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HealthTrip Spotlight: Detective Jeff Ensor
Jeff Ensor began his career with the Henrico County Police Division in June 1999, and he is currently serving with homicide as a violent crimes detective. The early stages of his HealthTrip, after he was promoted to detective, were off and on, many times moving from consistent to irregular. It started when he could meet with a trainer from the Fitness & Wellness division of Human Resources once per week who helped set up a routine that he followed. However, a drastic dip occurred in his routine when he was moved to midnight shift.
Things started looking up for Jeff when he came back to daylight and joined the Henrico County Police & Fire CrossFit classes in the summer of 2015. He had early success with two different running programs the Fitness and Wellness division offered until the birth of his son when he had another dip in his routine.
During April 2017, Jeff weighed 230-pounds and decided it was time to get serious. With his annual Police fitness test on the horizon, he started running to prepare. He became more motivated when he began to lose weight. The next month, May 2017, the Fitness & Wellness division began to offer a new class called, “Henrico Tactical Strength & Conditioning (TSAC)”, that focuses on improving overall job performance, performing job-mimicking tasks, for sworn personnel on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 10:30 AM. “This worked perfectly in my schedule,” Ensor stated. The structure of participating in three classes per week plus two days of running has led to Jeff’s current success with his overall fitness and weight loss of over 30 pounds in about three months. After recognizing his achievements, we conducted an interview to spotlight him. Here is what he had to say:
I want to be able to do things with my older son, who is increasingly involved with team sports and track. My original goal weight is 190 pounds, so I am almost there. Setting up little goals has helped tremendously, averaging about two pounds lost per week. I have been tracking my meals in My Fitness Pal using the 50% carbohydrates, 30% protein, and 20% fat macronutrient split allowing me to become more carbohydrate conscious and careful with my overall consumption. Plus, my family and my wife have been very supportive with my diet changes by assisting me with meal prepping.
I am thankful for my chain of command allowing the flexibility to workout. I probably would not have been as successful if we were not allotted the four hours per week to exercise during shifts. If certain work duties come up that keep me from participating in classes I make the time to make up the workout. Fitness and Wellness does a great job of making the equipment available, and being more than accommodating by posting workouts on the bulletins and blogs, giving extra resources, or answering questions.
I believe the greatest fitness success I have had thus far is during the four-week progressive Sandbag Grinder Series offered by the Henrico TSAC program. Being able to do this with a group, seeing everyone taxing over the same workout, and looking forward to accomplishing the progressions was motivating. I built both strength and endurance and it showed from the initial score and final score of the pre and post-fitness test. First, I was able to transition from the 40-pound sandbag to the 60-pound sandbag as we progressed through the series’ workouts. But, most importantly, my initial benchmark test which consisted of picking up a 60-pound sandbag from the floor to your shoulder, then stepping onto and over a 20” box as many times as possible in 5-minutes, was only 23 reps. By the end of the 4-weeks, I doubled my work capacity score to 46 reps! Plus, I noticed my minutes per mile pace during my running decreased from 11-minutes per mile to 9-minutes per mile. I would recommend this program to anyone, even if you are off-duty. What I appreciate is the trainers do an excellent job of providing alternate movements or scales based on one’s relative fitness level.
There are numerous fitness and wellness services available for County employees:
- The employee portal contains all the information on getting started, fitness programming, fitness training, Health Trip programs, and Team Henrico events under ‘My HealthTrip’.
- For more information about the new Henrico Tactical Strength & Conditioning program, please visit our blog at https://henricotactical.wordpress.com/
- You can also stay updated with the latest programs by following the Fitness and Wellness Division’s Facebook page.
- We encourage more “HealthTrip Spotlight” stories for our HealthTrip! If you have a fitness and wellness related success story we would love to hear about it. Contact Senior Fitness Trainers Joshua Gaskins at [email protected] or Ayse Mazicioglu at [email protected].