Who is Terry Stokes
I'm not particularly good about talking about myself but here goes:
I am a figure coach, personal trainer and hopefully a friend to my many clients. I am in the gym 7 days a week during competiton time because I get just as psyched as the competitors do during show season. My wife doesn't mind much because she is a competitor also... which means she is in the gym everyday also... enduring my 'easy' workouts, and telling me how ridiculous they are!
Featured writer in Journal of National Medical Association
Featured writer in National Gym Association Newsletter
Certified Personal Trainer
Certified Strength Coach
Medical Exercise Specialist
In the beginning...
When I first started training -
Even though I was a certified personal trainer, strength coach, medical exercise specialist etc. I didn't know much about the biggest challenge facing women ... fat loss. They didn't really teach it in certification courses and nobody really knew much about it except to tell their clients to do 100 hours of cardio and take a fat burner! I realized that fat loss in women was difficult for many trainers to accomplish. I decided to study diet... not from books, but real-world diets. I studied the leanest people I knew: bodybuilders, health food fanatics, sprinters, track athletes, guys coming back from military boot camp etc. I realized that they all a had certain things in common. They were very regimented, ate simple foods, used resistance exercises in their training and worked out frequently. What better example than the ex-con who comes out of prison ripped (I grew up in a tough neighborhood). Talking about someone who is regimented, eats simple foods and works out frequently... you can't get a better example than that.
There was no creatine, steroids, protein powder, amino acid supplements or fat burners in prison last I checked!
This stuff really works...
My system worked everytime...
I developed a system for fat loss based on what I learned but soon realized that to get a woman ready for a bikini was one thing but to get her ready for a competition was a lot more difficult. Women's diets had to be really fine-tuned in order to get rid of stubborn body fat. It took awhile but I finally got it down to a science... to where my results were predictable. That's when I started to get a bunch of new clients. At one point I was training women 60 hours a week including the trainers who were working at the same gym!
Figure Competitors:
I began to get calls from a group of women who desperately needed to lose body fat but didn't have a clear answer as to how to do it... figure competitors!
Many of them were frustrated with past performances and were having trouble getting lean. I fine-tuned the diet even more and began to put winners onstage consistently. I started with 1 competitor and now I have a waiting list (a nice problem to have).
I am infamous for turning a 2 hour figure seminar into an 4 hour marathon because I talk too much! This day my Power Point projector broke... so it turned out to be 5 hours long!
Competitors always want to train me... not going to happen!
Because I give such intense workouts the girls are always offering to train me for a session (trying to get a little payback). I always laugh and tell them no. They complain that I don't know how hard their workouts are. Well actually I do know... here I am putting myself through a very difficult circuit that I will use to torture (ooops, I mean 'train') the girls with soon!
Help me please....
Emails, emails, emails...
What really prompted me to write this e-book was the many emails I started to get asking for diet advice. I found myself up late every night writing diets for a competitor hundreds of miles away, or in another country. I would always think to myself: "Did I remember to tell her _____ or ____ ."
So I decided to put everything together and answer all of the questions I received from competitors. This way I wouldn't have to wonder if i remembered to tell someone important details about dieting. I decided to cut the price of my online training in half and offer everything in an ebook.
A figure 'beast' (my wife)
Before my wife started training she weighted 119 lbs at 5'11' and spent a lot of time on the treadmill. Now she is a figure 'beast'. She is still 5'11' but I'm not telling you how much she weighs (I'm not crazy). Her V-tapered back is the result of about 347 million pullups!
Definition
Figure Beast: a competitor who would rather lose 2 fingers and a thumb instead of missing a workout when getting ready for a competition. I love training these rare animals!
My wife is also a Jan Tana Airbrush Specialist. Here she is (below) giving a pep talk, trying to give me a high-five with tanning juice on her hands, giving a competition tanning demonstration and doing pullups.
In the end...
All I want to do is help competitors reach their goals in the shortest time possible. I know how hard it is getting ready for a competition. The strain it places on relationships, the diet, the extra workouts, the doubters, your friends & parents (who think you are getting to skinny).... I can't help with those things but i can sure get you in shape to make it all worth it!!
The smile on Kristin's face (below) backstage at her first show says it all!
