Senior Class Board President Darren Tomasso has been shaping more than policy this past year. Tomasso, a fitness trainer and 2016 Mr. Penn champion, is infamous at the Pottruck Health and Fitness Center for his "Brazilian Butt Lift" group fitness class.
Tomasso credits the novelty of the name to drawing attention to his training sessions and getting people involved in the class.
“At first people were confused what it was,” Tomasso said. “The first thing that pops up when you Google ‘Brazilian Butt Lift’ is the plastic surgery procedure.”
Tomasso starting teaching the "Brazilian Butt Lift" class in the spring of 2016. After competing in the 2016 Mr. Penn bodybuilding competition, Tomasso’s mom shared pictures of him on her Facebook wall. Soon after, his mom’s gym friends asked if he would teach a class for them next time he was home over break. After enjoying his first fitness instructor experience, he returned to campus set on teaching a course at Pottruck.
When he first started to teach the class, Tomasso consulted with his friend and College senior Rhea Singh due to her prior experience in group exercise classes. Singh first became involved with group fitness after sustaining an injury that prevented her from participating in dance.
Singh helped him to launch and curate his own class Snapchat account, “Pennsquats.” At first, Singh went to the group classes in order to be a “friendly face” in the room, but once she found out that Tomasso wanted to publicize the class, she started posting pictures and videos to the account for him.
Tomasso has stopped teaching the class this semester in order to focus on his new passion and fitness venture: small group functional training.
For his small group functional training program, Tomasso meets twice a week with groups of around eight members. The small group environment ensures that he can tailor workouts to focus on each individuals’ fitness goals and adjust for any injuries while still maintaining a group workout setting.
The functional component of the sessions depend on each individual client and what they want to use their group training sessions for. Clients in Tomasso’s class range from marathon trainers to tennis team members looking to improve their flexibility and tennis game.
Wharton senior Alex McClelland is a longtime friend, training partner, and client of Tomasso. McClelland likes Tomasso’s approach to small group functional training because of its ability to “break up the monotony” of a regular gym routine. McClelland also credits the small group setting to helping him perform better and incrementally achieve his fitness goals.
“When you’re in public, you’re more incentivized to work harder and focus,” McClelland said.
Due to the success of both his small group functional training and his "Brazilian Butt Lift" class, Tomasso began toying with the idea of pursuing fitness instruction and training as a career. McClelland positively reinforced Tomasso’s straying away from the traditional Wharton investment banking path into the world of fitness training.
“He, like many of us, was faced with a challenge to choose to do something he was passionate about or something that was seen as productive on campus,” McClelland said.
As someone who has gone through a fitness transformation himself, Tomasso welcomes people of all fitness levels into his classes — from those looking to jumpstart their fitness journey to gym rats looking to improve their form or certain muscle groups.
“Darren has professional training experience with weightlifting, functional training, and circuit training,” McClelland said. “Even people who come to the gym a lot can benefit from his expertise.”
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