Gregory T. Parker

Dear Joel,

Let me take the opportunity to formally thank you for the positive impact you have had on my life. Prior to the start of my training with you, I was a soft 228 pounds. I was lazy and didn’t like exercise in any form. Today, I am fit and don’t want to stop working out. You turned the entire fitness process into a fun and healthy lifestyle.

Not only did you change the shape and condition of my body, you impacted my mind. My self-confidence, drive and enthusiasm for life are at a high. I never though one person could have such an extreme impact on my life.

I consider you not only my trainer but also my friend. In life we have the rare opportunity to positively affect other people’s life. You have affected me deeply.

If you would ever like to use me as a reference for clients, please do not hesitate to ask. After speaking with me, they will have no doubt of the positive affect you can have on their body and mind.

Thanks again,
Gregory T. Parker

What are people saying about Joel?

Joel Lucky is “head and shoulders” above the rest. Joel has a tremendous amount of knowledge and wisdom about what your body can and cannot do. Joel is a true model who has a gift for motivating and inspiring others.

Melissa, Texas

I have had the honor and privilege of training with Joel Lucky. I highly recommend him as a trainer for other individuals of all fitness levels. Joel is professional and honest when evaluating your fitness level. He will strengthen your weaknesses and if you follow his advice, you will see results.

Kathryn, Lewisville, Texas

I have worked out at gyms across the United States, Europe, and Asia. Never have I met a man with more pure concern and interest in his clients. When we train with Joel, we are a team. He educates, pushes, and motivates us to greater levels than we could ever have attained by ourselves. Most trainers attain certification through a minimal classroom education. Joel has a lifetime of knowledge gained through personal experience and his association with professional body builders and trainers.

The Parker Family, Highland Village, TX

During our training time we found Joel to be positive, encouraging, supportive, and informative. He developed a varied program for us to use to avoid boredom and to build on as we met our primary objectives. Mike went from 33% to 12% bodyfat! I started out with a weight of 153 and lost down to 140 and have maintained that weight for more than 2 years!

Mike and Sharon, Texas

How I Got Lucky

Finding the Right Trainer
by Debbie Wilbanks

Finding the right trainer is like finding a magical combination where you work-a boss who inspires you and makes you want to excel and who also turns out to be genuinely interested in you and in your success. In my search for the perfect fitness trainer, I found that, unlike being assigned a boss in my job, my trainer is my choice. It is therefore my responsibility to make sure it works right for me. If not, it is my responsibility to keep looking. After working with several trainers and having little success toward my fitness goals, and my stubbornness in not accepting mediocrity, let to the one solution that could make me look forward to my workout-I finally got Lucky!

No stranger to the gym, I worked out in the early 80’s when being a rat gym wasn’t cool. I never though I would need a trainer. I had great genes, healthy eating habits and youth. But I didn’t know anything about the second layer of baby fat that you never lost and the other pounds that crept on without notice.

I hired my first trainer about three years before “I got Lucky”. I picked that trainer from a row of pictures on the wall at a fitness center because she was the only female trainer available. I had searched high and low for my doctors, all women, because I thought a woman would be more in tune to the female body, and because I was shy enough that I simply felt more comfortable with women. I likewise felt that a woman trainer would know the best ways for me to reach my fitness goals. I did not realize that I was embarking on a three year search for a trainer, and that all of my preconceived notions would fly out of the window before I would be happy with my fitness program. At the time, I didn’t give it much thought, but I later realized that there is a world of difference in trainers. I started out settling for a salesperson with a learner’s permit and ended up with a Formula One race car driver.

So my first trainer was a young woman about the age of 28. We spent the most uneventful, unexciting six Wednesdays I can ever recall. I don’t remember her name or much of anything else about our training sessions, but what I do remember is counting off the six sessions like a jail sentence.

The next trainer was hired after I had time to forget the first one. I would surely have better results this time; I had changed gyms and had time to ask the fitness club manager which trainer would be best for woman my age. What the manager gave me was a trainer that would be best for his bonus. She was older, one of those rough women who made you wonder what they did before they stumbled into personal training. Yeah, you guessed it, no results and I absolutely hated every moment with that mean woman!

