I wasn’t raised to be “active.” My first experience of exercise happened in my late 20’s when I signed up to kickboxing (I actually managed to get my green belt!)

Like many women, weight gain was related to having kids. As soon as I fell pregnant, I stopped exercising and started eating for 2. Time moved on and I didn’t realise how much weight I’d gained until I was in a larger ladies’ shop and the size 20 jeans didn’t fit. I lost some of that weight, and after the birth of my second child, I signed up to run a 10K for charity and thankfully, I decided to hire a personal trainer to get me through it. In my head, it would be a short term intervention, I’d finish my race and the trainer would go.

What I couldn’t have anticipated back then was hiring that PT would be life changing. I painstakingly completed the 10K (crying every single step of the way) and I realised I had to change if I was going to be alive to see my children grow up. I kept the PT on and still to this day train with him once a week.

In the last 12 years, amazing things have happened. I have lost 20% of my body fat and gained 10kg of muscle but beyond that, I’ve made amazing lifelong friends, and most of all, I’ve learned that my body can do amazing things - I can deadlift 100kg, I completed a half marathon, I competed in the Turf Games.

All I needed was someone to show me how to unlock my potential.

This is why I’ve become a Personal Trainer. I want to empower my clients to embrace what’s hard, to get stronger and fitter and feel more confident. I want them to understand that exercise and movement is a crucial part to building self-love and acceptance.