Gymnastics, Four Kids, and a Barbell: Why I Coach the Way I Do

My love for training really started in my childhood. I was in gymnastics as a little girl and used to dream of being in the Olympics. Obviously life took a different direction. But something from that gym floor stuck: the idea that a body can be trained, that a skill you cannot do today is just a skill you have not repeated enough yet.

Fast forward to 2012. Two kids in, I wanted to get back in shape and feel strong again. Not smaller, exactly — strong. I found a gym with childcare, which if you are a parent you know is the entire ballgame, and I started. General fitness first, then strength training, then running. I was completely self-taught up until my certification courses.

What being self-taught actually taught me

I learned so much through trial and error. I did the things you do when nobody is guiding you: I program-hopped, I trained too hard on weeks I was already exhausted, I chased soreness like it was a scoreboard, and I spent months on exercises that were not moving me toward anything in particular. I also had long stretches where I was doing everything right and did not know it, because nobody had told me what progress was supposed to feel like.

Then results started showing up from my efforts, and I was hooked. I wanted to share that success with anyone who was looking for it. That was the moment I knew I wanted to share what I had learned with anyone who was looking for that knowledge. Such a wonderful feeling it was.

Here is the part that shaped my coaching most, though. All the wasted time in those self-taught years came from one thing: not knowing which parts of the advice applied to me. The advice itself was usually fine. It just was not written for a woman with two small kids, a limited window, and a body that had been through two pregnancies. Nobody was doing the translation step. Now that is my whole job.

Starting over, twice

Two more kids later, I have started over again. And now I feel stronger and more energetic than ever. I say that not as a highlight reel but as the most useful piece of experience I own: I know what the restart feels like from the inside. I know the specific dread of walking back into a gym at a level below where you used to be. I know how loud the voice is that says you already tried this.

That is also why I will not shame a client, ever. I have been the person who fell off for a month. Shame did not bring me back. A plan that fit my week brought me back.

How the story shows up in your program

Three concrete ways. First, I plan for interruption. Every program I write has a twenty-minute version, because the week you are sick or the kid is sick is the week the habit usually dies. Second, I start below where your ego wants to start, and we earn the jumps. The gymnastics kid in me believes in drilling a pattern until it is automatic before we load it heavy. Third, I explain everything, because I remember what it was like to guess.

I want to see all of my clients succeed in what they desire the most. Whether that is weight loss, general strength, more muscle, better energy and daily mobility, or getting ready for one specific event on the calendar — the mechanism is the same. A plan built for your actual life, run consistently, adjusted honestly.

If you have been circling the idea of starting for a while, that is normal, and it is a fine place to start from. Tell me what your week really looks like and we will build from there.