That was it for me. I surmised that I just wasn’t the type who could work well with a trainer, and I was giving up on finding one. Until, that is, I would seek a trainer for someone else. My son was somewhat overweight, and I decided that it would be motivational to hire a trainer for him-maybe he would become more interested in working out. So I asked some trainers who would be the best trainer for my son. They gave me the trainer they most disliked because no one wants to train a mouthy teenager.

We missed the first training session because my son was in the hospital with a broken leg. When I discussed the predicament with the gym, the best “deal” they could make me regarding the “useless” training sessions was for me to use my son’s sessions. Anything, I thought, would be better than wasting the money I had already paid for the sessions. Wrong again! This trainer, my first male trainer, worked me so hard I would get sick in the parking lot.

The trainer also showed me a new reason not to hire a male trainer. It was called “ego.” How could anyone be so self-centered as to use my time and money, not paying attention to my reaction to the workout, but to talk through each session about himself and his problems with women? I felt like he should be trading me the fitness sessions for the counseling he was trying to get from me. Two sessions pushed me over the edge and I decided it would be less torturous to let the remaining sessions go unused. So my initial decision-not needing a trainer-appeared to be the correct decision after all. The whole situation just gave me false hope and was a waste of time and money.

For the next year not much happened with my quest for better fitness. Some weeks I was very committed to workout out productively and other weeks I was more committed to finding reasons not to workout. I tried to get excited with some classes offered by the fitness center, but all in all I was, at best, remaining at a status quo. I was satisified there was no way a trainer was going to be of any benefit to me. That decision stood until a terrifying reality hit me- I received notice that my 20th high school reunion was mere months away.

Six months before my reunion, I bought a book on the latest fad diet and started working out at the gym five days a week BEFORE work. Yes, before work! If you don’t know by now, I am here to tell you that fear will trigger a level of discipline you have not seen before. A month into my plan to be the hottest looking woman at my reunion, I had not lost any weight and the mirror test revealed no noticeable change. That was when I realized with only five months left, I’d better get very resourceful. So I consulted the most reliable source on woman’s beauty.- Cosmo

There the answer was- in black and white. If I wanted real results, I would have to do what the stars do- hire a trainer. I could see the trainers used by the stars are “professional trainers” who work with only one or two clients at time- rich clients. The “Trainer of the Stars” would be like the star’s bodyguard or publicist, and would be hired only after interviews and reference checks. I probably wasn’t going to get one of those trainers, but my research helped me to understand that there are people hired in the fitness centers as salespeople, who learn to do training as part of their employment and that there are professional trainers who come to work at the fitness center because of their training as fitness professionals. These trainers do not usually do memebership sales, and are not usually found at a desk in the sales office. Not just any part-time trainer could make me the hottest woman at my reunion- I needed a professional body sculptor.
I started my search for a pro by asking for recommendations from other people at the fitness center. Then I would watch each of those recommended trainers with their clients. Their techniques, interaction and attentiveness to their clients and propensity to “gab” during training were some of the triggers. I also targeted their clients for questions about the trainers and their results. Just watching the training sessions proved very educational.

I witnessed the “touchy feely” trainer who couldn’t keep his hands off the pretty girl clients. I grimaced at the “God’s gift” trainer who spent more time looking in the mirror than training his client. Then there was the “Gung Ho” trainer who promised results like TV ads, but used the same set of “canned” routines for every workout. As I was beginning to think there were no true professional trainers in my part of the universe, I watched a trainer I hadn’t noticed much before because most of his training sessions were during the same hours I worked. He was just finishing a session with a very fit young woman. I thought it unfair to base my review of his training prowess on this. It is easy to make a young girl look that good, after all. Still I made a note of this trainer’s name “Joel Lucky”. I wondered if that was a “stage” name.

