Welcome to Roman Fitness Systems

This is my web home, my blog, and my baby.  From this site, I’ll share my training advice, nutritional strategies, and my stories. And probably more random nonsense than anything else.

So who am I?

My name is John Romaniello, and I am a bad-ass.

Okay, that isn’t true.

I can’t really back that up.  I am not a bad-ass.

On a scale of bad-assery, 1 being Danny Tanner and 10 being Samuel L. Jackson, I am probably about a 5.8, which I think puts me in a range somewhere between Will Ferrel and Conan (O’Brian, not the Barbarian).

What was I saying? Oh yea, about me.

I am a New York based personal trainer, coach, author and model.

Over the past several years, I have helped thousands of people achieve and surpass their fitness goals using methods both traditional and unconventional.

Living and working in the New York area, I’ve had the opportunity to train a number of actors, musicians, producers and models.

More importantly, I have helped people from all walks of life achieve their goals. To give a few examples, I’ve worked with:

• kids
• their parents
• the lawyers who repsesented those parents in the divorce
• strippers who danced for the lawyers
• bouncers at the club where the strippers worked
• the poker players who take money off the bouncers in the weekly game
• that dude at the mall who sells all the poker players their sunglasses
• my mom

I have served as a strength coach for athletes of all levels and sports, from high school wrestlers to collegiate  and professional soccer players to recreational golfers and volleyball players and even the occasional cheerleader.

And of course, there have been a lot of people who don’t care about performance and just want to look good with their shirts off–which works for me, because I honestly hate shirts. Total waste of time.  Pants, I’m okay with. Usually.

As an author, my articles have appeared in numerous online and print publications, such as T-Nation.com, SHAPE and the like.  My modeling images have appeared on packaging for supplements, training products, a few underwear ads, a variety of fitness magazines, and probably some very inappropriate websites.

Chances are, if you’ve picked up a fitness magazine in the past few years, you have either seen me or read something of mine.  While that’s all pretty cool, it still doesn’t make me a bad-ass.

I’m just too much of a nerd.

Unapologetically, I love  Star Wars,  comics, emo music, video games and all things technology. To put it in literary terms, I have always been more Lord of the Rings than  Lord of the Flies.

I wasn’t a natural athlete, but instead a chubby kid who would rather be reading than running.  In fact, when I was in the 8th grade, I really only started playing sports as a way to—as my guidance counselor put it—”diversify my resume for my college applications.”

So I was forced by that logic to take time out my busy Dungeons & Dragons schedule to wrestle, play football, and run track.  With a lot of hard work, I was able to work myself into the upper echelons of mediocrity at most of this.  I would go so far as to say I stopped sucking.

The thing that did it was training.  The offseasons were my favorite. I spent time in the weight room, where I enjoyed lifting.  Because I had no delusions about my potentional for athletic greatness, I got to focus on lifting, where I was able to excel.

I would often spend time there lost in thought about what it would be like if I could use the tools in that room change my body and look like the guys in the comic books instead of the guy who read them.

Years later, when I was 19 and way fatter than I had a right to be I decided to do just that.

Being a bookish sort of guy (read: nerd), I dove headfirst into all the literature I could find.  I read everything on training, nutrtion and supplementation I could get my hands on. I read for hours and trained for hours—-and let me tell you and made A LOT of mistakes!

The thing about reading everything is that there is just so much bad information out there.  For the most part, you never really know what’s right, or wrong, or just plain stupid until you try it. So I tried everything.  And despite the fact that I made mistakes, I DID make progress.

In a few months I went from a chubby 193 to a shredded 165.  Six months later, I had packed on almost 30 pounds, and was back at 193, but this time on my terms. I was back at my starting weight, but with radically different physique.

Over that first year, outside of learning as much as I could and getting my first training certifications, I completely changed my body and my life.

I went from hating beaches to loving them, loving shirts to hating them, and being uncomfortable with my body to getting pictures of it taken professionally.

And, again, this was despite my mistakes.  Now, I know I could make better progress in less time.

However, those mistakes were the best things that ever happened to me.   Stumbling onto methods I would not have otherwise been aware of, my mistakes have helped me come up with systems for both fat loss and muscle gain that–until now–I have not shared with the world.  Using these methods, I’ve been able to help people avoid those pitfalls and reach their goals in record time.

It’s not always easy, but it is effective.

Plus, thankfully I have had a great time doing it. I tell jokes, I tell stories, and sometimes I give people workouts that make them vomit–but as my fellow model and philosophizer Derek Zoolander once said, vomitting is, “a great way to lose weight before a runway show.”  Which is braggable.

So, I guess I am a fitness dude who makes people laugh.  Or maybe I’m a comedy dude who makes people fit.

Either way,  hang out here and you’re sure to pick up some stuff that you can use to achieve your goals, whether they be for get bigger, faster, and stronger; or to get smaller, leaner and sexier.

Or especially if you goal is…oh, I dunno, to get really hot and take a bunch of pictures and post them on your Facebook so your ex-girlfriend feels stupid for hooking up with a lacrosse player, I can help with that.

Hypothetically.

…just sayin.

We’re going to have a good time here and form a great community. I want you to post comments on whatever you’re thinking about whatever I’m saying.  You’ll need an open mind and a sense of humor.

If you don’t want to talk about innovative ways to make great progress, or you’re offended by the occasional off color comment (or picture) this might not be the place for you.  That’s cool, no sweat.  We’ll have fun without you.

So welcome to Roman Fitness Systems.  Clothing optional.

Yours in Moderate Bad-assery,

Roman

P.S.   A few more things about me.

I love books, the History channel and poker. I dig surfing, skydiving, Green technology, and classic motorcycles.  I believe that Arnold Schwarzenegger is the man and has never made a bad movie.

I’m going to talk about tv, movies, sex, and a lot of pop-culture—especially pop-culture and viral facets of the interwebz.  Anytime you find a funny website that relates to a topic we’ve touched on, you post it or I’ll be personally offended.

I hate spicy food, because I don’t see a reason for food to make me uncomfortable with I eat it.  I don’t eat shellfish because, dude, they look like bugs.

Speaking of which, I am terrified of spiders.

I have a dog who walks me twice a day, a mom who still sends leftovers home when I leave her house and some of the greatest friends in the world.