Fittest Loser trainers talk about the contestants' progress
The four military veterans competing in this year's Fittest Loser Challenge are each paired with a different kind of veteran - one of the trainers at Push Fitness in Schaumburg who each have worked with Fittest Losers in years past.
Twice a week, the trainer oversees a one-on-one workout session with the contestant, and also reviews the record of what they have eaten during the preceding seven days. And every Saturday morning all four contestants plus myself and about five other Push Fitness clients meet at Push for a "boot camp" workout and weigh-in.
As the contest finished the ninth of its 12 weeks, each trainer reviewed his or her protege's progress.
Josh Steckler and Russell Page
The man who invented the Fittest Loser Challenge nine years ago, Push Fitness owner Josh Steckler, has been working one-on-one with 60-year-old Air Force vet Russell Page of Antioch.
Steckler said that Page, the only "career" military vet in the contest, "is a very hard worker and he's good at taking orders. He listens and trusts what I tell him."
Steckler said Page also always "wants to know what the plan is. He wants to know what he's in for - how many reps of what he will be doing that day."
He said Page's exercise plan has to be steered around the problem that his mobility in one shoulder is limited by the effects of a serious pedestrian traffic accident years ago.
"His hips were a problem too at first," Steckler said, because in Page's second career as an industrial sales rep for a Rolling Meadows-based defense contractor, Page spent many hours on airplanes. "That's not good from a weight standpoint and it's not good from a muscle standpoint. Your muscles get tight and weak. But once we got his glutes working efficiently, he wasn't struggling as much."
Steckler, 37, said he grew up on a farm in Indiana. "I was always physically active," he recalls. "I was always faster and stronger than my friends because I worked so hard on the farm. Right after high school, I got a job in a small-town gym and got my first taste of that."
So when he enrolled in Indiana University, he studied kinesiology (body movement), biomedicine and psychology.
A job opening for a professional trainer brought Steckler to Schaumburg. In 2009 he started Push Fitness, which at first was based on Plaza Drive in Schaumburg. It relocated to a larger space on Remington Drive last September.
Soon after starting Push, he said, he got the idea of starting a Fittest Loser competition in cooperation with the Daily Herald as a way to raise the new business's profile by showing what kind of results its training and nutritional counseling could achieve.
Steve Amsden and James 'J.D.' DeBouver
Like contestant James "J.D." DeBouver of Schaumburg, Push Fitness trainer Steve Amsden is in his 30s and saw combat in the Iraq War.
While DeBouver was under attack from Iraqi rebels as he rode in road convoys, Amsden spent three tours as a ground crewmen for Kiowa attack helicopters at temporary forward bases in the desert.
After leaving the Army, he said, he struggled with depression as he settled near his last Army base in Colorado. After he "pulled himself together and started leaving the house," he said, he got a job teaching fitness at a chain workout center in Colorado.
Moving to Illinois in 2008, he said, "I didn't want to work in a major-company place again because they always want you to sell supplements and they don't really put the interest of the client first." But he met Steckler, learned that Steckler was planning to start Push Fitness and joined the Push staff in 2008, "before it even had a building."
Besides DeBouver's shared post-traumatic stress, Amsden has had to work around back injuries DeBouver has sustained during Fittest Loser - first by straining his back during a Saturday boot camp, then by falling on ice during a March snowstorm.
"I know it's been frustrating for J.D. Most people probably would have quit at this point with the injuries he's had, especially involving the back," Amsden said. "But he has a ton of intestinal fortitude."
While DeBouver has missed several weeks of workout sessions and didn't run in the April 1 Foodie 5K Race, he has continued to follow the eating plan recommended by Amsden. He also has done Pilates exercises under the guidance of his mother and has performed alternative, less back-straining exercises when he attends Saturday boot camps.
And as a result, DeBouver has lost 32 pounds in the competition's first nine weeks, placing him in a neck-and-neck race for leadership in the race.
"Steve pushes me," DeBouver said. "He's good at motivating me to do more. If I just did it on my own, I would do just enough. Steve doesn't let that be the case. You need some external motivation to keep you going."
Michelle Jeeninga and Tony Wiszowaty
Trainer Michelle Jeeninga said her protégé, 68-year-old Marine vet Tony Wiszowaty of Schaumburg, works hard. But she faults him for some "time management" problems - "getting here on time for his classes."
When asked his impressions about Jeeninga's guidance, the jovial, extroverted Wiszowaty also started by talking about the time tensions, but remained good-natured about it. "Once I was two minutes late and Michelle told me she would be easier on me if I had been on time," he said.
Jeeninga also is known as a perfectionist when it comes to her trainees using the correct form in each exercise.
"We're working on Tony's posture a lot," she said. "That's using your core and it protects your lower body. If you're supporting a heavy weight and you're slouching, that's going to hurt your lower back and your knees."
Jeeninga, 39, has an unusual relationship with fellow Push Fitness trainer Steve Amsden. They were married for six years. She met and married Amsden while he was serving in the Army and she was working as an airline flight attendant. They lived in Colorado for two years before they moved to Illinois so Amsden could join Steckler in starting Push Fitness.
She said she majored in business while in college "and I never in a million years thought I'd be doing this. But I've always been a runner. I started getting into fitness in 2004 and after Steve got into it as a profession, I did too."
After moving to the Land of Lincoln, she worked at the Schaumburg YMCA, then joined her husband on the Push staff in 2009. They divorced in 2012.
Today, she said, she gets along well with her ex-husband as they work side by side. In fact, she said Amsden is her new husband's best friend. "When you're a Christian, you can't hate each other," she said.
As the sole female trainer at Push, "I'm the mama hen of the studio," she laughs.
Patrick Stille and Penny Brown
The only female contestant, 37-year-old Navy vet Penny Brown of Fox Lake, is working under the guidance of Push's youngest and newest full-time trainer, Patrick Stille of Streamwood.
"Penny's doing really well," Stille said. "We've had a few hiccups with her being sick" - first with a stomach virus and more recently with a strep infection. "We get a few moans and groans from her, but overall she has done well."
As her fitness has improved, Stille said, he has taught Brown more advanced exercises. "As I put it, we're having more fun now," he said.
Stille, 27, moved to Schaumburg from Minnesota while he was a teenager. At Schaumburg High - "I was Saxon," he says - "you name it and if it's a sport, I was playing it - gymnastics, football, basketball."
After studying exercise science in college, Stille became a professional trainer five years ago. He joined Steckler, Amsden and Jeeninga on the Push staff 2½ years ago. "Meeting with Josh and seeing the environment here, it was an easy decision," he said.
After Brown lost only a single pound in the challenge's eighth week, she made an ambitious vow to her comrades: "I'm gonna lose six pounds this week and when we come back next week I'll be under 200."
When the ninth weigh-in was finished, it showed she had lost more pounds that week - four - than any other contestant. But she remained just above her target, at 201 pounds.