I cornered and asked the young “hot” woman he was working with what she thought of her trainer. With the positive feedback she gave me in mind, I continued to watch this Joel Lucky guy train others. From the stairmaster, treadmill, and other machines, I watched him work with the same clients for several weeks. I continued to see no changes in my mirror while I made mental notes about Joel’s clients. Their ages varied, as did the stages of their fitness journeys. Each came back week after week. Each worked very hard and each left smiling and thanking their trainer. As I found opportunities to ask them about Joel Lucky, I realized that they all had two things in common. They were all very serious about affecting fitness changes, and they all described Joel Lucky with one word “professional”.

Had I found the perfect trainer? Perhaps. Although I struck up conversations with most of his clients quite easily, I found that I was afraid to go up and talk directly to him. I wondered if he would think me serious enough to be worthy of his time and whether I would have the physical ability and self-confidence to train with him. Would he laugh at me? Would he say there was no trainer who could help me? Would he put up with me? I thought about this a couple of days- inside screaming that the clock was ticking, ticking, ticking.

With only 8 weeks left, I decided I would talk with the devil himself to look good for my renunion. I finally forced myself to march up to Joel, told him I was looking for a professional trainer, that I had heard positive things about him, asked him if he had any openings and held my breath. He was so nice. I later chastised myself for wasting so much time before I talked with him. Yes, I was the same age as his mother, but his charismatic aura caused me to blush and act like a nervous teenager. After we discussed my goal and time frame, Joel checked his schedule and announced that he had a 2:00 p.m. opening on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Was I crazy? I had a job from 8 to 5. What was I thinking? I’ll tell you exactly what I was thinking: I was thinking, ” I am going to be the hottest woman at my class reunion 60 days from now!” Iwouldn’t want anyone to think it was easy from that point. It was anything but easy. Still the next 8 weeks flew by and I exceeded my goals. I saw the same changes in the mirror that others noticed. I loved watching the reactions from friends, co-workers, and the other workout “fanatics” at the gym. Some were happy, some were not quite so thrilled, but all wanted to know how I did it. I simply said, ” I just got Lucky” and smiled.

During training sessions, Joel challenges his clients to push themselves just beyond their comfort zones. That causes us to expand that comfort zone, but not to the point that would cause failure or discouragement. From my session with Joel, I knew that I had his full attention and that my goals were his goals. He never touched me, never belittled me, and never spend out workout time on anything but reshaping my body and, in many ways, my lifestyle. He was very encouraging as my trainer and I never again felt I was wasting my time with a trainer. Because Joel works as hard as his clients, and holds us accountable, I found that I didn’t want to disappoint him by cheating.

I recall one Monday during a training session when he asked me how I was doing on the meal plan he had designed for me. I had to confess an indiscretion to him. On the previous Friday night, my sons had brought home the most delicious smelling pizza, which tempted me over the edge. My discipline dissolved and I ate one pepperoni off of the top. I was closing my eyes savoring the moment when I was jolted into the reality that I would have to “answer to Joel” for this act. I immediately spit out the partially chewed pepperoni and washed out my mouth. Joel laughed so hard I couldn’t resist joining him. That is when we both new this trainer-client realationship was going to be successful.

I must admit that there have been times when I just didn’t feel like going to my workout. Yet every time I forced myself to show up to workout with Joel, I walked away feeling like a new woman. No matter how tired or sore I became, Joel was always willing and able to adjust the routines to get the most out of whatever parts of my body were willing to cooperate that day.

After several years of working out with Joel, I believe that he has helped me to change my life. Maybe that is only perception and maybe I would have been the hottest woman at my reunion without all of that work. I would rather, however, not take that chance. I have another reunion coming up and I had so much fun at the last one that I am excited about going -not afraid as I was before. This time I will avoid all the stress leading up to it. I know exactly how to proceed and again I will look spectacular.

I have learned that hiring a trainer is not for everyone, but finding the right trainer can benefit anyone. There is no simple formula for finding the right trainer. You just have to pay attention, ask for references and hope you too can “get Lucky.”