An interview with Daniela Rakova– a personal coach, fitness instructor, step aerobics instructor, pilates, power jump, and fitball lead. She prepares diets and calls on everyone -“Do it right with me!“.
Can you introduce yourself to our audience?
Hello and thanks for the invitation! I hope that the information I will provide will be useful to everyone.
My name is Daniela Rakova, 36 years old from Sofia, married with two children aged 11 and 5. I’m an economist by education and I graduated from the University of National and World Economy with finance and marketing, but I have never recognized myself in the field of finance. Life has given me another opportunity, which I am very happy about. What I have been doing for 10 years gives me great pleasure because I have the opportunity to help many people. What I’m doing right now is running personal fitness workouts. I do a lot of group activities and lead 6 disciplines at the moment. The idea is for each of them to be different and to affect the maximum number of people. Some prefer more active and dynamic things, others are looking for something lighter and more moving exercises.
Do you have programmers and software developers as clients and do they have any particular requirements?
One of the good features of my job is that I have the opportunity to meet people from all fields and of course, there are also programmers and IT experts. What impresses me is that people in this field are in perfect condition and look good, compared to the mass of clients.
How important are the daily workouts for professionals who spend between 8-12 hours before the computer as an IT professional?
Well, I will start with the fact that in general sport is the essence of health and this is clear to everyone. Especially young people who are very intelligent and have access to all kinds of social media platforms and see how popular it is to take care of their health above all and maintain good physical shape. Taking into account these specialists spend much of their time in one position in front of the computer and are not very active during the day,it is essential worthy to determine some daily care for themselves and maintain one healthy tonus. It is not about going to the gym every day or doing specific exercises. The question that one must realize how important it is to increase how important is the active lifestyle before reaching a doctor and receiving any negative consequences due to the wrong lifestyle. We then advise all people in this field to actually pay attention and create something to unload them mentally, to detach them from their routine in everyday life and to expand physically.
Do people from the IT industry have to emphasize a certain type of exercises – e.g. cardio or specific muscle groups?
In general, everyone has a different physical activity and strength. It is a little difficult to talk about these people in general. Therefore, we will say that in any case, for people who have not been active, it is very important to turn to a specialist who is very important to guide you to the right exercises for them. The client has to pay attention to the whole body and always has to start with warm-up exercises. When we move on to a certain type of exercise, it is important to understand if someone has a problem such as dissolving the back or spinal curvature after a subsequent non-active lifestyle. Workout ends with stretching or cardio as progress over time and prolonged practice of training increases and strains the muscles. We can try different activities to get gradually better and better results.
Do you think that the active way of life improves our professional performance?
Of course! Here we can consider two examples related to the IT professionals. Let’s say that the person is working remotely from home. And he wakes up 5 minutes before work, makes coffee and breakfast and he will be fresh and awake in the following 2 hours. In another situation where you get up 40 minutes early, you do one 30min workout after drinking a glass of warm water on an empty stomach. We take a quick shower and after that, with a cup of coffee we are fresh, cheerful, active, and I guess much more useful in our work.
How much time per day do we need to set aside to feel more toned and energized?
In order to be toned and feel good, 30-40 minutes a day are absolutely enough. Whether we will train at home, take a walk with a pet, do a group activity for 30-40 minutes or even go to fitness- it’s always good. If we aim to achieve any results you have to train between 3-4 times a week if we really want to see any development. However, for tone and a good condition of the body and spirit, it is enough to separate after 30 minutes a day.
What are your observations, did COVID-19 encourage people to sport?
I’m still guessing it’s too early to do some summary analysis because we’re literally working for 2 weeks. I am happy that the people who have visited our halls before have not given up and I believe that in one way or another they have found an opportunity to move and be active during these months at home. Given that the lockdown was now during the winter months full of many holidays, I see that people were looking forward to opening all sport centres and coming back to us. I also believe that everyone else who has not been active before, are now trying their best to change their lifestyle given the circumstances and the fact that COVID is much more dangerous for people with comorbidities, which very often occur as a result of immobility and bad habits. Obesity is a very big problem, diabetes, heart disease. So I believe that at some point this whole situation will lead to an increase in people’s interest in sports and, in general, movement as prevention. I think we just need to learn lessons from the whole situation and try to do everything possible to take care of ourselves, to raise our children in this way and to be active people.
Follow Dani Rakova for more valuable tips, online workouts and daily motivation.
Instagram: dani_rakova
Professional website: Dani Sport. Do It Right
YoutTube channel: Daniela Rakova Do It Right
