On Strength

And what I learned from being a fitness instructor and personal trainer

Warning- this is a bit of a long post. Not possible to shorten- too much to say.

Every month I start a new note on my phone to record my weight training sets. This month’s note is called February STRENGTH. Last month’s note was called ‘January just KEEP GOING’ as I’d been sick before Christmas and felt like an old rag. December was called December Strength BLAST. The titles are short and annoying- The capital letters are to highlight the importance of the contents.

In the notes, I record the weight training session I do each day. The date, the exercises, weights used, number of sets. I attribute this need to record to being self-employed and being self-trained. The old saying if a tree falls in the woods comes to mind here. Each note, each recording of a training session is an affirmation. I’m here. I’m alive. I’m lifting weights. I’m keeping going.

Writing about strength is to consider a whole life of strength related stuff. I have been lifting, pushing and pulling metal objects for 32 years now. I wanted to write about it as it continues to heavily (pun very much intended) influence everything I do and how I feel, after all this time.

Overall I am hugely grateful to have discovered and had the opportunity to access and participate in this magical activity. I can’t imagine a life without training.

I worked as a fitness professional for 14 years and acquired many certifications and courses, some better than others. What I learned was that bodies are incredible things. There is no hierarchy of movement- all movement is good. But there are hierarchies of activities to achieve different physical results. Again these need to be changed and adapted per person, as we are all.. drum roll, different! There is no one size fits all. You have to find what works for you. And what works for you now might not have worked for you before, and may need to be changed again in the future. That what it is to own a body. It changes, so you must also change what you do with it.

I got to to thinking about my strength timeline trajectory. I’ve been lifting weights and exercising since I turned 18. I was never great at sport and had the typical negative experience of physical education in school. I joined a gym at 18 while a college student in Dublin and that was where my interest in strength training was ignited. I went on to train in many gyms, exercise by myself, travel and train in gyms in the US, retain in my late 20’s as a fitness instructor and from then work full time for 14 years in the industry. Then in 2016 I left it all behind, and went back to art as a career. Fitness was no longer a job but after using my body as a tool to teach and train so intensively for so many years, strength and fitness inevitably became part of my work as a performance artist.

There are so many areas of the above that I’d like to dive in to. My working life, specifically what I learned while working as a personal trainer and strength coach- is what I will write about today.

In 2011 my husband and I returned to Ireland from a year living in Vancouver. We had a new baby son and I had no job. Before leaving for our year in Vancouver I’d been the fitness manager of a large gym in Cork city, located in the south of Ireland. I’d taken a career break from the job to go to Vancouver, but because of structural changes within the company my job was no longer there for me upon our return. This news was the catalyst I needed- I immediately decided I was not going to put my professional career at the mercy of other people anymore and decided to set up my own fitness classes.

I’d spent a year in Vancouver personal training and teaching fitness classes in various gyms around the city centre, right up to a week before giving birth. (This is not a boast- it was normal in work focused, sensible Vancouver to keep fit throughout your pregnancy. I worked out as normal and taught all my classes- no one blinked when I hopped on a spin bike at 8 months pregnant to teach a class. I just worked at a suitable intensity and took breaks when I needed them.)

The experience I’d gained in Vancouver rubber stamped my conviction that I could make a success of my own classes in Cork without the safety net of an employer.

I remember finding a large, freezing cold warehouse space to rent in a dilapidated industrial estate on the north side of Cork city. I started running body weight training classes and pilates classes there. It was so cold in the warehouse that you could see your breath. Out of necessity I renamed my pilates classes ‘Power Pilates’ and sped them up so my clients didn’t freeze to death.

My son joining in a movement class in 2012

I eventually moved into a warmer venue, run by a martial arts MMA family team. I ran kettlebell classes, pilates classes and what I called ‘movement’ classes. My small toddler would often sit and play at the edge of the mats as I taught. At this time small gyms were everywhere, springing up in warehouses and above shops. It didn’t worry me- I knew gyms were like pubs or hairdressers- if you were good at what you did people would come to you.

Teaching a kettlebell class outside the back of the gym I worked from.

And I was good enough at it. I spent time programming interesting classes and I knew how to adapt and progress so everyone was able to train safely, from beginners to regular attendees. I found the science of movement and lifting endlessly interesting, democratic and empowering. Anyone could change their body if they were prepared to put the work in.

I soon realised that like attracts like- my class attendees were by and large women- women in their 30s and 40’s, all trying to improve themselves. I understood my clients. I knew exactly how they felt about themselves. I knew their insecurities and I knew how media and society fed them an ideal of what they should be, and tried to sell them the quick fixes. The diet shakes. The supplements. I knew them as I too had been there as a younger woman and done that.

At this stage, I’d already spent many hours as a fitness professional listening to people tell me about their body problems. Body problems though, are never just of the body. They are of the mind. The spirit. The soul. Through my work I learned of so many, many people unhappy with themselves. But I was a fitness instructor, not a psychologist, so I had only two methods of helping. Listening, and teaching them how to exercise safely and effectively.

