Personal trainer Jay Brown is on a mission to help busy professionals get fit

Personal trainer Jay Brown, owner of Cambridge-based JB Fit Method, is a young man on a mission to help people of a certain age get fit and feel re-energised, whatever their current situation.

“I help busy Cambridge professionals lose weight, get strong, and feel better in just 12 weeks – without strict diets or two-hour workouts,” states Jay on his website.

He continues, speaking to the Cambridge Independent from his home in Cottenham: “I’m a personal trainer who specialises in being able to help those in their 40s to 60s, mainly busy professionals, and I try and see how I can help with people’s lifestyles, diet and exercise.”

Jay, 19, has been into sport for most of his life – mainly cycling, cross country and boxing – and started running personal training sessions, initially for friends and family, around two years ago.

The young fitness expert studied at Cambridge Regional College. Before that he was a pupil at Cottenham Village College, and he now offers private one-to-one training sessions at RP Fitness on Nuffield Road in Cambridge.

“I also work for a company – RP Fitness – which runs exercise classes,” he notes, “so I do small group exercise classes and I also do one-to-one personal training.

“Mainly small group exercise classes for women and the one-to-ones is a mixture of men and women.”

Jay adds: “I would say the biggest misconception I’ve seen, on the subject of diet, is you need to first of all lose all the weight straight away.

“People will go on super-extreme plans where they’ll eat 800 calories a day and they do it for two weeks.

“They lose a lot of weight, but their body’s in such a state and so fatigued because they haven’t been giving it enough energy to even digest food properly, or for organs to function properly, that it actually pans out to gaining all the weight back.

“So I would say the biggest misconception is that extreme diets, super low-calorie diets, have to be the way.

“I would argue the complete opposite; I recommend people to make small, sustainable changes which they can keep up with 10 years from now and not cut out the foods that they love.

“There are much more sustainable ways to lose weight, like drinking more water, eating enough fruit and veg every day, increasing your step-count, eating more protein – these are the real things that are going to help with weight-loss.

“And then for exercise, I would say the biggest misconception is that you have to go to the gym five times a week.

“I completely disagree; I would say two to three times a week can be amazing and have loads of benefits.”

Long-term, Jay’s professional goal is to grow his clientele, to explore more online personal training and potentially to do podcasts.

He believes there has been a real increase over the last few years in the number of people striving to get fit.

“We’re seeing so many studies come out that evidently people are really beginning to understand how powerful and how effective exercise and eating correctly can be for your health,” he says.

“The interest has absolutely skyrocketed, and it’s really good to see. I’m really pleased and optimistic about the future.”

Jay concludes: “I’m really understanding to clients’ goals, situations, and am non-judgemental.

“I’ve always been empathetic and really able to work with people, regardless of their starting point.”

Find out more about Jay at jbfitmethod.com. For more on RP Fitness, go to rpfitness.co.uk.