We had already met Stefano Marini, the VIP Personal Trainer for the Aspria Harbour Club, several times during the past year because of the valuable content he has contributed to the Wellness Blog. His blog post “It’s time to burn” had been one of the most commented ones we had posted.

That’s why we’re here today to tell the story of his experience in Miami! Happy reading, and thank you Stefano for your very detailed diary!

Hi everyone, I’m Stefano Marini, Fitness Manager and Personal Trainer at the Aspria Harbour Club.

I love to call myself a “fitness addict” and nearly every year I try to organize a trip to the US in search of innovation and inspiration. I went to Los Angeles and Las Vegas in the summer of 2010.

This year in February, as had happened in the past, I had a great opportunity to accompany a VIP client, former professional soccer player Massimo Brambati, on a trip to Miami, where, despite his busy schedule, he still wanted to stay in shape , and make sure there was someone there while he traveled to help watch his diet, as this is a time when people often make poor decisions about what to eat.

For my part, I initially had the chance to train in one of the very latest VIP hotels in Miami Beach, the recently built W South Beach Hotel. One wonderful surprise was noticing that the nearly 300 m² luxury fitness room was almost entirely equipped with Technogym equipment.

Later on, I had the chance to train my client in one of the most recent and high-tech buildings in South Beach.

As you can see from the photos, the layout of the fitness room in this building is incredibly elegant, in typical Miami style. What struck me about this condominium’s fitness center was its size, which was comparable to the square footage of an actual fitness club. I was also struck by the elegance of certain details, like the soft towelettes for freshening up your face, the fruit they provided, and the convenient dispensers of flat and fizzy water.

I also had the chance to meet with some local personal trainers. I noticed that during their lessons they also used many techniques of Functional Training, which has been very much in fashion in the last year. You can see it in some of the photos I took when I visited the most famous CrossFit gym in Miami Beach.

CrossFit is a discipline that blends together exercises drawn from the widest range of sports, attempting to capitalize on the benefits of all of them. The name of the discipline itself, which was created in a humble gym in Santa Cruz in California, says it all.

All the exercises and technical moves in CrossFit are taken largely from gymnastics, track and field, and weight lifting, but they can be inspired by any type of movement, because the goal is to involve the largest number of muscle groups through movements related to the ones you make in everyday life.

CrossFit is based on an endless range of functional movements; it doesn’t help you if you specialize in only one specific sport, but it does help you build your overall ability, which is useful in every sport. The functional training in this discipline is designed and structured to be universally applicable, modular, and adaptable to any ability level, regardless of personal experience or age.

And even though this was a condominium gym, I was impressed that it featured separate women’s and men’s dressing rooms with a sauna, Turkish bath, lockers, and showers. That’s because connected to the gym there was an actual spa with massage rooms and two pools. Training sessions were conducted morning and afternoon as follows:

• in the morning: jogging for 40 minutes (both on the beach and on the treadmill)

• in the evening: weight session with cardio cool-down and a heavy focus on stretching.