Danni is not a gym rat... she's a gym unicorn!
Hi! My name is Daniela Gomes, but some of my friends usually call me Danii. I am also known as the "Gym Unicorn" amongst the Strong Made Simple community. I am Chinese with a tiny bit of Portuguese, and I was born and raised in Macao, China, which is now known as "Asia's Las Vegas". If you are not sure where that is, it is quite near to Hong Kong. Fitness has been a part of my life ever since my family opened a gym back in Macao. I am and was always surrounded by people who strive to achieve their own fitness goals and are interested to have a healthier lifestyle. Other than working out in the gym, I also enjoy travelling, playing video games, going to raves, and playing racquet sports, such as badminton and racquetball. I came to the U.S. to pursue a major of Foods & Nutrition at SDSU for a year. At the moment, I am going to study Mandarin Chinese in Beijing in order to help and manage my family's business in the future. And with all of this I gained the dreaded "Freshman 15".
Starting Personal Training
My fitness goal has always been fat and weight loss, while getting my muscles toned. The reason why I wanted a personal trainer was because I had been doing routines with my training, and I did not know how I should change it up. I was also getting lazy to go to the gym, and I needed someone with an expertise with fitness, who could motivate me and force myself to get there, and push me to greater limits to have a better fitness performance, while also teaching me some new exercises to change my workout routine. And so, I chose Anthony to be my trainer for 2 months. The first time I saw a picture of Anthony at the ARC, I had an intuitive feeling that he was a fun and cheerful guy, who can keep my workouts enjoyable and at the right level for progression. At the end, Anthony was able to help me achieve fat loss and muscle toning. Throughout our personal training sessions, he had always kept everything positive and encouraging. He helped me achieve greater strength and performance, and made me realize that I could do difficult exercises that I never thought I could ever do.
Success in Strength
At the beginning, Anthony asked me if I could do pull ups. I said that I could never do pull ups, and that my upper body strength was pretty weak for that. So, Anthony helped me to work on that for the past 2 months by doing half bodyweight pull ups. At the end, I felt much stronger and it was more easy for me to do those half bodyweight pullups than that time at the beginning.
Anthony has also helped me improve my fitness performance on squats. Before I began to train with Anthony, I had always used two 10lbs dumbbells to do walking lunges for my lower body workout. Compared to that, Anthony had me do goblet squats by using a 15 lbs dumbbell from the beginning to a 60 pound dumbbell at the end. After knowing that I can do goblet squats with that much weight, he made me try out doing barbell squats. So far, he has helped me achieve on doing barbell squats up to 95lbs. I thought this is my greatest fitness achievement so far because I was able to do all of this within 2 months, and I am happy to know that I can actually do more advanced exercises.
We're Stronger Together
This is my first time meeting a personal trainer that has his own community with his clients. Strong Made Simple has brought me to meet fun people who have the same interest in fitness. I love how Strong Made Simple would make fun active events to gather everyone and for us to meet whoever we have had not met in the community. From this, I would see some of them training with Brian during my personal training sessions, and we would all train together sometimes.
Whenever we all train together, I felt that we were into this together, and had fun instead of torture. That is the best part about Strong Made Simple; we are always in this together. They really make you feel like you are part of the community. We train together, have fun together, we motivate each other, and we encourage each other. It is positivity surrounding you the whole time.