meet ronan

Hi all! My name is Ronan, I am 27 and I’ve been a Strength and Conditioning Coach/PT for near 10 years now here in Dublin.

What were you doing before you started at Rocky Fitness?
I worked in a few different commercial gyms for the 7 years previous in managerial roles alongside being a fitness instructor/personal trainer too.

What’s your role within Rocky Fitness?
My role here in Rocky fitness is a senior coach due to my experience in the industry along with also organising and running all of our events that we do here in the gym.

What inspired you to become a coach?
I think I knew when I was finishing school that sitting down and doing a 9-5 desk job wouldn’t be for me and I needed to be on my feet and in an active job all day instead. So I think that and also having a love for fitness at the time the two just seemed to go hand in hand along with having a passion for always wanting to help others and uplift them to be the best they can be.
What’s your favourite part about being a coach?
I think my favourite part other than what I’ve just mentioned would be the rewarding feeling of seeing how much impact you can have on people and how you can change their lives through training. For me seeing that glow on their faces or buzz about them when they’ve achieved certain things like a personal best or maybe at the end of finishing a tough workout. That’s gold for me !
What’s your least favourite part about being a coach?
Nothing really .. maybe the 5.45am starts as getting up can be tough as my sleep is awful 🥲

What piece of advice are you always repeating to members?
One quote I always preach to people is “If you go from 0 to 100 you’ll go from 100 to 0” and basically what it means is if you go all out on something from the start and try completely change everything about your current lifestyle, you’ll likely burnout and boomerang back to where you started as the foundations haven’t been built . Where as if you start to make small sustainable changes for a start and then build on them over time I think you end up getting to that ultimate end goal a lot better and more efficient.

Kind of like when people say “I’m starting Monday and cutting out everything again and I’m going to start doing x y and z” It’s setting you up for failure and also going to put a lot of unneeded pressure on you and make you hate that process of trying to evolve into your best.

What’s one common fitness myth you wish more people understood?
Women thinking that lifting heavy will make them bulky or make their arms big like Arnold Schwarzeneggers, along with taking protein with this will cause that too.

Both of these are just not true and if anything I’ve found the women that have lifted the heaviest and have the highest protein intakes would tend to be the opposite as big weights along with increasing daily protein intake builds more lean muscles and can make your arms actually smaller and more “tone”