Boulder or you live here, Boulder is a great place to be if you have a fitness resolution. The city is packed with award-winning fitness instructors and top-notch personal trainers who can help you meet your goals.

American Fitness and Associates says a personal trainer can help you hit fitness goals or even break through a plateau. AFFA says trainers can provide personalized plans, keep you motivated and keep you safe.

In a city as fit as Boulder with so many options, it can be hard to pick a trainer. Lucky for you, we’ve lived here for, well, all our lives, and we’ve worked out everywhere.

Here is a closer look at two of Boulder and Broomfield county’s top personal trainers, Joe Roseberry and Jason McQueen. They are both highly recommended but also very different in their approaches. We chatted with them to help you get to know them better, so you can pick the trainer who’s right for you.

Joe Roseberry

Joe Roseberry is an author, avid yogi and personal trainer and owner of the Just Results Fitness gym in Broomfield. He created a piece of exercise equipment called The Answer.

“My burning desire is to bring the wealth of health to the world,” he says.

Roseberry was a civil engineer before he decided to go into a fitness career.

He’s a lifelong athlete, with a background in high-level sports, such as college football.

What is your specialty?

My specialty would be connecting the physical fitness of the body to the mind and the soul — bringing together my 32,000 hours of training sessions and incorporating it into the wellness of the entire being.

At Just Results, we have a team of trainers now who have thousands of hours of training under their belt and have established a community that’s loving, warm and receptive to all people, in their journey through life and fitness. We can individually or group-cater to anybody’s needs based on the diversity of the team we have.

We are creating a community where you can get filled up with light and love, and it all starts with your physical body feeling good; then your spiritual mental and emotional body can start to heal also.

How would you describe your training style and personality?

People love the posi-fit (positive fitness) approach that I bring to each session, with a total body approach to fitness with strength, core, cardio and balance that is delivered in a unique, encouraging, motivating, inspiring way.

Who are the people you serve?

My clients are people who are seeking more out of their life mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally. It ranges from the “Joey” who is just beginning to the “average Joe” to the GI Joe.

What equipment do you use?

The Answer, a small piece of equipment with a soft pedestal and metal lip that your feet slide under, bringing together squats and sit-ups with perfect form.

Ultimately, your body is the machine, and I use any equipment that turns your body into the machine, where you create the fulcrum. You create the intersections of movement.

As soon as you pick up a dumbbell, your body is the machine. As soon as you do an Answer, your body is a machine. Cables, for pull-downs and triceps extensions, they turn your body into the machine. Whereas on a leg extension machine, the fulcrum has been set up for you.

Every body just like everybody is unique and different. Therefore, everybody’s exercises and movements will look different. The amount of weight is different, the technique is different. Yoga has helped me conceptualize that.

What makes you unique and different?

I love it. It’s my personal legend. It’s what I wake up with the most joy in the world to do.

I’m extremely knowledgeable about it, after 21 years of fitness. Much of my instruction came from an apprenticeship with my mom, a physical therapist.

Also, I offer free yin yoga every Wednesday. Everyone needs it, and I wanted to make it so easy that they wouldn’t not do it. Just show up. It’s such a blessing to slow things down and love the body and let it release.

What is your advice for people wanting to get fit in the new year?

Know that you’re worth the investment in your health. Mankind is the only species that will trade their health for wealth, only to try to regain it all back in the end.

You’re worth one hour of every day; that’s only 4 percent of your day.

Do the Answer in 15 minutes and that is 1 percent of your day, investing in the most valuable asset anyone has:  the wealth of health.

Specifically, I would offer five action steps for anyone wanting to get fit:

1. Schedule 15 minutes of exercise every day, whether you’re walking outside or doing a high-intensity workout.

2. Drink 0.5 ounces times the number of your ideal body weight every day. Start there. Hydrate, feel great. The goal is 0.75 ounces. Measure it.

3. Remove gluten and refined sugar from your life. It’s not a diet. It’s a way of life. Just do it for 30 days and see how you feel.

4. Get seven hours of sleep, because you’re able to navigate life with its variables with a more cheerful demeanor when you’re well rested.

5. Get 15 minutes of stillness a day, whether that’s meditating, mindfulness, breathing, whatever you call it.

All of this combined is only asking for 30 minutes of your day, just 2 percent of your day to have a healthier, happier life. I will provide structure, accountability, knowledge and motivation to do all of those things on Facebook and other mediums.

What is your life motto?

At this point in the journey, it’s: “U for unique: There isn’t, there never has been and there never will be another you or another me, so let’s become the best versions of ourselves that we can be.”

What is the key to being healthy?

Be the best version of yourself, and you and everyone else will benefit from that. You know when you eat unhealthy food you’re not being the best version of yourself. You know when you stay up late partying you’re not being the best version of yourself. You know what it looks like. And its different to everybody.

