Bob Harper (personal trainer)

Infobox actor


imagesize = 150px
name = Bob Harper
birthdate = 1965 (Age 43)
location = Nashville, Tennessee, United States
birthname = Robert Harper
notable role = "The Biggest Loser" (2004-present)
"Biggest Loser" Australia (2004-Present)|

Robert "Bob" Harper (born 1965) is a personal trainer, who appears on the television series "The Biggest Loser" (US) as the trainer for the blue team. He is also a trainer in the Australian version of the show. He was born and raised in Clarksville, TN.

The Biggest Loser

Bob Harper has been the blue team trainer for the entire run of The Biggest Loser in America, and the first two seasons in Australia to date. For the third Australian season, he and fellow trainer Jillian Michaels together trained the black team in the United States before heading back to Australia.

Harper appeared as the full-time blue team trainer during the first Australian season, however in season 2 of the Australian show, he shared the responsibility with Australian trainer Shannan Ponton. In the first Australian season, Harper left the show temporarily when his mother died of a heart attack.

Harper has trained many celebrities, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, Ellen DeGeneres, Melissa Etheridge, Guy Ritchie, Dermot Mulroney, Josh Ulsh, Selma Blair, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Catherine Keener, Carla Gugino, Laura Dern and Jenny McCarthy.

Harper teaches daily fitness classes in Los Angeles. He also instructs yoga and his hobbies include photography, tennis, cycling, running and snowboarding.

Notably, out of the three personal trainers on the American series of "The Biggest Loser", Harper is the only trainer who has been fit his entire life; fellow trainers Jillian Michaels and Kim Lyons have both previously been overweight (albeit not to the same extent as the contestants on the show). He is also the oldest out of the three trainers in the American series; there is an eight-year gap between the ages of himself and Lyons, and a nine-year gap between himself and Michaels.

He along with Jillian recently made an appearance during the "Deal or No Deal" season 4 premiere.

Win-loss records

Looking at the trainers' win/loss records, Harper has only won over Michaels twice, and those were in the special editions of the show. In the main show, in seasons 1, 2, and 4, Harper has always lost to Michaels; in season four in particular, Michaels' team completely wiped Harper's team out in the final week, which left him with no representatives in the finale, and therefore, he, the trainer, was also eliminated from the competition (Lyons met the same fate two weeks earlier). The only time he won the main game was in season 3, when Michaels did not participate, and he beat Lyons to be the winning trainer (he only had one finalist, while Lyons had two). In season 5, for the first time ever, the end result was a tie between Harper and Michaels, because the winner, Ali, was shared between both trainers during her time on campus. She first trained with Harper before she was originally eliminated in week 4, and when she returned, she switched over to Michaels, but was neither a member of the blue team or the black team, therefore, when she won, it resulted in the first-ever tie (Although technically, Harper would have won because the Pink team, Ali and Bette-Sue, originally belonged to him for the first four weeks of the competition).

In the Australian series, Harper and Michaels each had two finalists in the season 1 finale; Jillian won by a very narrow margin (Although it should be noted that the winner, Adrian 'Adro', was also trained by Bob for a short time). In season two, he and Ponton shared the blue team, and in week 9, the entire team was eliminated, thus knocking both Harper and Ponton out of the game because they had no one representing them as finalists. In season 3, he, Michaels, and the Commando shared the black team. At one point, they were eliminated, but two of their black team members came back via a twist in the game. However, one was eliminated again, and the other took a money offer and surrendered his place in the game, and thus while Harper was eliminated, he took both Michaels and the Commando with him. The reason why Bob and Jillian were eliminated from the game is because they had a team that was significantly smaller than the teams of their rivals (Bob and Jillian had only 4 team members, as opposed to 7 each for Shannan Ponton and Michelle Bridges). Having a smaller team made it harder for Bob and Jillian to win, and this disadvantage ultimately cost them the game.

External links

* [http://www.myspace.com/trainerbob Bob Harper] at MySpace