my story
Author: Jonathan Wong, Singapore Personal Trainer And Performance Expert
Who is this Jonathan guy
and why should I listen to him?! My athletic history is pretty long. I had the
wonderful experience of growing up in South Africa and Hong Kong when I was in
my primary school years (age 8-12).
In those countries I attended schools that placed high emphasis on Physical Education. Higher emphasis than here in Singapore. The less structured timetables allowed more “play time” after school and the smaller academic syllabus’ allowed for less need for “tuition”. All this playtime and activity is necessary for good development of movement skills in young children.
So I was blessed to get these chances at a young age. In fact it has been shown that the majority of physical attributes are developed before the age of 12. So it’s critical that we let kids play and not just lock them into rooms and ask them to study books only!
In my teen years till my early twenties I competed up to local club level in many sports, including basketball, softball, rugby, American football and Strongman. I attribute the ability to do well in many different athletic areas to the fact that I had all these movement patterns built in at a young age.
Unfortunately there was a slight problem…
I had a love that matched my love for competition and physical challenges. You may have heard about it.
It’s called FOOD.
This also started young. My mom once told me that “most babies cry when you don’t feed them, but you cried when we didn’t feed you FAST ENOUGH”.
Yup. I was tubby. A “Trim and Fit” (TAF) Club member all my teenage years, I did not get recess in school. I got a piece of watermelon and 20 minutes to run around the track.
Then came the army days.
I lost all that fat and became rather lean. But I also dropped a lot of weight and got weaker. Luckily, by then I had been lifting weights for about 3 years and weekend gym sessions kept me fairly strong. I went from 85kg to 69kg.
All we did in the army was running. So of course I got thin and weak. In fact I jumped further in the broad jump at 80+kg before my Army days than at 69kg at my so called “fittest” stage.
I was posted to the Singapore Combat Engineers as an Officer Cadet Instructor. There I must have conducted 15 or more IPPT tests and countless training sessions for the soldiers in my unit.
By this time I was already very interested in human physical performance and there were some trends I noticed that help shape my thinking about training for the IPPT. (And thus how this manual comes about 10 years later)
Here are just some of my many IPPT related thoughts:
- People who are outstanding at the 2.4km run are usually poor at the broad jump.
- People who are heavy can possibly do great on the broad jump while really being bad at the 2.4km rum
- Long distance running did not improve performance in the IPPT in any way compared to well structured speed training.
- The sit-up station makes many peoples’ backs hurt the next day
- The Shuttle Run Station is extremely technique dependent. Slow but coordinated guys do just as well as fast but clumsy guys.
During tertiary education time I attended some classes, passed and got a degree in Computer Engineering. But all my spare cash and time was spent learning about human performance and health. I knew very early that building software and fiddling around with the code of computer operating systems was not the thing I wanted to do with my life.
I’m a dreamer and have always wanted a company and a Gym where I could coach clients the right way, the most effective way and the way that gets results.
Wholehearted pursuit of your dreams gets you places!
So here I am today, owner of Genesis Health And Performance a specialized fitness and sports performance company here in Singapore. We have our own private fitness coaching gym and several staff who are excellent coaches as well.
In my life, I have been given many opportunities to “coach”, as an instructor in the army, as a social worker, as a basketball coach, a sports performance coach and also as a fitness professional. These coaching experiences have been a great help in bringing technical points into practical application. This manual is one such application.
TAF Club, TAF club no more!
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