My Path to Becoming a Personal Trainer

Surprisingly, I did not always want to be a personal trainer. When I was young I wanted to be an author, I wrote many stories and even picture books, but another passion soon swept me away. When I got to junior high then high school I became very active, I played soccer for 6+ years then ran competitively for 4 years and then a couple more recreationally. That's when the desire to become a physical therapist sprouted.

My junior and senior years of high school were fraught with a lot of injuries, I had shin splints multiple times. I started to have foot pain and had to get specific inserts for all my shoes, and I started to get really bad knee pain. Looking back obviously, I was being really hard on my body, but all I could see was that my body couldn't keep up with where I wanted to be.

I often printed off the Pinterest workouts that told me that it would give me a six pack (they never did).

Being around the athletic trainers at my school and then working through my own injuries and watching others work through theirs I had a real desire to see what was hurting someone and wanting to make it better. So, when I started my undergrad I decided to major in Exercise Science. I didn’t second guess that major for one second, I loved all my classes that were directly related to my major, specifically Exercise Presciption (that’ll become of note a bit later).

While in college I continued to keep running, I ran two more half marathons, tried to run most days and continued to get upset with myself when I didn’t stick with it.

In the middle of my undergrad I had to take a specific course that was for anyone that was basically pre-med, anyone that wanted to go into the medical field. I realized very quickly that physical therapy was much more medical and required much more schooling than I had expected or wanted to do.

All of a sudden I had no idea what I wanted to do, and I was most of the way through my degree. My last semester I still didn’t know, I had a general idea, I thought about Public Health for a second and then I took Exercise Prescription and a whole idea opened up to me. Honestly though, I was pretty deep in academic burnout and then the pandemic hit.

I graduated in the middle of COVID, the world shut down and I had no idea what I was going to do with a degree that felt like it fizzled out. I did a lot of self reflection and research and decided I wanted to become a Personal Trainer. The beginning of 2021 I moved to somewhere where I thought there would be more opportunity and I studied. I got my certification mid 2021 through NASM and I was so excited.

After I graduated I decided to go and get my knee checked out, was told that running was not in my cards anymore and I had some work to do to get my knee back to functioning ok, but it would always be an issue.

That’s when I started getting into lifting some weights, yoga, and hiking. I was building programs for myself, though it looked different, I was still overtraining.

I immediately started applying to jobs at different gyms and got hired on at a big box gym. Which was truly an invaluable experience. I met some of the greatest people in my clients, I got to share my education, I got to help people, I was living what I had worked for.

Around this time was when I developed Orthorexia though it took awhile to realize and acknowledge it. I became obsessed with an idea of what a personal trainer should be doing and what they should look like.

I was a personal trainer I was actively training people, why was I struggling so bad?

I struggled with going to that gym and training people that were assigned to me. The environment became extremely focused on sales that were not about personal training, and that went against my personal philosophy when it came to fitness.

So, I quit. And I moved again. And again I felt lost. I was doing a lot of healing and therapy when it came to my disordered relationship with food and exercise, as well as my general mental health. I was also doing a lot of re-evaluating when it came to whether I wanted to be a personal trainer or not.

I did. And I believed in myself to do it on my own terms. So, that's what im doing. I am an online personal trainer, I get to help people on their terms, I get to share my education and experience. I get to continue to pursue my passion and heal myself a long the way.