But you know what the best version of yourself is, and you know what you’re doing — whether it’s in alignment with improving where you’re at or regressing — and nobody has to tell you. You know if what you’re doing is making you the best version of yourself.

What is the biggest fitness mistake people make?

Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Saying, “I worked out today so I can have a cookie, so I can have a beer, so I can eat whatever I want.” The end result is that you’re just treading water. Ask me how I know: because I did it. Over and over again.

Jason McQueen

Jason McQueen has been a certified personal trainer and fitness consultant in Boulder since 1995. He currently trains at Mountains’ Edge Fitness.

McQueen has a long list of certifications: in Spinning, in TRX, as a sports nutrition specialist, in Kinetix Fascial Integration (a fascial release technique) and as a strength coach.

With the last certification, he says his emphasis has shifted to more performance-oriented movements, with a deeper knowledge about how the body moves in different planes.

Combined with Kinetix, which addresses how the body reacts to trauma, injury, pain and overuse, and he says he can address the full spectrum of physical health.

He has a background in all kinds of athletics: soccer, diving, baseball, football, track, martial arts, snowboarding, you name it.

He studied business and philosophy in college but fell in love with fitness.

His company is McFit Personal Training.

How would you describe your training style and personality?

I like to have fun, and I like to get my clients results. Some are results they don’t even know they want or need.

If you’re having fun and enjoying what you’re doing and connect with the person you’re working with, you’ll come back. You could have the smartest personal trainer in the entire world but if you don’t like them, you won’t come back and reach your goals. I have a good middle-of-the-road personality; I get along with a lot of personalities, both men and women, older and younger. I can connect with the teenagers because I have one, and I’m in the middle age group.

I don’t think I’m too intimidating. I don’t see myself as some big, muscly guy in the gym throwing around weights and screaming and yelling. I know it can be a scary thing coming into a gym.

Who are the people you serve?

Mostly people who want to perform better or people who had an injury and want to get rid of it or who want to be stronger after it. I have a huge pull toward injury prevention and recover right now, both younger and older.

My demographics are about 60 percent women, 40 percent men. About 80 percent are a middle age, older than 35. About 20 percent are 18 to 35.

I see a pretty good 50-50 split of specific goals (like I want to increase bench press or run faster or run my first Spartan dash) to people coming in like, “I’m sick of feeling like crap and moving slowly and being in pain. I know I need to be healthier but don’t know what to do.”

What equipment do you use?

It depends on the goals. If you have an injury, especially a back, hip, shoulder or a major joint injury, it limits some equipment we can use. For instance, if somebody is riddled with past injuries, we will probably start out with more machine-based, stable activities, whereas if someone’s in good health with no injuries and we don’t have to worry, I will definitely challenge the body with more free-weight, functional, balancing, using TRX, rings, dumbbells or barbells.

I personally like more free weight and suspension equipment, generally speaking.

What makes you unique and different?

My martial arts background, in mixed martial arts, Taekwondo, Muay Thai and Brazilian Jujutsu. I have a good understanding of how the body moves from a martial arts point of view and how to make it stronger and faster. Most martial artists move functionally. There are some poses and forms that don’t necessarily relate to day-to-day basis, but every martial art has you moving in different planes at the same time, and throwing in strength or speed or both. That’s power. That relates to everything, whether it’s snowboarding or rock climbing or running. Or even just coming out of the grocery store holding several bags and you hit ice; your body has to react and move in different planes to prevent an injury.

What is your advice for people wanting to get fit in the new year?

Some of the best things I tell all of my clients, no matter who, is to make attainable goals. Take baby steps. It seems simple, it seems cliche, but if you can set yourself up for success, you’ll keep going.

Maybe it takes longer than someone who’s aggressive, but you set yourself up for success and you create a manageable lifestyle — something you can do for the rest of your life. There are some trendy, fad diets and yeah, you’ll lose 20 pounds, but you can’t live the rest of your life like that, so you crash and burn because you can’t maintain it.

Start out with changing one to two things. If that’s just getting into the gym two or three times a week, start with just getting in there and doing something. Then add a little more and a little more. Create the lifestyle. Create those goals you can achieve, and you’re psychologically creating a great snowball effect, and you’ll eventually get to exactly to where you want to be.

What is your life motto?

Balance. Not just a balance between flexibility and strength and cardio, but a balance in life. You’ve got to have fun, too. Even too much of a good thing can be bad. Too much working out can be bad, just like too much sitting on the couch is bad.

What is the key to being healthy?

Small goals. Create consistency. And keep going. Stay in balance.

What is the biggest fitness mistake people make?

Being too aggressive or too impatient is really a quick way to create an injury, and once you get an injury, it psychologically sets you back and physically sets you back and it’s crushing. It’s difficult to work past that. It’s the turtle’s pace that wins the race.