You’re Personal Trainer is Thankful for You

To all of my clients: thank you for helping me fall in love with what I do day in and day out.

The more clients I get to know, the more I love what I do. My clients become more than just a weekly training session. I know about their lives, and they know about mine. They tell me about their deepest personal frustrations. They come to me ready and willing to show me their weaknesses and talk about what embarrasses them the most. That’s a huge amount of trust.

And yet when they leave, my clients are the ones thanking me.

I am a personal trainer. I am part coach, part fitness geek, part mentor, part therapist. I LOVE that I can help women figure out this world of exercise and nutrition and health.

I help people, primarily women, develop healthier exercise and eating patterns. They come to me wanting to lose weight, build strength, put on muscle and feel comfortable in their clothes and in a gym. We work together to get there. So I get the thank you.

For all of the personal training clients out there, and especially my own, I want to say thanks to YOU.

Thank you…

For reminding me why I love what I do.

Fitness and health saved my life. In my early twenties I developed an eating disorder and I struggled for years to fight through it. I worked with professionals who helped me sort through the bullshit rules I read online and unhealthy self-perceptions I’d developed over the years. Learning more about food and exercise and my own body transformed my recovery into a launching pad for a new career and a burning passion to help others who found themselves struggling as I had.

So 5 years ago I earned my first certification and became a personal trainer.

And to this day, when a client walks out with a smile on her face, or texts me after an awesome workout, or posts on social media about how amazing she feels now that she’s started to get fit again, I fall in love with what I do all over again.

For motivating me to keep training.

I run fitness classes out of my personal training studio. These classes are tough. Think less Jane Fonda and more Jillian Michaels, less barre class and more T90X. And holy crap is it motivating to watch women go from struggling through 2 knee pushups and a 30 second plank on day 1, to 10 real-deal push-ups and a 90 second plank on day 30.

I am 100% the fitness nerd who gets excited to be in love with fitness.

I LOVE when my clients are just just as pumped as I am. I LOVE when my clients send me their stats and their progress pictures. I LOVE when they send me photos of them making their husbands do a workout with them on vacation.

Every hint of “I helped someone fall in love with fitness” gives me a jolt of energy far more effective than any cup of coffee could ever be.

For knocking the trainer-lingo from my vocabulary

Metabolic conditioning. SMR. Oxidative phosphorylization. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

My clients give zero $hits about fancy words and scientific explanations.

Do I feel special and important when I talk fitness-ese? Sure. Do I follow 1,000 trainers and coaches on social media who fill my feed with fitness talk? YEP. Do my clients want to here it?

NOPE.

So thank you all for the reminder that a squat is a squat, it’s okay to breath hard without assigning a heart rate zone, and you don’t need to know the scientific reasoning behind the 10 second rest increment in a Tabata workout.

You just want to get it done.

For asking me to keep learning.

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty – Henry Ford

I don’t have all the answers. I won’t ever have all of these answers. But I will ALWAYS strive to FIND an answer.

The health and fitness world is constantly changing, constantly re-inventing itself. There are millions of exercise techniques, diets and trends out there and I get a text from a client at least once a week with a theory or method that I’ve never heard of. The only way that I can get better as YOUR coach, is to learn the answers that you need me to know.

For inspiring me to push myself just as hard as I push you

Last week in class, one of my clients picked up 20 pound dumbbells to curl. I was so excited for her. Then I realized that since she had the 20s, I had to use the 25s. Here goes nothing…

I love fitness but, like you, I don’t always have the motivation or energy to workout. I adore nutrition but sometimes I want pizza and wings.

My clients push me to be better simply by pushing themselves.

I’m inspired by the women who come to me knowing nothing about dead lifts or push presses but learn fast and grow faster.

I’m inspired by the women who have struggled with diets for years and still have the guts to come to me asking for help, accountability and guidance.

I am inspired to be my best self because my clients rely on me to not only push them to be THEIR best selves, but they look to me to emulate that lifestyle.

So thank you. Thank you for trusting me. Keep on asking for help. Keep on striving for more.