WHETHER he’s coasting through the friendly skies sharpening his flying skills, or motivating fitness enthusiasts on dry land, Ralph Ventura is always on the move—and he prefers it that way.
At the age of 25, he’s training to be a licensed pilot, and working as a fitness coach while simultaneously managing a gym that is soon to open. It seems like an awful lot to someone at the outside looking in—not for him though.
”With flying and with gym, it’s not work. It’s tiring but it’s fine. I don’t force myself to do it,” he shared, as he thinks of them as passions. After all, it’s always been a back thought to be a pilot since he was young, and he’s been working out religiously since he was a senior in high school. In fact, his love for fitness pretty much set everything in motion.
Ralph is a nursing graduate from Velez College as well as a registered nurse. After his stint in the banking industry, he decided to take up the offer of being a personal trainer full time two or three years ago at Anytime Fitness, specializing in interval training, body building and more. There he met friends who piqued his interest in flying.
“I asked them what the process was on how to become a pilot. I realized that it was doable,” he said.
Since last year, he’s been learning the ropes on aviation at Airworks Aviation Academy located at General Aviation Area, Mactan-Cebu International Airport, Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu. It offers a pilot program essential for one’s career in aviation with courses like Private Pilot License Course (PPL) and Instrument Flight Rating Course (IFR) to name a few, flying different kinds of aircraft like a Cessna for starters. He was pursuing this while at the same time teaching some classes at Anytime Fitness (Cebu IT Park and Cebu Business Park branches) and fitness studio Zink. It was basically fly, work out, teach, repeat.
There are times when it can all be exhausting of course, but for Ralph, he’s always eager to do it all again.
“I’m so tired every time I go home, but the next day I keep doing it because it’s what I love,” he said, chuckling at his current day-to-day schedule. “If you see one of my classes—if you’re in my shoes—you’ll see how fun it is! When you hit the gym you get tired, but when you start, the exhaustion fades. I’m not even kidding.”
The same goes with flying as he recalled the first time he flew the plane solo.
“I wanted to fly because I wanted to travel all over the world and at the same time you’re flying the plane. It’s a different feeling; like you’re defying gravity,” he said. “It’s unexplainable especially when I flew my first solo. The feeling is one you can never forget. It’s one of the craziest feelings in the world—you’re by yourself!”
At present, he’s still teaching some classes at Anytime Fitness (Cebu Business Park branch) and Zink, is eager to take the CPL examination, while busy with the opening of another Anytime Fitness branch at Oakridge Business Park, Mandaue City, Cebu, set to open November this year.
“I’m so happy right now,” he said when asked about his journey. “I’m not there yet but I’m sure I’ll be so happy when I get there. I feel like I’m getting to where I want to be. For me this is really what I want.”