A little context on how I got to this point- I had decided at age 27 to get a training certification as a fitness instructor. I had attending gyms for years up to that point, and had a fascination for the science of how the body works and how it responds to outside stressors.

At this particular time, aged 27, I was staying in my childhood home in Dublin having recently returned from a few years of New York living. I remember feeling so impatient with the slowness of life after the energy and colour of New York. I was living at home, working as an illustrator but feeling like a failure due to my failed attempt to secure a visa to stay in the Big Apple. It was time for radical change. I applied for a fitness certification course in Dublin City University.

I remember there were about 60 of us but over ½ soon dropped out due to the intense nature of the course. As a seasoned 27 year old, I was considered ancient but quickly realised that my relatively broad life experiences were serving me well- the younger course attendees couldn’t hack the intensive study and the long hours.

I finished the course and was offered a job in a gym in neighbouring County Kildare by one of the tutors on the course. I had planned to continue my illustration work and find a part time fitness job to supplement my income, but this full time opportunity was a valuable pathway to gain experience and skills.

And so I accepted the job and my fitness career began. For the next 14 years I worked in countless gyms, became a personal trainer, learned how to teach pilates, accumulated countless more training certifications, went to Vancouver and worked in gyms and personal trained there, started my own classes and fitness company back in Ireland, started training and competing in kettlebell sport, opened my own gym, and along the way had three kids.

.To me, doing fitness was easy. Actually easy is the wrong word. To rephrase- fitness was very much within my ability to perform competently. I had had a nuanced relationship with myself growing up as a teenager, and in my mid-teens, deep in self-loathing, developed an eating disorder, which dictated all my life choices up until my late 20’s. Managing and covering up my eating disorder took a considerable amount of time, energy and discipline.

It occurred to me early on in my fitness career that if I diverted even 10% of this time, energy and discipline to my fitness career that I would likely be successful. Anyone would have been. So I did.

Fast forward from age 27 to 10 years later- the intense years of having young kids, working early mornings and late nights as a fitness instructor, personal trainer and gym owner.

I was working as both of the first two- teaching fitness classes and personal training- for a huge multi-national company who had its Irish headquarters in the city I lived in. They had their own gym, sports hall and impressive fitness facilities, a generous concession to staff welfare you might think- or perhaps a bid to improve general employee health and therefore prevent sick leave.

I taught fitness classes there- spinning (leading a class full of people on stationary bikes through intense cardio workouts) TRX (sets of straps suspended from the ceiling which you used to target muscles from multi angles) Pilates (a series of exercises based from a floor position, sometimes using bands, circles or foam blocks to assist) Kettlebells (using kettlebells- large round iron weights with handles) and body conditioning classes like circuit training, and a class I invented myself called Jump Roll Crawl.

I enjoyed teaching. I was loud (communication is key when you are working in a studio full of people with music on), I knew my stuff thoroughly, I was personable, I remembered names, I noticed how people moved and when they started to improve. I appreciated people making the effort to get out of bed early of skip their lunch hour to come to my classes. I knew it was a daily choice they made and that it was my job to ensure that they had made the right choice.

Personal training was a different kettle of fish altogether. In the corporate gym I had a coterie of clients, men and women, some who I saw long term and some for just a few sessions.

Personal training is an interesting job because it’s just that- personal. You need to be ok with people telling you stuff about themselves. Some people worked with me every week, others would check in with me for as session sporadically and then mostly train by themselves.

The most common reason people booked personal training was in anticipation of an upcoming event. Sometimes it was a wedding, or a holiday. Other times it was post baby fitness goals. Sometimes it was after a bout of ill health, or a death in the family that had deeply affected them. Most often though it was an upcoming event they wanted to get in shape for.

I would ask them, somewhat unfairly, but what are you going to do in 5 years? This would invariably take them by surprise. They had not been thinking that far ahead about their bodies. They were thinking about the wedding in 3 months. And they had to all extents and purposes bought into a marketing construct where they’d been told that in 3 months they would have what they wanted. To be lean and toned. They didn’t really want to think about where they would be in 5 years.

But I did. I wanted them to think about a time when I would not be there, assisting and guiding them. I tried to have them re-shift their goalposts to beyond three months, beyond the parameters of the gym and the personal training construct. I wanted them to think about lifestyle, habits, long term plans. I wanted them to stop hating their own flesh as I had done my own for so long and start focusing on what their bodies did for them. I wanted them to take ownership of their bodies, and not allow others, ads, society, media to tell them how to feel. You only get one body.

What I found was that most women, by and large, had been taught from an early age to not like themselves. And to disassociate from their bodies. Not necessarily by their parents, but by the world. Television. Ads. Culture. Other people. I recognised it before they would even mention their dislike of their bodies, because I knew exactly how it felt. I could see it in how they carried themselves, how they walked into the gym. Apologetically. Nervously.

I would hear the same words from a woman every time- ‘I want to lose weight and tone up’. They felt if they could just be smaller, neater, take up less space, they would be happier. I heard my own deep insecurities about weight and size echoing back at me time and time again. I began to see how we as women had been encouraged from our early years to see ourselves as problematic. Our flesh, our shapes. Never good enough.

