We get straight into the heart of the conversation when, to make it easier for a few people to reach the table, I lean on a windowsill and Nathan exclaims: “I like your triceps, you can tell you train it.” Coming from an alpha male like him, you immediately feel appreciated. And from there we start to get to know the character better and the aspects that set him apart from other personal trainers. “Living in this world of social media that has taken over,” he tells us, “we constantly live in search of beauty, so the gym, fitness and cosmetic surgery have taken hold. The gym is no longer just about health, it has also become aesthetics, which leads to a boost in self-esteem. You manage to feel good about yourself and so you feel better with those around you. Then it also becomes marketing, let me explain better: in my case, to do my job well, you have to be the product of what you sell. To sell myself well I am forced not to stray from my goal, so I also become a salesman, and the content I sell is myself.” Nathan has spent his whole life in sport. He played in Piedmont's interregional Eccellenza until he was 28, so he has always been a sporty guy. “They used to tell me that I see football before the others,” he says, but then he took up the gym. In 2016 came the turning point. The meeting with Nina Moric launched him in a big way. “That meeting turned everything around for me.” To those who believe his fame is due to the VIPs, he objects and is keen to stress that “I was good before I met the VIPs, and that's why they chose me.” But who are these VIPs? To name just a few of the faces best known to the general public, we find Asia Argento, Guendalina Cenessa, Fabrizio Corona, Nina Moric, Nina Suarez, Francesco Chiofalo, Zoe Cristofoli and Antonella Fiordelisi.
Nathan's Instagram
“Do you know why my fame is constantly on the rise?” he asks us, but then he tells us: “because you have to train happiness, and that's what happens when I train you. Moreover, I'm a motivator, both with my younger clients and with my adult clients, perhaps established businessmen. I explain to people that mentality makes the difference and that the hardest thing is not the hour of training with the ‘personal’, but the other 23 hours of the day. They look for me because they're looking for a motivator. I myself need a coach. What he tells me is law for me. He gives me a guideline, not because I don't know how to do it, but if he tells me, I prefer it and gladly follow it. So, with this premise, you understand why I'm a good motivator for others.” We continue with the interview and ask for a piece of advice to give to everyone who wants to lose weight. He answers: “avoid dropping and gaining weight drastically, you hurt yourself and, moreover, you create the ideal conditions for the appearance of the infamous stretch marks. Take the time you need to do sport, and to those who tell me they don't have time I reply that ‘I make time for myself’. Do women have time to go to the hairdresser? No? Well, they make the time to go. The same goes for those who go to the gym.”
How do you motivate your clients? “Sometimes, when I notice that there are very willing clients full of positive energy, I invite them to train with me. For them it becomes a kind of reward. In that specific case, though, they are not trained by me, but they train with me, which is a nice difference.”
What features must your ideal gym have? “In a gym I look for three things: convenience (easily reachable), cleanliness and price. I found all of this at Fit Activ, of which I am a strong supporter, a gym open 24/7, accessible to everyone and present at national level across the whole country.”
Do you train everyone, even non-VIPs? “Absolutely yes, one thing doesn't rule out the other. But be careful, I make a scrupulous selection of clients. Regardless of their fame or not, if I realise that the person is not focused on reaching the goal we set ourselves, or rather if over time I notice that the results aren't showing, due for example to their poor diet (which I can't control), I tell them directly that I can't work like this, so either they get their act together or I can no longer train them. I may seem unfair, but I'm not. I'm strict, but fair.”
What does a typical day for Nathan look like? “Unlike the American methodology, I'm not a big fan of morning training. I train at 4.00 pm, so even if the world were to collapse, at that time I'm there for no one. I train my clients starting from 10.00 am, then I break for lunch, rest, train and resume training my clients from 5.00 pm. I'm methodical. I repeat this routine day after day. The life of a bodybuilder is a bit sad, I admit it, but my goal is to build muscle mass. It's called bigorexia: you're never satisfied, when the appearance of the body and nutrition are at the centre of your every daily thought.”
Are you in favour of doping? “Doping should be seen as the icing on the cake. If you are an athlete, under medical care, guided by a medical team, then it can make sense. If instead the goal is to go and look good on the beach, then no. So it's not stuff for average users. It's stuff for supervised athletes who regularly have blood tests. Everything must be done with a certain criterion. You also have to know how to put them together. Each product has a function, so you have to know the dosages, the cycles and the post-cycles, understand how to fit them together, understand how long they last. You must absolutely not upset a hormonal axis. The body is a machine, and that's why you need a coach, someone who supervises you well.”
How much do you eat a day? “It's more or less six meals that I eat a day, among which I count breakfast, a mid-morning snack, a lunch, an afternoon snack, a dinner and a pre-bedtime meal. Three are the fundamental elements to which I devote the utmost attention: carbohydrates, proteins and fats, which I combine according to the goal I have, that is, mass or definition. Every day, two hundred grams of bresaola, half a chicken, oats, egg white, bananas and supplements cannot be missing. At the moment I eat 5,500-6,000 kcal a day. According to the BIVA I recently underwent, which is the bioelectrical impedance vector analysis, I have a basal metabolism of 2,186 kcal a day, which means that if I had to stay still and lying in bed all day, I would burn that amount of calories without doing anything. The carbohydrates I eat come, in any case, strictly from clean sources such as white rice, wholewheat pasta, oats, bananas and rice cakes. Even when I eat fat (currently about 60 g a day) the source is clean, to be clear, I eat peanut butter or avocado, but I avoid lard, for example.”
Do you drink protein shakes? “Yes, but I want to make it clear that the supplement must absolutely not be seen as a replacement for a meal. I take it in addition to my meals.”
Speaking of proteins, how many grams of protein should you eat a day? “Generally it ranges from 3 to 5 grams of protein per kilo of body weight, but then it depends a lot from body to body and, I repeat, it depends a lot on the goal one wants to pursue. But proteins aren't everything. For an advanced level, the balance between sodium and water levels is also fundamental. In spring, for example, I go for extreme cutting, where I reach a competition level. In that case I lose weight and even the glasses of water I drink become important.”
How often do you cheat or simply not stick to the diet? “In summer, never. In winter, once every two weeks, but also for a matter of receptors and for a mental matter, as well as to prevent the body from getting used to it. So when I cheat, I eat a lot. And today I'm at the Ristorante Vivace precisely because I know I eat well and I really fancy pizza. I've been told that here they make pizza the way it should be done, and now we'll find out together.”
The event organised by One Love GL of Gianluca Lombardo saw the protagonist of the evening, Nathan, also take on the role of the Neapolitan pizza maker when, at the invitation of the owners of the Vivace restaurant, Giancarlo and Valerio Defanis, he improvised as a pizza master.
