How hard work and dedication can lead to success
- Sonsoles Martín Rodríguez
- Aug 23, 2022
- 4 min read
February 20, 2022
In 2016, Adriano López Vázquez inaugurated the Delphos gym in Monforte de Lemos (Galicia, Spain), a town of just 20,000 inhabitants, which, although it is home to some elite athletes, was not used to sport in a closer and more personal way. In 2021, López was collaborating and training people from television and actors such as Pedro Alonso (Berlin in Money Heist). What happened in those five years where the evolution is evident?
Talking about Adriano López is synonymous with progress and learning. Born in 1985, he studied labor relations, but in the end, his passion for sports led him to take courses more and more related to the goal of being a personal trainer. Self-employed since the age of 18, he had many previous jobs, including lifeguard, hotelier or teaching in schools and other gyms.
However, he knew that he wanted to create a different space of his own, following a specific line of principles. For López, the most important thing is to try to have a relationship with the person beyond student-coach, being something more personal. Care about the students as you want them to care about you.
This philosophy where López feels the successes of others as his own and helps them grow sportingly and personally, has resonated in Monforte very well, where more than 100 people go every week. Although there were more gyms before his, he was the one who introduced the concept of personal trainer to the town.
He also trains people from other cities, like Madrid or Santiago, monitoring their progress remotely. Some people, like the actor Pedro Alonso, contacted him through mutual friends, and with others it was López himself who got in touch, managing in one way or another to create a network of contacts that he maintains day by day.
He said he does not think much about his growing popularity, remaining realistic but with dreams and hopes to continue growing.
A remarkable quality of López is his ability to motivate people. He believes that everyone has a reason that goes far beyond a mere aesthetic fact, which drives them to continue working. He said that in the end, he is doing everything that he wishes someone had done with him in his day.
This thought of wanting to be a closer coach has led him to want to learn more. At the beginning of the pandemic, he finished a master's degree in leadership coaching at the University of Barcelona; he is finishing a master's degree in sports physical preparation for soccer and studying a distance career in physical activity and sports sciences in Madrid.
Instead of stressing him out, all this work meant that the covid pandemic did not affect him personally or professionally. He defines himself as a person who takes care of things more than worries. When the state of alarm was decreed in Spain, starting the national quarantine, López focused on regulating everything from home. He was always working with a volume of people practically equal to that of the gym before the pandemic.
In addition, he came up with the idea of creating a web page, a project still in progress that would be focused on the idea of development.
"If you lie down, I'll lie down with you and if you get up, then I get up at the same time as you," is one of his outstanding phrases on this future website.
He also expanded the staff in the gym and now he has a physiotherapist, a nutritionist, a room coordinator, and a Community Manager. Something remarkable is also his short career as a model. He started at a very specific moment when he didn't even have his gym.
He walked past a modeling agency and curiosity made him go inside. He participated in a series of model contests and photo sessions and was chosen as Mister Galicia to participate in Mister Spain. He declined the offer for work reasons, but sometime later, the Mister Universe manager contacted him and since there was already a Spanish representative, he was chosen to represent Portugal because of his Portuguese roots.
The contest took place in Peru in 2015 and he describes the experience as very interesting where he met a different world to the one he was not used to because he came from taking photos and not parading on catwalks.
Today, he does not believe that it is possible to return to professional modeling, but he does not rule anything out and even considers publicity if the opportunity arises.
His work has earned him two opportunities to be on the cover of Men's Health Spain magazine. The first with modeling where he made the top 25 as a cover candidate. And the second as personal trainer, where he was among the top 20.
People like María Martín, a track athlete who has been training in the gym for a year, assure that from the first moment she spoke with Adriano, "she felt that feeling of familiarity,” that makes her feel comfortable and happy with the results.
Comments