People confide in you when they get to know you, even a little bit. As a female in her late 30’s, with young kids, I got sent a lot of clients with the same profile. Gyms are weird places, with their mirrors and their machines. Lots of people told me it had taken months for them to pluck up the courage to come in the gym door. For fear of looking stupid, Being judged. Not being fit, strong or thin enough.

My first goal was always to help my client feel a sense of ownership about being in the gym space. After the initial couple of visits they grew a little more accustomed to their surroundings and had realised that other gym users were not looking at them- they were mostly too busy watching TV or looking at their phones, or looking at themselves.

The next step was movement training. I was dealing with people, corporate office people who got up, drove to work, sat all day, drove home and went to bed. They had stopped jumping , skipping, climbing years ago and had forgotten how to do these things. As a result their mobility, dexterity and flexibility were all low. We would work on simple movement patterns, over and over, and learn how to perform functional movements like squats and lunges.

I would remind them that there were other reasons to get strong, not just aesthetic ones. Strength would help them be able to get up off the ground if they tripped. Strength would help them get up off the toilet by themselves and to be able to climb the stairs when they got old. Cue horrified laughter.

I would always try and make them laugh, just a bit, to put them at ease. After all, it would be 6 or 7am, usually raining outside, on a busy weekday morning. We would both have long, busy days ahead. Any bit of lightness was useful.

I opened my own gym space 3 months before I had my third kid. It was called The Strength Room. It was a weight training gym. We had barbells, kettlebells, a big steel rig for pull ups and racking weights on. No mirrors.

Outside my gym The Strength Room, 9 months pregnant in 2013

I wanted a space that was inclusive and hard core. Hardcore in what we did there, what we lifted, what our message was.

The same pattern emerged in my gym as it had with personal training in the big company- like attracted like. We ended up with a tribe of not exclusively but primarily female clients, in their 30’s 40’s and 50’s. In the morning classes we always had kids playing in the corner of the gym where we kept a box of toys, and a pram or two with a sleeping baby, including my own. A lack of a babysitter was no reason to miss training. The women brought their partners along too and our client list grew.

The classes were kettlebell lifting, strength training, barbell lifting, body weight training like push-ups, crawling, pull ups, circuits, strong woman/man training, for which we even had our own little car that we pulled up and down the concrete outside the gym.

We were not a tribe of amazons- we had every ability level and everyone trained at their own capacity and ability. No competition.

A kettlebell class in The Strength Room 2015

We lasted for just over 2 years. I was owner, proprietor, manager, accountant, marketer, class instructor, everything. I had a business partner and the gym was making money but not enough. Meanwhile my middle child had been diagnosed with a lifelong disability and the gradual awakening of the long term implications of this meant we- my partner and I- had to drastically re-evaluate our situation. With both of us working we were finding it harder and harder to get to the frequent doctor and therapy appointments. One of us had to become our child’s carer. That one of us was me, as I made less money and our mortgage still had to be paid. So the Strength Room, my pride and joy, had to go. I will write about the Strength Room and the wonderful group of people who trained there another time.

What I want to end with was what I saw time and time again when women started lifting weights. They would experience what I called a physical can do awakening.

The realisation that you can be proud of your body for your body’s sake . Not because of how it looks but because of what it can do.

When new clients, nearly always women- arrived to the gym they would say the same familiar words - I want to lose weight and tone up.

I would say but what do you want to DO- for YOU?

I would ask again- what do you want to be able to do that you can’t do now?

I would set them a starting Goal.

Maybe it would be 5 push ups.

Or to Squat a certain amount of weight.

Or to be able to do a body weight pull up.

We would work towards the goal, day after day, showing up week after week, putting in the work. Long after the novelty had worn off. Showing up when you were tired and sore. Then the magic would start to happen. Women would report in wonder of the shape of their arms changing, their bums lifting, their posture improving. Of lifting things that had previously felt heavy with ease. These body changes had come about through the pursuit of the goal. They were a by-product of the work. 5 assisted push-ups would become 5 full body push ups, 5 would become 10.

Toning up and losing weight was no longer the ultimate goal. Being able to do things, lift things, became the goal. I saw women reclaim their bodies as powerhouses, not just sacks of flesh that they had disassociated from. They spoke about themselves with more kindness and with more pride.

It was about positive results, achieving personal goals instead of trying to fit in, be less than, to take up less space. It was simple but profound.

I lift weights on my own now- I moved away from the fitness industry 8 years ago. I record my weight training session each day into my notes and I often think about those days in the strength room and in the corporate gym in the early mornings and all the great women and men who got up early to train with me. I still keep in touch with a few of my clients from those days. Some of them still lift weights and swing kettlebells. I know the industry has moved on from that time and that weight lifting is much more commonplace now than it used to be. I no longer lift competitively, and no longer teach anyone how to lift. I do miss it sometimes but I know that giving up being a fitness instructor allowed me the space to make art again, which I do not regret. At 50 years old I lift for the love of it now, and for the positive effects I get mentally and physically as a result. I hope I will still be doing that in 20 years time.