Al has had an intense relationship with fitness all his life. Overweight  and asthmatic as a child, his path to fitness included being teased and taunted by friends, family and strangers as the “fat” kid, being unable to make youth sports teams, and yearly despair for scoring poorly on school physical fitness tests. In his teens his “fat” body grew taller and more broad; and his chronic asthma subsided, making physical exercise and dynamic movement less of a struggle. To this day, Al insists he never “lost” his fat; his larger frame just made him appear more in line with what society considered acceptable. 

He began to play tennis, racquetball, football and basketball and for the first time began to enjoy movement. By early adulthood, he had transformed himself into a college-level rugby player; but he never forgot the desperation and low self-esteem associated with not being able to participate or be viewed as a physically valued youth. 

While attending college for theater and mass communications, he began working in a fitness club to increase his strength and aerobic capacity for rugby. Al received his first fitness certification at 20, and hasn’t looked back! 

A 37 year fitness industry veteran; Al is renowned in the New York City and Richmond, VA areas as an elite level personal trainer, master group fitness instructor and speaker on all things fitness.

His specialties include assessing and correcting movement dysfunctions, postural mechanics, pre- and post-operative fitness, sports-performance and group fitness.

Al’s resume includes work with New York City’s top retail fitness firms including, Equinox Fitness, New York Sports Club, The Fitness Company, Chelsea Piers, Crunch Fitness, The Printing House, The Executive Club (at World Trade Center), Revolution Studios and +1 Fitness. 

In 1997 Al transitioned to corporate and in-home personal training aimed at individuals who needed fitness expertise in their private buildings and offices. It’s here he began to develop his theories on the often-antagonistic relationship between being “healthy” and being “fit.” Through the years he has compiled an impressive record helping people feel better and stay injury-free, managing and staffing health clubs, recruiting, training and supervising personal trainers, developing innovative and profitable fitness programming, and honing the philosophies that are the cornerstones to Fitness Therapy RVA.

In July of 2018, Al and his family relocated to Richmond, VA and he started Fitness Therapy RVA. The mission of Fitness Therapy RVA is to heal people’s sports traumas and help promote life-long fitness strategies. 

Along with Fitness Therapy RVA, Al runs Rethink Fitness, a partnership with yoga master Mary Burruss. Their mission is to meld personal training and movement systems into effective virtual fitness regimens, continue to develop the concepts of homeostatic mind/body training and perfect online and in-person training protocols.