Take a minute to learn why our Trainers are so unique and among the best in Saskatoon. Team Wawryk Trainers are passionate for wellness, living a healthy lifestyle, have a drive for personal improvement and the desire to help their clients discover and reach their goals. 

Team Wawryk Trainer - JESS FRIESEN

Hard work, perseverance, motivation and determination are just a few of the traits that have fueled her passions throughout her life. From a very early age, she discovered her athletic abilities and excelled at many sports including volleyball, basketball, swimming, track and hockey. After high school however, the demands of post secondary education forced Jess to lose focus on sports and a healthy lifestyle and soon came face to face with the reality of not only being uncomfortably overweight and out of shape, but also dealing with an unhealthy relationship with food. Once realizing that she allowed herself to lose sight of something that she had been so passionate about for so long, she decided to embark on a journey down the path of health and fitness and has never wanted to look back. Her own experiences battling weight issues, self image and emotional eating, she understands the effort, energy and support that it takes to get the desired results. Jess' ultimate goal as a personal trainer is to motivate inspire and educate others about the benefits of exercising and living a healthy lifestyle. Results do not come over night, but with patience, persistence, and consistency anyone can achieve realistic goals.

Team Wawryk Trainer - DENISE KOMINETSKY

She completed the CanFit Pro Fitness Instructor Specialist Course (FIS) in 2013, and the Personal Training Specialist Course (PTS) in 2016. Denise has been a Figure Competitor with the Saskatchewan Amateur Bodybuilding Association since 2011. She placed well in each competition and qualified for nationals after only her first year competing.

Members' workout requirements are always changing, which means we need to add new equipment to the gym. A must-have was a third Squat Rack, the Atlantis Half Rack. More people are starting to incorporate functional (and fundamental) exercises like deadlifts, lunges and squats into their training which necessitated us to add another Squat Rack into the weight room. In the past people would stay clear of exercises like squats because were under the impression they were only beneficial in a competition setting with the sole purpose of lifting a maximum amount of weight.  Now people are starting to realize that squats are the perfect exercise for both shaping the legs and glutes while complimenting a variety of other body parts. It's great to see people are now challenging themselves with these types of exercises.

 The leg platform is a very diverse piece of equipment.  It looks very simple as it's just an adjustable step; but it would take more than your 2 hands to count the amount of exercises you can do with it. Step ups, lunges, reverse lunges, box jumps, box squats, stiff-leg deadlifts, incline push-ups, and the list goes on.  Get creative with the leg platform, it's durable and build for a serious workout.

Most machines work front-to-back. The Helix turns tradition on its side— literally. With lateral (or side-to-side) movement, you use more muscles, which means you burn more fat than during a traditional workout– in the same amount of time.  Plus Helix’s patented motion tones your butt, core and inner/outer thighs better than old-fashioned cardio machines.

Common Misconceptions about the weight room

So many people that are both new to the weight room or long time users become deterred from the gym because they haven’t achieved the results they had expected from their weight routine.  There are many common misconceptions about lifting weights that cause people to start on the wrong track and are then left feeling discouraged.

Lifting weights will make you big and bulky; false.  The primary benefit of lifting weights is increased lean muscles, but increased lean muscles doesn’t mean enormous muscles.  For men it is a lot easier to get big muscles, but still takes years of heavy training.  In the case of women, they just are not genetically programmed to build thick and bulky muscles.  Other benefits of weight lifting include increasing metabolism and lower body fat, a greater resistance to injury and improved overall health.  So don’t ignore the weight room, embrace weight training and use it to build the body you want.

Doing Ab exercises everyday will result in a flat stomach and well-defined 6-pack Abs; false.  Abdominal (Ab) exercises are resistance training and like weight training, are used to develop the targeted muscles.  We need to remember that muscles and body fat are two completely different things, so once we develop our Abdominal muscles it does not change the fact that there still might be some fat lying on top of them.  Spending a majority of a workout everyday training Abs will become very repetitive and boring; dedicating some time twice a week Ab exercises is lots. 

It is possible to spot reduce fat from one area of the body; false.  Repeating an exercise over and over will do nothing more than condition that particular muscles to perform that exercise.  To reduce body fat, we need to adjust what we eat so that the calories we ingest are slightly lower than the calories we burn, signalling the body to start burning fat for energy.  On the extreme end of this, when we begin to starve ourselves our body goes into survival mode and will begin to store fat in the body for future requirements.  We have no control over what area the body fat will accumulate; it is all genetically predetermined.  For some people it is in the stomach, for others it’s the hips or butt.  Just as we have no control over where it will end up, we have no control over where it will come off.  

The key to success in health and fitness is the understanding that it takes patience in the process and the willingness to always learn, to change old habits and adapt.

All too often in the gym many of us are performing our squats with improper technique, there are 2 causes for this.  The first and common reason is that we tend overload the weight and use more than we should causing us to sacrifice technique as well as depth on the downward part of the squat.  The second reason is that we are generally taught to limit our squatting is to lower our thighs to just below parallel rather than perform full ‘arse to grass’ squats, because it is a ‘safer alternative’. The argument for this is that a full squat places much more stress on our knees and ligaments.

While from a static anatomical standpoint, this argument is seemingly true, our body actually behaves different in a dynamic movement under load. For example, supporting structures like cartilage and ligaments work to dissipate the intensification of stress on joints. On sensing the increased load, stretch receptor cells in the joint alert the brain to increase the muscular and ligamentous stability in and around the joint capsule, thus preventing injury. 

It's not all black and white though, there are circumstances when a full squat would not be initially advised, such as people with damaged knee cartilage or post knee operation patients, also  individuals with disc bulges or spinal issues. In the majority of clients with knee issues though, it is ironically their years of half squatting, poor technique and the lack of full squatting that forms the root of their problem.

 So, if a full Range Of Motion (ROM) squat is not bad for us, what exactly are the advantages of performing such an exercise?

• Recent research has shown that full ROM squats help to strengthen the ligaments around the knees, and maintain the capsule integrity.

• Squatting through a full range of motion helps to minimise imbalances of the quadriceps muscles by forcing the muscles to work through the lower half of its movement capacity, as well as reduce imbalances between the quadriceps and hamstrings.

• It encourages optimal muscle recruitment and activation over a larger range of motion, leading to better quadriceps development.

• Deep squatting helps to activate the lower fibers of the Vastus Medialis Oblique (VMO), which serve a critical purpose of stabilizing the knee during movements like running and jumping.

• Full squatting is an instinctive movement pattern of the body, like walking or breathing. For example, perfect squatting techniques are best observed in children, who perform the exercise with ease and without instruction.

• It can help to eliminate knee pain caused by patella-femoral tracking syndrome which ironically can be caused by muscular imbalances and tight iliotibial band as a result of partial squatting.