By Germaine Lim

NOTHING'S impossible with Yumi Lee. In six months, the 40-year-old US celebrity personal trainer got actress Demi Moore to do one-arm-one-leg push-ups effortlessly for the movie GI Jane (1997).

At that time, Moore - who played a soldier undergoing the gruelling US Navy Seal training programme - couldn't even manage a regular push-up, said Yumi, who charges upwards of US$100 ($140) for a one-to-one hour-long session.

Speaking over the phone from Los Angeles where she is based, the Korean - who has been a personal trainer for the last 16 years - told The New Paper:"Demi got the technique right in just six months. Considering she wasn't even doing any push-ups before this, that was a pretty quick progression."

And remember Brad Pitt and his incredibly ripped body in Troy (2004)?

Photo: Warner Brothers

That was achieved under Yumi's training too.

"For Brad, we focused a lot on core and strength training. Of course he also ate a lot to get his size."

Yumi appears on the exercise show My Workout, which airs over Li TV (SingTel mio TV Ch22) every Wednesday and Thursday at 7pm, and weekends at 8pm.

While many need a kick in the bottom to get started, there are also others who have gone the other extreme and become addicted to exercise.

She was one of them. There were days when she would work out more than two hours a day, which she said is unhealthy.

Then she was competing in sport aerobics, which combines aerobics and rhythmic gymnastics with dance and choreography.

Between 1995 and 2001, the US national sport aerobics champion had won three gold medals, two silver, and one bronze.

She was also into running and swimming.

"I changed my social life to exercise. If I was too busy to work out, I would get moody.Then I stopped competing. I was tired of working out. I wanted to live my life."

Now she alternates between cardio and strength training and a strict diet plan to keep fit.

For example, she suggests eating half a sandwich and keeping the other half for later.

She joked: "It's not nice to shove food into your mouth anyway."

The pay-off of being a personal trainer isn't just seeing a client's physical change. She says it is equally, if not more, rewarding to help others become mentally fit.

That was why she became a personal trainer instead of a journalist.

She graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University with a degree in sociology and minor in communications.

She had become a fitness trainer in college and realised that journalism did not gratify her the way motivating people as a trainer did.

Over the last eight years, she has learnt that the clients too, have to be ready to make a difference to their physical and mental well-being.

She said: "I can't be there throughout the day. I can only spend an hour a day with them. For those who are easily discouraged, I try to stay as positive as possible.

"Sometimes it's not about what's going on right now. I try to get to the source of dysfunction: Why they got to where they are now."

She recalled a woman who was fond of chocolate.

"This client had been sent to a boarding school as a child and the only comfort she had then was the chocolate bar in her hands. Once we identified her trigger points, it was easier to manage a more effective weight-loss programme."

It also helps to have a partner to workout with.

Yumi is married to Ron Matthews, also a celebrity personal trainer, who's helped Hollywood babes like Jennifer Garner and Eva Mendes.

Since a personal trainer may not always be available for everyone, she said people can still get "help" in the form of TV shows like her show My Workout and US reality TV weight-loss show The Biggest Loser.

"People are motivated by these shows. There's no way that they can simply watch these shows and not be spurred on by the energy on these shows to do something about their bodies."

This article was first published in The New Paper.