ACCOMPLISHMENTS:
Celebrity New York City personal trainer Kevin Richardson is the creator of Naturally Intense High Intensity Training and the founder of Manhattan’s Naturally Intense Personal Training Services. (Note that as of March 2nd 2020 Online Personal Training and Diet Coaching with Celebrity Online Trainer Kevin Richardson is now available). A former international fitness and nutrition consultant for UNICEF, Kevin is also a highly prized guest speaker at corporate events, working with major international corporations to help improve the health of their employees with his time saving workouts. In a career that has spanned over quarter of a century, he has helped hundreds of clients from celebrities to CEO’s to regular New Yorkers achieve their fitness and weight-loss goals with his program of short-duration, high-intensity workouts. A native of Trinidad and Tobago, Kevin grew up in a fitness-oriented family. He was a painfully thin child who preferred reading books – especially comic books – to playing sports, and often found himself the target of schoolyard bullies. The best way to stand up to them, he decided, was to be like the comic-book heroes he idolized, so he began martial arts training at the age of nine. As he became proficient in karate and ninjutsu, he was, indeed, better able to take care of himself. Unfortunately, while he could fight, he didn’t look like he could; he remained a scrawny kid who had to prove himself over and over. Eventually, he decided it wasn’t enough that he could fight like his comic-book heroes – he needed to look like them, too.
Following in the footsteps of his father, brother and cousin, he began training at age fourteen in natural bodybuilding, a branch of the sport that rejects performance-
A husband and father at age twenty, Kevin left the Caribbean for New York in search of a better life for his family. He found a second home at Brooklyn’s legendary Fifth Avenue Gym, which produced more natural bodybuilding champions than any other facility of its kind. For fifteen years, he worked by day in social services, running a recreational therapy program for people with AIDS and formerly homeless New Yorkers, and by night at the Fifth Avenue Gym, doing personal training. Inspired by his own success, Kevin spent the first ten years of his personal-training career refining the principles of high-intensity training and applying them to his clients. Committed to the scientific method, he set out not to prove but to disprove the effectiveness of ten-minute high-intensity workouts. It wasn’t enough that the system worked for him and his first set of clients; he wanted to determine if the results could be replicated consistently by a wide variety of individuals with a wide range of fitness levels and goals. And indeed, he found that Naturally Intense High-Intensity Training worked for men and women from their 20’s to their 70’s whether they were trying to lose weight, increase endurance, build muscle mass, enhance overall fitness, or develop a world-class physique.
In early 2009, at the depth of the last recession, Kevin took a leap of faith, leaving his job in social services to bring the Naturally Intense 10-Minute Workout to a larger audience. Headquartered in the Chelsea/Flatiron District, his personal-training business was honored with the Best of Manhattan Award in 2012, 2013,2014, 2016 and 2017. His clients have included various celebrities, actors, politicians, business executives, athletes, models, natural-physique competitors, Navy SEALs, and plenty of ordinary folks. Some have traveled regularly from as far away as London and Singapore to train with him, while others have commuted weekly from Massachusetts and North Carolina. Kevin is a a major figure in the fitness community with over 2 million readers of his award-winning blog (naturallyintense.net/blog), and his Naturally Intense 10-Minute Workout has reached a broader audience over the years through features on CBS on the Couch, Fox 5 Good Day New York, and the CBS Morning News, The Daily Mail and The Wall Street Journal. Kevin is also a highly in demand public speaker, and is often hired to speak about his own journey and present his unique Naturally Intense methodology of better results in less time at conferences across the country. A true Renaissance Man, Kevin is also an internationally published fitness and dance photographer and he is the creator of the overwhelmingly popular, Dance As Art-
My Budget Home Gym Setup Recommendations
Anyone following along knows that I have a pretty impressive home gym setup, but as nice as it is to have all this equipment, the fact is that you don`t need very much in order to make progress if you are training at home.
Which is why my number one recommendation is a pair of dumbbells. Maybe a barbell as well, but that`s really all you need.
I trained for about a year during the lockdowns with just a pair of dumbbells and a barbell and was able to make tremendous progress, and to this day I universally recommend and provide dumbbells to my online training clients and they have made some great gains as well.
So if you are thinking about training at home, start small and keep it simple. Thanks as always for watching and as always, Excelsior!!! #naturallyintense
#homegymsetup #dumbbells #trainathome #trainingathome #naturalbodybuilding #naturalbodybuilder #naturalbodybuildingvideos #homegymlife #homegymequipment #homegymrat #homegymideas #homegym #personaltrainer
High Intensity Training- Negative Leg Extensions!
The negative, or eccentric, phase of any resistance movement creates the most micro trauma and thus stimulates the most growth and strength increases.
As such having someone pushing down in the lowering phase can REALLY up the intensity of your training.
