Why I am so passionate about why I do what I do?
I get asked the question sometimes how I got into what I do and why. The answer has a couple of different reasons.
First is that I wanted to go to college for PE and one of my teachers talked me out of it. I then ended up going in a completely different direction in retail management, which I did for 20 years. And I enjoyed it.
When I did get back into going to the gym after many years, even though I loved going, I also made excuses to getting there regularly. It wasn’t until I decided to become an instructor that the consistency would get there for me.
At one point my daughter asked me after hearing my story, why I didn’t go and do it now? I told her that I was doing what I loved in an atmosphere that was positive and the people wanted to be there.
Adding in the personal training was just a natural progression. But being in my 50’s doing it, I came from a different perspective in that I could see the benefits that regular exercise gave me and the people that came consistently. But it made me sad when I was in the gyms that I taught that the majority of the trainers were in their 20’s to 30’s. The lack of older trainers meant that sometimes “older” people weren’t taken seriously when they talked about pain or hurting and I had a couple of friends get hurt!
I did not want to see that happen to anyone I knew personally! So the next step, me focusing on the non- 20 somethings (there are enough that want to train them). I have seen people walk around confused and scared to ask someone for help. Or not even wanting to step into a gym because they felt intimidated.
Second is my mom. And my mother-in-law. And my former mother-in-law.
Watching my mom and my former mother-in-law decline because of ALZ and dementia hurt a lot. It was so sad to see such vibrant people slowly wither away. They both tended to isolate themselves and not have a lot of interaction and socialization, which is huge. Although my mom walked a lot, when she was home, she sat a lot.
My mother-in-law had a long battle with cancer. It came, it went. It came back, they got it out. Unfortunately, she never changed her lifestyle habits to healthier ones, she was very overweight and the foods she made, and she was an amazing cook, were heavy and inflammatory. She also had a long, slow decline which was hard to watch.
I don’t want to be that. I don’t know of anyone who does. But it does takes some changes on our part to keep that from happening as much as we can.
I want to impact people’s lives so that they want to make those changes stick. To take away the intimidation of stepping into any exercise/fitness facility. To show you how it can impact your life in such a positive way.