Time to get personal, and no, gross… not THAT personal. 😜
What I mean is that my training philosophy comes from a very personal space – it isn’t what I learned when I was getting my training certifications, and it isn’t something that you will get from any other trainer because, well, it’s personal. And it will be personal with each and every one of you. How we connect and move through your fitness journey is unique. If you haven’t read through my home page yet, no worries, because that’s the fancy and professional version of my training philosophy – and although I stand behind every word, I want to really connect on a deeper level here, so that you know where I’m coming from, and that I’m not perfect, and I really, really, really……….really……….really don’t want you to be either……really.
I want to first take a quick minute to feature an amazing lady in the space of compassion, Dr. Kristin Neff, who has been studying this subject for quite some time and has devoted a significant portion of her life to it so that we can reap the rewards. Having compassion that we are in this together is so important for me. I want to stress this, A-FUCKING-LOT. Now, Dr. Neff unpacks compassion into four major points, and also pretty much makes the case that having compassion, whether it’s for yourself, or for someone else, is all pretty much the same;
- Having compassion means you recognize suffering – you lean into the uncomfortable
- Compassion also calls us to feel – we want to help, we want to care
- When we are actively practicing compassion, we offer understanding and kindness, especially when mistakes are made – no judgment, we all fail sometimes
- Compassion also teaches us that the pain, failure, and imperfection in our lives is a shared experience between all of us – it is what connects us, you and I
Compassion matters within my training philosophy because it has taught me that we all have our own timeframe, our own unique way of getting to our goals, as well as how we fuck up. I can’t be stringent with how I teach people – I’m not teaching you the steps or a lesson plan, what I’m really doing is holding that space for you where you want to be fit, empowered, healthy, strong, beautiful…..even when maybe some of your past failures made you think otherwise. It is important for me that you KNOW that I want you to be heard, and for you to KNOW that I care – we all have our shit to get through, some of it is physical, some of it is mental, and some of it we still haven’t even discovered yet.
I am here to tell you that you are going to mess up. During sessions, I correct form and like a broken record, constantly say “engage your abs, keep your back flat, shoulders down away from your ears, etc….”, over and over and over. Clients will come to their sessions and tell me they had a horse-shit week of eating all the wrong foods. They didn’t work out as often as they had planned. They ate 3 cupcakes instead of working on portion control and just having one. Even through all this, I’m holding that space for them to not be perfect – it is what it is, IT is in the PAST, and now we move forward focusing on the reset and adjustments. THIS is such an instrumental part of my job as a trainer. THIS, to me, is how clients make lasting lifestyle changes. Also… you may want to sit down for this one… I am not perfect, and I’m not going to do things perfectly every single time and neither will my clients. Neither will you.
Since we are practicing compassion and getting personal, I’m also going to admit that at first, that wasn’t the case for me. I was and continue to be a perfectionist – I used to think, ‘hey, listen to me,’ or ‘let’s remember, I’m the knowledgeable one here.’ What changed? Probably a little compassion, and well, as much as I help my clients to change, they change me. I have since learned that we are all so different (big shocker, I know, but most of us fall into the habit of thinking that people that don’t think like us are just plain wrong and that’s not always the case, ya know?); my job is to allow you that room to have your personal fitness journey and allow you to become curious about ways to incorporate fitness into your life. I could craft the perfect fitness regiment, give you a curated list of workout out equipment, and provide all the nutritional guidelines you could ever want, but if you are not ready for ALL OF THAT yet, then all it will do is overwhelm you, and that’s not very compassionate, is it?
So, that’s not how I do things, and here is a little bit more on the why…trigger warning;
When I was in my late teens, and early 20s, I was stressed, didn’t have a lot of mental health tools, and was stuffing my face quite frequently with food whenever I felt…well, anything. At a party? binge eat. On a romantic date? binge eat. Camping? binge eat. Feeling sad? binge eat. And after binge eating, I would often try to make myself throw up because that was the cycle I was in – unfortunate for my young self (and fortunate for my mature – I’m not old yet- self), the throwing up part didn’t work out whenever I tried, and that left me feeling even more stressed, too full, and basically shitty. I felt guilty afterward too, about what I ate, and how I ate it. On one particular day, when throwing up wasn’t succeeding, I went to the gym, I got on an elliptical, and tried to work-off (notice how I didn’t say work-out?) for over an hour, it made me sick, it was the last thing I should have done; my body took such a beating during those years. I tried to make myself happy with the food – but here is the thing, I only felt “good” when I was eating the food, not after. I tried not eating too… and then diet pills, I tried extreme detoxes and fasts (not the intermittent kind… the kind you pay for 🤦♀️); all sorts of things that didn’t address the shit I needed to. There are emotional ties that we aren’t even aware of that effect and trigger the way we look at and deal with food (and that’s just the tip of the iceberg). This then triggers the oh, so familiar guilt and shame reflex. Guilt mixed with shame is a dirty spiral to go down on, and that’s not what I want to create for my clients. I want them to know we can just move forward, and do better starting NOW….wherever they are in their journey. I’m not here to be the poster child of “look how I turned my life around”- far from that. I’m just here to tell you I recognize your struggle and I want to help guide you through it – the only way out is through. I’m not here to judge you, and I’m going to continue holding space for the fact that we are both imperfect.
I had to get personal with this post because I want for you to truly understand that when I say “I understand that I am working with a person, with unique needs, and I take that into consideration with each of my clients…” there is some deep heart in that. I take this philosophy very personally, and I carry my own failure (failure is learning how NOT to do something the next time) in life into each connection because I genuinely want to see you loving life, I don’t want you to be overthinking your “work-offs”, I don’t want you to be in a cycle of guilt and shame. Let’s not feel like shit together. We don’t need to get anything right, we just need to show up and do our very best, in the present moment. We will continuously define, redefine, and find new goals. All. The. Damn. Time… because if we aren’t constantly “growing forward”, we are either stagnant and stuck, or going backward.
I can share what works for me, but what works for me might now work for you. Deep down, somewhere down there (not there……but yep….right there, you feel it now) we all want to feel content, happy, healthy…. Whatever you want to call it… We just sometimes have a propensity to stand in our own way, to be immune to the very change we want to see in ourselves. However, when we come together, when we connect, build trust, have compassion (for ourselves and others), we tend to be able to do great things.
I’m super excited to continue showing you how amazing you are, and not just in how amazingly toned your biceps or ass can be 😏, but in that deep, personal space where you know, you are worth this too.
#wellness #training #mindset #balance #fitness #workouts #yesyoucan #worthy #mentalhealth #rushintofitness #compassion #self-care