This was my last set and my training partner and Naturally Intense Personal Training Senior Trainer @egcitrin is pushing down as I lower the weight and (and is it just me or is she pushing more and more as I go along?)
But I don`t stop there.
On the 12th rep I execute an isometric hold for a count of 5 seconds with Erika actively pushing down before ending with nine punishing final reps!
I think I was sore for at least a full week after this but still training and hope you are too!
And as always, Excelsior!!! #naturallyintense
#naturalbodybuilding #naturalbodybuilder #highintensitytraining #highintensitytrainingtips #hometraining #homeworkout #fitover40 #naturalbodybuildingvideos #naturalbodybuildingtraining #naturalbodybuildingtips #naturalbodybuildingmotivation #legextensions #legday #legworkout #powertec #legdayworkout
Avoiding Injury As A Natural Athlete- Just Do This!
As a natural athlete, whether your goal is bodybuilding or body transformation, everything happens slowly and over very long stretches of time.
To that end, it is of the utmost importance that you prioritize not getting injured, as an injury can slow if not completely curtail your ability to realize your goals.
That being said, most people, when something hurts, just power through it, as there is this misplaced belief that there are some exercises that you need to do.
Squats, deadlifts, barbell bench presses and the like may be excellent exercises, but if it hurts, don`t do it.
Or better yet, do something else to build yourself up to a point where you can do them, but there are times when some of those mainstay movements simply might not be for you.
Now for some, saying everyone can`t squat or deadlift is heresy punishable by ridicule, but they won`t be with you at the physical therapy sessions, and they will still be training while you are out.
If it hurts, don`t do it, even if your favorite influencer swears it`s a necessity. There are hundreds of alternatives, and your job is to find what doesn`t hurt while recruiting the most muscular activation and sticking with it.
Do that and you`ll save yourself a lot of pain and you`ll realize your goals much faster as well. Stay safe while training and as always, Excelsior!!! #naturallyintense
#naturalbodybuilding #bodytransformation #nodrugs #weighttraining #listentoyourbody #avoidinginjury #naturalbodybuildingtips #naturalbodybuilder #fitness #fitnesstips #nosquats #injury #injuryprevention #trainsmart #sustainabletraining #nosteroids #naturalbodybuildingvideos #excelsior #highintensitytraining #fitover40 #personaltrainer #bodybuilding
Why Exercises Won`t Get You A 6 Pack!
One of the most common questions I get asked is what exercises I do for my abs and my response of
"Absolutely none whatsoever" is often received with some sense of disbelief, but it`s the honest truth.
I don`t do any direct exercises for my abs and haven`t since the mid to early 1990`s because I already had a foundation from years of truly grueling ab work and having a six pack is directly proportional to what I eat, not what exercises I do.
My abs get plenty of work from the squats, rows, deadlifts and other compound movements that I do and I can prove, having not done crunches, leg raises, planks and any of that for the past 28 years or so that it`s 100% diet.
If you want to have great abs, the exercise you need to master is walking away from the foods you shouldn`t be eating.
My diet is and has been one of precision for a very long time, and it`s what I eat and how I eat that allows me to always have a six pack, nothing else.
The good news is that everyone already has a six pack, you just have to get rid of the fat deposits above it for them to show, and if you put your mind to it, stay disciplined and avoid processed foods entirely, it can certainly happen.
So watch what you eat and focus on your diet if you really want that six pack and Excelsior!!! #naturallyintense
#sixpack #sixpackabs #6pack #6packabs #absmadeinthekitchen #everyonehasa6pack #abs #noabworkout #naturalbodybuilding #personaltrainer #drugfreebodybuilding #naturalbodybuildingtips #naturalbodybuildingmotivation #muscularity #naturalbodybuilder #timededicationsacrifice #excelsior #focusontheprocess #dothework #diet #abs
I Only Train Three Days a Week.
That`s right.
Just three days a week with short high intensity training based workouts and it allowed me to compete successfully as a natural bodybuilder, and it`s how I have trained and how my personal training clients have trained for the past 30 years.
The biggest problem in training is a lack of dedicated experimenting.
Everyone goes along with the training programs espoused by the most popular, without questioning the fact that the top figures in the fitness industry are all on steroids, and as such their methods may not always be best for natural athletes.
There are many reasons to consider low volume training but most importantly is that it allows for training sustainability.
Three days a week is far more doable long term than 4, 5, 6 or 7 days a week.
And I can tell you for a fact that it has been tested time and time again, and it works if you work it.
So give training less some consideration and as always, Excelsior!!! #naturallyintense
#train3xaweek #highintensityworkouts #naturalbodybuilder #trainlessexcelmore #trainsmart #sustainabletraining #competeatthehighestlevels #nosteroids #naturalbodybuilding #naturalbodybuildingvideos #naturalbodybuildingtips #excelsior #highintensitytraining