Singapore #Fitspo of the Week: Soh Hwa Yang

Life goes beyond the digits on the scale and your body is capable of so much more! Yahoo’s #Fitspo of the Week series is dedicated to inspirational men and women in Singapore leading healthy and active lifestyles. Have someone to recommend? Hit Cheryl up on Instagram or Facebook!

Name: Soh Hwa Yang

Age: 26

Height: 1.71m

Weight: 72kg

Occupation: Personal trainer and business owner

Status: Attached

Food: I do my best to eat a relatively balanced diet. As I tend to lift quite a few times throughout the week, my diet is definitely higher in protein. I make it a point to have quite a lot of colour in my food, and to have enough vegetables and fruit in my diet. Depending on my goals, I aim to hit a certain caloric target daily and adjust my macros accordingly. My guilty pleasure would definitely have to be a good steak and freshly baked bread.

Exercise: My weekly fitness routine currently revolves around hypertrophy. I work out 5 to 6 times a week and organise my workouts by body parts and recovery.

Q: When you were younger, were you active in sports?

A: Ever since I was a child, I have been an active person. My days in primary school typically started off with a game of catching with friends, and ended with tennis or table tennis after school.

As I got into more team and contact sports, the gym became a big part of my life. I was definitely one of the smaller built guys amongst my peers. Catching in the morning soon evolved into compound lifts in the gym, and after school activities soon became conditioning or hypertrophy focused training.

Then I moved overseas and stayed in a boarding school right beside the gym. Hence, it was natural that my friends and I spent most of our time at the gym. Soon, we decided to start a powerlifting club, which saw most of us in the club become part-time strength and conditioning coaches for the different sporting clubs at school. My passion for coaching and lifting really started to develop here, and stuck with me throughout the stages of my life.

Did you get into any other sports as you got older?

My passion for lifting never died. Although at different stages of my life, I took a step back from the gym because of university studies and serving the army. I would always hit the gym from time to time as a means to just take a step back from life, have some me time, or to just feel good in general.

It was a place that always felt familiar to me; an environment that was always inviting, inspiring, healing and self-improving.

You were working a corporate job when you decided to switch careers.

I majored in politics and economics, but the internships and jobs that I took up in that industry never really lived up to what I thought they would turn out to be. I often felt a lack of purpose and impact.

I decided to pursue coaching very much due to that. I wanted to make an impact on the lives of others and what better way than to improve the lifestyle and health of others.

What do you enjoy about being a personal trainer?

Watching people thrive and achieve their goals has to be the greatest satisfaction about being a personal trainer. Furthermore, the interaction and relationships that you create with your clients are extremely meaningful, and hard to come by in any other professions.

Lastly, it is a profession that is extremely well balanced. You get to do what you love, constantly get better at it, make an impact and make a good honest living out of it.

Any challenges?

The challenge of a personal trainer is managing expectations. Not everybody enjoys this lifestyle as much as you do and your clients will have many practical needs and wants. It is then our job to understand their lifestyles and take small steps with them, to build the right habits they need to help them achieve their goals.

It is very much a two-way relationship which requires a lot of time commitment and patience. It is however, truly rewarding.

What are your fitness goals now?

My fitness goals remain the same as before – to be better than yesterday. Although I am very satisfied with where I am, the gym is a place where you can always seek to improve. I am currently focusing on improving and exploring movement patterns, in hopes to better programme exercises for myself and my clients.

In my opinion, understanding the body and making faster decisions is the key to becoming more efficient in achieving health and fitness goals. Hence, my current focus is to deepen my knowledge in movement patterns.

When you were younger, did you experience any incidents that made you feel insecure about yourself?

I think I have always been a pretty easily satisfied and down-to-earth guy. Fortunately, I have always been at peace with my body and its capabilities. My view on life has always been to be at peace with yourself, do what makes you happy, and what makes you better in the your own eyes, and in the eyes that those who matter to you – which I realised typically align.

Did you ever struggle with your body?

I have definitely struggled with being of a smaller build. It sometimes put me at a disadvantage in certain sports like rugby and basketball, but it was what inspired me to put on muscle and improve my body, so I am thankful for that.

Are you satisfied with your body now?

I am definitely content with how far I have come, but as always, I do think it is still a work in progress. There is always room to grow. Although I am at happy and thankful for how my body looks and performs, I definitely want to build more muscle, become more mobile, stable and strong.

Lifting is a sport that I love and I treasure the opportunity to be able to train frequently, and I think I will always seek to find improvements in how I perform and look.

Have you ever received any comments about your body?

I do receive comments about my body and thankfully, they are mostly friendly comments. I treasure and appreciate my body, and if I could change anything about myself, it would have been to be way more structured about my training when I was younger.